A Lassie-Pineapple Day Caper for midnight_malaga
Author: Regency
Title: A Lassie Pineapple Day Caper
Fandom: Psych (x minor Criminal Minds)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter (UST?)
Warnings: a wee bit of language
Pseudo-warnings: fluff, attempted lolz, and drama (er, surprise!)
Word count: ~3,764/1000
Summary: Shawn had decided to show his unspoken love for his favorite detective by declaring Friday Lassie Day. Unfortunately, Friday was busier than he’d expected and crime fighting had to take precedence. Surely, Lassie would understand.
Author’s Notes: Please, forgive me for my unforgivable lateness. Written for the Psummer of Psych (psummertime) for midnight_malaga. I’m nervous about this because I’ve only written two short ficlets for Psych in the past, but I really wanted to get this right for you. I hope I accomplished even half of what you wanted.
Prompt:
Type of gift you want: Fic or vid, please!
Things you want to see: Shassie awesomeness, crossovers, Gus being sick of Shawn's X annoying trait, fluff, humour, Juliet and Shawn being gal pals, epic bromance with Gus and Shawn, denial of lurve
Veto: Shawn/Gus
Type of gift(s) you will make: Fic
Disclaimer: I don’t any of the characters recognizable as being from either the USA series Psych or the CBS series Criminal Minds. All characters are the properties of the writers, producers, and studios responsible for their existence. No money exchanged hands during the conception, creation, or distribution of this story. No copyright infringement was intended. This was good, clean fun.
~!~
“A pineapple a day keeps sad Lassie at bay. Come on, Lassie, smile.”
Lassitter’s lips didn’t so much as twitch.
“Come on. Like this,” Shawn demonstrated. “Isn’t this nice? See my pearly whites, so pearly…and white.” He turned to his best friend, who didn’t seem any more impressed. “Gus, show him your canines. Those will definitely have him in stitches.”
“Back off, Shawn.”
Shawn pouted. Gus is entirely too sensitive about his clearly carnivorous teeth. “Don’t pretend you’re not proud of them. You used to sell smiles for a dollar back in junior high. Now, stop being stingy with those orthodontic nest eggs and share the joy!”
Gus snorted and looked away. Shawn whimpered pathetically. He knew it was pathetic because he was totally copying that puppy from the 1-800-Adopt-Me-I’m-Cute commercial. It had moved him so much that he’d called them right up and had them send that pup straight to his dad’s house. He thought that was for the best. Shawn was definitely not bringing anything cuter than himself home with…himself. It just wouldn’t work. And anything that adorable was a public menace waiting to happen. He should know. Can’t have the competition, Scrappy, but please do enjoy the complimentary 5 a.m. wake-up calls, courtesy of me.
Shawn snapped out of his amused introspection in time to see his favorite detective leaning interestedly toward a beaming Gus. Something had happened while he was in LalaLand and he had no idea what. Whatever it was, he hated it already.
“Guster, those are some impressive teeth you’ve got there.” The detective spent far too long staring into Gus’s mouth in this psychic’s opinion. The only mouth Lassie should have been focused on was Shawn’s and he should know; he was psychic. Okay, no, but he should know because his mouth was way more interesting than Gus’s stupid mouth with his stupid, pointy teeth and, and…
“My teeth are way pointier than Gus’s,” he declared, peeling his lips back to show off his gleaming grimace. Lassie didn’t even deign to raise an eyebrow, much less redirect his gaze from Gus’s victoriously grinning chompers. Lassie’s indifference made Shawn a sad panda.
Well, that just wouldn’t do.
~!~
“Gus, you have to stop showing me up in front of Lassie,” Shawn told his very, very best friend in the entire world the moment Carlton Lassiter had walked out of the Psych office door.
“What?” his very, very best friend asked, while asserting his essential Gus-ness and shooting Shawn some serious side eye action.
Shawn put his hands on his hips, looked at Gus squarely and said, “You have to let Lassie think I’m better than you.”
“And I repeat, ‘What?’ Or, better yet, why?”
Shawn threw up his hands. “Come on, man, you know why.”
Gus’s eyebrow seemed to go up of its own volition and tap dance, which made sense. “Because there’s a thin line between love and hate, and you’re on opposite sides of it?”
“Ha!” Shawn guffawed ironically in reply. “I see what you did there. That’s funny.” He scowled, “Not.”
Gus rolled his eyes to the ceiling while Shawn pouted. Shawn pouted and sulked for quite some time in the hopes that Gus would take back what he’d said. Once five minutes had passed without a word between them, it was Shawn’s turn to sigh.
“Okay, look. I know you don’t get us-”
Gus chimed in, “I didn’t realize there was an ‘us’ to get yet.”
Shawn bounced on his feet. “See! ‘Yet,’ there’s no me and Lassie yet, but there will be.”
“And how do you propose to make that happen, Shawn? The last time I checked, Lassiter seemed more interested in staring at my-”
“-freakishly pointy-” He leapt gazelle-like out of arm’s reach before Gus’s uranium glare could become a nuclear half-Nelson headlock-slash-wedgie.
“…teeth than in getting close to you.” Half-Nelsons, wedgies, and other sundry torment threatened in every word as Gus crossed his arms and leaned back against his desk. “How do you plan to get his attention?”
