DISCLAIMER: If I could make any money off of writing psych stories, y'think I'd be doing it under a fake name?
RATING: Let's call it T. Sure. Why not. Because there could be smut ahead. (Who are we kidding; of course there'll be smut.)
SUMMARY: Let's get this out of the way: LASSIET. Carlton decides it's time to give up the dream of Juliet, but things don't go the way he plans for either of them.
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CHAPTER ONE
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So what happened was, this thing. This thing... happened.
And after it happened, not that he ever really thought anything would change because of it, nothing else happened.
(What he had hoped for was irrelevant; hope was always irrelevant in his case.)
Except after a few weeks, he realized that not only was nothing going to happen, nothing was ever going to happen—not that it was ever going to happen in the first place—and further, the only person being made miserable because of it was him, and the only person who could move him out of that state of misery was, damn it all, him.
It was a rolling sort of epiphany, and the last piece of it had to do with a remote control falling under the coffee table and out of his reach at a time when he was too tired and too lazy and too blah to get up and fetch it.
Which was how he ended up watching Love Actually.
Which, actually, was pretty good, and pretty funny, and pretty charming, and when Mark went to Juliet (of course, Juliet) and silently confessed his feelings—not with expectation of reciprocation, but simply because he knew he had to tell her before he could move on—and then stood in the street after she kissed him and told himself "Enough. Enough now," it was the last piece Carlton needed to complete the epiphany.
Enough.
Enough now.
He had to give up this pointless, unattainable dream and move on.
There would be no confession, no standing in the street, no brief kiss before the love of his life went back to her man. Lying on the sofa talking to himself was good enough. It was time to look outside the cage he'd put himself in.
It was time… to go out and find someone.
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Juliet left Shawn slowly. At first she didn't know she was doing it.
But one night after he came to bed she felt so… wrong about him being there beside her that she got up and went into the living room, curling up on the overstuffed chair under an afghan and immediately feeling so much more settled that she slept dreamlessly until dawn.
She couldn't have explained it to him, and it was best not to try. But after a few weeks, she never slept all night in the same space as Shawn.
He always stayed up later—there was TV to watch, or he'd be doing something with Gus—so sometimes she would start out in the bed and move to the chair after he joined her, and sometimes she started out in the chair and stayed there until morning. Since she left the house every day hours before he stirred, it took him a while to notice her new routine.
Still, after a week he asked her what was up and she told him she was having trouble staying asleep, which was true, and the chair worked for her. He suggested moving it into the bedroom—he even suggested sharing it with her, nudge nudge wink wink. She assured him it was just a phase and he shouldn't worry about it. Work stress, maybe. Seasonal changes. She didn't know, but don't worry about it.
Even on those rare occasions when he talked her into sex, she never stayed with him after. He'd fall asleep quickly and she couldn't get out of bed fast enough.
Gradually, it began to be easy, these little white lies and evasions. Probably not as easy as it was for him to lie to her every day about every single thing, but as long as there was some element of truth in her words, she could live with the deception.
She had to live with it, if she was going to continue to live with him.
Her police work legitimately took up a lot of time, and after hours, Shawn was often with Gus. She found more and more excuses not to join them on their evening entertainment quests, and after a month, realized that between her job (Carlton) and the overstuffed chair, she really spent very little time with her live-in boyfriend at all.
In addition, their recent casework had not required the hiring of Psych, although Shawn and Gus still came around regularly and turned up at crime scenes uninvited. But she took Carlton's cue—sometimes before he gave it—and got better at side-lining them. She started being Carlton's partner again: working with him rather than unintentionally against him.
In many ways, she felt better about most every aspect of her life these days except that she still shared the house with Shawn.
But she started looking at apartment ads on her breaks.
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Carlton had a date.
Her name was Emily Adkins, she was 38, she was conservative and liked the shooting range. That's where he met her; he was on his way in on Saturday afternoon and bumped into her coming out, but she didn't snarl at him and in fact smiled enough that—remembering his epiphany—he asked if she wanted to have an early dinner, and she said yes.
And it was a nice dinner. He didn't feel as if he'd creeped her out; she said he had beautiful eyes and for once he let himself accept the compliment even though he had no control over their size or shape or color. She had rather nice eyes herself, brown and warm.
She asked if he wanted to go out again on Tuesday night and he said yes, and promised that if something came up at the police station he would let her know as soon as he could. He didn't brag about his position, and she said she'd seen him on TV and he didn't preen about that either.
