To say the day had been long would be an understatement. By the time Lassiter got home, it was after ten, more than three hours past the time he'd told Shawn to expect him. Shawn had responded to his going-to-be-late texts with his usual aplomb, but Lassiter still felt terrible.
He tried to be as quiet as possible as he unlocked the door and opened it. Shawn must have had to put Charlotte to bed, which he didn't normally do, and Charlotte—how would she have been? Fretful, probably, distressed that her normal bedtime routine was being disrupted by Lassiter's absence. Would she have taken her nighttime bottle or just arched her back and cried? Would it have taken Shawn hours to get her to lie quietly in her crib?
He had his answer the moment he opened the door.
Shawn was on the couch, naked from the waist up, and snoring lightly, the throw blanket wrapped around one leg. Three feet away, sleeping soundly in her Pack and Play, was Charlotte. Her hands, so much chubbier now, and more dexterous by the day, were wrapped around a T-shirt instead of her blanket. Lassiter recognized it. It was Shawn's.
Lassiter was momentarily stricken. He stood in the doorway, unable to move, trying to absorb the scene before him. If anyone had told him six months ago that Shawn Spencer would be on his couch in the middle of the night, having cared—fairly competently, he had to admit—for an infant for the better part of the day, Lassiter would have laughed. And then, possibly, delivered a swift right hook for sheer impertinence. But now...
He remembered, suddenly, a word association game he'd played as a child as part of an entrance examination to a gifted program at school. He remembered being shown little line drawings and asked to say the first word that came to mind. A drawing of a rabbit and a fox: danger. Of a woman under a beach umbrella, with her feet in the waves: shark. A child on a bicycle: helmet.
Four people—two adults, two children—around a dinner table. He remembered that one especially, because the interviewer had asked him about it later. The word he had said was "hide." His answers hadn't gotten him into the gifted program, but they had gotten him some sessions with the school counselor.
Words came to him now, seeming to drift across his field of vision as he stood in his living room and looked at Shawn and Charlotte.
Close. Warm. Safe.
Family.
He pushed that last one away. If his life had taught him anything it was having hopes or dreams was the surest way to get fate to kick you in the balls.
He knelt by Shawn's head, and whispered, "Spencer."
"Nngh." Shawn rolled onto his back and put an arm over his face.
Lassiter put his hand on Shawn's shoulder. "Hey. Spencer." He cleared his throat and spoke slightly louder. "Shawn."
Shawn's eyes opened. He turned. "Oh." Voice hoarse with sleep. "Hi, Lassie."
"Sorry I'm late." Lassiter stood.
Shawn sat up slowly, groaning. "Man, Lassie. Your couch—"
He stopped himself when Charlotte whimpered and shifted in her sleep. "Sorry," he whispered. "I'll put her to bed."
"Let me." Lassiter reached down, sliding one hand under Charlotte's head and the other under her bottom. She made a face and wriggled again, but she didn't wake up. He went into the bedroom and laid her in her crib as lightly as he could. When he came out, he was careful not to let the door click shut.
Lassiter reached into the Pack and Play, retrieved Shawn's shirt, and held it out to him. Admitting his surprise at Spencer's newfound sense of responsibility was one thing, but having him standing half naked in his livingroom was another kettle of fish entirely. With blood burning in his ears he looked at the carpet and at the tiny plush bunny his mother had given Charlotte—anywhere but Spencer's chest. "How was she?" he asked.
"Fine," Shawn said, stretching. "We ate dinner, then cracked a couple beers and played Halo. She thought Infinity Multiplayer was cool, but we both agreed it didn't really live up to the hype."
Lassiter glared. Shawn threw up his hands. He still hadn't bothered to put on the shirt.
"You really have no sense of humor late at night, do you, Lassie? She had her bottle and baby food, we read some books, we did her therapy exercises, she went to sleep. No big deal."
No big deal.
"Great." Lassiter looked away, feeling awkward. "If you had no problems, then I guess I'll—" He stopped talking when he heard Charlotte on the baby monitor, first making little fretful noises, then escalating into an all-out wail.
