itookashotinthedark

[itookashotinthedark]

shawn spencer, through a series of comedic should-be-impossible hijinks, gets turned into a cat without anyone knowing its him. he elects to hang around the station and help out however much his four paws can.

hilariously, it doesn’t change that much.

some notes:

hes brownish-orange (kinda like henry’s hair in flashbacks??) which means he is close enough that he has the orange cat curse™

trying to decide on what breed he is. obviously mixed but what is in the mix?? main thoughts are havana, bengal, and siamese

okay final thoughts: bengal-siamese mix with a havana-like coloring for both eyes and coat.

hes a chatty cattyyyyyyyyyy,,,,,,,, yapper frfr

dog-person lassie and cat-person jules (she canonically has two cats)

he is so indecisive on if he should try and communicate that he is shawn to the station. on one hand theyd know hes safe and maybe be able to help him fix this. on the other jules has literally played fetch with him. a few officers have hand fed him. several cat things occurred. he would never live this all down (human shawn after hes asked where he was for like two months: (heavy sweating) i dont remember)

shawn sleeping in lassie’s chair and on his lap. he started doing it for the laughs but now he has realized that oh no this is actually comfy. tragedy.

half the station supports shawn’s cat shenanigans. a third just take videos. the remaining sixth try to call animal control on shawn but he always gets away and hes back in the station like two hours later so eventually they give up lmao

while all this is happening the station is also stressing because of shawn’s disappearance. they cant find any evidence for what happened. shawn went out to pursue a lead and just vanished. consequently, shawn is trying to make them all feel better with cat shenanigans

he refuses to use a litter box. it does not matter that he is so so small now he is using the fucking toilet. (the officers start leaving the bathroom door open a crack so he can slip in lmao)

shawn reading over case files while sitting on them. hes participating (and solving them)

shawn as a human accidentally left a pineapple stress toy in the station (maybe on some forgotten corner of lassie’s desk or smth lmao) and as a cat he rediscovers it and decides to play ball using it. all this to say that people start calling him pineapple because of it. honestly hes quite happy with that name over some other possibilities

jules is the only one allowed to touch the pineapple toy. he doesnt trust lassie not to try and dump it or something like the spiteful person he is and he certainly doesnt want anyone else touching it. (he would allow lassie to touch the pineapple toy if it werent for that fact though)

(shawn very carefully putting the pineapple toy down in front of lassie for the first timeand staring up with his big ole eyes and lassie stares back and externally his expression is hella flat but internally hes like oh no. oh no its growing on me)

BIG NEWS: cats can in fact eat pineapple, just not a lot since as a fruit it has a lot of sugar (not good for cats), HOWEVER… “It’s hard to see why because cats don’t have the taste buds that let them enjoy sweet flavors. The strong sweet and tangy taste of pineapple is mostly lost on them.”

shawn finally managing to get someone (probably buzz) to give him some pineapple only to be utterly HEARTBROKEN bc it DOESNT TASTE LIKE PINEAPPLE ANYMORE !!!!!!!!!

juliet holding him like a little baby as he is purring like a freight train

LASSITER HOLDING HIM LIKE LONGCAT AS HE IS WAILING LIKE THE DAMNED

literallyyyyyy thisss,,,,

he breaks into the chief’s office to lounge on her desk and she gives him hardcore side eye before, after a while, just sighing and starting to pet him. “this station doesn’t exactly need a mascot, you know,” she tells him, to a reply of mrrp, “but i suppose a little bit of cheering up wouldn’t be too bad.” very carefully, she taps him on the nose. “but not too much. this is a serious line of work—no making a mockery of my station.” the dull thunking of a tail smacking repeatedly into solid wood made no promises.

inconceivable amounts of cat fur everywhere and on everyone. no one can brush him because he wriggles away like an eel and dramatically grooms his fur out of their reach. so he just sheds everywhere. hes got a thick coat there is so. much. fur.

he keeps sneaking into crime scenes. no one is sure how but they suspect he is hitchhiking in lassiter’s car. no one can prove it tho bc they cant fucking find him. the crazy thing is that he leads them to evidence sometimes like a narcotics detection dog but with completely random items that usually seem nonsensical at first. until they prove otherwise. consistently.

lassie to himself: man this feels just like dealing with spencer’s psychic shit. weird.

GUS FIGURES IT OUT FIRST. not because he saw anything but he just saw a newspaper about this cat solving crime with the cops and he was like “oh my fucking god. it can’t be.” and then he pulled up to the station yoinked said cat and went to an isolated corner to freak the fuck out with it. “shawn what the hell happened” he goes, and shawn meows with feeling

juliet watching gus talk to pineapple the station cat in the corner of the bullpen: ???????

several cops having the all-important conversation of what to label him as. theres no snappy cat version of K9 they can use. K9 is supposed to sound like “canine” but there’s no letter to cover the fel in“feline”

some say F9 and some say L9 and a few say FL9 or just straight up FEL9

BY THE WAY!!!!! “Police cats are becoming an increasingly popular addition to law enforcement teams around the world. These feline officers are being trained to assist their human counterparts in various aspects of police work, from sniffing out drugs and explosives to providing comfort and emotional support to officers on duty” SND ALSO “Because they are uncommon, police cats receive a lot of press. Many show up regularly in media posts. If your local department has a police cat, don’t be surprised if you see stories about them on the news”

police cats are a real thing!! shawn is not an official police cat but he is at this point an unofficial one. on rare occasions he might even listen to an order or two (the station thinks he may have been specially trained by some probably-illegal group or smth, escaped, and decided to imprint on the station) (btw this is an actual issue with some police cats. as independent creatures theyre not as predictable as dogs and might not follow orders, which is an issue in high stakes situations n shit)

[itookashotinthedark]

Psych 3x12

[itookashotinthedark]

And nine chapters later, Immersion Therapy is now complete! It’s been a wild ride, start to finish.

If you haven’t already, please check it out on Ao3 or FFic!

Psych Fanfic: Immersion Therapy

Juliet is still reeling from Shawn’s betrayal. It’s been weeks since their breakup, and just as she’s trying to pick up the pieces, a dangerous criminal from Shawn’s past escapes prison. Juliet is suddenly forced to confront old wounds and work with the man who broke her heart.

As Shawn grapples with resurfacing trauma from the case that had him shot and kidnapped, he’s determined to prove himself to Juliet once more—even if it means reliving the worst moments of his life.

Shawn whump and Shules! Post Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark (STASITD) and Deez Nups.

Read on Ao3 or FFic.

Juliet picked up her mug with both hands, taking a moment to let the warmth seep through her palms. She sat down in her office chair and breathed in deep, the pleasant scent of coffee relaxing her instantly as she tuned out the hustle and bustle of the station around her. Not that the relaxation would last long. Since Lassiter’s wedding two weeks ago, she hadn’t felt calm—just anger and a chest-aching sadness.

Shawn had finally stopped calling. He wasn’t popping by her apartment anymore or showing up at the station. Still, every time someone walked into the station, she found herself scanning for tousled brown hair and familiar hazel eyes, unsure if the knot in her stomach came from dreading his presence—or hoping for it.

She scowled and took a sip of her coffee. It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to see him. He was a liar. More than that, Shawn Spencer, ‘psychic’ detective, had completely, irrevocably shattered her heart. The only decent thing he’d done was stop reaching out when she’d demanded space. If he’d ever cared, he’d give her that much.

Juliet grimaced, recalling the despair on his face when she’d screamed at him, cutting off his attempts at an explanation.

“I don’t want to know!” she’d screamed, even putting her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to know how you lied and tricked and manipulated everyone into thinking you're psychic. I don’t care!” He’d shrunk back as she’d stepped forward, her entire body trembling. “I want you to leave me the hell alone and give me some damn space!”

“Okay, Jules,” had been his whispered response and he’d walked out of her apartment, the backpack he’d stuffed his clothes and toothbrush into slung over his shoulder. 

At least he’d kept his word on that. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

The clearing of a throat behind her made Juliet jump and nearly spill her coffee. Juliet swiveled in her chair.

“Detective O’Hara.”

“Chief.” Juliet felt her cheeks burn, realizing that she’d been at the station an hour and hadn’t so much as logged into her computer.

Chief Vick’s lips pressed into a thin line as she scanned Juliet up and down. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Juliet’s heart pounded. Shawn.

...

Continue reading on Ao3 or FFic!

[itookashotinthedark]

psych + textposts bc it was about time i did one

[itookashotinthedark]

Chapter 3 is now published as well! Shawn much go back to the gas station where he was kidnapped and relive the day he was shot to find an escaped convict.

