The next morning he awoke to a delicious smell filling his house. He made his way down to the kitchen to find Shawn standing before the stove, singing to himself in a surprisingly good tenor as he cooked some sort of sauce, adding spices, not bothering to measure things out, but appearing to improvise as he went along. Not yet remembering what had happened the night before, Carlton only remarked to himself that Shawn was disgustingly chipper for the early hour, and that he needed coffee if he was to tolerate it for long.

Not wanting to bother the psychic, the detective decided to make the coffee himself, as his shoulder was decidedly less painful than it had been the day before. He kept his coffee beans in the cabinet just above and to the right of the stove, and since he was tall enough to reach around the other man, he did so, moving forward so that his face was a mere inches behind the psychic's head. As his hand wrapped around the coffee beans he breathed in, filling his lungs with the delicious smell of what Shawn was cooking, and the man himself. Smelling that mixture of his own familiar soap and the spicy tropical shave oil caused his memories of the night before to come flooding back into his conscious. Caught off guard, he backed away quickly, dropping the container of coffee beans to the floor as he did so.

"Everything okay, Lassie?" Shawn turned to see the detective with a shocked look on his face, white as a sheet. "Oh, crap. You're overdue for your pain pills, aren't you? Sit down, I'll get them."

The younger man launched himself out of the room as Carlton fell back into a chair at the kitchen table, shocked into mental silence. Only a strange buzzing sound filled his mind.

Shawn came in with a large blue pill, and a small white one. He laid them on the table in front of the older man and went to the sink to fill a small glass with orange juice. As he handed Carlton the glass, the men's fingers momentarily brushed each other, and Carlton's belly swooped down as if he had fallen off a cliff. Their eyes locked and younger man smiled, asking "You alright?"

Not able to speak, the detective merely nodded his head. Shawn pat him gently on the shoulder before turning back toward the stove.

"I'm making breakfast fajitas à la Spencer, I hope that's okay."

The detective watched the man cook, dumfounded and totally confused. He was feeling things he hadn't felt in a VERY long time, and he was finding himself unable to understand what was going on. He had jacked off thinking about Shawn Spencer. The mere sight of the man wearing only a towel had caused his body to respond in a totally confusing, not to mention horrifying, way. He hadn't responded that strongly to someone in years, and he had not felt like that about a man...he hadn't felt that...since college. His chest constricted as he remembered all those years ago. This WASN'T his first time feeling an attraction to a man. Something had almost happened with his college roommate, but nothing had ever come of it. It had come shockingly close, but then things had changed, and everything had been swept under a rug*. Why, after more than ten years, had these feelings suddenly come up again? And why was it Shawn Spencer who brought them up? Sure, the detective knew the other man was attractive, that was an objective fact that Carlton was not oblivious to. He also knew that O'Hara and Guster were attractive. Knowing someone is attractive, and BEING attracted to them are two different things. It made no sense for him to BE attracted to Shawn, he hated the man.

He looked up at the man.

No, that wasn't true. The man often annoyed him, but even back when they had first met, when their professional relationship was at its most strained, he didn't hate the psychic. He could even admit to himself that he had begun to see the man differently lately, but that didn't change the fact that Shawn Spencer was often a thorn in the side of detective Lassiter. How could this happen?

He continued watching the man. He was chopping vegetables at a speed the seemed unsafe, picking them up on the blade of the knife and dropping them into a sizzling pan. Like the psychic himself, Shawn kept the pan in a state of perpetual motion over the fire of the gas stove. Periodically adding spices with his left hand, he would shift the pan violently forward and backward, every once in a while tossing the diced vegetables up the sloped side of the pan and into the air, before catching them again. The detective watched, warmth growing in his stomach with each flip of the pan. Finally Shawn gave the veggies a particularly high flip, not spilling a single morsel over the edge. The simple sight of those vegetables falling through the air back toward the sizzling surface of the pan gave Carlton the almost irresistible urge to grab Shawn and push him back against the counter, to press the length of his body into the other man as their lips met in a kiss that sizzled and popped more than those veggies in the oil.