"She's awake," Shawn said.
"Thank you for that piercing insight," Lassiter snapped, and went into the bedroom. Charlotte had worked herself up into a sweating fury in a dismayingly short amount of time, and it was clear that rocking her a little and putting her back in her crib was not an option. Lassiter picked her up and carried her into the living room.
Shawn made a face and covered his hands with his ears. "Ooh. Though she be but little, she is fierce!"
Lassiter blinked. "Did you just quote Shakespeare?"
"Was that Shakespeare?" Shawn said. "I just remember Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett, and Michelle Pfeiffer looking hot." He grinned.
"Just..." Lassiter sat on the couch, grabbed the remote and turned on the television. "Sit down."
Shawn sat.
Lassiter switched the channel to a station that was showing The First 48.
"Oh, look!" he said to Charlotte, delight filling his voice. "Detectives in Phoenix Arizona have found the victim of a fatal assault tied up in a hotel room."
Charlotte made a sound that even to Shawn's tired ears sounded like a question.
"That's what Detective Mike Polk and his team have to find out," Lassiter continued, his voice smooth and soothing. "Who did it? First he'll check the security cameras and see if they caught images of the killers arriving or fleeing the scene while his team combs the hotel room for evidence." As he talked, Shawn moved closer and closer to him on the couch. When Lassiter flashed him a quizzical look, Shawn shrugged.
"Can't hear," he said, and scooted again.
The sudden weight of Shawn's body against him was disconcerting, and he lost his train of thought for a moment. But Shawn, he noticed, wasn't wriggling around or interrupting or doing any of the other juvenile, incredibly irritating things he normally did.
And Lassiter relaxed. In fact, after that first initial shock of contact, he found himself actually kind of enjoying Shawn's solid warmth next to him. It was, of course, a purely biological response: all animals liked to be close to each other for body heat. Cats, for example. He'd once seen his mother's two tomcats curled up on a chair, licking each other's head. It wasn't homosexual, exactly; it was just science. So the fact that he leaned into Shawn—just a little bit—was immaterial. It didn't mean anything at all.
By the time he finished explaining how detective Polk reconstructed the victim's last hours, tracing his steps back to when he met his killers, Charlotte was asleep. It took him all of four seconds to realize that Shawn was too.
He turned his head as slowly and carefully as possible. Shawn was tucked up against him on the couch, his head heavy against his shoulder, his breath coming slow and even. He'd pulled both legs up under the throw blanket and had managed to work one arm behind Lassiter's back.
Lassiter reasoned that he would give it another forty-five minutes before he tried to move Charlotte back into her room. He switched the channel to an episode of Criminal Minds and turned down the volume. He didn't really need sound for that show anyway. Even without sound Hotchner would still be his team's moral compass in the storm, Morgan and Garcia would still be flirtatious while saving the day, and Spencer Reid would still be…well he would still be enjoyable. Lassiter felt a warm stirring that he quickly pushed back into a dark corner of his soul.
Damn these Spencers, he thought. Both the television kind and the ones in real life.
But even as these thoughts submerged his eyes rebelled and he found himself staring at Shawn again, visually tracing the line of his collarbone.
He really was very…Lassiter pulled his eyes away and stared resolutely at the television.
It was some kind of pack mentality, he told himself. Just psychological. Whatever the cause, Lassiter found himself feeling as if he, Charlotte, and most staggering of all, Shawn, formed some kind of a unit.
The thought that he was bonding this hard with Charlotte was terrifying, especially if he considered how precarious his claim on her actually was. In the eyes of the law he was just some stranger who changed her diaper and fed her. He understood the reasons behind the rules, but it didn't make him feel any better. The gap between law and justice had widened for him in a way that was distinctly uncomfortable. More and more he could envision a situation in which he found himself on the wrong side of the law. He pushed the thought away. When the time came, he would do whatever had to be done. Until then, he would do what he could.
