Tuath Dé ocus Andé

***

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Stephen King

***

Carlton Lassiter knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Shawn Spencer is lying.

He's a lying liar who lies.

And he's surprisingly proficient at it.

For a human.

Carlton knows.

No matter how well Shawn acts, how outrageous his claims, how annoying he acts, how ridiculous his leaps, Carlton knows.

There is nothing on this earth that Shawn Spencer could ever do to convince Carlton Lassiter that he's psychic. 

After all, real always recognizes fake.

***

Carlton Lassiter was born on April 11th, 1968, but he didn't enter the world until eight years later. 

His mother, Mona, was a philosopher who liked to spend her time thinking about the world rather than living in it.

His father….

Well, that's where it gets tricky/interesting/disturbing/crazy.

His father came from under the hill. Down the long road with no end. The other side.

A handsome man, otherworldly Mona always said, with inhumanly blue eyes, tall and long-limbed, and a slightly mad smile.

Carlton inherited all those things from him, which Mona has never been shy about telling him.

When he's older, he realizes that's why she doesn't like looking at him.

Fae. That's what he was.

A knight of the Tuatha de Danaan.

One of the old kind, whose years stretched back beyond the times of druids and wizards and dragons.

Not that any of those ever really existed, mind you, but the fae are very good at creating things and twisting things, and all those monsters people like to tell horror stories about were just fae magic. Something twisted to torment or scare the humans or to manipulate them into doing something a fae wanted. 

Carlton doesn't know his father's name, though he knows what he told Mona.

There are very few names under the hill. They're all so old there's no need for them anymore.

And names are power.

They don't like that.

Carlton takes a twisted bit of pleasure in telling everyone he meets his name, laughing inside at how it means nothing.

Carlton's name means nothing because it's human. The only favor Mona ever did him was refuse to let his father name him.

Those first eight years, Carlton grew up on the other side, in the fae land humans could never reach. Where the moon was always bright and low in the sky, and there was always a blanket of stars. Where the forests were dark and deep and never-ending if you didn't know the way.

They're a beautiful race; there's a reason they inspired human fairytales, but Carlton is a perfect example of how that beauty doesn't translate to the human world. 

Humans, for all their clueless stupidity and inattention, have excellent instincts. If they're trained right, most of them recognize when something seems too good or too beautiful to be real. 

Whether they pay attention to that instinct is another matter entirely.

Under the hill, Carlton is a bright-eyed knight, built for battle and bloodshed with strong hands and ready feet.

Under the warm sun of the human world, his eyes are a shade too blue, everything about him is a hair too long like he's stretched to look like something else, and his smile's too sharp, like a razor blade.

He doesn't belong, and the smart ones know it. 

He doesn't quite belong under the hill either, though.

He aged so much faster than the other children because his mother was human and refused to walk the road.

She wanted to stay human, stay in her world, where there were things to think about that she could understand and comprehend, not magic that bent to the will of the fae. 

So, Carlton spent the first eight years of his life under the hill and then took the long road out.

Mona wasn't pleased. She had her own life then, and Althea, and she didn't want to be reminded of her dalliance with something not human.

But a deal is a deal, and deals were law to the fae.

She'd born the son she'd promised, and his father had taken him as they'd agreed. 

But neither of them had stopped to consider Carlton's choice in the matter. 

The sole upside to being a changeling, Carlton thinks, is that he can live in both worlds.

Never mind that neither actually wants him.

Most fae are confined to the otherworld. Only a handful of the many are actually strong enough to cross over and exist in the human world for any stretch of time.

And most of those are changelings, half-breeds planted by the fae for a variety of reasons that are usually related to mischief and madness. 

Carlton walked out on his own and nearly killed himself doing it. 

But he did it and broke any hold the fae had over him in the process.

He loves Althea more than Mona because she was the one who nursed him back to health, unable to ignore a child in need, despite the fact that he was so beautiful it hurt to look at him and being in the same room as him puts a knot of fear in her stomach no matter how much he's promised not to hurt her.

Althea nursed him for almost a year, and she was the one who introduced him to John Fenich.

Just a rookie cop then, but one cursed to already know about what moved in the shadows.

John Fenich is the human that convinces Carlton they're not all bad. Mona can't stomach looking at him even though she gave birth to him, and Althea would help any child, no matter what they were, but John Fenich knows exactly what Carlton is and isn't, and gives him a chance anyway.

