Work Text:
When it came time for gathering evidence from Coyote's cluttered cave, Paige had been assigned blueprints - mountains of them, each one an individual scheme. She was three filing cabinets deep, cross-referencing invoice numbers for the exhibit list, when she started noticing the drawings in the margins.
Almost every other blueprint had one. Small, sketched in pencil, tucked into whatever spare margin the plans hadn't claimed - drawings of the roadrunner, rendered with a level of care that had nothing to do with schemes. Dust trailing off one wing like a comet's tail. A wink, once. Lots of smiles and carefully drawn feathers.
She flipped through six more blueprints before Coyote wandered over from where Kevin was sorting through all the physical ACME products.
"You draw him a lot, you know," Paige said, holding one up - a rocket-powered net launcher, and, in the corner, Road Runner mid-laugh. "You make him look really nice, too."
Coyote's ears went up like antennae. He crossed the cave in three strides and plucked the blueprint from her hand, before holding up a sign.
???
Just that. Paige opened her mouth, then closed it. Kevin, across the cave, caught her eye and gave the tiniest shake of his head. Which, to be fair, it probably wasn't the right time to be diving into the root cause of Coyote's obsession with Road Runner. Maybe something for after the case.
"Never mind," she said, reaching for the next stack.
She did not miss, though, the way he gathered a chunk of the pile of blueprints she'd set aside - every one with a margin doodle, she'd bet money on it - and folded them away against his side, into cartoonishly non-existent pockets, rather than adding them to the evidence pile where they belonged.
She made a mental note. Not for the case.