Fic: Great Expectations [Psych, Shawn/Various, R]
So, Psych fic, and of course it's not nearly to the tone or content of the show. (Figures. Perhaps I should just stick with being quietly gloomy, because I obviously can't write anything in the least bit fluffy.) In this rare case, however, I was actually aiming for gloomy and fucked up, mostly to prove a point about Shawn, which is: hey, guys, he's not actually that nice. In fact, consider this a child of lucia-tanaka's Varying Degrees of Conartistry, which goes somewhere along the same lines. (A child that isn't nearly as good as the parent story, by the way. Read it. You'll never watch Psych the same way again.)
And re: my own personal issues - I swear, people, I wrote the angst after I wrote the fic. I just edited the angst first.
Okay, housekeeping. La-de-dah... Dates, of course, are all assuming Shawn was born in 1979; quotations are from On the Road, Crime & Punishment, "Daredevils", "Psy vs. Psy", and "Murder? ...Anyone? ...Anyone? Bueller?"
...Right. Fie ye away, fluff! Vice, vice, angst, baby, and bring on the gay!
great expectations
shawn / gus, shawn / lassiter, shawn / juliet
psych; r-whateva. general spoilers.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' "
- Jack Kerouac
The wonderful thing about lying for long periods of time, Shawn discovers, is that after a while the lie starts to become the truth. For that single moment, the world stumbles and slows as it readjusts to your reality, and then, amazingly, it moves on. Everyone forgets that you’re not who you say you are. Eventually, you do too.
The awful thing about it, Shawn discovers a little later, is more or less the exact same thing.
*
“No, I love you more,” Shawn says, crooning into the phone he’s tucked against his ear. “More than pineapple, and smoothies, and pineapple smoothies, even the ones with those little umbrellas stuck in the -”
“Spencer,” Lassiter barks.
Shawn covers the mouthpiece with one hand. “Lassieface.”
Lassiter frowns, the corners of his mouth crinkling in frustration. “In case you haven’t noticed, Spencer, we have a dead body on our hands. Please, spare us the cooing over your girlfriend and hurry up and do your… whatever, so we can get out of here and do ours.”
Shawn snorts, and then whispers something into the phone, shoving it into his pocket so he can cross his arms. “Jealous, much?”
Lassiter rubs his eyes tiredly. The last two bodies were recent, one after the other, Shawn knows. Blondes in their early twenties. Lassie’s been working around the clock, trying to solve it before a fourth chick ends up dead. He’s on his seventh cup of coffee since lunch, and the combination of caffeine and the disgusting amount of sugar he adds has made him about as twitchy as a fork in an electrical socket. In a few hours, they’ll probably have to start mainlining amphetamines just to keep him from crashing.
“Spencer,“ he starts, and Shawn tosses something at him. It’s a doll’s head, lips painted a garish red, jagged from the chin down.
“Found that behind a target,” Shawn says conversationally. “At the shooting range. You should really keep better care of your dolls, Lassie. Blowing them up isn’t kosher at all.”
“Do you have a point?” Lassiter asks, “or are you wasting my time for kicks?”
Shawn shrugs. It’s almost evening, and he can feel the wind picking up, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. “Date more, shoot less? You’re not that bad.” He frowns. “Well, actually, you are. But that’s not the point. Look,” he says, taking out his cellphone, “even with all my charm, brains, and good looks, I have problems too.” Lassiter snorts. Shawn ignores him. “Most of my dates are so amazingly boring. Even if the sex is great, and isn't that weird? But anyways, I found someone-” he shakes the cellphone to prove it “-and the spirits are telling me you can too.”
“Which street-corner would you recommend, then?” Lassiter asks, dryly.
“See, this is what I mean,” Shawn says. “You just keep looking in all the wrong places.”
Shawn watches Lassiter walk away, hands in pockets, his shoulders dark shadows spreading against the setting sun. Occasionally his right one will rustle, as if he is fiddling with the porcelain doll’s head tucked away there. Round and round his fingers go, tracing the shattered contours - thumb rubbing an eyesocket, the curve of a painted cheek. Shawn shakes his head, once, and listens a little while longer to the loop of sound emitting from the phone’s tinny speakers.
You have reached the desk of Adam Hornstock. To leave a message, press one. To leave a callback number, press -
“Huh,” Shawn says, after a while, and snaps the phone shut.
*
(Though he will never admit it, Shawn loved James Taylor - loved the white suits and folk lyrics, jerked off once or twice to the slow, bluesy rhythms. Listening to Gorilla, he dreams of dust and dark Spanish eyes.)
In 1998, he hitchhikes across the border on a truck piled high with melons, sticky-sweetness worked into the cracks in the leather of the front seat, the back window fogged with sweat and juice. The water makes him sick; his hotel room has no air conditioning. Shawn sets "Mexico" to repeat on the CD player he will get mugged for three days later, and works very hard - drinks even harder - to make the place measure up.
*
"Oh wait, I get it. You guys are dating. You're together. Everything makes sense."
"We are not dating."
"Dude, are you kidding me? He was voted most likely to succeed. You think he's going to date me?"
- Murder? ...Anyone? ...Anyone? Bueller?, 3.02
*
In 1996, Gus and Shawn spend their first summer apart. Gus goes to doctor camp; a retreat sponsored by the Young Men's Christian Society; SAT classes in the UCSB basement. His parents keep him busy, and apart from the initial inquiries, he doesn't question it. At his camps and retreats and classes he meets serious, goal-driven people who work hard and act much like him. People who understand his jokes, for the most part, and are happy to let him sleep for more than five hours without being interrupted. He certainly doesn't think of how easy it would be to disappear into this earnest, clean-cut puppet show, because as a well-off, well-spoken black kid growing up in the suburbs of Southern California, part of him has always wanted to.
When he gets back home, his parents look at him with narrowed eyes. There are several voicemails waiting for him. It takes Gus a while to realize that they are from Shawn, because the voice on the tape is shaking so badly.
