AN: Well, here goes. First ever fanfic! Of anything! So, tell me (in details! Oh, how I love details!) what you love, what you hate, what makes you tilt your head to the side and go "Whaaa...?"

This will contain: violence, same- and opposite-sex sex (sexy sex), cursing, spoilers, terrible and/or nonexistant editing... this is an exercise to make me write more better faster. But it will also be fun! I hope. I don't have too much of a structure planned for this story, so feel free to request/suggest! But also don't be surprised when I don't listen :P

Lastly, (I'm sorry for this super-long note. I promise no more of this length.) this story requires a bit of setup. This first chapter is my take on the scene in episode 10, season 1, "From the Earth to Starbucks" where drunk!Lassie rants all over Shawn about how he's not a good cop anymore. Seriously, for MOST of this chapter, it feels like plagiarism. But hopefully this details I added will be enough to make it interesting, and I promise the next chapter is almost done! And don't worry, it's all original(ish) material from here.

Thanks for reading, and pretty please review!

Ch. 1

Shawn took a gulp of his drink as he began to wander back toward the bar, and his date ran off to call her ex-boyfriend. He looked around the crowded restaurant, taking in all the tiny details and filing them away, and then stopped, staring at the tall, dark-haired man slumped at a table by himself, holding his head.

"Lassie?"

"Spencer! Why am I surprised…" Lassiter sounded ever-so-slightly genuinely pleased to see Shawn. This needed exploring.

"Why are you wasted?"

Lassiter ignored the question, turning to shout for another drink. As Shawn approached the detective's table, he mentally revised "wasted" to "utterly shitfaced." Lassiter smelled like gasoline and body odor, and the dark circles under his eyes, as well as the lines on his face, seemed only a continuation of the wrinkled and stained ruin of his normally pristine clothes.

Jesus, Lassie, thought Shawn, as Lassiter continued babbling at him. What the hell happened to you? Earlier that day, Lassiter had seemed fine, if maybe a little over-caffeinated… and even more impatient with McNab than normal… and when Shawn sat down on Lassiter's desk, plucked the pencil from the detective's hands, and opened his mouth to say something hilarious, Lassiter simply got up and walked away. Juliet had merely shrugged and gone back to her own paperwork, so Shawn spent a few minutes flirting with her, and then, more subtly, with McNab, before he left. He knew McNab was totally straight, and married, but he was just so much fun to mess with! Almost as fun as Lassie.

"You astound me." The grating, slurred voice interrupted his thoughts, and he looked at Lassiter in shock.

"C-Come again?" said Shawn.

"It's beyond astounding; it is some of the most impressive reasoning I've ever seen." This sentence was delivered in the overly-enunciated voice of the truly inebriated, as Lassiter leaned in and stared at Shawn. Shawn stared back as the detective continued to babble, trying to see past the fog of alcohol and figure out what exactly was happening.

"Is there a punch line coming? Let's get to it," Shawn said, looking down, feeling the familiar twist in his stomach that normally accompanied talking to his father. Weird. It's just a drunk Lassie. I wish Gus were here to see this. Wait, just a drunk Lassie? I should see if I can record this conversation with my phone or something. For posterity.

But Lassiter continued, spilling bitter compliments at Shawn between gulps of Scotch. Shawn was amazing. Shawn was unstoppable. Shawn was definitely not a psychic, but he had the best mind Lassiter had ever worked with.

He suddenly looked at Shawn with wide blue eyes, and lurched closer. "Can I tell you a secret?" Over Shawn's protest, he said, in a voice that was somehow amused and hopeless at once, "You know how everyone thinks my wife and I have been separated for nine months?"

"Yes?"

"Two years. Two years tonight, and I'm the one that keeps tryin' to fix the thing…" Lassiter reached behind him for his drink and unbalanced, nearly falling, but Shawn grabbed his elbow and pulled the detective back toward him. Just keep pulling, said a tiny voice in his head, one that Shawn normally listened to without question. Just put your other arm around him and pull him close and kiss him… As much fun as the voice usually got him into, Shawn told it to shut up for now. No way was he trying anything with Lassie so clearly fucked up, and not just from the alcohol.

"Well." Shawn looked around. He really didn't want to be here for this. Why couldn't Lassie break down in the privacy of his own home, where no one had to see him and feel useless because they couldn't help? He had to leave. "I'm gonna let you go. Don't drive."

"You know, I used to be a good cop. Seriously. Stunning arrest record…" Lassiter continued talking like he hadn't even heard Shawn. "I caught the Black Bay Killer."

