Title: So Cruel
Genre: Romance / Angst
Rating: M
Pairing: Shawn x Lassiter
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: Between the horses of love and lust were are trampled underfoot.
Word Count: 654
Warnings: N/A

Disclaimer: Not mine. Summary is from a U2 song.

A/N: Sorry for any continuity errors. And the UST.


It isn't supposed to be like this. There isn't supposed to be this heat between them, this passion, this fire. They are opposites – one order and reason, one chaos and gut-feelings. One a man who follows the book, one who follows his heart. There is supposed to be animosity and snark between them, jokes and puns and one-upping each other. Teasing. Taunting. Not this. Never this.

"Ah, Spencer – fuck. Fuck."

There are no jokes here, not now. It is lust and yearning and urge – it's wanting to sink so far into another person that there is no telling where one ends and the other begins. It's teeth sinking into the soft flesh of a collarbone, tongue laving over bony hips, fingernails digging into muscled thighs. It's making sure to never leave a mark where someone could see. It's secrets, quick moments in closets and behind closed doors. There are quick glances – not too long – soft brushes of hands made to look like a game, fleeting touches that weren't enough. They were never enough.

"Yes… there! Ugh!"

If you had asked Shawn a year ago who he loved above all others he would have said Juliet. It you asked him today he would say the same. Juliet was a breeze, a meadow, she was a warm blanket, the comforts of home. She was everything familiar and good and bright – summer rain in the sunshine, sand between your toes with the smell of ocean in your nose. She was friendship, contentment. She was home.

But if you asked him who ignited him, who made fireworks of pleasure dance behind his eyes, who made his veins sing with aching need – it would be Lassiter. Only him who made Shawn shake with want of him, only Lassiter who made his throat dry and his heart burst, only Lassiter who made him incoherent with the primitive, masculine need to take, to mark, to own. He teased Juliet like a boy pulling a girl's pigtails on the playground. He teased Lassiter to make him burn. There was never enough of him. Every moment, every chance, he had to make those dark eyes spark, to make that jaw clench, hands fisted at his sides, Shawn took.

"Spen…cer…"

Torn – one way love, one way lust. How on earth to make this choice. Did he choose the girl who made him feel at ease, who made his eyes light up? Kisses soft and hesitant, touches tender and adoring. There was a life there - there was a house with a white picket fence, there were 2.5 children and a dog. Or did he choose the man who made him angry and irritated, who made him want to push and shove and bite and scratch? Bruises on wrists, clenching thighs on his waist, claw marks down his back. This was probably going nowhere. Nowhere but a bedroom (or closet or the backseat of a car or an empty interrogation room). But the thought of leaving it behind entirely made his stomach drop, made him lightheaded with terror.

"Ah… ah… ah… ah…"

To see this man come so undone (for him, only for him)… was like drinking up magic. Hair disordered, eyes hazy and glazed over with passion, hands scrambling on sheets, fisting in blankets, the primal arch of his spine as he fought to make Shawn go harder, faster, deeper. The unrestrained noises he made – blind with hedonism, spiraling higher and higher, wound tight, tighter, tightest, almost there

"S – Shawn!"

Always, always, always the sound made Shawn frantic with need. His name on those lips, the name he cried out at the crescendo, at the cliff, as he fell. Thighs clenching with bruising force, hands white-knuckled in the sheets, neck head thrown back revealing the long, smooth column of his throat. So open, so wanton, so his.

The thought (mine, mine alone, no one else can see this, for me only, mine) made his hips stutter in their motion, white-hot bliss tightening in his abdomen so fiercely it made his breath cease. Gripping hips higher, tighter, clenching teeth on that revealed line of neck, he thrust, once, twice, three times, the man beneath him crying out as his over sensitized skin was stimulated again and again.

And then he, too, fell. Eyes slammed closed, face pressed against the column of shoulder, shaking with release. When hesitant hands reached up, brushing one long soft swipe down his spine, he shivered. This wasn't supposed to be soft, it was primal, tension and release. But the feeling of that hesitant touch, so fleeting, so unsure, unease and shyness is every calloused fingertip - made a heart clench, made breath shudder out of him, a knot he never even knew was tied coming undone.

No, how could he ever choose something besides this?