FIC: "Right Place, Wrong Time" by Regann - PG-13/R - Shawn/Lassiter (11/??)
Title: Right Place, Wrong Time (11/??)
Author: Regann
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter
Rating: PG-13/R
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: Nothing new but I do need to acknowledge that I shamelessly lifted the character of Rodney from Stargate:Atlantis.
Summary: 17-year-old Shawn has a fake ID burning a hole in his pocket, a college party to crash, and a mission to stop being the only virgin in his senior class. Unfortunately, there's this big-earred, good-doing grad student by the name of Carlton who catches him in the act. The unfair nature of cosmic humor being what it is, thus begins something that'll come back to haunt them both ten years later -- when an adult Shawn Spencer decides to give psychic investigation a try.
Past Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Right Place, Wrong Time (Part 11)
Though Shawn tried not to dwell, he had to admit that it was frustrating that Lassiter didn't seem to have any clue who he was.
He assumed -- maybe incorrectly -- that Lassiter did remember him, as in Shawn, as in the kid he'd been when they'd met over a decade earlier but that there was something standing between those memories and the present because the detective wasn't drawing the right connection between Shawn-of-the-past and the Shawn Spencer who'd he recently tried to arrest.
Shawn didn't think he'd changed that much in the intervening years and Lassiter hadn't changed much at all but memory was a strange thing. In fact, he sometimes had a hard time remembering that other people didn't remember the same way he did and couldn't recall things anywhere close to his ability. He didn't have any trouble remembering Carlton; if he concentrated, Shawn could remember exactly what it felt like the first time he touched him, still such a vivid image in his head that he could feel himself shivering as he thought about it.
On one hand, Shawn knew that Gus was right and they were all better off that Lassiter didn't know the truth. After all, the detective could hardly stand him as is -- if he knew Shawn-the-psychic was Shawn-the-teenager, Lassiter would be probably spend a hell of a lot more time trying to get him thrown in jail or out of town. He doubted Lassiter would like having a constant reminder of that indiscretion in his face all the time, solving the crimes that he couldn't.
But then, there was another side of Shawn that found it incredibly offensive that Carlton didn't recognize him. The lingering melodramatic notions of his teenaged self aside, it wasn't very flattering to be forgotten, even if their time together had been confined to less than a week's worth of hours spread over three months ten years earlier. It made him want to do something crazy just to shake Carly up.
Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- Gus's good sense was rubbing off on him and he'd been able to hold back the urge -- even when Lassiter seemed intent on doing things to make Shawn crazy.
When Lassiter had escorted him out of his impromptu meeting with Lacey, Bethany and Dylan, the feel of Lassiter's arm looped around him had sent him back but Shawn hadn't been fooled for a minute; he'd almost been expecting the not-so-gentle throw against the stone wall that followed. Of course, Shawn gave as good as he got, in no way feeling guilty for using his knowledge of young Lassiter to make his point with the older one. He figured that a good Catholic boy wouldn't like his crack about the Bible and he'd been rewarded with Lassiter's reaction.
Shawn had tried to put the arousing aspect of the encounter behind him and focus on his annoyance. It was bad enough that something that pissed him off so badly also left him sexually frustrated but it was doubly worse that he was the only one getting the residuals from those old memories while Lassiter remained irritatingly unaffected.
Then he'd been in the middle of one his better psychic episodes when Lassiter had decided to take it all to the next level in the Hotel De La Cruz kitchen. This time he'd hadn't been expecting it at all; he especially hadn't expected them to end up in a tangle of limbs that reminded Shawn of those few great days they'd spent together before but he'd been forcibly reminded as Lassiter had wrested with him, bodies sliding and rubbing together in a fine facsimile of frottage, if Shawn did say so himself. He was even more surprised that they both didn't walk away from it as hard as nails but he supposed that Juliet's discovery of Dietrich Manheim's dead body had put a damper on the situation.
Shawn found it strange how Lassiter had no problem laying hands on him, their bodies touching in ways that weren't considered intimate only because they'd been fully clothed. Even clothed, Shawn felt a couple of the positions they'd been in were still pretty damn intimate: the last time Lassiter had had Shawn's leg hooked over his arm like he'd had there at the end, Shawn had been losing the absolute last vestiges of his virginity and that was pretty damn intimate in anyone's book.
Not that Lassiter seemed to remember it, Shawn thought sourly. Bastard.
