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: And we're back to T+
Spoilers: Intense, and possible through series finale. Definitely contains spoilers for "The Rear View Mirror."
A/N: I hope that last chapter was okay. I haven't written a sex scene in…God…who knows how long. As far as I've seen thus far I haven't gotten any reviews on the last two chapters, which worries me. I know it's been a hell of a long time since I updated, but people seemed willing to jump back into The Rear View Mirror. Makes me afraid too that I might've insulted people with that revolver/automatic explanation, which was never my intention, I just saw several different fics by several different people over the course of reading through old stuff that called the guns Lassy and Juliet were carrying Glocks and revolvers within the same context, and Glock doesn't make revolvers. Like I said, no big deal, just a bit of information I'd like to have if I didn't already know it. I have issues, too. For some reason I have a habit of misspelling the word "whoa." I spell it "woah." I don't know why, I would swear to you I've always known how it was properly spelled. But Loafer pointed this proclivity out to me very kindly and now I'm on guard for it. I don't think I've done it lately but if I do, call me out for it, and anything else I screw up, too. Please, seriously. I'm the type who hated getting papers back with big "A's" on them and no notes in the margins. I'd much rather get lower grades with plenty of constructive criticism. I don't have a beta, so all mistakes are mine.
Chapter Thirty: She's Too Good For Me
Ursula was right about you.
That was what Juliet had whispered as she prepared to leave Carlton's bed at four thirty-eight in the morning that Monday. As she drove her little green VW Bug back to her house, she couldn't help shivering - constantly - at the memory of their lovemaking. Honestly, her teeth were chattering, and she wasn't cold in the least. Just unutterably, amazingly thrummy and excited and wanting to go around again and again and again.
Why had she wasted so much time? Why, when the right man was right there all the time?
Of course, now the hard part, she realized as she pulled into the driveway. Shawn's Norton was parked there, meaning he was home, but he would likely be asleep. She wasn't going to wake him up just to break his heart. And he wouldn't be awake, more than likely, by the time she had to go to work, so that meant she would have to hold off the "let's stay friends" talk until after watch. She didn't think he'd take it well, at all, but she had to make him see. If she had to be blunt about it, she would be. Tell him there was someone else. He didn't need to know who - oh Lordy, he would be intolerable if he knew who - and he certainly didn't need to know that his girlfriend was now, technically, unfaithful, no matter what she had decided with regards to their relationship.
She sighed as she keyed off the Bug's ignition. Break-ups were never pleasant. She didn't want to break Shawn's heart, but…even if there wasn't Carlton, it just…wasn't going anywhere. Sooner or later he would slide back into his usual disrespectful, won't-listen-to-anyone ways and now that she was pretty damned sure he'd been lying to her all along - about being psychic and who knew what else - well, why would she stay with someone like that?
She went into the house and petted the cats that milled around her feet, and checked to make sure they had food and water. Then she went into the guest bedroom and set the alarm for about an hour later than she usually gave herself, so she could sneak a little sleep into this crazy night. She doubted that she'd get any, but somehow she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and drifted off to sweet dreams of the love she'd made tonight.
-…-…-
She awoke with a start when the alarm went off at precisely six thirty. She smacked it off with the flat of her hand, yawned and stretched, and lay there in bed for a moment on the flat of her back, staring up at the ceiling, not at all looking forward to what had to be done today but looking forward to seeing Carlton again, to looking into those so-blue eyes, to seeing what she saw in them last night, dark as it was.
She got up, showered, dressed, and went into the kitchen to feed the cats and fix herself a cup of coffee from the Keurig. A ridiculous expenditure, that, considering she typically consumed at least a full pot of coffee when she drank coffee at home, but it came in handy when she was in a hurry and it was nice to have the occasional cup of something special and fancy. This one was Mocha Coconut-flavored.
She cast eyes to the bedroom door, still closed. Shawn was still asleep, surely. He didn't typically get up before ten o'clock, at the earliest. She heaved a sigh as she thought about the unpleasant conversation to come. Even if he did accept it without fuss - or without much fuss, anyway - it wouldn't be an easy thing to do, at all. She didn't want to hurt him, but…well…the time had come. It really had been inevitable.
