Mornings are always disorienting, even when you remember everything. There's a fine line between the safety of sleep and the responsibility of wakefulness: Shawn Spencer tips over into wakefulness with a start, and the first thought is that he isn't home and the second thought is that he isn't alone and the third thought is that he'd really like to go back to sleep.
The fourth thought is that of his girlfriend, Jules, who isn't there.
(The fifth thought is of Carlton Lassiter, who is.)
He breathes in the warm smell of the sleeping detective – like at least half of the twenty three flavors in Dr Pepper, everything but the minty ones – and he wonders if Lassy had the habit of clinging desperately to his wife in his sleep or if the possessive circle of his arms is something special, just for him, and there's part of his brain that's hoping it's the second of those two choices. Shawn thinks that he likes being held like he's something precious, and he thinks that if it were Jules on that couch she'd have shouldered him off of it in her sleep: because she never relaxes, Jules, especially not in her sleep, she's always shifting and talking and kicking and snatching the blankets away in a way that seems almost malicious to half-asleep Shawn, although he never thinks to complain when they're both awake.
And being shouldered off of the couch makes him remember the bruise spreading across his right shoulder, from when he hit it on the coffee-table the night before: not shouldered off but overbalanced, not quite able to compensate for the weight of himself plus Lassy, and he'd been more attentive to the kisses than staying put on the sofa and it was alright because it only hurt for a minute and because he'd dragged Lassy on the floor with him and there was more room on the floor, besides.
He remembers kissing on the sofa and kissing on the floor and it was amazing, really, kissing Carlton Lassiter of all people: amazing that Lassy liked it, and it wasn't just that he –liked- it but it was how responsive the other man was, the way he shivered and trembled and made those little Lassy noises and Shawn doesn't figure he could possibly be blamed for taking the opportunity to push his obsession with 'getting reactions from Carlton Lassiter' to the next level. And he remembers Lassy's boxers were flannel like his borrowed pants, and he remembers asking permission to pull them off and he remembers getting it.
Shawn grins, then, tucks his face in the warm spot between Lassy's chin and shoulder and chest, because this is a nice sort of remembering. It was like the other man hadn't ever had a blow job before, the way he was so easily reduced to babbling liquid syllables of incoherency, from which Shawn had been able to extract only a few things that resembled actual human speech: his name, several times, and a sort of strangled sleepy "thankyou". Honestly, giving Lassy head was a total forgone conclusion, wasn't it? And he was ever so grateful, perhaps – Shawn thinks – to underline the whole part where Lassy didn't actually hate him. Or maybe Lassy really hadn't ever had a blow job before, and Shawn grins again, considering that, which would actually be pretty awesome. Awesome for him, that is, not for Lassy, because who wants to waste thirty some years of ones life not having blow jobs? The only thing that would have been better would have been if it were reciprocated (- although not, NOT simultaneously because Shawn knows full well his attention span isn't good enough for that sort of thing, thank you anyway). And thinking like this almost makes him want to nudge his way out of the circle of the other man's arms and see if he could repeat the experience.
But that would lead to awake!Lassy, Shawn thinks, an instant before he acts. Awake!Lassy would talk and maybe even scold and maybe even carry through with those threats of bodily harm. Because blow jobs with Lassy is a lot like sex (okay, exactly like sex) and having sex with people that aren't your girlfriend is a pretty rotten thing to do and if Shawn were a good person, he thinks, he'd have had that thought, oh, sometime before rounding third base.
Self-hatred isn't something Shawn Spencer does particularly well, and so he quickly tries to come up with a solution, an answer, a justification. Is there a sexual identity experimentation clause somewhere in the social convention of what does and does not make up cheating on one's girlfriend? And maybe there is, but it's too late for that, because he and Jules had already had that conversation (and Shawn was willing to admit to being disappointed in her answer to that question, although intrigued by the way her eyes lit up when he'd mentioned his past exploits and were girls really just as bad as men that way?) Maybe there's some sort of Rad Bromance clause, you know, a 'my friend just needed fucking really really badly', except in this case it would be more of a 'this guy who I thought kinda hated me but really turned out to like me the whole time and oh, by the way, this is making me re-evaluate all the times he's ever pinned me up against a wall".
Nope. It sounds weak even inside his head. Surely there has to be something other than my feelings were hurt and so I took advantage of an opportunity to feel good and didn't care about the consequences, even though that right there sort of summed up the reason why Shawn was so much better at first dates then second ones.
He doesn't want to think anymore.
That never makes much of a difference.
So part of his brain is still stuck on the thought of fucking Carlton Lassiter (properly, next time,) and a more rational part of his brain is considering the possibilities of there ever being a next time, and then he's thinking about how it's not like he just picked up a random guy in a bar or something, this was –Lassy- and to be fair he'd been fascinated with him since before he ever met Jules – and he thinks that it doesn't really matter because (the last time he checked) Jules was still his girlfriend and the naked man holding him in his sleep had threatened to shoot him if he hurt Jules and holy shit, talk about a Catch 22 of Epic Proportions.
He hasn't figured anything out, but he knows he has to leave, before Lassy wakes up: if he gets gone fast enough maybe he can buy some time against the inevitable. He's way too practiced at leaving lovers asleep; he slips out of Lassy's arms, reaches for one of the discarded sweaters and pulls it on, finds his damp jeans and damper shoes and spends a really really really long moment wishing he dared wake Lassy up.
But he doesn't.
It's a long walk back to his place, and he doesn't even have to be quiet when he finally opens the door, because both Jules and Gus are sleeping the sleep of the dead, or at least the Sleep of the Hung-Over. (Shawn counts four empty wine bottles.) Jules is sprawled, her hair a mess, her head tipped back and she's snoring. Gus is curled up with his thumb in his mouth and his head resting on one of Jules's knees. It's almost adorable, Shawn thinks, and then he wonders: what the hell is he going to do now?