For those of you who don't recognize it, this is a crossover with the Season Three ep of Buffy called "Band Candy." To summarize: For some reason, demons sell candy that reduces all the grownups to their irresponsible teenage forms. It wears off in a day or so, but until then, weirdness ensues.

Funnily enough, I was doing some research and it turns out that Sunnydale actually is Santa Barbara - in the name of poetic/storytelling license, it is now north-er. Ish.

Chapter One

Or,

The Time Shawn Inexplicably Wanted His Mommy

"Where did you get that?"

Gus stares at the huge box on the desk, while Shawn rummages through the drawer for scissors. It's easily the size of a speaker cabinet.

"My mother's cousin's best friend's… dog. Or something. Lives up north, somewhere sunny. Ah hah!" He produces the scissors with a flourish and goes to work hacking at the duct tape. "The point is, this is a time honored tradition, Gus! Remember that month in tenth grade, where I joined band–"

"Yes, Shawn." Gus crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow in what Shawn calls the 'Somewhere-and-Somehow-you-have-Pissed-Me-Off' pose. "You showed up to all of two practices, flirted with the drum major–"

"Hey. Katie Campbell made shakos hot."

"–then, you made faces at me through the window during my audition. I got third chair, Shawn. I had to sit next to Luke Kleiner. Do you know how long I practiced those scales?"

"Yes, unfortunately, because when you started speaking to me again one week, two days, three hours and fourteen minutes later, that was all you talked about. But Gus! Let us not dwell on the past."

"Why not?" Shawn, as usual, ignores him.

"For it is a glorious time of year. The time," he pauses dramatically, then gestures wildly to the mangled box, "of the band candy."

"Oh, hell no."

"Gu-us! Don't be such a Negative Nancy. Come on, try some, it's really good."

"No, Shawn. I remember the last time you gave me one of these."

Shawn raises an eyebrow as he unwraps a chocolate bar. "In tenth grade?"

"They were drugged, Shawn! I went home and my mom grounded me for two weeks because she thought I'd been drinking!"

"Gus, Gus, you're remembering it all wrong. That wasn't the chocolate."

Gus blinks in spite of himself. "It wasn't?"

"No, of course not. I spiked your Pepsi."

Over the years, Gus has learned that most of the mishaps in his childhood were Shawn's fault, but he hasn't quite gotten around to expecting to blame him for the little things. He's also learned that he really, really should. "Shawn."

Shawn holds up a hand in restraint, and since he doesn't have a cast on Gus knows he has to wait for an opportunity to exact revenge. Shawn's a slippery bastard. "Now, wait, Gus, try it from my perspective. You were already a sophomore in high school and you hadn't so much as tried one of those chocolate liqueur things, I had to intervene. And – and remember? The weekend after you weren't grounded anymore you were so mad at your mom that you went to Cindy Neilson's party and got smashed, and then for a month after that everyone called you 'Bruce Lee' and I never told you why."

"The hangover lasted for two days, Shawn. Two days! I got a C on my chemistry test!"

"Oh, come on, the street cred was so worth it. Also, it's scary that you remember that."

"Why? You would."

"Yes, but I spent an entire childhood honing my gift in a misguided effort to please my father, while yours is just born of some deep seated desire to hold everything against me. Ooh! Phone call!"

Gus would so smack him except that his phone goes off too, and it's Jules, and she's talking too fast for everything to be entirely okay.

"That was Chief," Shawn says. Gus nods and grabs his keys.

"Jules, and she sounds worried. We should hurry."

"Gus, wait!"

He stops in the doorway as Shawn grabs five or six candybars and tosses him one.

"Some for the road?"

——

"Hey, Chief!"

Shawn tosses Vick a candy bar, which she catches on reflex. "Spencer. My office, now, and for heaven's sake keep your voice down."

"Don't sweat it, Chief, Lassie's out for lunch. We've got at least twenty minutes."

Gus looks around and, sure enough, it's just Juliet staring blankly at her computer screen. He follows Shawn into the office and closes the blinds while the Chief sits fidgeting behind her desk and taps a pencil against her hand.

"Mr. Spencer, as always, I demand your full discretion and yet do not actually expect it."