*
Gus drives his mother’s ’84 Nissan to the Spencer’s’ house. Shawn looks at him with eyes he knows are desperate and hollow, like marbles with the centers hacked out, and Gus doesn't say a word as they throw sleeping bags, spare shirts, cans of food in the backseat. (Inevitably, they forget the can-opener.) Shawn thinks he might say something only once, when he walks in on Shawn slamming his father's bureau doors shut, a wad of stolen cash in his fist, but Gus just looks at him for a moment and then turns away. It's then that Shawn realizes how good of a friend Gus is to him, how utterly perfect and how blessed he is, and how he is taking this loyal, honest boy and destroying him piece by piece.
That night, they take a hotel room off the highway, so close that passing cars spit gravel up on the lawn. The guy at the register won't take their money; they aren't eighteen, and certainly don't look it, but Shawn jimmies a lock on one of the motel doors and tells Gus he'll leave a few twenties behind in the morning. There's only one bed in the room, and with typical teenage nonchalance he offers to break into another one, but Gus says softly, it's okay Shawn, it's okay, and they sleep together there, backs turned to each other, radiating heat where their ankles / hips / shoulders touch.
For a little while, they hit the road. Marker-trails are drawn up through the road maps until Gus discovers that Shawn is using towns and highways and the memorial bridge they passed five miles back to play connect the dots. “Just go,” Shawn offers instead, as if they have all the time left in the world, instead of none of it. In diners Gus dampens the air with his nervous babble, palms slippery on the laminated menus, and all the while Shawn stays hunched next to him, hollow, like a shell you could put up to your ear and hear the ocean in.
*
Two packets of Twinkies. A half-empty can of Mountain Dew. A packet of Camel cigarettes that Shawn's already broken the seal on. Fake Ray-Ban sunglasses. The cashier rings them up without a glance, but Shawn thinks about what she would have seen if she'd looked. Two naive little boys, he thinks, standing hip to hip in an off-white room - one boy a little shorter, his angles soft and dark, as if he were a shadow cast by the other. Two naive little boys breathing in air, room thick with the ghosts of tired, broken-down people who would never be anything more. But they are so much more, he knows; Shawn can feel the potential inside him like a coiled spring, or a bottle rocket ready to go off. Something uncurling and stretching between them. Now, the sunglasses dangle in the wind as the car hits fifty rattling on the highway, Shawn humming "Born to Be Free". He had bought the exact same type as Henry's, but hung them by the rearview mirror instead of putting them on, because there's something terrifying in looking at the world through the same lenses, as if you and your father are the same person, and then glancing towards your reflection in the side mirror and realizing that in some ways, you are.
*
Gus has to go, after the first week: college is starting, so Shawn drives him to a bus station and pays for his ticket back to Santa Barbara. There's a voice, then, crying inside Gus, telling him no, don't leave Shawn like this, forget all your plans, your friend is more important, but he shuffles awkwardly on the platform and goes through with it anyway. He will never forget the sight of Shawn standing there behind him as the train pulls out, looking like a cardboard cut-out propped against the ticket-booth, flat, frozen in mid-wave.
When Gus next hears from him, Shawn is bright, peppy - Californian, even, voice brassy over the phone. He talks of his jobs since then (five: dog groomer, assistant salamander breeder, usher, funeral home attendant, Paul-Mitchell shopboy) and the people he has screwed (eight or nine, depending). He talks of the cute shampoo girl he's befriended, and how dude, Gus should totally drop everything and come back here and run away with her into the sunset, only you know, they'd have to take him along too, and then maybe dump the girl nicely once the hot sex was over because bros before hos, man, you know that. He never mentions anything bad, of Henry or anyone else. And Gus feels a little better, but resolves to be an even better best friend and put up with any crazy schemes Shawn could come up with, to pay for his selfishness in leaving Shawn behind; to pay for what could have broken this wonderful, beautiful, crazy kid who's starting to become a wonderful, crazy, handsome man.
Shawn is tanner when he sees him next, broader. He looks good. He hasn't held down a job or relationship for more than a few weeks, and Gus wants to shake him, because when he says it there's some sort of pride in his voice.
*
"This is what I am. I didn't choose it."
"Yeah, I had a similar experience with my dad when I told him I wanted to take Gus here to the prom."
- Daredevils, 3.03
*
Shawn gives his first blowjob in 1995. It's Michael P. Hayes, a kid he knows from church: blonde, clean-cut, wrestles and all the girls want to take him home to show to their mothers. Shawn wonders if they'd want to show him off now, as Michael P. Hayes thrusts messily into Shawn's mouth, Shawn gripping the shag carpet in one hand and Hayes' knee with the other. He feels dizzy, head spinning; Hayes isn't enormous, really, but he's not tiny, and Shawn can feel spit gathering at the overstretched corners of his mouth, acid pooling in his stomach when Hayes accidentally shoves too deep and hits the gag reflex. What Shawn's doing isn't pretty, but Hayes sort of is, and Shawn is trying as hard as he can, because Hayes told him he has gorgeous eyes and, on another occasion, laughed at several of his jokes.
Hayes convulses suddenly and comes, the smell hitting Shawn's nostrils at the same time blood-warm spunk hits his face. Momentarily exhausted, Shawn lets his head droop against Hayes' thigh, and Hayes flinches, a little.
(It's only when Hayes says thanks, kid, sort of mumbling and not meeting Shawn's eyes as he tucks himself back in, that Shawn realizes he might have been played. Teeth feeling too big for his mouth, lips raw and shiny with spit; it is here, sitting alone on the floor of a pink- and black-tiled bathroom, that Shawn learns never to give his all into anything, in case his all isn't good enough.)
*
It's 1992. Shawn gets migraines, and prays his soft, pretty features will harshen into a more handsome facade (they will). Sometimes, he borrows his mother's makeup and smears it over his face, looking at this red-lipped, wild-eyed mascara'd thing in the mirror and wondering if what they say in the schoolyard is true and God made a mistake, that he really was meant to be a girl. Perhaps that would explain it: the dreams that slip into his head, sometimes; the moments he catches himself staring at the deep, rich shadows of Gus' skin. Prom of 1996 comes and goes, and though he goes stag while Gus has a sort-of date - Rebecca Robinson, six foot two with the ugly, industrial scaffolding of braces still erected in her mouth - Shawn wonders, for a brief moment, about just asking Gus to be his date. Other times in 1995, he thinks about what Henry used to say about his art teacher in elementary school, how he was a queer and Shawn wasn't to be alone with him, ever, do you hear me?