The fact that his pack mentality had added Spencer to the fold didn't exactly fill him with joy either. It was natural to respond to beauty, but when it came to Spencer, that particular weakness had no future. He may as well fall for a television character. Lassiter stole another sideways glance. Certainly, Spencer was in fine physical condition. For a man. A very straight and completely clueless man.
This is not the beginning of something, he reminded himself. Spencer was just an employee, nothing more. To men like Spencer, falling asleep wasn't a sign of trust. He was probably the kind of guy who fell asleep on public transit, or passed out on people's lawns. It didn't indicate any kind of special bond between them. Certainly nothing sexual. Those jokes he made all the time practically proved it. Lassiter knew from first-hand experience, feelings like that were nothing to joke about. The fact that Spencer was so comfortable being half naked in front of him was just the final nail in the coffin. No one who was genuinely attracted to another man could be so blasé about it.
Lassiter thought of how removing his own shirt in front of Spencer would feel and the mixture of desperation, anticipation and panic that washed over him removed all his doubts. He had to get off this couch and away from Spencer for both their sakes. Now.
Cradling Charlotte in his left arm, Lassiter slowly slid himself out from beneath Shawn's weight. Shawn groaned a complaint, reached a hand out as if searching for him on the couch, and then settled back into sleep.
Lassiter carried Charlotte into her room, reminding himself as he did so that the three of them were not a family.
That kind of thing didn't happen to men like him.
Three days later, Lassiter returned home from work with an anger boiling in his gut. An anger that had Shawn Spencer's name all over it. Clutching his evidence, he unlocked the door and strode inside. The house smelled wonderfully warm and cheesy, but even as his mouth watered and he realized how long it had been since lunch, he knew he had to confront Spencer with the evidence of his crime.
"Spencer, what is this?" He reached over the couch and stuck the invitation in Shawn's face, directly in his line of vision. The damn things had been all over the station.
Shawn tipped his head back and grinned up at Lassiter. "It's a baby shower invitation, Lassie, what does it look like?"
"It looks like you're inviting people over to my house is what it looks like." Lassiter came around the couch and stood in front of Shawn, arms folded. Charlotte, seeing him, spit out her pacifier and gave him a wide, toothless grin. He smiled a hello down at her and then turned a surly face back to Shawn. "Explain."
Shawn retrieved the pacifier and held it out to Lassiter. "I just thought, hey, it's not every day you get a baby. They make a big deal of it when you're a girl. I've seen Baby Mama."
Lassiter took the pacifier and went to the kitchen sink to rinse it off. As the water ran over his fingers, he allowed himself a weary smirk. Despite himself, he thought the shower idea was actually a pretty thoughtful—if misguided—gesture. He gave a passing thought to his dwindling bank balance. Having a baby was turning out to be more expensive than he'd expected. While a baby shower would undoubtedly be a hellish ordeal, at least he might come out of it with some decent clothes for Charlotte. She was quickly outgrowing the onesies he'd bought.
"Next time, ask," he grumbled. He came back to the couch and sat down beside Shawn. "How was today?"
Shawn handed Charlotte over. She grabbed for Lassiter's tie and put it in her mouth.
"A lot of that," Shawn said, indicating the vast quantity of slobber Charlotte was lovingly applying to Lassiter's tie. "Some of this—"he patted her bottom—"and wots of dis." He adopted a baby-talk voice and put his face next to Charlotte's. She giggled and squealed when he gave her a loud, sloppy kiss on the cheek.
"You're not supposed to talk to her in a baby voice," Lassiter said, frowning. "It might impair her—"
"Speech development, I know." Shawn sat up. "You've told me, like, eight times. No baby talk. Can we negotiate on valley girl talk or lines from Pootie Tang?" When Lassiter stared silently instead of responding, he continued. "Don't worry. I make up for it during the day. We read out loud." He grinned. "Mostly the case files you're not supposed to keep at home."