But it seemed that even if Lassiter's mind had forgotten who Shawn was, his body hadn't and he was taking liberties that only made sense in the context of a past that the detective seemed oblivious to.
Shawn wasn't sure how he felt about that.
After the arrival of the Attorney General aborted Lassiter's attempt to have them tossed out, Shawn and Gus made themselves scare, happy for the reprieve. Shawn treated Gus to lunch in the De La Cruz's restaurant -- courtesy of Lassiter's room tab, of course.
"They had to get that ring some other way," Gus said around a mouthful of fries, picking up their earlier thread of conversation. "There's no way they busted into that safe and left it unmarked."
Shawn was staring off into space, thinking. "We've gotta be missing something, then. The ring was stolen and I need to figure out how, so I can figure out who. Lassiter isn't going to catch them and someone's got to." When he refocused on his friend, he noticed that Gus suddenly looked a little uncomfortable. "What?"
"Nothing," Gus lied, rather unconvincingly. Shawn's eyebrow rose dubiously and Gus rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. You sure Lassiter hasn't figured out about...?"
"What?"
"You...and him...and..."
Shawn rolled his eyes. "I'm absolutely sure. Why?"
"That thing in the kitchen? Weird, man." Gus paused to take a drink from his soda. "I'm just saying."
"Yes, it was," Shawn admitted. "But I don't have time to think about him anymore. I've got a robbery to solve!"
"Anymore?" Gus looked torn between amusement and worry. "So you've been thinking about Lassiter?"
"A little," Shawn said vaguely. "Today, however, he's mostly taken a backseat to the ring and the lovely, lovely Lacey."
"This is just like the McCallum thing," Gus griped. "You need to forget about Lacey until we're done."
"No can do, my friend," Shawn said, gloating. "She's part of the case and I would be remiss if I didn't pay her the proper attention, don't you think? I mean, she was the last one to see the ring before it went poof."
Gus pushed aside his plate. "She was?"
Shawn went still for a moment, flashing back to the footage he'd seen while spying on Lassiter's briefing. "Yes, I'm pretty sure she was. It was a little hard to tell from the angle I was watching from but..." He snapped his fingers and started to rise from his seat. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" Gus demanded to know as he followed him out of the restaurant.
"To get our hands on a copy of that footage," he declared. "We'll start there. There's got to be something that the cops missed."
The rest of the case was a whirlwind of activity and less sleep than Shawn would've chosen to have if he hadn't been under such a pressing deadline. He was definitely sad that his criminal turned out to be Lacey because he'd already spent a lot of time thinking about what he wanted to do with those magic hands come their Friday date, but he was willing to concede that sleeping with a killer might not have been the best way to deal with his sexual frustrations, no matter how hot she was.
The wedding reception, at least, was a vast improvement over the wedding ceremony, even if Gus spent most of the time shooting him evil looks. Shawn thought he did a particularly good job on the toast that the best man had botched, and the remaining bridesmaids, Amber and Miranda, did their level-best to make sure that Shawn didn't miss Lacey's presence too badly. Shawn danced every dance he could, made good use of the open bar, and still had time to make it to the police station before the cops had finished booking Lacey.
"I bet this isn't the way she was expecting this day to end," Gus observed as they watched Lacey be led past, ignoring Shawn's discussion of his imaginary, future wedding.
"Yeah," Shawn agreed, sighing. "What a waste."
When Gus excused himself to take an important call from the office, Shawn meandered over into the bullpen, hoping to find Juliet for another round of 'impress the new detective with my amazing psychic powers.' It had worked well so far and he figured that, aside from the Chief who was willing to ignore the improbability of it if she got the answers, Detective O'Hara was his best bet for an ally at the station.
O'Hara was nowhere to be found but Lassiter was at his desk, looking just as sour and unhappy as he had been before he'd left the hotel. Shawn also noticed that he was still frowning at what looked like his hotel bill.
Shawn shoved his hands down into the pockets of his dress pants and put on that patented look of innocence that he'd perfected long ago. He whistled a little just for good measure and Lassiter almost immediately noticed him, sighing as if he were being besieged by a biblical plague instead of a slightly-rumpled, slightly-inebriated, slightly psychic.
"I thought I told you to get out of my sight," Lassiter ground out.
Shawn shrugged, hands still in his pockets. "That was hours ago! I figured you'd be missing me by now."
