Chapter 4

Spencer was shocked to find Lassiter standing in his office the next morning, looking tense and uncomfortable, his hands shoved into his pockets. Gus, who was right next to Spencer, grunted as he ran into him, as the fake psychic had stopped cold outside their office door, staring in through the window.

"Shawn! I've told you, you can't do that whenever you feel like it just because you find it 'amusing' to watch me nearly spill coffee on myself. I've told you, coffee burns are no joke, no matter how funny you think it is!"

"That's not it, Gus. Look."

He pointed, and Gus shrugged.

"So? Lassiter decided to stop by. Hopefully with our most recent check, which I still don't believe you put into a "savings" account. You spent it already, didn't you Shawn?"

The young man shook his head, distracted, wondering why Lassi was there so early. He hoped that it wasn't about yesterday. Shawn was still mad at himself for how he'd reacted to the head detective. He should have denied it and brushed it off, the way he always did when someone confronted him with half-thought out theories, but Lassi had taken him off guard, bringing out the side of him that people rarely saw, the real him that hid under the mask of too-wide smiles and forced laughter day after day.

His bitter and cynical side.

"Uh, Shawn? Are we going in or are we just going to stay out here as lawn decorations?"

"Oh, I don't know. I mean, I still haven't given up on the idea of lawn gnoming as a profession, Gus. I mean, think about it! Traveling the world by parachute and landing next to pools with scantily clad women?"

"How many times do I have to tell you that the Travelocity gnome is not an actual job position? I mean, how could you even think that was safe? Only traveling by parachute? Statistically, you're more likely to die from parachuting than you are by a car! That should tell you just how dangerous it is!"

"Oh, c'mon," Shawn protested, purposely delaying walking into Psych headquarters. "We could make it an actual thing! It would be awesome!"

"For the last time, Shawn, I am not "gnoming" with you, no matter how hard you try and sell it. Now, would you open the damn door? I'd like to go inside already."

The psychic shook his head and absently replied, "Right. Inside. Of course. Inside would be a good place to be. Yeah…"

He opened the door and tried to brush off the older man standing sternly in the middle of the room as he walked over the couch and threw himself across it, propping his feet up on the arm of the couch with his hands behind his head, purposely giving off an I-don't-care attitude. He barely glanced at Lassiter, while Gus went out of his way, as usual, to be nice and polite to the man who rarely showed him any sign of noticing him.

"Detective," said Gus as he sat down at the only desk that they had in the office. "How can we help you today?"

Lassiter pulled his hands from his pockets, crossed them over his chest, and stared the younger man down, before saying in his usual cop-voice, "Actually, I'm here to talk to Spencer. Alone."

Gus raised an eyebrow and quickly added, "Is it about our most recent paycheck? Because I'm still not sure-"

Lassiter interrupted, looking more than a little bit peeved, leaning towards annoyed. "You got the damn check, now scram before I fire a warning shot, Guster. I'm here. To talk. To Spencer," he pointedly articulated a second time. "Alone."

Gus puffed out slightly, pulled back his shoulders and said, "Well, I can certainly tell when I'm not wanted," and walked right back out of the office, taking the Blueberry, leaving Shawn to fend for himself against the head detective. Spencer deliberately avoided looking at the older man, reaching out and picking up a ball from the table, tossing it in the air, acting as if he was alone.

The third time he threw it up, Lassiter's hand shot out and snagged it mid-air, and he glowered at Shawn.

"Why haven't you told him?"

Shawn flippantly parried with, "Told him what?"

"Oh, don't pull this crap, Spencer. You know exactly what I'm talking about," he spat out, towering imperiously over his prone form. "You're sick and you're not telling anyone, not even your best friend, which means it's either nothing serious, or it's worse than serious. I'm guessing from how you've been acting, that it's the latter. Now. When did you find out?"

The psychic sat up, his face schooled into an unreadable mask, any fight left in him gone. It was too taxing to keep on acting like there was nothing wrong, when it was obvious that Lassi knew. He caved.

"The doctor told me when I got my appendix out."

Lassiter paled.

"You've known that long?"

Spencer nodded.

"Yeah. Not like it matters," he added, standing up and walking over to the desk, absently picking up an action figure and moving its' arms. "I mean, it's not like it's curable, anyways. This sort of thing…it takes people quickly, Carlton." The second time he'd heard Spencer use his first name. "And I wasn't going to try some half-assed treatment to feel even more miserable just to eke out a few more meager months of life. I won't put anyone through that."

He looked back up at him, and Lassiter just held his gaze for a moment, and then finally broke the silence with, "Is it cancer?"

The psychic shook his head. And then nodded. And then moved his head in an awkward half-circle.

"Sort of. I have malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, MPNST. Fancy words for little cancer cells on my nerves." He paused, putting down the action figure. He moved to take a step, and suddenly put his hand on the edge of the desk to steady himself as one of his knees gave out, and then looked back up at the detective. "It affects my balance. At least, for now. It'll get worse as time goes on."

Lassiter nodded, and was about to say something, when Spencer suddenly said, "But, hey! Only the good die young, right?"

Carlton glared.

"You're gonna joke about this? Seriously?"

Spencer laughed.

"Uh, would you rather I go all Willem Dafoe in Platoon on you, like I did earlier? 'Cause I think we saw how well that worked out. I mean, look at me, Lassi," he added, gesturing to himself as he collapsed in the chair behind the desk. "This is what's going to happen to me. I'm going to get worse. Do you know what that means?"

Lassiter hesitated, unsure of what to say, so Shawn continued.

"I'm gonna have numbness, partial paralysis, and the highlight of it all…my memory's gonna go to shit."

The detective snorted at that one and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Hate to break it to you, Spencer, but your memory's never been that good in the first place. I mean, I bet you can't even remember what you had two hours ago for breakfast, let alone what the last case was that you worked on. I've heard Guster correct you so many times, it's sad."