"If he ever gets you alone, even looks at you funny," Henry had reminded him, straightening the buttons on his little puffed coat, "get out of there fast. I don't care what you have to do -" as if a seven-year-old kid could really do much of anything "-just do it."
The art teacher Shawn knew was quiet, a slender wisp of a man, with a voice like a piece of ripped satin. When he and Gus were younger they used to speculate on whether or not the art teacher was an ax murderer, to get his father so riled up over it, but these days Shawn knows, and no longer laughs over it, averting his eyes when he passes the man in the halls. He'd like to say that the art teacher didn't understand it, that he looked at Shawn with hurt confusion, but the worst part was that he did understand, he understood perfectly, a sad bitter little smirk that turned up at the corner of his lips. Usually Shawn can't bear the smirk, and he'll be the one to turn away, but sometimes he's the one whose face twists into a grimace, soft lines stark with anger.
(After all, it's not like he's the one doing anything wrong, right?)
*
1998, 1999, and Shawn slips into a new millennium without noticing. 2001 is the year of parties and body parts, sweat splashed on foreign skin, leaving drunk and coming home high. In 2002 he quits smoking after the incident at the Kazakhstan border. (The tide of alcohol, too, recedes in the wake of that semi-confidential debacle with Gus and the llama.) Henry had been asking him to quit for years, of course, claiming it stunk up the house. Don't come over here until you kick that habit, he had said, and for a while, every wet, black cancer-cloud had tasted that much sweeter.
In 2006, Shawn starts working for the Santa Barbara Police Department. The cop at the front desk points to the NO SMOKING sign. Apparently, some of his clothes still smell like smoke.
*
(At the beginning, Lassie is solid - rock or sea-stone washed smooth by the waves, just as Shawn Spencer is made of reflections on other people, like light bouncing off a ring of mirrors. Sometimes, Shawn wonders about what would happen were he ever alone. Would he simply cease to exist, all of his particles of light and sparkle start to dissolve into the air? A tree falls in the forest, and all that. Lassie is lucky, Shawn decides; Lassie can stand to be alone. It's Shawn that sleeps beside a new person every night.)
*
"I personally arrested Evan Boesky."
"I... wrestled in high school."
"With what, your conscience?"
- Psy vs. Psy, 2.04
*
At first he doesn't make much of it. 2006 is the year of motorcycle rides and non-sequitors; the wind always seems to be whipping past his face, and now Lindsay's hands pat down her dead lover's chest. It's only later - when Gus is quietly chewing on his fries and Shawn's palms are slippery and cold from the smoothie in his hand - that he wonders. The more Shawn thinks, though, the more it makes sense. (Because, come on. Not even Lindsay wanted to touch him as much as Lassie does - arms around his chest or legs tripping him up, as if pulling Shawn away from something was the only way he knew to pull him closer.)
He’s a little warmer to Lassie, afterwards, even though he sees less of him with every case. And then Chief Vick has them split up, and Shawn's not seeing him much at all.
Okay.
Okay.
(Tentatively, though. He will go tentatively, cautiously, into this night-dark thing.)
*
In the summer of 1994, Shawn almost kills himself. It isn't deliberate; he isn’t drunk, it isn’t after another argument with his father. He doesn’t wrap Gus’ car around a tree, his date sprawled bloody in the front seat. He doesn't storm upstairs and yank the police-issued handgun out of the desk drawer, knock it to his temple and blow his brains out all over the bedsheets. Instead, he overdoses on Alleve.
He carries it around for headaches, he explains to the nurse once they pump his stomach. In the darkness of a movie theatre, arm slung awkwardly around his date, he had mistaken the sugarcoated pills for m&ms.
"What, you're too stupid to tell the difference when you were chewing on them?" Henry fumes. Across the bed Madeline holds Shawn's hand, silent, peach-painted nails digging in deep.
"No," Shawn replies, calm and floating. "I always swallow them whole."
*
Sometimes he wonders what Juliet would be like if he screwed her. Just took the initiative, you know; it's obvious she'd be willing enough, would probably be picking out china patterns in her head and humming the wedding march to the beat of his thrusts and the muffled slap of skin-on-skin. Would she less bubbly, he wonders, once she got fucked?
Sometimes Shawn is pretty sure he's in love with Juliet. She’s blonde and pretty, of course, but sweet, and makes him wish that for once in his minorly fucked-up-and-around life, someone wouldn't break the rules for him. Sometimes he thinks he might have found such a person, but deep down he knows that if Lassie ever fell in love with him, he'd break more rules than anyone else. If Lassie were in love, he would break the sky to give him the moon.
*
(Arm's length is better, never a punch's throw away from a kiss. Because being sort of normal, whenever Shawn's around him - that's sort of worth it.)
*
In 2007 he lies enough that he wouldn't know the truth if it threw him against a wall, and all he feels in his bones is last night's hangover. Sometimes he wonders if he could change the world just by wishing about it, or speaking it out loud - yes, my name is really Byron Bojangles the Third. Most days Shawn feels like a god, the way people treat him, and others he feels like the marionetter pulling all the strings. Occasionally, he wonders if Jesus ever got lonely.
From 1996 to 2007, everyone he meets is a little bit in love with him. His parents, teachers, friends, employers: the world wants him, and usually he's only too happy to give. It’s only sometimes that he wonders if he's given too much already. Like a yo-yo swinging out an around-the-world, 2007 is a year of nostalgia. Every minute seems to be a family snapshot in hiding; it feels like he is spinning backwards in time with every crack his parents try to patch up. Like all children of divorcees, he secretly thinks his parents' estrangement is his fault. Sometimes Shawn is so much of a cliché that it burns.
*
“Talk nonsense,” black-clad Razumikin had said, “but talk your own nonsense, for I will kiss you for it.”
Reading Crime & Punishment in his 1994 English class - Ms. Whitby’s scratchy handwriting marching across the blackboard, falling asleep to the sound of trucks on the highway - Shawn had sort of wished Raskolnikov’s friend was real, and that he was Shawn’s friend too. He had a feeling that they would get along great.
“Talk nonsense,” he imagines saying to Gus, “and I will kiss you for it.”