"Spencer, you'd have to be gone a really long time before I'd even contemplate missing you."
Shawn bit his tongue to keep from saying something like Oh? Wasn't twelve years enough? because he was positive that if he did either Lassiter or Gus would kill him before he could escape the station. "That's very harsh of you, Detective," he said instead. "First, I solve your crime and then I come all this way to say hello and this is how you repay me?"
"Speaking of repaying..." Lassiter's glare turned even more deadly as he rattled the sheets of paper at him. "Don't think I'm not going to prove this was all you and don't think you won't be paying for it."
He made a tsking sound by clicking his tongue. "This obsession of yours? Flattering but...misguided. You really just need to move on."
Lassiter had that look on his face again -- the one where he looked like he was going to explode -- so Shawn decided it was time to beat a hasty retreat. He sauntered away but he couldn't stop himself from turning around one more and add, "Don't worry, I'll come visit you some other time when you're in a better mood."
He left the detective sputtering in his wake.
When he caught up with Gus finishing his phone conversation outside of the police station, his friend shot him a look. "What's got you so pleased with yourself?" Gus asked, obviously dreading the answer.
Shawn grinned. "Oh, you know -- just the satisfaction of a job well done."
Gus looked dubious but accepted the answer and Shawn's memory surrounding the case left him smiling for days.
**
He didn't know when he'd first started thinking it, but Carlton had slowly started to label his days good or bad depending on whether or not Spencer was lurking around the station. There was nothing he hated more than to look up from his work to see Spencer loitering around or to arrive back from an interview to the unmistakable sight of Spencer's motorcycle parked in plain view.
Frankly, Carlton was uncomfortable with the idea that Spencer could, in such an absolute way, dictate his feelings and actions even though it had become embarrassingly apparent that he could from almost their first meeting. He was a good cop; he knew how to do his job and he'd risen through the ranks of detective as quickly as he had because of it. He'd had always played by the rules, kept his head in stressful situations, reined in his temper to such a degree that even Fenich had been impressed. It made him a good detective, a clear thinker, the perfect candidate for head detective and, one day, chief.
But it seemed like every time Spencer came into the picture, none of it held true and Carlton couldn't trust himself to act accordingly. Since he'd met Spencer in that first interrogation, he'd acted inappropriately during an investigation more times than he had in his first ten years of service combined. It was embarrassing and frustrating to think that someone like Spencer could drive him to it, especially when Carlton knew he should be better than any of the pretend psychic's antics.
Whenever Spencer was around, sense flew out the window. That wasn't a usual state for Carlton Lassiter; he'd always prided himself on his cool head. Of course, there had been times in the past when he had acted with a thoughtless disregard of consequences but it had been a long time ago --
Carlton ruthlessly shut down his wandering train of thought, clamping down on the memories to which it had been leading. Like everyone in the world, there was things he'd done in his past that he was ashamed of, that he regretted but he refused to dwell on them. In fact, he chose to do the opposite and hide them so deeply in the back of his mind that he rarely, if ever, accessed them. It had worked for him for a long time and it was just another thing he could blame on Spencer.
He'd still been trying to put some of his angry, deplorable behavior behind him from the Maxwell case when the Holby bank robbery landed on his desk again. With the two living members of the gang being released from prison, it fell to him and O'Hara to warn Raylene Wilcroft that her late husband's partners might come calling on her, intent on finding the missing money. They weren't the only ones who wanted to find the money, either -- Carlton hoped that they'd eventually lead him to its recovery as well.
Carlton and O'Hara had been talking to Raylene for no more than a few minutes when Carlton's bad day came walking over to sell his psychic freakshow to the widow Wilcroft. It was a sign of things to come, he knew, and it made Lassiter want to strangle the smirking psychic right there on the spot.
As always, Spencer sent logic flying out of the equation.
It didn't help that he eventually figured it all out, proving that Carlton had been way off the mark. David Wilcroft, alive? Raylene, as much of a threat as either ex-con? His mind just hadn't moved in those directions, not once during the original investigation or the current one.
The strangest moments, though, came when Spencer tried to give him credit in front of Chief Vick. It might've seemed magnanimous -- as O'Hara chided him later -- but Lassiter knew better than that. Shawn Spencer had probably never done a selfless thing in his life and it had been obvious that he had some ulterior motive. Carlton's first guess about trying to get him to admit that he was psychic had seemed solid at the time but the detective was no longer sure if it was Spencer's ultimate motivation. Of course, with someone like Spencer, there might not have ever been a real motivation behind the things he said; he just took delight in shocking people, in Carlton's opinion.
