Note: Thanks to my friend Kelly for editing and providing suggestions :)

The kid Officer Tran had busted sat in the interrogation room, his arms folded across his chest and an 'I-hate-everything' pout on his face. Lassiter watched him from behind the two-way glass while he and O'Hara waited for someone to bring them the bagged evidence; she had a folder in her hands and was going over the information on him again.

"Daniel Troveman," she said. "Twenty-four, was a student at SBCC a year ago, until he left-slash-flunked out in the middle of the spring semester. Works for Fastman Delivery part-time, lives alone, has rich parents—his mother and father were both in computer programming, but are now retired—but he has almost nothing in his own bank accounts, no trust fund or other official income. No obvious ties to drugs or gangs."

"Well, he obviously has some sort of connection," he said. "No one sells just one gram of coke when that's all they've got."

"They found an eightball in his backpack—that's still in evidence, along with an ounce of pot, which could be medicinal..."

Lassiter rolled his eyes. "I thought being a hippie and being a crackhead were mutually exclusive, but the dopeheads will never stop proving me wrong. Anyway, even if all he had on him is an ounce and a gram, the money taken from the MixMart would have bought five times that much. So, whoever his partner is, he's probably got the rest of it. You can take lead—start with finding out where he got the coke and to who else he was planning on selling it off to. That might tell us who his partner is and where he is."

O'Hara looked pleased, and Lassiter quickly turned to a uniform coming down the hall with their evidence so that she wouldn't have time to thank him; she was doing a good job, learning fast and remembering everything he'd taught her, even under pressure, so there was no need, although she had a tendency to do so anyway. So far, that seemed to be her biggest fault: she was entirely too nice and polite for a detective. But she was still learning.

Juliet opened the door to the interrogation room and went straight for the table with their suspect, not missing the way his eyes flicked past her and settled on Lassiter, pegging him as the one in charge and aiming most of his hostility toward him immediately. Juliet shifted slightly to her left, breaking Troveman's line of sight to her partner so that he had to look at her.

"Are you ready to tell us where you got the coke?" she asked, pitching her voice firm but polite.

He attempted to give her an innocent, surprised look. "What coke?"

"This coke," Lassiter said, tossing the evidence bag onto the table and ending his thirty-second promise to let her take point. "You're telling us you can't explain that?"

The kid sneered at him. "It's a bag, lawman. You've probably never seen one before because you don't have one."

Juliet ignored him and went on before her partner could divert the topic of the interview. "Can you please just tell us where you were last night around midnight?" She also ignored Lassiter's disgusted look at her phrasing.

Daniel Troveman flicked his eyes to her, and his sullen look once again replaced his fierce one. "At home."

"Okay." She nodded, business-like, not so much the good cop but the 'just answer my questions and this will be over' cop. "And was anyone with you?"

He shrugged. "I may have had a date over."

"And this person's name?"

Troveman hesitated, glanced at Lassiter, and then glanced at the bag of dope he'd been arrested with and sighed. "Shawn Spencer," he said finally. "We met at ten, and he left my place this morning, so that's all your mystery hours covered." He looked up to see both detectives staring at him, and he brought back his pouty glare. "Got a problem? Neither one of us was robbing some tacky Mom & Pop Shop, so it's none of your business who I'm sleeping with."

"I'm sorry," Juliet said slowly. "Wh-what did you say your—your date's name was?"

"And we need contact information," Lassiter broke in. "To confirm your alibi."

Troveman glared at him again. "Shawn," he said, very loudly and very slowly, and then spelled it. "Spencer. He's a psychic. I don't have his number memorized, but it's in the phone you guys took. He was with me all night and can tell you I didn't rob anyone or anything."

"All right," Juliet said, and she wrote it down. "We'll have someone escort you back to the holding cell while we contact him and confirm your alibi."

"This is great," Lassiter said once they were back in the hallway.

She looked at him, startled to see that he looked hugely smug. "What's great?"

"So Shawn Spencer likes men," he said and snorted. "I knew there was something more he was hiding, other than that psychic malarkey. Go call him, O'Hara—I can't wait to see the look on his face when he has to tell us who he was with."

"You're going to give him a hard time about dating a guy?" Juliet asked, her eyebrows raised. "I didn't think you were like that."

He glanced at her and made a face. "I'm not. For one, I—my mother lives with a woman."

"Oh, I didn't know that." Juliet couldn't remember ever hearing him talk about his father, which now made sense, but it was hard to picture her partner growing up with lesbian parents. "Have they been together for a long time?"

