No Smoke Without Fire
A new Lassiter/Juliet story, since I can't seem to help myself. Although I blame this one on Loafer and a line from her divine "Lassiter and the Valentine." Go, read. I'll still be here. And yanno, I had intended this to be light and funny, but then it got all internal and thinky. Also something I can't seem to help.
As usual, no infringement intended, no ownership in psych, just borrowing a corner of the sandbox.
Spoilers through ep. 6.09: Neil Simon's Lover's Retreat. Needless to say, it'll soon veer off into non-canon territory. Also something I can blame on Loafer and her nudging.
AN: Title of the story comes from a Duffy song found on the soundtrack for the film AN EDUCATION. Beautiful movie, beautiful song.
"Whoa there, slugger! What are we, dating?"
Juliet sat straight up, blinking into the dark, her throat tight with a gasp that had apparently tried to escape, but instead, left her breathing hard, her heart racing, and a cool bead of sweat trickling in a teasing line from the base of her throat down between her breasts. Beside her, Shawn slept on, blissfully unaware that his girlfriend was in the midst of a… predicament.
One that was becoming worse, night after night after lovely, dream-filled night.
It had started innocently enough, she supposed. Slowly. Little wisps of images, faint echoes of a word or two—only once every couple of weeks. Easily dismissed as an anomaly. Then the images progressed from wispy and fragmented to more fully realized. Words, became phrases, snippets of conversations thought long forgotten. Once every couple of weeks became more like once a week. Accompanying the increased frequency was the memory of touch—from the occasional brushes to the awkward hugs to one heart-stopping, all-encompassing embrace she'd felt for days afterward.
But even with the increased frequency, she'd managed to explain it away to herself. It was only natural. She'd literally spent the majority of the last six years with him—no matter who had flitted in and out of her life, with respect to personal relationships, he'd been the constant. Her bedrock. While technically, she'd known Shawn just as long, and as much as they'd flirted and circled each other over the years, she'd still never spent anywhere near the same amount of time in his company. Even taking into account that they were finally dating, she could tally up the hours she spent with him versus the ones spent with Carlton and Shawn would still lag pretty far behind.
And not that she'd ever, ever admit it outside her own head, she kind of preferred it that way. A little Shawn went an awfully long way while she could spend hours with Carlton and not ever feel as if it was too much.
Shawn might be her boyfriend, but Carlton was her partner.
All things considered, it made perfect sense that he'd invade her subconscious.
Right?
Right.
Still—the timing was pretty suspect. That those dreams would start marching through her nighttime hours like an army of ants at a picnic only after he'd begun a relationship with another woman?
Yeah, wouldn't exactly take Freud and Jung to analyze that.
Okay, yes, it was true, she'd had the odd dream off and on over the years. She was only human after all, and while Carlton might be cranky, difficult, awkward, prone to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, had more than a few OCD tendencies, and practically had dysfunctional down to a science, he was also inherently kind—at least to her, had untapped reserves of sweetness that he'd just as shoot himself in the foot rather than admit to, was loyal to a fault, and had the most compelling, utterly blue eyes she'd ever seen in her entire life. Those eyes killed her on a daily basis, revealing so much more about himself than she was sure he realized, because if he did, again, he'd find it cause for shooting himself in the foot. Repeatedly.
And not that the rest of him was anything to sneeze at, either.
Which brought her to this latest dream. The one she'd been having every night for a solid week, increasing in detail.
The one where her partner was, well… naked.
"Get a hold of yourself, O'Hara," she whispered fiercely, unconcerned that Shawn might hear her. As remarkably alert and annoyingly hyper as he could be while awake, asleep, he was beyond dead to the world. Only the smell of fresh pineapple pancakes had the ability to rouse him. Actually, come to think of it, it was more like rouse him to a little more than walking fugue state, after which he'd descend into a "necessary post-pancake nap—to assist with proper digestion, Jules," not really hitting full functioning status until after noon, at the earliest.
No, she was safe. He wouldn't notice her restless tossing and turning, or any verbal reprimands she might feel necessary to deliver to herself, because just reciting them silently wasn't doing squat.
Not that verbalizing was doing any great wonders either—if anything, it seemed to bring the image into sharper focus in her mind's eye: Carlton, spectacularly annoyed because they were in a potential life-or-death situation and Shawn had seen fit to shampoo his hair during a potential life-or-death situation and because the HazMat guy and his scrub brush had just gotten a little too familiar with parts of his body that had been hidden from view by the makeshift shower stall and hey, was it getting warm in here?
She tossed the covers back off her legs and flapped her loose t-shirt, trying to get some cool air circulating against her increasingly damp skin.
There was a lot she hadn't been able to see behind the opaque white screens of the shower, but there'd been more than she'd ever been privy to before. What had been hinted at by his habitually undone top buttons and the rolled-up shirt sleeves, and teased more fully on the rare occasions she saw him casually dressed had been revealed to be… well, pretty damned magnificent.
Seriously, the man had arms, shoulders, and a chest to die for.
She wrapped her arms around her upraised legs and dropped her chin to her knees with a sigh she should've been embarrassed by, but you know, at 3:47AM in the dark of a January night, who cared?
Moreover, she should've been downright ashamed of herself that when she conducted a comparison—the man haunting her dreams versus the man lying next to her in bed, the man who loved her, for God's sake—the man in her dreams was… dare she admit it? Coming out ahead.
Not that Shawn wasn't an attractive man. She glanced down at him, sprawled across the sheets, lashes dark against his cheeks, full mouth curved in a boyish smile, like he was dreaming of something wonderful.
Most likely the churros he'd been craving just before they drifted off to sleep and for which she'd refused to get dressed and swing through Rudy's All-Night Mexican Drive-Through and no, he could not call Gus to go buy some and bring them by so they could all have a sleepover on the living room floor where they could stay up all night watching old black-and-white horror movies and crank calling people, primarily Lassie.
No. Just… no.
Now. Where was she again?
Oh, yes. Shawn, attractive man. Well, at least the attractive part was true. Despite his wretched diet he was in better than average shape and if he'd yet to reveal what had created the faded scar bisecting his smooth chest, it certainly wasn't anything that currently hindered him, while the scar itself added a sort of rakish, secret-past-we-can't-discuss, accent to his physique. His hair, when she convinced him to just let it air dry without the benefit of ozone damaging products was thick, if a bit rough, his humor and wit were undeniably sharp, if often ill-timed and his eyes sparkled with fun and intelligence and an irrepressible zest for life, but—
She sighed again, restless and a little unnerved. She couldn't deny there was just something about the mélange of colors contained within the hazel irises that seemed to mask something essential. Something he kept so deeply hidden and buried so far down in his soul, it could well be hidden even from himself. Which begged the question, how could she ever have a chance in hell of really knowing him if he was so unwilling to know himself?
Whereas, Carlton—
Carlton.
Slowly, Juliet eased herself to lie back to the mattress, turning away from Shawn and staring into the dark.
He was as much a mystery to her, maybe even more so, than Shawn. Yet she was more comfortable with the mystery that was Carlton. Somehow, she understood that unraveling the mystery that was Carlton, while gradual, painstaking, and maybe even painful, would be like unwrapping a worthwhile gift. Shawn, on the other hand—
In another truth she hated to admit, she wasn't sure that Shawn's mysteries would be all that comfortable or pleasant to uncover.
God, what was wrong with her?
Carlton was taken.
She was taken.
She loved Shawn. Of that there was no doubt. But she couldn't deny the question remained as to whether she could allow herself to fall completely irrevocably in love with him.
Worse still, was it possible she already there… with someone else?