Fic! And it's Psych!

[unadrift]

Whenever I haven't been fiddling with html code these last couple of weeks-- (Yes, the poll convinced me. My own shiny new website is almost done! Almost! On that note, I still very much need to get the following message off my chest: ----Die, Internet Explorer, DIE!!!---- Phew, okay, yes, feeling better now.)

Okay, what was the point of this post again? Right, I wrote, and surprisingly, it's not SGA. It's Psych! I love Psych! And I loved the season finale to an unhealthy degree.

Hence, this tag for An Evening with Mr. Yang.
3200 words, gen, PG-13, Shawn and Lassiter, humor, yet angsty (huh?).

Thank you to naye for initial beta comments and to snarkydame for the whole beta package!

---

An Evening With Mr. Lassiter


Shawn wasn't, by nature, a brooding kind of person.

For all the traffic that was usually going on in his head, hardly any vehicles ever traveled down Deep Introspection Lane, or the even less frequented Self-Reflection Avenue. No, Shawn was really more like an armada of K.I.T.T.s in super pursuit mode, thundering down Spontaneity Highway at breakneck speed, with just a few stops in Ingenious Deduction County and/or Insanely Fun Valley along the way.

When things slowed down once in a while, it was always a bit of a shock.

Contrary to the laws of compelling narration, the meeting room at the station wasn't still in the condition the team had left it the day before. That would have been extremely tardy, and this was the police, after all. The cleaning crew had gotten rid of the paper debris on the floor, the tables were aligned and bare, and the chairs all in order – except for the one Shawn had grabbed and wheeled away to sit in.

There wasn't a reminder of the previous day left in here, but there didn't have to be. When Shawn closed his eyes, he was then again. With Jules frowning at the riddle projected on the wall, Lassiter glaring at him as usual, the chief all fussy and worried, ankle-weight Mary generally behaving like he could be guilty of all of Santa Barbara's recent unsolved murders, and Gus being Gus in a very Gus-like way.

Shawn was then, in the middle of it, and everything else just slowed down in the now.

This wasn't a little traffic jam on Spontaneity Highway. This was a major car pile-up, complete with multiple explosions of Hollywood-proportions, and with Hollywood-plausibility, too. As far as the traffic watch helicopter circling the crash-site (Airwolf style) was reluctantly reporting, this qualified as heretofore unknown disaster.

Shawn opened his eyes. Lassiter was standing in the doorway, watching him with a neutral expression. Shawn very much wanted that neutral expression for himself.

"Spencer," Lassiter said, "I'm going out for a beer."

Shawn let the sentence echo back and forth in his head a few times and decided that, coming from Lassiter, it sounded kind of like an invitation – only without the part where he actually got invited.

"What is it with you people?" Shawn said, throwing his hands in the air theatrically. "Suddenly everyone wants to go out on a date with me? Get in line, Lassie, or fight it out with the rest of them. Seriously, I don't get it--" Shawn paused. What was he saying there? Of course he totally got it. "Okay, yes, so I'm very much worth fighting over, even with the hair pulling, and the kneeing in private parts, and all the other dirty moves in the book, but let me take a moment to say: What the hell? Why now?" And because the chief conveniently chose that exact moment to walk by outside the meeting room, Shawn asked, "Chief! You want to go on a date with me, too?"

Chief Vick stopped dead in her tracks and stared at Shawn as if he was certifiably insane and wearing his underpants on his head. But that was okay. Shawn had made it his mission to put that kind of look on her face at least once per case. This particular one resided right among the top ten so far, he noted with satisfaction. And technically, he wasn't even on the clock today.

"Spencer," the chief said, and then she paused. "Go have that beer." She exchanged a look with Lassiter (what was that all about?), turned, and vanished into her office.

Shawn swiveled around in his chair, two times, three, and came to a stop facing Lassiter. "Have you ever wondered why we say that someone vanishes to somewhere, when actually they don't vanish, as in disintegrate, at all?"

"I can't say that I have," Lassiter said, still standing by the door. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, like he wanted to take off running, yes, right this moment, please.

Shawn plucked at a crease in his jeans, deliberately casual. "So, about that date--"

"Not a date, just a beer," Lassiter corrected crossly. "Why on Earth would I ask you, of all people, out on a date? Whatever gave you the idea--"

"Oh, I don't know," Shawn interrupted, gesturing at Lassiter at large, "maybe it was the fact that you're standing there, all nervous and fidgety. It's disturbingly cute. Who knew you could be cute? And you put on your best tie, just for me. Lassie, you shouldn't have. It's really, really ugly."

