Carlton Lassiter knows that happiness doesn't last, but he had been hoping for more than 24 hours of it with Shawn. Which is why, when the first cracks appear, he's thrown by it.

"I was thinking we could go up to Lookout Mountain," he says to Shawn that afternoon. "There's a national park with a battlefield there, and they're having artillery demonstrations tomorrow. There's also a lot of other touristy crap, so if you're not interested in more Civil War history, there will be other stuff to do." He stops talking at the way Spencer is looking at him, or more specifically, the way Spencer suddenly isn't looking at him.

"That's up near Tennessee, right?"

"Yeah, right at the border between the states. Why?"

"It's just – we haven't talked about your vacation plans, Lassie. Are you flying out of Atlanta, or are you traveling up the coast and flying out of a different state?"

Puzzled and a little irritated, Lassiter replies "Flying out of Atlanta. Why does it matter?"

"Oh!" Shawn says, sounding relieved. "That's good. It's just, my bike is here. I can leave it a couple of days, but if you were planning on leaving the state and not returning, I…well."

He shuts up. Lassiter stares at him. He had, in all honesty, completely forgotten about Shawn's motorcycle, and it feels like a bucket of cold water over his head to realize that Spencer had been about to say that if Lassiter wasn't coming back through Atlanta, then Shawn wouldn't go with him.

"But you are coming back, so no worries! We need to stop and get some road trip food. I'm craving Cool Ranch Doritos and Skittles! Probably not at the same time, but maybe I'll discover a new taste sensation." Spencer is babbling now, probably from nervousness.

"No Doritos in the car," Lassiter says flatly, automatically responding to Spencer's nonsense. "I won't get my deposit back if the car smells like Cool Ranch."

"But Lassie, Doritos are an imperative part of the road trip experience!"

It's so easy to fall into their usual pattern and snark something in reply, but Lassiter is barely even aware of their banter. This ithing/i, affair, whatever it is, has a time limit, and Shawn has already thought about that, is apparently one step ahead of Lassiter yet again. In a week and a half, Lassiter is going to get on a plane and go back to Santa Barbara, and Shawn is going to get on his motorcycle and go somewhere else.

If that's the way it's going to be, then fine, Lassiter reasons to himself. He can enjoy a fling, right? There was no way this was going to last, so why not just have fun with it for the few days that it does? This way, there's no ugly break-up, no waking up to the sick realization that he's tried everything he knows to do and still failed, the way he had with Victoria and Marlowe.

"Lassie?" Shawn asks worriedly "Where'd you go?"

Lassiter shakes his head, willing himself to not say or do anything that will reveal to Spencer how stricken he is by the realization that two weeks from now, he's not going to have Shawn in his life anymore. Again.

"I'm right here," he says firmly. "If we leave now, we can get there before it gets dark."

It's silly how sad he feels checking out of the hotel; we'll always have Room 305, he thinks bitterly. Spencer can obviously tell something is wrong – he is, after all, a genius at reading body language and facial expressions – but he either doesn't know why Lassiter's upset or he's purposely ignoring it. He cranks up the radio and rolls down his window, his sunglasses hiding his expression enough that Lassiter has no idea what he's thinking or feeling. It's strange, how Shawn can go from being the most energetic, touchy-feely, loquacious person Lassiter's ever met to this remote stranger. If he had ever thought about it, he would have assumed that knowing the truth about the psychic fraud, to say nothing of going to bed with Spencer, would have made him less of a mystery, but instead it's like he just keeps uncovering layers, only to find that there are even more layers underneath.

From the passenger seat, there is a very unmysterious snore.

Or maybe instead of layers that hide what he's really feeling, he's just tired from months of restless sleep and a night and half a day of marathon sex. Lassiter supposes that could be true too.

Shawn napping gives Lassiter the opportunity to think about why the idea that Spencer isn't going to come back to Santa Barbara with him is so disconcerting. The last few months, have, quite frankly, sucked. Shawn not being around is just a part of that; Henry's death seemed to set off a chain reaction of badness, from Shawn leaving to the doomed relationship with Marlowe, to losing O'Hara as a partner.

Shawn coming home wouldn't fix any of those things, and would in fact lead to a whole new series of difficulties, but the thought of him not being there makes Lassiter's heart ache in a way that he didn't know he was capable of anymore. He's always prided himself on being a stoic loner figure like Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name or Dirty Harry, but over the last six years he's gotten accustomed to the quirky, lively personalities surrounding him, and at the forefront of that is Shawn. The fact is, he's lonely, and when he looks back at the past months after Shawn left, all he can see is an endless slog of gray, meaningless days.

The thought of going back to that is terrifying.

Two hours later, Spencer finally stirs. "Are we there yet?" he asks sleepily.

"Almost. I was thinking we might get some dinner before finding a hotel."

Spencer yawns "Whatever you want, Lassie."

What Lassiter wants is to shake the nonchalance out of Spencer and find out if any of this means anything at all to him, but he knows from experience that directly confronting Shawn about something he doesn't want to talk about is useless, so he decides to settle for getting an answer to a different kind of question for now.