A clean slate.

And paperwork that would fool any law enforcement agency that decided to look into Carlton's past.

Between Althea and John, by the time Carlton is nine in the human world and a few decades more in the fae, he's ready to assimilate. Going to school with John's daughter, Beth, and pretending he's been there all along.

It's easier to pick up being human because they're all so damn weird anyway than it is to control his fae blood.

It twists and writhes in his veins, trying to get out, to go back, and it's Carlton's sheer willpower that keeps it contained.

Those first few years, he's constantly in pain, sore and exhausted and growing in odd bursts, but it slowly gets easier, though the pain never goes away completely.

Another reminder that Carlton doesn't belong here.

He doesn't belong anywhere.

He decides to be a police officer his first year of high school. Beth wants to follow in her father's footsteps, and Carlton just wants to survive the year successfully. He's been living with the Fenich's since Mona adopted his baby sister, Lauren, and decided she doesn't want him in the same house as her.

She says it's just in case, but Carlton knows the truth.

Beth is furious on his behalf, the first and, so far, the only person truly not afraid of Carlton. She nearly puts the high school quarterback in the hospital when she catches him picking on Carlton, who swore to John that he would never, ever lift a hand against a human, no matter what.

She calls him Carly just to annoy him and makes sure to walk him to every class. Most of the school thinks they're dating, and neither of them minds. 

John only looks apprehensive once when he first hears, but he never says anything to either of them or after a while, he looks at Carlton with even more warmth than he did before.

He thinks they might have dated eventually. He probably would have married her, and they would have been blissfully happy if the summer of their junior year had happened differently. 

Looking back, Carlton thinks the years of bliss before that summer were probably the sign that something horrible was going to happen. 

Carlton was actually working up the courage to ask her out when she beat him to it. Planned the date and everything, and Carlton knows because he can hear John through the walls laughing his ass off that the newly minted detective thinks it's hilarious.

They go to dinner at their favorite burger joint and a drive-in movie after, and they hold hands the whole time and share their first kiss in the car while neither of them are paying attention to the movie because they know John will take special pleasure in interrupting them if they try at home.

The last few weeks of school float by in a haze of happiness that Carlton's never experienced before and never will again. 

One month into their summer break, four months after their first date, John takes Carlton fishing while Beth goes to hang out with her girlfriends. 

They get back late, eventually forgoing fishing for running Carlton through some exercises John came up with to wrangle and exhaust his fae blood that result in them just running through the woods until they're both too tired to do anything but limp back to the car. 

John is one of the best trackers on the force because he spends so much time tracking Carlton through a forest that actively helps him hide. 

Beth still isn't home by the time they get back, but she texted her mother she was spending the night, so none of them are worried.

Yet.

Carlton sends her a goodnight text, and three hours later, when he hasn't heard anything back, he starts to worry.

Five hours later and three un-returned calls, and John is at Beth's friend's house and finds out the girls aren't there. 

By dawn, a massive search kicks off, and John brings Carlton along when Beth's phone pings off a cellphone tower near a large agricultural area. They search thousands of acres over the course of three days before Carlton smells the blood.

The one degree of luck they have, in this horrible, horrible time, is that when Carlton first smells it and slips into an almost catatonic trance, overwhelmed by the smell and the taste of the iron in the air, he's surrounded by John's fellow cops. 

Including patrol officer Henry Spencer. 

All of them have had enough close calls with the weird and unexplained that they barely blink at Carlton or John's insistence that they follow his directions, and Carlton haltingly leads them right to the grove where Beth and her friends are scattered across the grass. 

Officially, it's written up as a kidnapping and murder attributed to a gang operating in the area.

Unofficially, most of the officers there that day, the good ones anyway, think something more sinister had a hand in it. 

All four girls were mutilated beyond recognition, and John and Carlton have to be forcibly removed from the scene. 

It takes years to figure out who was responsible. Years of Carlton acting out and John trying to reign him in and save the child he has left. Althea tries to help, even drags Mona with her, and it's the closest Carlton has ever been to the woman who gave birth to him.

But all their efforts are tainted by the thought that it might be Carlton's fault.

That someone from under the hill came looking for him and found Beth instead.

Or someone's trying to draw him out.

