Happy Birthday Shana! Could I get some good ol Shawn x Lassie please <3
Shawn had just been hoping to get collect his reward check and leave, except now he’s sitting in an interrogation room and this junior detective is asking him about the video store robberies like he committed them instead of solving them and this would be a laugh, really, except he knows who her partner is and he would really very much like to get out of here as soon as possible.
“Look, Detective Barry,” he starts.
Her eyes narrow. “How do you know my name?”
For fuck’s sake. “Is it a secret?”
She scowls at him and opens her mouth, but then the door opens and her partner strides in, head buried in a file. “Lucinda, this doesn’t seem…”
Shawn sinks down in his seat as he trails off like it’ll do him any good.
Lucinda raises an eyebrow and looks between them. “Do you know his name too?”
“I’m familiar with it, yeah,” he answers, mouth dry.
Lassiter snaps the file shut and rounds on Lucinda. “What the hell is going on here?”
“This is who I was trying to tell you about,” she says, clearly confused but throwing her shoulders back. Shawn finds it admirable, but he still cringes. “He gave us the tip about the video store owner, but he has to be an inside guy. He claims he figured it out by–”
“Watching the news,” Lassiter finishes. Shawns looking everywhere but him, but he still feels the weight of his eyes on him. “Get out. We’ll talk about this later.”
“Me?” Lucinda blinks. “What are you–”
“Out,” he snaps. “We’ll discuss this later.”
She presses her lips together and narrows her eyes before storming out. He sort of wishes she hadn’t, because now it’s just him and Lassiter together in this small room. Surprisingly, it’s Lassiter who breaks the silence. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”
“Hasn’t been long,” he says, having to make the conscious decision not to fidget. He sweeps his gaze over Lassiter, the grey in his hair and his bright blue eyes and his ugly tie and stupid suit and, “You’re still wearing your wedding ring.”
He really never does know when to shut up.
Lassiter’s shoulders stiffen. “I’m still married.”
“Right,” Shawn says quickly. “That’s true, yeah.” He swallows. “I’ll just, uh, go, then?”
“Right,” Lassiter echoes before stepping aside. “Of course.”
He collects his check and should probably go home or something, but instead he goes to Gus’s work, charms his way through security and maybe lifts a keycard, who can say, and barges into Gus’s office before collapsing dramatically in the chair across from his desk. “You won’t believe who I saw at the station.”
Gus doesn’t look up from the game he’s playing. “Lassiter.”
He straightens. “What? How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve been telling you that you’re going to run into him there since you started calling tips in, Shawn, and there’s no one else there who you’d run to tell me about.”
“I didn’t run,” he protests before changing tracks. “What am I supposed to do, Gus, just know the perpetrators of a crime and remain silent? I have a civic duty.”
“You don’t have to collect the reward money.” Shawn doesn’t dignify that with a response and Gus sighs. “How’d it go then?”
“Fine,” he answers. “Totally fine. Practically a non-event, even.”
Gus finally looks away from his game, both eyebrows raised, and Shawn starts messing with the little zen garden he keeps there to avoid it. It’s never a good sign when he can’t tell how much of what he’s saying is a lie.
He gets pulled over the next day and already has the trick with his dad’s old police ID ready, except instead of getting him for speeding or whatever, they haul him down to the station and make him leave his bike there on the side of the road.
Since the only crime he’s committed recently has been minor identity theft in order to sign Gus up for a variety of butt cream samples, he really has no idea what this is about. There’s also his stack of unpaid parking tickets, but Gus usually pays those before it gets to hauling him down to jail levels.
He finds himself in Interim Chief Vick’s office, Lucinda standing behind her, and goes, “Oh my god, you can’t seriously still be on this.”
“Solving a crime just by watching news footage is a bit hard to believe, Mr. Spencer,” Karen says. She’s got that intimidating glare down pat. It would probably be more effective if Shawn didn’t know that she’d learned it from his father.
There’s one very loud knock and then Lassiter is there, suit jacket off and shoulders heaving like he ran here. “Chief, you’re making a mistake.”
How did he even know? He doesn’t need to be here, Shawn can totally handle this. Probably.
“I didn’t include you in this discussion for a reason, Detective Lassiter,” Karen snaps. “Return to your desk.”
“He’s not involved in any of this,” Lassiter insists.
“Oh, so you have a more plausible explanation than him solving crimes our department can’t from the five o’clock news?” she asks. He doesn’t say anything, because of course he doesn’t, since that’s literally what Shawn is doing. “Right, then. Well, Mr. Spencer, unless you feel like illuminating us, you’ll be spending the night in a cell.”
Lassiter looks downright panicked at that. Shawn’s about to tell him it’s fine, it doesn’t matter, it’s not like any of those people know so he’ll just have a boring night – “He’s psychic.”
Shawn almost looks around to see who’s said that, except he’d seen Lassiter’s lips move and heard the words come out of his mouth, so it was probably him. Probably, because Lassiter looks about as surprised as Shawn feels.
“Psychic,” Lucinda repeats skeptically. “You really believe that?”
“No,” Lassiter says then grimaces. “I mean. I was just saying that–”
“He’s never been a real believer of my gift,” Shawn interrupts smoothly. Hey, he can roll with this. “It’s a source of contention between us. An irreconcilable difference, one might say.”
Spitting out some facts about Karen and Lucinda isn’t all that hard, and even for some of the officers he’d passed in the way in. Karen is sitting back, an expression there that Shawn can’t quite name. Lucinda doesn’t look convinced, exactly, but she doesn’t seem actively hostile towards him anymore either. She jerks her head towards Lassiter. “Nothing for him?”
“Unfair advantage,” Shawn says. “My psychic gifts have told me that he stopped in at the bagel place and got a blueberry bagel with cream cheese and large black coffee before work, but also I know he did that because it’s Tuesday.”
“Thank you, Mr. Spencer,” Karen says before Lucinda can do more than frown. “That will be all. You’re free to go.”
“No problem, anytime, although preferably not,” he answers, grinning and walking backwards out of her office.
He keeps his eyes on Karen so he doesn’t accidentally look at Lassiter.
Lassiter bursts into Karen’s office. “You can’t put him on the missing person case.”
“I didn’t realize I needed your permission, Detective Lassiter,” she says, not glancing up from her paperwork.
“He’s a civilian,” he insists. “He’s not even psychic!”
That does get her attention. “Careful.”
He clenches his hands into fists. “I already said I didn’t believe him.” God. Of all the stupid things he’s said around him, but that cell was full of people Lassiter had rounded up and put there the past two days. What else was he supposed to do? Not that, but what’s done is done.
Karen sighs. “You once told me the best detective you knew was your husband.”
His stomach drops. “I was very drunk.”
“You were very drunk,” she agrees. “Were you lying?”
“He doesn’t listen,” he says. “He just runs headfirst into things and doesn’t think and doesn’t follow procedure and he’s going to get himself killed!”
“Well, then it’s a good thing you’re here to keep an eye on him, then,” she says.
“Chief,” he says, then doesn’t know where to go from there. This can’t be happening.
She softens. “I’m sorry that you have to work with your ex-husband, Carlton. But we need this win and we both know he can get it for us.”
“He’s not,” he starts, then stops and swallows. “The divorce isn’t finalized. He’s – he’s not my ex-husband.”
Her eyes drop to his left hand and she says, “I see.”
He really doesn’t think she does, but apparently there’s nothing to be done about it now.
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