Fic: "The Hours That Are Passed," Part 6/10, Psych

[elles_letters]

Rating: PG-13
Summary: When a former partner of Henry's comes under investigation, Shawn will do anything to get assigned to the case. Turns out, he's not interested in helping an old family friend; he's out to protect himself.
Warning: Mentions of child abuse and use of coarse language.
Disclaimer: Psych and all related characters are the property of USA Networks and a bunch of other people in suits. Please don't sue.

Chapter Warning: This chapter mentions brief but specific details of sexual abuse of a minor by an adult.

chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | [bonus] | chapter nine | chapter ten



Chapter Six

"Ebony And Ivory Live Together In Perfect Harmony...
Ebony And Ivory Live Together In Perfect Harmony..."

Gus woke to the sound of his phone vibrating and the harmonious voices of Stevie and Paul. He reached across his bed and snatched the buzzing nuisance off the nightstand. "6 AM" the phone's display read brightly. An early morning phone call and pop tunes calling for interracial cooperation. It didn't take much to figure out who was on the other line.

"Nghhhh," Gus called out after answering. He didn't even bother to bring the phone to his ear, flipping on the speaker phone instead.

"Gus?" Shawn replied.

"What?" the other asked, still half asleep.

"Dude, break in the case." Shawn was too chipper considering how early it was, especially considering he normally slept until well after noon on the weekends.

"What case? Cupcake case?"

"Our good friend is dead."

"Who the baker?"

"No, dude. Lenny. Lenny, the crotchety flasher. Can you please try and stay focused?"

"I'm focused, Shawn." Gus yawned before continuing. "Focused how nice these 500-thread count sheets feel."

"Gus, get up! I need you. There have been some major developments in our case."

"No more perverts, Shawn. That's my new rule."

"No, see, there's no problem anymore. Now, it's just a plain old murder case, which you should be totally fine with."

"I'm not, Shawn, and you're wasting my minutes with this foolishness. Goodbye." Gus buried deeper into his sheets and blankets and prepared to drop back off to sleep.

"Gus!" Shawn shouted, jarring the other man awake. "I need you to meet me at the station and help me drag the others over to his house."

"You can do that yourself."

"They take me more seriously when you're around."

"Barely."

"Just grab us some breakfast and meet me at the station. We're too far in to give up now."

As the sound of the dial tone filled Gus' otherwise quiet bedroom, he sighed and sat up. He rolled out of bed and padded across his chilly floor, cursing his decision to remain friends with a flighty man-child with a clear death wish.

---

"Gus, they're so bright!" Shawn stumbled awkwardly into Karen Vick's crowded office, eyes squeezed shut, feeling up the walls and nearby head detectives. "They're burning my retinas."

"What is, Shawn? A flashlight?" Gus asked. He hovered cautiously behind Shawn, keeping the other man from tripping. "Strobe lights? A traffic signal?"

Shawn shook his head. He straightened and raised his hands. He opened and closed his fists. "No, nothing like that. They're not really blinking, they're not really sparkling, they're...they're..."

"Flashing?" Juliet offered.

"Yes!" Shawn said, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "That's it. I see bright flashes going off over and over. Flash, flash, flash, fla—" Shawn stilled. He lowered his hands from his head and opened his eyes. He looked around the office, blinking rapidly as if trying to clear his vision.

"They stopped," Shawn said quietly. "The flashes have stopped."

"And what does that mean, Mr. Spencer?" Karen asked with a resigned sigh.

"Oh, Chief, I have a bad feeling about this." Shawn raised his hand to his head and closed his eyes again. "I can't see them anymore. Something—someone—has made the flashes stopped."

"Someone murdered the flashes?" Gus asked dramatically.

"Yes, Gus! That's exactly it!"

"What?" Carlton said in disbelief. "How exactly do you murder a flash, Spencer?"

"No, Lassie, not a flash, but a flasher."

"Someone murdered a flasher?" Karen repeated.

