FIC: "Right Place, Wrong Time" by Regann - PG-13/R - Shawn/Lassiter (14/??)
Title: Right Place, Wrong Time (14/??)
Author: Regann
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter
Rating: PG-13/R
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: I lifted the name and occupation of a character within from Lifetime's Blood Ties. I like vampires.
Summary: 17-year-old Shawn has a fake ID burning a hole in his pocket, a college party to crash, and a mission to stop being the only virgin in his senior class. Unfortunately, there's this big-earred, good-doing grad student by the name of Carlton who catches him in the act. The unfair nature of cosmic humor being what it is, thus begins something that'll come back to haunt them both ten years later -- when an adult Shawn Spencer decides to give psychic investigation a try.
Past Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10| 11 | 12 | 13
Right Place, Wrong Time (Part 14)
When Carlton finally made it home after the long day at the station, he was too tired to do more than drop his briefcase at the door and plant himself on the sofa, content with the ringing silence of his rented house. Two murders had been solved that day -- one over twenty years old -- and that should've been worth the exhaustion and even the bloody nose.
And it would've been -- if he'd been the one to solve the cases.
He hadn't, though. Instead it had been Spencer who'd stepped up and done what he hadn't, recognizing the supposed mountain lion mauling for what it was and vindicating Captain Connor's decades-old suspicions about Zoe Sharpe's demise.
Carlton should've been happy and he supposed he was. The murderers were in jail, justice had been served and the Chief of Police was due to recognize Connor's invaluable assistance -- there wasn't much more he could want in the closing of a murder case. But the fact remained that every time Spencer stepped in and solved one of his cases with his usual hapless laziness, it irritated Carlton to no end. There were plenty of cases that he worked fine without "psychic" involvement but the ones he remembered were the ones where he failed and Spencer swooped in to do what he couldn't.
It wasn't only in the professional sphere that Spencer tended to make his blood boil. Carlton's head was filled with him and it didn't seem to matter what he tried to do about it, there was no escape. His attraction to Spencer wasn't only an irritant in that it complicated his work and haunted him in personal hours, it also dredged up memories from his past he thought better left forgotten. It had been over a decade since Carlton had felt even a flicker of sexual desire for another man and using the term "man" to describe that particular person was a laughable exaggeration if he'd ever heard one.
Except that it wasn't funny, even years later.
Everyone made mistakes, Carlton knew that. Good people sometimes did bad things when the situation presented itself -- it was something he'd seen too much in his years as a cop. But what Carlton had done all those years ago wasn't that since he'd known exactly what he'd been doing and that it had been wrong and he'd still done it -- until his conscience had finally strangled him back onto the straight path.
But it hadn't stopped him from wanting it and, in some ways, that was the worst part.
Even in the happy years of his marriage, Carlton had sometimes had dreams about -- the past. He still refused to think of it, to think that name and place and time. But the dreams would come upon him every so often, reminding him of things he'd tried hard to forget.
He'd pushed those memories away so strongly that he could hardly remember his face; it was mostly a jumble, disjointed pieces of a nose or a jaw that could've matched with any number of people he'd seen since. But he could remember other things very well and that was what rose up in his subconscious, shockingly erotic memories of being buried in that body, memories that left him hard and wanting, that made Carlton wonder what sort of deviant he really was that he could find sex with a child so arousing even with the memories blurred with time.
He didn't want to admit it but Carlton knew that truth: that despite the homosexual encounters he'd had before that one summer, they'd been nothing compared to what he felt in that little space of time -- nothing had, not really -- and he wondered if that made him the pedophile he sometimes felt like. Nothing had made him happier than meeting Jenny and falling so completely in love; he'd been relieved and had written off that fling as an aberration, as some freak occurrence born of loneliness and bad luck, instead of rising from some quality inherent in him.
That Spencer had come along and dragged all of this out of his subconscious and into his waking mind pissed Carlton off. He didn't even like Spencer, despite his hormonal reaction to him. At least, that was what he liked to tell himself -- that Spencer was lazy, arrogant, cumbersome, disrespectful and completely lacking in redeemable qualities. But then there were things that utterly contradicted his low opinion of the fake psychic. There was Guster's mostly-unwavering loyalty and the way Spencer had so recently stood by Captain Connors when everyone -- including Carlton himself -- had disregarded the retired cop's concerns. There'd also been those times when they'd talked, a few snatches of conversations here and there, where they'd almost managed to get along like normal humans.
Truthfully, Carlton was jealous of Spencer's ability as much as he was frustrated by it. It astounded him, the intuitive leaps and logical jumps Spencer could make, the way he could tie together shards of information that seemed inconsequential and find the answer from it. And he didn't care what Spencer said or did in the name of "psychic vibrations," he knew that he was lying about it. He was about as psychic as Carlton was which meant none at all. But he still had no idea how Spencer did it, even after a few months of observation.
For all the trouble this new thing with Spencer had caused in him, at least it helped assuage some of the fear and guilt he'd harbored for so long. Because despite how immature Spencer chose to act more often than not, he was an adult physically -- and Carlton was definitely attracted to him. It helped ease those worries he'd harbored, silencing that irrational voice in the back of his head that taunted him for his crimes.