But that was for after work. She pushed thoughts of that out of her mind and focused on the pleasure of seeing Carlton, being with him. She knew exactly how he would behave today. Shy, flustered. Blushing and smiling and stammering and just generally being absolutely adorable. He would pull himself together and probably bark at McNab or Dobson just to make sure nobody thought he'd gone soft. For her part, she might have to have at him in Observation.
It occurred to her, as she was climbing into her Bug, that she would have to get used to Sunday dinner at Mama Lassiter's house, but that wasn't such a great hardship. At least the woman could cook.
She drove to the station and pulled into her reserved parking space, not at all surprised to see the dark blue Crown Victoria parked in Lassiter's space. He always got to work first; it didn't matter how early she was. Their regular watch started at eight. She wouldn't be at all surprised to find out he came in every morning at six, called in or not.
She entered the building. Sergeant Allen was already at her post at Booking, and she nodded and smiled at her as she passed, but the woman's expression stopped her dead in her tracks before she made it far. She came back, concerned.
"Patricia, what's wrong?" she asked.
"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," Allen said. "You know, be careful, 'cause he's in a helluva mood, but maybe - just…maybe - you can kinda talk him down?"
"What do you mean? Who's in a hell of a mood?"
"Your partner. Snapping at everybody; just about drew on McNab, and all the poor boy did was say 'Good morning.' I haven't seen him this damn touchy in a long time. This is like…early days of the separation-angry. Early days of Shawn Spencer-angry. Maybe worse."
"Where is he?"
"He passed me about a minute ago and I think he was on his way down to the firing range, and thank God for small favors. Maybe he'll blow off a head of steam down there. Although…I saw the gun he took down there, and I'm not sure our little target range can handle it."
"What kind of gun did he take?" Juliet asked, perplexed at all of this.
"I didn't get a good look at it, but…I strongly suspect…it was somewhere on the order of a fifty-caliber."
"Oh, shit…" Juliet stood where she was for a moment, wringing her hands, unsure of what to do next. Go down there? If he had some sort of problem he needed to work out, letting him work it out with ammunition was the way to do it and she should just let him be, but if he'd brought the Taurus or, perhaps, the Desert Eagle, then the precinct's little firing range most likely couldn't handle it.
The next second her paralysis was broken by the sound of three loud explosions in close succession.
BANG… BANG… BANG!
"Oh, shit!" she said again, and raced down the stairs. She burst through the firing range door and found him at the end of the last lane, still standing with the golden Desert Eagle held out before him in both hands, his eyes closed behind his protective eye gear. Just…standing. Had he fired the clip empty? Juliet wasn't very familiar with the manufacturer but she thought the gun had a seven-round clip.
She looked down at the end of the lane. Of the target paper pinned in front of the wall there was very little remaining, and it looked as though there were now also three large holes in the concrete wall. The Chief wouldn't be happy about that. Neither would the owner of whatever vehicle got holed, if the bullets went straight through and into the parking lot. Hopefully they'd only hit a car and not a person.
"Carlton," she said, cautiously placing a hand on his arm. He jerked away from her. "Carlton, talk to me. What's wrong?"
He ripped off the glasses and ear protection and stalked out past her without a word. Didn't even look at her. Alarmed and, yes, more than a little bit pissed off, she followed after him.
Stalking like an angry panther, Carlton walked back to the Bullpen and to his desk, where he opened a desk drawer, carelessly tossed the Desert Eagle inside, and slammed it shut. He then stood with his hands on his hips and his thumbs in his belt loops, silently seething.
Chief Vick came out of her office and turned a Look specifically on her Head Detective. "Do I have to ask what that very loud noise was a few minutes ago?" she asked.
Lassiter didn't seem at all inclined to answer her. Indeed, he did not appear to have heard her, which was bad policy indeed. Juliet took the initiative, tentatively.
"Carlton was just…testing out some ballistics on the range," she said, blushing furiously.
Vick crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot on the tile floor. "Ah ha. Ballistics that can be heard three floors above a sound-proofed firing range?"
"There…may be some damage…to the firing range wall," Juliet said, in a very small, rather choked voice. "Hopefully…not the parking lot."