Carlton considers taking the long road back to find out, but John stops him and convinces him to stay, so his wife doesn't lose another child.

Althea points out that they don't know what happened, and Carlton leaving may ruin their chances of finding out.

So, Carlton stays and doesn't return to the land under the hill, no matter how loud it calls to him.

Let's Beth's mother-baby him and acts out and breaks every rule and law he can trying to find out who it was and why it happened.

He never gets arrested, though he does get cuffed a few times. 

There's a lot to be said about the brotherhood of blue and loyalty to the uniform, but it works out for Carlton because there isn't a single police officer in Santa Barbara willing to arrest him.

Carlton's never sure if it's him they're protecting or John and his wife, but either way, Carlton escapes high school and his first years of college without a record, despite his best efforts. 

Years later, he realizes it's the height of irony, Henry Spencer let him off more than once but apparently wasn't that lenient with his own son. He decides he's going to take that to his grave.

Carlton is just starting to think this will be his life for the rest of his years, the call of the other side getting louder with every year of discontent when they solve it.

Carlton has spent so long hating that half of him, suppressing the twisted blood, years convincing himself that it was why Beth died, that learning it wasn't lands him on his ass.

It's nothing but honest-to-good police work that catches the two men responsible for Beth and her friends. They aren't changelings, no one was looking for Carlton or taking revenge against John.

Beth and her friends were just too pretty and too friendly, and they trusted the wrong man just a little too much.

He's completely human, twisted and cruel, but human, and he'd made his son in his image.

The case isn't the sensation it would have been today. Serial killers were just coming to the forefront when Beth was killed, and the pair responsible never worked their way up to another kill after those four.

They plead guilty, and it never goes to trial. Carlton sits with John and his wife at the sentencing, listens to the judge rip the man apart, and decides then and there to become a cop.

To his surprise, John is thrilled. 

Carlton switches his major, applies for a master's program, and John starts training him to use his blood instead of ignoring it.

Turns out, being a changeling comes with some advantages. 

For one, Shawn Spencer might be sharp enough to convince the rest of the world he's psychic, but Carlton actually is.

It comes in flashes, in moments heralded by strong emotions that Carlton can practically taste, and at first, they're so overwhelming they lay Carlton out. Glimpses of desires so strong they can't be ignored, rage so powerful it tastes like blood, and fear so tangible it makes Carlton shiver.

Henry Spencer may be the human lie detector, but Carlton eventually reaches the point where they don't even need to speak for him to know they're guilty. 

It fills the air around them with vibrant colors that hurt Carlton's eyes if he looks too long.

The more Carlton listens to his fae blood, the more he has to adapt and learn what feels like a whole new body. He's clumsy and awkward for his first few years on the force. He can outrun and out-lift anyone, but he bumps into lockers and doors and drops files. 

He sees a vicious face in the mirror, all cheekbones and icy eyes and sharp teeth, and grows a mustache to try and hide it all. 

It doesn't work, and he knows it was a bad idea, thank you.

He learns to focus, turning everything he's got on his work, and it makes him good. Makes him the best. 

He's brilliant, really, ten steps ahead of anyone who crosses his path. 

He's wary of everyone because he's seen how quickly a good person can go bad, and he's lonely. 

So terribly lonely that it gnaws at him. A giant gaping hole right in the center of him.

He meets Victoria and latches on, and at first, she relishes his attention. It's intense, Carlton can smell her perfume for hours after he's seen her. Can tell exactly what she needs any moment they're together.

Can't stand to spend the night away from her.

And the sex…

Well, there's a reason humans are so drawn to the fae, and it's not just the music in their blood.

The desire and want is intoxicating, and Carlton has to be careful because the emotional side of it is one thing, but the physical is another.

He learns on their first night together that Victoria doesn't like to bruise, likes things emotionally fraught but physically gentle. 

Carlton has a whole lot of strength and passion and fire that he carefully locks away. He pushes himself harder at the gym, hits harder at work, so it's not so hard when he comes home.

And despite the long hours and numerous cases, even Victoria never doubts his fidelity. 

Apparently, that's the one area of their marriage that's never in question.

John makes Chief, and Carlton makes detective ahead of schedule, and things are going well. 

Carlton is the best, they all know it, and by John's trust, tends to be the one that handles the more questionable cases. The weird ones.

The ones that can't be easily explained and signed off.