For a change he was doing everything right, and it was working.
It's not as if she was Juliet, but she was nice and pretty and he'd enjoyed himself.
On Monday morning he felt good about things, because whether or not anything came of Tuesday night dinner with Emily, he'd already proved to himself that he was capable of keeping a seemingly normal woman's attention throughout an entire meal.
Didn't mean he didn't run her name through the system anyway (one parking ticket three years ago and listed as a passenger in a collision between a Scion and a Fit which led to a fistfight between vegetarian drivers).
Juliet came in and smiled at him. "How was your weekend?"
He glanced at her—still beautiful, check (a bit tired perhaps); still not his, check—and remembered he was Starting Fresh. "Surprisingly good. Yours?"
She shrugged and went to the coffee bar.
Hmmm… Spencer must have annoyed her. Which annoyed him.
Lassiter, this is not your problem anymore. If she asks for your help or attention to her personal life, fine, but otherwise avert your eyes.
The eyes Emily Adkins called beautiful.
Despite himself, he smiled.
Juliet came across the aisle with her mug. "What made your weekend good?"
A little whisper said don't tell her yet. Don't jinx it.
So he deflected, by doing exactly what he'd just told himself not to do. "What made yours shrug-worthy?"
She sipped coffee and seemed to be debating how to answer, during which interval Chief Vick came out of her office and called out his name, then Juliet's. "My office, please."
Once they were seated, she gave them the specs on a series of smash-n-grabs in a neighborhood too close to a school for the school's liking, and when she asked if they wanted to involve Psych for the sake of expediency, Juliet—to Carlton's surprise—said immediately, "Let us take a look first, Chief. We may solve it a little more slowly but at least you can be assured we'll get it right the first time."
The Chief nodded, but her gaze was shrewd. Carlton knew she too had noticed that lately, Juliet had been doing this more often: dismissing the notion of hiring Spencer & Guster before they'd had a good long run at the case themselves.
It was the way it should be, of course, and certainly made the job easier, but he had to wonder what was up. Too much to hope she'd merely come back from the dark side?
She glanced at him now, and he nodded his approval as well. When she held out her hand for a fist-bump, he grinned and could not refuse, and felt like maybe his partner was coming back to him.
It'd be nice, since that's all they would ever be. Partners, with any luck good friends, and no need what-so-freaking-ever to dwell on the thing that happened which, over the course of a few minutes, ultimately changed nothing at all.
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The thing that happened, weeks and weeks ago, was something partners deal with now and then. Spend a lot of time with a person of the opposite sex, get to know and be known by that person, and boundaries can blur, especially when alcohol's involved.
Juliet relived that night often, not always by choice. Sometimes she dreamed about it.
It was after the final police league softball game of the season. Their team won, and everyone was feeling fine, and there was beer and there was laughter and she could see Carlton was mellow and relaxed and looking good out of his suit and tie (although he certainly looked good in a suit and tie too), dusty and disheveled and… dashing.
They were parked near each other, and Shawn had gone off with Gus to pick up additional celebratory pizza on the way home. She and Carlton were the only ones walking down that particular side street, all other voices having faded away in the distance.
The night was cool and the stars were bright and he walked alongside her, his mitt dangling from his hand, and Juliet still didn't know why she did it, but she grabbed it and took off running, and he probably didn't know why he did it, but he took off after her in protest.
She felt sixteen. She felt… flirtatious. It was the beer and their high spirits. It was a level of familiarity—intimacy, even—that she felt with no one else.
He caught her arm and pulled her back but she held on to the mitt, laughing and trying to squirm free, until he—laughing too, mock-cursing her—suddenly had her pressed up against his Fusion, dominating her with his height and strength and sheer force of … Carltonness.
Yes, they were altogether too close. Juliet absorbed his heat and proximity and he stopped trying to get the mitt and started just looking at her.
A nearby streetlight illuminated his crystal blue eyes but they seemed to be darkening, and Juliet simply had to know. She'd wondered many times and now she had to know, because he was right there, touching her, pressed to her.
She leaned up and kissed him, full-out, no possible misinterpretation.
And he kissed her back, all fire, no brimstone, his mouth sure and willful against hers.
Her arm was around his neck and her hand stroked his chest and she loved being entwined with him. One of his hands slipped into her hair and the other cupped her ass and while the kiss grew in ferocity—because that was the word for it—it also somehow gentled. As if once the flame roared up, it was set now to burn a long, long time.