"What am I going to say now?" Spencer had said and that was the problem -- he was completely unpredictable. That also meant that he was completely untrustworthy and undependable, which were two things a cop couldn't have in a partner. If he and O'Hara couldn't trust his words or deeds, then he was useless, no matter how much his "psychic visions" helped.
Worst of all, Lassiter felt like he was starting to be the only sane one who remembered these things. It was obvious that the Chief put more stock than he thought wise in Spencer and his "private psychic detective" act and O'Hara seemed to be getting sucked in with a kind of naivety that Carlton found tiring in children, let alone adult police detectives.
The week was made even more unbearable by Spencer's triumphant arrival a few days later, a little dustier than usual but face so bright with glee that Lassiter had to blink and refocus before he realized that Spencer was talking at him.
"Lassy, up!" he demanded, gesturing with his hands. "You, too, Juliet! The spirits have spoken and have shown me the money!"
Eventually, he, O'Hara, the chief and a few uniforms followed Spencer and Guster out to the L-Kaylish Trail where Spencer said the spirits had led them.
"It's here," he assured them. "I can...feel it."
Carlton rolled his eyes but followed behind the shovel-wielding psychic as he led them through the turns of the mostly defunct trail. Finally they came upon an oddly shaped rock off to the side of a clearing and Spencer started having epileptic fits, thus denoting it as the location of the money.
Spencer and Guster helped the uniforms dig until they hit something solid -- an old suitcase. When they opened it up to reveal the missing Holby millions, O'Hara almost clapped in delight, Guster looked pleased and Spencer elbowed him with an "I told you so" look on his face.
"Aren't you happy?" Spencer demanded after the elbowing. "The money has been found!"
Only the Chief's presence kept Carlton was saying what he wanted to say.
Spencer, he noticed, had smudges of dirt all over his face, a particularly dark streak along one cheek. His clothes hadn't fared much better than his face. Carlton made a show of sliding his sunglasses back onto his face. "You got lucky."
"Oh, Lassy," he sighed. "When will you learn better?"
"It's not happening, Spencer."
Spencer shook a grimy finger in his direction. "It's already happened. You? Just need to accept it here." On "here" he laid a dirty palm against Carlton's pristinely white dress shirt, right where his heart would be. Before Carlton could protest properly, Spencer lifted his hand from Carlton's shirt -- only to tap the same dirty fingers against Lassiter's temple. "You already know it here."
As Carlton reached out -- probably to throttle him -- Spencer skipped away, heading determinedly toward the Chief where she stood speaking with the forensics team who were in charge of transporting the money.
O'Hara chose that moment to walk over. "Carlton, you have a little..." She indicated her temple.
He rolled his eyes as he reached for his handkerchief. "I know."
Her eyes moved down to his shirt. "And a little..."
"I know, O'Hara!"
Vaguely offended, O'Hara wandered off again, leaving Carlton to glare at Spencer's back from across the clearing.
Lassiter was thankful when their tech guys finished up and the group started their trek out of the trail. Once they reached the loop's gate, Carlton and O'Hara went straight toward the Crown Vic, their work finished. Carlton himself couldn't wait to be able to mark this money's recovery off of his case list, satisfied that it had been found, even if Spencer had been the one to do it.
Unfortunately, the detectives had to pass by Spencer and Guster as they were loading their shovels into the hatchback. There was a uniform standing with him, a young female officer who'd only recently transferred into their station.
"...solved?" Carlton heard her ask as they brushed by.
"Wow, now it's this, and the Summerland murder, and the Maxwell ring case and...well, of course, the McCallum murders. That's one of my more -- well, impressive -- cases, you know."
He couldn't keep himself from commenting, stopping to look back at Spencer. "Don't you ever get tired of bringing that up?"
Spencer's expression went -- blank, was the only word Lassiter could think of -- for a moment before it settled into a provocatively knowing expression, complete with half-raised eyebrow. "Well, you know what they say, Lassy. You never forget your first."
Once again, Lassiter was left with the feeling that Spencer was talking about more than just the McCallum murders but he shook the paranoia away and stomped off to his car, O'Hara trailing behind.
