Written for the halfamoon fic fest for the prompt: Psych - Juliet O'Hara (& OR / Carlton Lassiter) - "Five Futures Jules Could Have".
Jules and Lassiter kiss in the rain. It's not glamorous like in the movies, it's cold and damp and the rainwater leaves a taste, but they've been waiting too long and when their lips come together, it changes everything. It changes their future.
1. Jules runs away. Because they're partners, because work relationships never work, because if anyone found out then she would be transferred.
Because she knows his history, and she knows it would never work. It would surely run badly.
Because she can't be vulnerable like that, not with him. A good partner sees everything, weakness and anger and fear and the things you bury too deep beneath your smiles for anyone else to find, and she couldn't let him see all of that and the rest of her too.
So Juliet runs away, and Lassiter respects her decision with quiet disappointment, and continues to be a great partner by her side at work.
Years later, on her wedding day to a ruggedly attractive professional athlete, Carlton congratulates her with a kiss on the cheek and his best wishes. She pretends not to notice that he looks sad.
2. Lassiter runs away.
Juliet respects his decision, and responds cheerfully as their friendship grows into something awkward and fearful.
Until she doesn't.
She shows up at his house with a homemade peach pie and three thick ammunition catalogues and tells them they are going to spend some time together.
He takes one look at her, arms full of gifts and face full of demands, and he kisses her. The pie drops and splatters on the living room floor, but that's okay. Lassiter assures her that his floor is regularly cleaned with non-toxic materials, and she trusts him, so they sit on the floor with two forks and pick at the upper layer of pie as they look through catalogues and start to hint at the things they've been afraid to say.
It only lasts a few months, but they are happy together. When it ends, it's amicably, and they both look back on it with fondness.
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3. "Do we really want to do this?" Juliet asks.
He pauses, and his pause hurts more than it should, but then he practically lunges for another kiss, and she has her answer.
They keep it under wraps, and no one at work figures it out. Well, Shawn does, but he keeps quiet; Lassiter thinks he'll blab, but Juliet knows he won't.
He treats her the same on the job, much to her relief. He respects her and trusts her to kick some ass when need be, but he was always a bit protective of his partner, and that doesn't change.
To her surprise, she'sthe one who treats him differently. When he barks out an order for her to take the other (safer) entrance instead of going in the front with him, she hesitates, then agrees. She doesn't want him to feel like she doesn't believe in him.
Even though, before they started dating, she would have insisted on going in with him.
He is shot, and he spends a month unconscious, comatose, before waking up and asking for her, mouth dry with disuse.
She stays with him as he recovers, as he goes through therapy to get back into shape. But on his first day back at the job, she tells him that it's over.
He figures out why without her saying it.
4. They start dating, and everyone pretends not to notice. Even Chief Vick.
When Vick runs for the state legislature, she recommends Jules as her replacement as Chief of Police, and Lassiter couldn't be prouder.
Everyone continues to pretend to know nothing. Until Lassiter busts someone a little too powerful, and suddenly it's a scandal that the media just eats up: attractive young police chief and her affair with her head detective.
Cue wordplay with the title "head detective."
She resigns - she has no choice - and Lassiter angrily resigns too, even though the mayor asks him to stay and fill Juliet's shoes. (The mayor really doesn't want to have to make McNab the new chief).
The next election, Jules runs for mayor. She doesn't hide from the scandal, but corrects it, saying that it was not an affair but it was a relationship with a man she loves, and she is glad that she no longer has to hide it. She has good ideas, and is very tough on crime, and her smile reminds voters of their childhood cruses or their granddaughters. Representative Vick endorses her, too, and Jules wins by just a hair.
Juliet tries to convince Lassiter to return as Chief of Police, but he and Gus have opened up their own detective agency where Gus gets to use his extensive knowledge base and Lassiter gets to solve mysteries without "those pesky constitutional thingamajigs," as he puts it. Shawn had by then moved to Hollywood to star as a "psychic game show host," and Lassiter had grudgingly admitted that Gus was a pretty good partner (second best he's ever had).
So Jules and Lassiter no longer work together, but they make up for it by moving in together.
Four years later, Juliet decides she has had enough of politics and doesn't run again. She joins the Lassiter-Guster agency as a senior consultant, and devotes more time to her charitable interests, such as educating young girls in the proper use of firearms.
5. After they kiss, they can't get enough.
It's constant, and it's exciting.
Until they get caught in the evidence room by McNab, and they decide to cool it down, in public anyway.
Juliet is normally cautious, but she's gotten used to believing in her partner, and what they could do together. So she trusts this, and somehow, to her delight, he manages to let go of enough of his own baggage to trust her too.
They are open with their relationship and get special dispensation to stay partners.
Forty years later, the news does a human interest story about Santa Barbara's famous husband-and-wife cop team. They are the oldest active-duty police officers in the city, and they still have the highest solve rates every year; being in their seventies hasn't stopped them from figuring out the tough riddles, or from occasionally slamming gun-toting killers into the sidewalk before they can hurt anyone else. Everyone who sees the story note how the two tough old police detectives still look into each other's eyes with love and gratitude. As if, after all these years, they're still full of hope and anticipation.
The viewers all see the way they look at each other and it's perfectly clear: this is the same way they must have looked at each other, all those years ago, the first time they kissed.