Carlton becomes a master of hiding the monsters he finds, putting down changelings and fae he faces without revealing the truth and concealing their crimes among others.

Before Carlton joined the police force, it was rare to find an officer with a connection to the fae, though there were plenty of officers with close calls and stories. Carlton's not sure when exactly some of his fellow officers realized there was something different about him, but they slowly start bringing him their more difficult cases without John needing to nudge them along, and Carlton builds a strong network of officers with experience in dealing with what anyone else would call supernatural, and they keep the public blissfully ignorant of the things that go bump in the night.

Carlton develops an even more powerful reputation among the fae and their ilk.

He is not someone to be trifled with. 

His father is a mere knight under the hill, but changelings are frequently more powerful than the fae that begot them, and Carlton is no exception. 

He's much stronger than his father, and the first few fae he runs into on the job learn that the hard way. 

He learns the rules over those first few interactions, too.

Queen Mab's rules, and Carlton only ever meets her once, and that's enough. The closest thing to a true demon he's ever seen. A woman of such beauty and malice that Carlton is alternately insanely attracted to and absolutely terrified of her. 

He meets her the night he kills a full-blooded fae down by the docks. A man who'd been enchanting and murdering women and stealing their children. It's a short chase and a long fight, with Carlton's backup focused on making sure no one catches them while Carlton worries about the fae. 

Mab comes herself to see the fight, and at first, Carlton thought she was there to save her knight, but he learns that night that the number one rule of fae in the human world is that another fae is not allowed to intervene.

Mab would stand by and watch him enchant and murder and steal.

But she'll also stand by and watch Carlton crush his skull against a rock.

And she won't bear Carlton any ill will after.

That's the most important rule, she tells him, darkly amused by the blood and brain matter covering his hands. If a fae wants to play in the human world, they're honor-bound to pay the price if they're caught. There are some who try to escape, but Mab's own knights will intervene against anyone who tries to break a deal.

If, by some chance, they make it back under the hill, well, then Mab deals with them.

Very few ever take that route, she tells him as she licks blood off his finger, and Carlton has never backed away from someone as fast as he backs away from her.

He's a half-blood, so she has no real power over him unless he journeys under the hill and she invites him, but Carlton knows if he ever does go, he'll never make it back out, so he refuses.

She isn't pleased by his refusal, but Mab plays the long game, same as Carlton, and she leaves with little bloodshed, just a haunting promise to see him again.

Carlton is still shaking hours later when he finally finishes the reports about the man who was murdering women to get to their children, none of whom were ever recovered.

They're all under the hill now, and Mab will never give them back.

That run-in is the beginning of the end for Carlton and Victoria.

Kind and gentle and selfless Victoria.

Mab was sharp and angry and vicious, and everything Carlton was and wanted in a partner, a thought hidden deep down where no one else would ever know.

To the end of his days, he wonders if Mab visited her, but Victoria never says anything that would suggest it.

They just start to grow apart after that. Victoria seems to realize he's holding something back, but Carlton knows from the little hints he's dropped that she'd be appalled by the desires that coil themselves in his chest.

At the possessiveness he feels towards those he loves and the rage the mere thought of someone else touching her sparks.

That's not the kind of love Victoria wants, and Carlton knows it.

He knows she's going to leave him long before she actually works up the courage to do so. 

Carlton makes Head Detective, the youngest in department history, and continues to blaze his way up the ranks. He builds his network and even makes a few allies among the changelings and fae that call Santa Barbara home.

None of them trust one another as far as they can throw each other, but they respect the rules that bind them together, and more often than not, they lean on one another to keep the wayward in line. 

Or to remove them entirely.

Carlton passes a few years where his largest worry is just waiting for the day Victoria is ready to leave him.

Carlton fights for her with everything he has, but she won't fight for him, so it's a lost battle before it even starts.

Even so, Carlton hangs on longer than he should, realizes he's in denial about it all. Victoria was a balm against all the painful things in his life, confirmation that a half-breed that didn't belong anywhere could belong somewhere. 

Her failure to love him forever is just further proof that he was a mistake, and it breaks his last, tiny connection to Mona, who'd seen his marriage as the one normal human thing Carlton had managed. 

Just when he's starting to right himself from all of this, trying something with Lucinda that he foolishly hopes will replace what he's lost with Victoria and dealing with Vick, who's another story in and of itself, he meets Shawn Spencer.