It was just one of many days made 'bad' thanks to Spencer.
Author: Regann
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter
Rating: PG-13/R
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: Nothing new but I do need to acknowledge that I shamelessly lifted the character of Rodney from Stargate:Atlantis.
Summary: 17-year-old Shawn has a fake ID burning a hole in his pocket, a college party to crash, and a mission to stop being the only virgin in his senior class. Unfortunately, there's this big-earred, good-doing grad student by the name of Carlton who catches him in the act. The unfair nature of cosmic humor being what it is, thus begins something that'll come back to haunt them both ten years later -- when an adult Shawn Spencer decides to give psychic investigation a try.
Past Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Right Place, Wrong Time (Part 11)
Though Shawn tried not to dwell, he had to admit that it was frustrating that Lassiter didn't seem to have any clue who he was.
He assumed -- maybe incorrectly -- that Lassiter did remember him, as in Shawn, as in the kid he'd been when they'd met over a decade earlier but that there was something standing between those memories and the present because the detective wasn't drawing the right connection between Shawn-of-the-past and the Shawn Spencer who'd he recently tried to arrest.
Shawn didn't think he'd changed that much in the intervening years and Lassiter hadn't changed much at all but memory was a strange thing. In fact, he sometimes had a hard time remembering that other people didn't remember the same way he did and couldn't recall things anywhere close to his ability. He didn't have any trouble remembering Carlton; if he concentrated, Shawn could remember exactly what it felt like the first time he touched him, still such a vivid image in his head that he could feel himself shivering as he thought about it.
On one hand, Shawn knew that Gus was right and they were all better off that Lassiter didn't know the truth. After all, the detective could hardly stand him as is -- if he knew Shawn-the-psychic was Shawn-the-teenager, Lassiter would be probably spend a hell of a lot more time trying to get him thrown in jail or out of town. He doubted Lassiter would like having a constant reminder of that indiscretion in his face all the time, solving the crimes that he couldn't.
But then, there was another side of Shawn that found it incredibly offensive that Carlton didn't recognize him. The lingering melodramatic notions of his teenaged self aside, it wasn't very flattering to be forgotten, even if their time together had been confined to less than a week's worth of hours spread over three months ten years earlier. It made him want to do something crazy just to shake Carly up.
Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- Gus's good sense was rubbing off on him and he'd been able to hold back the urge -- even when Lassiter seemed intent on doing things to make Shawn crazy.
When Lassiter had escorted him out of his impromptu meeting with Lacey, Bethany and Dylan, the feel of Lassiter's arm looped around him had sent him back but Shawn hadn't been fooled for a minute; he'd almost been expecting the not-so-gentle throw against the stone wall that followed. Of course, Shawn gave as good as he got, in no way feeling guilty for using his knowledge of young Lassiter to make his point with the older one. He figured that a good Catholic boy wouldn't like his crack about the Bible and he'd been rewarded with Lassiter's reaction.
Shawn had tried to put the arousing aspect of the encounter behind him and focus on his annoyance. It was bad enough that something that pissed him off so badly also left him sexually frustrated but it was doubly worse that he was the only one getting the residuals from those old memories while Lassiter remained irritatingly unaffected.
Then he'd been in the middle of one his better psychic episodes when Lassiter had decided to take it all to the next level in the Hotel De La Cruz kitchen. This time he'd hadn't been expecting it at all; he especially hadn't expected them to end up in a tangle of limbs that reminded Shawn of those few great days they'd spent together before but he'd been forcibly reminded as Lassiter had wrested with him, bodies sliding and rubbing together in a fine facsimile of frottage, if Shawn did say so himself. He was even more surprised that they both didn't walk away from it as hard as nails but he supposed that Juliet's discovery of Dietrich Manheim's dead body had put a damper on the situation.
Shawn found it strange how Lassiter had no problem laying hands on him, their bodies touching in ways that weren't considered intimate only because they'd been fully clothed. Even clothed, Shawn felt a couple of the positions they'd been in were still pretty damn intimate: the last time Lassiter had had Shawn's leg hooked over his arm like he'd had there at the end, Shawn had been losing the absolute last vestiges of his virginity and that was pretty damn intimate in anyone's book.
Not that Lassiter seemed to remember it, Shawn thought sourly. Bastard.