*
In 1984 his father took him to see fireworks at a beach. He shrieked at first, then laughed, and when one spark came too close to the crowd, he caught it in his fist. It burned and he cried, but he cried even harder when he opened his fist and there was nothing there. Henry ruffled his hair and looked around for his mother. For Shawn's next birthday, they took him to a Chinese restaurant, where his rice came with six candles stuck in it. Shawn blew them out, wishing with every ounce of his six-year-old being to become that shooting-star firework. In a way, he has been trying ever since.
*
On New Years, 2004, Shawn sees a couple dancing at Tonic. The man is tall and rangy, but stretched, as if he didn't have enough to cover his extra height; the woman short and muscled, with small breasts and round, comfortingly solid hips. They dance more energetically than anyone he ever saw - all these complicated dances with 1-2-3 steps and clasped hands, a little grinding snuck in during the quiet moments. They are young and beautiful, and by the way they dance Shawn can tell they are in love.
He could go over there, he thinks, ask to cut in and dance with her. She would purse her lips, wonder what kind of asshole would ask to cut in between people in love, and the man would frown, telling him to get lost, and Shawn would say, Whoah, man, I'd be happy to dance with you too, if that's what you want. They would get angry and half an hour later, he'd be the back of some nondescript van, kissing the girl while the man's big, square hands traced constellations on his hips.
What would it be like, he wonders, to have sex with two people who love each other? Would the man go slow, leaving fingerprint bruises, mapping the latitude & longitude of his body as if it were Shawn he loved? In the hot confusion of passion, would she forget and kiss Shawn as if there was a wedding ring waiting in his mouth? Or would she think he was a distraction, push at his cock as if it were a roadblock; would the man beat him off without forgetting which one's his lover and which one's the Friday night fuck? Would they let him watch, would they let him stay the night? Would they change the sheets in the morning?
The couple has stopped dancing now, long enough to notice that he's staring. Shawn grins at them, and raises his glass in a toast.
*
After the zoo incident in 1985, when they were still too young to understand and too old to think about it, Shawn asked Gus to marry him on the assumption that girls were gross and therefore, weren't nearly as worthy as the best best-friend in the whole wide world to spend your life with. Shawn and Gus forever, he asked, right? Gus accepted, but wouldn't hold his hand for the ceremonies, even though Shawn insisted they would look just like that delicious soft-serve ice cream they served at the place up on the corner, half chocolate and half vanilla and all good, and Gus replied, Shawn, why do ya have such a fas'nation with sweet things?
I like you and you're not sweet, Shawn said, but secretly agreed with the holding-hands thing, because that just seemed kind of weird. Nice, but weird, and would look it. (Shawn hadn't yet learned to bulldoze over anything questionable, and thus make strange just another kind of normal.)
They said their vows under the cherry tree in the front yard; Mrs. Guster's garden gnome was the priest and witness because, Shawn reasoned, he was almost as creepy as real clergy. They had no rings to exchange, so they compromised and shared an ice cream. At the store, Shawn admitted that Jimmy Nickels had taken his pocket change. Gus paid.
*
The last day of school in 1996, Shawn drives out to the old elementary school. After a little argument with the front desk - and honestly, the weed-whacker thing was so not his fault, and wouldn’t you think she’d have forgiven him by now? - he ends up following a trail of handprint-paintings down to art teacher's office. Mr. Anderson, the plate on the door reads. Through the little window set in the door, Shawn can see that Mr. Anderson is there, doing the mad dance of last-minute filing. (Three hats in the room, two of them stuffed into the lost-and-found bin, and Anderson’s turtleneck snagged high at the collar.) Shawn raises his hand to the door and lays his palm there, flat against the glass. He doesn't mean to knock, but he’s obviously more nervous than he thinks, because the touch of his shaking fingers rattles the frame, and Mr. Anderson looks up.
"Can I help you?" he asks.
"Shawn - Shawn Spencer,” he says by way of greeting. Hands stuffed deep into torn pockets, Shawn opens the door and shuffles inside. He won’t meet Anderson’s questioning gaze. "I just - I wanted to say that I'm, uh. I'm not. I mean, I didn't -” Shawn’s tongue feels too thick for his mouth. He's in front of Anderson now, close enough to reach out and touch. He does, and the man shifts, uncomfortable. Anderson has the same hair as Hayes, Shawn notices - straw-like spikes that give him the appearance of wearing a bird’s nest atop his head. For a second, something Gus had said about curtains and drapes flashed through his head.
Nervous giggle. Heavy silence.
“Shawn?” Mr. Anderson asks.
"I'm sorry," he says - quiet, choking - and drops to his knees.
There's a hiss, a gasp, and hands are trying to untangle his from where they've started working at the zip of the art teacher's jeans. “What are you -” and Shawn looks up, finally. Anderson's eyes are a washed-out blue, like a painting left too long in the rain. There's disgust there too, and shards of understanding.
"No, Shawn," the art teacher says, and pulls him up, frantically shaking his head. "No, no, no -"
(From Anderson's office window, he can see the bright red-and-blue of Henry's police cruiser coast to a stop. This time, though, there is no siren.)
*
It's 2008, and Shawn is listening to Coldplay - because really, who didn't rush out and grab Viva La Vida off the shelves as soon as it came out? Gus is sitting next to him: slightly embarrassed, but mostly just peeved, in that way that the Gusmeister does so well. He hadn’t believed that Shawn had bought the album until Shawn actually dragged it out of his bookcase and showed it to him.
“So,” Shawn says, drawing out the sound, “do you believe me now?”
Gus mutters something like “’s not your type”. Shawn smiles, an odd little half-moon grin that doesn’t meet his eyes. Carefully taking off his headphones, he yanks out the jack, plugs a different one back in, and brushes experimentally against the touchpad. A series of clicks come out of the speakers, like Morse code, some urgent message - horrible, wonderful - waiting to be deciphered.
As he explains to Gus while he scrolls through his playlists, "Viva La Vida" may have been the big single and all, but it's "Death and All His Friends" that Shawn comes back to in those simple, quiet hours of the early morning. It doesn't have the best lyrics, or the most moving chords. He certainly can't dance to it. But he and Gus are in this song, Shawn says, and every chord is two children jumping over a fence, or sleeping out under the smog-covered stars.