And now the fun part began, the part where Lassiter was getting annoyed. It came with the flaring of nostrils, which was always amusing. "Spencer, read my lips: Not a date, just having a BEER."

Shawn cocked his head innocently. "What was that last word?"

"Oh, forget it," Lassiter snapped, and walked out.

"Hey, Lassie!" Shawn shouted and propelled the chair backwards as he rose to follow Lassiter. Maybe he was yelling a little louder than absolutely necessary. "You don't give your date a ride to the pub? Is that gentlemanly behavior? I walked to the station. All the way. My feet are tired." He caught up with Lassiter by the front door. "It'll be on your conscience if I collapse from manly exhaustion by the side of some deserted road and die of hypothermia. Or thirst. Or malnutrition. Or boredom. I get bored easily."

"You don't say," Lassiter deadpanned, and added, "Shut up and get moving, Spencer," with nothing more than a put-upon sigh. He even held the front door open for Shawn. Maybe Shawn was losing his touch.


* * *


The most positive thing Shawn could say about the place Lassiter had chosen was that it was badly lit. And not in the creating-a-romantic-mood kind of way, just-- badly lit. The owner of this (for lack of a better word) business probably couldn't afford new light bulbs. Which, taking the clientele into account, didn't surprise Shawn in the slightest.

Lassiter came back from the bar and, with a decisive thump, put down two mugs of beer on the greasy table. He sat down opposite Shawn.

Shawn leaned forward. "You arrested all of these guys here before, didn't you?"

Lassiter let his eyes wander over the people in the room. This included three guys at the bar (with bloodshot eyes and shaky hands and some very telling chemical stains on their clothing), two lone nervous figures at separate tables (eyeing each other, and trying to act like they were strangers and also generally inconspicuous kind of people), and the aggressively possessive guy (with the most voluminous pumped-up eighties hair Shawn had ever seen, and that said something) sitting together with a woman in a skimpy dress (who had no qualms using her colorful and un-ladylike vocabulary) in a booth behind Shawn. Not to forget the bulky bartender himself (who watered down the beverages he poured out almost beyond recognition).

"Only three of them." Lassiter took a swig from his mug. "Bald Bob twice, though."

Shawn didn't need to ask who Bald Bob was. The Hair and Shawn's fabulous grasp of sarcasm pointed very clearly to the pimp in the booth behind his back.

"So, why did you drag me out to this-- this--" Shawn searched for a fitting, yet not too insulting description and came up empty again.

"Bar," Lassiter supplied.

"Bar," Shawn repeated. The characterization lacked descriptive adjectives, but that was all for the better, really. "Bar. Okay." Shawn nodded, then seamlessly switched to shaking his head. "Let me tell you, I'm shocked. This is your favorite place for hanging out on weekends, Lassie? I always thought that you at least had some standards, however incomprehensible they might appear to the normal person."

Lassiter raised an eyebrow. "A normal person like you?"

"Yes, a normal person like me. Why is that so memorable?"

"Spencer, if there's anything that you are not, it's 'normal'."

Shawn leaned back in his creaking chair, smirking. "I'm taking that as a compliment."

"Of course you are."

"That still doesn't explain why you're buying me awful, possibly toxic beer in this dump of a bar on our first date."

Lassiter shook his head to himself. "I should have thrown you out of the car," he said.

He had almost done it, too. Twice. In retrospect, Shawn should have anticipated that Lassiter wouldn't take kindly to criticism on his driving skills.

"Missed opportunities. Oh, how they torment the pensive mind," Shawn intoned, demonstratively taking another look around. "I should have jumped out while I still could."

The glare Lassiter sent him would have set the toughest career criminal spontaneously on fire. "I used to gather intel here, meet informants, keep an ear to the ground. Real police work. You've probably heard about it," Lassiter said, somewhat snidely. He was clearly just jealous of Shawn's exceptional abilities that solved half his cases. "You didn't expect me to bring you to a place I actually like, did you? And take the risk of never being able to return? You can't go anywhere without making a joke of yourself and embarrassing everyone around you like it's a spectator sport." Lassiter gestured in a way that communicated, 'So there'.

