Lassiter stepped out of the shower and dried himself off. Then with a towel wrapped around his waist he shaved for the second time that day. He walked into his bedroom, opened his closet and inspected its contents. It had been a while since we'd been on a date, and he hadn't known what to wear then. Choosing clothes for his pseudo-date with Spencer was an even greater challenge. He tried to keep his goal in the forefront of his mind: figure out how Spencer's really solving cases, charge him with fraud, and never have to see him darken the station again. But for some reason he seemed to be just as anxious as if this were a real date.

He chose his dark blue suit and a crisp white shirt then perused his tie rack. He held up a red tie then recalled Shawn's words when they were investigating the speed-dating ring at Shenanigans, "Chicks dig the sternum bush." Well pretend-date or no, this was not an occasion for revealing his chest hair. It invited people to imagine him naked, and it made him feel like one of the Bee Gees. Besides, he didn't have the confidence in the power of the sternum bush that Spencer had. He'd tried it with his ex-wife and she'd produced divorce papers. He settled on a light blue tie that Spencer had once said brought out his eyes.

On the way to the boardwalk he wondered if he was expected to bring flowers or something, then decided against it. Spencer had a job; he could get himself flowers if he wanted them. Besides, he thought, two men eating together was just two men eating together, but two men eating together with flowers was obviously a date. And while he had no qualms about letting Spencer think it was a date, he didn't want the whole world knowing.

Natalino's was the kind of restaurant that did a heavy traffic in couples. A speaker system played orchestral music in the background, and the light just bright enough to allow customers to read the menu. Most of the tables were designed for two and screened off from other diners by a series of long curtains hanging from the ceiling. Lassiter took one look at the candles dotting the tables and hoped the curtains were fire retardant. He identified the exits, just in case, and made a mental note to have the fire marshal check this place out. Then he told the hostess that he was meeting someone and gave Shawn's name. She led him to a dark corner where Shawn was already seated. He was wearing a grey dress shirt and a dark blue tie, and his eyes looked almost brown in the dim light. Lassiter marveled at the fact that Spencer even owned a tie.

"You came," Shawn said, standing briefly as Lassiter sat down. Lassiter, whose mother had taught him to stand when a lady entered, wondered if Shawn thought of him as the lady in this scenario.

"You have a gift for stating the obvious, Spencer."

"I didn't know if you'd show up." Spencer wiped a sweaty palm on his pant leg and began toying with his silverware. He tried to rest an arm nonchalantly on the table and just caught the edge of his fork tines, sending the implement flying into the air, landing with a clatter somewhere behind him. The waitstaff, familiar with the pitfalls of first dates, were very subtle about slipping him a replacement fork as they filled the table's water glasses.

Lassiter buried himself in the menu, ignoring Spencer's nervousness. "Before I order I suppose I should ask which of us is paying for this," he said.

"I figured we'd go Dutch," Shawn offered. "That way I won't feel any pressure to put out."

Lassiter smiled grimly. There was the smart-mouthed man he'd grown to... tolerate. "Your virtue is safe with me, Spencer."

Lassiter ordered the caesar salad and garlic shrimp penne. Garlic was usually a no-no on a date, but it wasn't as if there was going to be kissing. Shawn ordered the garlic bread and the lobster pasta, and Lassiter relaxed. Spencer obviously doesn't think of this as a real date either. He felt confident enough to order a glass of wine.

Shawn smiled across his garlic bread at Lassiter. "So…tell me things."

"What sort of things?" Lassiter asked, spearing a crouton with his fork.

"Hobbies?" Shawn asked. "I know you like the Civil War."

"I don't like the Civil War," Lassiter said. "I like the ideals that three hundred and sixty thousand brave Union soldiers gave their lives to protect. The ideals of justice and equality for all men."

"And you express it by dressing up and wearing a false beard. I get that," Shawn said. "What else do you do? Do you collect stamps, or first editions or My Little Pony dolls?"