"Those are not for babies." Lassiter gritted his teeth. Children should be at least seven before they delved into a case file. And even then he felt strongly that they should start with basic cases, such as vandalism. It was never too early to learn that graffiti led directly to a life of misery.
"Lassie!" The playful tone was gone. Shawn looked at him with wide eyes. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding. I've read Pat the Bunny so many times I've memorized it. Now it's like that damn AllStar song by Smash Mouth. It was everywhere for three years. You couldn't escape. In fact, just thinking about it now gave me the nastiest earworm. Hey now, you're a rockstar, get your game on, go play!" Shawn looked at Lassiter with large, puppy-dog eyes. "Please. Shoot me. It's the only humane thing to do given the circumstances."
Lassiter scowled. "Don't tempt me."
"Hey." Shawn put a hand on Lassiter's arm. "Relax, okay? I know this is new for you and you don't like being away from her. But you can trust me. I promise." Suddenly he was grinning again. "When have I ever let you down?"
Lassiter gave him a look. "Do you really want me to answer that?"
"I mean with something important," Shawn said impatiently. "Not once have I ever forgotten your lunch order."
"A baby is not a hoagie," Lassiter pointed out sharply. The mention of lunch had him wondering about that delicious smell again.
"Lassie, look at this place." Shawn stood up and swept his arms out.
Lassiter looked. His apartment, he saw, was clean. Really clean. Sparkling, even. Charlotte's toys were stacked in a brand-new cubby in the corner, the carpet had been vacuumed, the countertops gleamed.
"Now look at this baby." He folded his arms. "Is that a kid who looks neglected?"
Charlotte smiled up at him, round-cheeked and rosy, smelling sweetly of baby shampoo and clean diaper.
"That outfit is pristine," Shawn said. "Now, granted, I put it on her literally thirty seconds before you got home, so I'd estimate its expiration date is about..." He looked at his watch. "Four minutes from now. But. That is a clean, well-fed, happy baby. You have a clean, well-scrubbed, happy apartment." He pointed at the kitchen, where, Lassiter now saw, a pot of something on the stove. "You are about to be a clean well-fed Lassiter." He tilted his head. "Now. What can I do to make that third adjective happen for you? How do we get you happy?"
Lassiter looked up at Shawn: at the frown, the crossed arms, the challenge in his hazel eyes. He opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Ah," he said. "I don't—" He broke off and looked away. "Sorry." He could not tell Shawn any of the things that made him happy. He couldn't afford to give anyone that kind of ammunition.
"Yeah." Shawn sounded only slightly mollified. "That's what I thought." He picked up his jacket and shrugged into it, then reached for his bag. "See you tomorrow."
"Shawn, wait."
Shawn slung the bag over his shoulder. "Yeah."
Lassiter hesitated. Then: "Stay for dinner."
There was a long pause. Shawn gazed at Lassiter, his expression utterly unreadable. Lassiter was starting to think he'd made a mistake when Shawn abruptly smiled.
"Thought you'd never ask," Shawn said easily. He dropped the bag. Slid out of his jacket and dropped that, too. Then he went into the kitchen and began taking dishes out of the cabinets.
"You want a big bowl or a little bowl?" he asked.
Lassiter stood up, putting Charlotte on his hip. "That depends." He nodded toward the pot on the stove. "What are we having?"
Shawn smirked. "This is actually a decoy." He lifted the lid and tipped the empty pot toward Lassiter. "I washed it already. Chicken primavera's in the oven."
Lassiter sat down at a barstool and sat Charlotte on the counter. "Where'd you learn to make that?"
"Hey, careful." Shawn's eyebrows drew down when he saw Charlotte sitting between Lassiter's hands.
"Now who's being overprotective?" But Lassiter took Charlotte off the counter and put her back in his arms. "Big bowl," he added, when Shawn, looking impatient, held up both options.
"To answer your question, Lassie, O esteemed connoisseur of all things culinary, overlooking your incomprehensible love of Cream of Wheat - "
"It's healthy," Lassiter interrupted.
