Getting Carlton out of the car was as easy as getting him into it.
Getting him into bed was not.
"C'mon, Lassifrass – just swing your leg up," Shawn said, half-pleading with the detective sprawled face first on the duvet, the man's lower half dangling off the edge of the bed. "Gotta help me out a bit here, buddy."
Forcing Shawn to strain his ears to hear, the cop flapped his wrist in protest as he spoke into his mattress. The move clearly a favorite of the man's, the psychic laughed in response.
"Jus' leave me. Is good," Lassie replied, his voice still slurring, though less than before.
"No, Lass. Is not good." Dropping the foot he held in defeat, Shawn sighed, exasperated and wondering how much time he'd wasted trying to maneuver Lassiter this way.
The tactic had failed spectacularly.
His inability to manhandle Lassie frustrated him and, irritated with both the situation and himself, Shawn took a deep breath and just… gave up.
He was good at giving up. For years it was his go-to plan of action – don't like the way things are going? Leave them. Can't cope with what life has handed you? Then don't. Find something better to do than what you're doing now? Then do it.
He'd been the king of quitting, as his father constantly reminded him. Since he was a child, as a matter of fact. But ever since he'd stumbled into what he was beginning to think was his life's purpose – ever since he'd started falling for the not-usually drunken detective – Shawn's desire to quit had dissipated, going from the back-up plan in his back pocket to the worst-case scenario he kept on a dusty shelf in the back of his packed closet.
But this was different.
Also, his back was sore.
It was insane how long it took Shawn to realize the inanity of trying to move Lassie this way, but once he did, he positioned himself next to the mostly-passed out pain-in-the-ass and sat instead. The mattress dipped slightly beneath his weight, and he took a moment to stretch out his back and relax, absentmindedly trailing his hand along the curvature of the cop's back and relishing in the feel of the man under his fingers as he lost himself in thought.
Just a year ago, he'd have lost a limb for even trying to touch Lassie this way. But now?
Well, things were different now, and it was unlikely he was going to get that violent reaction after all.
A shiver raced up Lassiter's spine and he moaned, snapping Shawn out of his reverie and clueing him in to the effect he was having on the man. Though he didn't want to stop what he was doing, he knew the gentle intimacy wasn't the most productive to getting Lassie tucked in. But he couldn't quite help himself, the action bringing about a much-needed sense of comfort for them both.
"Is good," Carlton said again, and this time Shawn wasn't sure if he meant his position on the bed or the touch of his hand, what little skin the detective had exposed turning to gooseflesh.
If Shawn was basing it off his body's reaction, though...
The thought that Lassie loved the feel of his touch warmed the darkest parts of the psychic's heart, sending a shock straight through him.
"Is nice."
His hand stilled in the center of Lassie's back. Not sure if he should continue or how distracted he'd be if he did, the thought of spending the rest of the evening like this – sitting quietly and stroking the cop's back as he murmured drunken pleasantries – was too tempting to pass up. So, Shawn allowed himself a moment more before he forced himself to come up with a plan, basking in the warmth of the other man's body and reveling in the domesticity of the moment as he did.
Surprisingly, it was allowing his brain to be put on auto-pilot – simply enjoying the friction of his fingertips as they danced across Lassie's dark blue dress-shirt – that helped him come up with an idea. And it was a good idea, he thought, one he wasn't sure why he hadn't tried to begin with.
"Lass?" Shawn said, receiving a muffled "What?" in response.
He smiled, mildly amused by the detective in this state.
"I'm gonna roll you over. Don't hurl on me again, k?"
Another muffled answer, this time shorter as Lassiter agreed.
"K."
Shawn sighed. Pulling his legs onto the bed, he centered his gravity to gain leverage, turning himself into a human fulcrum. His hands slid under the man's stomach, fingers splayed against the taut skin of Lassiter's stomach, the cop's shirt having bunched beneath him. Jolts of attraction raced up his arms and into his brain, and he let his mind wander for the briefest of moments before he moved one hand higher and one hand lower, touching clothed hip and collarbone respectively.