“That’s easy. I’ll do what any civilized government does when it wants to show love.” He dropped into his lean-back office chair and contently folded his hands behind his head. “I’ll declare a holiday.”
It was only Shawn’s lightning fast reflexes and honed spidey sense that saved him from getting an empty Mylanta bottle to the neck. He got it to the forehead instead and thanked his lucky stars that his psychic powers allowed him to avoid incidents like this…Wait.
~!~
Crime fighting put a hold on Lassie Day. It was Lassie Day, by the way, he’d already decided. It was simple, understated, very Lassie. He’d been pleased with his decision on the name. Gus had helped him decide how it should be observed. They’d determined that a delectable feast of baked ham with pineapple and pineapple upside-down cake was in order given the fortuitous date. April 16th was the national day of celebration for the former and April 20th was the holiday for latter. Thus, naturally, it fell that Lassie Day should be dead center. Lassie’s mostly tart on the inside, but a little sweet. Very prickly on the outside. Shawn liked the contrast.
Ham and cake, and possibly some pudding, he amended while watching the FBI’s wunderkind profiler, Dr. Spencer Reid, at work. He was plotting dinner and jealous schemes all at the same time. There’s so only room for once ‘Spencer!’ in this police department and I’m it-him, he. I am he? ...I wonder if Lassie likes pineapple daiquiris?
What could he say, he was a talented boy.
Shawn stared long and hard at the willowy kid in the sweater vest from across the room. Hypervigilance recognized hypervigilance and he recognized instinctively that there wasn’t a quirk of behavior that escaped Reid’s attention, except for maybe his own. He was shaping up to be quite a problem for Santa Barbara PD’s resident psychic since his shtick was all quirks. Can’t let the cat out of the bag now. He might be angry that I forgot to leave air holes.
Shawn’s thoughts had been firmly ensconced in the realm of making Lassie Day a glorious reality when the Santa Barbara Snatcher had struck for the sixth time and the chief’d had no choice but to call in the FBI’s finest to assist on the case. Abductions weren’t usually Lassie’s area of expertise, but with the BAU’s tentative expectation that the victims had likely already been killed, Vick had tapped him to head up the taskforce. That meant that Lassie was in no mood for celebrations and neither was Jules, whose help he’d definitely been counting on to make Lassie Day all that it could be.
She’s a party planner with a gun, which he had to admit made an odd sort of sense given the parties he’d gone to in his day. He was convinced that she’d have covered her gun in sequins if she could have gotten away with it, just for a little added flare. Once, making use of her meticulous organizing and stealth abilities, she’d helped him cover a couple of Lassie’s many personal weapons with pink and gold glitter as a practical joke. That was the first time he’d gotten even an inkling that his stalwart detective-with his strong Irish hairline-might have liked him more than just a tiny bit. Between his furious bellowing and his furious gesturing (there might have been some lamps gently volleyed at Shawn’s head, but he couldn’t quite recall), he’d managed to utter these immortal words: “Damn it, Spencer, of all of the things I’d let you touch, you choose my guns?”
The words had left just enough wiggle room for Carlton to wiggle right out of the subtextual web he’d woven for himself. Well, if he’d been having the conversation with someone else, they would have. As it was, Shawn had grinned, Lassie had blanched and thrown him and a contrite Juliet right out of his house. Gus had driven the get-away car and they’d drowned the failure of their prank in fruit slushie goodness long into the night.
Shawn felt the need for another slush night coming on like enlightenment. He couldn’t help. Where there was a Lassie, there was a Juliet, and, generally, there was he and Gus-save for days like today when he was here and Gus couldn’t be. He should have seen that as a bad omen from the start.
They were here, there was evidence, and Shawn couldn’t help. What others believed to be ESP was merely a deluxe set of inborn and trained observation skills; they were fantastic for normal cases, but this wasn’t normal. The perpetrator, or unsub as the Spencer of long hair and useful interjections had oh so helpfully remarked, was of above-average intelligence and it showed in his crime scenes. There wasn’t a speck of dust out place; in fact, there wasn’t even a speck of dust. There was nothing, to see or to see. He wouldn’t have minded failing so much if Lassie hadn’t looked so disappointed-and on his day, too, even if Shawn hadn’t told him about the holiday proclamation he’d made over Facebook yet.
Consequently, when Reid and his brethren began to brainstorm aloud about the psychological profile of their abductor-slash-possible-killer and Shawn had nothing to contribute, he thought about pineapples instead and all the tasty things he could make with it to make Lassie smile again. Not that Lassie really smiled-ever, actually, or that it was particularly pleasant when he did put his atrophied facial muscles to the task. It was just the thought of a thoroughly pleased Carlton Lassiter that allowed Shawn to ignore the upset expectations of those in the squad room with him and relax. And when Shawn Spencer was relaxed, oh the things he could do.
‘Gone fishing,’ he read passively off of one of the blown-up crime scene photos pinned to the cork evidence board as his gaze wandered. He narrowed his eyes in confusion, because personal stylist Nicolette De Havilland didn’t come across as a woman who spent her vacation time fly-fishing on anybody’s lake. The happy motto hung on a keychain among Nicolette’s house keys, dangling serenely from a hall table.