"Since I left for the Academy. The idea was hard to get used to, but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell her or anyone else who they can be with."

She gave him a measuring look. "So why are you glad that we have to question Shawn and make him admit he's gay?"

"Not because of that—I don't care who he dates or sleeps with or... or whatever." He shrugged irritably. "I'm just sick of him always getting one up on us, and now we finally know one of his secrets before he knows we know. I really don't give a crap if he's gay; I just want to see his face when he realizes he's caught out for once."

Juliet frowned. "That's mean. If he doesn't want to be out—"

"It doesn't need to go any farther than the interrogation room and our report. And we have to ask, don't we?"

"I guess." Juliet gave him a stern look now. "But no jokes. We just confirm that he was with our suspect the entire night and that he didn't see anything illegal, and then we let it go." She raised her eyebrows at Lassiter when he glanced over at her, and when he just rolled his eyes and flicked a hand up, she nodded and went to her desk to make the call.

Two hours later, Shawn leaned casually in the doorway of the interview room. "Hi Jules," he greeted. "Lassie-pants. I hear you're in need of my prodigious..." He grinned. "Skills."

"Hi Shawn," Juliet said, gesturing to the seat on the opposite side of the table. "We just need to ask you a few quick questions."

He touched his forehead and squinted at the ceiling. "The answers are yes, no, and Bismarck."

Lassiter looked at Juliet. "One donut-hole joke."

"No. Shawn, can you come sit down, please? I don't think any of those answers are going to do it."

"So you weren't going to ask if I am the walrus, if I bit my thumb at you, and what the capitol of North Dakota is?"

She smiled. "Not today."

"Ah." He nodded wisely and sauntered into the room, pulling the chair out and sitting on it backwards. "Those questions must have been coming from Lassie."

"You are not the walrus," Lassiter said.

"Goo goo joob," Shawn said seriously.

"And I really don't care what you're biting or at whom."

Shawn opened his mouth as if to retort to this, too, and then he squinted slightly at Lassiter, then at Juliet. "South Dakota," he said slowly.

"Pierre," Juliet said. "And no, Shawn. We just—we need to ask you where you were last night."

"From about ten o'clock until this morning," Lassiter added.

Shawn was entirely still, except for his eyes, which flicked from one detective to the other, back and forth. His lips pressed together a little, and then he finally folded his hands, laid them on the back of the chair, and rested his chin on them, looking only at Juliet. "On a date," he said lightly. It was obvious that he'd figured out what was going on, and Juliet sensed more than saw her partner slump irritably now that they both knew they weren't going to get the reaction he'd been hoping for.

"Okay," Juliet said, her pen poised over her notepad. "Name?"

"'Shawn Spencer, how do you do?"

"Name of your date?"

"Am I a suspect?"

"In what?" Lassiter asked.

Shawn shrugged, his chin still on his hands. "In... whatever. I didn't see or hear anyone do anything illegal, and I didn't do anything."

"No one's saying you did," Juliet said quickly.

"Oh. I'm the alibi." He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he shrugged again. "Yeah, okay. I was with Danny Troveman. Ten to about nine-thirty, his place, overnight." He raised his eyebrows. "That it?"

She jotted down what he'd said. "Almost—we just need to make sure your account matches his. Where did you meet?"

She looked up to see him still looking at her steadily. "His apartment."

"And were you there the entire time?"

"Yup."

"Were you aware that he's a drug dealer?" Lassiter asked. "An ounce of pot and an eightball, is that what you're into?"

Shawn shrugged, still not looking at him. "Not the sort of ball I was after, y'know?" He frowned. "So he's been arrested?" he asked Juliet. "For what?"

"I just told you," Lassiter said. "And if you knew your boyfriend was selling drugs, and you didn't report it—"

Shawn finally glanced at him, giving him a strange look. "He's not my—it's not—never mind." He looked back at Juliet. "I didn't know outright—I didn't even know he was still into coke. I don't smoke or snort, myself, and he never got anything out when I was there. What I did notice I assumed was just for personal use, not for profit. I figured you guys have bigger perch to percolate than one delivery guy with a dime and a Pink Floyd black light poster. Trust me, Jules: this dude just wants to grow up to be Tommy Chong, not George Jung."

"So there are drugs in his apartment," Lassiter pressed on. "Where did you see them?"

"In the bedroom."

"Where in the bedroom?"