"Okay, Lassie. You ready?" he asked, hoping to avoid startling the man into another accidental bout of upchuckery. Once was more than enough for the night, and Shawn didn't want to have to figure out where Lassie kept his extra sheets, let alone try changing them with the man sprawled atop the bed as he was.
"Ready," Lassiter mumbled as he shifted, sending Shawn's thoughts flying when he unwittingly re-positioned his dick into the palm of the psychic's hand.
Shawn's fingers flexed around the flesh instinctively and Carlton broke out in a moan.
"Ohhhhhh."
It was obvious Lassie was smiling into his mattress, the sound coming from the man's mouth equally muffled and erotic.
"Tha's nice, too," he said, and rocked his hips, enjoying the not-quite accidental stimulation. Suppressing a grin, Shawn felt little Lassie grow to half-mast and wished life-sized-Lassie wasn't wasted beyond the point of consent. Because no matter how tempting it may be to take advantage of the situation he'd literally just been handed, that's exactly what it would be right then – taking advantage.
"'s really nice," Lassie continued, cajoling. "Really, really nice. Wan' more. Gimme more?"
Shawn shook his head, biting his lip and blinking back his lust, determined to behave himself no matter how much Lassie tried to convince him otherwise. He knew could be a bastard from time to time, but Shawn wasn't that kind of bastard, unwilling to cross a line he knew he shouldn't, no matter how blurry it was. So, much as it pained him, he murmured an apology and slipped his hand back to its original position, ignoring the whine of protest the man made when he moved away.
"Okay, Lassifrass, heeeeeeeeere we go!"
Flexing his hands, Shawn sent all the strength in his arms to his fingertips, the sop flipping onto his back with a surprising amount of ease as the psychic thanked a god he wasn't sure he believed in that it had worked on the first try. Lassie's head hit his pillow and he snuggled into it, clearly pleased with his new position even though he was still sideways.
His stress at the situation rising once he realized Lassie was likely to turn belligerent if Shawn took the headrest away to move him again, Shawn wished he had a pillow of his own to clutch at. He was uncertain of what his next move should be if that wasn't it, and he wished he could just flop down next to Lassie and let things be. He wasn't usually the caretaker in these moments, after all. Shawn was usually the caretaken, and he realized that if he was half as bad as Lassie was, he owed Gus a whole lot of apologies for dealing with his own drunk ass over the years. Probably more than just apologies, to be honest, his intoxicated self far more incorrigible than Lassie was proving to be.
"Lassie?" he asked, checking in with hopes the man was awake enough to tell him he was okay, though the restful look on the detective's face made him question it.
"Wha', Spencer? Wha' you want now? Is sleepy. Is flipped. Is good, see?" Carlton replied, his arms flopping to his sides as they spread across the bed, frowning when the left one hit his headboard. Shawn stifled a laugh at the sight, the response more adorable than he'd ever seen Lassiter before. He didn't even know Lassie could be this cute, and he wondered if it was something the detective knew it about himself. If he didn't, Shawn was certainly going to inform him once he regained cognizance. And possibly every single day for the rest of his life.
"Yes, Lassie. I see," Shawn replied, his tone as warm as a honeyed hot toddy. "But I can't leave you sideways." He continued, hoping the man's love of logic would spur him into helping, not looking forward to moving the man if it didn't. "You'll fall off the bed. You're only half-on as it is."
"Sure can," Lassie sleep-argued, something Shawn wasn't entirely surprised by his ability to do.
The man was the biggest pain-in-the-ass he'd ever met – funny when you considered he thought the same about Shawn. Arguing was second nature to Lassiter, especially arguing with him, and it made the psychic wonder if Lassie had been born a master debater or if verbal sparring was just a thing that got him off. Considering how often the man proved to be contradictory – sometimes, it seemed, just for contradiction's sake – Shawn seriously leaned towards the latter of the two options.
In fact, fighting with Shawn probably gave Lassie a soul-boner or something. But he wasn't about to give up now, regardless of which it might be.