"I collect and shoot guns," Lassiter said. "I fish, but then you already know that." He went through his house in his mind's eye, looking for anything that might qualify as a hobby. Somehow he didn't think that tracking criminals or reviewing cold cases on his free-standing Claridge board counted. "Let's turn this around, shall we?" he asked, shifting the subject from his own, possibly empty personal life. "Do you have hobbies? Outside of interfering with police work, I mean."

"Of course I do," Shawn said. "I have lots of hobbies. I don't spend all my time listening to Careless Whisper and making friendship pins, you know."

"Then let's have it. What do you do?"

"Nothing special." Shawn stuck out his bottom lip slightly, as if thinking about his hobbies made him sad. "I pick something, do it intensely for a while and then move on." He waved a hand. "I get bored. I like challenges."

"I know," Lassiter said. "I've seen your resume." He took a sip of wine. "So what made you settle on private investigator?" He refused to acknowledge that there was anything supernatural about what Shawn did for a living.

"Oh, that's an easy one," Shawn said. He smiled. "You know how it is. You have a gift for something and you work on it until you're really good. Then it's so easy you can't not do it."

"You worked at it?" Lassiter didn't bother to keep the disbelief out of his tone.

"Oh yeah," Shawn said, thinking of Henry's never-ending observation training sessions. "I worked at it. You sound surprised."

"I am. You don't strike me as the working at it type."

"Not everything I do is easy, Lassie. It just looks that way."

"So," Lassiter looked around the restaurant to see if anyone was watching them. "Do you do this often?" He still found it difficult to believe that Shawn meant for their dinner to be a date. It hadn't occurred to him that Shawn might mean it when he'd said Lassiter was the station's second prettiest detective. He certainly didn't think of himself as pretty. He had sometimes been called 'striking,' which he suspected was code for 'odd-looking.' Although if Shawn did think he was pretty then what, if anything, did that change? And had he given the top spot to McNab or O'Hara?

"Natalino's?" Shawn asked. "No. I was here on a case once."

"That's not what I mean, Spencer." Lassiter looked him in the eye and held the stare just long enough to make his point.

"Ask men on dates? No, I don't." Shawn looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, unless slow-dancing with a life-size standee of Val Kilmer counts. But I must say, dates are different when the other person can talk."

Lassiter's brow creased. "Then why did you ask me here?"

"Why do you think?" Shawn's hand reached out and rested on his thigh, just inches above his knee. Lassiter froze as if he were a Victorian maiden. Every nerve in his body seemed to shift focus to the spot on his leg, now warm from Spencer's touch. Instead of the fake date and subtle interrogation he had planned for this evening he found his mind wandering in an entirely different direction. He suspected that gay men didn't have the same taboo against sex on the first date that straight women did, and he wondered how far Shawn would be willing to go if they were somewhere more private. Pushing that fantasy aside as best he could, Lassiter tried to keep his mind on his purpose. He took a deep, calming breath and remembered something one of his instructors in the academy had said (or had it been a scene from Point of No Return?): when faced with an uncomfortable situation, smile and say something off-hand.

"I think the percussion cap was one of the most significant inventions in the history of firearms."

Shawn smiled. "I'll try not to take that as a threat, Lassie." Shawn removed his hand, but Lassiter's leg felt as if the ghost of his touch still remained.

"I followed up on that tip you gave me," Lassiter said finally.

"About Mrs. Harris?" Shawn asked, "or about using conditioner on your body hair?"

"The tip about Mrs. Harris," Lassiter growled. "She's clean, but her husband's been involved in some very shady land deals. I have it on good authority that if he weren't missing the FBI would have brought him in for questioning by now. In fact, except for the fact that his assets are intact, I'd think he'd done a runner."

"You mean all the money's still in his accounts?" This information seemed to please Shawn.

"Actually, most of his assets are in his wife's name," Lassiter explained. "He probably transferred them so they'd be harder to freeze if the white collar crime guys got onto his scams. But it would make it harder to get his hands on cash in a hurry. And as we heard on the tape, he found out the hard way that some people aren't very patient."

"So you're assuming he's dead?" Shawn asked.

