Police Academy 9: Bye Bye Birdie

What will Lieutenant Thaddeus Harris do when the possibility of being the new commandant is incompatible with having a relationship?

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harris or other recognizable Police Academy characters!

This story is a sequel to Police Academy 8: Police and Prejudice, beginning later in the same day in which that story ended. You should read that story first before delving into this one or you will be hopelessly lost. The story, as you may recall, is told from April Carnegie's point of view.

At precisely twenty-two hundred and five hours, I stood nervously by Commandant Lassard's office in my dress uniform, with all its buttons and shiny new police hat. I'd brought my sweatsuit in a duffle bag after I'd changed into the uniform in a bathroom right down the hall from the office.

Lieutenant Thaddeus Harris was now officially my boyfriend and had propositioned me to fulfill what was probably a long-awaited fantasy of his. Basically, he wanted to screw around in the commandant's office. As long as we didn't get caught, I was game. Once Harris got started, he was rather good between the sheets. I wandered how he'd be behind a desk….

It was then, in the midst of my self-stimulating thoughts that I heard fast-paced clicking in the hall. Whoever was steadily approaching wasn't yet visible, not yet having rounded the corner to my hallway. I froze in place, unable to tell if the clicks were made by male or female shoes. The clicks were far too fast paced to be those of Lassard, but what if it was Callahan or Tackleberry? What would I say? How would I explain why I was here, in my dress uniform, no less? The state of my rather turned-on lower half made me feel even more scandalous. Was Harris seriously running late?

I didn't have to worry. The footsteps rounded the corner, revealing Lieutenant Harris. I let out an audible sigh of relief. He was dressed in his usual uniform and even had his annoying little baton with him. As he approached, he gave me a little nod and then took out a ball of keys from his pocket, unlocking the door and pushing it open. I entered the room, which was illuminated only from the outside lights. He locked the door and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Lassard's office was located directly above Harris's office and had the same general layout. Unlike Harris, however, he had lots of bookshelves packed with books, as well as a goldfish bowl on his desk. His entire décor was devoted to fish, with wooden fish sculptures behind his desk and even a fish mounted above his doorway.

"Are you going to turn on the light?" I asked.

"Not before I arrange the curtains," he replied, moving past me quickly in the room. Swiftly he yanked the maroon curtains hanging on either side of the large windows towards the center, effectively blocking out the view. Now it was pitch-black, but Harris still moved around expertly enough to find the light switch. I squinted in the bright light.

"Guilty," he announced, grinning at me and putting his baton down on a chair. "Which means I can breathe easy for a little while longer. And do this."

At that, he approached me, one eyebrow cocked as he strode right up to me and grabbed my ass with his free arm, pulling my body against his. He leaned in and kissed me so fiercely that my hat fell off and clattered onto the floor. My eyes went wide at the noise in the quiet office, praying that no one would suspect something was going on, and investigate. The back of my legs made sharp contact with the front of Lassard's desk and made the piece of furniture squeak across the floor, the water in the fishbowl sloshing around like crazy.

"Damn, that was close," Harris muttered, pulling away. "You almost killed Lassard's pet," he added, his voice now more like a growl as he pointed sharply at the fishbowl. "You damn near killed Birdie."

"I know," I replied, breaking out in a toothy grin.

"Now, I can't abide that," he said, putting his fist on his hip. His tone was serious, but his eyes were playful, and a grin played on his lips. "You gotta bend over the desk and fix what you done to that poor fish."

"Is that right?" I quirked an eyebrow at him, then I looked at the desk. A post-it note said 'Feed Birdie'. "Guess Birdie wasn't fed today, either," I added.

Harris's eyes shot from the desk to my face. "Is that right?"

My heart thudded in my ears and I could feel my body heating up. I grinned at him, playfulness flooding my senses.

"Seems to be," I commented.

"You tryin' to change the subject?" he growled, his eyes hungrily scanning my body from top to bottom. He took a step toward me, heat emanating from him. His eyes narrowed with desire. "That's got nothin' to do with you bending over, now, does it?"

Damn. My entire bottom half was now throbbing and I could hear every breath I took. Now was my time to give him the same feeling.

"No it doesn't, Commandant Harris," I said.

I heard him make a kind of high pitched whimper. Was he going to chicken out? I must have made a concerned face, because he felt the need to make up for that involuntary little noise, and make up for it he did. Birdie would certainly agree to it, because only seconds after Harris began our physical encounter, the fishbowl clattered to the ground and shattered into big nasty shards of glass.