Psych Fanfic: Immersion Therapy

Juliet is still reeling from Shawn’s betrayal. It’s been weeks since their breakup, and just as she’s trying to pick up the pieces, a dangerous criminal from Shawn’s past escapes prison. Juliet is suddenly forced to confront old wounds and work with the man who broke her heart.

As Shawn grapples with resurfacing trauma from the case that had him shot and kidnapped, he’s determined to prove himself to Juliet once more—even if it means reliving the worst moments of his life.

Shawn whump and Shules! Post Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark (STASITD) and Deez Nups.

Read on Ao3 or FFic.

Juliet picked up her mug with both hands, taking a moment to let the warmth seep through her palms. She sat down in her office chair and breathed in deep, the pleasant scent of coffee relaxing her instantly as she tuned out the hustle and bustle of the station around her. Not that the relaxation would last long. Since Lassiter’s wedding two weeks ago, she hadn’t felt calm—just anger and a chest-aching sadness.

Shawn had finally stopped calling. He wasn’t popping by her apartment anymore or showing up at the station. Still, every time someone walked into the station, she found herself scanning for tousled brown hair and familiar hazel eyes, unsure if the knot in her stomach came from dreading his presence—or hoping for it.

She scowled and took a sip of her coffee. It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to see him. He was a liar. More than that, Shawn Spencer, ‘psychic’ detective, had completely, irrevocably shattered her heart. The only decent thing he’d done was stop reaching out when she’d demanded space. If he’d ever cared, he’d give her that much.

Juliet grimaced, recalling the despair on his face when she’d screamed at him, cutting off his attempts at an explanation.

“I don’t want to know!” she’d screamed, even putting her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to know how you lied and tricked and manipulated everyone into thinking you're psychic. I don’t care!” He’d shrunk back as she’d stepped forward, her entire body trembling. “I want you to leave me the hell alone and give me some damn space!”

“Okay, Jules,” had been his whispered response and he’d walked out of her apartment, the backpack he’d stuffed his clothes and toothbrush into slung over his shoulder. 

At least he’d kept his word on that. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

The clearing of a throat behind her made Juliet jump and nearly spill her coffee. Juliet swiveled in her chair.

“Detective O’Hara.”

“Chief.” Juliet felt her cheeks burn, realizing that she’d been at the station an hour and hadn’t so much as logged into her computer.

Chief Vick’s lips pressed into a thin line as she scanned Juliet up and down. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Juliet’s heart pounded. Shawn.

...

Continue reading on Ao3 or FFic!

[itookashotinthedark]

Chapter 2 is up as well!

Psych Fanfic: Immersion Therapy

Juliet is still reeling from Shawn’s betrayal. It’s been weeks since their breakup, and just as she’s trying to pick up the pieces, a dangerous criminal from Shawn’s past escapes prison. Juliet is suddenly forced to confront old wounds and work with the man who broke her heart.

As Shawn grapples with resurfacing trauma from the case that had him shot and kidnapped, he’s determined to prove himself to Juliet once more—even if it means reliving the worst moments of his life.

Shawn whump and Shules! Post Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark (STASITD) and Deez Nups.

Read on Ao3 or FFic.

Juliet picked up her mug with both hands, taking a moment to let the warmth seep through her palms. She sat down in her office chair and breathed in deep, the pleasant scent of coffee relaxing her instantly as she tuned out the hustle and bustle of the station around her. Not that the relaxation would last long. Since Lassiter’s wedding two weeks ago, she hadn’t felt calm—just anger and a chest-aching sadness.

Shawn had finally stopped calling. He wasn’t popping by her apartment anymore or showing up at the station. Still, every time someone walked into the station, she found herself scanning for tousled brown hair and familiar hazel eyes, unsure if the knot in her stomach came from dreading his presence—or hoping for it.

She scowled and took a sip of her coffee. It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to see him. He was a liar. More than that, Shawn Spencer, ‘psychic’ detective, had completely, irrevocably shattered her heart. The only decent thing he’d done was stop reaching out when she’d demanded space. If he’d ever cared, he’d give her that much.

Juliet grimaced, recalling the despair on his face when she’d screamed at him, cutting off his attempts at an explanation.

“I don’t want to know!” she’d screamed, even putting her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to know how you lied and tricked and manipulated everyone into thinking you're psychic. I don’t care!” He’d shrunk back as she’d stepped forward, her entire body trembling. “I want you to leave me the hell alone and give me some damn space!”

“Okay, Jules,” had been his whispered response and he’d walked out of her apartment, the backpack he’d stuffed his clothes and toothbrush into slung over his shoulder. 

At least he’d kept his word on that. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

The clearing of a throat behind her made Juliet jump and nearly spill her coffee. Juliet swiveled in her chair.

“Detective O’Hara.”

“Chief.” Juliet felt her cheeks burn, realizing that she’d been at the station an hour and hadn’t so much as logged into her computer.

Chief Vick’s lips pressed into a thin line as she scanned Juliet up and down. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Juliet’s heart pounded. Shawn.

...

Continue reading on Ao3 or FFic!

[itookashotinthedark]

The Smartest Dumb Person She's Ever Met (Shules Shawn Genius Reveal Fic)

“Shawn, this is ridiculous.” Even as she says it, Jules knows her smile completely undercuts her protests as Shawn sets out more and more and more plates of food.

“Babe, I told you, we are finding our new go-to takeout spot tonight,” Shawn insists. “We’ll just dump all the leftovers on Gus! He’ll love it, maybe even more than he loves watching debates about rash cream side-effects.”

“I don’t think he loves watching those, Shawn.”

“Then why does he spend hours on it every few months?”

“Well, maybe, because he has a day job. We’re not all so lucky to be employed by spirits and whims,” Jules teases lightheartedly as Shawn sits down and starts putting together a sampler plate. “Speaking of which, we didn’t talk about what I should expect from living with a psychic.”

“Aside from constant swooning and daily hair updates?”

“Aside from those.”

“Well, Jules, I’m afraid I can’t tell you what to expect, because I don’t know either.” Shawn hands her the plate, and sniffs. “Truth be told, this is uh… this is the first time I’ve moved in with somebody.”

Jules smiles softer. “Mine too. But I just mean… how often do you have visions outside of cases? And what about your dreams, are those affected?”

“No, not as far as I know- but I have been told I talk in my sleep.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Because you know me.” He kisses her before dishing up his own plate. “But uh, yeah, no psychic vision dreams for the most part.. … Well, sometimes, but not usually. And I can control the visions at home, don’t even worry another second about it.”

“Really? Because I thought you were completely beholden to them at all times.”

“Ehhhh… more or less.”

“Shawn.”

“Alright, so maybe a minor one here and there- but I’ll save the big stuff for the cases. No dramatic psych-outs in the living room.”

“Thank you.” Jules takes a bite of one of the various dishes on her plate, and coughs. “Oh my god, they used so much black pepper!”

“Let me try- hck! Oh my- ekch! That is just stupid, how much there is-”

“Get some water-”

“On it, on it, holy-”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shawn doesn’t have psychic visions or dreams, just like he promised.

But he has something else going on.

Jules starts noticing it after the first few days of lovey-dovey, disgustingly happy mushiness finally starts to settle into domesticity. She sits at the table and Shawn has a big stack of toaster waffles already drenched in syrup ready for both of them, even though he’s not a natural early riser, because it’s a day they both have off and it’s more Brunch than Lunch, and Shawn… isn’t eating.

His head is tilted, his eyes narrowed, and that usually means he’s having a vision. But this morning he’s just barely reading the newspaper- Jules is sure he’s not actually reading it, his eyes aren’t moving right for that, in fact they’re barely moving at all. They’re narrows and still, taking the paper in as one whole picture, probably absorbing nothing.

And she starts to realize he gets that look a lot, with no visions following them. He gets it when the delivery guy drops off their food, he gets it when the news comes on, he gets it when Lassiter comes over to drop off something Jules left in his car during a stakeout, and again and again and again.

And then it just goes away, and he doesn’t say anything. And she assumes, well, it’s a minor vision. He has them a lot more often than she had previously thought, clearly. Small, apparently unimportant visions that he just brushes off.

And then he tells her that they should stop getting takeout from the place two blocks away because the delivery guy is about to quit from being overworked. There’s no fanfare, no hand to his head, no sharp inhale- just an offhand statement that slips out right after he closes the front door.

