Disclaimer: I don't own psych yadda yadda no copyright infringement yadda yadda.
Rating: T.
Summary: CHAPTER FOUR – workin' it out.
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She was gone. She had kissed him with brief intensity, and then she turned and left the apartment, leaving him stunned, and pretty sure she was stunned, too.
Lassiter locked the door and sank back into the chair, head in hands, heart racing.
This was all supposed to be done. He was supposed to be over her, or nearly over her; he was supposed to have accepted her relationship with Spencer and then forgotten them both. He was supposed to be over her.
And now she'd gone and kissed him.
Dammit.
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"Shawn," she asked, her feet up on Gus' desk. "Where do you see this going?"
He stopped just before throwing the Nerf ball. "I see myself making a perfect shot, getting a trophy kiss from you, and then doing it all over again."
"I mean us. Where do you see us going?"
He threw the ball, which bounced off the rim and rolled between the filing cabinets. "Manny's for jerk chicken, and then maybe down to the—"
"Shawn," she said more sharply, and he looked at her. "I am talking about our relationship."
He grinned. "Of course you are. Women do that. They randomly bring up an important topic and the man has to try to slide out of it until he can figure out the way she wants the questions answered, which means it's in his best interests to table the discussion indefinitely."
Juliet's eyebrows went up. "Seriously?"
He threw himself into his desk chair, which creaked alarmingly. "Okay. Where do I see us going? I see more of the same. We spend our time together, you do the cop thing, I do the psych thing, and we have a great life." He smiled winningly. "Like the life we have now."
"We're sitting in your office waiting for Gus to bring back popsicles."
"We have to find him a girlfriend, that's true," he mused.
She studied him. He was smart and observant and frequently incredibly dense. "Do you know whether I want a house?"
"Sure, because you live in one."
"I rent half a duplex."
"So? It's part of a house, not an apartment complex."
"Do you know how I feel about religion? Children? Marriage? What about politics?"
He made a face. "I don't do politics. Those conversations are un-fun."
"Many parts of life are un-fun, Shawn."
"I know. Those are the parts I avoid." He got up again and retrieved the Nerf ball. "A pudding pop says I make the next shot."
Juliet sighed. "You flirted with me for five years. You can tell me a lot of facts about myself, and that's very cool. It really is."
He made the shot, and turned back to face her. "But?"
"But what about the future? Is this what you see for us? Just hanging out?"
"Of course not."
"Then what? What do you want?"
"What do I want? I thought this was about what you want."
"No, it's about you not knowing what I want."
He shook his head, exaggeratedly confused. "Jules, what are you asking me? We've been a couple for months. I've been having a fantastic time. I thought you were too."
"I was. I am," she amended, but felt like a coward for doing so. "But I also need to feel like I'm moving forward. You avoid every conversation about the future, but the future is now. I'm not talking about putting every plan into action right this minute. I just want to know what the potential plans might be."
Shawn returned to his chair, sighing. She could see he was struggling to not show his frustration. "Jules. I love you. You love me. Do I want a house? No, not really. I like the freedom of being able to walk away from a place and you can't do that with a house. Do I want marriage? I guess. I don't know if the piece of paper—"
"The concept," she interrupted, "not the piece of paper."
He shrugged. "The concept? Sure, fine, whatever; it's cool. Kids? I like kids okay, but I'm more the fun uncle type. My dad and I are both good reasons not to have kids, you know that. Religion, politics, capital punishment—what about them? Those things shouldn't make a relationship succeed or fail. They just flavor it."
She met his gaze, and felt a little hopeless. "But don't you want to know what flavors I like?"
He smiled. "I know all your flavors, Jules. At least the ones that count."
That count to you, she thought, as Gus came in with the popsicles.
Now she sat on the edge of her bed, remembering that conversation. It had taken place three weeks earlier, before she knew she'd ever see Lassiter again.
She put her fingers to her mouth and could still feel the kiss, all too brief. She had kissed him because it had, in that moment, been the only thing she wanted to do.
Lassiter knew the answers to the questions she'd asked Shawn. She'd spent more time with him than anyone else in the previous years, and he knew she wanted a house, and kids. He knew she valued marriage and faith and except for politics they agreed on a lot of issues, and sometimes she thought he secretly agreed with her on politics. He listened to her, he challenged her, he argued with her. He remembered what she told him. Granted, he'd been a captive audience for many of their conversations, and he didn't give quite as much back because it wasn't his nature, but as startling a concept as it was, he was her friend. They could squabble like siblings and have hotly-worded arguments about how to approach a case or a suspect, but their relationship was solid. It was an anchor.
