Any Possible Frontier
By Nefertiri's Handmaiden
Disclaimer: I don't own Psych. If I didn't there would probably be more Shawn whump.
Note: We know why Shawn ran away from home. We even know some of what he did when he was gone. But why did he come back to Santa Barbara?
==P==
The story of why Shawn ran away is easy and quick to tell:
He hated his father. He'd do anything to piss the old bastard off. And God, he couldn't stand one more second in this God-forsaken hellhole that used to be home, a long time ago.
==P==
For generations, men have pointed their faces west and started trekking, as if the Pacific Ocean was calling their names, offering them wealth, glory, love, happiness, something new.
Shawn was born in California, raised on the coast of the Pacific. For him, the frontier was east.
He set his bike on the highway and roared out of town. He didn't say goodbye.
==P==
The story of what Shawn did while he was on the road takes longer to tell.
He saw a lot of places.
He did a lot of things.
Well, perhaps it's not such a long story, after all.
==P==
The story of why Shawn went home is the one that matters.
When he left Santa Barbara, he'd been 20, angry, headstrong, with a criminal record under his belt, a new bike under his ass, and a vow that he would never speak to his father again in his head.
Little of that had changed.
He was older now: 25, with his brown hair sun-streaked from working as a farm hand this summer in Indiana, fluent Spanish in his back pocket, autographs from several bands that he'd roadied for, and free tickets at Comerica Park anytime he wanted courtesy of his friendship with the manager.
His bike wasn't so new any more. God, he hadn't really thought that it would wrack up so many miles so easy. But he had taken good care of it - changing the oil regularly and making sure the gas tank never hit empty.
He was less angry, too. Still pissed at his dad, but less so at the world.
He'd seen enough of it to realize that it largely wasn't the reason why he was angry.
And he missed Gus, that was for certain.
He'd circled around to Santa Barbara to see him a couple of times, carefully and pointedly avoiding his father or any talk thereof.
The Wienermobile had been a good excuse to swing by. Gus had been a fan of that one.
And then there had been the time when Gus had been in that accident and needed a new kidney, and didn't you know it, but Shawn and Gus were the same blood type, and Shawn was a donor match.
They never talked about it afterward.
But he didn't come home for Gus, though he missed him. Because Gus and him, they were solid. They'd always been solid.
He didn't come home to fix things with his father. That had never been it. First off, he didn't think they could be fixed, not with him being who he was and his father being his father and his mother being… well… gone.
He didn't go home because he was running from something else. He'd faced some hard strokes on the road, spent a few nights on the street, a few in fields because he was too far from a town and he was about to fall asleep on this bike, a few in an Argentinian jail after a misunderstanding with a local prostitute.
He didn't go home because he got hurt, though he'd suffered a couple accidents on his bike and at various jobs. He took a baseball to the head when he was working at Brewer Stadium in Milwaukee. He slid 100 feet when the tires of his bike slipped on black ice in Michigan and skinned the hell out of his left leg. He got the hell beat out of him by a hulky guy in New York because he'd been hitting on the guy's girlfriend. That was all part and parcel.
He didn't even come home because of a woman, though Shawn being who he was that was a distinct possibility. He'd known many women, cared about a few, and perhaps even loved once or twice. But his heart was never so broken that he'd needed to run back to Santa Barbara to forget.
He didn't go home because of any of that.
==P==
Shawn was in Virginia again.
He'd been here a couple of times. It seemed that though he spent his fare share of time inland, his California blood kept drawing him back to the water. Because he refused to go home and stand on the shore of the Pacific and stare out at the waves that raged and crashed forever, he picked the other coast. Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts: He'd traveled up and down the Atlantic Coast.
Still wasn't California.
After getting off from his job at the bar - he was busing tables this week, fixing the jukebox when drunk sailors from the base at Norfolk hit it a little too hard - he took his bike to the beach where he parked it haphazardly, took off his shoes, and stepped down onto the sand.
He'd been at the bar so late cleaning up that it was four in the morning. It was getting on to winter, and the waves were angry with a storm offshore, and the sand was freezing. He sat down near the water and stared out at the waves, munching on a burrito he'd taken from the bar's kitchen.
The ocean smelled different here in Norfolk than it did back in Santa Barbara.
That didn't make any sense, Shawn knew. None at all. An ocean was an ocean. By rights, it should smell about the same.
But he could see the aircraft carriers anchored at the base from where he sat on the beach: huge floating cities. He could smell the diesel from the destroyers and frigates. A lighthouse far in the distance spun a warning light over the water, over and over and over.
Santa Barbara was quieter and the smell of fuel and fish from the marina wasn't so invasive. The air there was just fresh: sea salt and clean air. And the wind there was never quite so biting as the wind here in Virginia that screamed EAST COAST as it ruffled Shawn's hair.
An ambulance wailed not too far from where he was and a commercial cargo ship heading in to dock blared a horn.
Then it was quiet, and there was nothing but the crush of the waves and the gulls squawking and the blowing of the wind.
Shawn felt a calmness in his soul that he hadn't felt in… well, maybe ever.
Quiet. Perspective. Perhaps even a bit of personal growth, as if Shawn wasn't completely opposed to such a thing.
Peace.
But it still wasn't Santa Barbara.
Just like that, Shawn realized that it was time to go home.
He snorted through his nose and grinned to himself.
He didn't know exactly what answer he'd been looking for all these years on the road, didn't know exactly what he'd just found. But he had been looking, and it had been found.
Now it was time to go home. Gus, a job, a place to live… his dad. He'd deal with all of that when he got there.
For how, the Pacific Ocean was calling, saying his name, telling him there was adventure to be had, there along the west coast. Shawn was a California boy first and foremost and a risk-taker beside that. He heeded that call.
He stood, brushed the sand from his back of his jeans and stretched the muscles in his back. He left a message on the machine at the bar, telling them to send his check to the apartment he'd been staying at to settle his debts.
Then he pulled on his leather jacket, slid his helmet on over his head, swung his leg over his Norton, and fired it up.
The road before him was long and there were miles to go before he could sleep.