"Yes, Chief. As Gus could tell us all, flashers don't just stop flashing."

"Why would Mr. Guster know that, Mr. Spencer?"

"Yeah, Shawn," Gus said agitated, "why would I know that?"

"I don't know, dude. Why did you know that other disturbing stuff you know?"

"Mr. Spencer—" Karen began.

"Chief," Shawn interrupted. "A flasher has been killed. And the spirits are telling me that this dead flasher has something to do with Det. Stiles."

"Do you have any evidence of that?" Karen crossed her arms and leaned back in her desk chair.

"Other than the searing pain in my eyeballs? No."

"Chief, he doesn't even have a body," Carlton complained.

Shawn closed his eyes shut and raised his arms. His fingers waggled in the air, alternating as he mumbled numbers under his breath. "Five! No...Seven! No, no! Dirty...thirty...3569 San Pascual Street," Shawn rattled off, lowering his arms.

The three officers stared at him silently.

"The nearest IHOP is about two miles away," Shawn added helpfully.

---

"I can't believe they beat us here," Shawn mumbled.

"They have sirens, Shawn," Gus replied. "And I'm pretty sure Juliet didn't make Lassiter pull over for crepes."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Well, if she had, I'm sure he wouldn't have made the excursion twice as long by demanding the waitress heat up the chocolate syrup."

Gus shrugged. "I don't like cold syrups."

Shawn ignored him and hurried to where Juliet was waving them over on Leonard's front step. "Well?" he asked when they joined her.

"One dead," she answered gravely. "Name, Leonard James, a registered sex offender."

"What happened to him?" Gus asked.

"We don't know yet. Lassiter's examining the body."

The head detective strode out the house as if summoned. He frowned when he saw Shawn and Gus, but didn't say anything to the pair. Instead, he turned to face Juliet.

"Two shots," Carlton said brusquely.  "Straight in the head." He crouched under the crime scene tape that had already been placed in front of the door. CSI and uniformed officers buzzed back and forth from the interior of the house to the police vans parked along the street.

"Could it have been Stiles?" Juliet asked.

"The accuracy of the shots would support that theory, but that's not enough to bring him in. Not at least until ballistics has time to go over the evidence."

"Man, are you serious?" Shawn asked frustrated. "I know Stiles is behind this. I can sense it."

"Well, I'm sorry, Spencer, but unless you can think of a way for us all to 'sense' it, that doesn't do us any good."

Shawn scoffed and began pacing in frustration. "You make this job more difficult than necessary, Lass, you really do," he mumbled.

He scanned the nearby area searching for anything that could link the former detective to the scene. He noticed two men sitting at the nearby bus stop. The older of the two, a heavyset dark-skinned man with a Jheri curl, frowned when Shawn made eye contact with him.

"Lassie!" Shawn shouted. He grabbed Carlton by the arm and pulled him down the porch stairs. "Come on, dude, I've found some guys who may have sensed it."

"Excuse me, gentlemen!" Shawn shouted as he pulled the other man across the street. "May we have a moment of your time?"

Carlton squirmed in Shawn's grasp. "Spencer, let go of my arm!"

Shawn ignored him. "Good afternoon, fellas," he greeted once they reached the bus stop. "My name is Shawn Spencer and this is my co-worker Slim Jim. Can we ask you a few questions?"

"That depends," Jheri Curl asked. "If it's anything about what happened over at Lenny's, we didn't see much of anything."

Shawn studied the two men's faces. They looked familiar. He'd seen them sitting out here before. They may not have seen the murder, but they probably knew a lot more than they realized.

Carlton wrenched his arm free from Shawn's grasp and pulled out his badge. "Carlton Lassiter, SBPD," he said curtly. "You have any idea what's happened at your friend's house?"

Jheri Curl shook his head. "Lenny's a weird cat. I wouldn't say he was a friend, but I wouldn't wish anything bad on him. At least, nothing like what it seems went down over there."

"You notice anything suspicious or different about him lately?"