"Chief! I'm wounded. Why, we're as subtle as a Philip Pullman novel, aren't we Gus?" Gus nods vigorously in agreement. "What'cha need us for?"

The case is about one of the richer geezers in the neighborhood, a guy pushing late sixties, who has apparently gone certifiably whacko. "Witnesses say he broke into a car in broad daylight, apparently hotwired it in two minutes flat, and drove off towards the south end of town," Chief says, tossing the file over.

"What kind of car?"

"I'm sorry?"

Shawn puts his hand on the file and another to his head and made his 'concentrating' face. "I'm sensing… I'm sensing something sporty, something flashy, something nobody over the age of fifty-five could look at without getting a headache, let alone an urge to drive it."

That one's out of nowhere, even for Shawn, and Gus has picked up an observation skill or two from all the years they've spent together. He hasn't even cracked the file yet! Chief nods, though, with her look that says she's impressed but not enough to buy the psychic thing. "It was a brand new Jaguar XK convertible, bright red. Belonged to a trust fund kid eating lunch at a café across the street. He headed towards, oddly enough, his girlfriend's house, and when she called the cops he drove off towards Ossy Hill."

Shawn and Gus exchange quizzical looks, and it's Gus who asks the burning question. "Why would a sixty year old man head for the Santa Barbara equivalent of make out point?"

"We have no idea. Anyway, cops picked him up outside of town, brought him back to a holding cell, where…" she trails off and rubs her forehead, as if the next thought is too painful to finish. "…where he escaped."

"What?"

"He got out, somehow, we think he might've picked a lock, and anyway it's not like anyone was too concerned about him. He's got a pacemaker for Christ's sake! He's on the run, Lassiter is about to have an aneurysm, and I'm not exactly pleased either." She braces her hands on the desk and leans towards them. "If you can't find him, and bring him back quietly, the press is going to have a field day. This is the second escape in five months."

"Got it, Chief. We are so on top of it." Shawn grabs the file and salutes, then nods briskly to Gus and heads for the door.

"Oh, and Spencer."

"Hm?"

She unwraps the chocolate bar he gave her and breaks off a piece. "Thanks. And stay out of Lassiter's way."

——

"So, what've we got?"

"Alexander Turner, age sixty-seven, wife died twelve years ago of cancer and he's just started seeing someone new."

"How new we talking? Anna Nicole Smith?"

"Mmm, no, nice old lady by the name of Lily Rushgrout, lives up on the Hill. Apparently they met at the country club."

"It says that?"

"Well, no, but they're both members, so it stands to reason."

"What about his family?"

"A daughter and a son, both grown up and married, three grandkids between the two of them. Daughter, Judith, lives in Sunnydale, California, and the son's all the way off in Canada somewhere." Shawn stops dead in the middle of the parking lot and it's only years of practice that keep Gus from crashing into him. "Sunnydale, Sunnydale. I know that name."

"Isn't it a town a little ways up north?" Gus grabs a candy bar out of his pocket and nibbles pensively. "I've heard the name before, on the news or something, maybe? I know we ship a lot of pharmaceutical stuff that way, more than Santa Barbara and Ventura combined."

"This is weird."

"What?"

"I can't remember."

"It's not that weird–"

"No, really, I can't remember. Ask me how many hats are in the room."

"Shawn, we're in a parking lot."

"That shouldn't matter. Gus, something's not right, 'cause I haven't been this off since that time in 9th grade when I got pneumonia–"

"And you spent the next month and a half on antibiotics. I remember. You made me bring you toast."

"Gus, I was sick, and that's not the point. This, this isn't, this isn't cool. This is not cool. I wanna go home."

"What? Shawn,"

"Take me home, Gus, I want my mom."

"Your mom?" Somehow, the fact that his mom moved away and is now living in Florida fails to come up, but because Gus is indulgent if nothing else, he drives Shawn back to his apartment. Or, at least, he would have, if he hadn't been rear-ended by another car two blocks away. He gets out, feeling more self-righteously angry than usual, and wheels on the car behind him.

It's Lassiter.