It wasn't until the phone woke him up that Carlton realized that he'd dozed off and he startled himself to wakefulness as he reached for it.
"Lassiter," he answered, shaking off the lingering strains of sleep.
The caller was Mohadevan, one of the department's forensic pathologists, bearing news of an autopsy whose results Carlton had been impatient for. Though there had been no sign of foul play in Bryant Valerie's death, he was convinced that that was exactly what he had on his hands. Unfortunately, Mohadevan had called to dash his hopes for evidence to support his hunch because she hadn't found anything out of the ordinary in her results and was chalking the death up to natural causes.
Carlton didn't buy it for a minute. He hung up with Mohadevan even more disgusted than he'd been when he'd first arrived home. There was nothing more frustrating than a case he knew was one way and not the other but there was no way to prove it -- it was even more annoying than Spencer's nasty habit of solving seemingly unsolvable cases. With a touch of grim irony, he almost wished that this was one case where Spencer could come in and figure out the puzzle if so that the killer would be caught.
He'd been planning to spend a few hours before bed going over the Valerie case again but it didn't seem worth the effort, given Mohadevan’s call. Instead, he just closed up the house, double-checking the locks before heading toward the bedroom.
Carlton was tired, hot, sticky -- he stripped off his rumpled suit, tossed it in the hamper when a mental note to take it to the cleaners and stepped into the shower, setting the water as hot as he could stand it.
Under the pounding spray, Carlton tried to clear his mind of everything bothering him, blanking out the work troubles, the problems with Spencer, his own guilt catching up with him again and focus on the simple, monotonous actions of showering. As always though, his rebellious mind let thoughts of Spencer crept over him, a sporadic cascade of images, no rhyme or reason as they danced across his distracted consciousness.
He was so absorbed in his rambling thoughts that it took Carlton a moment to realize that he’d automatically started fisting himself to the stimuli, quickly aroused by the barest reminiscences of Spencer. As he pushed toward release, he tried to focus the memories: Spencer smirking and covered in dirt when they found the Holby cash; the feel of him during the altercation in the De La Cruz kitchen; Spencer’s weight on his lap; in the police locker room, shirtless and relaxed. Carlton’s breath caught as he lingered on that last memory, and his hand sped up, slick with soap, until he was on the cusp, the images of Spencer mixing with older memories of a willing male body, young and supple. It was all melting together and Carlton thought he was missing some connection but then he was coming and all coherent reasoning shattered, leaving behind only broken fragments of whatever he’d been thinking.
Carlton leaned his head against the incongruously cool shower tiles, swallowed by the misty steam as he tried to catch his breath. He berated himself for being weak enough to give in to those thoughts again. It wasn't the first time he’d jerked off to those same memories but he always promised himself it would be the final time and he’d been strong enough to resist doing it again.
He never was.
Given its start, Carlton figured he wouldn’t make it through the week without at least one big drinking binge.
He could already taste the scotch.
**
When he’d told Amanda that he was open to seeing where the night could go, Shawn hadn’t expected the night to go the way it had: Amanda getting engaged to her not-actually-cheating ex over the phone and him wrestling a very drunk Carlton Lassiter home from Tom Blair’s Pub.
It might have been easier if Lassiter hadn’t been all but dead weight. Shawn was spry and strong enough given his size but the police detective had several inches and several pounds on him which made dragging the unconscious man from the pub to Lassiter’s Crown Vic a laborious task even with help from Loretta and Roxie. After tipping the waitresses for their help, Shawn buckled his cargo into the passenger seat, checked his license for his current address and used the keys he’d already fished from Lassiter’s pocket to start the car.
Luckily, Lassiter only live a few streets from the pub -- probably why he chose it, Shawn assumed. Glancing over at Lassiter’s lolling head, Spencer couldn’t help but snort.
When they reached Lassiter’s house, Shawn had to struggle to get him up the stairs and in through the front door, especially since he had to fumble with the keys to unlock the door.
“It took you twelve years to buy me a drink,” Shawn huffed aloud as he shouldered his way inside, Lassiter in tow. “And it was a scotch! For the record, Lassy, I’m not that fond of scotch.”
Lassiter didn’t reply since he was still passed out and Shawn took a deep breath, trying to pick up the pace. He was relieved that the house was only one storey and, with one a last great burst of energy, Shawn hustled down the hall, dropping Lassiter unceremoniously down on the bed.
Shawn took a minute to catch his breath, sending a half-hearted glare in Lassiter’s direction as he silently cursed his heaviness. The detective was sprawled out on his back, loose-limbed, taking up almost every inch of the bed. His eyes were closed, jaw slack and slightly open, arms resting at his sides. Before he knew what he was doing, Shawn was sitting on the edge of the bed, the curve of his back almost brushing against Lassiter’s hip.
“Oh, Carly,” he said to himself as he leaned over Lassiter’s supine form. “What’s a good boy like you doing in a drunk like this?”
There was no answer from the snoring man -- not that Shawn expected one. With another sigh as to how lame his night had turned out, he began to work Lassiter’s tie loose so it wouldn’t strangle him in the night. He tossed the ugly strip of fabric away, then made sure that there were a few buttons undone at the collar for the same reason.