"Nothing more suspicious than usual. Lenny was an asshole. He stayed to himself most of the time, except on Sunday mornings when he did his shopping. Hard to really say what he was doing. He did have a lot more company these last few days."

"Company?" Carlton asked. "Like who?"

"A dark-haired guy wearing a gun was here one day. Might have been a cop. He didn't have no uniform. He really pissed Lenny off."

"Did you get a name?"

Jheri Curl shook his head. "He didn't talk to any of us. He only spoke with Lenny for about 15 minutes before he told him to fuck off."

"Was there anyone else?"

Jheri Curl looked over at his friend, a skinny man wearing a purple Laker's cap over scraggly blond hair. "Wasn't he fussing with someone the other day?"

Purple Hat thought for a moment. "Yeah, two jackasses were wandering around the neighborhood last week."

"What did these jackasses look like?" Carlton asked.

"They drove a fruity little blue car," Purple Hat recalled. He looked over to where the police cars lined up the street. "It looked a lot like that," he said pointing to Gus' blue Prius.

Shawn cleared his throat loudly. "That doesn't mean too much. That's a very common car, actually."

"I don't think so," Jheri Curl commented.

"One of the guys looked a little like you, too." Purple Hat said, pointing toward Shawn. "Like he hadn't combed his hair in two days."

"Yeah," Jheri Curl said in recognition. "Yeah, that was you we saw talking to him. You and some angry, black yell-y guy."

"Oh no, Gus isn't angry. He's just neurotic."

Carlton glared at Shawn.

"Let's not talk about Gus right now," Shawn said quickly. "Let's go back to the dark-haired guy. You thought he was a cop?"

Purple Hat nodded slowly. "He walked around like he was a cop—you know, like he owned the place—and banged on Lenny's door like a cop would. And he had one of the cop frat stickers on his car. "

"Have you seen him here since?" Carlton asked, still giving Shawn a glare.

"Nope," Jheri Curl answered. "But if he was here, someone would have seen him. We don't get a lot of strangers coming through here."

"Thank you for your assistance," Carlton flipped closed his notepad and nodded to both men. He then grabbed Shawn by the arm and pulled him away from the bus stop. "What were you and Guster doing out here?" he asked once they were out of earshot of the two men.

"A vision may or may not have lead me to this neighborhood."

Carlton frowned.

"It did," Shawn said simply.

"Dammit, Spencer, is there a reason you refuse to listen to anything I tell you?"

"Look, Lassie, we go through this every case. Gus and I will make sure you get to do your big, bad cop routine, I promise. Gun, badge, kicking down of the door, the whole nine yards."

Carlton groaned in frustration before squeezing Shawn's arm and pulling him closer.

"Spencer!" he began, lowering his voice, "you do realize you two are now the last people to be seen with our victim before he was killed?"

Shawn scoffed. "You can't possibly think we killed Lenny."

"Do you also realize that apparently your friends over there weren't the only ones who saw you out here?"

"What are you—"

"Stiles, Spencer," Carlton said, fear flickering in his eyes. It fascinated Shawn; Carlton Lassiter didn't fear anything. "Stiles saw you speaking with James. That's why he had to come back. He had to shut him up."

---

Shawn's coping mechanisms had not changed much since he was a child. Which explains why when Gus found him later that evening, he was sitting in the dark Psych office, drinking a Slurpee and watching Bewitched reruns on Netflix. Sitcoms always had a soothing effect on him.

"Your father called me," Gus said, flipping on the lights.

"Let me guess?" Shawn began, smacking his lips loudly as he released his Slurpee straw. "He's bought me a puppy?"

"Not even close. He said if you don't stop blocking his calls, he'll sell everything in your old room on eBay."

"Empty threat," Shawn countered.

Gus pulled out  his phone and tapped open the web browser. "He's already posted your original copy of the Terminator soundtrack."

"What!?" Shawn snatched the phone out of Gus' hands. "A buck? Is he serious?"

