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: Thanks for sticking with me all this way, and sorry there's so little payoff. But stories never really end - characters come and go, plotlines start and stop and occasionally restart again. That's the beauty of life. Just because this part of the story didn't go the way we thought it would or should, doesn't mean that the story is over. It's just not being written any longer.

Epilude: Buzzwords

He couldn't believe he was going through with it. Obviously he'd lost his mind, there was no better explanation for why he was now approaching the invisible office walls around Detective Lassiter's desk with a sheaf of computer-printed papers in his hand. Henry Spencer's desk was sitting kitty-wampus half in the bullpen aisle, which seemed to indicate that the head detective was slightly peeved. Henry was probably trying to gain more office space by minutely shoving Lassiter's desk closer to the conference room wall day by day again.

The Head Detective's face was a thundercloud - nothing unusual, but still terrifying. Buzz almost chickened out, but his traitor-feet carried him straight ahead. "D-d-detective Lassiter, Sir?" he stammered.

"What do you - " Lassiter started to bark, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said in a calmer voice, "Yes, McNab?"

Buzz began to babble about how he'd felt when Lassiter got shot, and how afraid he was, after Lassiter disappeared on his long vacation, that he would never come back. Lassiter finally stopped the nearly nonsensical barrage of words with a hand.

"What do you want, McNab?" he said in a deliberately even tone.

"I just wanted to give you this, Sir," Buzz said, and handed over the sheaf of papers. "It's nothing important - you don't even have to read it." His face bleached white. "In fact, it's probably best if you don't, really. It's just…something I wrote. I'm, uh, I'm gonna go now. Good to have you back, Sir."

Buzz bolted for the restrooms with one hand clapped over his mouth like he was on the verge of throwing up. Lassiter watched him run with one eyebrow cocked quizzically, then he looked at the papers in his hand. Typed across the letterhead were the bold-italic-underlined words, "World's Greatest Cop."

There were only four pages of double-spaced type, so even though he was a slow reader it didn't take long to get through it. It was a brief vignette about a police detective who returned to active duty after a life-altering event to discover that he meant a lot more to his colleagues and friends than he'd realized. Lassiter did not know what the phrase "a cocklebur concealing a caramel center" actually meant, but it was fairly obvious who the main character was patterned after. At the end of the story the detective's partner walked up and presented him with a coffee mug bearing the legend, "World's Greatest Cop."

O'Hara cleared her throat. He looked up from the story to see her standing at his elbow with her hands behind her back. "Buzz and I kind of went sharesies on this scheme," she confessed. "I honestly thought he was going to leave me hanging but I'm glad to see he sucked it up."

She put the "World's Greatest Cop" coffee mug on the blotter of his desk, smiled, and flounced away.

FIN