Disclaimer: I own nothing of Psych and 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: T+
Spoilers: Hard to say. Could be through entire series, but likely won't be many.
A/N: HEY FARMER BILL! A LITTLE HINT FOR YA! YOU'RE NOT ON A TRACTOR ANYMORE, YOU'RE IN A CAR. IT'LL TURN ON A DIME. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SWOOP OVER INTO THE NEXT LANE IN ORDER TO MAKE A LEFT OR A RIGHT-HAND TURN! YEESH! Sorry. Just one of the annoyances of living in Iowa, and I had to get it off my chest. Carry on.
Just one more thing that pissed me off: My mom comes to my house and watches Fox News. Fox News has a tendency to piss me off just naturally, but this time was worse than normal, because some bitchy-ass lookin' woman was yakkin' about how horrible it will be when women are in combat because, among other shortcomings, THEY CAN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT. I can shoot just as well as any man, and better than most. BullSHIT we can't shoot straight. Like anyone else, we just have to be taught. And…well…maybe, just maybe…most of us need lighter weapons than the average military rifle. But I could still shoot straight with one of 'em. Don't TELL me I couldn't. Of course, most women don't have seventeen inch upper arms. And most of the time MEN fire those weapons from a mount.
Chapter Two: Secrets
Lassiter set Juliet up with an extra-large UC Santa Barbara t-shirt and sent her to bed. She pulled back the covers and climbed in, grateful for the comfortable mattress, but sat up right away at the feel of something hard under the pillow. She reached beneath it and pulled out a small pepperbox pistol.
"Oh, Carlton," she said, shaking her head in despair. She placed the gun on the bedside table beneath the lamp. She turned off the light and lay down again. She lay with her eyes closed for some minutes until, heeding an impulse she didn't try to identify, she reached under the bed frame and found the gun clipped to it. She pulled it out and looked at it. A Colt Python. With a sigh, she put the gun back in its clutch and opened the drawer of the bedside table and reached in to find the .38 Special inside. Typical Carlton. She wondered how many guns he really had. He claimed eight "hidden spares," but she suspected there were many more than that. He just didn't consider them all "hidden."
She managed to sleep, and in the morning she grabbed her shower as quickly as possible and dressed just as swiftly in last night's clothes, thinking how stupid she was not to have grabbed her go-bag out of her Bug before hopping into Lassiter's car. Lassiter went into his bedroom to grab fresh clothes and then into the bathroom to get his morning shower and change, and while he did, Juliet took the opportunity to explore.
He came out of the bathroom, damp hair springing into loose curls, to find her trying to force the guest room door.
"What are you doing?" he asked, alarmed.
"This door's locked," she said. "Isn't this your guest room?"
"Yeah, I, uh…use it for my office. I was working in there yesterday and I accidentally locked myself out. I'll jimmy it open later."
"Something's flapping around in there. Listen - can you hear it?"
Indeed, he could hear Pepper flapping and screeching indignantly, upset at having been locked away all alone all night long after Lassiter's other self disappeared.
"Must be a bat," Lassiter said, through a dry throat. "I left the window open. I'll get some gloves and when I get the door open I'll grab it and toss it back out."
Juliet looked at him in amazement. "You won't…kill it? Who are you and what have you done with Carlton Lassiter?"
"It's a bat, not a squirrel," he said, as reasonably as possible. "I kinda like bats. Besides, it might be an endangered species. And you wouldn't want me to kill anything, now would you, O'Hara?"
"Well, that's…surprisingly considerate of you, Carlton," she said, nodding like she was impressed. He winced.
"Ouch. Still, I suppose that's fair." He jerked his chin in her direction. "How's your head?"
"Not bad. A little…big."
"I'll put coffee on. Sound good?"
"Sounds great."
She followed him into the kitchen. While he set about brewing up a pot of coffee she poked around his cabinets.
She giggled. "So organized," she said. "Alphabetized and color-coordinated. Your pantry would make Martha Stewart jealous."
"I like to know where things are when I need them," he said defensively.
