Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: M+

Spoilers: Through season 4 episode 16, "Mr. Yin Presents"

Chapter Four: Hair of the Dog (or Cat)

Lassiter woke up to a pounding headache and the strange sensation of fur in his nose. His forget-me-not eyes blinked open and met the slitted golden green eyes of the cat curled possessively on his chest. It was the slowly twitching tip of the cat's tail that kept thwacking into his left nostril. Lassiter did not own a cat, nor did he recognize this one. He wasn't exactly unfond of cats, but he was leery of individual specimens of the genus, particularly when he did not know them or the likelihood of them scratching his eyes out.

"Good morning."

At first, with the fur in his nose and the brass band in his head and the sneaking suspicion, by the fuzzy feeling of his shriveled tongue, that he may have accidentally swallowed the cat's sibling and it was now plotting revenge, he actually thought it was the cat who spoke. Then Juliet O'Hara's sunshine face peered over the cat's back at him, wreathed with a smile, and a wave of humiliation crashed over him as he remembered falling into a drunken stupor on her couch. The cat leapt off of him with a faint mew of indignation as he struggled to sit up.

O'Hara pushed a steaming hot mug of coffee into his hand, flavored just the way he liked it with cream and sugar. "I bet your head hurts like hell, doesn't it?" she said. Her voice was pitched low and gentle, in deference to his hangover, but it sounded like she was shouting.

He nodded, face contorted in a grimace of pain, and sipped gingerly at his coffee. Once he managed to wash some of the cat off his tongue he managed to grunt out a few hoarse words.

"Sorry, O'Hara," he said. "I don't drink like that very often." Although he did, these days, and the lie tasted as bad as the cat he still suspected he'd swallowed.

She laughed, lightly, but it let him know that she was well aware he'd lied. "It's okay, Carlton. You can crash with me any time you need to. You know that, right?"

There was something in her voice that struck his ear as slightly off. It was like there was a whole different layer underneath her innocent words, a realm an old-time cartographer would have labeled with the warning "Here there be sarpents." He couldn't let his mind wander into that realm because it was only in his head, not hers.

That was when she reached out and touched his cheek, soft cool fingers on fever-hot flesh, and he blushed so red that the tips of his ears seemed almost to glow. It was an innocent touch, of course it was, but he didn't take it innocently at all. She smiled at his intensely consternated expression, leaned in, and kissed him.

The top of his head exploded, or at least that's what it felt like. He was still drunk, that was what it was, drunk and hallucinating. Maybe he'd gone further than just drinking, maybe he'd slid into drug abuse without ever realizing it. This felt like an LSD trip to him, not that he knew from experience.

She unbuttoned his shirt and slipped a hand inside to ruffle through his chest hair. The prickle and tickle of that felt very real and quite wonderful. It also felt very real when the hand was replaced by her lips as she kissed her way down from his mouth to the middle of his chest. So what if it was a drug-fueled hallucination borne of a desperate and hopeless attraction? There might be laws against taking drugs but there weren't any against enjoying the experience once they were in your system. He wrapped his arms around her and she climbed on top of him. Eventually she broke off from kissing and grinding against him long enough to whisper three words in his ear.

"Finish your coffee."

Numbly, he complied. He noticed a faint burn to the drink unrelated to the actual temperature of the liquid. "Put a little Irish in it," she said, and winked at him. "Don't think you really need any more alcohol but no better fix for a bombed-out brain, is there?"

No amount of Irish coffee was going to fix his bombed-out brain, though the hangover did subside almost immediately. He finished off the drink and she climbed off of him. He felt absurdly disappointed - even his hallucinations couldn't stand to be near him - but then she grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pulled him up off the couch, almost by main force. "Come on," she said, and took him by the hand. He followed where she led, like a dog on a leash only with a lot less free will. The room she took him to…was her bedroom.

Well, it didn't have to be her bedroom, he supposed, it could well have been a guest room, if this apartment had any such amenity as a guest room. The point his brain insisted upon was that there was a BED IN THE ROOM, and she led him straight toward it. Panic set in. Is this exactly where he wanted this strange fever-dream to take him? Yes, yes it was. But he couldn't allow himself to cheapen his partner like this, not even in a hallucinogenic haze. She grabbed at his jacket again and held him steady when he tried to bolt.

"It's okay, Carlton," she said soothingly. "It's all right." She stretched up and kissed him as she pushed his jacked back over his shoulders and down his arms. In a straight-up battle between conscience and the taste of O'Hara's lips and tongue, conscience didn't stand a chance. He surrendered to the madness and allowed her to remove his jacket, holster, and shirt while they kissed and he ran his hands through her silken honey-gold hair. Sweet Justice, but he loved that hair.

She took a half step back from him and untied the cord of the robe she wore. For half a second after she allowed the garment to fall to the floor he saw peach-colored lace, but then he realized she wasn't wearing anything beneath it at all. Overwhelmed, he stepped to her and took possession of her mouth while his hands caressed her soft skin. Gently, maddeningly, she moved her lower body in a lazy shimmy against him.

You fool, he thought, you're going to ruin another partner's career because you can't keep it in your pants?

Another portion of his brain spoke up. Hallucinations don't ruin careers. Not as long as they don't make you take a drug test in the next month or so, at any rate.

Jackass, you've never done drugs a single time in your life. And this is not an hallucination.

But it had to be, because O'Hara wasn't interested in him and there was no way in hell that she was now - oh dear sweet Jesus she's unzipping my pants.

Well there we have it, ladies and gentlemen - the standard issue American male, complete with standard issue American penis pre-set to derail a promising career, he thought as his slacks puddled on the floor around his feet. This time, try and make sure it's only yours that goes down in flames, 'kay, assmunch?

It wouldn't be like last time. Last time he'd been naïve about office politics - he'd mistakenly assumed that as long as he and Lucinda continued to work together efficiently as they'd always done, then the revelation about their affair (not against department regulations, per se, but STRONGLY DISCOURAGED, in all caps) wouldn't be an issue. But it was an issue, of course, because any woman who would sleep with Carlton "Hardass" Lassiter had to be a total slut, right? And it was the sudden influx of come-ons from coworkers who ought to have known better that set Lucinda to apply for a transfer more than any Official Disapproval. He was no longer naïve enough to believe O'Hara would fare any better once word of this got out - and it would, of course, because the asshole whistle-blower was still around, wasn't he? And hitting on Juliet more than ever in the wake of his break-up with that Lytar woman.

Well, it was simple. Before his shift tomorrow morning Lassiter would go to the Chief and request a transfer. He would come up with some bullshit rationale - he could take a page from Lucinda's book and maybe his mother could have an industrial accident. No one needed to know about this except he and O'Hara, and he would not let it come back to haunt her any more than it had to. He was prepared to let it haunt him all it could.

Then he thought about moving to some jack-shit town and starting fresh as the "new guy" on some Podunk police force. The head detective there would be certain he was after his job, and he'd resent the head detective for having the job he'd worked so hard for so long to achieve. A soft whimper escaped his lips unrelated to the feel of the erect nipple that skated softly across the skin of his chest.

She pulled away from him and put a finger to his lips. "Don't even think about it," she said, and he wondered if she was somehow reading his mind. "And don't you dare even consider asking for a transfer."

"What are you, psychic?" he asked.

She laughed lightly. "You're not hard to read," she said. "Just stop thinking and love me, dammit."

"Yes, Ma'am," he said, and so he did.