Instead, he tore his eyes away from the other man's backside, picked up the pills Shawn had laid before him, and made his way back upstairs. He found himself in the bathroom, leaning over the sink, looking at himself in the mirror. He didn't think he looked right; though his features were all as they usually were, there was just something that seemed off. Or maybe he was looking for something to be different. He had thought he had had a pretty good handle on who he was. Except for one turbulent time in college, (and come on, it's college-everyone is confused at that time in their lives), he was pretty sure he knew what he wanted. He had never exactly had a happy romantic life, but his job was more than fulfilling. He had just never felt this level of attraction for anyone in his life. He had loved his wife, but never had he been this drawn to her. Although it was a physical attraction (and boy was it!), he thought that there was more to it than that. He had been feeling something was different for a while now, which had been troubling enough on its own. This just completed the cycle.

His mind, body, and soul were all screaming to be close to Spencer, but he worked with this man on a regular basis, and these feelings were inappropriate. Not only that, but the detective was too old to put his life through the kind of upheaval that would accompany this kind of revelation. He would have to sweep it all under the rug. He had done it once in his life. He would have to do it again, and Carlton knew what he had to do.

He dropped the pills in the sink and ran the water over them, watching them slowly dissolve in the stream of water, disappearing down the drain. They messed with his equilibrium too much, he could feel the slowness and lethargy they clouded his mind with, the sluggishness they imposed on his body, and perhaps they had something to do with the physical ache in his chest that he somehow felt whenever he thought about Spencer. He took a deep breath, looking back at the mirror one final time, then turned and made his way back to his bedroom.

He picked up the phone on the bedside table, and dialled. After the second ring a feminine voice answered, "Hello?"

The detective grit his teeth and replied, "Hello, mother."

-0-0-0-

She made plans to fly to Santa Barbara on Friday, which gave the detective three more days with the psychic before she arrived. He resigned himself to trying to keep his thoughts under control until she got there, when the physical distance between him and the psychic could help him gain some needed emotional distance. He would not have to see Shawn again until he was back at work. He could handle himself then, in control and on the job in the only place he had ever felt truly at home, not vulnerable and injured.

The detective never considered that this would be easier said than done. The more time he spent with the younger man, the more he found himself attracted. Each time the man helped him change his dressings, or cooked him another irritatingly delicious meal (which were rarely appropriate for the time of day-fajitas for breakfast and loaded pancakes for dinner), or made some charming off-hand comment as they watched TV, he would find thoughts stirring that would not go away, no matter how hard he tried.

He became more and more cold toward Shawn as the days passed, spending more and more of his time locked in his room. The younger man stayed as friendly as ever, though thankfully he kept his physical distance whenever possible. Carlton was at least grateful for this; he didn't think he could handle it if the psychic invaded his personal space while his thoughts and feelings were so confused.

In the most cowardly move of all, he couldn't bring himself to tell Shawn that he had called his mother. He kept putting it off, scared of where the conversation would lead if he brought it up. Finally on Thursday evening, as they sat on the sofa watching TV and an ad for a local Greek place had inspired Shawn to make some off-hand comment about what he would make for dinner the following night, the detective finally said something.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? My mother's coming. She'll be here tomorrow, mid morning."

"Ah, I'll finally be able to meet Mrs. Lassie! Does SHE like feta cheese?"

"Um, I figured you were eager to get back into your own space. I called her so you could go."

Trying to hide his disappointment, it only flashed momentarily across the psychic's face before he offered, "Okay, Lassie, we've probably been in close contact a bit too long as it is."

The detective had to look away. "I appreciate you volunteering to stay with me, but yes, I think we have."

The psychic's only response was to look down at his feet.

"I'm incredibly tired. I'm going to bed." Carlton got up and made his way up the stairs.

"G'night Lassie," he heard Shawn finally call up behind him, in a voice that sounded way too hopeful for the detective to listen to just then.

"Good night Shawn," he said quietly to himself so that the other man couldn't hear.