"Nothing wrong with organization," she said. "You're maybe taking it to a bit of an extreme. Let's check out the fridge, shall we?"
She opened up the side-by stainless steel Amana and examined the shelves and crispers. "If I moved one of these tomatoes from the vegetable crisper, where they kind of look like a military review, and put it in the cheese drawer next to the Colby jack cubes, would you be able to leave it there for a few hours or would you twitch and fidget until you'd gone and moved it back?"
"O'Hara, you have had plenty of opportunity before now to observe that I am, in fact, anal retentive. This should come as no surprise to you," he said.
"What's with the package of stew beef in the meat drawer?" she asked.
He was feeding a dragon with it, but he wasn't about to tell her that. "I was planning on making a pot of beef stew this weekend, but I kind of ran out of gumption."
"It's open. And it looks like you've taken chunks out of it," she said.
"I…tossed a couple of pieces to Shannon," he said, numbly. "Trying to make friends."
She shrugged, apparently satisfied. She closed the refrigerator door and sat down at the kitchen table.
"Can I make you something for breakfast?" he asked. "I can't make a proper omelet to save my life but I make awesome scrambled eggs with cheese and whatever else you want thrown in with them."
"Why can't you make an omelet?" Juliet asked. "I learned how to do that in seventh grade Home Ec."
"It's not because I don't know how," he said. "It's because I make eggs with either half and half or heavy cream - whichever I happen to have on hand. I make 'em with quite a bit of it, and they don't stick together. Kind of scramble themselves, actually. But they taste utterly spectacular."
"Well, now I think I've gotta try 'em," Juliet said.
"What do you want on 'em?" he asked.
"What have you got?"
"Ah…ham, green peppers…red peppers…jalapenos…and pretty much any vegetable you might want."
"Ham and jalapenos sounds good to me," she said, rather eagerly.
Working swiftly and efficiently, Lassiter got out the ingredients, a bowl, a fork, a spatula, a frying pan, and set to work. He cubed up ham and set it to fry, chopped up jalapenos and added them, then whipped up the eggs with heavy cream and poured them into a second frying pan he pulled out from the drawer below the stove. He cooked up the eggs and scrambled them, then added about a cup of a mix of shredded cheeses. He dumped the cooked ham and jalapenos on top of this, and after the cheese was properly melted dumped the entire thing onto a dinner plate. He got out another fork and set the plate down in front of Juliet, then poured her a cup of coffee.
"There you go, Mademoiselle," he said, grandly. "Eggs à la Lassiter."
She forked up a bite and put it in her mouth. She closed her eyes and savored the rich flavor. "Mmm… that's as good as sex," she said. He choked. She giggled. "Sorry. But it is good. Where did you learn to cook?"
"My therapist told me to take up non-law enforcement related hobbies," he said, shyly. "Cooking was one of the ones I came up with. I liked it, but I didn't really stick with it. Not having anybody to cook for is kinda depressing."
"Well, if you make everything as well as you do this, I'll quite happily come over and let you cook for me," Juliet said.
He thought about it. "My therapist would be happy I took it up again," he said, slowly. "Right now all I've really got going on is tap class once a week and book collecting: he wants me to expand my horizons as much as possible."
He also had the sorcery, but he wasn't going to tell Juliet or his therapist about that. As long as he could keep Pepper corralled and quiet and the guest room off-limits, there was no particular reason not to allow Juliet to come over.
"I can't cook worth a damn," Juliet said. "How did you get so good?"
"It's just like chemistry," he said. "I always got good grades in that. In fact, I toyed with the idea of becoming a forensic specialist. Following a recipe is really methodical and precise, and you know how I do when things are methodical and precise. Then after you figure out how to make it the way the professionals tell you to, you can play around with it and find out how you like it."
The sorcery was the same way, although he doubted he would ever play around with his own additions to recipes. That was more exactly like chemistry, and a misstep could potentially be deadly.
"Aren't you going to have anything?" Juliet asked.
"I typically make do with just a Clif bar in the morning," he said.
"You know what you should do?" Juliet said. "You should go jimmy that door open and get that bat out of there. Who knows how long it's been there? It's probably pooped all over everything."