"Hey, Lassy-face!" Shawn calls from the front seat. He doesn't get out but he sticks his hand out the window and waves. Lassiter leans against his car door and full-on smirks, in a way that's entirely different from his usual 'Now-I-get-to-put-You-in-Cuffs' expression. This is more of an 'I've-got-you-right-where-I-want-you' look that would be more at home on Shawn's face, if not for the underlying menace. Gus gulps.

"Spencer. Guster."

"You hit my car."

Gus is pretty sure he's in the right here, but lord knows they've given Lassiter enough reason to want to hit them and all things considered it's really not that bad compared to the glint in Lassie's eye and maybe he should just leave.

"Did I?"

"Um, yes?" Lassiter doesn't move, but Gus is now extremely aware of the man's gun holster. "You- you rear ended me. Hit my bumper, see? It's all – all dented."

Now Lassiter is moving, and Gus could not be more nervous. "You got any witnesses to that claim, Guster? Anybody willing to back you up?" He's advancing now, in an incredibly intimidating fashion that makes Gus happy that it's always Shawn who's the center of his ire, and is his hair actually spiked?

"No, no, that's cool, you just do your thing and we'll catch you later, say hi to Jules, have a, a… later."

He bolts. There's no way to glorify it; he locks the doors and they are gone. Shawn's too busy laughing to comment but the fact remains that he didn't get out of the car.

He drops Shawn off at Henry's house (because, inexplicably, that was where Shawn demanded to go) and heads back to Psych. He has the sudden and unequivocal desire for a pineapple.

When he gets there, a redhead with dismay written across her face in capital letters is staring at the box on Shawn's desk. She jumps when the door slams behind him.

"Can I help you?"

"I, um, yes. I think so. These… these are yours?" She looks so earnest, so 'please don't kick me out' that Gus finds himself blushing like he hasn't since Fiona Lauper in the ninth grade.

"No, they're my partner's. Shawn. He got them from a friend. Do you want one?" Does she want one? Nice, Guster, he chides himself. She's looking at the box like it's going to explode; of course she doesn't want one.

"Oh, no, that's okay. Um. Do you mind if I take them? I'll pay you and all, it's just that these are, um, they're not good. For you. Cholesterol and all that."

Gus nods energetically and she looks confused. "Yes, you mind?"

"No! No, that's fine, go right ahead. Don't worry about the money or anything."

"Oh, okay, cool."

It's when he's helping her carry the box towards a van in the parking lot that he thinks to ask, "Wait, how bad for you are we talking?"

"Did you have one?" she asks, and gives him this look like he's suddenly making sense. Gus shifts his grip on the box, bewildered. "Ah. Well, don't worry about it, but you might want to go home. Watch some TV or something, maybe? Take the day off or whatever."

He's about five seconds away from asking her to join him when two things stop him. First, he's overtaken by a sudden and extreme nervousness, which is as effective as duct tape for shutting him up, and secondly, some subdued part of his brain manages to screech "high schooler!" to him through the fog. It turns out to be a good thing because the guy who opens the door to the van gives her a smile that he recognizes from the one and only time Shawn ever got serious about a girl. He puts the box in the back and waves as they drive away.

He's just dug out the pineapple from the fridge when he gets a call from Henry.

"Gus! What the hell is up with Shawn?"

"Sorry?"

"He's locked himself in his old room, he refuses to open the door, and unless I'm much mistaken that's "Remember the Time" he's got blasting on repeat which was a bad song in the first place. Plus, he is tying up my phone lines in what I'm fairly certain is a long-distance call to Florida. What in God's name is he on?"

Gus hangs up.

Two days later, Shawn calls him and they go for pineapple smoothies. Gus gets an anonymous check in the mail and uses it to fix his bumper, and the Chief has apparently taken a week-long leave of absence. When they try to find out why from Jules, they're promptly handed another case (a serial cat-burglar, which has Shawn making all sorts of Halle Berry jokes) and sent packing.

"Weird," Shawn says as she shoves them out the door. Gus decides not to comment.

Next Chapter: 'The Time Gus Wasn't The Only One Screaming Like A Little Girl'

No guarantees on the date, but I'll try to have it up within the month.

Anyway, reviews are greatly appreciated, unless you're going for the one-word "UPDATE" mandates that irk me so much. In that case, don't bother. Feedback (whether positive or negative) is always loved!