Vick sighed and shook her head. "McNab - go down and check to see exactly what we're looking at in terms of damage, and check the parking lot, too, just to be sure, and pray to God and all His Saints that nobody got hurt. Carlton, you can bet this is coming out of your paycheck. I'll be thinking seriously about whether or not this is going in an official reprimand. You're lucky I'm not going to demand to see just what kind of gun could have done this kind of damage, because I'm fairly certain it isn't legal in the state of California."
Lassiter, for his part, was still apparently oblivious, lost in his own anger. Anger at what, Juliet couldn't fathom. He should've been in the best of good moods, shouldn't he? He'd told her he loved her -
But wait. Maybe that was the problem. Carlton didn't like having his feelings out on display. Maybe he regretted saying that. But then, wouldn't that mean that he regretted the entire night? And if he felt that way, if he really did love her, wasn't last night the fulfillment of every wish he could ever have wished for? Good Lord, there was no figuring this out.
She couldn't have it out with him in the Bullpen. She sat down at her desk and logged into her computer, prepared to search evidence and ballistics reports and lab results until a call came in, if it ever did. The Crown Vic wasn't a good place for a face-to-face confrontation, either, come to think of it - the dashboard cam didn't record visuals of the occupants of the vehicle, but it did record audio. What they had to talk about would be a bit more embarrassing and damaging to Carlton's career - and her own - than Carlton's "danger music" when in pursuit of a fleeing suspect.
After work. After work, she'd drive over to Prospect Gardens and demand entrance and not leave until he'd talked to her. Oh, but she had to talk to Shawn after work.
Shawn.
Oh.
Dear God.
Maybe Shawn was the problem. As far as Carlton knew, she was still with Shawn. She'd never come right out and told him that she was breaking it off with him, she'd thought her actions said it quite loudly enough, but Carlton was a man who liked things spelled out, at least when it came to all things emotion or female-related. She hadn't said she loved him in return to his confession, either, and that might be gnawing at him as well. Dear God, what an idiot! She was a bona fide moron!
She looked across the Bullpen aisle at him, sitting down now with his head in his hands, his fingers in his hair, mussing it up severely. There was no place in the station she could think of where she could actually have an actual private talk with him - there were cameras everywhere. That idea about having at him in the Observation room was just a passing fancy. She could pull him into the ladies' room, perhaps, but that probably wouldn't work, either, because how would she ever keep any other ladies out of it while they talked?
She sighed. She would have to go see him after work and tell him everything she'd neglected to tell him last night, and pray that his bad mood now wouldn't ruin his career in the meantime. And that meant she had to talk to Shawn first, so there wasn't anything standing in between them.
McNab came back up from downstairs eventually and knocked at Chief Vick's office door. She let him in. "Good news, Chief. The bullets didn't go all the way through the building, although - it looks like it was a near thing. In any event there's no damage to the outside wall, but…geez…it's gonna take some repair work to fix the firing range wall."
Vick sighed and rubbed her eyes with one hand. "Thank you, McNab. I suppose if that's the case I can let the warning and the docked pay stand as punishment enough. Fortunately for Carlton, a little concrete and labor to patch up what was destroyed shouldn't cost all that much. Now, if I just knew what exactly possessed him to blow holes in my firing range wall."
She dismissed McNab, and called Lassiter in to her office. "Carlton. Have a seat," she said, and he lowered himself into a chair. She folded her hands together on her blotter. "Now. What was this about today? To say you've been in a mood this morning is to put it mildly, and the destruction of the firing range, while not entirely out of character, is at least unexpected. This weekend you were absolutely wonderful, and Iris can't seem to stop gushing about the time she spent with you. Now you seem to be a man Most Disturbed. Do I need to schedule you an appointment with Dr. Erlich?"
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Chief. I need a new partner."
She maintained a pretty good poker face and leveled her own version of the Stink-Eye on him. His Stink-Eye might have been more effective, mostly because it was more frequently employed, maybe because the color of his eyes made his a little colder, a little fiercer, but compared to anyone else she had a deadly glare.
"Tell me why."
"I…I can't."
"Then it's very simple, Carlton. You can't have a new partner. I'm not breaking up my best team of detectives on a whim or because you're a bad mood this morning. Either tell me what's wrong, or suck it up and deal with it."