"It would appear so. I hope he'll at least rip-off the winner by jacking up the cost of shipping and handling." Gus snatched his phone back. "Why you'd run off earlier?" he asked switching the subject.

"Things got a bit too heavy for me."

"Murder's a pretty heavy thing, Shawn."

Shawn paused the black-and-white adventures of the suburban witch and met Gus' eyes. "Lassie thinks the reason Lenny got killed was because Stiles saw him with us."

"What!?"

"I know, dude."

"Do you think he was watching Lenny?"

"I don't know."

"You don't think he's been watching us, do you?"

Shawn just took a long draw from his Slurpee.

Gus sat down at his desk, his face stricken. "Oh my god," he said softly. "We killed a guy."

"Dude, we didn't kill him."

"He died because of us, Shawn! I have some crazy flasher's blood on my hands."

"At most, you have an intimidating shove match or possible beating on your hands. Stiles took things way too far by killing the guy. That's all on him."

"Oh my god," Gus repeated. "Stiles is a murderer. A murderer that possibly thinks we know too much."

"I don't see how him being a murderer who thinks we know too much is that much worse than him being a pedophile that thinks we know too much."

Gus let out a small whimper.

"Okay, maybe it's a little worse."

Gus whimpered again.

Shawn sighed, then closed his laptop. "Things are getting too heavy again. I think I'll swing by my dad's and gather a few of my valuables."

"Don't leave me here alone!" Gus jumped up from his desk chair and followed Shawn to the door. "A flasher just got killed! What do l do if Stiles shows up?"

"Pour him a drink," Shawn offered. "I'll be back to help you entertain him in a few," he promised.

He shut the door behind him and listened as Gus locked the door and pulled the chain.

When Gus moved to lower the blinds on the office's large picture window, he knocked on the glass and, once he had Shawn's attention, pointed toward his watch.

"You got an hour, tops," he yelled through the window. "Keep me in here by myself too long, Shawn, and I'll personally see to it that Lassie gets your ass locked away somewhere."

"Love you, too, bro," Shawn replied with a gleeful wave. Gus frowned and flipped the blinds closed.

---

Run in, run out. That was the plan. He wasn't a kid anymore. Shawn didn't owe his father any explanation.

"Get out of my room, old man," he shouted as he slammed his father's front door behind him.

"Shawn!" Henry yelled back. He tossed his dish towel into a sink full of soapy water and stormed into the living room. "I've been trying to reach you all week, kid. We need to talk."

"Not now. I'm only here to pick up a few collectibles and then I'll split." Shawn bounded up the stairs and hurried to his old bedroom. Henry followed close behind.

"What have the police found on Stiles?"

Shawn grabbed an old backpack from his closet and began stuffing it with items from around his room. "On him?" Shawn deflected. "A lot of really tacky shirts."

"Don't change the subject. What have you all found out?"

"I'd love to tell you, Dad, but," Shawn paused his puttering to look at his father. "Actually, no. It's a lot more fun keeping it from you."

Henry sighed and sat down on the edge of Shawn's bed. "I can't believe this. Ian Stiles. I've known him since he was a rookie. I practically raised him."

"Does that make us brothers?" Shawn asked humorlessly.

Henry ignored him. "I didn't see any signs, Shawn. I spent 20 years locking up thieves, rapists and murderers, and I couldn't even see what was right next to me."

Shawn poked through a stack of magazines sitting on his old work desk. "Well, Dad, things like that happen to the best of us. Disasters happen right under our noses and we never know any different."

"I just can't see him doing it. Something must have happened to him. The Ian Stiles I knew was never that sick."

"Really?" Shawn asked casually. "What if I say I knew that he was like that all along?"

"How would you know?" Henry asked, his voice lowering.

Looking back, Shawn had no idea what prompted him to say that. Maybe he was sick of hiding or maybe he too was angry at his father's lack of knowledge regarding Stiles true self. Either way, once he opened his mouth, he couldn't shut up.

"Take a stab at it, Dad. I'm sure you can figure it out."