He waits until they're halfway through dinner at a steakhouse he finds off the highway before asking something that's been plaguing him for months.

"Where did you learn how to fool a lie detector?" Lassiter tries to make his question sound casual, but there's no denying both his curiosity and the little flare of anger in his chest when he recalls the incident, Spencer being as smug as only he can be, looking him right in the eye and lying.

Shawn answers without hesitation. "Henry. He taught me how to do that when I was, I dunno, thirteen."

"Why in the name of sweet justice would he do that?" Lassiter asks, astounded.

Shawn shrugs casually, but Lassiter can see how his shoulders tense up as he talks about Henry.

"He said I might need to know how to do it one day if I ever went undercover or something. He had an entire career mapped out for me, you know. Strangely enough, fake psychic detective was not part of his plan. I can't deny though that many of his lessons came in handy over the years."

"Like what?"

Shawn smiles slightly, but doesn't look at Lassiter when he replies, keeping his eyes focused instead on the straw wrapper he's been fiddling with.

"He locked me in the trunk of his car once to teach me how to escape. That's how I knew to kick out the taillight when I was kidnapped that time. He would blindfold me so that I learned to use my other senses. He would take me and Gus out and leave us in the woods to learn how to survive and find our way back to civilization" Shawn shakes his head "It's amazing to me that Gus didn't run at the first sign of just how fucked up our particular father-son dynamic was."

"Christ Spencer, if I were on a domestic call and found out a parent was treating a kid like that, I would have that kid out of the house so fast –"

Now Shawn does look at him. "I know Henry loved me. I was never in any danger. He just had some weird ideas about parenting. He wanted me to grow up and be an even better version of himself. I think he dreamed of like, being able to introduce me as his son the FBI agent, or the police chief or something. He should have had you for a son, Lassie. You would have made him proud."

"Shawn, I know he was proud of you. He gave you cases –"

"He knew I was a good detective. An effective tool for the department. It's not the same as being proud of me" Shawn looks away "This is a depressing conversation, Lassie. Let's talk about something else. Hey, are you ever going to tell me what happened with Marlowe?"

"This is your attempt at a less depressing conversation?"

"What can I say? I'm curious. She was hot, Lassie, and fresh out of prison. An impressive amount of porn starts off with that very premise."

Lassiter scowls at him. "Don't talk about her that way. It just didn't work out. Not many people are cut out to be married to cops, and she turned out not to be one of them. That's all."

"No," Shawn says, studying him with that perceptive gaze that makes Lassiter feel like he's under a microscope, and which he also absurdly thinks is insanely sexy, "that's not all. I can tell when you're lying. But it's okay to say that it's none of my business."

"Well then, it's none of your fucking business."

Shawn grins like he's just been handed a compliment. "See? That wasn't so hard. You want some dessert? I saw this chocolate lava cake on the menu that looked like a volcano of deliciousness."

While Shawn flags down the waitress and orders his cake, Lassiter thinks about how he had failed with Marlowe, how he had built her up as an ideal in his head and was frustrated when she turned out to be a flesh-and-blood woman with her own idiosyncrasies, one of which just happened to be an inability to deal with all of his idiosyncrasies. Apparently, not everyone wants guns hidden all over the house, or Most Wanted posters tacked up in the dining room. And her affection for squirrels was just plain puzzling.

At least with Spencer he already knows everything annoying and frustrating about him, has, in fact, been building a tolerance towards his quirks for the last six years now, to the point where it's no longer tolerance but affection. Realizing that makes it sting all the more to remember that this relationship is running on borrowed time.

Shawn is eating his cake, but still watching him carefully. After a minute he sets his fork down and says "Let's get out of here."

"Is the cake not any good?"

"It's a taste sensation, Lassie. But I'm in the mood for something else now."

They barely make it to the car before Shawn is all over him, sucking his tongue into his mouth, mussing up his hair, pulling his shirt free from his pants so that he can dig his fingers into bare skin. They're making out in the front seat of the car like horny adolescents, except Lassiter can't remember doing anything like this when he had been a teenager. He slides a hand up under Shawn's shirt to stroke his hand up to his chest, where he pinches a nipple. Shawn groans into his mouth.

They're interrupted by a passerby shouting "Get a room!"

Lassiter pulls away reluctantly, reminds himself that they're sitting in a restaurant parking lot. "Maybe we should, um, get a room."

Shawn smiles wickedly "Or we could just give everyone who walks by a good show. I'm up for it. What about you?" he punctuates the question by petting his hand over the thin material of Lassiter's slacks covering his erection. "Oooh, feels like you're up for it too."

"Spencer…" Lassiter growls in warning. Or in arousal. It's hard to tell at the moment.

"Fine," Shawn sighs, removing his hand, which makes Lassiter feel equal parts relieved and disappointed. "But we're checking into the first hotel we see, got it?"

"Agreed."