He smirked at Spencer…and was surprised when the psychic looked up at him and said, "Can you keep a secret?" Not sure what Spencer was getting at, he nodded. "Okay, then. Here goes. Not exactly how I planned the big reveal, but you know what they say: vie la se."

"It's se la vie."

"I've heard it both ways."

Lassiter rolled his eyes.

Finally, after hemming and hawing, as well as picking at his nails, he said, "You're the only one who's ever suspected…well…that I'm not exactly as in tune with the spirit world as everyone else thinks I am." Lassiter snorted. Shawn continued. "Look, you've met my mom, right?" Lassiter nodded, his gaze narrowing in confusion at the sudden change of subject. What did his mom have to do with anything? "You know that she has perfect recall, which is one of the reasons why she doesn't take notes in her sessions."

The detective nodded a second time, trying to understand where the younger man was going with this…and then something turned in his brain.

However, before his thought could lock firmly into place, Spencer finished it for him.

"I have it, too. And when you're raised with a cop for a father, you get a crash course in how to be a perfect detective. You get quizzed on how many hats are in the room before you can order your dinner at the diner," he said, looking almost sad at the thought. "You learn how to tell in seconds if someone is lying or telling the truth, making you realize at the impressionable age of nine that everyone is lying to everyone nearly every second of every day. You get the experience of never being allowed to look at the picture of the puzzle you're putting together in your spare time. You get timed on how quickly you can count how many guns are in a room, how many of them are loaded, and how to most efficiently shoot your way out of a bad situation if you have no other choice…"

His voice became more bitter as he continued.

"You get tested every Christmas to see if you can figure out the present before he figures out yours, or you lose stocking privileges. You get to learn how to play chess…and then get criticized every step of the way for not thinking far enough ahead and for making too many goddamn mistakes of leaving your king open to attack. You get to have every grade you make in school turned into how much a fucking failure you are for not being able to perfectly recall every page what you read the night before."

He paused, and his voice went soft on the last few.

"You get locked in the trunk of your dad's car for a whole afternoon while he teaches you how to escape, even though he knows perfectly well that your two biggest fears are the dark and small spaces…you get told that you're different and special every single day of your life while feeling like your stuck in a damn prison and your own father is the prison ward. Instead of having your father tuck you into bed at night and tell you there's no such things as monsters, he tells you that they're real, and that you're going to have to be the one to stop them…you get to have the childhood from hell…"

Lassiter just stared…and then something else clicked.

"So you're telling us that you can read guilt off of TV interviews?"

"Can't you?"

He uncrossed his arms and looked the fake psychic in the eye, more than slightly mad at himself, and said, "You tried to tell me. The first time we pulled you in, you tried to tell me this, didn't you?"

Spencer nodded.

"I don't think you were willing to admit that a kid like me could do your job better than you."

Lassiter nodded in return.

"You're right. I wasn't. But, I have to ask…why are you telling me this? You realize that you have committed so many crimes that you would go away for life just on obstruction charges alone, not even counting what I bet is probably numerous breaking and entering charges? God, I feel like an idiot…"

Shawn shook his head and said, "Don't. I didn't give you any reason to trust me. You had every right to suspect me. However, the reason why I'm telling you this is for selfish reasons. I can't have anyone finding out about my situation." Lassiter's eyes snapped back to Spencer's. "My memory's gonna start to go in a few months I'm figuring, from what I've read about this thing. I'm not gonna remember everything that I see. I'm going to need you to pick up the slack."

Carlton straightened his shoulders and looked at the younger man in shock, not quite believing what he was hearing.

"Me? Spencer, I don't have that kind of memory, I don't have that kind of training-"

"But you do, Lassi, I've seen it. Remember the shark case? You went out on a limb because you thought you something was off, something was different…and you were right. During that entire case, I knew that you had it in you to be not only great, which you are, by the way, but also amazing. It's there, Carlton…and I need it to be there later on. I hate asking this, you have no idea how much I hate asking this of you…but I need you to cover for me."

Lassiter's jaw tightened and he swallowed. He shoved his hands into his pockets, and turned away from the man that he now knew for certain was not a psychic detective.

The silence pervaded for over a minute.

Finally, he turned around and broke it.

"If…if I do this, I'll be aiding and abetting."

Spencer looked him square in the eye.

"I've managed to keep this hidden for six years, Lassi-pants, I think I can manage it for a few more months. Besides, I'm dead at the end of the year, if not earlier, Lassi-fras. I'll be taking the secret to my grave. Literally. What have you got to lose?"

He inwardly flinched at hearing Spencer talking about his imminent demise so casually, as if talking about the end of a baseball season, but he knew that he was right. It's not like anyone would know, and if he could pick up the slack, then he could not only learn Spencer's methods, but also become a better detective. Besides, like Spencer said: what did he have to lose? It took him a moment as he thought about all of the possible repercussions should anyone find out…but then he finally came to a decision.

"Okay. I'll do it."

Spencer grinned, his hazel eyes brightening for the first time in weeks.

"You're the best, Lassi! Now, I only ask one last thing," he added, standing and stepping into Carlton's personal space, their faces inches apart.

"What's that, Spencer?"

Spencer smirked.

"Don't go falling in love with me."

Lassiter snorted and rolled his eyes, and replied, "Trust me. There's no chance in hell of that happening."

The fake psychic patted him on the shoulder and said, "One can never tell about these things, Lassikins. Who knows? Maybe I'm the love of your life and you never even knew it…"

Pushing him out of his space, Carlton walked to the door and tossed over his shoulder, "The chief's got us a new case. Are you coming or not?"

Spencer grinned. He wouldn't miss it for the world.


Part 4/?