His other self had let Pepper out of the window to do the necessary outside before disappearing, but that had been a long time ago, and undoubtedly Pepper was, at the very least, feeling the need again.
"You're right," he said. "I'll go do that."
He grabbed a butter knife out of the silverware drawer and headed into the living room. Juliet finished up her omelet and coffee and followed him in, which he did not like at all. He jimmied the lock and slipped inside, opening the door only just as far enough as he had to. He prayed to God and Sweet Lady Justice she didn't see or smell the tall jimsonweed growing on the table next to the door. Why he had poisonous nightshade growing in his guest room would be damned hard to explain.
"Pepper, calm the fuck down," he whispered sharply, and the little dragon stopped flapping and screeching and landed on the desk. "I know you don't like being locked up, but it's necessary. I'll let you out when she's gone. Now do you need to go out? I'll open the window for you."
He did so, and the little dragon flew out. Lassiter exited the room, sliding out again through the smallest possible opening.
"Who were you talking to in there?" Juliet asked. His eyes widened.
"Uh…myself. It's a big mess in there - shit all over the place, boxes everywhere. I stubbed my toe and cussed myself out."
Please God don't let her have actually heard what he'd said.
She shrugged. "What are you hiding in there? What is it you don't want me to see?"
"Just the mess," he said. "It's embarrassing."
"You…Carlton OCD Lassiter…have a mess in your guest room. I find that hard to believe."
It wasn't much of a mess, just slightly disorganized, at least by his standards, partly because new books and accoutrements arrived almost daily and partly because there was a tiny dragon constantly messing up whatever order he managed to put things in.
"Yeah, well…I'm trying to clean it up. It's stuff I've been hoarding for years - decades in some cases. I need to sort through it and get rid of most of it."
"Got anything good in there?" she asked.
"My gun vault," he said, before he could think better of it.
"Ah ha! I knew you had more than eight guns. How many do you have, really?"
"Er…actually, I've never counted. Somewhere between twenty and thirty? More than that, probably, when you count all the ones I keep for defense. The ones in the vault are just collector's pieces."
"What are your best ones?" she asked. "Show me."
"Er, ahhh…okay, sure…I'll go get 'em. Just the ones I like best."
He slipped back into the guest room, silently cautioned Pepper to silence again, and opened up his gun vault. He got out his .357 Magnum, his 1870 Colt Army revolver, his beloved Desert Eagle, his Remington 788 rifle, the 10-gauge shotgun he'd built himself with the fancy laminated Rueger stock. One at a time, he began carrying them out to the living room. As he picked up the last one, the gold-finish Desert Eagle, he looked around the guest room and sighed. He didn't want to keep secrets from his partner. If he was ever going to tell anyone about this hobby it would be her, but…well…who knew how she would take it? She seemed reasonably open to the concept of the paranormal, but witchcraft? That was a slightly different story from psychics. She might be violently opposed to the idea. She got a little bit freaked out that time they dealt with the possible demonic possession, so she didn't seem likely to like anything considered "dark arts."
He went back out to the living room. Juliet had the Remington 788 in hand and was peering through the scope.
"This would be a great hunting rifle," she said.
"Well, it would be a great way to ensure that whatever you shot at would definitely be dead," Lassiter said, "but it blows gaping huge holes in the meat and, unfortunately, it has a hair trigger. I don't keep it loaded, but I'm just as happy to have a trigger lock on it nevertheless."
"Oh, I see," she said, and put the gun down, leaning it against the back of the loveseat. She caught sight of the gun in Lassiter's hand and gasped.
"Is that a fifty-caliber?" she said. "Carlton, that gun's illegal in this state."
"Grandfather clause," he said calmly. "I bought and registered it before the ban."
"Oh. Let me see that beauty."
He handed the automatic over. She held it out and sighted down the barrel. "The Israeli Military Industry really knows how to make a helluva handgun, don't they?" she said. "Do you have ammo for it?"
"Yeah. Never fired it, though."