"Okaaay," he said, taking the opportunity to poke at the man as he pulled Lassie's socks off. The detective too drunk and the situation too awkward, he wasn't going to pry Lassie out of his clothes, but he figured this small thing of comfort was something he could achieve. "But when you wake up on the floor just remember that I told you so."
Lassie replied as he wiggled his newly freed toes, his liquor-brained logic surprising the psychic. "S'okay. You'll jus' pu' me back to bed."
Shawn laughed openly at that, the detective's brazen response tickling his funny bone.
"Oh, really? I am, am I? How's that gonna happen when I'm sleeping in the living-room, Lassiepants?" he asked, grabbing the man's left leg and shaking it for emphasis, ready to swing it up onto the bed and stopping only when he heard the answer.
Lassie breathed, the word coming out as a sigh, and Shawn did a double-take, not knowing if he heard him correctly.
"Stay," Lassie said again, a little more forceful this time, the request laced with longing as his slur turned into one of alcohol-induced exhaustion.
"Stay wi' me."
Shawn blinked at the response, unsure of how to respond.
"Wan' snuggles."
The psychic counted his blessings, his pulse racing at the idea. The couch in the other room was both lumpy and lonely, and he'd much rather be here with Lassie's warm body pressed up against his own. Shawn was sure Lassie would be a blanket hog, but that wouldn't matter when the man was likely to become a human comforter of his very own. Far more importantly -
Lassie didn't want to be alone anymore; he had said as much in the cab.
He didn't want to be alone anymore, and he wanted Shawn to be the one to be with him.
But in what way?
Was it just for the night, to take care of him until he was his hard-ass self again come morning? Or did he mean more – did he mean he really wanted to start something between them? Or rather, further the thing they had already been started?
His earlier declaration of affection made Shawn think the latter, but with Lassie loaded when he'd said, it left him uncertain – love being just as impossible to profess when wasted as consent was. Either way, as important as the answer was, Shawn knew he couldn't let it matter until morning. The man wouldn't be sober enough to tell him until then, so he let the thought leave his head and came up with a compromise, proud of himself for doing so as quickly as he had.
"How 'bout this, Lassie? You let me get you on the bed right -" he offered, thumb caressing the cop's bare ankle, smiling when he saw the other man smile, "- and I promise you I'll stay, k?"
Lassiter paused a moment, brow furrowed slightly, as if he was considering. The offer a good one, Shawn didn't know what he had to consider, and it made him wonder if Lassie was being petulant just because he could.
"An' snuggle?" the cop said after a moment, apparently unwilling to agree without his addendum to the matter accepted. "Hasta snuggle if stay. Wan' snuggles."
Shawn's smile grew wider, his heart melting at the demand.
He was definitely reminding Lassiter of how adorable he was come morning.
"Yes, Lassie," he agreed, crawling back onto the bed. "And snuggle."
Moving the cop after that had been easy – Lassie now resting with his head on Shawn's chest, his arm wrapped around the younger man's waist with the psychic pinned beneath him – and the lack of difficulty made Shawn wonder if the detective had been trying to get him in this position on purpose.
He wouldn't put it past Lassiter, the man a wily enough son of a bitch when sober that he could imagine him equally so when wasted. Shawn had the memories of their recent truth or dare as proof, after all, where Lassie had been smart enough to get himself blown in a broom closet. Though the cop hadn't exactly been sober that time either, he hadn't been drunk enough for Shawn to worry about whether he had really wanted it. Lassiter had made it exceedingly clear – the phrase 'I want my dick so far down your throat, you'll be tasting me for days' unable to be taken any other way.
There was a fine line between drunk (which he'd been then) and fucked-out of his skull (which he was now) though, and it made Shawn glad he'd been the one to find Lassie and take him home, not wanting some opportunistic asshole to have seen the vulnerable man as prey. As Head Detective, Lassiter was well-known in these parts and it gave Shawn chills to think of all the horrible possibilities he'd avoided by Shawn being the one to scoop Lassie up and whisk him away like the man's own personal knight in plaid-and-denim armor.