Loud, abrasive, lying Shawn Spencer.

Carlton has to let Lucinda handle the questioning at first because the moment he steps into the interrogation room, he's hit with a wave of longing and anger, and desire so strong it nearly puts him on his ass.

There's a heartbeat there, where Carlton is convinced Shawn's a changeling as well. Humans don't usually feel that strongly, and when they do, it's not a healthy thing. 

It usually ends in stalking and murder.

So that's where Carlton jumps after the few seconds it takes him to realize Shawn Spencer is human.

But there's no maliciousness in him, even when he's muttering about his father.

His emotions bounce around the room, chaotic and loud and blindingly bright, and they give Carlton a headache. He tells the truth, and Carlton knows it, then he lies, and Carlton knows it, and he's much more dedicated to the lie than he is to the truth, and Carlton is infuriated. 

He's a brat. Spoiled and coddled and shielded for all that he believes he wasn't.

Carlton wants to punch him in the face but maintains enough common sense to realize that would kill Spencer, and he needs to shoot him instead.

He wonders, though he never asks if his reaction to Spencer was part of Vick's reason for hiring him. She's been a good cop long enough to know there are things in the darkness, and she doesn't trust Carlton because part of that good cop instinct tells her he's one of them, even if she'll never be able to prove it.

Carlton doesn't trust her because he doesn't know her and because she seems bound and determined to do the exact opposite of everything he suggests.

It's mostly his pride, he knows, but it's also his instinct for survival. It's almost animal-like, Carlton's figured out. Which makes sense because the fae are much closer to animals than humans in a lot of ways.

Karen Vick could end him if she decided to, but instead of coming to him and having an honest conversation, they're playing a game of chess. She knows Carlton has enough support to put up a fight, and he knows she has enough support to win, so neither of them is willing to commit to an endgame. 

When Spencer turns out to be right, he can practically taste the glee rolling off her.

And Carlton has to keep his mouth shut because the only way to out Spencer is to out himself. He saw the guilt and the rage pouring out of the judge the day they met, but John taught Carlton how to be a cop, not how to be a psychic.

Carlton has to find evidence because his word won't put someone behind bars, can't just point and accuse, so Carlton will always be one step behind Spencer. 

It puts him at a significant disadvantage, and his anger at that manifests in their first few run-ins. 

Carlton's never wanted to shoot someone so much in his life.

Lucinda leaves, but Carlton knew that was coming, and he knows the real reason even if she won't say it, so he brushes it off, which serves the dual purpose of keeping him focused at work and pissing her off.

Juliet O'Hara is handpicked by Karen Vick to keep Carlton on a leash.

He knows it.

Vick knows it.

O'Hara has no idea.

Carlton adores her anyway.

And Vick knows that, too.

She's stuck Carlton with a leash and a weakness in one move, which is why Carlton has never underestimated her. 

In the best ways, Juliet reminds him of Lauren, who's never been close enough to Carlton to see his faults, and of Beth, who loved him in spite of them.

Carlton spends a lot of time at the shooting range that first week with Juliet and ends up sleeping on John's couch that weekend rather than going home.

Carlton's entire world has shifted in a matter of weeks, so it's understandable that he's a little unhinged in the beginning of their acquaintances. 

Officers Malcolm and Hewett think it's hilarious. Easily Carlton's two closest allies on the force, they were the second and third changelings to join the Santa Barbara Police Department, respectively, and they've had Lassiter's back since. Neither of them is as powerful as Carlton, but they're deadly in their own rights, and he's passed on what John taught him to them.

Between the spelling bee and the boy cat and that stupid, stupid astronomy case, they've been having the time of their lives watching Spencer, Guster, and Juliet run Carlton in circles.

It's like trying to walk three cats on a leash.

Malcolm and Hewett take him on patrol with them one night to give him an opportunity to work off some of the rage, and they end up tracking down a fellow changeling whose blood has turned beyond repair. He's made himself into some kind of human-wolf hybrid, letting his fingers grow into claws, and his teeth sharpen, though none of them are willing to call him a werewolf, and he's been attacking hikers in the forest outside Santa Barbara. 

It takes them most of the night to track him through the forest, and he gets in a few good swipes before they put him down, but they do, and they burn his body as the sun comes up.

