Chapter 36

Shawn jumped out of the car as soon as Gus drove up to the docks, fairly certain he knew where they were going. If he was right (and he pretty much always was), they would be at the one spot on the dock that didn't have any camera coverage. He headed straight for the security booth…and then stopped.

FBI vehicles. Crap.

He had to get past them. He needed a distraction…as if on cue, Gus showed up behind him, panting.

"Dammit, Shawn, quit moving so fast! There's only so much running I can do before my quads start rioting, and you are pushing-" He slapped a hand over Gus's mouth.

"Shut up!" the fake psychic hissed at him. "I need you to go and distract the feebs so I can figure out where Lassi is."

He began to move, but his friend grabbed his arm and whispered back angrily, "Oh, no you don't, Shawn! I am not going to be your usual punching bag! I've seen the movies. The black guy always dies first!"

"You're not the black guy, dude, you're the plucky comic relief! The comic relief never gets killed, so, now go in there and be so freakin' funny they laugh their asses off, man! Just…do it. Please. If not for Lassi's life, then for mine. Please…?" He threw him the puppy dog eyes.

Gus gritted his teeth, but caved.

"Fine. But if I die, I am haunting your ass!"

"Deal."

As Gus moved over towards the federal agent's cars, Shawn crept across the wet pavement to the small guard house, where he could see several security cameras. As soon as he stepped inside, he grabbed the map of the dock from the wall and then looked at the camera angles, figuring out where O'Daly most likely had Lassiter. It barely took him two seconds to spot it.

There. That's where they were. The northeast corner; there wasn't a single camera over there.

Without even thinking about it, he slipped back out, making sure to stay in shadow, and made his way towards the unwatched corner of the dock. As he moved as quickly and as silently as he could, he couldn't help but hum the Mission: Impossible theme song under his breath. He briefly wondered what had happened to Gus, but then brushed it off. What mattered was Lassi and saving his life, and Shawn couldn't do that if he was too scared to take a risk to find him.

Just as he turned the corner that brought him into range of the dead zone, he heard low voices.

He stood all the way up from his crouching position, ready to walk into view…

…and then a shot rang out.

His heart stopped.

No.

A second shot.

Carlton.

Panicking, while running tactical scenarios that his father had drilled into him over a grueling weekend at the police academy's tactical obstacle course, he careened around the corner and got there just in time to see his boyfriend sprawled on the ground, gun in his hand…bleeding. No one else in sight.

Oh god, no. No. No, this couldn't be happening.

Not paying much attention to what he was doing, he rushed to Carlton's side, and just as he fell to his knees beside him, Carlton gasped out, "It…was…Mark…", and Spencer quickly shushed him with, "I know, I know, I figured it out, I just need you to stay still."

The blood was bright red. Arterial. Dammit. Left subclavian artery, for sure.

Shawn put pressure on it and looked down at those blue eyes that he was intimately familiar with, and then saw Lassi look at something over his shoulder. Without even thinking about it, the psychic reached down and grabbed the gun from Carlton's limp hand and pivoted in a perfect one-eighty and saw Mark rushing him, a knife in his hand. There was already blood on the blade. He ditched the gun. Mark was already two feet away and Shawn was more likely to get himself shot than the man attacking him.

Mark barreled over him and Spencer rolled, using the druggie's own body weight against him, to pin him to the ground. He attempted to reach for the knife, but Mark got in a glancing blow, hitting him upside the head with his other hand that he'd pried free from Shawn's grip.

He attempted to shake it off, but his head swam and he knew instantly that he most likely had a concussion.

Swallowing down the bile in his throat, he resorted to the hand to hand tactics that he'd been taught and thought to himself, Screw it. Lassi's gonna find out eventually, I might as well.

Shawn Spencer was not as inept as he seemed, he only acted that way to keep people from knowing the truth about how his father had raised him. He knew how to fight, goddammit, and it was going to save his life for once. Even as Mark turned him to his back, swinging down the knife with deadly force, Shawn's hand shot up and hit him with planked fingers squarely in the jugular notch.

Mark spasmed as if struck by a bullet, and fell on top of him. Shawn grabbed the knife from him, and then grunted as he shoved the dead weight off him. Dead being the key word.

Knife in hand, he sat up and then reached over with his free hand and carefully put his fingers to the younger man's neck.

Nothing.

Shawn expected to be overcome by some sort of overwhelming emotion at having just taken a man's life…but he only felt relieved. It was over.

However, an unsteady breath to his other side reminded him of the dire situation and he rushed back to Carlton, tossing the knife to the ground and picking the gun back up. It wasn't Lassiter's gun, but that didn't matter. He tucked it into the back of his jeans and then pulled off his over-shirt and pressed it hard to his boyfriend's chest, trying to stem the bleeding.

God, that blood was red. Too red.

He felt tears unwillingly begin to slide down his cheeks, hot and burning, and he struggled to keep a steady voice as he said, "Hold on, Carlton. Help is on the way."

He reluctantly removed a hand to grab his phone and call 911, his fingers slipping wetly over the screen, leaving behind streaks of red, his hand shaking the entire time, the tears still falling. An operator picked up the phone, and he quickly said, "This is Shawn Spencer of the SBPD, and I am calling in a 10-00, I repeat, we have an officer down and we need an ambulance down at Shoreline Drive, the northeast corner…and…hurry. Please."

He let the phone fall from his hand, hearing a faint voice saying, "The ambulance is on its' way, sir. Please, stay on the line…" and looked down at Lassiter, still putting pressure against the wound, and seeing that Carlton's eyes were open, he said, "Hey…I thought I told you not to get shot?"