It was a lifeline.
It was everything.
And she wanted it back, plus more.
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"I'm bringing you lunch," she said after he answered. "Turkey or ham?"
Lassiter let out a breath. "Turkey."
"See you in half an hour." She disconnected.
He rubbed his face. It didn't help calm him. He didn't want her here, but he wanted her here. He wanted to see her, to smell her, to drink her in, and he wanted her to stay as far away as he could keep her.
That one kiss had killed whatever reserves of strength he'd idiotically believed he was building up. Three, maybe four seconds of her lips against his and he was done for.
Maybe he could get a transfer up to Eureka. Hell, why stop there; just go to Canada. Maybe skip up to Alaska and over to Russia. They needed cops in Russia, right? Sure they did.
When she arrived, she smiled, and Lassiter felt weak, and that wasn't going to work at all.
Juliet set up lunch on his kitchen table as if she'd been there a hundred times. Cokes in tall glasses with ice, turkey and tomato on wheat, chips, cookies. She looked cool and collected, her blonde hair pinned back loosely, and he said, "You changed shampoos."
She went pink. "A while ago, yes. I couldn't find the peach anymore. Now I'm using—"
"Something tropical. Gardenias," he murmured, and ate rather than have her look into his eyes and know.
"I miss having lunch with you," she said after a while, breaking a chip into pieces.
He glanced at her, surprised. "In the car, or in restaurants?"
"Both." She smiled again, and oh, he found her enchanting. "You would always relax, even in the middle of a stakeout. And you always remembered what places I liked, and even what I had and if it was any good or not. And even if you were terse with the waitstaff, you'd leave a good tip."
"I hate tipping. The restaurant should pay their staff a decent wage."
"They should, but they don't, and you always tipped well. And you didn't like that I noticed." Her smile was half-teasing now. "But I noticed a lot of things."
He swallowed. She hadn't noticed enough. "How are things at the station? Did Vick make you head detective like she should have?"
Juliet shook her head. "She offered it to me, but I turned it down."
"What? Why?"
"I'm not ready for it."
"The hell you aren't. You're damn good, O'Hara, too good to be anyone's underling anymore."
She went a little pink again. "Thanks. But I'm really not ready for it. I still like being part of the team. I don't want to run the team. Anyway, I still think of it as your job."
He paused, because that touched him. "Well, it's not. Who did she give it to?"
"No one. The position's still open."
"But it's been four months."
Juliet said simply, "I think she's hoping you'll come back."
Lassiter gazed back at her, considering how he was feeling. "I haven't given her any reason to think that."
"Who needs a reason?" She added more Coke to his glass. "That's the thing about hope. It persists."
"It's crazy," he muttered. Hope had been fluttering around him for a couple of days now—stupid, insensitive, mindless hope. It mocked reality, threw rocks at sense, vandalized resolve. "Hope's a bastard," he said out loud.
Juliet laughed. "Yeah, I know."
He set his glass down. "Why are you here, O'Hara? I mean, really. Why? What is it you think you're trying to fix?"
She stared at him, eyes wide. "I told you. I want you to talk to me. And it almost doesn't matter what you say because I am not letting you out of my life again."
He got up abruptly, pacing the room. "That's not a call you get to make. Sometimes one person's needs trump the other's."
She followed him, standing too close. "Tell me what your needs are. We'll see if they trump mine."
"I know what yours are," he said bluntly. "You want things to be nice. You want me to tell you everything's okay and let's get back to how we were but it can't be like that anymore, O'Hara. I can't be like that anymore."
"Then I want to know how you can be. How we can be. What we can have if it can't be like before." After a second, she added impatiently, "And I don't even want it to be like before. I want something different now. Something better."
"Like what? We live in different cities. Our lives are separate. You have a place back there, and I'm starting to make one here. Can't you just let it be?" Can't you stand further back, so I don't have to smell your hair and your skin and see your beautiful eyes and your mouth and fight back this urge to just wrap myself around you?
"No," she said simply.
"O'Hara," he protested.
"Carlton, just tell me!" She advanced on him, eyes alight. "Tell me why you left. Put it in so many words, so we can deal with it. What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of the truth? Are you afraid of me?" She kept on, until she had him backed up against the wall. She was close to a foot shorter, but he felt she was towering over him.
