Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: M+
Spoilers: Through season six episode nine, "Neil Simon's Lover's Retreat"
WARNING: Shassie, meaning full-on homosexual Shawn/Lassiter angst and occasional explicitness.
A/N: The long-awaited appearance of Gus! For honestly, what is Shawn without Gus? A ping without a pong. A ding without a dong. A stripper without a pole. More than a boy, but less than a man. And I think I got lost in the imagery there for awhile, but you get my point. Also, a more-than-cameo appearance of Juliet, even though it's a telephone conversation!
Chapter Nine: 'Til Tomorrow
Gus arrived half an hour into Airplane!, bearing more luggage than Shawn could possibly have required if he intended to stay at Lassiter's house for a year. He looked relieved to see his friend alive and whole when Shawn opened the door.
"Gus! Come on in, come on in. Maybe if you add your pouty pleading face to mine we can get Lassie to break down and make us some bananas foster. Come on, show me the Famous Burton Doe Eyes."
"I'm not making Doe Eyes at Lassiter, Shawn, but bananas foster does sound good. Is that…are you guys watching Airplane?"
"We just finished Top Secret. Gus - would you believe it? Lassiter has four full episodes of MST3K on DVD and VHS - 'Manos:' the Hands of Fate, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Mitchell, and The Brain That Wouldn't Die - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Shorts! Isn't that awesome?"
"Yeah, that's great. You actually watched Top Secret without me?" Gus said. He sounded hurt.
"Well, I promised Lassie I wouldn't pry into any more of his personal information, and he wouldn't make me any bananas foster, so we had to do something, and pretty much everything else he owns stars either Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Or Rae Dawn Chong, but I couldn't cheat on you like that."
"Okay, I forgive you, but you're going to have to start Airplane! over again. Your essentials, sir." He dumped the three large bags he carried at Shawn's feet. "Is that…are you wearing one of Lassiter's shirts?"
Shawn looked down and fingered the zipper of the black sweatshirt he wore. "Yeah. Well, see, I felt kind of skeevy wearing the same shirt as yesterday, and then I spilled clam chowder on myself at lunch, so Lassie let me borrow his hoodie. Took a lot of persuading, too, which was kind of mean since I washed it for him today."
"You and Lassiter seem to be getting…close," Gus said, with a suspicious glare.
"At times over the past twenty-four hours, particularly over breakfast this morning, you couldn't slip a piece of paper in between us."
"I believe that constitutes TMI, Shawn. I don't need those kind of mental images. Whatever the hell you meant by it."
"What do you think I meant by it?"
"I don't even want to contemplate, Shawn."
"But you're contemplating. I can tell. You're contemplating your little heart out. Come on, if we can't get bananas foster I do know that there's popcorn in the pantry just begging to be consumed while 'Larry's getting larger!'" Shawn cried, and poked Gus in the stomach. Gus giggled like the Pilsbury Doughboy.
"Don't reveal my weaknesses in front of Lassiter, Shawn," Gus said severely, once he recovered.
"Lassie's in the nice room, he couldn't see. Besides, Lassie's already aware of your weaknesses. Dead bodies, hot women with low expectations, cupcakes, and porn."
"Not cupcakes and porn, Shawn."
"Well, not at the same time, silly. You need a free hand."
"Not funny, Shawn."
"Tell that to ventriloquist extraordinaire Jeff Dunham and his suitcase full of wacky little friends. All of which, funnily enough, have pretty much the same voice."
"Gee. I wonder why."
"As do I, Gus. I think they're all secretly related. Although it is hard to imagine Achmed the Dead Terrorist sending Walter a Father's Day card."
"They're ventriloquist's dummies, Shawn. Dunham does the voices for all of them."
"That's ludicrous, Gus - I've seen them on stage together and Dunham's lips never move."
"That's kind of the point of ventriloquism, Shawn."
"Silly, gullible Guster. Come on, Shawnie wants popcorn and a little Leslie Nielsen. 'Good night, sweet Frank Drebben. Flights of Nordbergs sing thee to thy rest.'"
"I hear that."
Gus followed him into the "nice room." "Is that…is that a sword on the wall?"
"It's long, pointy, rather sharp, and made of metal, Gus - it's either a sword or Doctor Doom's nose," Shawn said.