Shawn had to let that sink in for a moment. It wasn't like he had been expecting more from Lassiter. This was Lassie, after all. But-- okay, so he hadn't been expecting this. Possibly, Shawn was a little flattered that Lassiter was-- inconvenienced by the psychic episodes, or psychisodes, as Shawn liked to call them. But, maybe, possibly, Shawn was less flattered, and more-- something else.

"About yesterday," Lassiter said, reluctantly. He scratched his head, then took a sip of his beer, then scratched his head again.

Shawn watched for a while, amused. "The chief put you up to this, didn't she?"

"Yes," Lassiter said, relieved. "Yes, she did. Imagine my joy about the assignment. What was the woman thinking? I do pep-talk about as well as you do--"

"Serious discussion?" Shawn offered. "Knitting? Refinement of plutonium?"

"Yes. That." Lassiter almost smiled then. It must have been really, really close, with the corner of his mouth twitching like that. Shawn made a mental note to use 'plutonium' more often in casual conversation, since, unexpectedly, it seemed to be a funny word.

"What do I need pep-talk for, anyway? Have you looked at me lately? I'm at my personal best, psychic abilities finely tuned and ready to go." Shawn lifted his fingers to his temple, schooling his face into an exaggerated expression of deep concentration, complete with eye-squinting and lip-biting. The move never failed to prompt a disapproving, disgusted look from Lassiter. "Really, just aim me in the right direction, I'm locked and loaded, the nightmare of all bad guys, the wet dream of all law enforcement-- Er-- Or not." Sometimes Shawn suspected that a detour down Sensibility Road might actually be a good idea before he directed his verbal inspirations down to his mouth.

Lassiter smirked. "I always knew you were full of yourself, Spencer," he said. "I never realized just how far it goes."

Shawn usually made it a point not to let annoyance sneak up on him. The people that he could get riled up about usually weren't worth getting riled up about, which made the exercise a colossal waste of his energy. Barring a few exceptions, Shawn liked to have a level, detached view of everything and everyone around him, because that was the way his mind worked best. Most of the time this was easy enough to achieve. Always being right helped a lot. It was easy as pie not to get annoyed at people when they were oh-so-wrong and Shawn knew he was just right, right, right.

Unfortunately, Lassiter was one of the exceptions. In the wrong kind of situation, Lassiter could annoy Shawn in almost no time flat. Like now.

"Can we get to the part where you try your hand at the pep-talk?" Shawn suggested. "Because this? Wouldn't help, even if I actually needed an inspiring speech."

Lassiter sighed. Honest-to-god sighed. "The chief thought you were-- O'Hara thought so, too. That, today, you were-- That you were not really--"

"Myself?" Shawn said, because otherwise this could go on forever. And as much as he had enjoyed this evening so far-- Oh, wait, he hadn't. So, speeding things up, yes, was definitely a good idea.

"Yourself. Yes. And that this was probably because people you--" Lassiter frowned.

"Really would like to see again? Respect? Love?"

"That, yes. Got dragged into your case. Which can be--" Lassiter gestured, obviously getting desperate. "You know."

Only reluctantly, Shawn took pity on him. "Traumatic?"

"Apparently. For them, and for you." Lassiter stared into his beer, twirling the glass, twirling it again, and again. "When Vinnie the Weasel had our house turned upside down and inside out, Victoria took that as the cue to file the divorce papers. Or maybe it was the slug I put in the kitchen ceiling? I never managed to figure that out. She hated it when I brought the job home with me."

Shawn felt his eyebrows rise. This was personal information. About Lassiter. From Lassiter. Shawn's brain was refusing to process. "Vinnie the Weasel?" he asked, latching on to the one safe piece of information. "What is this, The Return of the Godfather?"

Lassiter lifted his eyes again. "Get this: His real name was Peter."

Shawn could pinpoint the moment down to the millisecond when Lassiter realized that he wasn't talking to one of his police buddies. Not that Lassiter had any police buddies. "Vinnie the Weasel, formerly known as Peter?" Shawn asked lightly. "There should be a law against that, somewhere. In Ohio, maybe, or Arkansas? Wichita?"

"We were talking about you," Lassiter interrupted stiffly.

"Oh, were we? I'm fairly sure I heard you say a few sentences that weren't strictly related to events the occurred yesterday. Or to me. You've only got yourself to blame, Lassie."