Lassiter let out a pained breath, a few drops of blood appearing on his lips. Shawn immediately knew it wasn't the subclavian artery that had been hit, but the axillary artery. He was coughing up blood, which meant that the bullet had not only nicked the artery, but damaged the lungs as well.

Shit.

He then replied in a shuddering voice, "Yeah, well…Mark had other plans…"

"You don't have to worry about him anymore, Lassi. Right now, all you have to worry about is how I-I'm gonna wear a maid's outfit while I wait on you hand and foot after you-you get out of the hospital, big guy," he stuttered, running the back of his hand across his cheeks, wiping the tears away. Be strong.

Lassiter let out a choked laugh, and then said, "Don't think…you've…got…the legs…for it…"

A gasping chuckle escaped the fake psychic's lips.

"Maybe not," he conceded, and then looked up as he saw flashing lights and heard sirens. "Lassi, the ambulance is here. They're gonna get you all patched up. My own Humpty Dumpty put back together again."

He pulled back as soon as the medics arrived and made sure to not get in their way, but said to them, "Pretty sure the bullet nicked the axillary artery, he's coughing up blood," and one of them nodded and they proceeded to wrap a much firmer tourniquet over his wound and then got him onto a stretcher. Spencer got into the ambulance with them, grabbing Carlton's hand as soon as he slid into the cramped space.

He couldn't lose him.

The instant they arrived at the hospital, Spencer jogged alongside the gurney, keeping his hand around his boyfriend's for as long as he could. He repeated himself to the ER doctor, saying, "Bullet to the left axillary artery, most likely still in the lung, he's coughing up blood," and she nodded. Not two seconds later, he was summarily brushed to the side as they wheeled him into emergency surgery, leaving him standing in the hallway feeling empty.

His hands felt cold.

Spencer now stood in the waiting room outside of surgery. It had only been a couple of minutes since Carlton had been admitted, but it already felt like an eternity. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he wasn't entirely in one place. It felt like half of himself was simply…missing.

No. Not missing.

It was less than a hundred feet away in another room, resting in the hands of a stupidly brave man who was lying cut open on an operating table.

God, was this what Carlton had gone through when he'd gotten shot? No wonder he'd been angry. Shawn now understood slightly what his boyfriend had gone through. It was horrible. He felt terrified, worried, pissed off, and sick to his stomach all at the same time.

But he still couldn't bring himself to sit down. He just stood there. Waiting. He wouldn't be able to sleep until he knew that Carlton had pulled through…if he pulled through.

Not ten minutes later, Juliet rushed through the doors with Gus in tow, finding Shawn standing as still as a statue, blood on his forehead, staring at the swinging doors leading into emergency.

"Shawn, I heard what happened over the police scanner. We got here as soon as we could…are you alright?"

He turned slightly at hearing her voice and then, in the most emotionless tone she'd ever heard from him he said, "He's in surgery. The bullet hit his axillary artery and is stuck in his lung." He pulled out the gun that still rested in the small of his back and handed it to her. He then walked to the wall and sat down in one of the chairs, and, without even looking up, he said, "Nine millimeter. Beretta M9."

Spencer went silent.

Juliet grabbed a glove from her coat pocket and wrapped it carefully around the gun that he'd handed to her. She should go back to the lab…but at seeing him so emotionally shut down, she decided it could wait, and instead placed the covered gun in her purse for the time being. Yes, she'd probably get yelled at for forgoing proper police protocol, but Carlton had just been shot. She could deal with Vick yelling at her.

Shawn was still silent.

Gus, who had seen this type of reaction from his friend before, said nothing and sat down next to him, while Juliet looked on in confusion at Shawn's almost cold demeanor.

Finally, she said, "They caught Mark and O'Daly. It was Mark who fired the first shot, which hit Carlton. Apparently, Carlton got the gun back from him and fired the second shot." She stepped forward and put a hesitant hand on his shoulder, unsure if he was about to snap at any second. "He got enough evidence on his wire to put O'Daly away for good, Shawn."

He didn't look at her.

Feeling uncomfortable, Gus finally broke the tension with, "I'm sure he'll be fine, Shawn. This is Lassiter, after all."

"Yeah. Fine," the fake psychic repeated dully.

Juliet sat down on his other side and squeezed her friend's hand. He didn't return the gesture. He didn't look at either of them, either, staring blankly into the empty air in front of him, and she started to worry even more. Carlton had eventually reacted and broken down when Shawn had been in the hospital, and it was healthy. He actually expressed his emotions on a regular basis, but Shawn…

…Suddenly, Juliet had an insight about one of her closest friends.

Sure, he smiled all the time and seemed to be fairly emotional in a good and healthy way…but she realized that maybe he was covering for something.

She glanced at Gus and saw that he seemed completely unsurprised by Shawn's actions, and her theory was further confirmed. When Shawn actually cared about something, or someone, and when something terrible like this happened to them, he simply shut down. As if he wouldn't allow himself to feel anything.

And it made a terrifying kind of sense.

If you couldn't feel anything, then how could anything ever hurt?

She let out a frustrated sigh as he gently pulled his hands away from hers, and that was when she saw the blood on them. She knew it wasn't his. She looked at him and saw the blood on his head and then carefully asked, "Have the doctors checked on you, Shawn? You're bleeding…"

She lifted her fingers to his face, and he pulled away from her hand.

"I have a low-grade concussion, nothing worse than falling off my bike. As long as I don't fall asleep for the next few hours, I'm good. Besides," he added, acting as if it were nothing. "I don't think I'm gonna sleep until he's out."

Juliet didn't have to ask who he was talking about.

It was going to be a long night.

Part 36/?