"I guess chivalry isn't dead, after all." (face: jaw line)
"Carlton, are you listening to me?"
Juliet sighed when her partner continued to stare at the report on his computer screen without seeing it. He'd been distracted for the past two weeks, ever since Shawn Spencer had gotten hurt in the warehouse bust. It was baffling, really; she hadn't known that Carlton had cared so much about the other man.
"Carlton?" she prompted, nudging at his shoulder and watching him jerk in surprise at the contact of her hand on his arm.
"What?" he muttered, peevishly, glaring at her.
"You haven't heard a word I've been saying, have you?" she asked.
"What do you want, O'Hara?" he asked, shortly, and she flinched at the distant tone in her partner's voice.
He also hadn't been talking to her for the past two weeks, except for work related matters. O'Hara wasn't stupid, she knew she'd screwed things up, royally. But, Shawn and his theatrics had just been getting on her last nerve, lately, and when he'd called her, insisting that it was life or death, she'd blown him off with some excuse and had hung up on him.
She should have known that something was up when Shawn had called back, with that same, desperate tone in his voice. But, she'd snapped something about how she was swamped with work, and how she didn't have time for his drama queen act, and then she'd hung up before he could get another word out. It had taken another five minutes of her guilty conscience gnawing at her before she'd gone to the Chief with Shawn's frantic phone call. But by then, she was too late.
"I was just asking your opinion about those home invasions on Berkeley," she said, when Carlton huffed out an impatient breath and waited for her to get to the point. "Do you think there's anything there worth looking into, deeper?"
"Everything is worth a deeper look," he said, icily, and she winced at the not-so-subtle censure in his voice.
"Look," she said, exasperatedly, trying to apologize for probably the hundredth time in two weeks, "I'm sorry, all right. I screwed up, and it will never happen, again."
Carlton just grunted out a wordless acknowlegement, his eyes fixed firmly on his computer screen as he turned his attention back to the report waiting for him.
"I'm not really the person you should be saying that to, don't you think?" he finally said, without looking over at her.
The worst part was, he was right. The person she really needed to apologize to was Shawn, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to talk to the other man. She'd tried, dozens of times, but she could never get the words out. She just wound up babbling, aimlessly, and sounding like some kind of idiot while Shawn stared at her in disbelief.
She hated that she couldn't say two simple words: "I'm sorry", but part of that, she reasoned, was Shawn's fault. After all, it wasn't as though he had apologized to her for what he'd done. Everything had been fine between them a while back, Shawn flirting badly with her while she just laughed it off, but then, about a month ago, it was as though a switch had been flipped.
He'd come to the station to talk the Chief into giving him a case, and he'd been perfectly nice to her. There had been no flirting, no barely-hidden glances, no thinly-veiled innuendo, and it had thrown her for a loop. Seemingly overnight, he'd started treating her like he would any other person. There'd never been any explanation, and she'd been hurt by his sudden shift in attitude.
So, maybe she'd adjusted her own attitude, in turn. She'd started treating him completely professionally, although she was ashamed to admit that her professionalism had slipped from time to time, as she let her emotions take control and dictate how she dealt with Shawn.
"I was an idiot," she said, quietly, but from the way Carlton's hands stilled on his keyboard, it was obvious that he'd heard her.
"Yep," he agreed, while she blushed, faintly. "You were an idiot."
Hearing her words parroted back at her made her unaccountably angry, and she glared at the man who still wasn't looking at her.
"You're my partner," she snapped. "Aren't you supposed to be on my side with all of this?"
"All of what?" he asked, rhetorically. "You screwed up. You won't do it, again. End of story."
"Thanks, partner," she muttered, dryly.
Stalking across the squad room, she sat down at her own desk, pulling up the file for her most recent case. She pointedly ignored her partner as she worked on her report, striking the keys on her keyboard a little harder than necessary. She could feel his eyes on her from across the squad room as he watched her work, and she shifted, uncomfortably under his direct gaze.
She felt like she had as a kid the few times her parents had caught her doing something wrong, and she knew that it was her own guilty conscience speaking. Twice, she picked up her cell phone and started dialing Shawn's number, to just get it done and over with, but both times she flipped her phone shut before she could complete the call.
Carlton was right; she needed to apologize. But she wasn't going to let herself take the easy way out, by talking to him over the phone where she didn't have to look at him, or worse, by leaving a voicemail so that she didn't have to talk to him at all. No, when she apologized for her error in judgment, it was going to be face to face, no matter how uncomfortable it made her feel.