"I don't--" Lassiter snapped, then took a breath. "This isn't about me, Spencer. I'm used to this, as used as you can get. I've been a cop for almost twenty years. I learned to deal. This is about you. You went through this case with a serial killer fixated on you, your mother was very nearly blown up in your face, and you sit there, doing what you always do. You act--"

"What? Less sane than the average citizen?" Shawn retorted, a burning sensation firing up in his gut, not unlike the one Pedro's hot chili usually created two hours after ingestion. Only this time, the feeling wasn't even remotely food-related.

Anger. Anger was a lot worse than annoyance.

Lassiter had the nerve to stab a finger in his direction. "No. You act, period."

Shawn stared, because, dissatisfying as it was, Lassiter was totally, unnervingly right. Shawn had been going through the motions, on autopilot. He could hardly remember anything from the date the night before. (What had that movie been again? How much popcorn had they eaten? Had Gus allowed them to make out in the car? Probably not. Had she laughed at his jokes? More importantly, had he managed to crack any jokes at all?) Shawn could barely form a thought without being re-directed to the image of the bomb (The bomb!) strapped to his mom, happily blinking its way to an unhappy ending.

The memory of meeting Mrs. Yang in person wasn't half as terrifying as the thought that his mother could have died, and that it would have been Shawn's fault.

Cars were piling up on Spontaneity Highway once more, making his head want to explode, and Shawn gripped his beer so hard his knuckles turned white.

"I never expected to hear this particular piece of advice come out of my mouth," Lassiter said, almost gently, "but you really should talk about this to someone."

Shawn took a breath to tell Lassiter to go to hell, or Brisbane, or somewhere else far, far away.

"Ah, no!" Lassiter said, raising his finger once more. "Not me! Have your heart-to-heart with Guster. Or your father. Whoever. Not me. So if you really want to talk about it now--"

Shawn sent him a death glare. He was good at death glares, but Lassiter was mostly unimpressed.

"I thought so," Lassiter said. "Well, if you want to not talk about it, we can do that."

Shawn exhaled, in a rush, and the anger left him, riding right out on the carbon dioxide. Because Lassiter got it, wasn't pushing, was more observant than Shawn would have given him credit for, was buying.

"More beer," Shawn said. This definitely called for more beer.


* * *


Sometime around the tenth beer, after an uncertain number of shots of something stronger and a solid twenty minutes of comfortable silence, it occurred to Shawn that Lassiter was acting kind of nice today. "Dude," he said. "Did I say? I'm really glad we had this conversation."

Lassiter raised an eyebrow at him – probably because Shawn had hit some major obstacles while trying to get the words out, and maybe because Lassiter was still holding on to his first beer. "Call me 'dude' again, and I'm going to introduce my beer to your ridiculous hair," he said sweetly.

"On behalf of my hair, I'm insulted," Shawn said, gesturing at the hair in question, and almost stabbed his thumb into his eye. "We are not ridiculous. In fact, we should be taken more seriously."

"You and your hair?" Lassiter asked, clearly amused.

Shawn nodded seriously. "Me and my hair," he said. "We're like this." He held up his hands, but couldn't quite manage the gesture that involved forming two linked circles with his thumbs and forefingers. "Like this!" he emphasized anyway, and put his head on the table. The now even greasierererer table, and for the record: Eeew.

Things were a bit hazy afterwards.

Shawn remembered threats of unspeakable punishment in case of in-car puking, and Lassiter saying, "I always assumed that you'd be a talkative drunk," somewhere along the way.

"That a complaint?"

"No. I like contemplative Shawn."

Shawn groaned. There weren't all that many vehicles going down Deep Introspection Lane in his head now, but it really was a lot busier there when he was drunk. And obviously, he was very drunk. Otherwise he wouldn't have imagined Lassiter using the words 'Shawn' and 'like' in one sentence.

Lassiter brought him home. He might even have tucked Shawn in. He might have said, "You have that talk tomorrow," which sounded suspiciously like an order.

Shawn might have snuggled deeper into his pillow and answered, "Will do, Lassie."


* * *


In the morning Shawn downed three cups of coffee and two aspirins, and after that he almost felt human again.

When his mother called, he picked up the phone. She would understand about car pile-ups.


* * *


Two days later, at the station, a delivery guy handed Lassiter a package in exchange for his signature.

Naturally, Shawn had timed it so that he would be there to watch Lassiter unpack and leaf through a paperback edition of 'The Right Word at the Right Time - Motivation is Key'.

Lassiter met Shawn's eyes and nodded, barely noticeable, and maybe even amused. Shawn just grinned back.


- end -


Note to self: We are badly in need of Psych icons.