‘Wish you were here,’ he gathered out of another photo from another scene. The crime scene photographer’s lens had barely registered the postcard of some generic winter paradise affixed to Jeffrey Dreysdale’s fridge. Jeffrey didn’t go anywhere, he was too afraid to get hurt. Sorry, Jeff, Shawn thought because it looked like he’d been right to fear. The man didn’t go anywhere and neither did his friends; no one would have sent him a postcard if they knew him. They don’t know him or they don’t care.
He inspected the little keepsakes one after another, mere afterthoughts in the pictures of lives abruptly abandoned. Keychains, snow globes, postcards, and novelty tees. They were the common feature between people who’d shared little else save for having disappeared without a trace.
‘No paradise without you,’ said the last in white bubble letters emblazoned on the base of a snow globe. Its backdrop was a beach with no sun and a tidal wave rising in the distance. It wasn’t beautiful because it wasn’t intended to be; the tiny solitary figure splayed resignedly on the sand said all it needed to. If Shawn hadn’t been convinced before, now he knew that those people were never coming back.
“That’s all, folks,” he murmured to himself as he eyed all the pictures in succession. He couldn’t tell if the spectrum was the elaboration of an improv kidnapper or the perfect plan of a mastermind come to life. He couldn’t tell.
“You see something,” presumed a voice that was becoming familiar for all the wrong reasons.
Shawn breathed in and breathed out, channeling his annoyance into a low-grade pseudo-psychic episode. He certainly wasn’t about to waste the good stuff on someone who would see right through it. He paused, thought it over; he might have always been wasting the good stuff, he didn’t work with idiots.
“I see something, yes.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb and let the spirit of shtick overcome him. “I see trinkets…tourists…travel! I see travel. I see cheap, tourist trap souvenirs from the world over. I see them everywhere.” He winced. “I think my taste is being affected.”
“Spencer, your idea of taste consists of Technicolor polos whose flamboyance would make Joseph cringe, jeans older than my driver’s license, and cheap windup toys for interior decoration. I think, in this case, we can safely say, ‘Good riddance.’”
Shawn broke from his trance to pout soulfully in Lassie’s direction. “Lassie, I’m hurt. I thought you liked my Technicolor polos.” He smirked sexily a la Antonio Banderas in Zorrrro. “Don’t you like the way they show off my guns?” He flexed one polo sleeve-clad bicep. Lassiter visibly appealed to something above and turned away without another word. “Lassie, don’t try to deny our love. It’s in the air!”
“Something is definitely in the air,” quipped the also very heartthrob-esque Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan to his colleagues, whose default setting seemed to be brooding broodily.
“You said you had something,” prompted the broodiest of them all, SSA Aaron Hotchner, the BAU boss. Shawn sensed some hidden anger issues with this one and decided to play things straight for his own sake.
With a nod, he explained, “Something at each of the scenes is wrong; it feels wrong, therefore so it is wrong.” Nothing says, "Listen to me," like a logical fallacy.
“If nothing was wrong, we wouldn’t be here, Mr. Spencer.” Chief Vick had been particularly patient with him today and Shawn had no intention of disappointing her any more than Lassie.
“I don’t just mean cosmically, Chief, I mean logically.” He pointed to the various photographic scene reconstructions. “What’s a notoriously picky, chronically immaculate stylist doing fishing? Fish guts and Donna Karan do not a lifelong friendship make. What good is a postcard of a ski resort to an agoraphobic so afraid of drowning he has to be institutionalized annually during the Spring thaw? It doesn’t make sense. These little souvenirs don’t match anything what they’d have bought for themselves or anything they might have been given by friends. They’re just…out of character.”
When a moment passed without comment, Shawn was relieved to hear Juliet break the silence. “Whoever he is, he’s hiding his trademark in plain sight.” He knew she would have squeezed his hand in comfort and congratulations if she’d been holding it. She was in a class of her own on that front.
“He thinks that’s the way he’s going to get us,” Morgan supplied, frowning, but no less suave for it.
“He wants to shame us with the oversight. The innocuous nature of the signature is intentional.” If it was possible, Hotchner’s gaze darkened ever further. It is, in fact, possible. Scary.
Morgan continued, “So, we’ve got souvenirs, pretty much tourist crap. We talking travel or something else?”
After a protracted stretch of blessed muteness, the other Spencer had his say, “Travel is too literal. The concept of free time, or vacation, would appear to almost be the opposite of what the unsub is attempting to convey. That would imply something temporary, something transitory or passing. These ‘vacations,’ for lack of a better word, are undeniably permanent.”
“To go somewhere good and permanent,” offered SSA Emily Prentiss from her contemplative perch on Lassie’s unoccupied desk. “That could only be--”
“-paradise,” finished the brooder extraordinaire. “He takes them to paradise, but why the leftovers? Why leave guideposts for us to follow?”
“Maybe to invite us to come along,” posed Prentiss once again with her Wednesday Addams eyes and her Friday evening smile. It was barely there and so was she. They had one more day to make this gold before they were off to catch another psychopath on another coast, leaving Jules and Lassie to the mess. She didn’t wear that inevitable abandonment well and Lassie wore it even worse.