Shawn looked at him from the corner of his eye—it was clear that he was trying very hard to be cooler with all of this than he really was, possibly because it'd been sprung on him, but more likely because Juliet was right: he hadn't wanted this part of his life to be anyone else's knowledge. "There were two joints in the nightstand drawer," he said evenly, "between the box of condoms and the Astroglide."

Lassiter glanced at the notepad O'Hara was holding, saw that she wasn't writing, and looked up at her face in time to see incredulity and annoyance. "Why aren't you writing?" he asked. "We've got a search warrant for that apartment on the way, we might as well know where to start."

Shawn frowned, tilting his head a little. "What else is he suspected of? Why did you want to know where he was at midnight?"

"He was arrested when he tried to sell a gram of coke to an undercover officer, and he had plenty more with him," Lassiter said, hedging the question. "I don't suppose you can account for his whereabouts last Saturday, too?"

Now Shawn grinned. "I can, actually."

Juliet had her pen ready. "What times?"

"Umm... I'd have to check my texts to be sure, but about nine Saturday night until, like, eight Sunday morning."

This she wrote down, along with what she'd been too busy trying not to glare at Lassiter to jot down before. "That would clear him," she told her partner. "He can't have been on either of those robberies if he was with Shawn, since they happened around one and two in the mornings."

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine, but we still have him on possession and intent to sell." He made a face. "A judge grants puny bail, and he'll pay it and be back out, and we'll be back to square one."

"Am I done?" Shawn asked.

"Yes, thank you." Juliet gave him a smile and set her pen down on her notepad.

Shawn got up from the chair and turned toward the door; then he hesitated and glanced back at her quickly. "Um, so... how much do you think Danny's bail is going to be? You probably know this if you did a background on him, but his parents aren't going to help."

"I'm not sure. It depends."

"Okay." Shawn seemed for a moment as if he was going to say something else, and then he turned and left the interview room.

"There, see?" Lassiter said. "I didn't make fun of him. Are you happy?"

"I'm very proud of you," Juliet said, only slightly sarcastically.

.

Shawn and Gus sat on a bench in a mostly-deserted hallway near the bail office; Shawn was annoyed because not only had Gus made him literally double-pinkie-swear that he was going to pay back the money Gus had fronted as the good-faith money for the bail bondsman, but his so-called friend had also brought along a family-size bag of Cheetos and was refusing to share. Gus unconcernedly chomped on puffy orange curls while Shawn signed over the cash to the officer behind the glass and spoke to Juliet, the head detective on the case, about getting everyone out of here and into an economy bag of Chester's best.

"Wait here until we get your statements printed and you can sign them," she said. "I'll have to have Daniel sign his, but I can tell him to meet you here once the bail goes through."

"Thanks, Jules." Shawn smiled at her, then made another grab for Gus's Cheetos.

Gus smacked his hand. "You must be out of your damn mind."

"Gus, don't be pot-scented incense, you have a whole bag!" Gus gave him a steady look and crammed an entire handful of cheesy goodness into his mouth, and Shawn folded his arms. "That's it," he said. "I'm getting one of those boxes of Goldfish crackers that look like a milk carton for the Jolly Green Giant. I'll be swimming in fish and you'll just be powder-coated orange."

Twenty minutes later, he had made three more attempts to sneak a handful of what he'd once, as a seven-year-old, nearly convinced his best friend were old cheetah toes, and he was power-blocked each time: once as Gus hastily grabbed the top of the bag and held it closed, once as he twisted around to the side and denied access, and once as he threw a hand into Shawn's face and got crumbly cheese powder on his nose. "I had a girlfriend who was like that with snacks at the movies," Shawn complained. "If I wanted any, I had to spend sixteen dollars on day-old popcorn."

"Girlfriend?" a deadpan voice said.

Shawn looked up and saw Danny staring at him warily. He made a 'pshaw!' sound and waved his hand. "Like, years ago," he said. "I've of course learned how to circumvent those circumstances. If I rustle or smell like butter the next time you see me, don't ask and I'll share." He stood up. "Jules is printing off stuff I have to sign and then we can go, unless you're a hardened con now who can't stand the outside. You want to grab dinner? Gus wouldn't share his snacks and I'm withering away."

"I don't like girls," Danny said.

Shawn squinted at him. "Is that a burn? Because you probably should have noticed that I'm not one."

"You know what I mean. You're not actually gay."

Shawn raised both hands, palms up. "Dude," he said slowly. "The stuff I did with you was pretty gay."

"Whatever." Danny turned away, his tone disgusted. "I'm not into bi guys. Don't call me."