But it seemed that even if Lassiter's mind had forgotten who Shawn was, his body hadn't and he was taking liberties that only made sense in the context of a past that the detective seemed oblivious to.
Shawn wasn't sure how he felt about that.
After the arrival of the Attorney General aborted Lassiter's attempt to have them tossed out, Shawn and Gus made themselves scare, happy for the reprieve. Shawn treated Gus to lunch in the De La Cruz's restaurant -- courtesy of Lassiter's room tab, of course.
"They had to get that ring some other way," Gus said around a mouthful of fries, picking up their earlier thread of conversation. "There's no way they busted into that safe and left it unmarked."
Shawn was staring off into space, thinking. "We've gotta be missing something, then. The ring was stolen and I need to figure out how, so I can figure out who. Lassiter isn't going to catch them and someone's got to." When he refocused on his friend, he noticed that Gus suddenly looked a little uncomfortable. "What?"
"Nothing," Gus lied, rather unconvincingly. Shawn's eyebrow rose dubiously and Gus rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. You sure Lassiter hasn't figured out about...?"
"What?"
"You...and him...and..."
Shawn rolled his eyes. "I'm absolutely sure. Why?"
"That thing in the kitchen? Weird, man." Gus paused to take a drink from his soda. "I'm just saying."
"Yes, it was," Shawn admitted. "But I don't have time to think about him anymore. I've got a robbery to solve!"
"Anymore?" Gus looked torn between amusement and worry. "So you've been thinking about Lassiter?"
"A little," Shawn said vaguely. "Today, however, he's mostly taken a backseat to the ring and the lovely, lovely Lacey."
"This is just like the McCallum thing," Gus griped. "You need to forget about Lacey until we're done."
"No can do, my friend," Shawn said, gloating. "She's part of the case and I would be remiss if I didn't pay her the proper attention, don't you think? I mean, she was the last one to see the ring before it went poof."
Gus pushed aside his plate. "She was?"
Shawn went still for a moment, flashing back to the footage he'd seen while spying on Lassiter's briefing. "Yes, I'm pretty sure she was. It was a little hard to tell from the angle I was watching from but..." He snapped his fingers and started to rise from his seat. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" Gus demanded to know as he followed him out of the restaurant.
"To get our hands on a copy of that footage," he declared. "We'll start there. There's got to be something that the cops missed."
The rest of the case was a whirlwind of activity and less sleep than Shawn would've chosen to have if he hadn't been under such a pressing deadline. He was definitely sad that his criminal turned out to be Lacey because he'd already spent a lot of time thinking about what he wanted to do with those magic hands come their Friday date, but he was willing to concede that sleeping with a killer might not have been the best way to deal with his sexual frustrations, no matter how hot she was.
The wedding reception, at least, was a vast improvement over the wedding ceremony, even if Gus spent most of the time shooting him evil looks. Shawn thought he did a particularly good job on the toast that the best man had botched, and the remaining bridesmaids, Amber and Miranda, did their level-best to make sure that Shawn didn't miss Lacey's presence too badly. Shawn danced every dance he could, made good use of the open bar, and still had time to make it to the police station before the cops had finished booking Lacey.
"I bet this isn't the way she was expecting this day to end," Gus observed as they watched Lacey be led past, ignoring Shawn's discussion of his imaginary, future wedding.
"Yeah," Shawn agreed, sighing. "What a waste."
When Gus excused himself to take an important call from the office, Shawn meandered over into the bullpen, hoping to find Juliet for another round of 'impress the new detective with my amazing psychic powers.' It had worked well so far and he figured that, aside from the Chief who was willing to ignore the improbability of it if she got the answers, Detective O'Hara was his best bet for an ally at the station.
O'Hara was nowhere to be found but Lassiter was at his desk, looking just as sour and unhappy as he had been before he'd left the hotel. Shawn also noticed that he was still frowning at what looked like his hotel bill.
Shawn shoved his hands down into the pockets of his dress pants and put on that patented look of innocence that he'd perfected long ago. He whistled a little just for good measure and Lassiter almost immediately noticed him, sighing as if he were being besieged by a biblical plague instead of a slightly-rumpled, slightly-inebriated, slightly psychic.
"I thought I told you to get out of my sight," Lassiter ground out.
Shawn shrugged, hands still in his pockets. "That was hours ago! I figured you'd be missing me by now."
"Spencer, you'd have to be gone a really long time before I'd even contemplate missing you."
