The thin crack of light across the floor slid away as the door clicked shut. He walked across the floor of the apartment, away from the woman's bedroom. She'd been sleeping when he'd come to visit. She hadn't visited him in a while. It was so lonely when one had no visitors to call friends. And after he'd tried to be such a good host.

He'd left her a present, for when she woke up. Flowers, and a card. Maybe that counted as two presents? One could not avoid calling him a gentleman or gracious. He smiled to himself at the thought.

Humming cheerily, Maurice the elephant man walked out of Quincy Archer's front door, into the hall.

~~~

20 minutes later, the alarm in the redhead’s bedroom went off. 40 minutes after that she was on her way to work, the card from the flowers in her purse, along with a phone number and a thoughtful frown firmly in place on her face.

Surely those flowers hadn’t been there the night before, Quin repeated in her head, but surely her building sup had simply let a delivery man into her apartment to leave them. Surely when she talked to Nate later he’d tell her that they were from him, and surely they had nothing to do with the weird phone calls that she’d been getting with nothing but silence on the other end.

She was going to have the boys at the station run the number anyway. Just to see.

Quin groaned. After sensitivity training.

Into the precinct she went, and into the briefing room, looking for Ashton. If she had to go through this, she’d at least have someone to cut up with throughout the lecture.

"Danana nananana nana nana nana nana, Bat guy!"

Ashton rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. Someone was excited it was nearly Halloween, and acting five because of it. The squad member who was singing did his very best not to break into dance as he tapped his pen on a pad of paper in the meeting room.

Speakers sat in chairs by a podium at the head of the room.

Why was this training even required, Ashton wondered. So touchy-feely. Couldn't they get by on common sense.

He crossed his arms and looked obstinately at the lady getting ready to talk. The lady shuffled her notes, and failed to notice any dirty looks from all corners of the room. Good for her.

Ah. There he was. Quin made her way through the slightly crowded room to the empty seat next to her partner. ”Thanks for saving me a seat.” she said, grinning as she sat. He probably hadn’t been saving her the seat, but he could have credit anyway.

Having slept as late as possible, Quin sat down and went to work on getting the red mass into a pony tail while the lady at the front of the room shuffled her notes and ignored everyone.

”I wonder if she realizes how pissed everyone is.” Quin asked, getting out her pen and notebook, the card in her purse catching her eye.

”Hey. How long does a call trace usually take if the person isn’t on the line?” she asked casually, adjusting her ponytail slightly.

>>”Thanks for saving me a seat.”

Ashton shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. "Not a problem."

>>”I wonder if she realizes how pissed everyone is.”

He never stopped glaring at the woman. "Probably not."

As for that last question Archer had just tried to slip in there... "Are you being stalked?"

Well. Her partner was in a fine mood this morning.

Quin simply had to grin.

Until Ashton asked if she was being stalked.

Quin shook her head, ”Nah. Just got someone calling and hanging up. Probably just an automated telemarketer that’s not playing right.” She didn’t mention the flowers. There was no reason to make a big deal out of the whole thing. ”Is that misappropriation of department resources?” she asked lightly.

The woman at the front of the room cleared her throat into the microphone and feedback echoed throughout the room from the speakers.

”Here we go….” Quin said, already setting up “the dot game” on the pad of paper she’d brought along.

>>”Is that misappropriation of department resources?”

"Probably." Came the burly reply.

"Ahem."

The woman up front cleared her throat. She looked like she'd gotten lost on the way to the library, with her horn-rimmed glasses like goggles, and her hair in a bun.

"I am here today to talk to you about seeensitivity!~" The woman drawled. She drew out the last word in her haughty British accent.

Ashton didn't do his best to not roll his eyes.

The woman drawled on.

Quin leaned back in her chair, yawning slightly and toying with her damp ponytail. “Sensitivity” training in a police department seemed so…out of touch with reality.

The redhead supposed there was a time, and a place, and reason for this sort of thing, but it just didn’t make sense when they could have been hunting down a killer.

Discretely, Quin nudged Ashton, then nodded at the ‘dot game’ board she’d set up.

”You can even go first.”

Ashton stared at the paper. Ashton blinked.

"Don't follow." He breathed.

It was just a bunch of dots. Real men played tic tac toe.

Meh. Ashton didn’t know the dot game. Quin figured she’d have to settle for something else…or actually watch the lecture that was being given.

Yeah. Fat chance of that. They’d moved on to the part about how even if you think a dirty joke is funny, the people around you might be offended.

Quin sketched a tic-tac-toe board on the paper and looked to Ashton with an eyebrow raised in challenge. Everyone knew how to play tic-tac-toe.

She drew an X in the middle spot. Gauntlet. Thrown down.

Gauntlet. Accepted.

What shortly followed what the baddest session of Tic Tac To--ing this side of the Milky Way.

Neither party paid much attention to what the woman was doing. And lucky for the both of them, she paid them no mind as well.

Maybe Ashton was unfamiliar with the finer points of the dot game…but wow, he really kicked ass at tic-tac-toe. Even though she’d had the advantage in the first game with the middle space, he’d really given her a run for the money and taken his fair share of games as they played.

The woman up front was apparently a robot, because for the last…however long…the only sound had been her voice. Quin took a break from her game to glance around the room at all the sleeping, doodling, space staring, and phone typing that a person could possibly hope for in a meeting like this. At least their tick-tac-toe games showed some proof of life.

Suddenly people were clapping, and the Captain was getting up to speak on the podium about how glad they all were that the British woman had been able to come and help them out. Truth be told Cynthia Myers looked as aggravated about the whole thing as everyone else, but if the captain was grinning and bearing…Quin figured she could too. Besides, the second the Captain had hit the podium, all other nonsense had stopped.

Soon enough, they were released to actually go to work, and Quin clasped the number in her hand.

”I’m gonna go see if I can run this. See you at the desks.” Ashton had said it was probably misuse of resources, but Quin wanted to see for herself. Sure it was probably just a telemarketer, doing their job and being persistent, but something nagging in the back of her head said that she needed to check this out.