Finally, he finds the song, and presses hard on “play”. In the gloom of the evening-lit room, the screen flashes white.
Gus’ eyelids droop, eyelashes sweeping shadows over his cheeks, and then the drums drown everything else.
fin.
And re: my own personal issues - I swear, people, I wrote the angst after I wrote the fic. I just edited the angst first.
Okay, housekeeping. La-de-dah... Dates, of course, are all assuming Shawn was born in 1979; quotations are from On the Road, Crime & Punishment, "Daredevils", "Psy vs. Psy", and "Murder? ...Anyone? ...Anyone? Bueller?"
...Right. Fie ye away, fluff! Vice, vice, angst, baby, and bring on the gay!
great expectations
shawn / gus, shawn / lassiter, shawn / juliet
psych; r-whateva. general spoilers.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' "
- Jack Kerouac
The wonderful thing about lying for long periods of time, Shawn discovers, is that after a while the lie starts to become the truth. For that single moment, the world stumbles and slows as it readjusts to your reality, and then, amazingly, it moves on. Everyone forgets that you’re not who you say you are. Eventually, you do too.
The awful thing about it, Shawn discovers a little later, is more or less the exact same thing.
*
“No, I love you more,” Shawn says, crooning into the phone he’s tucked against his ear. “More than pineapple, and smoothies, and pineapple smoothies, even the ones with those little umbrellas stuck in the -”
“Spencer,” Lassiter barks.
Shawn covers the mouthpiece with one hand. “Lassieface.”
Lassiter frowns, the corners of his mouth crinkling in frustration. “In case you haven’t noticed, Spencer, we have a dead body on our hands. Please, spare us the cooing over your girlfriend and hurry up and do your… whatever, so we can get out of here and do ours.”
Shawn snorts, and then whispers something into the phone, shoving it into his pocket so he can cross his arms. “Jealous, much?”
Lassiter rubs his eyes tiredly. The last two bodies were recent, one after the other, Shawn knows. Blondes in their early twenties. Lassie’s been working around the clock, trying to solve it before a fourth chick ends up dead. He’s on his seventh cup of coffee since lunch, and the combination of caffeine and the disgusting amount of sugar he adds has made him about as twitchy as a fork in an electrical socket. In a few hours, they’ll probably have to start mainlining amphetamines just to keep him from crashing.
“Spencer,“ he starts, and Shawn tosses something at him. It’s a doll’s head, lips painted a garish red, jagged from the chin down.
“Found that behind a target,” Shawn says conversationally. “At the shooting range. You should really keep better care of your dolls, Lassie. Blowing them up isn’t kosher at all.”
“Do you have a point?” Lassiter asks, “or are you wasting my time for kicks?”
Shawn shrugs. It’s almost evening, and he can feel the wind picking up, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. “Date more, shoot less? You’re not that bad.” He frowns. “Well, actually, you are. But that’s not the point. Look,” he says, taking out his cellphone, “even with all my charm, brains, and good looks, I have problems too.” Lassiter snorts. Shawn ignores him. “Most of my dates are so amazingly boring. Even if the sex is great, and isn't that weird? But anyways, I found someone-” he shakes the cellphone to prove it “-and the spirits are telling me you can too.”
“Which street-corner would you recommend, then?” Lassiter asks, dryly.
“See, this is what I mean,” Shawn says. “You just keep looking in all the wrong places.”
Shawn watches Lassiter walk away, hands in pockets, his shoulders dark shadows spreading against the setting sun. Occasionally his right one will rustle, as if he is fiddling with the porcelain doll’s head tucked away there. Round and round his fingers go, tracing the shattered contours - thumb rubbing an eyesocket, the curve of a painted cheek. Shawn shakes his head, once, and listens a little while longer to the loop of sound emitting from the phone’s tinny speakers.
You have reached the desk of Adam Hornstock. To leave a message, press one. To leave a callback number, press -
“Huh,” Shawn says, after a while, and snaps the phone shut.
*
(Though he will never admit it, Shawn loved James Taylor - loved the white suits and folk lyrics, jerked off once or twice to the slow, bluesy rhythms. Listening to Gorilla, he dreams of dust and dark Spanish eyes.)
In 1998, he hitchhikes across the border on a truck piled high with melons, sticky-sweetness worked into the cracks in the leather of the front seat, the back window fogged with sweat and juice. The water makes him sick; his hotel room has no air conditioning. Shawn sets "Mexico" to repeat on the CD player he will get mugged for three days later, and works very hard - drinks even harder - to make the place measure up.
*
"Oh wait, I get it. You guys are dating. You're together. Everything makes sense."
"We are not dating."
"Dude, are you kidding me? He was voted most likely to succeed. You think he's going to date me?"
- Murder? ...Anyone? ...Anyone? Bueller?, 3.02
*
In 1996, Gus and Shawn spend their first summer apart. Gus goes to doctor camp; a retreat sponsored by the Young Men's Christian Society; SAT classes in the UCSB basement. His parents keep him busy, and apart from the initial inquiries, he doesn't question it. At his camps and retreats and classes he meets serious, goal-driven people who work hard and act much like him. People who understand his jokes, for the most part, and are happy to let him sleep for more than five hours without being interrupted. He certainly doesn't think of how easy it would be to disappear into this earnest, clean-cut puppet show, because as a well-off, well-spoken black kid growing up in the suburbs of Southern California, part of him has always wanted to.
When he gets back home, his parents look at him with narrowed eyes. There are several voicemails waiting for him. It takes Gus a while to realize that they are from Shawn, because the voice on the tape is shaking so badly.
*
Gus drives his mother’s ’84 Nissan to the Spencer’s’ house. Shawn looks at him with eyes he knows are desperate and hollow, like marbles with the centers hacked out, and Gus doesn't say a word as they throw sleeping bags, spare shirts, cans of food in the backseat. (Inevitably, they forget the can-opener.) Shawn thinks he might say something only once, when he walks in on Shawn slamming his father's bureau doors shut, a wad of stolen cash in his fist, but Gus just looks at him for a moment and then turns away. It's then that Shawn realizes how good of a friend Gus is to him, how utterly perfect and how blessed he is, and how he is taking this loyal, honest boy and destroying him piece by piece.