The detective had slipped back into the quorum while Spencer the Younger imparted his wisdom and tipped his head in respect to Spencer the Psychic-er when he’d expressed his own. It wasn’t a fruit basket of pineapple carved in the shape of a dozen roses, but it was mutual respect from a man who gave it grudgingly even to the most deserving. From Carlton Lassiter, that was damn near a declaration of love. Shawn hadn’t spoken to Lassie’s ex-wife yet; for all he knew, it might have been just that.
“So do we have any ideas as to who the perp might be?” Lassie asked out of the blue. Spencer Reid had given up on correcting the elder officer after the second glower he’d gotten for his trouble. Unsub, what’s that, as far as he was concerned.
“Someone with access to a hell of a lot of souvenirs.”
“You mean someone who’s traveled anywhere, ever, or has had the grave misfortune of living in or near a tourist attraction? Thank you, Agent Morgan. That really whittles it down for us.”
Shawn gave a soundless whistle while taking a large step out of Hotchner’s blast radius. He didn’t want to get corrugated Lassie bits on his nice polo; the gore might never wash out.
To his surprise, his dark princely-ness remained composed, though his displeasure shone through like lasers on poor, helpless diamond. “Detective, I understand that you’re frustrated with our lack of progress, but taking it out on my agents isn’t going to help us catch the unsub any faster. That’s only going to happen if we can all put our feelings aside and focus on the profile. Can we do that?”
Morgan shrugged his broad shoulders nonchalantly. Shawn could helping noticing that they were really nice shoulders. “Consider it done.”
Lassie jutted his chin out defiantly, and then relented at the chief’s quelling look. “What he said.”
Agent Hotchner nodded, shifting his gaze from the gathered detectives, to Shawn, to his agents in turn. Shawn shuddered a little under the cool assessment; it was clear that the kid he’d underestimated wasn’t the only not buying his product. Yet, instead of confronting Shawn, Hotchner demurred and took a seat beside Morgan on an absent detective’s desk.
“Mr. Spencer, you clearly have some insight that the rest of us lack. I’d be grateful if you would share it with us; it may help.”
Shawn doubted it, but he didn’t protest. He left his pretense in costume piles on the floor and told them what he saw. And, for the first time, he didn’t doubt that Lassie believed him.
~!~
They caught the perp on Sunday, a day after the still-stalling Behavioral Analysis Unit had been given its marching orders and had headed out to Delaware to investigate a triple-homicide. Their goodbyes had been civil, if a little on the terse side, and they’d vowed to keep them in the loop as the case progressed. It had been a short loop in Shawn’s estimation, more like a cheerio than a racetrack. Home stretch was brief and the photo finish brutal. Prentiss still vowed to buy the first round of drinks next time they were in town, which would probably be too soon.
Lassie finally got to have his holiday in the squad room. It was two in the morning and technically Monday, but Shawn would not be moved. While his detective toiled with after-action reports, munitions checks, and closing the case file, Shawn stole his partner and his surprisingly agreeable boss to tack up streamers above his head. Buzz buzzed around the perimeter to let Gus in through the back; with ham and cake and a delectable pudding at stake, one could never be sure who to trust. (They’d had to forgo the daiquiris but another day, oh, another day!) Although his handsome nose twitched, Lassie never looked away from the computer screen before him. Fingers flews, brows furrowed, and sharp eyes narrowed, all toward the ultimate end of putting this case behind them.
Shawn could relate, he did relate. He wanted to forget he’d ever seen a snow globe, much less that he’d ever loved one. He planned to de-friend the next person to send him a postcard and his keys were going keychain-less for the foreseeable future. Compartmentalizing was one of Shawn’s many gifts, but it helped to do away with reminders, too. He just wanted this day back, to love it as he had when it was a day for cake and warm, fuzzy feelings instead of injustice and mean justice done. He wanted it to be two days after Lassie Day and the third day of the rest of his life. He wanted this day back, but he couldn’t have it, so he’d take last Friday in its place.
“Happy belated Lassie Day, Lassie!” he declared, presenting a fresh, whole pineapple to his favorite detective as a token of his love and affection. He was praying that nervous giggle he heard had been Juliet (or the chief or Buzz or Gus) hovering behind him and not actually from him. Gus is never gonna let me live this down. And maybe it was worth that.
Lassie’s lips did twitch this time, twice-and this was before he’d actually taken his eyes off the screen. When he did betray the world of pixels for the world of man, his lips made the evolutionary leap from a scowl into a smile. And, Wow, that isn’t unpleasant at all, Shawn noted, nearly dropping his pineapple in the offing. It’s actually kind of nice.
Easily snagging the tropical plant out of Shawn’s unexpectedly lax grasp, Lassie began to pitch it back in forth between his hands. Neither his smirk nor his sense of superiority wavered for a second whilst he asked, “So, remind me, Spencer, is this the part where you kiss me or can we eat first?”
Without wondering which of his accomplices had told and finally feeling much steadier, Shawn plopped right down on the edge of Carlton’s desk to stake his claim. This could go on till dawn or Armageddon, he didn’t care. “I don’t know, Lassie, you tell me. It’s your day.”
Tossing the prickly bromeliad fruit at him without an ounce of menace, Lassie told him, “Yes, it is,” and somehow Shawn didn’t think he was just smiling about the pineapple upside-down cake anymore.