Shawn's mouth dropped open. "What? Are you kidding me right now? I come down here and not only confirm your alibi and vouch for you, but I get outed, and then we post your bail, and now you're throwing some sort of high school tantrum because I also like girls?"

"More like third grade," Gus muttered.

Danny rounded on him. "You should have told me!" he insisted. "I don't like wasting my time. No—just goodbye, Shawn." He turned on his heel again and started to stalk away; then he stopped when he got halfway up the stairs and was met with Juliet and Lassiter. He glared at both of them. "Can I go, then?"

Lassiter raised one hand and made a shooing gesture at him instead of telling him to get the fuck out of his station. The waste of space edged around them and continued his sulk toward the door, for which Lassiter was glad. They had been close enough to hear the last few exchanges between the pothead and the fake psychic, and while he arrested a lot of stupid, crass people, this kid had just made the Losers Of The Week list.

Juliet gave her partner an almost threatening look. "Be nice to Shawn. He clearly wasn't ready to be out, and he just got dumped."

Lassiter snorted. "Big loss. That kid's birth certificate is probably an apology letter to his parents from the hospital."

Juliet gave him another look, this one uncertain. "Maybe, but that's irrelevant."

"Fine, fine." He flapped a hand toward the hall near the bail office and then followed her the rest of the way down the stairs.

Shawn was looking at Gus, his hands held up again. "Gus? What just happened? Did I black out and go to an alternate universe again?"

"Nope." Gus nonchalantly popped another Cheeto into his mouth. "You've never been to another universe."

"That's what everyone says until they end up in one." Shawn let his hands fall limply to his sides. "Are you sure? Maybe it happened when I touched that lucky rabbit's foot that really makes you actually lucky and then I was forced to burn it before it killed me."

"That was last night's episode of Supernatural, Shawn." Gus considered. "Although I can see a sneaky hot waitress filching forty grand of lottery tickets away from you."

"Oh. I didn't know you watched that."

"Of course I do— why do you think I put salt in strategic locations all around the office?"

"Popcorn emergencies?" Shawn sat back down on the bench and folded his arms. "What the hell."

"Sorry, man." Gus said sympathetically. "You can't have the best of both worlds without having the worst of them. Some straight dudes are going to 'ew' at you for liking dudes, and some gay dudes are going to 'ew' at you for liking women. It's called biphobia. You want a Cheeto?"

Shawn sat up straighter, considered this, and then he took the entire bag. "Yes, actually." He jammed a particularly fat one into his mouth and crunched it down, glaring down the hall, where he could now see Lassiter and Juliet coming. "What a sucky day, and not in the good way," he complained. "Can we revoke bail?"

"No," Gus said, licking cheese dust from his thumb. "If he doesn't show up for his court date, we're out the money. If he does, we'll get it back."

"I'm going to sign for the check with a train of eleven women behind me." Shawn's gaze went down a notch from an annoyed glare to a tired wariness when the two detectives slowed and then stopped in front of them. "Hey, Jules. I don't suppose you'd want to put on a bikini top that has my face on the cups and follow me around for a while?"

"Um," she said.

"Be nice, O'Hara," Lassiter said, and she gave him a look as she handed Shawn the printout of his statement to sign. Lassiter waited until she had secured Spencer's scrawl on the sheet and tucked it back into her folder, and then he gestured to both Spencer and Guster and to the hallway and stairs that led to the exit. "You two can go." He looked at Spencer, but he was gazing moodily down into Chester's cheetah face. "Anything that was discussed in the interview room stays here," he added. "Interviews go in our reports, but they're not exactly public domain." He expected Spencer to reply to that or at least to look up, but he didn't; after a moment, Guster turned to look at his friend, and Lassiter nudged O'Hara back toward the stairs so that she wouldn't feel compelled to be sympathetic and they could get back to work.

.

Lassiter slowed on his way back to his desk when he saw Shawn Spencer sitting in a hard plastic chair in the hall near the door by himself, still cramming Cheetos in his mouth with a determined look on his face. He almost ignored him, and then he realized that he couldn't see Guster anywhere, and he wondered what was going on. He had work to do—like figuring out who really had robbed the MixMart—but there was something about the fixed way Spencer was glaring at a poster reminding citizens that a vehicle's safety harness was required by law and shoving his arm almost up to the elbow into the snack bag that made him pause. He glanced around, saw that no one was paying attention to this entire direction, remembered the constant feeling of rejection he'd almost always gotten from people he'd been seeing (or people he'd been married to), and he slowly walked over.