"Oh, what I wouldn't give to fire this sucker," she said. "The power would be orgasmic, at least if I could keep it from hitting me in the head when it recoils."
"To be totally honest with you? I'm not sure if I could keep the kickback from hittin' me in the head," he said. "And I'm bigger than you, so I would guess I'm at least a little bit stronger. But yeah, I'd love to see what it's like to fire it, just once. Don't think there's any place in California that'll let you."
"We could take it somewhere deep into the woods, shoot into a tree," she said, hopefully.
"We'd have to take it out into Redwood National Park, I think. Any regular tree the bullet would probably just go straight through."
She made a moue of disappointment. "Dammit."
"We could maybe take it up to Cachuma or someplace like that," he said. "Find a quite spot and fire it into the water. The Mythbusters proved that water stops a fifty caliber bullet pretty much cold."
"Oo! Yes, lets!" Juliet said, excitedly.
"Maybe next weekend?" he said. "I'd have to do some looking on the internet to find a place that's quiet enough for us to actually fire a gun this big a couple of times without bringing concerned citizens and park rangers and county sheriffs down on top of us."
"It's a date, partner," she said, and held out her hand. He took it and shook with her.
"I should get you to your car now," he said. She made another moue of disappointment.
"This weekend has been so much fun," she said. "I'm not really ready for it to be over."
"I know what you mean," he said, honestly, even if he couldn't honestly see why she would feel that way. "I had a lot of fun. But I, uh…I've got a lot of things I've got to get accomplished before work tomorrow, and I need to get busy on that."
Yet another look of disappointment crossed her pretty face. "Oh, okay. I should let you get to work, then."
He slipped his shoes on, grabbed his keys, and led her to the door. She tripped over something on the way out.
"Carlton! There's a…package…at your door," she said in surprise.
He picked up the brown paper parcel quickly. "Ah, yes. Just something I ordered."
"That arrived on a Sunday?" she said, incredulously. "Without a shipping label?"
"I ordered it from a local shop. It was hand-delivered," he lied gamely.
"Are you sure that's what it is?" she said, sounding concerned. "You're always saying how proud you are of how many people want to kill you."
"Oh yeah," he said, blushing furiously. "I recognize the wrapping." He put the package on the end table next to the door and stepped out, closing the door quite firmly behind him. "Shall we go?"
"Don't take this the wrong way, Carlton, but you've been acting kind of funny, lately," Juliet said.
"Be honest, O'Hara: Don't I always act kind of funny?" he said, trying for jocularity.
"Not like this," she said, quite seriously. "You're all…twitchy and secretive. I kinda get the impression you're hiding something from me. Something big."
Tell her, a voice in his head whispered. He took a second to confirm that it was his own.
Are you nuts? Don't you dare, another voice said, just as much his own.
"I've just got a lot on my mind right now, is all," he said. "Kinda stressed out."
"What about?" she asked.
He sighed. "Everything and nothing," he said, the lie coming with remarkable smoothness. If this kept up, he could start giving lessons to Spencer. "Honestly, I think there's something wrong with me. But I'll be going to see my therapist soon, and I'll talk it out with him. And yes, I'll do whatever he tells me to do, even if he tells me to see a shrink."
"Good," she said, sounding relieved. "Make sure of it. All right, let's get to gettin'."
He dropped her off outside Westwood Lanes, and saw her into her Bug and on her way home, and then drove back to Prospect Gardens, feeling rather reluctant, actually. He had had fun. He should do that kind of thing more often - his therapist would agree with that wholeheartedly. Pepper might have objections.
He rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, even though he had cracked open the book on teleportation. That particular discipline seemed particularly dodgy to him, and he doubted he'd be doing a great deal of practical exercise in that arena. He opened his door and picked up the package on the end table, closed the door behind him and locked it, then headed for the guest room door. He put the package down on top of the hi-fi cabinet next to the wall and opened the guest room door.
A tiny black figure exploded out of the room and flapped into his face, growling ferociously if shrilly. He actually took a couple of steps back in the face of the little dragon's fury.