And that was saying something.
Title: A Lassie Pineapple Day Caper
Fandom: Psych (x minor Criminal Minds)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter (UST?)
Warnings: a wee bit of language
Pseudo-warnings: fluff, attempted lolz, and drama (er, surprise!)
Word count: ~3,764/1000
Summary: Shawn had decided to show his unspoken love for his favorite detective by declaring Friday Lassie Day. Unfortunately, Friday was busier than he’d expected and crime fighting had to take precedence. Surely, Lassie would understand.
Author’s Notes: Please, forgive me for my unforgivable lateness. Written for the Psummer of Psych (psummertime) for midnight_malaga. I’m nervous about this because I’ve only written two short ficlets for Psych in the past, but I really wanted to get this right for you. I hope I accomplished even half of what you wanted.
Prompt:
Type of gift you want: Fic or vid, please!
Things you want to see: Shassie awesomeness, crossovers, Gus being sick of Shawn's X annoying trait, fluff, humour, Juliet and Shawn being gal pals, epic bromance with Gus and Shawn, denial of lurve
Veto: Shawn/Gus
Type of gift(s) you will make: Fic
Disclaimer: I don’t any of the characters recognizable as being from either the USA series Psych or the CBS series Criminal Minds. All characters are the properties of the writers, producers, and studios responsible for their existence. No money exchanged hands during the conception, creation, or distribution of this story. No copyright infringement was intended. This was good, clean fun.
~!~
“A pineapple a day keeps sad Lassie at bay. Come on, Lassie, smile.”
Lassitter’s lips didn’t so much as twitch.
“Come on. Like this,” Shawn demonstrated. “Isn’t this nice? See my pearly whites, so pearly…and white.” He turned to his best friend, who didn’t seem any more impressed. “Gus, show him your canines. Those will definitely have him in stitches.”
“Back off, Shawn.”
Shawn pouted. Gus is entirely too sensitive about his clearly carnivorous teeth. “Don’t pretend you’re not proud of them. You used to sell smiles for a dollar back in junior high. Now, stop being stingy with those orthodontic nest eggs and share the joy!”
Gus snorted and looked away. Shawn whimpered pathetically. He knew it was pathetic because he was totally copying that puppy from the 1-800-Adopt-Me-I’m-Cute commercial. It had moved him so much that he’d called them right up and had them send that pup straight to his dad’s house. He thought that was for the best. Shawn was definitely not bringing anything cuter than himself home with…himself. It just wouldn’t work. And anything that adorable was a public menace waiting to happen. He should know. Can’t have the competition, Scrappy, but please do enjoy the complimentary 5 a.m. wake-up calls, courtesy of me.
Shawn snapped out of his amused introspection in time to see his favorite detective leaning interestedly toward a beaming Gus. Something had happened while he was in LalaLand and he had no idea what. Whatever it was, he hated it already.
“Guster, those are some impressive teeth you’ve got there.” The detective spent far too long staring into Gus’s mouth in this psychic’s opinion. The only mouth Lassie should have been focused on was Shawn’s and he should know; he was psychic. Okay, no, but he should know because his mouth was way more interesting than Gus’s stupid mouth with his stupid, pointy teeth and, and…
“My teeth are way pointier than Gus’s,” he declared, peeling his lips back to show off his gleaming grimace. Lassie didn’t even deign to raise an eyebrow, much less redirect his gaze from Gus’s victoriously grinning chompers. Lassie’s indifference made Shawn a sad panda.
Well, that just wouldn’t do.
~!~
“Gus, you have to stop showing me up in front of Lassie,” Shawn told his very, very best friend in the entire world the moment Carlton Lassiter had walked out of the Psych office door.
“What?” his very, very best friend asked, while asserting his essential Gus-ness and shooting Shawn some serious side eye action.
Shawn put his hands on his hips, looked at Gus squarely and said, “You have to let Lassie think I’m better than you.”
“And I repeat, ‘What?’ Or, better yet, why?”
Shawn threw up his hands. “Come on, man, you know why.”
Gus’s eyebrow seemed to go up of its own volition and tap dance, which made sense. “Because there’s a thin line between love and hate, and you’re on opposite sides of it?”
“Ha!” Shawn guffawed ironically in reply. “I see what you did there. That’s funny.” He scowled, “Not.”
Gus rolled his eyes to the ceiling while Shawn pouted. Shawn pouted and sulked for quite some time in the hopes that Gus would take back what he’d said. Once five minutes had passed without a word between them, it was Shawn’s turn to sigh.
“Okay, look. I know you don’t get us-”
Gus chimed in, “I didn’t realize there was an ‘us’ to get yet.”
Shawn bounced on his feet. “See! ‘Yet,’ there’s no me and Lassie yet, but there will be.”
“And how do you propose to make that happen, Shawn? The last time I checked, Lassiter seemed more interested in staring at my-”
“-freakishly pointy-” He leapt gazelle-like out of arm’s reach before Gus’s uranium glare could become a nuclear half-Nelson headlock-slash-wedgie.
“…teeth than in getting close to you.” Half-Nelsons, wedgies, and other sundry torment threatened in every word as Gus crossed his arms and leaned back against his desk. “How do you plan to get his attention?”