"Shouldn't we do something about—" I began, my eyes locked on the fish. My remarks were stifled mid-sentence by Harris's mouth moving over mine.

"I think we oughta get the fish—" I began, but was cut off again by Harris, who moved us away from the flopping fish shaking his head all the while.

"The fish is just gonna have to wait," he said irritably. "Besides, I heard those things can live for seven hours without water."

Only after we had finished did Thaddeus Harris care about the goldfish flopping on the ground. I don't know how it was able to survive ten minutes out of water.

"Damn fish," Harris grunted as he attempted to scoop up the slimy goldfish on the ground. He'd since pulled up his pants but had somehow misplaced his belt.

"What are you going to put him in?" I asked. "Surely Commandant Lassard will see that he isn't in his—"

"Ah ah ah," Harris said in a singsong, shaking his finger at me with eyebrows raised. "We got nothing to worry about." I was still doubtful and showed it on my face.

"Gotta hand it to him; for being such a dimwitted old fool, Lassard's got his bases covered with that damn fish," he muttered to himself as he shook his head. He looked up at me. "Just you wait."

With that, Harris strode over to the back of Lassard's desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a fresh new glass fishbowl. He held it up triumphantly, forgetting about his pants for a second. Immediately they fell down, exposing his boxers to me. I chuckled at the silly view, even though I'd seen his boxers only minutes earlier in a rather different situation.

Harris's face turned a shade of pink and he yanked up his pants indignantly, holding them high above his waistline. I found his belt slung over one of Lassard's wall shelves and tossed it over to him. Again his pants fell as he caught the belt with his only usable hand. I wanted to laugh at his appearance, but the fish was making me nervous.

"You better get that fish back in there or we won't have to worry about it anymore," I cautioned, glancing down at Birdie to see that it had stopped flopping around. Harris reached down and picked up the shards of glass from the previous fishbowl that were scattered across the floor.

"Throw those away in the can," he said, dumping handfuls of it into the new fishbowl. "Lassard would find it right away in here." He handed me the fishbowl full of glass.

"Wait—you want me to go to the bathroom?" I replied indignantly. No way was I going to walk out in the hallway with this.

"Yeah—dump the glass out and fill it with water," he said. "You're dressed and I'm not."

"What if someone sees me in the hallway?" I countered. "How am I supposed to explain the fishbowl?"

"Only Lassard and the instructors know there's a fish in here. If it's a cadet, just ignore 'em. Now, get going before it up and dies!" He shooed me off with his hand, his voice now impatient and prodding. "Move it, move it, move it!"

I raced down the hallway as silently as possible, taking off my hat and placing the fishbowl in it. If Commandant Lassard were to find me wandering the hallways with an empty fishbowl, he'd probably die of a heart attack.

Thankfully, I was able to reach the women's restroom, dump the glass out, and fill up the fishbowl with water without anyone seeing me. It wasn't long before I was back in the office, to find Harris drained of all color.

"What's wrong?" I asked, instantly terrified. My worst fears were confirmed.

"The damn…. fish," Harris muttered, holding the limp creature in his hand and spitting on it to no avail. "It just up and died."

"What did you do?" I asked. "I thought you said they could live seven hours out of water."

"I didn't do nothing!" he insisted. "Stupid fish flopped out of my hand onto the floor a couple of times, but that's 'cause it's too damn slippery and because I only have the one hand."

"You let it fall a couple of times?" I gasped. "It probably broke its back!"

"No way," he replied dismissively. "You see cats doing that all the time. Bugs, worms. Fish are no different."

I gulped, the seriousness of what we'd just done truly sinking in. We'd killed the commandant's fish, in addition to defiling his office. That poor, sweet old man without a mean bone in his body. I wasn't sure what to say, but I was annoyed at Harris for cutting me off right after the bowl broke.

I crossed my arms and asked him a question.

"So you're saying that a human falling from a twenty story building wouldn't be—"

"I don't wanna hear it, Carnegie," he interrupted while shaking his head. "We gotta get a replacement fish—that's right. Lassard will never know."

It was then that we heard the engine of a golf cart pulling around the cul-de-sac in front of the building. Harris scurried to the window, fish in hand, and used his bad shoulder to nudge the fabric back.

Harris looked out the window and then back at me, his expression irritated and yet somehow also conveying how scared shitless he was. The next words the left his lips were unnaturally high-pitched.

"Lassard."