"Pepper! Now, stop!" he said, grabbing the creature with both hands to stop its assault. "I'm sorry you had to be locked up all night, but you know as well as I do we had no choice. People can't know about you, Pepper. It's scary enough when you go outside. Our only salvation is how tiny and dark you are - hopefully if anyone actually sees you they mistake you for a bat."
It raised the question of what exactly he would do if Pepper turned out to be a psychedelically-colored male dragon upon maturity, but that was a bridge to cross if and when he came to it.
"You hungry? I bet you are. Come on," he said, and let the dragon go as he turned and headed for the kitchen. Pepper flapped after him and, as usual, landed on his head and fussed around until there was a nice nest up there.
Lassiter opened up the fridge and pulled a couple of cubes of stew beef out of the meat drawer. He held them in his open palm and Pepper fluttered down to perch on his fingers and chomp them down with a certain dragonly gusto. Lassiter closed up the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table to let Pepper finish up the beef. The little dragon let out a tiny burp when the cubes were gone.
"Excuse you," Lassiter said, and stood up as Pepper transferred back to the top of his head. He headed back for the guest room and picked up the new package along the way. He sat down at the desk inside, looked at the package for a moment, and then with shrug he ripped it open. A piece of vellum fell out, along with a black velvet-covered jeweler's box.
He read the note, written in that script he now knew so well.
You should have opened this when you were still in the company of Ms. O'Hara, it read. No matter: you can just as easily give it to her tomorrow at work. Hers is, of course, the one that does not fit you.
By this point in the game, he wasn't even surprised. He opened the jeweler's box. Two rings were inside, both fairly large, although one was clearly larger than the other. They were both silver - or perhaps platinum? That was awfully shiny silver - and the larger one had a cabochon of malachite upon which a shining silver dragon in Oriental style was inlaid. The dragon had a very small but very brilliant ruby for an eye and its single clawed hand was gripping a tiny egg-shaped opal. The smaller one featured a cabochon of lapis upon which a bird in flight - rather a large-looking bird, perhaps a bird of prey, but obviously not an eagle or a hawk; something rather pretty, a phoenix, perhaps, in keeping with the dragon? - was inlaid, silver with wings and a head of rhodochrosite, nice and pink, a color Juliet would love, particularly against the rich, dark blue.
He took the dragon ring out of the box and slipped it onto his left index finger. It fit perfectly, not that he'd had any doubt that it would. He wondered what purpose it was supposed to serve. He supposed he could wear it in public, out of character or not. He could tell people a crazy relative had given it to him. He looked down at the other ring. Explaining that would be…impossible. He closed the lid of the box with a snap. Pepper fluttered down to the desktop from the top of his head with an irritated squawk. At that moment, something hard and fairly heavy dropped onto the top of his head.
"Ouch!"
He reached up to rub the spot, casting around for what had fallen on him, and saw nothing. His hand, on the other hand, came into contact with something immediately: another piece of vellum. He pulled it down from his head and read the message. It was written in all-caps.
GIVE IT TO HER, MORON.
"Okay, okay, sheesh," he muttered, rubbing his sore head. "You don't have to hit me over the head with it."
A/N: I have a ring like the ones described, but there's a wolf on it, set against onyx with turquoise inlaid in the silver. I have a dragon pendant such as the ring described, but as it has a bezel of gold designed to look pretty much like Irish lace, it is too girly for Lassiter to wear, or, indeed, myself. A pity. I really like where this story is going. I have SO many ideas for it, it's not even funny. I even know how it's supposed to end, at least at this point, and THAT, my friends, is an astonishing rarity for moi. That said, I'm taking a bit of a step back from it for the next little while, just for a little while, so I can focus some attention on stories I have neglected: namely, Objects and Rear View. I'm approaching their endings, and as is usual for me, they are making my gears to grind. That, and the fact that I've had so many absorbing ideas lately, it's been easy to procrastinate. But I SHALL crank them out, this I swear on my father's grave. And now suddenly I'm kinda depressed. Never swear on somebody's grave; it tends to remind you of the fact that that person is, indeed, gone.