More softly, she asked, "Or are you afraid of you? What is it?"
Lassiter felt something snap. He grasped her arms and turned her around rapidly so that now he had her pinned to the wall. "You really want to know what I'm afraid of?" He could smell that tropical paradise in her hair, and the light in her eyes—the fire—was high and bright.
"Yes," she whispered, not struggling, not giving an inch.
"I'm afraid if you don't leave here now, there's no way I won't spend the rest of the day making love to you," he growled, surprising himself because it was true but not what he meant to say, and in the back of his mind he knew yes, yes, scare her off, make her see this is hopeless and she can't fix it, this is the way, and he kissed her hard, tasting her lips fully, knowing he had only a few seconds to memorize this moment until she broke free.
But she didn't even try. Instead, she kissed him back. Just as hard.
His arms found their way around her waist. Hers slid around his neck as she pressed herself to him. Still kissing.
He invaded her warm mouth with his tongue… she invaded his. It was an electric, delicious shock.
And there was hunger in it; it wasn't just Lassiter.
His hands slid up under her blouse, touching bare silky skin; she began to unbutton his shirt, warm sensuous fingertips playing across his chest.
Still kissing, hot and furious.
He cupped her bottom with his hands, lifting her slightly; she wrapped her legs around his, and the kiss raged on.
Lassiter carried her toward the sofa, still half-expecting her to struggle, to come to her senses, to end this crazy thing he'd started.
She didn't come to her senses.
So much kissing. Every kiss a little explosion of wonder.
The moment he finally believed she wasn't going to bolt from his arms was just after her blouse dropped to the floor and her lovely body was revealing itself to him. He touched her skin, and she took his hand and showed him what she wanted.
And that, oddly, was when whatever had snapped before snapped back into place. Reason returned. Somehow, beating back a flood of hormones, sanity returned.
He froze.
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Juliet sat in her car, still shaking. She was too far from home, and too far from what she knew and understood.
Lassiter had stopped. She'd felt that what was happening was akin to completing a circuit, making everything crystal clear in the light of his ocean-blue eyes.
But he had stopped.
His voice was husky when he spoke. "I can't do this to you."
She was out of breath, trying to focus on his meaning. Do this to her? Weren't they doing it to each other?
"I can't be the guy you regret compromising your principles for." He rolled off of her, onto the floor, cupping his head in his hands, breathing hard, shutting down.
With difficulty, feeling incredibly weak, Juliet sat up and retrieved her blouse, holding it for a moment, still overwhelmed with her desire for him.
"You wanted it in so many words," he went on, not looking at her. "Here are the words. I left Santa Barbara because of how I felt about you. How I still feel about you. There was no damn way I could explain it, or even look you in the eye. It wasn't going away, and you were with Spencer, and he wasn't going away either, and I took off because that's what I had to do for me."
She was still breathless when she asked, "But what about my feelings?"
Lassiter's dark head stayed down as he answered. "You didn't have any feelings for me, O'Hara. You were happy with what you had and I wasn't going try to confuse you."
"You really have no idea what you're talking about."
Now he looked at her, in disbelief.
She put her blouse back on, buttoning with shaking fingers. "You forget that everyone can keep secrets. Everyone can repress. Everyone can put aside what they know is true because it's hard or it's scary. And being in love with your partner is scary, because it breaks a lot of rules and it's messy and there are consequences."
He'd stared at her, blue eyes searching, and she didn't flinch. "You're not in love with me."
Juliet stood up, finishing up the buttons. "Says you."
Lassiter was surprised again. "What kind of response is that?"
"The best I can do on short notice. Says you. If you think I came all the way over here because I'm confused about my feelings, you're an idiot. If you think I was just half-naked on the sofa with you because I'm a little 'mixed up,' you're an even bigger idiot."
"Way to make your point," he said dryly. "Listen. Juliet. You are quite probably the loveliest, nicest person I have ever known. You have a big heart. A wide-open, generous heart. You hate for anyone to be hurting. But the odds of you having lasting feelings for me now that aren't a mix of sympathy and misplaced guilt are pretty low. We were partners for a long time and that clouds issues. I know it. You know it. You should go back to Santa Barbara, make your life with Spencer, and forget everything about the past few days."
She glared at him, and loved him, and he was an idiot. She went to the table and fetched her purse. "Says you," she said with finality, and walked out.
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