“That’s easy. I’ll do what any civilized government does when it wants to show love.” He dropped into his lean-back office chair and contently folded his hands behind his head. “I’ll declare a holiday.”
It was only Shawn’s lightning fast reflexes and honed spidey sense that saved him from getting an empty Mylanta bottle to the neck. He got it to the forehead instead and thanked his lucky stars that his psychic powers allowed him to avoid incidents like this…Wait.
~!~
Crime fighting put a hold on Lassie Day. It was Lassie Day, by the way, he’d already decided. It was simple, understated, very Lassie. He’d been pleased with his decision on the name. Gus had helped him decide how it should be observed. They’d determined that a delectable feast of baked ham with pineapple and pineapple upside-down cake was in order given the fortuitous date. April 16th was the national day of celebration for the former and April 20th was the holiday for latter. Thus, naturally, it fell that Lassie Day should be dead center. Lassie’s mostly tart on the inside, but a little sweet. Very prickly on the outside. Shawn liked the contrast.
Ham and cake, and possibly some pudding, he amended while watching the FBI’s wunderkind profiler, Dr. Spencer Reid, at work. He was plotting dinner and jealous schemes all at the same time. There’s so only room for once ‘Spencer!’ in this police department and I’m it-him, he. I am he? ...I wonder if Lassie likes pineapple daiquiris?
What could he say, he was a talented boy.
Shawn stared long and hard at the willowy kid in the sweater vest from across the room. Hypervigilance recognized hypervigilance and he recognized instinctively that there wasn’t a quirk of behavior that escaped Reid’s attention, except for maybe his own. He was shaping up to be quite a problem for Santa Barbara PD’s resident psychic since his shtick was all quirks. Can’t let the cat out of the bag now. He might be angry that I forgot to leave air holes.
Shawn’s thoughts had been firmly ensconced in the realm of making Lassie Day a glorious reality when the Santa Barbara Snatcher had struck for the sixth time and the chief’d had no choice but to call in the FBI’s finest to assist on the case. Abductions weren’t usually Lassie’s area of expertise, but with the BAU’s tentative expectation that the victims had likely already been killed, Vick had tapped him to head up the taskforce. That meant that Lassie was in no mood for celebrations and neither was Jules, whose help he’d definitely been counting on to make Lassie Day all that it could be.
She’s a party planner with a gun, which he had to admit made an odd sort of sense given the parties he’d gone to in his day. He was convinced that she’d have covered her gun in sequins if she could have gotten away with it, just for a little added flare. Once, making use of her meticulous organizing and stealth abilities, she’d helped him cover a couple of Lassie’s many personal weapons with pink and gold glitter as a practical joke. That was the first time he’d gotten even an inkling that his stalwart detective-with his strong Irish hairline-might have liked him more than just a tiny bit. Between his furious bellowing and his furious gesturing (there might have been some lamps gently volleyed at Shawn’s head, but he couldn’t quite recall), he’d managed to utter these immortal words: “Damn it, Spencer, of all of the things I’d let you touch, you choose my guns?”
The words had left just enough wiggle room for Carlton to wiggle right out of the subtextual web he’d woven for himself. Well, if he’d been having the conversation with someone else, they would have. As it was, Shawn had grinned, Lassie had blanched and thrown him and a contrite Juliet right out of his house. Gus had driven the get-away car and they’d drowned the failure of their prank in fruit slushie goodness long into the night.
Shawn felt the need for another slush night coming on like enlightenment. He couldn’t help. Where there was a Lassie, there was a Juliet, and, generally, there was he and Gus-save for days like today when he was here and Gus couldn’t be. He should have seen that as a bad omen from the start.
They were here, there was evidence, and Shawn couldn’t help. What others believed to be ESP was merely a deluxe set of inborn and trained observation skills; they were fantastic for normal cases, but this wasn’t normal. The perpetrator, or unsub as the Spencer of long hair and useful interjections had oh so helpfully remarked, was of above-average intelligence and it showed in his crime scenes. There wasn’t a speck of dust out place; in fact, there wasn’t even a speck of dust. There was nothing, to see or to see. He wouldn’t have minded failing so much if Lassie hadn’t looked so disappointed-and on his day, too, even if Shawn hadn’t told him about the holiday proclamation he’d made over Facebook yet.
Consequently, when Reid and his brethren began to brainstorm aloud about the psychological profile of their abductor-slash-possible-killer and Shawn had nothing to contribute, he thought about pineapples instead and all the tasty things he could make with it to make Lassie smile again. Not that Lassie really smiled-ever, actually, or that it was particularly pleasant when he did put his atrophied facial muscles to the task. It was just the thought of a thoroughly pleased Carlton Lassiter that allowed Shawn to ignore the upset expectations of those in the squad room with him and relax. And when Shawn Spencer was relaxed, oh the things he could do.
‘Gone fishing,’ he read passively off of one of the blown-up crime scene photos pinned to the cork evidence board as his gaze wandered. He narrowed his eyes in confusion, because personal stylist Nicolette De Havilland didn’t come across as a woman who spent her vacation time fly-fishing on anybody’s lake. The happy motto hung on a keychain among Nicolette’s house keys, dangling serenely from a hall table.