"Doctor Doom wears a mask because his face is scarred, Shawn. He doesn't have a metal nose."
"But the mask is made of metal and has a nose on it, correct? Correct. Don't ruin my refs with pedantics…pedanticism…nit-pickery, man." Shawn flounced out of the room into the kitchen.
"Hello, Guster. Make yourself at home…apparently," Lassiter said.
"Hello, Detective Lassiter. Thank you for…er…allowing Shawn to invite me into your lovely…and well-defended home. I, uh…I hope you are well? Or rather…er…better than when I last…saw you…in the hospital with tubes in your nose and an IV port in your arm."
"Thank you, Guster, for the reminder. Yes, I'm considerably better than I was with tubes in my nose and an IV port in my arm. Funny, isn't it? Well, sit down already - you're making me nervous, and you know how nervous you get when I get nervous."
Gus sat down in the armchair immediately. Shawn came back in from the kitchen with a bag of microwave popcorn in hand and perched himself on the couch right next to Lassiter. Gus eyed the seating arrangements, got up, and squeezed himself into the narrow space between the two men.
"Guster, if you end up in my lap my Glock and I will have a word with you outside," Lassiter said crossly.
Shawn ceded space with ill humor. "Yeah, Gus, geez - what are you trying to do, protect my honor? All you need is a moustache and you'd be my fat, ugly old duenna."
"If a chaperone is needed, Burton Guster is the man for the job," Gus said determinedly.
"So you have been contemplating what I meant when I said - "
"Don't go there, Shawn. Once was enough. Once was too much."
"Now Gus, you know as well as I do that once is never enough with a man like you. Now, eight? Eight is Enough. Nineteen and counting? That's far, far too much. The Duggars must be stopped."
"You know that's right."
"I don't want to know what you said that was too much, Spencer," Lassiter said. "But Guster, let me assure you that there is absolutely no reason to fear that I will compromise his honor."
"I'm not worried about you, Lassiter - I'm worried about him. He makes…bad decisions."
"There's the understatement of the millennium."
"Foul - you can't call 'understatement of the millennium' when the millennium is only twelve years old," Shawn cried. "There has to be a maximum of two hundred years remaining in the millennium before nominations can be made. And Gus, don't start up the nit-pickery again by pointing out that the millennium is actually eleven years old, or whatever."
"It is, Shawn."
"Ap ap ap ap ap!" Shawn shouted, and stuffed a handful of popcorn in Gus's mouth. "Start the darned movie over from the beginning."
Lassiter brought up the DVD menu and restarted the movie from the opening credits. The airplane cut through the cloudbank to the Jaws theme one more time. Shawn offered the bag of popcorn to Lassiter, who refused curtly. Gus finished swallowing his unwanted mouthful and grabbed a handful himself. If, over the course of the next few hours, Lassiter felt like an uninvited guest in his own home then there was an aura of fate about it - sometimes it seemed less like Shawn and Gus were unrelated brothers and more like they were two halves of the same rather self-absorbed person. Sometimes - often, actually - he wondered why Gus put up with so much from Shawn, continually being marginalized and shunted aside. Guster had brains, talent, good manners, a good if prosaic career…well, Lassiter supposed Shawn brought a little adventure into his life but it hardly seemed to make up for all the trouble he caused. But then, what did Lassiter know about lifelong friendship? It's not like he had anything to compare it to.
Eventually he got tired of paying silent witness to the endless hardcore comedy routine that was Shawn plus Gus, and tired, too, of contemplating the increase in his grocery bill by the end of the night as they decimated his supply of anything resembling a snack without so much as a "by-your-leave." He slipped away halfway through their screening of the MST3K-enhanced version of the horrendous Joe Don Baker "classic" Mitchell and went to bed, without giving so much as a thought to the idea of dinner. He doubted either man even noticed his departure, or that they would care if they did.
The telephone rang at a little after eight o'clock, and a glance at the Caller ID showed O'Hara's name and number. Even though he knew who was calling he still answered with his surname. People pretty much all sounded alike to him over the telephone, so how else could one know for certain who was answering the call?