That night, they take a hotel room off the highway, so close that passing cars spit gravel up on the lawn. The guy at the register won't take their money; they aren't eighteen, and certainly don't look it, but Shawn jimmies a lock on one of the motel doors and tells Gus he'll leave a few twenties behind in the morning. There's only one bed in the room, and with typical teenage nonchalance he offers to break into another one, but Gus says softly, it's okay Shawn, it's okay, and they sleep together there, backs turned to each other, radiating heat where their ankles / hips / shoulders touch.
For a little while, they hit the road. Marker-trails are drawn up through the road maps until Gus discovers that Shawn is using towns and highways and the memorial bridge they passed five miles back to play connect the dots. “Just go,” Shawn offers instead, as if they have all the time left in the world, instead of none of it. In diners Gus dampens the air with his nervous babble, palms slippery on the laminated menus, and all the while Shawn stays hunched next to him, hollow, like a shell you could put up to your ear and hear the ocean in.
*
Two packets of Twinkies. A half-empty can of Mountain Dew. A packet of Camel cigarettes that Shawn's already broken the seal on. Fake Ray-Ban sunglasses. The cashier rings them up without a glance, but Shawn thinks about what she would have seen if she'd looked. Two naive little boys, he thinks, standing hip to hip in an off-white room - one boy a little shorter, his angles soft and dark, as if he were a shadow cast by the other. Two naive little boys breathing in air, room thick with the ghosts of tired, broken-down people who would never be anything more. But they are so much more, he knows; Shawn can feel the potential inside him like a coiled spring, or a bottle rocket ready to go off. Something uncurling and stretching between them. Now, the sunglasses dangle in the wind as the car hits fifty rattling on the highway, Shawn humming "Born to Be Free". He had bought the exact same type as Henry's, but hung them by the rearview mirror instead of putting them on, because there's something terrifying in looking at the world through the same lenses, as if you and your father are the same person, and then glancing towards your reflection in the side mirror and realizing that in some ways, you are.
*
Gus has to go, after the first week: college is starting, so Shawn drives him to a bus station and pays for his ticket back to Santa Barbara. There's a voice, then, crying inside Gus, telling him no, don't leave Shawn like this, forget all your plans, your friend is more important, but he shuffles awkwardly on the platform and goes through with it anyway. He will never forget the sight of Shawn standing there behind him as the train pulls out, looking like a cardboard cut-out propped against the ticket-booth, flat, frozen in mid-wave.
When Gus next hears from him, Shawn is bright, peppy - Californian, even, voice brassy over the phone. He talks of his jobs since then (five: dog groomer, assistant salamander breeder, usher, funeral home attendant, Paul-Mitchell shopboy) and the people he has screwed (eight or nine, depending). He talks of the cute shampoo girl he's befriended, and how dude, Gus should totally drop everything and come back here and run away with her into the sunset, only you know, they'd have to take him along too, and then maybe dump the girl nicely once the hot sex was over because bros before hos, man, you know that. He never mentions anything bad, of Henry or anyone else. And Gus feels a little better, but resolves to be an even better best friend and put up with any crazy schemes Shawn could come up with, to pay for his selfishness in leaving Shawn behind; to pay for what could have broken this wonderful, beautiful, crazy kid who's starting to become a wonderful, crazy, handsome man.
Shawn is tanner when he sees him next, broader. He looks good. He hasn't held down a job or relationship for more than a few weeks, and Gus wants to shake him, because when he says it there's some sort of pride in his voice.
*
"This is what I am. I didn't choose it."
"Yeah, I had a similar experience with my dad when I told him I wanted to take Gus here to the prom."
- Daredevils, 3.03
*
Shawn gives his first blowjob in 1995. It's Michael P. Hayes, a kid he knows from church: blonde, clean-cut, wrestles and all the girls want to take him home to show to their mothers. Shawn wonders if they'd want to show him off now, as Michael P. Hayes thrusts messily into Shawn's mouth, Shawn gripping the shag carpet in one hand and Hayes' knee with the other. He feels dizzy, head spinning; Hayes isn't enormous, really, but he's not tiny, and Shawn can feel spit gathering at the overstretched corners of his mouth, acid pooling in his stomach when Hayes accidentally shoves too deep and hits the gag reflex. What Shawn's doing isn't pretty, but Hayes sort of is, and Shawn is trying as hard as he can, because Hayes told him he has gorgeous eyes and, on another occasion, laughed at several of his jokes.
Hayes convulses suddenly and comes, the smell hitting Shawn's nostrils at the same time blood-warm spunk hits his face. Momentarily exhausted, Shawn lets his head droop against Hayes' thigh, and Hayes flinches, a little.
(It's only when Hayes says thanks, kid, sort of mumbling and not meeting Shawn's eyes as he tucks himself back in, that Shawn realizes he might have been played. Teeth feeling too big for his mouth, lips raw and shiny with spit; it is here, sitting alone on the floor of a pink- and black-tiled bathroom, that Shawn learns never to give his all into anything, in case his all isn't good enough.)
*
It's 1992. Shawn gets migraines, and prays his soft, pretty features will harshen into a more handsome facade (they will). Sometimes, he borrows his mother's makeup and smears it over his face, looking at this red-lipped, wild-eyed mascara'd thing in the mirror and wondering if what they say in the schoolyard is true and God made a mistake, that he really was meant to be a girl. Perhaps that would explain it: the dreams that slip into his head, sometimes; the moments he catches himself staring at the deep, rich shadows of Gus' skin. Prom of 1996 comes and goes, and though he goes stag while Gus has a sort-of date - Rebecca Robinson, six foot two with the ugly, industrial scaffolding of braces still erected in her mouth - Shawn wonders, for a brief moment, about just asking Gus to be his date. Other times in 1995, he thinks about what Henry used to say about his art teacher in elementary school, how he was a queer and Shawn wasn't to be alone with him, ever, do you hear me?
"If he ever gets you alone, even looks at you funny," Henry had reminded him, straightening the buttons on his little puffed coat, "get out of there fast. I don't care what you have to do -" as if a seven-year-old kid could really do much of anything "-just do it."