"Yes you did!" Shawn said, a little too loudly. "I remember it well." Please let me go.

"Though, I had a tip."

"The blue sedan."

"Yeah…" Lassiter focused on Shawn, a look of horror blooming on his face. "That was you?"

Shit. Why did you say that? "It… might have been."

"See what I mean?" Lassiter slumped back onto the table, and kept talking. He was over, he was done, he even got out his handcuffs and told Shawn to take them, as he wouldn't need them anymore. Shawn tried halfheartedly to get him to stop with the normal barrage of ridiculous compliments, but when he'd finished, Lassiter again seemed not to have noticed Shawn speaking. He told Shawn about the case that was eating him up inside, the case that finally made him realize he was done. When he was through ranting, Shawn took a deep breath.

"Lassie… Carlton." That was weird. "I believe in you, man! I really do, you just gotta trust your instincts!" Wow. I believe in you, man? Yeah, that'll get through to him! Shawn Spencer, basically the cause of all his misery, believes in him. Good job. As he finished saying the cheerful words, a scream came from the other side of the bar. Shawn's date came running over, bouncing with excitement.

"I just got engaged!" She shrieked.

As Shawn turned back to Lassiter, he started to talk again, in the hopes that this would forestall further drunken ramblings. He didn't need to worry – Shawn turned around just in time to see Lassiter slide bonelessly off his stool and onto the floor.

Again, shit. Shawn stood staring for a moment, then looked around. A few people glanced their way, but for the most part the people in the bar had more interesting things to do than watch a man spill his guts to his enemy. Well, Lassiter always said they were enemies.

I can't just leave him here. Sighing, Shawn ran his hands through his hair. As much as he would love to just draw a big moustache on Lassiter and go home, he couldn't. Lassiter hadn't been angry; he hadn't even blamed Shawn for solving all those cases. He'd been resigned, bitter, defeated. And Lassiter didn't have a Gus to come over at three in the morning and pry the bottle from his hands, and suggest sleep instead of a late-night motorcycle ride. Lassiter had guns, and an empty apartment, and probably more alcohol, none of which were likely to help him out of the hole he'd fallen into.

So Shawn called a taxi, and sat down on the floor to attempt to wake Lassiter. "Lassie… Lassie… come on, buddy, open your eyes. You're like twelve feet taller than me; there's no way I can carry you. Lassie. Carlton. Come on…" Several minutes of talking and gentle slaps to the face did nothing. "Lassie! Wake up! Be vertical for like five seconds for me…"

Exasperated, Shawn grabbed the drink still sitting on the table and tossed it into Lassiter's face. This elicited a shocked splutter and a flail, and the detective finally opened glassy eyes. Shawn stifled a giggle and put a hand on his shoulder. "Lassie? Lassitude? Hey, that's actually a word. Hey, Lassie, you in there? You wanna come outside with me?"

Lassiter just stared, straight in front of him, eyes starting to droop shut again. Shawn put his hand on Lassiter's cheek, turning Lassiter's head to face him.

Lassiter's eyes finally focused on Shawn, and then widened. "Spencer…?" He whispered.

"Lassie?"

Lassiter just leaned forward, eyes closing, and before Shawn could move their lips connected.

And stayed connected.

Lassiter put one hand around the back of Shawn's head, fingers burrowing into his hair, and the other around the small of Shawn's back, pulling him closer as Lassiter opened his mouth. Shawn felt strong fingers, a warm body, and soft lips, and reciprocated unthinkingly, clasping Lassiter's head with both hands and shuddering a little as Lassiter's tongue entered his mouth.

After a few seconds, Shawn dragged his face away with a gasp. Lassiter let out a soft growl, and tried weakly to pull Shawn back, but his hands seemed to have lost their urgency, and with a last indignant mumble, Lassiter passed out again, leaving a pale and wide-eyed Shawn staring at him.

What. The. Hell. Shawn could only form one thought, and it ran around and around in his mind. What the hell.

Luckily, the taxi arrived just then, and the driver turned out to be an old, cigar-chomping Italian man whose daughter Shawn had rescued from her mother (the driver's now-ex-wife) and the mother's psychotic boyfriend a month or so ago. Franco was the man's name, and he yanked Shawn off the floor into a tobacco-scented, back-slapping hug, after which he helped Shawn carry Lassiter to the taxi, laughing uproariously the whole time.

After Franco got them to Shawn's apartment, and helped Shawn carry Lassiter inside, and refused to take any of Shawn's money, and drove away still laughing, Shawn looked at the now-snoring man sprawled on his couch.

Awesome. Now what?