The waitress plopped down two plates of blueberry pancakes beside their coffee cups. Telling them to enjoy their food, she began to speed away towards another table before she had the whole sentence out.

"Thank you," Juliet called out towards the waitress' back before turning back toward her partner. He already had shoveled a bite of pancake into his mouth and was reaching for his coffee. "Ok, so things didn't pan out with my friend Mary. Next time maybe you don't bring up how to pull off the cleanest shot on a moving target," she said, although it seemed to her like that should be common sense on a date.

Setting down his coffee, he told her, "O'Hara, I appreciate the effort, but I really do not need your help getting a woman. If you recall, I was married before, and things were going well with Lucinda before Spencer came in and mucked everything up".

"I just want you to be happy, Carlton. So does Chief Vick". Her stomach grumbled at her, momentarily forcing her attention away from the conversation and towards the food on her plate. She reached for the syrup Carlton was currently hogging and pulled it towards herself.

"Just because I am single doesn't mean I'm unhappy, O'Hara. If anything, relationships make people discontent. Why do you think so many people divorce, kill, or steal from their partners?" He punctuated his point by stabbing his butter knife into his pancakes.

Juliet lifted her hands up, splaying them before him. "Ooookk, let's dial it back a bit". Sometimes Carlton's views on relationships were a tad concerning to her. He had such a negative outlook on romance, likely as a result of his separation from his wife. She wished that she could just get him to see that it wasn't all hopeless. "It's just that lately it seems like you've been lonely".

That was what had sparked this whole girlfriend search. Carlton had seemed so on edge lately (even more so than usual). And then his foul mood was exacerbated by a bad date. Juliet was not just helping him find a girlfriend because Vick had "ordered" her to. She also wanted the best for Carlton, and a romantic partner was a step in the right direction in her opinion. Someone to tell about his day, to support him, to care for him, and most of all, to love him.

"I'm not lonely! I have you!"

"That's sweet, Carlton". Although Juliet liked to consider herself Carlton's friend, most of their time together was spent on the job. She feared that outside of work her partner did not get enough socialization.

She was still smiling at his kind words when he suddenly added on, "And of course I have my guns".

Her smile quickly faded. "Carlton, you have a very weird relationship with your guns. Guns are not people". Juliet was surprised she had yet to find Carlton cradling his gun like a baby.

"I'm also friendly with my fellow Civil War reenactors. Although… We only meet a couple times a year. And when the guys go out for a beer after, they always say that they would feel uncomfortable drinking in front of a cop. Which now that I think about it, is weird, because I think that Bradley, one of the Union soldiers, is a cop… And when I go to the shooting range on the weekends, sometimes there are other people shooting there and we interact".

"How do you interact, Carlton?" She was not certain she wanted to receive the answer to that.

"I help them correct their stance and aim. Then they get annoyed and leave, but look, if you're going to shoot, do it right…." Juliet attempted to stifle a giggle behind her coffee. Yet while her little smirk was hidden by the lip of the cup, it did nothing to stop the noise from reaching Carlton's ears. She evaded the power of his glare by getting lost in imagining Carlton approaching someone else at the range to correct their stance. She could clearly see him gruffly informing them of everything they were doing wrong. He would gesture at his target as an exemplar, and then compare it to the sub-par work of the poor person who caught his attention. Likely more intimidated than annoyed, they would scurry out of the range and probably never return.

Carlton went silent for a moment, a pained expression forming on his face. "Help me, O'Hara," he said in a strained voice. Maybe another attempt at a girlfriend wouldn't kill him.

"I already said I would the other day on the stakeout", Juliet softly replied.

"Ooh! Why don't we roleplay!" She bounced up and down a little in her seat, grinning at him.

"I don't know, O'Hara. Roleplay sounds a little too close to undercover, and we all know how you get when you're undercover". In the span of a few hours on an undercover assignment, his partner had gone from a badass cop to one of Elle Woods' sorority friends in Legally Blonde. Yeah, so he watched movies. Whatever. But he definitely was not going to bring that movie up to O'Hara, even if it would help his argument. Also the idea of being on a date with O'Hara, even if in pretend, made him nervous. She was his partner, not some random woman he picked up at a coffee shop and could flirt with.

