2019-06-15 - No Wonder It Tastes Like Secrets And Regret

In the break room, in the PD side of the combo PD/FD, one dispatcher (definitely not a cop), is hanging out with the box of donuts on the table. Today, she's covered in a light sprinkling of powdered sugar, seeing as she's consumed at least one of the icing filled kind, and is currently working on half of a chocolate cake. Sutton wears a pair of fitted pinstripe pants, a button-down, crisp white cotton, and a darker camisole underneath it. Her sleeves are rolled up, at this point in the shift, tattooed left arm on display. Her ink is also dusted with white.

She has a mug, not hers. Across the porcelain are black letters in and handwritten, blocky typeface:

I D🍩NUT CARE.

In strolls a cop. Because it's the PD break room. So naturally, cops tend to wander in. And when they find a non-cop parked there with evidence of their donut appropriation all over their fingers and face, there's naturally an inclination to pause mid-stride and run their eyes over said interloper. And remark after a moment or three, "I think you must be lost. Fire is across the hall."

The bulky, dark-haired cop observes her ink for a beat more, then happens to notice the mug in front of her. His lips press together slightly. And he is, notably, armed. Suit jacket and pants; clean shirt, blue and silver tie that's ever so slightly askew. Badge visible at his hip, near his gun.

He moves again eventually, stepping in close to liberate a honey crueller from the box, and take a bite that sprinkles a bit of icing along the front of his shirt and beard.

"Do I look like I'm wearing a fire uniform?" She's not. Sutton's dressed in what could be loosely termed business casual if you ignore the fact that her pants are verging on tight (donuts), and she's covered in sugar, and her ID badge for dispatch is tucked into her back pocket, completely unreadable and thus violating policy about always having visible identification in the building.

She says this before she's even looked up from casing the donuts, though it's not like it's easy to mistake De La Vega's accent. Into her mouth disappears another hunk of chocolate donut, lightly coated with a glaze. The mug holds two strings with little teabag labels wrapped around the handle. She picks it up and takes a sip. It smells spicy and sweet, with a splash of milk or cream — some kind of chai, no doubt.

Sutton doesn't move, forcing the captain to reach past her. When he takes a bit and drips little cracked bits of the glaze. She reaches right on up to flick some out of his beard. "You're making a mess." Nevermind that gesture is familiar and invasive. "Your tie's crooked."

Judging by the slight belly that's visible atop the waistband of his pants, the captain also has a habit of overindulging on donuts in the break room. He disappears half of it into his mouth at once, glances down to brush some flecks of icing off his shirt, and suddenly she's touching him. Dark eyes fix on hazel for a long, long moment. Then, "Wine is not an emergency." No mention of the mess he's making, or the untoward gesture. The rest of the donut is shoved into his mouth, thumb and forefinger licked off, and a thoroughly pointless attempt made to straighten his tie. Which actually makes it a little bit worse.

Sutton licks a fleck of icing off her thumb after she returns her hands to herself. She shoves the offending hand into her front pocket like that did not just happen. The prolonged eye contact is broken by her. She reaches into the box to take the second half of the chocolate donut she broke in two just before Ruiz entered the break room.

"Wine is the only emergency worth mentioning in this town." There's a brief pause before something occurs to her. "Who bought it last night?" Her gaze turns to the tie, which is now more crooked. She squints at it, then looks away, eats a bite of donut. Looks back. Yes, it's bothering her.

Ruiz reaches for another donut once Sutton breaks eye contact, and once he's done fucking up his tie some more. It's pretty clear that this whole suit business doesn't sit well with him. "Creo que tienes tus prioridades equivocadas," he murmurs around a mouthful of icing and sprinkles. Then settles against the edge of the table with a soft thump that might be his firearm nudging the metal, and takes another bite right on the heels of the last.

Once he's finished chewing and swallowing, and dusted some colourful sprinkles from the thigh of his pants, "Mrs. Butler." Little old lady who lives down near the trailer park and keeps a shotgun in her bedroom closet. "We think. Dental records still need to be matched." Which suggests the damage that must have been done to her face. He glances over at Sutton, then back to the remnants of donut in his hand. And takes another bite.