Juliet had never felt anything like that in any other kiss from any other man.
And in the next second, she remembered she was with Shawn.
Breaking free, she stepped clear of the car and stared at him, horrified to be a cheater and embarrassed to have made Carlton complicit and yet wanting nothing more than to go straight back into his arms.
Carlton stared back at her, out of breath, looking ragged and oh so damned delicious, and she was an awful awful person.
"Don't…" she began, close to tears. "Don't tell him."
"I wouldn't." He ran his hand through his hair. "Dammit, Juliet, I wouldn't."
Not O'Hara. That made it worse.
"I'm sorry. Please forgive me," she begged, and he shook his head.
"You don't have to ask that. Just go home. This didn't happen." He bent to pick up the mitt she didn't even remember dropping, and Juliet almost ran to her Beetle, brushing back tears and wondering if he'd still be her partner come Monday.
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Carlton wondered all weekend, after it happened, whether she'd request a new partner or a transfer out.
Forgive her? Hell. He should be asking for forgiveness. It wasn't as if he didn't know he was kissing another man's woman. It wasn't as if he resisted for even half a second once her lips touched his. It wasn't as if he wasn't already half-aroused just from pressing against her in the moments leading up to that utterly brilliant kiss.
But who in God's name could have held up under a kiss from Juliet O'Hara?
He just hoped she wasn't going to want to Talk About It, because he definitely did not want to Talk About It. Juliet could not be permitted to find out just how much of his heart was hers—had been hers—for the taking.
He also hoped she'd take him at his word: it didn't happen. He didn't want her feeling any guilt, and he didn't want to see tears in those beautiful dark blue eyes again.
(He also hoped she hadn't gone mental and confessed to Spencer, because that… man… would blow everything sky-high. Lucinda Barry, at least, was a near-stranger to Spencer, but if he ever sussed out that Carlton Lassiter knew exactly how Juliet tasted, there would be no end to the pandemonium and destruction and brouhaha he'd inflict on everyone, which would hurt Juliet professionally as well as personally, and Carlton would have to shoot Spencer right between the eyes for that.)
So his weekend was spent alternating between reliving The Kiss and doing a lot of hoping it hadn't marked the end of the best partnership and friendship he would ever have, mixed with dread about how awful it was surely going to be, because that's how things usually went for him.
Sleep, he didn't get much of. As in, what sleep?
He felt like a zombie when he got to his desk on Monday morning, but when Juliet turned up later, she brought him a venti from Starbucks.
She looked tired too (and beautiful, always so damned beautiful) but she smiled at him and he smiled back and somehow, somehow, they went on as if it didn't happen.
Over the next few weeks, he began to believe she truly had put it aside.
It wasn't until movie-Mark said "Enough. Enough, now," that he realized he had to truly put it aside himself.
Enter Emily Adkins.
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Juliet got through that first weekend after The Kiss by cleaning the entire house, reorganizing her closet and bookshelves, sending Shawn out repeatedly for supplies they didn't really need (and counting on him staying away too long when his ADHD kicked in), and otherwise doing everything she could to move past… the feelings. The feelings which wouldn't go away.
They will, she promised herself. You're just kinda screwed up right now, wallowing in your guilt about kissing another man, about confusing Carlton, about risking further damage to your partnership with him, and the fact that you'd like to kiss him again (and again) is a feeling which will pass. It will pass.
It didn't pass. She first slept in the big chair on Sunday night, because Friday night after The Kiss she couldn't sleep at all while lying next to Shawn, far too rattled and upset to be able to settle her mind. Then Saturday night she dreamed such things about being with Carlton, such unspeakably erotic things, that she became terrified Shawn, if he woke, would somehow be able to tell, which amped up her guilt and drove her to walk around the house in the dark for an hour until she could face going back into the bedroom. Sunday, she didn't even try: once Shawn came to bed, she relocated to the chair.
More than anything she wanted to preserve her relationship with Carlton. More than anything. She couldn't imagine a work life (any life) without him, and she would make this right somehow.
The best place to start was with coffee and a smile, and that's what she did on the first Monday morning. He accepted the coffee, smiled back, and if she went to her desk a bit unsteady from having to fight an overwhelming impulse to drop into his lap and kiss him senseless, well, it would pass.
It had to pass, right?
Weeks later, she was still telling herself it would pass.
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