Shawn bit his tongue to keep from saying something like Oh? Wasn't twelve years enough? because he was positive that if he did either Lassiter or Gus would kill him before he could escape the station. "That's very harsh of you, Detective," he said instead. "First, I solve your crime and then I come all this way to say hello and this is how you repay me?"
"Speaking of repaying..." Lassiter's glare turned even more deadly as he rattled the sheets of paper at him. "Don't think I'm not going to prove this was all you and don't think you won't be paying for it."
He made a tsking sound by clicking his tongue. "This obsession of yours? Flattering but...misguided. You really just need to move on."
Lassiter had that look on his face again -- the one where he looked like he was going to explode -- so Shawn decided it was time to beat a hasty retreat. He sauntered away but he couldn't stop himself from turning around one more and add, "Don't worry, I'll come visit you some other time when you're in a better mood."
He left the detective sputtering in his wake.
When he caught up with Gus finishing his phone conversation outside of the police station, his friend shot him a look. "What's got you so pleased with yourself?" Gus asked, obviously dreading the answer.
Shawn grinned. "Oh, you know -- just the satisfaction of a job well done."
Gus looked dubious but accepted the answer and Shawn's memory surrounding the case left him smiling for days.
**
He didn't know when he'd first started thinking it, but Carlton had slowly started to label his days good or bad depending on whether or not Spencer was lurking around the station. There was nothing he hated more than to look up from his work to see Spencer loitering around or to arrive back from an interview to the unmistakable sight of Spencer's motorcycle parked in plain view.
Frankly, Carlton was uncomfortable with the idea that Spencer could, in such an absolute way, dictate his feelings and actions even though it had become embarrassingly apparent that he could from almost their first meeting. He was a good cop; he knew how to do his job and he'd risen through the ranks of detective as quickly as he had because of it. He'd had always played by the rules, kept his head in stressful situations, reined in his temper to such a degree that even Fenich had been impressed. It made him a good detective, a clear thinker, the perfect candidate for head detective and, one day, chief.
But it seemed like every time Spencer came into the picture, none of it held true and Carlton couldn't trust himself to act accordingly. Since he'd met Spencer in that first interrogation, he'd acted inappropriately during an investigation more times than he had in his first ten years of service combined. It was embarrassing and frustrating to think that someone like Spencer could drive him to it, especially when Carlton knew he should be better than any of the pretend psychic's antics.
Whenever Spencer was around, sense flew out the window. That wasn't a usual state for Carlton Lassiter; he'd always prided himself on his cool head. Of course, there had been times in the past when he had acted with a thoughtless disregard of consequences but it had been a long time ago --
Carlton ruthlessly shut down his wandering train of thought, clamping down on the memories to which it had been leading. Like everyone in the world, there was things he'd done in his past that he was ashamed of, that he regretted but he refused to dwell on them. In fact, he chose to do the opposite and hide them so deeply in the back of his mind that he rarely, if ever, accessed them. It had worked for him for a long time and it was just another thing he could blame on Spencer.
He'd still been trying to put some of his angry, deplorable behavior behind him from the Maxwell case when the Holby bank robbery landed on his desk again. With the two living members of the gang being released from prison, it fell to him and O'Hara to warn Raylene Wilcroft that her late husband's partners might come calling on her, intent on finding the missing money. They weren't the only ones who wanted to find the money, either -- Carlton hoped that they'd eventually lead him to its recovery as well.
Carlton and O'Hara had been talking to Raylene for no more than a few minutes when Carlton's bad day came walking over to sell his psychic freakshow to the widow Wilcroft. It was a sign of things to come, he knew, and it made Lassiter want to strangle the smirking psychic right there on the spot.
As always, Spencer sent logic flying out of the equation.
It didn't help that he eventually figured it all out, proving that Carlton had been way off the mark. David Wilcroft, alive? Raylene, as much of a threat as either ex-con? His mind just hadn't moved in those directions, not once during the original investigation or the current one.
The strangest moments, though, came when Spencer tried to give him credit in front of Chief Vick. It might've seemed magnanimous -- as O'Hara chided him later -- but Lassiter knew better than that. Shawn Spencer had probably never done a selfless thing in his life and it had been obvious that he had some ulterior motive. Carlton's first guess about trying to get him to admit that he was psychic had seemed solid at the time but the detective was no longer sure if it was Spencer's ultimate motivation. Of course, with someone like Spencer, there might not have ever been a real motivation behind the things he said; he just took delight in shocking people, in Carlton's opinion.