It’s not the first time she’s heard him make a random prediction, not even close. But something about the understated nature of it makes her pause, and after a second she asks, “What makes you say that?”

“You’ve seen the state of that car they have him driving, it's one rough road away from falling to pieces. Plus his shoes are completely tattered, and his jeans, basically everything that’s not given to him as part of the uniform, but they’re also all stiff still- he just bought them and they’re already wrecked because of how many deliveries he’s making. That’d piss anyone off enough to quit, especially at his age.”

She hadn’t noticed that- at least, not all of it. She knew the car was a piece of junk, and the clothes were tattered, but thinking back she sees what Shawn means by them still looking stiff and out-of-the-box new. And somehow, somehow, she feels like if she points out that she hadn’t caught onto all of that herself, something… big, would just… slip away.

“That’s a shame, I like him,” is all she says instead. “He has a nice smile.”

“He just got his braces off, he’d probably literally skip for joy if he heard you say that,” Shawn says, handing over her food. Again, no fanfare, no theatrics- he just says it, unthinkingly, almost distracted as he digs into his honey cashew shrimp and chicken. 

It’s different. 

It has to be a vision, but it’s different. 

And again, Jules gets a feeling that pointing that out would break… something, about this moment. So she makes a note, and tucks it away in her mind, and hopes she’s able to remember to follow up later.

“Good for him.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shawn talks in his sleep most nights, as it turns out. 

It’s not very comprehensible majority of the time- usually all she can make out, when she’s even awake to hear it, is Shawn mumbling something to or about Gus. At first it’s a little offensive, frankly, that her boyfriend dreams about his best friend constantly and she never hears her own name, but it quickly becomes just… normal. Like most of Shawn and Gus’s codependency. Some days she feels like she’s dating both of them, just a little bit. It bothers her less than it probably should, certainly less than she would expect if she was an outside observer. Gus was Shawn’s original rock, his strongest pillar, his tightest tether, and she knew she’d never truly be able to match that even before she and Shawn got together. 

She should probably ask Gus about some of Shawn’s more daily psychic dealings, actually- he’s known Shawn for their whole loves, so he must have lots of advice for her about how to deal with it. And how to deal with the rest of Shawn’s… quirks. Which she loves about him, she truly does, as messy and intrusive as some of those quirks are in their lives. Psychic visions, murder scene dates, fearing that Shawn’s going to get himself killed with his daily recklessness. She had kissed him on that Canadian overlook expecting all of it, thinking she had finally come to learn everything she needed to learn about him.

And then, all those months and years later, she’s laying in bed unable to sleep and reading a book to try and calm down when Shawn mumbles out something shockingly understandable about the case they’re both working.

She freezes, as though her silent eye movements while reading could somehow disturb the moment.

“Doesn’ ma’ s’nse,” Shawn mumbles in his sleep. “Th’ t’re tr’cks…”

Jules slowly lowers her book.

Shawn rolls over, facing her now, still fast asleep, lightly snoring. Jules watches him like a deer caught in headlights.

“T’res don’ ma’ch,” Shawn mumbles out. “Tr’d too w’de…” His brow pinches, his lips pursing a little. There’s a long beat of silence.

Jules holds her breath. Like with the delivery boy, something about this moment just feels… big. Important.

Shawn’s face smooths out. “M’gn’ts.”

Magnets. 

Jules thinks about the case that they’ve been working together all week, a hit-and-run. They’ve got one witness who got a whole license plate number, they’ve got the plate number matching a car of that exact description, and the only problem is they’ve also got  a suspect who vehemently denies ever driving that route in his entire life. And like always when things seem straightforward, Shawn had declared that he wasn’t convinced they had the right guy. 

But that doesn’t help her figure out what magnets have to do with anything. After a moment she doesn’t have to figure it out on her own, because Shawn makes a soft noise of sleep-laden realization.

“Th’ s’x an’ th’ n’ne.” His hand twitches, roughly tracing out the numbers on the sheets. “Fl’p ‘em…”

Magnets. 

License plate number magnets. Moveable, alterable plate numbers.

“S’me car m’ke, s’me num’er, diff’ren’ t’re.” There’s a note of satisfaction, even in the sleep-slurred mess that is Shawn’s voice. He smiles a little in his sleep, and moments later… he’s snoring.

Jules sits, book almost falling out of her nonexistent grip, stunned into silence.

Shawn just cracked the case. In his sleep. With logic and authentic detective deduction. 

… But that’s not possible.

Shawn doesn’t work like that. He doesn’t pay attention to clues, reason out possibilities, connect dots. He receives visions, he relays them, he makes connections with the help of his abilities. And maybe she’s seen some times that contradict tha belief, but- but it’s just not how he works. She would know.

… Maybe he does get psychic dreams. Maybe he just doesn’t know he gets them? But there was a thought process there, and a natural one for it to come to him so easily in sleep. She’d heard every step of the process, followed him on each conclusion.

… But the tire treads not matching? Jules relaxes, closing her book and turning off the lamp. That had to be psychic. No-one else noticed or said anything about tire treads through the investigation. How would he even pick out and remember that detail, anyway, without spiritual guidance? He’d seen only photos of the crime scene, and not great ones at that- darn trainees.

… Psychic dreams. Has to be.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Jules, look at that.” Shawn smiles and points at the ducks in the pond they’re having a picnic by. “There’s a bunch of baby ducks over there.”

Jules gasps and looks over eagerly, but quickly frowns. “Where?”

“Right there, in those tall hot-dog looking things.”

“Um, the reeds?”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

Jules squints, searching for signs of ducklings. “Where are you seeing them?”

“Right there, look.” Shawn leans and points harder , like that will help somehow. “You can totally see the hotdogs moving.”

“I think that’s just the wind.”

“No, look, the moms are circling the hot dogs and luring the feeders over to them.”

“What?” Jules looks at the edges of the pond now, and realizes that, yes, the ducks are luring the people with the food towards the reeds- and finally, the ducklings swim out into view.

“Told ya.” Shawn takes a bite of an eclair. 

“How did you even see that movement from here?” Jules looks back at Shawn in awe. 

“You kidding? They were totally moving all over.”

“But it looked like the wind.”

“The wind is blowing the total opposite direction. Look, you can see it in the ripples.”

“Huh.” Jules looks back at the pond. “That’s really impressive, Shawn. I had no idea your eyesight was that good.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been asked to be studied by science for my eyesight, but they said it would drain all the color out of them, and then of course I’d have to become a supervillain.”

“Or a mysterious warning corpse in the basement of a haunted mansion.”

“Neither of which I felt up for.”

“Right.” Jules giggles, and looks back at the pond. 

She has no idea how he noticed that. Not unless it was psychic, somehow. And further, she has no idea why he’s acting like she should be able to notice it, too. And, like before with the delivery boy, it’s not the first time he’s done this. But it’s the first time it feels…

Like something she needs to pay attention to.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Shawn?” Jules sets down the bowl of brownie batter when she realizes he’s stopped licking the spoon and is staring, eyes glazed, at the wall. It’s probably just a vision. She should just consider it a vision. There’s no real reason to think it’s not.

“Shawn,” she tries again, shaking his arm slightly. He startles, just a bit, and then clears his throat and puts the licked-”clean” spoon down on the counter. “Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” His eyes flick back to the wall. “... Jules, uh, does the wall look…” He pouts a little, shrugging. “Suspicious, to you?”

“Suspicious?” She looks at the same spot. “It’s… a wall.”

“Yeah… but there’s something a little off, isn’t there?” Shawn walks over to it, and taps his knuckles against the plaster. “... Sounds off, actually. Come here, listen.”

She obliges, leaning in close. Shawn taps one spot on the wall, and then the spot he said sounded strange.

“... What am I supposed to be hearing, Shawn?”

“It’s more hollow over here.” Shawn taps the first spot, and then taps the second. “Right here, it sounds more uh… almost like wet cardboard.”

She listens again. “Okay… I think I hear it now. But you didn’t hear the wall from over at the counter, did you? Was it a vision?”

“There’s a ring around this spot,” Shawn mumbles, like he didn’t hear her. He smacks his lips, and then jerks away from the wall as the focus suddenly drops away into his usual energy. “Man, we’ve got a leak in the walls! I knew that landlord was lying when he said it was all up to code.”

“A leak? Shawn, we tapped the wall a little bit, that doesn’t really tell us anything.”

“Yeah, maybe… but I’m calling someone, tomorrow, just- remind me in the morning.” His eyebrows twitch up, his mouth forming an ‘O’ as he realizes something. “If I play this card right I might be able to knock a bit off our rent.”