"Almost certainly," Lassiter said. "We'll probably start finding his body parts all over the county any day now." He took a mouthful of food and chewed heartily. The anticipation of finding a body, even in pieces, was always reminiscent of Christmas.

"Are you a betting man?" Shawn asked. When Lassiter raised an eyebrow he continued, "I'll bet you a hundred dollars they never find his body," Shawn said.

"I'll take that bet." Lassiter smiled. He was already making plans for putting Shawn's hundred bucks toward buying a new Smith & Wesson 629.

The two men ate their dinner and discussed cases from the past: the blue-haired bandit of Mission Street, the Skofield Park strangler, and the Montecito poisoner. Lassiter reflected that when he'd tried to discuss his work on dates with women it hadn't always gone so well. Spencer, on the other hand, seemed to love talking about work. He reminded him of Fenich that way.

Maybe, he thought, Spencer's more like a real cop than I've been willing to admit.

Lassiter threw caution to the wind and told him the dead clown story, just as an experiment. By the time he got to the part where they had opened the steamer trunk Shawn was laughing, his eyes shining with tears.

"Finally!" Lassiter said, feeling vindicated. "Someone else understands how funny that was." For the first time he realized that Shawn had a nice smile.

"Funny?" Shawn wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. "My God, Lassie. It's beyond funny. It's hilarible."

"Hilarible?" Lassiter's brows knit. "That's not a word."

"Sure it is," Shawn said. "It's a mix of hilarious and horrible, like watching Licence to Drive, or Flavour of Love." The waiter removed their empty plates and brought them coffee. "So," Shawn stared up at him with his darkened irises and licked his lips, making them glisten in the candlelight. "Where do we go from here?"

Lassiter took a gulp of his coffee to give himself time to think. He had enjoyed himself. The food had been terrific, and talking to Spencer about work had felt strangely comfortable. He'd even passed the dead clown test, which had sent more than one date running for the hills. Going ahead with his original plan almost seemed as if it would spoil the evening. He told himself this was just a normal stage of any undercover job. So what if he had a bit of Stockholm Syndrome? It didn't mean he could abandon the plan.

He looked at Shawn. "I'd like to see your place," he said.

As they settled their bills Lassiter tried to pull his focus away from Shawn's smile and back to his plan. The evidence he'd wanted hadn't been at the Psych office. It had to be at Spencer's apartment. He'd just need to excuse himself to go to the bathroom and do a quick search of the obvious hiding places. If he was lucky, by this time tomorrow he'd never have to worry about Spencer interfering in an investigation again.

Shawn's directions led them to a house on the beach. Lassiter felt anxious as he followed him along the walk to the front doorway. How can Spencer afford to live here? He wondered.

As if reading his mind, Shawn said, "I'm pet-sitting for a lawyer who's in Cuba for three months." In response to Lassiter's surprised look he added, "It's okay. She's Canadian." The door opened onto a living room with a fireplace, plush leather chairs, and a deep red Persian area rug. It was a warm, masculine room with a small galley kitchen to the left and a door to the right that he assumed led to the bathroom and bedroom.

When no friendly or curious animal met them at the door Lassiter asked, "Where's the pet you're sitting?"

Shawn pointed across the room to a wall of glass. "The top row is all fish, the second row is lizards, the third row is spiders and the bottom unit has a big snake named Reggie."

"I wouldn't have thought of you as the type of person someone gets to pet-sit," Lassiter ventured.

"Really?" Shawn said, surprised. "I do it all the time. I worked at an animal hospital for a month. Animals love me."

Lassiter looked around the apartment. If Spencer was only staying here temporarily then it was unlikely to contain anything incriminating. He watched as Shawn shook flakes into the fish tank, sprinkled mealworms into the lizard and spider terrariums, and brought something out of the kitchen for the snake. He returned to the kitchen, washed his hands, and came back, smiling.

"Now I'm all yours, Lassie."

Lassiter swallowed and looked at Shawn in the warm light from the shaded lamps. He was standing impossibly close to him, and Lassiter could smell his cologne, musky and dark.

