A/N: Right then, some reviews to address first.
SJColton, your bit about your glasses made me giggle. XD Have an internet biscuit!
Severitis, 'tis an honor that my fic has converted you. Welcome to the fandom! You came at a great time as the writers are being very generous to us this season but I'll let you catch up. ;)
Now let us go forth and enjoy much story time! :D
The minute the door is open, Lassiter has his hand on Shawn's shirt collar. He shoves him inside of the apartment and slams the door behind him.
"Woah! Woah!" Shawn panicks at the sudden iron grip on him.
"Where did you get that?" the cop asks, his voice low and humming behind clenched teeth.
The younger man looks at the angry detective with a helplessness.
"Get what?"
"The bottle cap, Spencer! Where did you get it?"
There's a fire in his blue eyes, burning hotter than any anger that Shawn's ever seen and it's terrifying. The fake psychic knew that Lassie could make a criminal tremble now and then but this is truly horrifying. He looks ready to beat him for answers and Shawn isn't even sure why. This doesn't deter the cop though and he keeps the studious fury on his face without the slightest hesitation.
"I-it's just a bottle cap, Lassie-"
"You said it was lucky. Why?"
Shawn hesitates for a second and it's obvious. His eyes wander for a minute and his signature eyebrow is hiked up and in place for thought. Lassiter is impatient though and pulls Shawn closer to him. They're nose to nose and the cop's gaze barrels down on the younger man's eyes. That quirky scent of Shawn's tries to wrap itself around Lassiter but he ignores it completely. He wants answers and he'll get them by any means necessary.
Shawn sighs, seeing the unforgiving resolution in the cop's face and despite not knowing the circumstances, he decides to give in.
"It was just this guy I was friends with for a while in high school. He gave it to me before he moved!"
"What was his name?"
"Why does it matter?!"
Lassiter can feel his heart in his chest, its usually steady pace sky rocketing in his ribs. He doesn't know why it matters but it does and what's worse is that at this moment it's the only thing that matters.
"What was his name, Spencer!"
"Jeremy!" Shawn shouts, "Okay? It was Jeremy!"
Lassiter lets go of Shawn and his face is in a state of shock. Quietly, he sombers over to the couch and he doesn't even register the small piles of clutter on the floor. His mind ignores strewn across shoes and discarded bouts of laundry. He sits down, resting his elbows on his knees as he stares into a empty bowl, stares at the tortilla chip crumbs at the bottom, and lets everything sink in.
Shawn waits at a safe distance and Lassiter can hear him breathing in to speak.
"I didn't think you'd want to know that, Lassie," Shawn admits, "I mean, I saw who's grave you were at and I heard the kind of stuff you were saying and I- I didn't think you'd want to know."
Lassiter doesn't understand how this could have happened. It makes him feel like the world is too small and suddenly every breath he takes is heavy and unbearable. Shawn got to know Jeremy, got to have more than one conversation with him, got to call him his friend. It doesn't seem fair to Lassiter.
"...how long did you know him?"
"About half a year. We were sophomores together. I'll be honest though, I had no idea he was dead until today."
Shawn takes in a deep breath and then strides over to the couch. Very carefully he sits down beside Lassiter, making sure to still keep a cushion's worth of space between them. The dark blue material of the couch suddenly feels like an ocean to Lassiter and the younger man to his right is just a drifting boat that dropped anchor too close to him.
"When did that craziness happen anyway?" Shawn asks.
"Seventeen years ago,"
"Seventeen? Wow...that would have made him-"
"-ninteen."
"Yeah..."
Shawn doesn't ask how he died and that's probably for the better. Lassiter doesn't think he'd be able to tell him. He'd get too angry, work himself up over it. It angers his sense of justice and at the same it just makes him upset as a person. Nobody should be killed because of a sexual preference, granted Lassiter has a list of things people should be killed for but orientation is not one of them.
"...how did you know him?"
Lassiter looks up like he's been woken up rudely. He hadn't thought about that, that Shawn would ask him how he knew Jeremy. The question sort of sits in the air, an awkward surprise to the cop but Shawn looks at him half expectant and half apologetic. Lassiter gains his composure and looks at the door as an equally awkward answers tumbles out of his mouth.
"I met him once. At a party. I may or may not have given him his first beer and he may or may not have kissed me."
He waits for Shawn's punch line, the expected joke but he receives silence. He looks back at Shawn to see him staring down at the cushion separating them. He looks like a despondent fisherman, gazing in the tightly knit water under him.
"Well?" Lassiter asks.
Shawn looks up at him and shrugs.
"Well what?"
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
"Your little monologue at the grave makes a lot more sense now."
Lassiter rolls his eyes. How is it that when Lassiter braces himself for Shawn, Shawn ends up surprising him? It's infuriating. However, as the cop looks back to the other man, he notices the bottle cap laying on his fingers.
"So what's your story behind that?" Lassiter asks, inwardly gulping a bit.