‘Wish you were here,’ he gathered out of another photo from another scene. The crime scene photographer’s lens had barely registered the postcard of some generic winter paradise affixed to Jeffrey Dreysdale’s fridge. Jeffrey didn’t go anywhere, he was too afraid to get hurt. Sorry, Jeff, Shawn thought because it looked like he’d been right to fear. The man didn’t go anywhere and neither did his friends; no one would have sent him a postcard if they knew him. They don’t know him or they don’t care.
He inspected the little keepsakes one after another, mere afterthoughts in the pictures of lives abruptly abandoned. Keychains, snow globes, postcards, and novelty tees. They were the common feature between people who’d shared little else save for having disappeared without a trace.
‘No paradise without you,’ said the last in white bubble letters emblazoned on the base of a snow globe. Its backdrop was a beach with no sun and a tidal wave rising in the distance. It wasn’t beautiful because it wasn’t intended to be; the tiny solitary figure splayed resignedly on the sand said all it needed to. If Shawn hadn’t been convinced before, now he knew that those people were never coming back.
“That’s all, folks,” he murmured to himself as he eyed all the pictures in succession. He couldn’t tell if the spectrum was the elaboration of an improv kidnapper or the perfect plan of a mastermind come to life. He couldn’t tell.
“You see something,” presumed a voice that was becoming familiar for all the wrong reasons.
Shawn breathed in and breathed out, channeling his annoyance into a low-grade pseudo-psychic episode. He certainly wasn’t about to waste the good stuff on someone who would see right through it. He paused, thought it over; he might have always been wasting the good stuff, he didn’t work with idiots.
“I see something, yes.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb and let the spirit of shtick overcome him. “I see trinkets…tourists…travel! I see travel. I see cheap, tourist trap souvenirs from the world over. I see them everywhere.” He winced. “I think my taste is being affected.”
“Spencer, your idea of taste consists of Technicolor polos whose flamboyance would make Joseph cringe, jeans older than my driver’s license, and cheap windup toys for interior decoration. I think, in this case, we can safely say, ‘Good riddance.’”
Shawn broke from his trance to pout soulfully in Lassie’s direction. “Lassie, I’m hurt. I thought you liked my Technicolor polos.” He smirked sexily a la Antonio Banderas in Zorrrro. “Don’t you like the way they show off my guns?” He flexed one polo sleeve-clad bicep. Lassiter visibly appealed to something above and turned away without another word. “Lassie, don’t try to deny our love. It’s in the air!”
“Something is definitely in the air,” quipped the also very heartthrob-esque Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan to his colleagues, whose default setting seemed to be brooding broodily.
“You said you had something,” prompted the broodiest of them all, SSA Aaron Hotchner, the BAU boss. Shawn sensed some hidden anger issues with this one and decided to play things straight for his own sake.
With a nod, he explained, “Something at each of the scenes is wrong; it feels wrong, therefore so it is wrong.” Nothing says, "Listen to me," like a logical fallacy.
“If nothing was wrong, we wouldn’t be here, Mr. Spencer.” Chief Vick had been particularly patient with him today and Shawn had no intention of disappointing her any more than Lassie.
“I don’t just mean cosmically, Chief, I mean logically.” He pointed to the various photographic scene reconstructions. “What’s a notoriously picky, chronically immaculate stylist doing fishing? Fish guts and Donna Karan do not a lifelong friendship make. What good is a postcard of a ski resort to an agoraphobic so afraid of drowning he has to be institutionalized annually during the Spring thaw? It doesn’t make sense. These little souvenirs don’t match anything what they’d have bought for themselves or anything they might have been given by friends. They’re just…out of character.”
When a moment passed without comment, Shawn was relieved to hear Juliet break the silence. “Whoever he is, he’s hiding his trademark in plain sight.” He knew she would have squeezed his hand in comfort and congratulations if she’d been holding it. She was in a class of her own on that front.
“He thinks that’s the way he’s going to get us,” Morgan supplied, frowning, but no less suave for it.
“He wants to shame us with the oversight. The innocuous nature of the signature is intentional.” If it was possible, Hotchner’s gaze darkened ever further. It is, in fact, possible. Scary.
Morgan continued, “So, we’ve got souvenirs, pretty much tourist crap. We talking travel or something else?”
After a protracted stretch of blessed muteness, the other Spencer had his say, “Travel is too literal. The concept of free time, or vacation, would appear to almost be the opposite of what the unsub is attempting to convey. That would imply something temporary, something transitory or passing. These ‘vacations,’ for lack of a better word, are undeniably permanent.”
“To go somewhere good and permanent,” offered SSA Emily Prentiss from her contemplative perch on Lassie’s unoccupied desk. “That could only be--”
“-paradise,” finished the brooder extraordinaire. “He takes them to paradise, but why the leftovers? Why leave guideposts for us to follow?”
“Maybe to invite us to come along,” posed Prentiss once again with her Wednesday Addams eyes and her Friday evening smile. It was barely there and so was she. They had one more day to make this gold before they were off to catch another psychopath on another coast, leaving Jules and Lassie to the mess. She didn’t wear that inevitable abandonment well and Lassie wore it even worse.