Should I have worn cologne? He wondered.

"I…uh…." He realized, for the first time since their date had begun, that he may have signed up for more than he could handle. He should have realized that there was no way he was going to be able to worm Spencer's deepest secrets out of him over wine and seafood pasta. Finding out how Spencer did whatever it was he did was more like a long-term project. Except maintaining the charade of dating for that long would almost certainly require more than dinner and a chaste peck on the lips.

"I'll give you a hint," Shawn said, smiling at Lassiter's awkwardness. "This is the part where we kiss." He leaned in closer, and just stood there, his lips slightly parted, waiting for Lassiter to make the next move.

Lassiter swallowed hard and wrapped his arms tentatively around Shawn. Despite all the times he'd slammed him into walls or wrestled him into a hold, touching him in this new context felt different and alien. He was suddenly conscious of how solid Shawn's muscles felt. He closed his eyes, leaned in and pressed his lips to Shawn's. They were soft and he tasted like creamy garlic, which contrary to common wisdom wasn't a bad thing at all. Shawn ran his hand along Lassiter's jaw as the kiss went on, leading inevitably to that moment where one of them would open their mouth. Lassiter felt Shawn's hips tilt forward and grind against his thigh, and his lips parted in surprise at how hard Shawn was, providing the opening Shawn's tongue had been waiting for.

Lassiter felt a surge of excitement welling up inside him from low in his gut. He suddenly realized that he'd been fooling himself with the idea that this was all an act. His mind might have thought he was acting, but his body didn't seem to agree. He pulled away, stepped back and wiped a hand across his mouth.

"I have to go," he said, hoping that the dim light and the darkness of his suit would hide his straining erection.

"Are you sure?" Shawn moved toward him and Lassiter put out an arm to block him.

"Yeah. I am. I mean, I do. Have to go." He turned, and strode to the door, pausing once it was open and he was safely on the other side of it. "I'll call you." He hurried to his car and pulled away, putting as much space between himself and Spencer as possible. His mind felt like a hurricane had been released in it. He'd assumed that this date had been a joke, and so he hadn't felt guilty about trying to use it to his own advantage. But the hardness in Shawn's pants suggested that the whole evening had been motivated by something entirely different. Shawn actually liked him, was attracted to him, and wanted him, sexually. And despite his attempt to pretending otherwise, the evidence of his own body suggested that maybe he'd been motivated by something similar. And a good detective didn't ignore the evidence.

The next morning Shawn unlocked the door to the Psych office, humming the theme to Stripes as he stepped inside, then froze, his senses alert. Dozens of things in the office were slightly out of place. It creeped him out like a Mini Pops cover of Hit Me Baby One More Time. He grabbed an umbrella as a weapon and, feeling only slightly like the Penguin, padded silently into the office.

It wasn't like the movies, where the hero comes home to discover his place trashed. No cushions had been torn open, no drawers were tipped open, no papers had been strewn across the floor. Yet to Shawn it was painfully obvious that someone had thoroughly searched the place. Part of him hoped this was just Lassiter's way of getting to know him better, but whereas Lassiter had left faint newspaper-ink prints on his desk drawers and the door to the storage closet, whoever had broken in this time had worn gloves. Shawn could tell because he'd purposely avoided wiping the newspaper prints from his drawer, but whatever gloved hand had opened it last hadn't been as careful.

Damn, he thought, looking at the hopelessly smudged prints. I was saving those as a souvenir.

Brandishing the umbrella menacingly, he opened the closet but saw only old Halloween costumes, a stuffed elephant he had won at a fairground, and miscellaneous sporting equipment.

Certain now that no one was lurking in the office, Shawn relaxed and collapsed into his chair. Even the valuables, like the television, DVD player, stereo, and computer were still here. He opened the drawer where he kept his candy and raised an eyebrow. His CD copy of You Can't Always Get What You Want was gone. Shawn pressed his lips together and nodded his head slowly. Whoever had broken into the office had had an insatiable need for the smooth deep tones of voice actor Winston Winters. And Shawn was 90% sure he knew who that was.