He debated on how much more he should do but decided that removing Lassiter’s shoes, along with the tie, was more than enough. Anything more and he’d been trailing into some personal boundary issues that Shawn didn’t want to think about. It was already a little too deja vu for him; it was surprising how little the atmosphere of Lassiter’s bedroom had changed over the years. It still had that same neat sparseness, same lack of definite character that had marked his dorm room over a decade ago.
Shawn watched him for a moment, fascinated by his uncharacteristically relaxed bearing, the smoothing of lines and frowns in his usually scowling face. But, even in sleep, Lassiter looked serious and Shawn found that fact incredibly sad. It hadn’t always been that way and he wondered what had happened since that had turned his Carly into the perpetually grim man he saw everyday.
Without much thought, he reached down, brushing a hand through Lassiter’s -- Carlton’s -- hair, letting his fingers smooth against the line of his face as he drew back. He could already see the reddish spot on his forehead from where he’d hit his head on the pub table and Shawn recognized the beginnings of a spectacular bruise.
As if only just realizing what he was doing -- touching Lassiter -- and where he was -- Lassy’s bedroom -- Shawn pulled away and hurried out of the room, leaving the detective to sleep in the dim light of a single lamp. Shawn quickly straightened up any mess he’d made, dropped Lassiter’s keys on the front table and made a whispered call to Gus for a ride home.
Blocking out Gus’s pesky questions about whose porch he was waiting on and why he was somewhere that his bike wasn’t, Shawn thought about the side of Lassiter he’d seen that evening. Under all the happy-drunk personality shift, there’d been some real sadness. Shawn had to admit to himself -- so uncomfortable, he hated it -- that he’d never given much thought to what his involvement in Lassy’s cases did to him. While it was nice to know that Lassiter found him astounding, he didn't like seeing Lassiter so downtrodden and defeated. He knew that part of it was marriage angst but Shawn couldn’t do anything about the ex-Mrs. Lassy’s refusal to reconcile; however, he thought that maybe he could help with the work situation -- if only Lassiter would let him.
That was a big if, he realized.
He thought about the dilemma for the rest of the night and, by morning, he’d figured out exactly what he needed to do. Bright and early, he drug Gus to the station to put his plan in action to solve the Valerie case for Lassiter. His friend hadn’t been very supportive at the beginning but Jules stepped up and she was way more helpful than Gus in terms of keeping Lassiter from figuring out their little plan. It was tricky at turns but, in the end, the awesome team that he, Gus and Jules made succeeded in leading Lassiter to the right answers so that it was the head detective who confidently marched up in front of the reporters to lead Hugo away.
Usually Shawn and Gus would’ve followed the drama back to the station but they decided that their presence there would’ve only drawn attention away from Lassiter which would have defeated the entire point of their covert operation. So, instead, they decided to go back to the office where Shawn could monitor the media coverage from a safe distance.
Entirely too satisfied both with himself and the look on Lassiter’s face when “he” cracked the case, Shawn couldn’t stopping grinning the entire car ride. He rolled his window down, fiddled with the radio much to Gus’s consternation and hummed along with every early ‘90s hit the stations played. Gus kept shooting him evil looks from the driver’s seat but it didn’t stop his bellowing sing-along to “Follow You Down” that lasted almost up until they reached their beachfront office space.
The first thing Shawn did once he was inside the office was grab the TV remote, settle on the couch and start flipping between news stations. Channel 5 had broken into the regularly scheduled soap opera programming in order to bring news about the arrest while Channel 8 had a bulletin running across the bottom of the screen telling viewers to stayed tuned for a news report. He clicked through a few more channels, stopping when he reached the local 24-Hour News station which was showing a loop of the footage of Lassiter leading Hugo away while their perky blonde newscaster did a voiceover about the scant details that had been made public so far.
Shawn flipped back to Channel 8 in time to see Lassiter take Hugo away again, the footage a little grainier but still perfect in its technicolor glory. It was shot from another angle, he noticed, showing more of Lassiter’s face as he passed, and a much better shot of Hugo’s surprised expression. He reached down for the bag of popcorn he’d left near the sofa a few days earlier, grinning at the solemn-faced reporter now talking about Valerie, Hugo and Detective Carlton Lassiter.
He was contemplating recording the newscasts for posterity when Gus burst in, still holding his cell phone.
“Get those calls made?” Shawn asked him.
Gus nodded, taking a seat at his desk. He glanced from Shawn’s grinning face to the TV screen. “What are you doing?”
“Watching Lassy on the news,” Shawn explained, gesturing. “He’s on 5, 8 and the 24-Hours News one, too. I bet he makes it national by the time it’s all said and done.” He paused as they added a shot of Lassiter leading Hugo into the SBPD to the mix. “Look!”
“Oh, I’m looking,” Gus said sternly, in that weird voice that Shawn knew meant his friend had some kind of issue with something. “Just not at Lassiter.”
Shawn’s eyes darted from the TV to Gus’s frowning face. “What?” he asked, grin fading.
“You never said why we had to do this,” Gus said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Shawn asked, uncomfortable with the way Gus was watching him. He shifted a little on the sofa.