“Shawn, you are not blackmailing our landlord over a leak that might not even exist.”

“I’m not! Not yet! Just planning to, possibly. So we can have more money for date nights!”

“It’s illegal.”

“Alright, alright. …How illegal, exactly?”

“Shawn.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s trickery. It’s lying. It’s wrong.

But she had been sitting at her desk, reviewing the latest round of new Detective’s Exam scores, when she’d remembered Shawn saying years ago that he had taken the exam when he was 15, and got 100.

A perfect score.

And maybe that meant very little to her once, when Shawn was just the strange somewhat charming guy who came into her life only on occasion to make a case more interesting. But now, dating Shawn and seriously considering spending the rest of her life with him, now as soon as she had recalled that tidbit it began to haunt her. Every time she watched Shawn around the house, and even in the station. It echoed in her head while she watched him look over reports, scan crime scenes, even while he was just watching movies and predicting things about their endings. 

I got 100. … Why? What did you guys get?

He hadn’t even been bragging. 

So now she sits on the couch, a thick binder in front of her, guilt twisting in her stomach at what she’s about to do. 

She’s about to lie to her boyfriend, with the full intent of tricking him into the taking the exam again, just to see.

When he walks into the house, slightly out of breath and carrying something that looks suspiciously like the pineapple statue put into evidence during the last case, he startles upon seeing her and hides the statue behind his back. But his excuse dies in his gaping mouth when he sees how stressed she looks.

“Babe? Everything okay?” He sets the statue- it’s definitely the same one put into evidence- aside as he moves to sit next to her.

“Fine,” she sighs. “Just- Chief Vick asked me to help review the Detective’s Exam after someone complained there were errors in it.”

“Hmm. That person should either pass immediately, or be barred from detective status forever.”

She giggles softly. “That’s a little extreme. It’s just, this is going to take forever, and I was hoping to go out today and finally try that spa that opened up.”

“Well you totally should!” Shawn looks at the binder. “Just, leave it for another time, it can’t be that pressing. After all, Santa Barbara already has it’s best detective.”

She rolls her eyes fondly.

“And, she just so happens to be dating an equally awesome but more brunette psychic detective.” He kisses her on the cheek. “So she should go out and treat herself while her awesome boyfriend tries to divine if there’s actually a mistake.”

“Oh, the spirits know that kind of thing?”

“Some of them, some of them.”

“Well, let them know I’ll still have to check their work, so they better show it.” She gives him a kiss back and stands. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The guilt gnaws at her as she drives to the spa, as she picks her treatment, as she gets her facial and her massage and her body scrub. She knows she had to- she knows Shawn well enough to know he’d never retake the exam if she just asked him outright. He’d be suspicious why she was asking him to, and she’s not sure she can tell him without making him think she’s doubting him.

She’s not. He is psychic. 

But he might also be more.

And if he is, he’s hiding it- maybe not as much as he did when she would only see him at the station, or planned dates, but he’s still hiding it. She sees him seeing things, noticing details, making connections, and when he does he never seems to…

She’s not sure. She just knows that he treats these moments like they’re something a normal person can do when they can’t, or like they aren’t happening at all, or even…

Even like they’re psychic.

She takes the long way home, breathing deeply the whole time. Shawn lies to her every day- she’s not blind to that. Usually about a case, usually because he’s more than likely doing something she could get reprimanded for just knowing about. She doesn’t like it, but even though he lies he doesn’t trick her, at least as far as she knows. 

When she gets home, Shawn isn’t there. She finds a note on the coffee table, stuck to the binder. Gus called, be back soon, XOXO.

She smiles, takes a deep breath, and opens the binder.

There’s mostly Doodles. His artistic skill on display ranges from shockingly masterful to shockingly kindergarten-like, some doodles belonging in a gallery and some not even qualifying for the fridge under a free pizza place magnet. Aliens, dinosaurs, scenes from movies, random invention ideas…

No answers, at first, which disappoints her. Until she notices that one doodle seems to coordinate to one of the questions, and it’s like a Rosetta Stone.

Not all, but many of the doodles seem to relate to the answer to a question in some way, and where there’s not doodles there’s not-answers that show knowledge of the actual answer. There’s snark and quips and jokes that contain answers, and every once and a while she even finds something straightforward smushed among the almost deflective content of the pages.

Deflective.

He’s deflecting that he knows the answers. The more she flips through, the more she sees it. Shawn went out of his way to answer without answering, to show his knowledge without admitting he has it. He couldn’t just not answer, and he couldn’t just pretend not to know- but he couldn’t outright show it either.

“Oh my god.” Jules closes the binder and puts her face in her hands. “Of course. Henry.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jules finds Henry’s detective’s exam score a week later. It’s high- not perfect, but high. She finds Shawn’s score to compare. Like he’d said. It was perfect.

She goes digging through the file archives on her lunch break, and finds the actual exam itself- someone preserved it, because a fifteen year old got 100.

It’s not like the one Shawn did in their living room.

It’s still got doodles, tangents, signs of distractibility- but the answers are much more plain. Forthright. It reads like an actual potential detective, taking the exam seriously, trying his best.

And she’s pretty sure she knows who gave Shawn that exam.

Of course, of course. His dad was a cop, a revered one, of course Henry taught Shawn some skills- more than some! How did that never occur to her? It feels silly now, to think Shawn wouldn’t have at the very least picked up a few tricks of the trade, even if Henry hadn’t taught Shawn outright.

She puts the file back, smiling and satisfied with knowing she was right and Shawn does have genuine, non-psychic detective skills like she’d suspected.

… The smile fades when she starts to wonder why he pretends he doesn’t.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Carlton, can I ask you about something?”

Lassiter looks up from his paperwork and sets his pen aside. “Anything to save me from the banality of filling another report out.”

“You… met Shawn’s mom, right?”

Lassiter’s mouth snaps shut, his eyes going a little wide. “This isn’t anything about you and Spencer’s… relationship progress, is it?”

“What? … Oh, god, no! No, I’m not looking to propose or anything.”

He sags (well, relatively- Lassiter never truly sags or loosens up) with relief. “In that case, yes, she did my last psych eval.”

“Right. And you-you talked with her a lot?”

“As much as was required by the situation.”

“Was she… like Shawn, at all? It’s just that, well, even though she’s been in town three times now, I’ve never actually talked with her beyond some passing comments.” She’s barely involved with Shawn’s life- if Jules didn’t know how absent Madaline is from her son’s existence prior to dating, she’d have assumed Shawn’s mom hated her by how little they’ve actually interacted.

Lassiter thinks for a moment, looking out into the bullpen, and then looks down and picks his pen back up. “Not really, no. Closest she came was recognizing the Clint Eastwood movies I was telling her stories from. She was generally professional, somewhat soft-spoken, and somehow got me to open up without even half of the pressing nature of her son.”

Jules nods. “Did she… mention Shawn at all?”

“Only at the end, after I shared my innermost thoughts. … You know, I take it back. That was the most Spencer -like thing she did during our sessions.”

“Huh.” Jules looks down at her own paperwork. That answers nothing about why Shawn is pretending he isn’t a good detective. It can’t be his dad, Henry would be much softer and more proud if Shawn showed off that skillset, surely. Madaline seemed like a good lead…

“She was weird, though. Outside of the relation to Spencer. She didn’t even record our sessions, she claimed to have… dammit.” Lassiter frowns as he tries to remember. “Something about being able to remember everything she hears with almost perfect accuracy.”

Jules’s head snaps up. “What?”

“I thought she was bullcrapping, but I got ahold of the file and didn’t actually find any errors in the quotes she included- she must’ve tapped the room or something.”

“Carlton, go back. Perfect memory? Shawn’s mom?”

“See, I believed her about it until I learned that. With Henry’s recall, and a mom with perfect memory for sounds, there’s no way Spencer should be as airheaded as he is. Not unless his brain short-circuited from overwhelming competency it just wasn’t built for.”

“Oh my god.” Jules puts her face in her hands. “Carlton, what if that’s exactly what it is?”

“What? What are you on about?”

“Nothing, just- it’s nothing.” She fixes her ponytail and then stands up. “I’m taking my lunch break, I’ll bring you back a coffee.”

“Uh, and a danish.”

“And a danish.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Henry swings the door open with a readied scowl, but it drops away when he sees it’s Jules standing on his porch. “Oh, Detective O’Hara.”