He made his way to his room, telling himself that this was not the coward's way out. He COULDN'T tell Shawn about the way he felt. Shawn was the epitome of heterosexual. This wasn't running away, this was saving himself the turmoil that confessing his feelings to a straight man-one he happens to work with-would cause. Why bother pursing these feelings, no matter how right they felt at the time, when they wouldn't be returned anyway? Hopefully he could make himself forget again, bury the feelings so they wouldn't resurface. If they never came up again, there was no point even bothering to examine or analyze them.

It would be like a finding out you loved the taste of Tyrannosaurus Rex meat above any other food. What would it matter? Tyrannosaurus is extinct and you won't ever be able to eat it, so why bother agonizing over the fact that you would be happy if you could go your whole life eating noting but Tyrannosaurus?

That's what he told himself as he got ready for bed that night, and dreamed of Shawn being buried alive wearing the giant Tyrannosaurus Rex head from the case a few years ago.

xoXOxo

The detective slept fitfully, and spent the following morning nervously peering out the front window, waiting for his mother to appear. Shawn had made him an inappropriate breakfast again – for the last time, Carlton told himself – but he only pushed it around his plate while Shawn ate his with his usual amount of gusto.

Finally, at ten, his mother arrived. The taxi pulled up into his driveway, and the driver helped his mother up to the house with her bags. There was an awkward moment at the door as he introduced Shawn and his mother.

"I'll bring your bags up to the guest room." In an attempt to escape the situation, he started grabbing her luggage.

"Oh, Lassie. Let me get that. You have a bum arm. Stay here and catch up with your mom."

"No, I can manage, I'll take them."

"No, you really... You probably shouldn't."

"Back off, Spencer! I've got it."

The men locked eyes for a second, and Shawn put his hands up, as if Lassiter had pulled a gun. "Okay, you've got it."

Shawn backed away playfully, arms still raised in the air, watching Lassiter turn and struggle up the stairs under the weight of the bags.

Still smiling, he turned back to Lassiter's mother, who was looking at him speculatively.

"What is going on between you and my son?"

Shawn was thrown off guard by her question. "What?" he asked pathetically, not quite understanding what she meant.

She sighed, and leaned back on the kitchen counter, crossing her arms and looking down in what Shawn assumed was disappointment. "Has he finally figured it out? I've been waiting for this since he was a teenager. I'm surprised it took this long."

Shawn looked at her, mouth hanging open, not even sure how to respond. She met his eyes, and he felt trapped like a deer in headlights. Had his eyes lingered too long on the detective's butt as he made his way up the stairs? Could she tell how Shawn felt about her son? Would she say something to him?

His panic was interrupted by a crash from above, followed by Lassiter's yell of, "Shit!"

Shawn raced up the stairs and into the guest room. He found Lassie sitting on the edge of the bed, his forehead leaning against the headboard, cringing. The larger suitcase lay between the bed and the end table, which had been knocked over.

Shawn got down on knees in front of the other man, and put a calming hand on each of Lassiter's arms. "Are you okay?"

The detective looked at him, breathing hard, but did not answer.

Movement behind him caught Shawn's attention, and he turned to find Lassiter's mother picking up the table and putting the fallen lamp back on it.

"It looks like the light bulb broke."

"I'll get a new one." Shawn jumped up and started heading for the door.

She stopped his progress with a hand on his shoulder. "No, son. You go on home now, I'll take over from here." She pulled him into an entirely unexpected hug, saying, "Thank you for taking care of my boy," before pulling away. She gave him a pat on the cheek, then turned toward the door and made her way down the hall to the utility closet under the stars. Shawn turned to look at Lassiter, who still sat on the edge of the bed.

"Well, I guess I'll see you later."

He turned to go, and had nearly made it to the door of the guest room when Carlton spoke.

"Spencer," the psychic turned toward the detective. He looked utterly frustrated, and something in the way he sat there looking back at Shawn started the gears turning in the back of the psychic's mind. A thought was struggling to form, but Shawn didn't yet know what it was.

"Thanks for being here these last few days."

"Any time, Lassie."

A/N:

* I have plans to write a prequel to this story, which will include the asterisked storyline, but I will not start that one until this one is complete.