Chapter Text
Shawn Spencer slid into the barstool, ordering a drink before glancing around at the occupied seats in order to find a suitable personage to hit on. The blonde girl with a cute smile but an awful tan was married; she had evidently forgotten to take off her ring before soaking up the rays, and a sliver of pale skin on her finger gave it away quite easily. The man on his left was paying for a drink and looked promising, but had a fancy gym membership sticking out of his wallet, and Shawn really didn’t want to talk about sports and veganism for the next hour and a half, unless it was sure to end in really incredible sex, and he wasn’t even sure the guy was gay. The girl two seats from his left was one of Gina Repauch’s friends, so he promptly turned around, shielding himself from her line of sight and finding himself trapped under the icy blue gaze of a certain Head Detective.
“Hey, Lassie!” he said, shooting him a big grin as the other man scowled.
“What is it? Come to gloat about today’s case?”
Lassiter had done a great deal of paperwork on some kidnapping case, only to track down, corner, and threaten an innocent woman who’d had nothing to do with the whole affair in the first place. About five minutes later he’d gotten a call from Spencer, who had found all three of the victims and knew the exact location of the kidnapper. All he’d gotten to do was cuff him.
“Nah, that was all you. Well, three-quarters you. Maybe one-sixty-fourth you.”
Carlton sighed, and Shawn sipped from his glass.
“In the mood for some heavy drinking, then?”
“I lost my wallet.”
Spencer had stolen and hidden it earlier that day, but now he felt a twinge of guilt deep in his stomach (or maybe he was just hungry), and raised his hand to his temple, a smirk playing across his lips.
“I’m sensing...it’s at the station, in the bottom drawer of your desk. Hidden in a box of...those clippy things.”
“Paper clips?”
“Bingo. Good sport, Lassie. I’ll buy you a drink for playing along.”
“Scotch. On the rocks,” the detective said to the bartender, and he obliged.
Carlton downed the whole thing in one go before requesting another.
“I said a drink, Lassie-face.”
“I know how much you got paid for this case. You can pay for a few extra scotches.”
“That’s fair. But I was really looking forward to buying a zipline for the office, and you’re wasting all my half on alcohol.”
“I’ll pay you back,” Lassiter grumbled.
“Thanks, Lassie. You can come by sometime and zip from one end of the office to the other. Sounds thrilling, I know, but you are quite the daredevil.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Cool,” Shawn said, and they sat in content silence as they both sipped at their third drink.
He drank as they listened to the bustle of the waitresses and the sound of the door opening and shutting until there were only a few people left sitting around the bar, and the room looked fairly blurrier than it had a while ago, and everything seemed a bit warmer, and Spencer was quite a bit closer than he had been.
“I’ve got to get home,” Lassiter said, sounding unsure of himself.
Sitting with Spencer quietly was a lot nicer than he would’ve liked to admit, especially when his hazel eyes were sparkling in the light and he was looking at him in that way…
“Don’t go now. You haven’t gotten totally wasted yet.”
“And I’d prefer not to. Now I’m driving home.”
“You know that’s illegal. I’ll drive.”
“No.”
“Come on, can’t friends give friends a hand? I learned that from the Fresh Beat Band, and let me tell you, it’s one hell of a children’s show. Now, I know you’re more into Civil War documentaries and gun lube infomercials, but Twist can really drop a beat, not to mention he looks like my doppelganger from some kind of alternate dimension where I’m a rapper with a passion for-”
“Shut up!” Lassiter barked, before closing his eyes and counting off ten long seconds before standing and continuing. “I’m fine. I’ll call a cab.”
“You lost your wallet, remember?”
He swore under his breath before retorting, “Well, it’s not like you’re in any condition to drive me home in the first place. That’s your fifth drink.”
“I’m drinking pineapple juice.”
“Oh,” the other man responded, stumbling a bit and steadying himself by gripping Spencer’s shoulder. “Oh, well-”
“Exactly. Let’s go.”
“On your bike?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lassie. As much as I’d like to have your strong, toned policeman arms tight around my waist as we ride off into the night, the wind whipping through our hair and romance alive in our hearts, I took Gus’s company car here. Don’t vomit in it, or he probably won’t let me buy that zipline.”
“Just come on, then,” the detective said, walking shakily towards the door before Spencer slung an arm around him, and he would’ve objected if his legs didn’t feel as if they were going to melt into the sticky tile floor.
He felt a blush rising in his cheeks, but night was gracious and quite pitch black, thank sweet Lady Justice for that. When he finally stumbled into the faux-psychic’s car seat, he was somehow exhausted, opening his mouth in a yawn as his eyes blinked sleepily and Spencer peered at him with a look of...endearment on his face? As he clicked his seatbelt, his eyelids fell shut.
-
Someone was flicking his ear and calling his name softly, and if Lassiter hadn’t felt so tired, he probably would’ve jumped to attention and reflexively reached for his holster.
“Mmnn,” was all he could manage before the aforementioned person leaned up close and pressed their lips against his.
It was a good kiss, too, soft but not too light either, and there was a hint of tongue teasing at his lower lip. He opened his mouth and accepted the gentle warm heat and the taste of...pineapple?
His eyes shot open.
“Spencer!”
“Rise and shine, Lassie. We’re home.”
He glanced around. The night sky was still pitch black, but the streetlamps illuminated the building in front of him, and it definitely wasn’t his house.
“We’re at...a dry cleaner’s.”
“Relax, it’s my apartment. You took a nap while we drove, but I’ve been trying to wake you up for five minutes straight, and no matter how cute you are when you’re asleep, I had to resort to desperate measures here.”
“Like...kissing me?”
“Exactly.”
“Take me home.”
“Nope. A good friend doesn’t leave a drunk friend alone.”
“A good friend doesn’t kiss their drunk friend and then not give any explanation.”
“I explained. Desperate measures, Lassie. Just come inside, you look pretty beat and it’s best to sleep it off anyway, right? I’ve got this perfect hangover remedy too; you dump a shitload of canned pineapple into a blender, add a generous amount of almond milk, mix in three packets of Blue Razz Pop Rocks, put it on high, and wait until -”
“Do it again.”
He paused, mouth still open and looking somewhat confused, an expression that was rarely genuine for him.
“Do what again?”
Lassiter slid a hand roughly into his hair (more roughly than he’d intended to, but his coordination wasn’t the best at the moment) and drew him in for a kiss, this one a lot wetter and breathier than the former one, and a lot more drawn out. He trailed from Spencer’s lips to his jaw to his collarbone, eliciting gasps from the so-called psychic.
“Love you,” Carlton whispered into his neck, and it wasn’t until Shawn stiffened, pulled back and exhaled deeply into the cold midnight air, refusing to meet his eyes, that Carlton realised he had fucked up entirely.
“Come on, I’ll take you back home now, really.” he said, keeping emotion out of his voice, more rigid than he’d ever seen him before.
They rode to Lassiter’s house with tension hanging in the air, and when Carlton got out, Shawn didn’t meet his gaze.
“Bye,” he whispered, no pet name attached, and the blue car sped off into the distance.
-
The next day, Lassiter’s wallet was discovered inside of his trusty box of paperclips, with a heart-shaped sticky note on it with ‘Gotcha, Lassie!’ scrawled on it in purple Sharpie. Shawn, however, did not turn up.