The detective had slipped back into the quorum while Spencer the Younger imparted his wisdom and tipped his head in respect to Spencer the Psychic-er when he’d expressed his own. It wasn’t a fruit basket of pineapple carved in the shape of a dozen roses, but it was mutual respect from a man who gave it grudgingly even to the most deserving. From Carlton Lassiter, that was damn near a declaration of love. Shawn hadn’t spoken to Lassie’s ex-wife yet; for all he knew, it might have been just that.
“So do we have any ideas as to who the perp might be?” Lassie asked out of the blue. Spencer Reid had given up on correcting the elder officer after the second glower he’d gotten for his trouble. Unsub, what’s that, as far as he was concerned.
“Someone with access to a hell of a lot of souvenirs.”
“You mean someone who’s traveled anywhere, ever, or has had the grave misfortune of living in or near a tourist attraction? Thank you, Agent Morgan. That really whittles it down for us.”
Shawn gave a soundless whistle while taking a large step out of Hotchner’s blast radius. He didn’t want to get corrugated Lassie bits on his nice polo; the gore might never wash out.
To his surprise, his dark princely-ness remained composed, though his displeasure shone through like lasers on poor, helpless diamond. “Detective, I understand that you’re frustrated with our lack of progress, but taking it out on my agents isn’t going to help us catch the unsub any faster. That’s only going to happen if we can all put our feelings aside and focus on the profile. Can we do that?”
Morgan shrugged his broad shoulders nonchalantly. Shawn could helping noticing that they were really nice shoulders. “Consider it done.”
Lassie jutted his chin out defiantly, and then relented at the chief’s quelling look. “What he said.”
Agent Hotchner nodded, shifting his gaze from the gathered detectives, to Shawn, to his agents in turn. Shawn shuddered a little under the cool assessment; it was clear that the kid he’d underestimated wasn’t the only not buying his product. Yet, instead of confronting Shawn, Hotchner demurred and took a seat beside Morgan on an absent detective’s desk.
“Mr. Spencer, you clearly have some insight that the rest of us lack. I’d be grateful if you would share it with us; it may help.”
Shawn doubted it, but he didn’t protest. He left his pretense in costume piles on the floor and told them what he saw. And, for the first time, he didn’t doubt that Lassie believed him.
~!~
They caught the perp on Sunday, a day after the still-stalling Behavioral Analysis Unit had been given its marching orders and had headed out to Delaware to investigate a triple-homicide. Their goodbyes had been civil, if a little on the terse side, and they’d vowed to keep them in the loop as the case progressed. It had been a short loop in Shawn’s estimation, more like a cheerio than a racetrack. Home stretch was brief and the photo finish brutal. Prentiss still vowed to buy the first round of drinks next time they were in town, which would probably be too soon.
Lassie finally got to have his holiday in the squad room. It was two in the morning and technically Monday, but Shawn would not be moved. While his detective toiled with after-action reports, munitions checks, and closing the case file, Shawn stole his partner and his surprisingly agreeable boss to tack up streamers above his head. Buzz buzzed around the perimeter to let Gus in through the back; with ham and cake and a delectable pudding at stake, one could never be sure who to trust. (They’d had to forgo the daiquiris but another day, oh, another day!) Although his handsome nose twitched, Lassie never looked away from the computer screen before him. Fingers flews, brows furrowed, and sharp eyes narrowed, all toward the ultimate end of putting this case behind them.
Shawn could relate, he did relate. He wanted to forget he’d ever seen a snow globe, much less that he’d ever loved one. He planned to de-friend the next person to send him a postcard and his keys were going keychain-less for the foreseeable future. Compartmentalizing was one of Shawn’s many gifts, but it helped to do away with reminders, too. He just wanted this day back, to love it as he had when it was a day for cake and warm, fuzzy feelings instead of injustice and mean justice done. He wanted it to be two days after Lassie Day and the third day of the rest of his life. He wanted this day back, but he couldn’t have it, so he’d take last Friday in its place.
“Happy belated Lassie Day, Lassie!” he declared, presenting a fresh, whole pineapple to his favorite detective as a token of his love and affection. He was praying that nervous giggle he heard had been Juliet (or the chief or Buzz or Gus) hovering behind him and not actually from him. Gus is never gonna let me live this down. And maybe it was worth that.
Lassie’s lips did twitch this time, twice-and this was before he’d actually taken his eyes off the screen. When he did betray the world of pixels for the world of man, his lips made the evolutionary leap from a scowl into a smile. And, Wow, that isn’t unpleasant at all, Shawn noted, nearly dropping his pineapple in the offing. It’s actually kind of nice.
Easily snagging the tropical plant out of Shawn’s unexpectedly lax grasp, Lassie began to pitch it back in forth between his hands. Neither his smirk nor his sense of superiority wavered for a second whilst he asked, “So, remind me, Spencer, is this the part where you kiss me or can we eat first?”
Without wondering which of his accomplices had told and finally feeling much steadier, Shawn plopped right down on the edge of Carlton’s desk to stake his claim. This could go on till dawn or Armageddon, he didn’t care. “I don’t know, Lassie, you tell me. It’s your day.”
Tossing the prickly bromeliad fruit at him without an ounce of menace, Lassie told him, “Yes, it is,” and somehow Shawn didn’t think he was just smiling about the pineapple upside-down cake anymore.
And that was saying something.