He's terrified to hear anything. His mind races, thinking what if Jeremy had kissed Shawn? What if they'd had sex? What if they'd been lovers? Just how much intimate knowledge did Shawn have of him? And what bothers Lassiter equally is just how much carnal knowledge Jeremy had had of Shawn but why that bothers him he doesn't know.
"It was the night before he moved," Shawn says, playing with the bottle cap, "I'd gone over to his place and he was drinking but that was normal. He drank a lot. I think it had to do with his dad but then I had problems with my dad too and I never drank, not really anyway. We bonded over that, our mutual daddy issues."
Lassiter could tell that the oblivious man meant that as sort of a light hearted joke but it just made the cop's insides twist. The anticipation didn't help either as he dreaded and waited for something that would clear up the sexual context between Shawn's old friendship. He could swear he felt sweat on his palms and he nearly jumped at any word that even sounded like 'sex'.
"So, he's drunk and telling about how he wishes that he could just be himself and I agree with him. I learned he was gay pretty quickly."
"How?"
Shawn chuckles a bit and smiles fondly. He might as well have shot Lassiter right in the heart. The conflicted detective can't put it into words but he doesn't want anyone else to have been with Jeremy. He wants to perserve that memory, keep Jeremy as his first kis and leave it at that, unsoiled by anything else. But it's more than that. It's Shawn. Shawn Spencer cannot, absolutely cannot, have done anything with him. Because he's Shawn. And Lassiter hates the heartbreak he's feeling as he looks at that warm smile.
"He kind of had a thing for the senior quaterback," Shawn laughs, "not that he ever did much about it but I knew."
Lassiter takes in a deep breath, somewhat relieved but before he can stop himself, words come out of his mouth.
"Did you and Jeremy ever..?"
"What?" Shawn looks confused, "Oh! No! No, no, no. My list of men I'd go gay for is a very deliberate, short and highly scrutinized list. Not that Jeremy was a bad pick or anything. I mean good for you-"
"-get on with the story, Spencer."
Lassiter feels calmer now, relieved, but somehow that relief makes him feel sick and he wonders quietly to himself who the people on Shawn's list are. The fact that it's a list alone makes the cop's head swim.
"So before I leave, he reaches into a draw and pulls out this bottle cap and he tells me that he wants me to have it. I, naturally, asky why, and he told me that it'd bring me courage one day, courage to do something 'a little crazy but wonderful' as he had put it. I totally forgot about it until I was visiting my dad the other day and I found it in a box of junk. Lucky really, because I've been needing some courage lately."
"You? Needing courage?" Lassiter says only slightly sarcastically before asking, "For what?"
Shawn smiles and wags his fingers in a 'no no' fashion. He then tucks the bottle cap back into the safety of his pocket and inadvertantly moves closer to Lassiter.
"No point in saying it until I've accomplished it," he says, "that's how we big boys get business done."
Lassiter scowls at this and there's this feeling that they're back to normal. The gloomy air that was around earlier has disapated. Shawn isn't looking a a bottlecap fondly, Lassiter doesn't have his heart pounding in his chest and the couch is once more a couch. There's still a lot they didn't talk about but Lassiter feels like that's okay. He looks into the kitchen opposite Shawn and feels a smile coming on. Jeremy described the bottle cap as something that gives one courage. Not just courage but courage to do something crazy and wonderful. And somehow the cop feels like with that little statement, that little bit of Jeremy's mindset that everything is going to be okay and maybe, just maybe he can forgive him.
"Well, Lassie," Shawn says, his hands giving a singular clap "you and I have the day off today, so what say we- I don't know, want to bake a cake?"
"...no."
Lassiter starts to get up and head for the door. He then pauses when he realizes that he came here on Shawn's motorcyle.
The little bastard is trying to trap me!
Not that Lassiter particularly wants to go back the station or back home or anywhere really. Today was just a lot to take in and even the idea of a ride home in a cab seems tedious. However, the alternative is to stay here with Shawn and...bake a cake apparently.
"Ah, come on! Okay, maybe not a cake. We could watch a movie!"
"Spencer, I highly doubt your collection of movies will in any way keep my attention."
"I've got Clint Eastwood."
The cop freezes in place and ever so slowly does his gaze land on Shawn. The pest is sitting there on his blue throne, surrounded by his palace of clutter and he's wearing the biggest smirk known to man kind. He knowns that Lassie is a sucker for an Eastwood movie. Reminds him of his childhood, the good parts, and simaltaneously reinforces his inner machismo and patriotism. It's like waving a cracker in front of a parrot, a carrot in front of a horse, the proverbial dog and his beloved bone. Shawn pats the couch slowly, being sure to milk his opportunity to work that grin and there's something sensual about. Lassiter tries to force the blush off his face as he silently sits back down, giving into the effortless task of watching a movie.
"Atta' boy, Lassiecakes-"
"Shut up and put the movie in."
A/N: Can you imagine Shawn and Lassie baking a cake together? :D IT'D BE THE FUCKING CUTEST THING EVER. Quick, everyone tell the writers that we want that! XD Lol and no, this fic isn't over yet. IT'LL NEVAH BE OVAH. D:
