Tuesday, May 3, 2005

   Nougat: Origins (Epilogue)
Cream made his way to the office after the debriefing with the other team members in the lunch room. He knew it was probably nothing, but he couldn't help but keep worrying to a degree about his partner. When he had left earlier, there was definitely something important on his mind, and whether it was his place to ask or not, he needed to find out.

Luck was with the young detective when he saw light from inside the office shining from around the blinds behind the office door's window. Courteous to the other detective already inside, he opened the door and entered quietly. Once Cream saw Nougat sorting through his files at the desk, he grinned - he could have stomped into the office, slammed the door, and the other detective still would not have noticed. To break the silence, the younger detective cleared his throat audibly.
"Old man, you never came back," he said. Nougat looked up, smiled, and shrugged.
"Stuff . . . y'know . . ." he replied nonchalantly.

Cream made his way over to the twin desks and sat himself down on a bare patch of the other detective's side, skimming over all the papers and documents spread over the desk surface. Nougat, meanwhile, still basically ignored his partner and kept sorting through his files.
"'sit okay if I touch anything?" The younger detective asked.
"Just put it back where you found it," Nougat answered back, still not paying much attention to the other man. Cream grinned at seeing Nougat's odd moment of complete professionalism.
"Alright, let's see here . . ." Cream said as he leaned over the desk, being careful not to slip and fall on top of the papers.

Most of the actualy typed documents seemed rather loosely connected, and Cream was having a hard time trying to piece together all the different reports. He mumbled to himself as various names and places came up, along with the various dates at the tops of the papers - to the young detective, this was clearly not a simple case.

"Here," Nougat said to Cream suddenly, a photo in hand, "you might get a kick outta this." Cream took the photo and after a long moment realised what he was looking at. His outburst came shortly afterwards.
"Haha! Noug', it's you! And you're not old!" he chortled while looking at the old pub photo, his jaw unwilling to close. Nougat, enjoying his partner's reaction, sat up straight in his chair and back from his work.
"Yeah, I'm a bit younger than you are now in that pic' . . . . . kinda explains why I look so retarded, huh?" Cream let the harmless jab roll off his back.
"Heh, yeah yeah, I know . . ."

The older sergeant cracked his knuckles over his head and stretched back, forcing the stiffness out of his body. Still leaning back in his chair and feeling relaxed, Nougat took a cleansing breath and settled into his chair comfortably. Cream couldn't help but feel slightly amused by the whole process.
"Been at it for a while, eh?" he asked. The other officer just nodded.

"Whip," Nougat started, "I'm curious . . . why did you wanna make detective?" Cream snickered a little at the sudden question.
"You mean other than the extra two bucks an hour and all the women?" Both detectives had to laugh as the words echoed in the office.
"Yes, besides all that great stuff."
"I dunno," the younger officer answered, rubbing his chin and looking along the top of the back wall, "I guess . . . I just wanted to do something meaningful and interesting with my life, y'know?" Nougat nodded and lowered his head. "What, that not good enough?" the younger detective said, leaning over the desk towards his partner.
"Oh no, that's a great answer . . . really good, actually . . ."

Cream rolled his eyes and straightened himself out on the desk.
"Alright old man," he asked, "so what drew you to the world of investigative policing . . . um . . . stuff?" Nougat chortled as his partner pushed through his words.
"A few reasons, I guess," he replied as he reached over the desk towards some files at the far corner. Finding the file he wanted, he handed the sheet over to Cream. "This guy mostly, though . . ." Cream took the offered file and read over it.
"Sergeant Marcus Stone . . ." he read out loud.
"Yeah . . ." Nougat said, chuckling a little to himself, ". . . he was a bit of an asshole, but still . . . . . I owe it to a bunch of guys that I find him."

The younger sergeant carefully replaced the document from where his partner had taken it and whistled quietly.
"So you've been at this for like, about a decade now?"
"Just about," Nougat answered. "Every now and then I get a new bit of something for the case, and then I work at it a little more . . ." Cream shook his head in slight disbelief.
"Man . . . that's determination . . ."
"It's somethin', yeah . . . very 'one-step-closer' sort of work, but hey . . . what can ya do, right?" The younger detective nodded with a smile and looked back at Nougat's old squad photo.

"Hey," Cream asked once spying something curious in the image, "next to you is uh, your old partner . . . the one-armed golfer, right?" Nougat couldn't contain himself and laughed once again.
"Yeah, that's Henry . . . he wasn't quite as big of an asshole . . . . ."
"I guess compared to you, few are, hey?" Cream slipped in; Nougat retaliated with a thrown pencil that bounced off the top of the younger man's head, much to the older man's pleasure.

"Aside from Henry, I haven't really seen any of those guys in a long time," Nougat recollected out loud. Cream hopped off the desk and stretched himself out against his side of the desks.
"You miss 'em?" he asked. Nougat smirked as he looked at his shrugging partner.
"A bit, maybe . . . . . so yeah, when this is over, we have to pay them a visit . . ." As the words left Nougat's lips, a similar line from a particular movie came to mind and a smile instantly formed from the corner of his mouth. ". . . I'll bring the chainsaw." Cream knew instantly knew what movie it was from, as they had discussed it several times before.
"I'll bring the beer," he finished, painting a wide smile over the older sergeant's face.

"Tango & Cash, right?" Cream asked with his eyebrow raised, wanting to confirm the quote.
"Yup," Nougat responded while he nodded. Both detectives exchanged another grin as thoughts of their beloved movie flowed through them.

"It's a good line, good movie," Cream said before dropping himself into his own chair opposite the other detective.
"Yeah . . ." Nougat said back, slowly turning his attention back to the case set up on his desk. ". . . great movie . . . great quote . . . . ."




[And as usual, the trailing off dialogue brings us to the end of another story in the saga. I thought this one came out pretty well . . . I mean, I think all of these came out pretty well considering how little time I actually spend writing them - you're never supposed to submit first drafts, and yet . . . hehe . . . . . and yes, I do have an issue with referring to "Tango & Cash" a lot. The movie means so much to these stories, what can I say?

As always, if there are any questions about what you have just read, or if you completely missed any references or anything I tried to make, I'm very free for fielding these sorts of things. But that aside, I hope everyone who read this enjoyed it well enough. I know this one was a little less interactive than many of my previous stories, but don't worry, I have a feeling this is far from being the last of 'em. So 'til then, this has been a SomeGuy story, courtesy of myOtaku.com. May your summers be bright and pleasing to you all.]
Comments (6)