“I’m here on a personal matter, actually.” Jules smiles a bit. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure, sure, come on in.” Henry steps aside. “I actually just grilled up a catch from this morning, if you’re hungry.”

“Thank you, that sounds great.”

Minutes later they’re both sitting at the table, Jules sees a little carving in the top of the old piece of furniture, a shaky scratching of Shawn and Gus Club right by her elbow. It makes her smile.

“So, ah, what is this about?” Henry gestures at her with his fork. “Shawn’s treating you right, isn’t he?”

“We’re great,” she assures. “I just wanted to ask a few questions about Shawn’s gift.”

Henry leans his head to the side, frowning. “I uh, can’t really help you there, Juliet.”

“Not the psychic one.”

Henry pauses, his frown deepening. He looks up at her with something… unreadable, in his eyes. “How do you mean?”

“I’m not doubting him,” Jules rushes to reassure, and it does seem to loosen something in Henry’s twisted expression, but not by much. “I just… I’ve always known Shawn was a little smarter than he let on, you know? But I’ve had reason to believe, since we moved in together, that it’s much more extreme of a mask than I thought.”

Henry puts his fork down entirely. “What’d he do?”

“Just… little things, that I used to think were maybe minor visions or feelings, but sometimes… sometimes he just says things that blow my mind. He notices way more little details than he used to let on, for example, and then today Carlton mentioned that his mom has an um…” She take sout her phone to look it up again.

“Eidetic tonal memory,” Henry fills in before she can even begin typing. “She does. I have a visual one.”

Jules looks at him, quickly tucking her phone away. “And then Carlton said that maybe Shawn struggled with handling that- well, he didn’t say it in those exact words-”

“Shawn does not struggle with his memory, except for when he wants to.” Henry’s mouth is puckered, like he’s eating a lemon dipped in sour dust. “You’re saying you think he’s faking visions.”

“Not all of them.” That’s just not possible, with everything he figures out. “But some of them, and I just- I just can’t figure out why he would fake them for some of the things he does. I mean, the other night he talked in his sleep and basically walked me through his process step-by step by accident, and then the next day he came into the station and pretended it just came to him when he reexamined the scene photos.”

“Shawn has always had an overenthusiasm for drama,” Henry starts, speaking quickly and with heavy exasperation. “He likes things to be public and dramatic as much as possible, especially when it’s an embarrassment to himself and to me.”

“That’s a little harsh, I think.”

“Trust me, it isn’t. Shawn has never wanted to embrace his full potential, Juliet- yes, he has both a visual and tonal eidetic memory, and on top of that I trained him to be a detective for his entire life. I knew, I knew he had the ability to be the best detective this department has ever seen, if he just-!” Henry stops himself and rubs one hand over his head. “But he likes living in a fantasy more. He likes slacking off, and refusing to apply himself, and avoiding responsibility, so he… indulged his psychicness, over his actual detective skills.”

“... I’m not sure he has,” Jules says carefully, watching for Henry’s reaction with a readiness to run. 

Henry laughs a little, bitterly, and looks up. “He’s not a real detective, Juliet. No matter how much I want him to be, or how much he insists he is.”

“Just because he’s not on the force, it doesn’t mean he’s not a detective.” 

“It might as well.”

“... You should be proud of your son, Henry. He’s helped solved a lot of cases we’d have had to let go cold without him.”

“I am proud.” He says it quickly, defensively- but not inauthentically. It occurs to Jules that this is the first time she’s heard Henry declade Pride in Shawn, in all seven years she’s known them both. “I am. Just not of his methods.”

“... Well, um, thank you, for the food, and-and the information.” Jules stands up. She’s starting to form a new theory about why Shawn hides his skills. “Do me a favor and, don’t tell Shawn about this? I just don’t want him to feel weird that I’m, well… investigating him.”

Henry shrugs and pretends to zip his mouth and throw away the key.

“Thanks.” She gives him a smile that has to be forced out, and leaves.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Well I bet you can’t quote every line from The Breakfast Club without looking it up.” They’re playing a game of low-stakes wagers while they make baked mac ‘n cheese for dinner, and Shawn is losing badly- mostly because he’s only making bets that have Jules showing off her best skills.

Shawn looks at her, genuinely offended, before it smooths out into acceptance. “You’re right, I can’t. Not unless I’m given a big buzzing button, to replace the slurs.”

Jules nods. “Fair. How about you just point to me and I’ll make the noise for you?”

“Now that is a plan.”

She feels bad about tricking him again. She does. But she watches him run through the whole movie script, doing the dances, dramatically flailing around the room- and she sees something she’d been completely overlooking for years. 

She laughs as he finishes it off, sweating and panting but grinning at her. “How do you remember all of that but the other day you couldn’t tell me if you’d even locked the front door?”

Well I remember important things, Jules.”

“Home security is important, Shawn.”

“When you’re not a detective dating a psychic, maybe.”

“Ha-ha. I’d still rather not come home from a date to our TV missing.”

“... True. Fair. I’ll work on it.”

“Seriously though, Shawn, sometimes your memory makes no sense to me. Do you think ADHD medication would help with some of the… little details?”

“Uh, no.” Shawn shakes his head. “No can do, tried it once and swore it off forever.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it uh… stuff filtered in but didn’t filter out, you know? Like Gus at a buffet.”

“Gross.”

“It was, it was gross. Both the meds and the buffet.”

“I can’t imagine. It would be awful, just… being unable to stop things sticking around in your head.” She watches him from the corner of her eye as she pulls the dish out of the oven.

Shawn’s posture tenses a little. His mouth parts and the tip of his tongue comes to touch the middle of his top lip. He shrugs, and nods. “Yeah. What a-” he interrupts himself with a chuckle that Jules can only tell is bitter and nervous because of how long she’s known him. “What a sucky thing that’d be!”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Shawn, this is too much,” Jules says as he leads her, his hands covering her eyes, somewhere for a date. 

“Are you kidding? You saved my life on this case, again, and you totally prevented a huge disaster with getting the detonator away from that guy.”

“And you are the one who noticed he had a detonator in the first place.”

“The spirits noticed, Jules. But I will take credit for this.” He moves his hands away from her eyes, and she gasps.

They’re in some kind of outdoor dining area, an archway of flowering vines set up above a table covered with a floral cloth and light-blue chinaware. As Shawn comes around to her line of vision she sees he’d hidden a nice suit under his usual jacket when he first told her he had a surprise planned, and his tie…

“Shawn, are you recreating the play?” It had been a particularly great date, for a variety of reasons- but mostly, because Shawn had actually managed to sit down, watch the play, and not turn it into a criminal investigation. He’d still kept up a running commentary and restless fidgeting of course- Jules would have been worried if he hadn’t- but otherwise it had been proof to her that he could take this seriously.

“Maybe.” He offers her his hand and leads her to the table. 

“Shawn, these plates are exactly like the ones from the date scene, how did you-”

“I may or may not have, solved a little case for the owner of the theatre and taken payment in the form of old props.”

Jules laughs, picking up the menu on the table. “Is this the actual menus too, then?”

“Unfortunately, no, but I think Gus- I mean, I, recreated them pretty well.”

“Mmm. Let me guess, you ‘managed’ the recreation, and Gus did the work on it?”

“I also turned on the printer.”

“Basically did the whole thing yourself.” She looks over the menu again- it had been held up briefly during the play, a larger version of it shown on a projection screen behind the actors, and she wouldn’t have remembered it if asked before this moment but now, seeing the recreation, she’s almost certain it’s exact.

It had been on stage for maybe one minute, maybe less.

“How did you even remember this?”

“Psychic recreation, Jules. I traveled back to the past in ethereal form. Your future self was there too- clearly, my gifts rub off on you fifty years from now.”

She laughs again, softer. He’s lying of course- he likes to lie for the humor, and the fun, and because no-one can truly call him out on his powers because even he doesn’t understand them as he often admits. But it feels different now.

He’s not lying entirely for fun. Partly for fun, sure- but he remembered the play, he remembered the menu, because he has an eidetic memory and can’t forget things and in the days since she spoke with Henry to confirm it that fact has been haunting her.

She has trouble sleeping some nights- it’s gotten better since Shawn moved in, having someone curled around her making sleep feel safer- because of the things she’s seen, experienced, endured. She still has nightmares about the clocktower, about sitting in a hospital bed waiting to hear if she has Thornburg, about desperately hunting down clues to Shawn’s whereabouts with Gus and having no idea if they’d even find him alive by the end. The images, the emotions, the sounds… they all stick with her, forgotten until the moment they strike.