"What am I going to say now?" Spencer had said and that was the problem -- he was completely unpredictable. That also meant that he was completely untrustworthy and undependable, which were two things a cop couldn't have in a partner. If he and O'Hara couldn't trust his words or deeds, then he was useless, no matter how much his "psychic visions" helped.
Worst of all, Lassiter felt like he was starting to be the only sane one who remembered these things. It was obvious that the Chief put more stock than he thought wise in Spencer and his "private psychic detective" act and O'Hara seemed to be getting sucked in with a kind of naivety that Carlton found tiring in children, let alone adult police detectives.
The week was made even more unbearable by Spencer's triumphant arrival a few days later, a little dustier than usual but face so bright with glee that Lassiter had to blink and refocus before he realized that Spencer was talking at him.
"Lassy, up!" he demanded, gesturing with his hands. "You, too, Juliet! The spirits have spoken and have shown me the money!"
Eventually, he, O'Hara, the chief and a few uniforms followed Spencer and Guster out to the L-Kaylish Trail where Spencer said the spirits had led them.
"It's here," he assured them. "I can...feel it."
Carlton rolled his eyes but followed behind the shovel-wielding psychic as he led them through the turns of the mostly defunct trail. Finally they came upon an oddly shaped rock off to the side of a clearing and Spencer started having epileptic fits, thus denoting it as the location of the money.
Spencer and Guster helped the uniforms dig until they hit something solid -- an old suitcase. When they opened it up to reveal the missing Holby millions, O'Hara almost clapped in delight, Guster looked pleased and Spencer elbowed him with an "I told you so" look on his face.
"Aren't you happy?" Spencer demanded after the elbowing. "The money has been found!"
Only the Chief's presence kept Carlton was saying what he wanted to say.
Spencer, he noticed, had smudges of dirt all over his face, a particularly dark streak along one cheek. His clothes hadn't fared much better than his face. Carlton made a show of sliding his sunglasses back onto his face. "You got lucky."
"Oh, Lassy," he sighed. "When will you learn better?"
"It's not happening, Spencer."
Spencer shook a grimy finger in his direction. "It's already happened. You? Just need to accept it here." On "here" he laid a dirty palm against Carlton's pristinely white dress shirt, right where his heart would be. Before Carlton could protest properly, Spencer lifted his hand from Carlton's shirt -- only to tap the same dirty fingers against Lassiter's temple. "You already know it here."
As Carlton reached out -- probably to throttle him -- Spencer skipped away, heading determinedly toward the Chief where she stood speaking with the forensics team who were in charge of transporting the money.
O'Hara chose that moment to walk over. "Carlton, you have a little..." She indicated her temple.
He rolled his eyes as he reached for his handkerchief. "I know."
Her eyes moved down to his shirt. "And a little..."
"I know, O'Hara!"
Vaguely offended, O'Hara wandered off again, leaving Carlton to glare at Spencer's back from across the clearing.
Lassiter was thankful when their tech guys finished up and the group started their trek out of the trail. Once they reached the loop's gate, Carlton and O'Hara went straight toward the Crown Vic, their work finished. Carlton himself couldn't wait to be able to mark this money's recovery off of his case list, satisfied that it had been found, even if Spencer had been the one to do it.
Unfortunately, the detectives had to pass by Spencer and Guster as they were loading their shovels into the hatchback. There was a uniform standing with him, a young female officer who'd only recently transferred into their station.
"...solved?" Carlton heard her ask as they brushed by.
"Wow, now it's this, and the Summerland murder, and the Maxwell ring case and...well, of course, the McCallum murders. That's one of my more -- well, impressive -- cases, you know."
He couldn't keep himself from commenting, stopping to look back at Spencer. "Don't you ever get tired of bringing that up?"
Spencer's expression went -- blank, was the only word Lassiter could think of -- for a moment before it settled into a provocatively knowing expression, complete with half-raised eyebrow. "Well, you know what they say, Lassy. You never forget your first."
Once again, Lassiter was left with the feeling that Spencer was talking about more than just the McCallum murders but he shook the paranoia away and stomped off to his car, O'Hara trailing behind.
It was just one of many days made 'bad' thanks to Spencer.