Henry stood and glared angrily at Shawn. "Don't go there, Shawn."

"Why? Mad you didn't pick up on that, either?"

"Shut up, kid. This isn't funny."

"No, it's not. It wasn't funny 15 years ago and it's not funny now."

Henry shook his head. "Stop talking, Shawn," he said, a dangerous growl in his voice.

"You wanted to know everything. Well, I'm telling you everything."

"I don't want to hear it."

"He gave me alcohol."

"Shut up."

"He told me I'd want the photos when I was older. That I'd want something to remember us by."

"I said, shut it!"

"He made me touch him first before he'd touch me."

"Quiet!" Henry barked. "Shut up, Shawn. Shut up or you'll push me into doing something I'll regret."

"I shouldn't have come here," Shawn mumbled. "I knew you wouldn't understand then, and you don't understand now." He brushed roughly past his father.

"We're not through here," Henry said as he followed Shawn out.

"You've made it pretty clear that we are." Shawn rushed down the stairs and to the front door. Henry reached out and held it shut before Shawn could get out.

"If you're telling me the truth, Shawn, if you got yourself in that situation and you never told me, I'll...I'll..." Henry's eyes flashed as he struggled to maintain his temper. Shawn pushed his arm off the front door.

"It's always nice talking to you, Dad. I'll tell Ian you said 'Hey.'"

He slammed the door shut before his father could answer.

---

It was funny that Shawn would find himself back here of all places. The house looked the same as it always had, although, a bit more well-lit than in his nightmares. It was disgustingly ordinary with off-white siding and a neatly trimmed lawn. It appeared unoccupied, a casualty of the economic times, and the windows were dark and shaded.

Shawn leaned against the tree in the front yard. He hadn't been surprised by his father's reaction to hearing of Stiles' abuse. Henry had been a protective father and a proud cop. If he thought his own son could easily fall victim to a man he'd trusted with his own life, he'd view it as a failure on his part.

But Shawn didn't want anger. He didn't want pity, either. Understanding would have been nice, or even sympathy. The closest he'd gotten to that was his confusing conversation with Lassiter a week ago. He sighed and rubbed his temples. Shawn didn't consider himself a big drinker, but he sure could use the numbing effect of a stiff drink.

He pushed himself off the tree and stretched in the cool night air. Gus had been alone for too long. Perhaps Shawn could talk him into joining him at a nice, crowded, well-lit bar. He turned and stopped dead in his tracks.

Really, given the day's events, he shouldn't have been too surprised to see him here.

"Shawny," the man said with a smile. "It's been too long."

Shawn smiled and hoped that his shaking wasn't too obvious.

"Not long enough, if you ask some folks. You're in quite a mess, Det. Stiles."




A/N: To make up for the two month hiatus, I come offering a chapter that's twice as long as the others. I'm a liar who can't write/update on time. Forgive me?

Comments

[batneko.livejournal.com]

Awh Shawn.

[an-sceal.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy, my HEART. Shawn's conversation with Henry was GUTTING.

Welcome back!

[amberlynn1991.livejournal.com]

Oh crap!!!! Lassie fix it :(

[stealthlamb.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see you've updated this fic. You're handling the subject matter with the delicacy it deserves. Don't forget, there aren't just victims - the abuser needs to be held accountable and I'm looking forward to seeing that happen. Shawn's hiding and his shame are very accurate in my opinion and I anxiously await Stiles getting his comeuppance. I look forward to more of this fic.

[bluerose03.livejournal.com]

Omg!!! Must update sooon!!!! I cannot wait to see what happens next!!! O.o

[avid-anon.livejournal.com]

Great work so far. :D I'm such a sucker for angst... Keep going! I eagerly await your next update!

[(Anonymous)]

Just caught up on this story from the shawn-lassiter comm, it's awesome!

You've totally nailed the Psych style and the abuse and shassie threads of the plot weave in perfectly.

Cannot wait for chapter seven! :)