"Let's get lunch," Carlton said, suddenly, standing and grabbing his coat off the back of his chair.
"What?" she said, confused.
"Lunch," Carlton repeated. "You're like my sister. You get irrational and bitchy when your blood sugar gets low."
"I am not irrational," she protested, and her partner smirked when he caught her deliberate omission.
But, she grabbed her own coat and followed him out to his car, sliding into the passenger seat while he started the engine. The drive was quiet except for the radio that Carlton had tuned to some news station, but after a few minutes he shut even that off, plunging the car into a stiff silence. He was drumming his fingers restlessly on the steering wheel as he drove, a deep line etched in his forehead between his eyes as he scowled at the road.
"Do you believe that feelings for someone can just change?" he asked, suddenly, breaking the silence. "I mean, you know how you should feel about someone, but everything you're feeling is completely the opposite?"
"I think emotions are complex," she said, slowly, treading lightly on completely new territory.
She didn't know what had prompted her usually taciturn partner to suddenly open up with his emotions, but she wasn't going to say anything to spook him into changing his mind.
"I don't think feelings can just change, overnight," she went on, carefully. "I think that certain events can change how we view people, and that affects how we feel about them."
Carlton considered her words as he drove, staring off into the distance, and then he shook his head in disgust.
"That," he declared, "makes no sense."
"Well, excuse me for not being a trained psychologist," she muttered under her breath.
Personally, she thought it made complete sense. Carlton just didn't want to accept anything that didn't fit into his perfect little worldview. Especially if it involved Shawn Spencer, like she was starting to suspect.
It made perfect sense, really. Shawn had saved Carlton's life out at the warehouse, and now Carlton was confused about the other man. The laid-back, no cares in the world, jokester had turned out to be deeper and more complex than either of them had suspected, and she had the feeling that Carlton was uncomfortable with the realizations that were forming.
Or, for all she knew, he was madly in love with Shawn. That thought made her snort with laughter, earning her a raised eyebrow from her partner as he took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at her.
'Carlton and Shawn,' she thought, still chuckling inwardly. 'Right. And next, pigs will fly.'
She was startled out of her thoughts when the car started slowing down, and she looked at their destination with some surprise.
"Tom Blair's Pub?" she asked, skeptically, as Carlton threw the car into park. "We're having lunch, here?"
"The food isn't bad," Carlton said, defensively. "Are you coming, or not?"
She followed her partner into the pub, confused when the hostess smiled, widely, when she saw them, a genuine smile that was worlds away from the usual, plastic customer-service smile.
"Hey, Detective," she greeted them, and Juliet was shocked to realize that the woman was talking to Carlton. "Your usual table?"
"Thanks, Christine, that would be great," Carlton replied, and even more shocking was the sight of a smile on his face, especially since she'd privately thought that his face would crack if he tried to smile.
"Christine?" she echoed, after they'd been seated, and a waitress had taken their lunch orders. "Your usual table?"
"I come here for lunch from time to time," Carlton said, although she suspected that it was more than that from the way he'd ordered without even looking at the menu.
"Right," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "What's next, finding out that you have a standing date with Shawn, here?"
There was an ominous silence from the opposite side of the table, and she looked up in shock to see Carlton fiddling with his napkin, very pointedly not looking at her.
"Oh, my god," she breathed, and a faint blush colored his cheeks at her exclamation. "You're having lunch with Shawn Spencer?"
"Just for about a week," he muttered, defensively, clearly sensing that he was trapped in the conversation. "Guster's been at some pharmaceutical conference in Seattle, and Henry Spencer's out fishing in the middle of the Pacific, so I've been keeping an eye on Spencer while he's recuperating."
"And that includes lunch," Juliet repeated, stunned.
Carlton opened his mouth to answer, probably to refute her words, but then his mouth snapped shut and his gaze hardened as he stared over her shoulder in the direction of the door. Twisting around in her seat, she followed his gaze to see Shawn Spencer standing in the doorway. He was leaning heavily on a pair of crutches, his weight centered on his one, good leg. And he wasn't alone.
A pair of hulking men had Shawn backed up against the door frame, practically looming over the smaller man while he leaned backward in a futile effort to get away. He was clearly trapped by the men, unable to get away while he was hampered by his broken leg. One of the men leaned closer to him, saying something, and a faint look of panic flashed across Shawn's face.