The art teacher Shawn knew was quiet, a slender wisp of a man, with a voice like a piece of ripped satin. When he and Gus were younger they used to speculate on whether or not the art teacher was an ax murderer, to get his father so riled up over it, but these days Shawn knows, and no longer laughs over it, averting his eyes when he passes the man in the halls. He'd like to say that the art teacher didn't understand it, that he looked at Shawn with hurt confusion, but the worst part was that he did understand, he understood perfectly, a sad bitter little smirk that turned up at the corner of his lips. Usually Shawn can't bear the smirk, and he'll be the one to turn away, but sometimes he's the one whose face twists into a grimace, soft lines stark with anger.
(After all, it's not like he's the one doing anything wrong, right?)
*
1998, 1999, and Shawn slips into a new millennium without noticing. 2001 is the year of parties and body parts, sweat splashed on foreign skin, leaving drunk and coming home high. In 2002 he quits smoking after the incident at the Kazakhstan border. (The tide of alcohol, too, recedes in the wake of that semi-confidential debacle with Gus and the llama.) Henry had been asking him to quit for years, of course, claiming it stunk up the house. Don't come over here until you kick that habit, he had said, and for a while, every wet, black cancer-cloud had tasted that much sweeter.
In 2006, Shawn starts working for the Santa Barbara Police Department. The cop at the front desk points to the NO SMOKING sign. Apparently, some of his clothes still smell like smoke.
*
(At the beginning, Lassie is solid - rock or sea-stone washed smooth by the waves, just as Shawn Spencer is made of reflections on other people, like light bouncing off a ring of mirrors. Sometimes, Shawn wonders about what would happen were he ever alone. Would he simply cease to exist, all of his particles of light and sparkle start to dissolve into the air? A tree falls in the forest, and all that. Lassie is lucky, Shawn decides; Lassie can stand to be alone. It's Shawn that sleeps beside a new person every night.)
*
"I personally arrested Evan Boesky."
"I... wrestled in high school."
"With what, your conscience?"
- Psy vs. Psy, 2.04
*
At first he doesn't make much of it. 2006 is the year of motorcycle rides and non-sequitors; the wind always seems to be whipping past his face, and now Lindsay's hands pat down her dead lover's chest. It's only later - when Gus is quietly chewing on his fries and Shawn's palms are slippery and cold from the smoothie in his hand - that he wonders. The more Shawn thinks, though, the more it makes sense. (Because, come on. Not even Lindsay wanted to touch him as much as Lassie does - arms around his chest or legs tripping him up, as if pulling Shawn away from something was the only way he knew to pull him closer.)
He’s a little warmer to Lassie, afterwards, even though he sees less of him with every case. And then Chief Vick has them split up, and Shawn's not seeing him much at all.
Okay.
Okay.
(Tentatively, though. He will go tentatively, cautiously, into this night-dark thing.)
*
In the summer of 1994, Shawn almost kills himself. It isn't deliberate; he isn’t drunk, it isn’t after another argument with his father. He doesn’t wrap Gus’ car around a tree, his date sprawled bloody in the front seat. He doesn't storm upstairs and yank the police-issued handgun out of the desk drawer, knock it to his temple and blow his brains out all over the bedsheets. Instead, he overdoses on Alleve.
He carries it around for headaches, he explains to the nurse once they pump his stomach. In the darkness of a movie theatre, arm slung awkwardly around his date, he had mistaken the sugarcoated pills for m&ms.
"What, you're too stupid to tell the difference when you were chewing on them?" Henry fumes. Across the bed Madeline holds Shawn's hand, silent, peach-painted nails digging in deep.
"No," Shawn replies, calm and floating. "I always swallow them whole."
*
Sometimes he wonders what Juliet would be like if he screwed her. Just took the initiative, you know; it's obvious she'd be willing enough, would probably be picking out china patterns in her head and humming the wedding march to the beat of his thrusts and the muffled slap of skin-on-skin. Would she less bubbly, he wonders, once she got fucked?
Sometimes Shawn is pretty sure he's in love with Juliet. She’s blonde and pretty, of course, but sweet, and makes him wish that for once in his minorly fucked-up-and-around life, someone wouldn't break the rules for him. Sometimes he thinks he might have found such a person, but deep down he knows that if Lassie ever fell in love with him, he'd break more rules than anyone else. If Lassie were in love, he would break the sky to give him the moon.
*
(Arm's length is better, never a punch's throw away from a kiss. Because being sort of normal, whenever Shawn's around him - that's sort of worth it.)
*
In 2007 he lies enough that he wouldn't know the truth if it threw him against a wall, and all he feels in his bones is last night's hangover. Sometimes he wonders if he could change the world just by wishing about it, or speaking it out loud - yes, my name is really Byron Bojangles the Third. Most days Shawn feels like a god, the way people treat him, and others he feels like the marionetter pulling all the strings. Occasionally, he wonders if Jesus ever got lonely.
From 1996 to 2007, everyone he meets is a little bit in love with him. His parents, teachers, friends, employers: the world wants him, and usually he's only too happy to give. It’s only sometimes that he wonders if he's given too much already. Like a yo-yo swinging out an around-the-world, 2007 is a year of nostalgia. Every minute seems to be a family snapshot in hiding; it feels like he is spinning backwards in time with every crack his parents try to patch up. Like all children of divorcees, he secretly thinks his parents' estrangement is his fault. Sometimes Shawn is so much of a cliché that it burns.
*
“Talk nonsense,” black-clad Razumikin had said, “but talk your own nonsense, for I will kiss you for it.”
Reading Crime & Punishment in his 1994 English class - Ms. Whitby’s scratchy handwriting marching across the blackboard, falling asleep to the sound of trucks on the highway - Shawn had sort of wished Raskolnikov’s friend was real, and that he was Shawn’s friend too. He had a feeling that they would get along great.
“Talk nonsense,” he imagines saying to Gus, “and I will kiss you for it.”
*
In 1984 his father took him to see fireworks at a beach. He shrieked at first, then laughed, and when one spark came too close to the crowd, he caught it in his fist. It burned and he cried, but he cried even harder when he opened his fist and there was nothing there. Henry ruffled his hair and looked around for his mother. For Shawn's next birthday, they took him to a Chinese restaurant, where his rice came with six candles stuck in it. Shawn blew them out, wishing with every ounce of his six-year-old being to become that shooting-star firework. In a way, he has been trying ever since.