"Hey, Carlton - it's Juliet," O'Hara said. Even though he suspected she'd just got home from work - long days and double shifts were common for both of them at the SBPD, and she was probably pulling a lot of overtime working with no partner, just a Uniform on call in his or her own squad car to answer a demand for backup - she sounded as upbeat and perky as ever. "How are you? I heard you got some shooting practice in yesterday." It was hard to tell through the bubbly tone whether or not she was teasing him.
"Shooting practice? No. I was making pineapple juice."
She laughed. "We're going to have to find an outdoor shooting range that will let you fire a fifty-caliber, because I want to try that gun," she said. "Do you think I could handle the recoil?"
"Oh yeah, sure you could. It's pretty intense, but you're strong and you know guns. You might not like it much, though - I don't have the molded grip so it's not a tremendously comfortable fit to the hand, and yours is a lot smaller than mine."
"I've still got to fire it once, all the same," she said. "I'll even reload the rounds for you."
He laughed. "That would be great, because I hate reloading and ammo for that thing costs a fortune. Makes me wish I collected my shells yesterday, you could reload those, too."
"I still can. Buzz held on to them."
The smile fell of his face at mention of the young officer, and not because of the shooting range incident. "Good old McNab…he's always there when you need him," he said. And when you don't, he thought.
"Well, your neighbors haven't called in to report any shooting, so can I assume Shawn is still alive? I do know you have a lot of sharp objects…"
"Spencer is alive. He and Guster are raiding my kitchen cabinets and watching my television as we speak."
"Is he doing you more harm or good, being there with you?"
Lassiter gave the question the due consideration it deserved. "I'd say he's helping me out," he said, "while at the same time being as much of a nuisance and thorn in my side as he can. Overall though, I guess the needle is in the green. Mostly." It was true, but no way was he going to confess to his partner just what kind of thorn Spencer really was.
"Good. You tell him I said he'd better treat you right, or I'll shoot him repeatedly."
This blatant echo of his own words months ago to Spencer left him wondering just how much O'Hara already knew or guessed. There didn't seem to be much he could say except for a lame, "Thanks, O'Hara."
"Anyway, I'm glad you're okay and I'm glad Shawn is being…somewhat helpful. It's way too quiet around here without you, partner, so I need you back on your feet ASAP. Sitting in the driver's seat all the time feels like trying to write left-handed and don't have anyone to buy coffee for!"
He snorted. "The minute I'm back on full active you'll be back to complaining about never getting to drive and always having to buy the coffee."
She giggled. "Probably. But speaking of driving, you've got to tell me about that Sting Ray. I mean, what happened to the Fusion?"
"Hated it. Sold it. Haven't replaced it yet."
"So where did the 'Vette come from?"
"Had it all the time."
"And you never said a word or let me have a ride. Asshat," she said.
"That's one of my words, O'Hara."
"I plead over-exposure. And I still don't know exactly what it means."
"Ass-Haberdashery is the wave of the future. I'd buy stock if I were you, before it inflates."
Another giggle. Lassiter had never liked the sound of giggling, it set his teeth on edge, but O'Hara's didn't bother him, possibly due to the same sort of over-exposure she was talking about, or because it was a subdued giggle rather than a high-pitched dog-howling screechy giggle.
"Anyway, the reason I called, other than wanting to know how you were, is that I've got this case that I think you'd find…interesting. Double-homicide. A head-scratcher, to say the least."
"No suspects?"
"Too many. For a quiet, long-time married couple with no enemies, there seem to be an awful lot of people with motive to see them dead."
"You've piqued my interest."
"Thought it would. Can I come by tomorrow? Maybe on my lunch break? 'Cause if the Chief knew I was involving you in police business at this point she'd probably blow a gasket and bust me back to walking a beat. And you know that's torture in heels."
"You'd have to resign yourself to flats, O'Hara - I know that's almost impossible for you," he teased. "Yeah, stop by whenever. I'll…ha! I'll make bananas foster."
"Oo, sounds good. What brought that on?"
"Spencer's been bugging me about it almost all day. I strongly suspect he pre-scoped my supplies to know that I happen to have the rum and banana liqueur already. There's no way in hell I'm leaping to his whim but I'll make it for you and he can choke on it."
She laughed out loud. "I won't even ask why you happen to have banana liqueur handy."
"For bananas foster," he said blandly.
"You are an endless surprise, Carlton. All right, I'll see you then. 'Til tomorrow."
"See you then, O'Hara."