Sutton breaks off another piece of donut and pops it into her mouth. She licks her finger and sips her tea, two-handing her drink and snack. She glances up when he speaks to her in Spanish. "I think you're full of crap." Well, that's blunt. You'd think she was hung over still, and completely lost her mind to be talking like that at work to a captain.

She settles down a little bit after another sip of tea, though the faintest scowl still shows on her forehead, a tightness between her eyebrows. "Well, that's..." Some of the salt is shaken out of her posture as she has a think on those few words. "Awful."

It's certainly not the first time a unit's been dispatched to that address. And Sutton would know this better than anyone. To say she had it coming might be unnecessarily harsh, but it's likely what a few people are thinking right about now. Mrs. Butler was not a gentle soul.

"Do you?" queries the captain after a moment, shoving the last of donut #2 into his mouth, and turning slightly to watch Sutton in her pinstriped pants and crisp button-down. Powdered sugar still decorates her clothing here and there, but he has enough restraint not to point it out. Much less take steps to remedy it himself. "I think you like me. More than you want to admit." A stray sprinkle is dabbed with his thumb, and eaten. "Or are you going to give me some bullshit about meaning to text someone else, last night?" He flicks his eyes to his mug, then back to her face.

There's a long silence from Sutton as she sips her tea from a stolen mug. Nobody likes to hear of a death, not even in a small town, not even with the offender is a frequent abuser of police services. "One more glass of wine, and I probably would have sexted my landlord, so it's good I got you first." The tone? A bit dry. Her contacts must be pretty thin to go right from 'cop she's met a couple times' to 'landlord'.

"Oh, is this yours?" The temporary-dispatcher asks, of the mug she's holding. "No wonder it tastes like secrets and regret." Just after she says that, she glances back down at the donuts, as if, for a split second she feels almost bad about the shitty tone that just keeps coming right out of her mouth.

Ruiz's slouched shoulders and tired eyes suggest he was up quite late handling the situation. He's not technically in charge of homicide, though gets pulled in on a fair few of them as one of the senior-most officers in the district. There's some amusement when Sutton mentions sexting her landlord, but no comment. A cop sticks his head in the doorway briefly to tell the captain he's swapping shifts with Morales, pauses long enough to flash the dispatcher a flirty grin, and then disappears again.

"I did not say that it was. But I am glad to see you have a conscience. Even if it's a guilty one." He makes another attempt at adjusting his tie, with a brief grimace of discomfort.

"On my desk in an hour." The mug. One presumes.

Sutton seems to spend the day fielding flirty grins from POs. She glances over the Captain's shoulder, so she's not looking at him when he says the thing about the desk. Mid-sip, she inhales and chokes. The brunette turns away to cough a couple of times, putting the mug down for a moment so she doesn't slosh herself with tea as well as sugar.

"Of course I have a conscience." Sutton reaches over to pick up the mug again. "Don't you?" She seems to have returns to baseline after a momentary hiccup. "You should get some sleep, Captain. You look like hell." She absently brushes at her arm, flicking sugar off of her tattoo, though some of it has melted against her skin. "I'm off shift. I'll talk to you tomorrow." With that, the woman turns to make her way out of the break room, before Waffles finds his way in here too.

Ruiz seems pleased with the effect the dry delivery of his demand has had on Sutton, and responds with a fractional smile at the corners of his mouth. It's warm and amused, and enough to make his dark eyes scrunch up a little at the corners. He waits for her to compose herself, without moving from his lean against the table a mere foot or so away.

"Make sure it's on my desk in an hour." Yep, probably the mug he's talking about. Though no guarantees. Does she really want to find out what De La Vega does to those who abscond with his shit? Surely she's gotten an earful or two of him ripping an officer to shreds behind the door of his office, to know that he's not quite the mild-mannered, laconic pushover he sometimes appears.

"Goodnight, Captain." Sutton throws up a hand as she walks out, though whether it's in acknowledgement of the demands or a dismissive gesture is open to interpretation. She rounds the corner, her boots loud enough on the flooring that it's easy to hear her making her way down toward a turn in the corridor, headed, presumably, for the call center to log out, if she hasn't already done so.

The mug goes with her.

The mug will not be on his desk in an hour, but that should come as no surprise.