"I'll be right back," Carlton said, brusquely.
Juliet watched him stalk across the dining area to Shawn's side, watched him brush his coat back to reveal his badge and gun clipped to his belt. And then, to her further amazement, she watched as Carlton draped a casual arm across Shawn's shoulders, leaning over and planting a quick kiss on the curve of the younger man's jaw line.
She could feel her own jaw dropping at the sight, her eyes practically bugging out as Carlton took a protective stance half in front of Shawn, saying something too low for her to hear. But, whatever he'd said, it made the men back off, shaking their heads as they left the pub.
She expected Carlton to back off as soon as the men were gone, but he remained where he was, arm across Shawn's shoulders. He said something that made a grin break out across the younger man's face, and then he steered Shawn across the crowded dining area. It was then that she saw that the arm he had across Shawn's shoulders was mostly for support, holding him up as he maneuvered with the awkward crutches.
"-almost miss the wheelchair," Shawn was saying, as he dropped gratefully into the chair that Carlton had pulled out for him. "Thanks, Lassie. I guess chivalry isn't dead, after all."
"What the hell was that?" Juliet broke in, interrupting whatever Carlton was about to say. "That kiss," she stammered, staring at the men in disbelief. "What the hell was with that kiss?"
"It's called acting, O'Hara," Carlton said, with an exasperated eye roll. "Spencer can't help but get himself into trouble; I was just getting him out of it."
"Hey," Shawn protested, "I could have handled things."
"Uh huh," Carlton said, skeptically, sarcasm heavy in his voice. "You were handling things just fine from what I could tell."
"You kissed him," Juliet pressed, and Carlton huffed out an impatient sigh.
"It was a ruse, O'Hara," he said, shortly. "Let it go."
Their food arrived, then, and it was accompanied by a sandwich and a Coke that the waitress placed in front of Shawn with a flirty smile.
"I saw you come in and figured that you'd be eating with Detective Lassiter," she said, when Shawn thanked her. "Enjoy."
"I'll be right back," Carlton said, suddenly, standing and heading across the room to the restrooms in the back corner of the pub.
That left her alone with Shawn, and suddenly she found herself just as tongue-tied as she'd been every other time she tried to talk to him. But, she was determined to say what needed to be said, and she wasn't going to let herself chicken out. Not again.
"I'm sorry," she blurted out, and Shawn looked at her in surprise, one eyebrow raised, inquisitively.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked, swallowing a bite of his sandwich.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, stubbornly. "I screwed up, and you got hurt, and I'm sorry."
"Accepted," he said, with a shrug, and she stared at him in disbelief.
"That's it?" she asked, incredulously. "I've been agonizing over this for two weeks, and you just shrug it off like it didn't matter?"
"Well, I left my thumbscrews in my other cast," he told her, sarcastically. "Really, Juliet, it's okay. Carlton's safe, the bad guys are in jail, and everything turned out fine."
Juliet just shook her head, amazed at his easy acceptance. She knew that he couldn't hold a grudge, and now she was seeing it, firsthand.
"Can I ask you something?" she asked, a few seconds later, and he gestured for her to continue. "Why'd you stop flirting with me? I mean, one minute you were all lovey-dovey, and the next, everything just stopped."
"This thing between us," Shawn said, looking her square in the eye, "was it ever going to go anywhere?"
She blushed, thinking back to her behavior. She'd had no intention of ever returning Shawn's affections, but she'd never set him straight because she'd been so flattered at having his attention focused on her.
"No," she admitted, quietly. "I like you, Shawn, but I don't-"
She trailed off, even now unable to finish the sentence, but Shawn was nodding, knowingly.
"Exactly," he said. "I'd been fooling myself for a while, but eventually the signs were too much for even me to ignore, so I just cut things off."
"I'm sorry," she muttered, this time apologizing for having lead Shawn on for so long, but he just shrugged, again.
"I saw what I wanted to see," he told her. "At least, until I woke up and smelled the coffee, anyway."
"That kiss," Juliet asked a few seconds later, unable to let it go like Carlton had ordered. "Was that really just a ruse?"
Shawn had glanced out at the dining area at her question, and she watched his face soften with some indescribable emotion when Carlton emerged from the restrooms. Then, he turned back to her, his face smoothing out into its usual mask.
"I don't know," he finally admitted, with a quiet sigh. "I just don't know, anymore."