“It is to me,” Gus said after a minute. “Just not sure it is to you.”
Shawn rolled his eyes, swinging his legs off the couch so that he was sitting up. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“What you think it means.” Gus had his eyes on his computer screen like he wasn’t paying attention to Shawn’s irritation.
“Well I don’t know what you mean, so I don’t think it means anything,” Shawn shot back. “So how about you explain it to me, Gus?”
Gus sighed. “Never mind, Shawn. Forget it.”
“No!” Shawn left the couch and plopped down into his desk chair. “No, you started this. You can’t chicken out now. Come on!”
Gus looked conflicted, deliberating; but then he must have made a decision because he stood up, nodding as he came around to lean against the front of his desk. “Okay, okay, fine.” He crossed his arms. “It’s not like this is new. I’ve been warning you about it since we finished the Summerland case. It's Lassiter.”
“Lassiter?”
“Yes, Lassiter,” Gus told him. “I told you, Shawn. You’re playing with fire and the only person who’s going to get burned is you when it hits the fan.”
Shawn snorted in disbelief. “One, you’re mixing metaphors. Two, I thought we’d gotten past this! I told I wasn’t going to say or do anything around him to tip him off and I haven’t, so...where’s this coming from?”
Gus shook his head. “Shawn, you are blind, do you know that?”
“My eyes are 20/20, I’ll have you know,” he said. “Probably better, actually, if I could afford to get ‘em checked out.”
Gus made an abortive movement, like he was contemplating stepping away from his desk. Shawn wasn’t sure if it was a prelude to leaving or coming over to smack him but it didn’t matter because he changed his mind and stayed where he was. “I’m being serious, Shawn.”
“About what?” Shawn asked. “I still don’t know what we’re talking about.”
“Why did you want to help Lassiter?”
“Because he needed it,” Shawn replied, waving a dismissive hand. “He was...sad, drunk, I don’t know. He gave me his handcuffs.”
“But why did that matter?” Gus wanted to know.
“Because they’re new, shiny, and mine are broken,” he explained.
Gus rolled his eyes. “Not the handcuffs! Why did it matter to you if Lassiter was sad? You spend half of your life trying to piss him off.”
“It just...” Shawn wasn’t sure how to explain why it had mattered to him. “It just did, okay? We pulled it off, he feels better, another murderer is caught! All’s well that ends up well, right?”
“Wrong!” Gus was pointing at him now. “You can’t just ignore what’s going on here. Why can’t you see what I’m talking about?”
Shawn scowled, leaning back in his chair. “Okay, Spellmaster, why don’t you give it to me, letter by letter?”
“Fine!”
“Fine! Then say it!”
“Fine, I will!” Gus paused, taking a ragged breath. “Shawn, why can’t you just admit that you’re falling for him again?”
Shawn blinked. “Gus...what are you...? I’m not falling for Lassiter, I...” When he saw the skeptical look on his friend’s face, he frowned. “You’re completely off base!”
“No, I’m not,” Gus said and his voice was even but firm, maybe even a little sympathetic. It just made it worse, in Shawn’s opinion. “I was there, all those years ago when you fell for him when you were a kid and I was there when he dumped you and I was there when we almost got arrested on our way to Mexico and I’m here now and it’s happening again!”
“No, no,” Shawn denied, jumping to his feet. He felt itchy, like his skin didn’t fit, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with energy he needed to work off. “Gus, man, I appreciate that you’re worried but you’re wrong here. I already told you, I wasn’t in love with Ca-- Lassiter back then! I was a kid, a kid who wanted to get laid and who got laid and it was good but then it was over and that was it.”
“I was there,” Gus said again, stepping into Shawn’s face, cutting off his pacing. “That wasn’t just what it was. You -- you were smitten and he broke your heart.”
Shawn opened his mouth to protest but there didn’t seem to be much point, not with Gus watching him with such a knowing look, not when there was a sinking feeling inside that was telling him that Gus wasn’t too far off.
“Okay,” Shawn said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Let’s say I concede on the young, virginal and stupid front. But that has nothing to do with now. I’m not in any danger of going there again.”
“If you really believe that, you’re fooling yourself,” Gus said sadly. “If you could’ve seen yourself a minute ago...”
“You worry too much, Gus,” Shawn told him.
“Lassiter was bad news when you were a kid,” Gus said. “And he would be even more bad news for you now.”
“I got it, Gus.”
“I’m not so sure,” Gus returned.
“I said, I got it,” Shawn bit back.
No longer able to put up with Gus’s pitying and pointed look, Shawn cleared out, jumping on his bike and riding around until he'd cleared his head. He didn’t want to believe what Gus had been saying -- it was much too complicated to be true.
But he remembered the way he’d felt looking down at Lassiter passed out on the bed and it was harder to dismiss his friend’s concerns.
The next day when the pair headed up to the station to check on the status of the Valerie case, Gus didn’t bring up the conversation they'd had and Shawn was grateful. He did notice, though, that Gus seemed to hover around when Lassiter dragged Shawn off for a quick one-on-one chat but he didn't have time to call him on it, not when he still had to go meet his dad.
Shawn tried to put it all out of his mind and he mostly succeeded; but he knew that something had changed -- and he wasn't sure he was happy about it.