What is that like for someone with Shawn’s memory? If her memories push in unwanted, what about his? The looks into the distance, the glaze over his eyes right before he reveals something, the visceral reactions when he remembers something he doesn’t like- it breaks her heart now, knowing that at least some of those are because his mind shoves near-perfect flashbacks at him. 

And with observation, she’s realized that it’s usually unwanted and not sought out- just like his visions. It’s hard to tell them apart from the outside, which just makes her even more concerned- does he even know the difference most of the time? Does it affect all of his thoughts, his imagination, the way he fills in blanks? Is that why sometimes his “visions” are so wrong, because he’s so used to them working the same way as the rest of his mind that he can’t tell what’s Him and what’s The Spirits?

“Hey.” She’s jolted out of her spiraling thoughts by Shawn reaching across the table and taking her hand. “Are you okay?”

She plasters on a smile. “Fine. Just- thinking about how lucky we are. To be here, after everything we’ve gone through.”

Shawn smiles back and pats her hand once before withdrawing his. “Lucky, or just awesome and unstoppable as a team? You, me, Gus, sometimes Lassie- we’re literally a dream team.”

“We are.” She tries to push her concerns about her boyfriend out of her mind, ordering food from a waiter wearing a costume clearly not sized for him- Shawn is always making seemingly impossible things happen, and Jules has no idea how he roped a real restaurant into this, aside from it being either a favor or a blackmail- but Shawn doesn’t blackmail people as far as she’s ever known, so probably a favor.

Shawn is impossible. More and more so every day. And the most impossible is his contradictions. She watches him fumble with his napkin, and remembers him leveling a gun with a steady confident hand on more than one occasion during a case. She listens to him recount a completely wrong story that she keeps correcting the details of, and looks at the perfect recreation of a scene from a play they saw once, months and months ago. She watches him exclaim in surprise over realizing the plates have a design of playing labradoodles at the edges, and thinks about how he saw the reeds moving in a different direction than the wind was blowing from almost impossibly far away to pick up on such a detail.

“Shawn.” She sets her fork down and interrupts his gushing about how cute the design of one of the puppies on the plate is. “I need to tell you something.”

His smiles drops, his mouth forming a small ‘o’ shape, eyes alight with panic. 

“I’m not breaking up with you.” The quick assurance makes Shawn sigh and slump in relief. “And-and I want you to know before I say this that I’m not doubting you either, or your psychic abilities.”

The tension in Shawn returns. “What?”

Jules bites her lower lip. “I just… can’t pretend not to know anymore, Shawn. Because it’s been just… awful watching you do everything you can to pretend you’re not intelligent.”

“... Jules, I-I don’t-”

“I talked to your dad.” She immediately wishes she’d started with anything else, the way Shawn shuts down and clams up. “No, that’s not what I- Shawn, I know you have an eidetic memory, and that you’re probably hyperobservant, on top of being psychic.”

Shawn’s mouth is tightly pursed, eyes searching, body language just withdrawn. Jules plows forwards, swallowing thickly.

“I’ve been seeing it since you moved in. You’re so smart, Shawn, and-and your detective skills are amazing. One night you solved a case in your sleep, and you mumbled the whole thing, and I was just blown away by how you were able to come to those conclusions and connect those dots.”

Shawn looks down, briefly licking his lips. “Chief Vick never asked you to review the detective’s exam, did she?”

“... No. And, you just proved my point. You made that connection so fast, Shawn.”

Shawn shrugs. “What-what is this? Why right now? On our date?”

“Because I love you.” She reaches over, pries his hands away from his sides and holds them. “And I want to understand why. Why do you pretend you’re not one of the best detectives I’ve ever seen? Your psychic visions are one thing, Shawn, but your skills… they’re genuinely incredible.”

Shawn won’t look her in the eye, traveling his sharp gaze around anything else around them. “You know me. I just uh, love putting on a show.”

“That’s what your dad said.” She feels his hands tense in hers. “But I don’t believe either of you. Well, I believe that’s part of it, but not the full thing. … Your dad said you’ve never really embraced it.”

“Of course he did.”

“But you do, embrace it. You do every day. I watch you get completely antsy and out of your mind without a case, and I used to think it was because you were just… chaotic, and-and bored, and maybe some kind of psychic restlessness but it’s not, right? It’s because you need to be able to solve something. Because you like being smart and solving cases, but you don’t like people knowing. Why?”

“Jules…”

“I’m not asking you to bring me in on your process, or to admit to anyone else when you solve instead of divine. I’m just… trying to understand you, Shawn, because I want us to work. And for us, this, to last… we have to know each other, and I feel like I’m just learning about you all over again.”

Shawn is silent for a moment, and then takes a deep breath and meets her eyes, reluctantly. “Gus knows,” he admits. “You probably figured that, but, he does.”

Jules nods. 

“Did my dad… talk about uh…”

“... He mentioned he trained you since you were young.”

“... Yeah. … I don’t know how to, uh…”

She waits. He seems… lost.

“... I learned how to properly stalk a perp through a hideout before I learned how people get sick from each other,” he says. Jules blinks in confusion until he continues, “I learned most things about being a cop before I learned everything else. And it wasn’t… he’s not proud of me, you know? When I was a kid I wanted to be just like him, and I couldn’t be, and he was disappointed in me. Eight years old, I could close my eyes and tell you the clothes anyone in the room was wearing, could tell you who was married and who wasn’t, how… how many hats, were in the room, and it didn’t matter. It was…” He scoffs. “Adequate. That’s it.”

Jules rubs her thumb along the back of his hand. “You got bitter about it.”

“Bitter’s a strong word.” It’s not- it’s just right. It’s in his voice, his eyes, his posture. But he doesn’t like these words, she knows that about him. He doesn’t like these words and these feelings, and he likes to pretend they don’t exist, and he doesn’t experience them. And how hadn’t she realized that was a problem before now? How had that just settled in her perception of him without setting off alarms that maybe something wasn’t okay?

“Shawn, you’re more than adequate. Your dad said so himself, he told me he is proud of you.”

“... He-he did?” The genuine surprise, it makes Jules’s heart shatter all over again.

“And more importantly, we’re all proud of you. Me, Gus, Carlton is even if he won’t admit it either- The Chief, she’s so proud of you and the work you do! Even when you mess it up or cause major problems, she still defends you and knows you do good work.”

Shawn’s mouth finally untightens, slightly, one corner twitching up for a brief smile. But it fades all too quick. 

“What’s the rest of the reason, Shawn? It can’t just be because your dad didn’t give you the credit you deserved. You’ve been doing this for years.”

“Well, like I said Jules, it’s not as fun. You know? You-you solve something psychically and everyone is in awe! Throw in some jokes, make a scene, plus the bad guys always seem to confess way faster when they think I divined certain things, it’s just better!”

“You could do the same with your deductions! I mean it, Shawn, they’re amazing, the way you solved that case with the hit-and-run was incredible. I don’t even know how you came up with the magnets.”

He puts a finger by his temple and gives her a somewhat prodding, questioning look. She frowns at him and raises an eyebrow, and he puts his hand back down with a defeated nod.

“... I don’t want to be my dad.” Shawn shrugs. “I don’t want to be my dad, and as amazing as he is I don’t want to be Gus, and I don’t want to be Lassie, or even-even some… ideal, me. I want to be… me, Jules.”

“I’m not asking you to not be you.”

“Not on purpose, but- this is me, Jules, this is who I am. I can’t live my life with everyone expecting me to remember everything completely perfectly no matter what, or asking me about every little detail of everything all the time, or saying I should know things or be smarter than what I did or-or have to be better than that-”

It’s like when the last piece of a case finally fits into place.

“Oh.” Jules squeezes his hand, and he cuts himself off to look at her with pinched brows and still parted lips. “Shawn… that kind of pressure is insane to put on a child. I’m so sorry.”

He blinks, frozen, and Jules stands up to come to his side and kiss his forehead. She crouches down by his chair. “You, are more than a detective,” she assures. “You are funny, and fun, and sometimes you’re so stupid and reckless that it literally hurts to watch, but that doesn’t mean that what you do right doesn’t matter. You don’t have to match your stupidity to your intelligence just to balance them out.”

“That’s not what I do.”

“Isn’t it? … Oh, my god, and after-after Yin you started going more overboard-”

“Jules-”

“-because he called you out and you had to hide even more-”

“Jules.” She looks into Shawn’s eyes and they’re… glassy. Red. Watering.