He realizes that it probably shouldn't help, but it does, and they end up at his favorite breakfast place on the pier, putting away enough food that the waitress actually looks a little worried. 

Juliet actually stumbles across them on her morning run, but she's far too trusting and too new, and she accepts their excuses of early training and places to be far too easily. Malcolm and Hewett are gone, and Carlton's halfway out the door before she can even ask what training. 

She only asks about it once, and Carlton's brush-off does what it's meant to.

She doesn't mention joining them again, and though Carlton feels a little bit bad about it, he's also relieved. 

Things don't start to look up until the case of that poor schoolteacher and the idiot defense attorney when he bothers to actually study Spencer.

He's annoying, he probably always will be, and he seems to spend an inordinate amount of time proving something to his father even though he absolutely denies that's what he's doing.

Carlton still wants to shoot him most of the time, but it's hard to ignore how much good Spencer wants to do. Every time Carlton sees him, it practically radiates off him like a fucking rainbow.

That stupid fucking dinosaur was fucking brilliant, and Carlton has never wanted to simultaneously kiss and kill someone so much.

A fucking dinosaur.

Carlton could see it the second he met the farmer, could tell Spencer was right while he was still drawing that stupid sketch Carlton now has tucked away in his desk, but he couldn't find the evidence first.

Spencer won fair and square.

And he flirted with Juliet and laughed with Gus, and the lot of them kept reminding Carlton that he went home alone every night. That he didn't get to have that because he was too much, too intense. He didn't laugh at the right things. He spent too much time at the range, like guns a little too much.

They'd run from him in terror if he ever showed them his real face.

It's disappointing, in a way Carlton hasn't experienced before. Shawn and Gus have the kind of bond Carlton once thought he'd shared with Beth, constantly aware and in sync. And Juliet laughed and trusted them in ways she never would with Carlton.

It makes him sad. 

Which makes him angry. 

Which apparently makes him violent.

He's going to have to work on that.

The first sign that he's a little too attached comes during the horse racing case. That asshole jockey who bullied Spencer and Guster in elementary school. Carlton has to fight the urge to punt him across the track like a football.

And then there's Guster's asshole boss that Carlton only hears about through Juliet, but he may or may not drop a tip to the IRS, and then…Uncle Jack.

Soon to be Dearly Departed Uncle Jack if Carlton sets eyes on him one more time this century.

He wants to rail and demand to know what kind of family member does that to another, but, well, there's his father, so Carlton already knows the answer to that. At least Henry actually seems like a loving father, even if he can't seem to speak the same language as his son.

Carlton has a random thought, just for a second, that maybe if he banged their heads together hard enough, they'd actually end up on the same page. 

He doesn't actually do it, but he thinks about it.

A lot.

He starts paying closer attention to Spencer after that, renews the friendship with Henry that he let slip when he realized how much it bothered Spencer.

Neither of them tell Spencer Jr., but they go fishing once a week when Henry's certain Shawn won't come around.

Like Karen, Henry was a good cop, good enough to know about Carlton, but where it seems to scare Vick, Henry seems to have put Carlton in the category of ally, probably because he's realized Carlton is the one keeping his son out of trouble with most of his fellow officers. Vick's too much the boss, and Juliet's too new for either of them to have that kind of sway, but Carlton does.

The more attention Carlton pays to Spencer, the more he remembers he goes home alone at night, and things he buried along with his marriage come barreling to the surface.

Spencer, despite his dedication to being a lazy goof, is ridiculously attractive. When Carlton really tries, he realizes he can predict whatever weird food Spencer and Guster, by extension, are about to start craving.

How either of them are still alive, and relativity healthy with all the crap they eat is beyond him.

He's funny as fuck, too, not that Carlton will ever give him the satisfaction of laughing out loud. And he's quick and smart, more than even Henry intended.

He's as good as Carlton. If he cared about gathering actual evidence more than just figuring out who it was, he'd be even better.

Karen picks up on his attention because, of course, she does.

The bitch.

He knows she's the one who put O'Hara up to finding him a girlfriend and one, A GROSS ABUSE OF POWER AND LINE CROSSING, and two, well played, Karen, well played.

O'Hara's just good enough and just well-meaning enough that it's a pain in the ass to get her to stop, and it doesn't help their relationship at all.

And then Carlton's getting accused of murder.

~tbc~