To Be Continued...
Author: Regann
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter
Rating: PG-13/R
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: I lifted the name and occupation of a character within from Lifetime's Blood Ties. I like vampires.
Summary: 17-year-old Shawn has a fake ID burning a hole in his pocket, a college party to crash, and a mission to stop being the only virgin in his senior class. Unfortunately, there's this big-earred, good-doing grad student by the name of Carlton who catches him in the act. The unfair nature of cosmic humor being what it is, thus begins something that'll come back to haunt them both ten years later -- when an adult Shawn Spencer decides to give psychic investigation a try.
Past Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10| 11 | 12 | 13
Right Place, Wrong Time (Part 14)
When Carlton finally made it home after the long day at the station, he was too tired to do more than drop his briefcase at the door and plant himself on the sofa, content with the ringing silence of his rented house. Two murders had been solved that day -- one over twenty years old -- and that should've been worth the exhaustion and even the bloody nose.
And it would've been -- if he'd been the one to solve the cases.
He hadn't, though. Instead it had been Spencer who'd stepped up and done what he hadn't, recognizing the supposed mountain lion mauling for what it was and vindicating Captain Connor's decades-old suspicions about Zoe Sharpe's demise.
Carlton should've been happy and he supposed he was. The murderers were in jail, justice had been served and the Chief of Police was due to recognize Connor's invaluable assistance -- there wasn't much more he could want in the closing of a murder case. But the fact remained that every time Spencer stepped in and solved one of his cases with his usual hapless laziness, it irritated Carlton to no end. There were plenty of cases that he worked fine without "psychic" involvement but the ones he remembered were the ones where he failed and Spencer swooped in to do what he couldn't.
It wasn't only in the professional sphere that Spencer tended to make his blood boil. Carlton's head was filled with him and it didn't seem to matter what he tried to do about it, there was no escape. His attraction to Spencer wasn't only an irritant in that it complicated his work and haunted him in personal hours, it also dredged up memories from his past he thought better left forgotten. It had been over a decade since Carlton had felt even a flicker of sexual desire for another man and using the term "man" to describe that particular person was a laughable exaggeration if he'd ever heard one.
Except that it wasn't funny, even years later.
Everyone made mistakes, Carlton knew that. Good people sometimes did bad things when the situation presented itself -- it was something he'd seen too much in his years as a cop. But what Carlton had done all those years ago wasn't that since he'd known exactly what he'd been doing and that it had been wrong and he'd still done it -- until his conscience had finally strangled him back onto the straight path.
But it hadn't stopped him from wanting it and, in some ways, that was the worst part.
Even in the happy years of his marriage, Carlton had sometimes had dreams about -- the past. He still refused to think of it, to think that name and place and time. But the dreams would come upon him every so often, reminding him of things he'd tried hard to forget.
He'd pushed those memories away so strongly that he could hardly remember his face; it was mostly a jumble, disjointed pieces of a nose or a jaw that could've matched with any number of people he'd seen since. But he could remember other things very well and that was what rose up in his subconscious, shockingly erotic memories of being buried in that body, memories that left him hard and wanting, that made Carlton wonder what sort of deviant he really was that he could find sex with a child so arousing even with the memories blurred with time.
He didn't want to admit it but Carlton knew that truth: that despite the homosexual encounters he'd had before that one summer, they'd been nothing compared to what he felt in that little space of time -- nothing had, not really -- and he wondered if that made him the pedophile he sometimes felt like. Nothing had made him happier than meeting Jenny and falling so completely in love; he'd been relieved and had written off that fling as an aberration, as some freak occurrence born of loneliness and bad luck, instead of rising from some quality inherent in him.
That Spencer had come along and dragged all of this out of his subconscious and into his waking mind pissed Carlton off. He didn't even like Spencer, despite his hormonal reaction to him. At least, that was what he liked to tell himself -- that Spencer was lazy, arrogant, cumbersome, disrespectful and completely lacking in redeemable qualities. But then there were things that utterly contradicted his low opinion of the fake psychic. There was Guster's mostly-unwavering loyalty and the way Spencer had so recently stood by Captain Connors when everyone -- including Carlton himself -- had disregarded the retired cop's concerns. There'd also been those times when they'd talked, a few snatches of conversations here and there, where they'd almost managed to get along like normal humans.
Truthfully, Carlton was jealous of Spencer's ability as much as he was frustrated by it. It astounded him, the intuitive leaps and logical jumps Spencer could make, the way he could tie together shards of information that seemed inconsequential and find the answer from it. And he didn't care what Spencer said or did in the name of "psychic vibrations," he knew that he was lying about it. He was about as psychic as Carlton was which meant none at all. But he still had no idea how Spencer did it, even after a few months of observation.
For all the trouble this new thing with Spencer had caused in him, at least it helped assuage some of the fear and guilt he'd harbored for so long. Because despite how immature Spencer chose to act more often than not, he was an adult physically -- and Carlton was definitely attracted to him. It helped ease those worries he'd harbored, silencing that irrational voice in the back of his head that taunted him for his crimes.