“You, being good at what you do, did not put me in danger,” she says softly, reaching up to brush her thumb over his cheek. “You being intelligent will not push me away, or change what I expect of you, or make you lose anyone you care about. But it might make us lose you, if you keep trying to bury it and compensate for it.”

“... I-I…”

“You know you’ve gone too far the opposite direction a lot these last few years, don’t you?”

He’s silent.

“... I understand these feelings run very deep, and all the back to your childhood. I understand that you probably resent what made your dad tain you just as much as you resent him and his training.”

“I don’t resent-”

“Shawn.”

“... I’m… working on not resenting him. Especially after he got shot.”

“I know. But you’re not working on how you feel about yourself because of him, are you?”

“... This is… very uncomfortable.”

“I know.” She wipes away an escaped tear. “You don’t like people being able to really know you, do you?”

“I like you knowing me. And Gus.”

“Do you? Because I had to figure all of this out on my own. Shawn, are you so used to hiding what you could be to be what you want to that you don’t even know how not to hide anymore?”

He flounders, opening and moving his mouth with no words, looking at the ground to her side. “I-I don’t know,” he finally gets out.

Jules nods. “And that’s okay.” Has he ever heard that before, in response to him not knowing something? Maybe. She won’t know unless they keep talking about this. She hopes they keep talking about this.

“... But you uh…” He presses his wrist, sleeves pulled down and gripped in his palm, to his nose for just a second, and sniffs. “You’re not saying you don’t believe I’m psychic anymore?”

“No, I’m not.”

He nods. “... You know, uh… Lassie is the whole reason I even got started, on the psychic detective thing.”

“Really?”

“Really. We still have this uh, table and everything for a few more hours, if you want to hear the story.”

She recognizes it for what it is. You know now, I’m uncomfortable with it, but I’ll try to not be, for you. So she sits back in her seat and listens to Shawn describe how he figured out a case through watching the news, and when Lassie didn’t believe him about it he claimed it was a psychic vision, and then he realized that works.

It recontextualizes even more things for Jules, even more of what Shawn must feel and think, and she wonders if she’ll ever fully figure him out. 

She’ll just have to spend her entire life with him, she supposes.

[itookashotinthedark]

Psych Fanfic: Immersion Therapy

Juliet is still reeling from Shawn’s betrayal. It’s been weeks since their breakup, and just as she’s trying to pick up the pieces, a dangerous criminal from Shawn’s past escapes prison. Juliet is suddenly forced to confront old wounds and work with the man who broke her heart.

As Shawn grapples with resurfacing trauma from the case that had him shot and kidnapped, he’s determined to prove himself to Juliet once more—even if it means reliving the worst moments of his life.

Shawn whump and Shules! Post Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark (STASITD) and Deez Nups.

Read on Ao3 or FFic.

Juliet picked up her mug with both hands, taking a moment to let the warmth seep through her palms. She sat down in her office chair and breathed in deep, the pleasant scent of coffee relaxing her instantly as she tuned out the hustle and bustle of the station around her. Not that the relaxation would last long. Since Lassiter’s wedding two weeks ago, she hadn’t felt calm—just anger and a chest-aching sadness.

Shawn had finally stopped calling. He wasn’t popping by her apartment anymore or showing up at the station. Still, every time someone walked into the station, she found herself scanning for tousled brown hair and familiar hazel eyes, unsure if the knot in her stomach came from dreading his presence—or hoping for it.

She scowled and took a sip of her coffee. It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to see him. He was a liar. More than that, Shawn Spencer, ‘psychic’ detective, had completely, irrevocably shattered her heart. The only decent thing he’d done was stop reaching out when she’d demanded space. If he’d ever cared, he’d give her that much.

Juliet grimaced, recalling the despair on his face when she’d screamed at him, cutting off his attempts at an explanation.

“I don’t want to know!” she’d screamed, even putting her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to know how you lied and tricked and manipulated everyone into thinking you're psychic. I don’t care!” He’d shrunk back as she’d stepped forward, her entire body trembling. “I want you to leave me the hell alone and give me some damn space!”

“Okay, Jules,” had been his whispered response and he’d walked out of her apartment, the backpack he’d stuffed his clothes and toothbrush into slung over his shoulder. 

At least he’d kept his word on that. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

The clearing of a throat behind her made Juliet jump and nearly spill her coffee. Juliet swiveled in her chair.

“Detective O’Hara.”

“Chief.” Juliet felt her cheeks burn, realizing that she’d been at the station an hour and hadn’t so much as logged into her computer.

Chief Vick’s lips pressed into a thin line as she scanned Juliet up and down. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Juliet’s heart pounded. Shawn.

...

Continue reading on Ao3 or FFic!

[itookashotinthedark]

Touch prompts: “feeling their pulse” for Shawn and Gus

so like .... i compromised my most staunchly held principle (there is objectively way too much of this kind of fic in the psych tag and i refuse to contribute MORE) to write this. alas; it would not let me go not sure how i feel about it as a standalone - i think it belongs in a larger fic, tbh, but im trying to be responsible and post these as prompts instead of spending weeks on a real story. i'll probably expand on it (and situate it in a generally more fun story) eventually. warnings for cursory description of blood, throw up and a broken arm & set during the events of 4x09, aka shawn takes a shot in the dark

In Gus’s memory, the Tuesday before Junior Prom is marked by the dead frogs in biology class and the most disgustingly broken bone the world ever had the displeasure of witnessing. 

“Mr. Spencer!” he had shrieked, operating on pure and unadulterated survival instinct.

They were fifteen and stupid – the way being angry at your parents makes you stupid, or being scared of how much you want to see Destiny B from first period art naked makes you stupid. When Gus yelled, feeling cold all over despite the hot after-school May sun, a weird hoarse twist he wasn’t used to tightened his throat. It overrode his gag reflex, thankfully, but unfortunately also made him sound like a panicking girl. Shawn didn’t say anything. They had a system. If Gus couldn’t look at Shawn’s broken ulna without throwing up, then he also couldn’t see the tears leaking out of Shawn’s eyes as he pressed his face against the scraggly front lawn and groaned in a horrible not-normal version of his recently-cracking teenaged boy voice. 

Plausible deniability for both of them.

“Fuck,” Shawn managed between sobs. Gus’s mom would have killed them both if she ever heard that word. “Gus, Gus it really hurts –”

“Don’t,” said Gus. He couldn’t look. This was so much worse than that time Shawn got a nosebleed in gym class it got all over his grinning teeth. He wasn’t grinning this time. He was shaking, like a leaf. Like one of those leaves from the plant unit in biology class, and oh, God – the frog. “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”

“Make it stop!”

Gus couldn’t. It was horrible. He’d told Destiny two weeks prior that he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up and he couldn’t even look at his best friend’s broken arm. He wasn’t panicking, not in the way Joy used to tease him for when they were kids (not grown-up fifteen year olds) and he’d get nervous around the water slides at Six Flags, but in this memory Gus felt scared in a new way that was somehow worse than water slides. “I told you that branch w-wouldn’t – I told you it wouldn’t hold, Shawn!” He shouldn’t have been yelling; it made him feel better anyway. “Why wouldn’t you just listen to me for once –”

The front door slammed open and shut and heavy footsteps rushed toward them. The broken arm probably hurt a lot, because Shawn wasn’t even mad at Gus for summoning his dad. Gus kept on shouting at his own shoes. To this day he has pretty much no idea what he was actually saying. The act of berating on its own was therapeutic.

Therapeutic had been one of the words he’d spelled right in the spelling bee.

“Shawn!” 

In the memory, Mr. Spencer’s voice invades their bubble like a popping bb gun and a big bucket of cool water in summertime all at once. The broken arm was not actually his fault, but Shawn had climbed the tree because he was fifteen and angry and Gus had hung back on the ground because he was fifteen and thinking about Destiny’s long swinging braids. Somehow both of these things connected back to the general presence of Henry, weeks away from divorce, hanging over their heads. He’d been the one who grounded Shawn two days prior for skipping second period for the millionth time, and Gus wasn’t sure he wanted to go to Junior Prom (where Destiny would be, slow dancing with Micheal H for sure) alone. 

“Shawn – ah, Jesus. Gus. Gus, come on, calm down, kid.” Two firm hands grabbed Gus by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet, and his tirade died in his throat. He was kind of shaking, too, but there was a sharp edge of fear to Henry’s voice that came out sounding almost angry and somehow made Gus feel better. “You’re okay, alright? You’re okay. He’s okay. This isn’t your fault. Go inside and get my car keys.”