Lassiter wakes up the next morning in a tangle of scratchy sheets. The first hotel they had come to had been kind of a dump, but that hadn't seemed to matter so much last night when Shawn's hand had been on his thigh. For a brief time, his mouth had been attached to Lassiter's neck as well, but Lassiter refused to drive anywhere until after Shawn had his seatbelt on, so Shawn had retaliated by naming in graphic detail all the things he was going to do to Lassiter once they were behind closed doors. Lassiter can actually feel himself starting to blush a little now as he recalls Shawn's low voice uttering filthy sweet nothings coming from the passenger seat of the car while his hand stayed firmly glued to Lassiter's leg.

"Dude! I want to know what you're thinking about. Your ears are all pink."

Shawn's voice now is raspy with sleep, and as he contemplates the stained ceiling of their hotel room, Lassiter muses that he never dreamed he might sleep with someone who called him "dude" in bed.

"I'm thinking that if I get bedbugs from this crappy hotel, it's going to be your fault."

Shawn looks at him critically. "You need to work on your pillow talk, Lassie. What I think you meant to say was that I am so amazingly, stupendously sexy that you can't keep your hands off of me and just thinking about all the dirty, dirty things we do together makes you blush and you can't believe you kept away from me for all those years." He grins over at Lassiter "Feel free to say that now, to make up for the bedbug thing."

"I can't possibly remember all that to repeat it back to you, Spencer." Lassiter says. "Maybe you should write it down."

"Maybe later," Shawn says, slumping back onto his pillow. After a pause, he says "I think it looks like a bunny rabbit."

Lassiter looks at him in confusion. "What? What are you talking about?"

Shawn points up "The lovely water stain artwork on our ceiling that had you so entranced a few minutes ago. See, there are the ears, and those cracks are the whiskers, and if you squint just right you can see the cute little cottontail."

Lassiter looks at the stain again; it does kind of look like a rabbit if he tilts his head a little. He considers it for a moment, trying to think of how to bring up the subject he really wants to talk about.

He hesitates, then asks "Aren't you bored?"

"With what? This?" Shawn asks disbelievingly, waving his hand in a gesture that encompasses himself, Lassiter, and the bed they're in. "We've only been doing this for two days. It's a little early for the seven year itch to set in." Now he looks worried. "Why? Are you bored? I thought I was bringing my A game, but I can try harder if…"

"No!" Lassiter say hastily "Not with this. This is…if you upped your game any, I might actually have a heart attack. I meant, aren't you bored with bartending. Waiting tables. Whatever else you've been doing for money. Don't you miss putting criminals behind bars?"

Shawn throws an arm over his eyes like he's trying to hide from this conversation. "Oh, that," he says flatly. "I like meeting new people, doing new things. It keeps my mind busy."

"What, and solving crimes didn't? I know you have to miss it. Guster told me that he does. He's bored with his regular job."

Shawn sighs. "Okay, yeah, I miss it. I'm good at it, it was exciting, whatever. I can't go back to running Psych though, and I am in no way qualified to get a legitimate PI license."

Lassiter wants to argue that Spencer could re-open Psych, even as he knows that would mean he himself would be abetting in defrauding the SBPD, which leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Still, when he weighs the idea of lying against Spencer's phenomenal case-solving abilities, it's tempting.

"Vick could hire you on as a consultant in a non-psychic capacity. We could say you got hit on the head and lost your abilities."

"And when the higher-ups come around asking why I'm still getting paid if I'm not psychic anymore? What then?"

Lassiter sighs. There's a way around this, he knows there has to be. Chief Vick can be ruthless when it comes to working the system, and if she were presented with the idea of Spencer coming back to work for her in some capacity, he knows she could figure out a way to do it.

"I don't know," he admits. "We would think of something. I always thought I would rather cut out my tongue than admit this, but you're an amazing detective. You shouldn't let that go to waste."

"Awww, Lassie that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me. Well, aside from the time you were drunk and told me I was astounding."

"I never said that."

"Would I lie to you? Wait, don't answer that."

Lassiter rolls his eyes and tries to persevere with the conversation. "You should at least consider coming back to Santa Barbara, whether you re-open Psych or not. Guster is lonesome. He looks like half a person walking around without you. It's depressing."

Shawn sits up "Oh, Gussy will be fine. He's a big boy. He survived college without me, and I traveled around for years after that before going home. Hey, if you want to go to that artillery demonstration, we should get dressed."

Before Lassiter can say anything else, Shawn has disappeared into the bathroom. That didn't go at all the way he had wanted it to. Spencer was supposed to jump at the chance to have his most ardent critic onboard the Psych bandwagon, or, failing that, he should have been swayed by the comment about Gus's loneliness. Instead, he had dismissed everything Lassiter had said and left the room to escape the conversation.

He punches a pillow in frustration. He has no idea how to approach this with Shawn, isn't even entirely certain what his own motives are. He's only sure about two things: He has to go back to Santa Barbara next week, and he doesn't want this thing with Shawn to end. He had hoped appealing to two of Shawn's favorite things – crime solving and Guster – would make him want to contemplate returning home, but evidently that was not a topic Shawn was willing to explore.

Well. He would just have to think of another approach.