It wasn't until the phone woke him up that Carlton realized that he'd dozed off and he startled himself to wakefulness as he reached for it.
"Lassiter," he answered, shaking off the lingering strains of sleep.
The caller was Mohadevan, one of the department's forensic pathologists, bearing news of an autopsy whose results Carlton had been impatient for. Though there had been no sign of foul play in Bryant Valerie's death, he was convinced that that was exactly what he had on his hands. Unfortunately, Mohadevan had called to dash his hopes for evidence to support his hunch because she hadn't found anything out of the ordinary in her results and was chalking the death up to natural causes.
Carlton didn't buy it for a minute. He hung up with Mohadevan even more disgusted than he'd been when he'd first arrived home. There was nothing more frustrating than a case he knew was one way and not the other but there was no way to prove it -- it was even more annoying than Spencer's nasty habit of solving seemingly unsolvable cases. With a touch of grim irony, he almost wished that this was one case where Spencer could come in and figure out the puzzle if so that the killer would be caught.
He'd been planning to spend a few hours before bed going over the Valerie case again but it didn't seem worth the effort, given Mohadevan’s call. Instead, he just closed up the house, double-checking the locks before heading toward the bedroom.
Carlton was tired, hot, sticky -- he stripped off his rumpled suit, tossed it in the hamper when a mental note to take it to the cleaners and stepped into the shower, setting the water as hot as he could stand it.
Under the pounding spray, Carlton tried to clear his mind of everything bothering him, blanking out the work troubles, the problems with Spencer, his own guilt catching up with him again and focus on the simple, monotonous actions of showering. As always though, his rebellious mind let thoughts of Spencer crept over him, a sporadic cascade of images, no rhyme or reason as they danced across his distracted consciousness.
He was so absorbed in his rambling thoughts that it took Carlton a moment to realize that he’d automatically started fisting himself to the stimuli, quickly aroused by the barest reminiscences of Spencer. As he pushed toward release, he tried to focus the memories: Spencer smirking and covered in dirt when they found the Holby cash; the feel of him during the altercation in the De La Cruz kitchen; Spencer’s weight on his lap; in the police locker room, shirtless and relaxed. Carlton’s breath caught as he lingered on that last memory, and his hand sped up, slick with soap, until he was on the cusp, the images of Spencer mixing with older memories of a willing male body, young and supple. It was all melting together and Carlton thought he was missing some connection but then he was coming and all coherent reasoning shattered, leaving behind only broken fragments of whatever he’d been thinking.
Carlton leaned his head against the incongruously cool shower tiles, swallowed by the misty steam as he tried to catch his breath. He berated himself for being weak enough to give in to those thoughts again. It wasn't the first time he’d jerked off to those same memories but he always promised himself it would be the final time and he’d been strong enough to resist doing it again.
He never was.
Given its start, Carlton figured he wouldn’t make it through the week without at least one big drinking binge.
He could already taste the scotch.
**
When he’d told Amanda that he was open to seeing where the night could go, Shawn hadn’t expected the night to go the way it had: Amanda getting engaged to her not-actually-cheating ex over the phone and him wrestling a very drunk Carlton Lassiter home from Tom Blair’s Pub.
It might have been easier if Lassiter hadn’t been all but dead weight. Shawn was spry and strong enough given his size but the police detective had several inches and several pounds on him which made dragging the unconscious man from the pub to Lassiter’s Crown Vic a laborious task even with help from Loretta and Roxie. After tipping the waitresses for their help, Shawn buckled his cargo into the passenger seat, checked his license for his current address and used the keys he’d already fished from Lassiter’s pocket to start the car.
Luckily, Lassiter only live a few streets from the pub -- probably why he chose it, Shawn assumed. Glancing over at Lassiter’s lolling head, Spencer couldn’t help but snort.
When they reached Lassiter’s house, Shawn had to struggle to get him up the stairs and in through the front door, especially since he had to fumble with the keys to unlock the door.
“It took you twelve years to buy me a drink,” Shawn huffed aloud as he shouldered his way inside, Lassiter in tow. “And it was a scotch! For the record, Lassy, I’m not that fond of scotch.”
Lassiter didn’t reply since he was still passed out and Shawn took a deep breath, trying to pick up the pace. He was relieved that the house was only one storey and, with one a last great burst of energy, Shawn hustled down the hall, dropping Lassiter unceremoniously down on the bed.
Shawn took a minute to catch his breath, sending a half-hearted glare in Lassiter’s direction as he silently cursed his heaviness. The detective was sprawled out on his back, loose-limbed, taking up almost every inch of the bed. His eyes were closed, jaw slack and slightly open, arms resting at his sides. Before he knew what he was doing, Shawn was sitting on the edge of the bed, the curve of his back almost brushing against Lassiter’s hip.
“Oh, Carly,” he said to himself as he leaned over Lassiter’s supine form. “What’s a good boy like you doing in a drunk like this?”
There was no answer from the snoring man -- not that Shawn expected one. With another sigh as to how lame his night had turned out, he began to work Lassiter’s tie loose so it wouldn’t strangle him in the night. He tossed the ugly strip of fabric away, then made sure that there were a few buttons undone at the collar for the same reason.