Gus can’t really remember whether he made it to the bathroom before spilling his guts. He figures it’s kind of an immaterial detail, nineteen years later.

“Gus,” Shawn mumbles. “Gus, I got blood on you.” 

“Shut up, Shawn,” Gus says.

Shawn isn’t dead, which is pretty obvious to everyone now. Gus has been convinced of it for the last twenty-four hours. If Shawn was dead, Gus would’ve felt it. This is a conclusion he came to at around eleven a.m Pacific Standard Time, still in his pajamas and halfway through one of the gross protein bars Juliet keeps in her purse to keep his brain functioning on something one tier above pure fear. He used to wonder about it in college – whether Shawn was lying in a ditch somewhere without him. The idea would float through his head on random days when he was in crisis about stupid stuff like his upcoming Chem 102 final and prone to catastrophizing, and he’d think miserably that Shawn was probably on a sunny beach surrounded by beautiful women and Dolph Lundgren, momentarily freak because dude, what if he’s in Northern Guatemala and dead, and hasn’t even said anything? That would be just like Shawn, and then, finally, he’d eat a Kit-Kat and go for a walk around campus and finish his study notes and everything would be fine. A week later he’d get a postcard, like Shawn had somehow read his mind all the way from Bardstown, Kentucky, and pretend he didn’t miss his friend someplace deep in his ever-feeling stomach.

This morning he became convinced. He’d know. That has to be how it works. Nothing else makes sense, and Gus is a person who likes to believe in the reasonable and rational when he can.

Yeah, says Shawn’s regular, not-mumbly voice in his head. Like mummies and curses and ghosts. Absolutely the most sensible person I know, buddy, bar none. 

Shawn’s real voice is slurring something unintelligible and sounding a lot less coherent than he did fifteen minutes ago when jumped onto the hood of a moving vehicle. Like an action movie star. Gus can’t even bring himself to be pumped about how cool that was, theoretically, because –

“EMTs are on their way.”

“Well can’t they get here faster?”

“I’m not a goddamn teleportation service! Guster, get his head up –”

“His head is fine, will you just –”

“Stop jostling him!”

“He’s my son, Lassiter, don’t fucking tell me what to do – Shawn – Shawn –” 

After the adrenaline wore off and Shawn’s legs turned to jello, getting him to sit up against the car was kind of hard. He is, as a result, currently lying on the ground with his head in Gus’s lap, manfully, while they wait. Juliet took care of locking the bad guy in the other car and has sort of shut down, emotionally speaking – her sweet face is the color of chalk and her eyes are like saucers and she keeps answering her radio so fast her hands blur – and Lassiter’s trying (ungainingly, now that the shooting is over) to take charge to make himself feel better.

Henry’s the only one who seems capable of being practical. Gus knows this version of him well.  

“Gus … you hate blood. 'Cept when you're tellin' me to lick it.”

Shawn again, being unhelpful. As always. Gus is too relieved to gag. Maybe later. 

“At this juncture I am neutral about blood,” Gus tells him, in his best Professional Pharmaceutical Salesman Voice. Shawn grins crookedly up at him. He’s like, half passed out already, and the only thing keeping Gus sane is the steady beat of his pulse in his neck, where it presses hot and sweaty against Gus’s hand. Hot and sweaty makes him think of their junior prom. That was gross, though Gus supposes he didn’t mind at the time. They barely made it to the thing anyway. Shawn milked his stupid cast like his life depended on it and Destiny, who was big into art, sat at their table instead of dancing with Michael H so she could doodle on it with the Sharpies she carried in her frilly clutch. She and Gus spent almost the whole night talking. She was like, his second ever kiss.

Back to the present. Through the power of Henry Spencer’s eyebrows Lassie’s been successfully banished – warded off, whatever – and Gus briefly wonders if he should be a bad friend (to Juliet) and ask that she come over and hold Shawn’s hand or something. Then Henry locks eyes with him and he realizes suddenly and inescapably that no, actually, Shawn will not want her to be here for this.

“Shawn,” Henry says.

“Hi, Dad,” Shawn manages. He’s still grinning, but his face is pale. Pasty. Shawn’s kind of tan as far as white guys go (Gus remembers Joy declaring this once, the way she always liked to declare things, when they were eight and she was twelve) so the gray tinge to his cheeks doesn’t become him. "Unhg… this’sucks. Kinda … numb tho’. I think ‘s getting better.” 

It’s not really getting better. Gus looks at the dirty, slick duct tape matted into Shawn’s tattered shirt and feels his ears ringing. This is one of top ten most unforgivable pranks Shawn has pulled on him in their lifetime, without a doubt.

“Kid, I’m so sorry. I have to stop the bleeding.”

“S’still bleedin’?”

It is. Gus’s leg is damp. Probably sticky. Every molecule in his body is trying not to think about it. 

“Gus, brace his shoulder.”

“Yes sir.”

Shawn’s mind registers what’s about to happen a second before Henry presses down; Gus can see it all click in his drooping eyes, which widen. The noise that comes out of his mouth is sudden and horrible. Worse than God’s most disgusting broken bone. Gus doesn’t move, but his stomach lurches, and his head spins. Henry’s pressure is firm and professional and unyielding and he can see the old brown jacket the older man stripped off his own shoulders start to stain where it rests against Shawn, who seems to be remembering that he got shot with a real live bullet for the first time since they found him. 

“Dad – Dad, stop, stop, fuck! Why’d you – doesn’ haft’ – jus -”

Plausible deniability, Gus thinks while Shawn complains. It would be normal except Henry's actually apologizing. He stares at the ugliest sepia-patterned fruit on his best friend's dad's shirt and counts to ten, then twelve, then thirteen. He wonders what Destiny's up to these days. He doesn't look and pretends not to hear, either.

“Gus,” Henry says after another minute, and Gus looks up. With a jolt, he realizes that he’s watching Henry Spencer cry. Nothing about his voice has changed; nothing about his posture has changed. The faint sound of an ambulance invades their consciousness while mundane, dull tears shine in the pale afternoon sun as they leak out of the older man's eyes and down his grizzled exhausted face. “You need to throw up?”

He does, kind of. Shawn’s spare hand has grabbed the dirty fabric of Gus’s jeans in one fist. He isn’t yelling anymore and from over Henry’s shoulder Gus can see Juliet, across the road, looking over at them desperately. She probably can't see the details, but there's no way she hasn't heard. Shawn gasps a shaky breath and squeezes his eyes shut and bites down into his own shirtsleeve to muffle himself. Gus and the car are blocking the worst of it from everyone else. The sirens are properly loud now. 

“He’s gonna be okay,” Henry says. “You know? It just looks like hell.”

Like he’s fifteen again, and being ordered to go get the keys. Gus shakes his head anyway, and Henry doesn’t ask again. 

[itookashotinthedark]

The most gut-wrenching, underrated scene in all of Psych just might be when Shawn is being held in the gas station and is forced to watch through a dirty window as his father and Lassiter walk away from him. The angsty, whumpy beats of that scene are so perfectly executed.

The stranglehold in lieu of a gag is so much more personal and cruel. We get to see how desperately Shawn tries to get a sound out, to cry for help, and Garth's gentle shushing is so painfully juxtaposed to the invasive and violent way he's keeping his hostage quiet. The way that Shawn's clearly struggling not to pass out as Garth's fingers dig into his neck, the fear and hopelessness in his eyes as he watches rescue - his own dad - walk away from him and leave him with these men, one of whom has already promised to kill him... and then as Henry and Lassiter walk away, we see Henry look back, as if he senses his son nearby...

There are a lot of great, angsty, whumpy moments in this episode alone, and some other stellar ones in the rest of the show. But this scene in particular will always stand out to me as one of - if not the - best for these reasons. It's so well written, acted, and executed and I could watch it all day.

[itookashotinthedark]

Psych 2x11

[itookashotinthedark]

Psych 2x09

[itookashotinthedark]

i think the best part of shawn spencer's character is the fact that he's an incredible crack shot and yet he voluntarily walks into every life threatening situation 100% unarmed

[itookashotinthedark]

I think Shawn and Gus really set the standard for me of what being a best friend should look like in media.

Is your best friend really your best friend if they don’t unabashedly help you with your shenanigans?

Is your best friend really your best friend if yall are not codependent to the point that people think you’re married and know you come as a package deal?

Are yall really best friends if you can’t call each other in the middle of the night to help cover up your presence at a crime screen?? Would they try to run into a bank to get you during a bank robbery? These are the questions you should be asking yourself.