"So, who did rob the MixMart?" he asked. "Any news from the spirit world on that?"

Spencer examined his fingers, which were coated with a thick orange powder. "Nope."

"Where's Guster? I thought you two would have been off buying five gallons of ice cream and some firecrackers or something. It's Tuesday, isn't it?"

Spencer's face remained stony. "Vick had our check ready from the bounty hunter case and he went to sign for it. It's raining, and he has the car keys."

Lassiter could tell that he wanted to be left alone, but he couldn't determine whether that meant by everyone in general or just by someone who, to be fair, had a strong likelihood of teasing him about everything that had come to light. He wouldn't, though. Not over this.

He tucked the folder he was holding underneath one arm and leaned against the same wall the short line of chairs were on, not looking at Spencer. "I'm sorry," he said.

He saw Spencer glance at him out of the corner of his eye. "For what?"

Lassiter thought about it. "Your sucky day," he said finally. "Among other things, it isn't fun to get dumped."

Spencer shrugged. "I don't care."

Which was what people said when they did. "Mmmhmm," Lassiter said. "That's why you're stuffing your face with Cheetos."

Now Spencer looked up at him fully, seemingly unable to decide if he should be amused or not. "Well, how do you eat Cheetos?" he asked.

"I don't."

"Ah, there's your problem." Spencer was still studying him, and after another moment Lassiter glanced down, his face carefully neutral. Spencer frowned slightly, returning his attention to the cheese snacks but not sticking any more into his trap. "Thanks, Lassie," he said quietly.

"For what?"

"For not being a dick."

It just went to show how much he was trying to not be a dick that he didn't point out the fact that, apparently, Spencer liked dicks.

"It does suck," he went on after a moment. "It wasn't serious, but... ugh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but some people need to grow the hell up."

Lassiter snorted. "Yeah," he said and sighed. "I know, believe me."

Spencer had been reaching into the bag again, and when Lassiter saw his hand pause, he stiffened against the wall, thinking, Fuck. You had to go and forget who you were talking to—he picks up on everything somehow, and you know how they say it takes one to know one.

Sure enough, Spencer looked up at him slowly, his gaze sharp and contemplative. Lassiter pressed his lips together and examined a poster displaying the correct way to secure a rear-facing infant safety seat in a vehicle.

"Huh," Spencer said. When Lassiter chanced a glance at him, he saw that he had on a small grin, the first one since he'd realized why he'd been called in for questioning. He held up the snack bag. "Cheeto?"

Lassiter sighed. Too late. "Sure." He selected an orange curl and munched it. "These are pretty good," he added.

"Yup."

He glanced at Spencer again and saw that he was still looking up at him, his face solemn, something in his gaze that wasn't there before—his eyes were still and contemplative, and all of a sudden Lassiter realized that his breathing had slowed and that he wasn't hearing anything going on in the bullpen. He really should be working right now—police work beckoned, police work that did not involve eating kid food and talking to the overgrown kid who was, most of the time, a menace to police procedure. He stood up straight and dusted off his hands, and then the voices and ringing phones came back to his ears. "Well—well, I have work to do," he said. "Robberies. Do not get involved."

"Sure," Spencer said softly.

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

"Well... good." Lassiter turned to go.

"Hey, Lassie?"

He turned back around warily, and this time he saw that Spencer had an odd look on his face, almost like he wanted to grin but wasn't sure if he should. "What, Spencer?"

Then he did smile, just a little, his eyes darting away quickly before flicking back to him. "Uh... call me," he said.

Lassiter just looked at him, and then he made an about-face and didn't stop until he was behind his desk, his notes from the MixMart case and a folder of witness accounts in front of him. Call Spencer indeed—as if that would be a productive idea. He didn't even have his number.

O'Hara came over from her desk and set her copies of the paperwork on their interview with Daniel Troveman on his desk for him to look over and add his signature to. "Coffee?" she asked.

"Sure."

As she walked away, he shuffled through the pages and stopped when he came to the report on their interview with Spencer, including his information, as he had given a statement and an alibi. All of his contact information was at the top of his sheet... including his phone number. Lassiter glanced back at the hallway, but the chairs were empty now; Guster must have collected their payment, since they had apparently gone, but the memory of Spencer's small grin and his last words—call me—were bright and clear.

Lassiter slowly reached for a notepad, and, before he could think too much about it and stop himself, he copied Shawn's number down, folded the note over, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. For use as needed.