"Shush! Ok, pretend I'm Mary," Juliet insisted. She was still smiling, and Carlton had no idea how any person could maintain a smile for so long without their mouth muscles betraying them.

He remained silent for a while, but a glare from O'Hara got him talking. "Hi, Mary," he muttered.

Propping her head up on her hand, Juliet assumed the role of Mary. "So Juliet tells me you're a detective".

"That's right. Head detective for the Santa Barbara Police Department". Carlton sat up a little straighter in the booth.

"Impressive. What does that entail?"

Carlton felt a little idiotic about telling his partner what he did for living, but went along with it to appease O'Hara. "Well, I am in charge of delegating, assigning cases and keeping an eye on the other detectives. But mainly I'm out solving cases with O'Hara. Y'know, the best part of my day is when the phone rings, and on the other end of the line is a beat cop telling me they found some massacred corpse". A relaxed smile appeared on his face, lighting up his eyes.

"Ehhh", Juliet made a buzzer noise and shook her head.

"What?" Carlton innocently asked, frustration seeping into his tone.

"No talk about corpses on a first date!" Yet another thing that should be common sense.

"But it's related to my job!" It was on topic, so what was wrong with what I said? He wondered to himself.

"Just say that you solve cases for the SBPD. That's it. And don't tell people that the best part of your day is when you find out someone is dead".

"You know that's not what I meant". It brought him no pleasure to see a dead body. What brought him pleasure was putting a murderer behind bars where they belonged. Plus, it was sort of impossible to do his job if there were no crimes.

"Of course, because I'm your partner. But Mary wouldn't. What were you going to talk about next, the torso we found in the sewer?" Juliet tossed out the rhetorical question flippantly.

Carlton's face slackened, any hint of a smile fading from his face, and he cast his eyes downward.

"Seriously, Carlton?" Juliet said in an exasperated voice. What part of dead body did he think sounded attractive to women?

"What? It's a good story. Almost as good as the clown one," he confidently replied.

Ah yes, the clown story that resulted in his date excusing herself to the bathroom and never returning. Juliet resisted rolling her eyes at him.

"Here-I'll give you an example of what to say". She deepened her voice. "A lot of people hate going to work, but not me. I love each opportunity I get to solve a case and put a criminal behind bars".

"That's so cheesy. Sounds like something a cop on one of those inaccurate crime shows would say at the start of the pilot episode". He took an aggressive bite of his pancakes. How in the hell did their conversation end up here? They were supposed to be discussing cases, for crying out loud. Last time he took O'Hara out for breakfast, that was for sure.

"But that is what you said to me, minus the serial killer vibe!"

"No it's not, O'Hara".

"If you say so…" She sing-songed.

"Check please," he barked out.

"Ok, ok, I'll drop it. Just finish your pancakes, Carlton". She lazily waved at him and took another bite of her pancakes.

"I already did," he casually said and took another sip of coffee.

She glanced over at his plate, which held nothing but pancake crumbs, a single rogue blueberry, and some syrup. Her jaw dropped open. "Wha-when?"

"While you were flirting with me and trying to turn me into a rom-com character".

"You know what a rom-com is? And I was not flirting with you, Carlton. I was acting as Mary!"

"Listen, O'Hara- maybe it's better if we don't butt into each other's romantic endeavors". This whole exercise was a bust-he was no better off with women than before this conversation had started. At least O'Hara hadn't run off like Mary, though. Somehow she had made it 3 years as his partner, and if he was being honest they got along great. Sure, it had been a rocky start, but they quickly got into the groove of things as partners. She was a hell of a good detective and served well as a buffer between himself and that buffoon Shawn.

"Maybe you're right. But you better still tell me about the non-romantic stuff in your personal life," she insisted.

"What personal life?"

"Carlton!" She threw her napkin at him, and he threw it right back.

After that, the conversation drifted to cases, and eventually faded out while Carlton gave Juliet the time to finish her pancakes.

The conversation gone, Carlton had nothing to turn to but his own complicated mind. For a moment he thought maybe it would be easier if he just dated someone who already understood the inner workings of his brain. But the only woman who did was O'Hara, so he immediately shoved that idea from his mind and called out to the waitress to bring the check.