*
On New Years, 2004, Shawn sees a couple dancing at Tonic. The man is tall and rangy, but stretched, as if he didn't have enough to cover his extra height; the woman short and muscled, with small breasts and round, comfortingly solid hips. They dance more energetically than anyone he ever saw - all these complicated dances with 1-2-3 steps and clasped hands, a little grinding snuck in during the quiet moments. They are young and beautiful, and by the way they dance Shawn can tell they are in love.
He could go over there, he thinks, ask to cut in and dance with her. She would purse her lips, wonder what kind of asshole would ask to cut in between people in love, and the man would frown, telling him to get lost, and Shawn would say, Whoah, man, I'd be happy to dance with you too, if that's what you want. They would get angry and half an hour later, he'd be the back of some nondescript van, kissing the girl while the man's big, square hands traced constellations on his hips.
What would it be like, he wonders, to have sex with two people who love each other? Would the man go slow, leaving fingerprint bruises, mapping the latitude & longitude of his body as if it were Shawn he loved? In the hot confusion of passion, would she forget and kiss Shawn as if there was a wedding ring waiting in his mouth? Or would she think he was a distraction, push at his cock as if it were a roadblock; would the man beat him off without forgetting which one's his lover and which one's the Friday night fuck? Would they let him watch, would they let him stay the night? Would they change the sheets in the morning?
The couple has stopped dancing now, long enough to notice that he's staring. Shawn grins at them, and raises his glass in a toast.
*
After the zoo incident in 1985, when they were still too young to understand and too old to think about it, Shawn asked Gus to marry him on the assumption that girls were gross and therefore, weren't nearly as worthy as the best best-friend in the whole wide world to spend your life with. Shawn and Gus forever, he asked, right? Gus accepted, but wouldn't hold his hand for the ceremonies, even though Shawn insisted they would look just like that delicious soft-serve ice cream they served at the place up on the corner, half chocolate and half vanilla and all good, and Gus replied, Shawn, why do ya have such a fas'nation with sweet things?
I like you and you're not sweet, Shawn said, but secretly agreed with the holding-hands thing, because that just seemed kind of weird. Nice, but weird, and would look it. (Shawn hadn't yet learned to bulldoze over anything questionable, and thus make strange just another kind of normal.)
They said their vows under the cherry tree in the front yard; Mrs. Guster's garden gnome was the priest and witness because, Shawn reasoned, he was almost as creepy as real clergy. They had no rings to exchange, so they compromised and shared an ice cream. At the store, Shawn admitted that Jimmy Nickels had taken his pocket change. Gus paid.
*
The last day of school in 1996, Shawn drives out to the old elementary school. After a little argument with the front desk - and honestly, the weed-whacker thing was so not his fault, and wouldn’t you think she’d have forgiven him by now? - he ends up following a trail of handprint-paintings down to art teacher's office. Mr. Anderson, the plate on the door reads. Through the little window set in the door, Shawn can see that Mr. Anderson is there, doing the mad dance of last-minute filing. (Three hats in the room, two of them stuffed into the lost-and-found bin, and Anderson’s turtleneck snagged high at the collar.) Shawn raises his hand to the door and lays his palm there, flat against the glass. He doesn't mean to knock, but he’s obviously more nervous than he thinks, because the touch of his shaking fingers rattles the frame, and Mr. Anderson looks up.
"Can I help you?" he asks.
"Shawn - Shawn Spencer,” he says by way of greeting. Hands stuffed deep into torn pockets, Shawn opens the door and shuffles inside. He won’t meet Anderson’s questioning gaze. "I just - I wanted to say that I'm, uh. I'm not. I mean, I didn't -” Shawn’s tongue feels too thick for his mouth. He's in front of Anderson now, close enough to reach out and touch. He does, and the man shifts, uncomfortable. Anderson has the same hair as Hayes, Shawn notices - straw-like spikes that give him the appearance of wearing a bird’s nest atop his head. For a second, something Gus had said about curtains and drapes flashed through his head.
Nervous giggle. Heavy silence.
“Shawn?” Mr. Anderson asks.
"I'm sorry," he says - quiet, choking - and drops to his knees.
There's a hiss, a gasp, and hands are trying to untangle his from where they've started working at the zip of the art teacher's jeans. “What are you -” and Shawn looks up, finally. Anderson's eyes are a washed-out blue, like a painting left too long in the rain. There's disgust there too, and shards of understanding.
"No, Shawn," the art teacher says, and pulls him up, frantically shaking his head. "No, no, no -"
(From Anderson's office window, he can see the bright red-and-blue of Henry's police cruiser coast to a stop. This time, though, there is no siren.)
*
It's 2008, and Shawn is listening to Coldplay - because really, who didn't rush out and grab Viva La Vida off the shelves as soon as it came out? Gus is sitting next to him: slightly embarrassed, but mostly just peeved, in that way that the Gusmeister does so well. He hadn’t believed that Shawn had bought the album until Shawn actually dragged it out of his bookcase and showed it to him.
“So,” Shawn says, drawing out the sound, “do you believe me now?”
Gus mutters something like “’s not your type”. Shawn smiles, an odd little half-moon grin that doesn’t meet his eyes. Carefully taking off his headphones, he yanks out the jack, plugs a different one back in, and brushes experimentally against the touchpad. A series of clicks come out of the speakers, like Morse code, some urgent message - horrible, wonderful - waiting to be deciphered.
As he explains to Gus while he scrolls through his playlists, "Viva La Vida" may have been the big single and all, but it's "Death and All His Friends" that Shawn comes back to in those simple, quiet hours of the early morning. It doesn't have the best lyrics, or the most moving chords. He certainly can't dance to it. But he and Gus are in this song, Shawn says, and every chord is two children jumping over a fence, or sleeping out under the smog-covered stars.
Finally, he finds the song, and presses hard on “play”. In the gloom of the evening-lit room, the screen flashes white.
Gus’ eyelids droop, eyelashes sweeping shadows over his cheeks, and then the drums drown everything else.
fin.