His eyes widened in surprise or shock, he recoiled, and reached up one hand to tug at his collar. When he did, Vick's eyes caught sight of a small, light-colored, mouth-shaped bruise on the side of his neck and her gaze sharpened with sudden understanding. Now she knew why he didn't want to talk about it, but was still somewhat in the dark as to the source of his obvious bad mood and his desire for a new partner. O'Hara wasn't the "love 'em and leave 'em" type. Well, if he wasn't talking, she wasn't splitting them up. Not for any reason. Not as long as they remained professional, and she trusted that Carlton could put the bug in his ass aside and return to professionalism forthwith.
His shoulders sagged in apparent defeat for a moment, and his head hung between them, but it didn't last, and with a clear effort he straightened them out to their usual impressive breadth and raised his head high. He opened his eyes and they looked clear again, although, perhaps, more resigned than anything else.
"Yes, Chief," he said, and turned and walked out of the office.
-…-…-…-
Juliet climbed into her Beetle at the end of watch with a heavy heart. Carlton had acted just fine for the rest of the day, but he was hurting, she could see it. He was too quiet, for one thing, with her especially, and never once made eye contact with anyone. Her especially. If she could've, she would have dragged him into a janitor's closet and had it out with him right there in the station, but there just wasn't any way to do that. Damn it to hell and back.
Now she had to find Shawn and break it off with him, so Carlton couldn't look at her and say that she was with him. She would try at home first, since it was closer to the station and she could change her clothes and get cleaned up and he did very much like to sit and eat Doritos and play his Xbox One that used to be at the Psych office and in Juliet's estimation still should've been, even though she didn't mind video games in the slightest when they were pastimes and not…oh, say…an occupation. Then if he wasn't there she'd try the Psych office, which ninety-nine times out of a hundred is where he would be, with Gus, engaged in something silly and utterly nonsensical and not at all work-related.
She didn't see the Norton when she pulled into the drive and she sighed, wondering how difficult it would be to track him down, and how hard it would be to separate him from Gus if she managed it. She parked the vehicle and climbed out.
Something seemed…off…as she entered the house. Even if Shawn wasn't there, the place just seemed…too quiet. The cats came to greet her as usual, so that hadn't changed. What was different?
She went into the bedroom, where she received her first check. The bed was neatly made, which made absolutely no sense. Shawn never made the bed. Wondering just what was going on, she crossed over to the closet and changed out of her suit and pumps into a more comfortable, casual ensemble of gray capris, a pink knit top, and pink canvas-sided flats. She went out into the kitchen, thinking to make herself another cup of that Mocha-Coconut coffee from the Keurig.
She stopped short in the doorway. Her laptop sat on the end of the kitchen island, open, with a Post-It note stuck to the frame of the screen. It read, "Wake me and Play me." It was Shawn's distinctive script.
She walked unsteadily into the room, took the Post-It off the computer, pushed the power button, and when the machine was fully booted up she found the Media Player keyed up and ready for her. She pushed play. The weather-beaten voice of Warren Zevon rose to her ears from the speakers.
I could hold my head up high,
And say that I left first,
Or I can hang my head and cry.
Tell me, which is worse?
If you go and ask her why,
She might say she's not sure.
Trust me when I tell you I'm
Not good enough for her.*
There was a piece of paper stuck under the edge of the computer. She pulled it out and read it.
Dear Jules,
You know, I know this is Lassy music, but it's not bad, really. Kind of recherché. (I got that
word from Gus. Hope I used it right.) In any event, it…kinda says what I had to say. I know it's
over, and I didn't want you to have to go through the icky parts of telling me it was. So I'm out,
no muss, no fuss, no bother, and I will always love you, Jules, but you knew that, and I know that
I never did it right. If I did, you wouldn't have needed him. Be well, Jules, and be happy, and be
loved, because you know you are, right? That much is obvious, always has been. He loves you
like nobody else, and I'm cool with that. I know he'll treat you like you're more precious than
diamonds and gold, which is cool because you are. And just so he knows, if he ever stops, I'll
discharge his weapon repeatedly. I'll be by to pick up my stuff later.
Love always,
Shawn
* "She's Too Good for Me" by Warren Zevon