He focused on the feeling of their bodies pressed together to avoid those negative thoughts, want replacing worry as the line between them blurred; the detective practically crawling atop Shawn and burying his face in the flesh of his neck. Shawn wrapped his arm around Lassie's shoulder when his beloved snuggled close, heart full to bursting as it beat against his chest like a stampede of hooves thundering through the grasslands of the Serengeti, laughing at the image that popped in his head. If this was what it felt like, maybe he was wrong about cats being stupid when they'd domesticated themselves. Because that's exactly how he felt right then – resplendently broken in and absolutely over the moon about it.
Unsure of what morning would bring, he chose to cherish the moment, breathing deep as the detective settled and allowing his mind to wander. It wasn't hard for Shawn to imagine what life would be like with Lassie wrapped around him every day – coming home from a hard case and crawling into his embrace to force the memories of corpses and murderers away – and he found that doing so left him far more content than he'd ever expected, his fantasies about the detective usually ones of the NC-17 variety.
This was the first time he'd imagined something less, yet somehow it was something so, so much more. Never picturing himself in the role of cop's wife while growing up – hell, if someone had suggested it even a week ago, he would have laughed in their face and told them to see a doctor for that brain-eating virus they clearly seemed to have – Shawn found that it was something he was surprisingly starting to crave… so long as the cop in question was the one currently glued to him, of course. Because though this wasn't the first time he'd taken care of Lassie (that was the astronomer case with the arrest of Hugo Rainer a little over a year prior), the feeling he got from doing so brought him to a place he'd never expected to be; one that couldn't be achieved by pineapple smoothies or scores of solved cases or even getting to rub his dad's nose in his success.
It was all Lassie. All Lassie and the possibility a relationship with him could hold.
Bringing him back from delicious wistfulness, the drunk's arm shifted, and Shawn struggled to keep his thoughts in check as the man's hand drifted lower with every move he made. Lassie, it seemed, could not burrow deep enough and Shawn's breath caught in his throat when the cop's long-fingers moved passed his waistband, accidentally copping a feel. The devil and the world both against him, Shawn bit his lip as Lassiter's palm stopped to rest directly on his growing erection, officially making the situation too hard to handle.
Carlton's state of mind more important to him than his own state of boner, Shawn wanted to remain chaste – a first for him after years of lecherousness. But, to his chagrin, he wasn't sure how to stay that way without resorting to less than snuggle-friendly tactics.
Picturing baseball wasn't gonna do it.
Neither was Googling gross medical conditions, his phone on the nightstand too far away.
And he certainly wasn't going to tarnish to moment by thinking of Henry naked, an old standby that not only worked but made him want to gouge his eyeballs out with a rusty spork.
Maybe he should try to talk to Lassie, find out what had caused his upset in the first place – the discomfort of a heavy conversation a good way to draw attention elsewhere, the detective's distress guaranteed to be an instant boner-killer.
Shawn looked down to see Lassiter on his chest, eyes closed and a small smile on his face as he hovered on the edges of slumber.
"Lassie?" the psychic said softly.
"Yeah?" Lassie whispered back, the word, thick with fatigue, barely making it past his lips.
He couldn't bring himself to do it.
It didn't matter how much Shawn wanted to know or how badly needed to distract himself; with the man so close to passing out, his curiosity for a clearly upsetting topic had to wait, unwilling and unable to mess with the cop's contentment.
Carlytown was both happy and sleepy right now.
He was physically and – more importantly – emotionally comfortable pressed up against Shawn's body.
And Shawn wouldn't change that for anything, not the world, not unfathomable riches, not even the threat of a bullet to the temple.
"Nevermind," he said softly, kissing the top of the man's fine Irish head as he put the thought to rest, resigning himself to a long night made longer due to his raging erection. All that could matter come morning. Because in that moment, there was only one thing of importance.
"Sweet dreams, Lassie," he whispered to the gently dozing man, curling his arm around his shoulders.
"Sweet dreams."