He debated on how much more he should do but decided that removing Lassiter’s shoes, along with the tie, was more than enough. Anything more and he’d been trailing into some personal boundary issues that Shawn didn’t want to think about. It was already a little too deja vu for him; it was surprising how little the atmosphere of Lassiter’s bedroom had changed over the years. It still had that same neat sparseness, same lack of definite character that had marked his dorm room over a decade ago.
Shawn watched him for a moment, fascinated by his uncharacteristically relaxed bearing, the smoothing of lines and frowns in his usually scowling face. But, even in sleep, Lassiter looked serious and Shawn found that fact incredibly sad. It hadn’t always been that way and he wondered what had happened since that had turned his Carly into the perpetually grim man he saw everyday.
Without much thought, he reached down, brushing a hand through Lassiter’s -- Carlton’s -- hair, letting his fingers smooth against the line of his face as he drew back. He could already see the reddish spot on his forehead from where he’d hit his head on the pub table and Shawn recognized the beginnings of a spectacular bruise.
As if only just realizing what he was doing -- touching Lassiter -- and where he was -- Lassy’s bedroom -- Shawn pulled away and hurried out of the room, leaving the detective to sleep in the dim light of a single lamp. Shawn quickly straightened up any mess he’d made, dropped Lassiter’s keys on the front table and made a whispered call to Gus for a ride home.
Blocking out Gus’s pesky questions about whose porch he was waiting on and why he was somewhere that his bike wasn’t, Shawn thought about the side of Lassiter he’d seen that evening. Under all the happy-drunk personality shift, there’d been some real sadness. Shawn had to admit to himself -- so uncomfortable, he hated it -- that he’d never given much thought to what his involvement in Lassy’s cases did to him. While it was nice to know that Lassiter found him astounding, he didn't like seeing Lassiter so downtrodden and defeated. He knew that part of it was marriage angst but Shawn couldn’t do anything about the ex-Mrs. Lassy’s refusal to reconcile; however, he thought that maybe he could help with the work situation -- if only Lassiter would let him.
That was a big if, he realized.
He thought about the dilemma for the rest of the night and, by morning, he’d figured out exactly what he needed to do. Bright and early, he drug Gus to the station to put his plan in action to solve the Valerie case for Lassiter. His friend hadn’t been very supportive at the beginning but Jules stepped up and she was way more helpful than Gus in terms of keeping Lassiter from figuring out their little plan. It was tricky at turns but, in the end, the awesome team that he, Gus and Jules made succeeded in leading Lassiter to the right answers so that it was the head detective who confidently marched up in front of the reporters to lead Hugo away.
Usually Shawn and Gus would’ve followed the drama back to the station but they decided that their presence there would’ve only drawn attention away from Lassiter which would have defeated the entire point of their covert operation. So, instead, they decided to go back to the office where Shawn could monitor the media coverage from a safe distance.
Entirely too satisfied both with himself and the look on Lassiter’s face when “he” cracked the case, Shawn couldn’t stopping grinning the entire car ride. He rolled his window down, fiddled with the radio much to Gus’s consternation and hummed along with every early ‘90s hit the stations played. Gus kept shooting him evil looks from the driver’s seat but it didn’t stop his bellowing sing-along to “Follow You Down” that lasted almost up until they reached their beachfront office space.
The first thing Shawn did once he was inside the office was grab the TV remote, settle on the couch and start flipping between news stations. Channel 5 had broken into the regularly scheduled soap opera programming in order to bring news about the arrest while Channel 8 had a bulletin running across the bottom of the screen telling viewers to stayed tuned for a news report. He clicked through a few more channels, stopping when he reached the local 24-Hour News station which was showing a loop of the footage of Lassiter leading Hugo away while their perky blonde newscaster did a voiceover about the scant details that had been made public so far.
Shawn flipped back to Channel 8 in time to see Lassiter take Hugo away again, the footage a little grainier but still perfect in its technicolor glory. It was shot from another angle, he noticed, showing more of Lassiter’s face as he passed, and a much better shot of Hugo’s surprised expression. He reached down for the bag of popcorn he’d left near the sofa a few days earlier, grinning at the solemn-faced reporter now talking about Valerie, Hugo and Detective Carlton Lassiter.
He was contemplating recording the newscasts for posterity when Gus burst in, still holding his cell phone.
“Get those calls made?” Shawn asked him.
Gus nodded, taking a seat at his desk. He glanced from Shawn’s grinning face to the TV screen. “What are you doing?”
“Watching Lassy on the news,” Shawn explained, gesturing. “He’s on 5, 8 and the 24-Hours News one, too. I bet he makes it national by the time it’s all said and done.” He paused as they added a shot of Lassiter leading Hugo into the SBPD to the mix. “Look!”
“Oh, I’m looking,” Gus said sternly, in that weird voice that Shawn knew meant his friend had some kind of issue with something. “Just not at Lassiter.”
Shawn’s eyes darted from the TV to Gus’s frowning face. “What?” he asked, grin fading.
“You never said why we had to do this,” Gus said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Shawn asked, uncomfortable with the way Gus was watching him. He shifted a little on the sofa.
“It is to me,” Gus said after a minute. “Just not sure it is to you.”