"Exactly. Ew. To answer your question, I learned to make it during a summer in Chipilo."
Lassiter frowned. "Isn't that in Mexico?"
"There are Italians everywhere, dude." Shawn reached for wine glasses. "They're like, ambassadors for pasta."
Lassiter strapped Charlotte into her high chair as Shawn set the table with the pasta and bread.
"What's this?" Lassiter examined the three small plastic bowls Shawn was placing next to Charlotte's bottle, each appearing to contain a small quantity of brown glop.
"Right to left? Bananas, pears, and oatmeal," Shawn said. "No primavera for our prima donna. Combination foods maybe in a few more months. If you're good," he added in a coo, making Charlotte smile.
Seeing Lassiter's surprised expression, Shawn shrugged. "In case she has food allergies. You know, so we know which food caused it."
Lassiter stared mutely. Why on earth did Shawn know this?
"What? You think I can't read a baby book?" Shawn scoffed. "Give me some credit." He pushed Lassiter's plate. "Try it."
Lassiter sat and took a tentative forkful of the chicken pasta dish into his mouth. It tasted good.
"Ah ah ah!" Charlotte was stretching both hands toward her bottle, her little face drawn up into a knot of displeasure.
"Sorry," Lassiter said to her. "Daddy was rude." He picked the bottle up and put it in her mouth. She held onto it, but he kept it securely supported as she ate. He could feel Shawn's eyes on him.
Should I not have said Daddy? He wondered. He'd been doing it recently when no one was around, just to see how it felt. It had felt good, and alarmingly…right. But this was the first time he'd referred to himself that way in front of anyone else. And he would have had to slip in front of Shawn. He may as well have announced it over the loudspeaker at a Gauchos game.
Shawn, however, didn't comment.
"Here." Shawn was reaching into his bag. "I picked this up today to give to Gus and Juliet, kind of a late engagement present. The pineapple didn't seem sufficient." He pulled out a bottle of wine. "But I think we should drink it instead."
Lassiter took the bottle with his free hand. "Um. Thanks."
Lassiter relaxed a little. Shawn hadn't commented on it, called him "Big Daddy," or done anything at all to indicate he'd noticed him using the d-word.
"It's Topo Gigio," Shawn said, rummaging in a drawer. "Good for seafoods, poultry, and—" he pointed with the corkscrew to Lassiter's plate, "—by happy coincidence, pasta. It's supposed to complement light foods. At least, that's what the guy at the liquor store said."
"It's pinot grigio," Lassiter said, watching Shawn neatly remove the cork from the wine bottle. He held out his glass and allowed Shawn to fill it. "Topo Gigio is the puppet mouse from the Ed Sullivan Show."
"I've heard it both ways." Shawn poured a glass for himself and sat down.
Charlotte finished her bottle and spit out the nipple. Lassiter was about to reach for her baby spoon when Shawn stopped him.
"I got it," he said, his fingertips light on Lassiter's wrist. "You eat."
So Lassiter did, watching as Shawn spooned bananas into Charlotte's waiting mouth and caught the drips with her plastic spoon. With his other hand, he shoved a forkful of primavera into his own mouth.
"Nice coordination," Lassiter commented dryly.
"Thanks." Shawn actually looked a little bit proud. "Just, er, stop me if I start to get mixed up, okay?"
"So." Lassiter twisted the stem of the wine glass between his fingers.
"So," Shawn replied.
"Why are we having wine?" Lassiter eyed Shawn suspiciously. During his marriage, various anniversaries had crept up with alarming rapidity and stealth. And Shawn had just happened to pull that bottle out of his bag. It felt as if they were celebrating something.
"Don't worry," Shawn assured him, grinning over the rim of his wine glass. "I won't let you take advantage of me on a first date. Although for the record, my schedule isn't the only thing that's flexible."
Lassiter choked on his chicken primavera and took a gulp of wine to clear his windpipe. Spencer's jokes were always so unnerving. And they were jokes, weren't they?