Shawn rolled his eyes, swinging his legs off the couch so that he was sitting up. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“What you think it means.” Gus had his eyes on his computer screen like he wasn’t paying attention to Shawn’s irritation.
“Well I don’t know what you mean, so I don’t think it means anything,” Shawn shot back. “So how about you explain it to me, Gus?”
Gus sighed. “Never mind, Shawn. Forget it.”
“No!” Shawn left the couch and plopped down into his desk chair. “No, you started this. You can’t chicken out now. Come on!”
Gus looked conflicted, deliberating; but then he must have made a decision because he stood up, nodding as he came around to lean against the front of his desk. “Okay, okay, fine.” He crossed his arms. “It’s not like this is new. I’ve been warning you about it since we finished the Summerland case. It's Lassiter.”
“Lassiter?”
“Yes, Lassiter,” Gus told him. “I told you, Shawn. You’re playing with fire and the only person who’s going to get burned is you when it hits the fan.”
Shawn snorted in disbelief. “One, you’re mixing metaphors. Two, I thought we’d gotten past this! I told I wasn’t going to say or do anything around him to tip him off and I haven’t, so...where’s this coming from?”
Gus shook his head. “Shawn, you are blind, do you know that?”
“My eyes are 20/20, I’ll have you know,” he said. “Probably better, actually, if I could afford to get ‘em checked out.”
Gus made an abortive movement, like he was contemplating stepping away from his desk. Shawn wasn’t sure if it was a prelude to leaving or coming over to smack him but it didn’t matter because he changed his mind and stayed where he was. “I’m being serious, Shawn.”
“About what?” Shawn asked. “I still don’t know what we’re talking about.”
“Why did you want to help Lassiter?”
“Because he needed it,” Shawn replied, waving a dismissive hand. “He was...sad, drunk, I don’t know. He gave me his handcuffs.”
“But why did that matter?” Gus wanted to know.
“Because they’re new, shiny, and mine are broken,” he explained.
Gus rolled his eyes. “Not the handcuffs! Why did it matter to you if Lassiter was sad? You spend half of your life trying to piss him off.”
“It just...” Shawn wasn’t sure how to explain why it had mattered to him. “It just did, okay? We pulled it off, he feels better, another murderer is caught! All’s well that ends up well, right?”
“Wrong!” Gus was pointing at him now. “You can’t just ignore what’s going on here. Why can’t you see what I’m talking about?”
Shawn scowled, leaning back in his chair. “Okay, Spellmaster, why don’t you give it to me, letter by letter?”
“Fine!”
“Fine! Then say it!”
“Fine, I will!” Gus paused, taking a ragged breath. “Shawn, why can’t you just admit that you’re falling for him again?”
Shawn blinked. “Gus...what are you...? I’m not falling for Lassiter, I...” When he saw the skeptical look on his friend’s face, he frowned. “You’re completely off base!”
“No, I’m not,” Gus said and his voice was even but firm, maybe even a little sympathetic. It just made it worse, in Shawn’s opinion. “I was there, all those years ago when you fell for him when you were a kid and I was there when he dumped you and I was there when we almost got arrested on our way to Mexico and I’m here now and it’s happening again!”
“No, no,” Shawn denied, jumping to his feet. He felt itchy, like his skin didn’t fit, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with energy he needed to work off. “Gus, man, I appreciate that you’re worried but you’re wrong here. I already told you, I wasn’t in love with Ca-- Lassiter back then! I was a kid, a kid who wanted to get laid and who got laid and it was good but then it was over and that was it.”
“I was there,” Gus said again, stepping into Shawn’s face, cutting off his pacing. “That wasn’t just what it was. You -- you were smitten and he broke your heart.”
Shawn opened his mouth to protest but there didn’t seem to be much point, not with Gus watching him with such a knowing look, not when there was a sinking feeling inside that was telling him that Gus wasn’t too far off.
“Okay,” Shawn said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Let’s say I concede on the young, virginal and stupid front. But that has nothing to do with now. I’m not in any danger of going there again.”
“If you really believe that, you’re fooling yourself,” Gus said sadly. “If you could’ve seen yourself a minute ago...”
“You worry too much, Gus,” Shawn told him.
“Lassiter was bad news when you were a kid,” Gus said. “And he would be even more bad news for you now.”
“I got it, Gus.”
“I’m not so sure,” Gus returned.
“I said, I got it,” Shawn bit back.
No longer able to put up with Gus’s pitying and pointed look, Shawn cleared out, jumping on his bike and riding around until he'd cleared his head. He didn’t want to believe what Gus had been saying -- it was much too complicated to be true.
But he remembered the way he’d felt looking down at Lassiter passed out on the bed and it was harder to dismiss his friend’s concerns.
The next day when the pair headed up to the station to check on the status of the Valerie case, Gus didn’t bring up the conversation they'd had and Shawn was grateful. He did notice, though, that Gus seemed to hover around when Lassiter dragged Shawn off for a quick one-on-one chat but he didn't have time to call him on it, not when he still had to go meet his dad.
Shawn tried to put it all out of his mind and he mostly succeeded; but he knew that something had changed -- and he wasn't sure he was happy about it.
To Be Continued...