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Lassiter Learns How to Bend	By : MsTeragram Category: M through R > Psych Views: 2237 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Psych, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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In
the name of Sweet Lady Justice...why does this have to be happening to me now?
Lassiter wondered. It wasn't enough that Ernesto Chavez had been shot in his
custody, or that he'd been framed for the murder and nearly lost his career.
No, now his mind and body were rebelling against him, indicating the beginnings
of an inevitable decline into madness and dementia. In a way, the whole thing
could be blamed on former detective John Drimmer. It was his idea that
Lassiter's fake suicide note should portray him and Spencer as lovers. That
idea had somehow wormed its way into his subconscious and laid eggs.
At first he'd become
focussed on whether people thought the idea was credible. His discussion with
O'Hara over lunch in the break room had not put his mind at rest.
"Nobody would have
believed that fake note, right?" He frowned down at his Enchirito instead
of looking at her directly.
"Maybe," she
said around a mouthful of chicken taco, then swallowed. "Drimmer was
pretty clever. The note would be in your handwriting, and it would explain why
Shawn's always been so uninhibited with you around the station. I mean the guy
sat in your lap. He doesn't do that to me."
"I could
maybe—maybe—see people thinking that Spencer was gay, but me? Would
you have bought that?"
"Well..." O'Hara
looked around the room as if desperate for something to change the subject.
"Our job could be said to attract people with certain repressed impulses,
Carlton. There's a reason one of the Village People is a cop. There's the
uniform, and the homosocial atmosphere—not every station has as many
women as ours does, you know."
"But I've been
married. To a woman."
"So was Elton John.
And Rock Hudson."
"Okay, fair enough.
But even if I were some sort of late-blooming homosexual, why would I choose Spencer
of all people? He's irresponsible, he's socially embarrassing, and he's an
attention sponge the likes of which I have never seen."
"Opposites
attract?" While Lassiter continued to frown at his lunch she continued.
"Look, Drimmer was just grabbing for the first thing he thought would make
people uncomfortable and not look too closely at your deaths. Let's move
on."
But Lassiter wasn't
moving on. In fact he was kind of fixated. He kept going over in his mind all
the reasons that this imagined relationship was absurd. But instead of putting
his mind at rest it was reminding him of a line from Hamlet he'd learned in
college, while dating an actress: "The lady doth protest too much,
methinks." It was not reassuring.
It wasn't that he hated
Spencer. Lately he'd developed quite a respect for him. Sure, Spencer was
annoying, but he was good at what he did. Much of what he did was ridiculous,
but whatever was behind the fa�ade was solid. Plus, Spencer had been on his
side through the whole Drimmer fiasco, and even the Chief and O'Hara had been
giving him some looks on that one. Spencer had trusted in his innocence, and
that meant something. Exactly what it meant, he wasn't sure.
Since shooting Drimmer
he'd been having a recurring dream in which he hadn't reached the gun in time,
or had plunged his hand into the bowl to find nothing but peanuts. The dream
ended with Drimmer shooting Spencer, and Lassiter woke in a cold sweat with a
sense of anger and loss that felt out of proportion to the situation. Several
criminals had tried to kill Lassiter. It was part of the job that every police
officer accepted. He didn't take it personally. That Drimmer had tried to kill
Shawn enraged him in a way that was unexpected and tinged with a protectiveness
that went beyond his basic duty to the general citizenry of Santa Barbara.
Maybe, he
thought, I've got post-traumatic stress. True,
he didn't have any symptoms other than the nightmares and the obsession, but it
was a condition that medicine was still trying to understand. Just in case it
wasn't PTSD he'd forced himself to return Spencer's blue plaid shirt, which
he'd borrowed during their investigation into the Chavez shooting. He had made
a point of not smelling it before tossing in the washer, but it bothered him
that he'd wanted to.
It didn't help any that
Spencer was clinging to him like a piece of Velcro. He kept showing up with
presents. He brought him lunch and coffee. He 'just happened' to have an extra
almond croissant. He seemed to be standing even closer to him than normal. And
every time Lassiter had looked he'd caught Spencer watching him with those
disturbing eyes of his. Lassiter firmly believed that eyes should be a specific
colour, not vary from blue to green to hazel according ones clothing choice.
While frustrating,
Spencer's behaviour made a kind of sense. Being that close to getting shot in
the head was probably a new and upsetting experience for him. He'd been
treating police work as a hobby, and now it had almost gotten him killed. And
since Lassiter had been pretty heroic under the circumstances, it was
understandable that Spencer felt safer around him. Lassiter actually had to
stifle the impulse to reach out and comfort him sometimes. But
such an attempt would be awkward and likely to be misunderstood, he
told himself. He was pretty sure that if he just waited it out Spencer would
get back to his carefree irresponsible self.
And then there had been
the Cruickshanks case. A woman had been found bludgeoned to death in a storage
room at the back of her store. The room was a warren of narrow aisles between
towering shelves of boxed stock. Lassiter had been recording the scene of crime
details in his notebook. Spencer had been spinning around like a dervish,
muttering something about the Wicked Witch of the West.
O'Hara approached,
carrying a bloody shoe in an evidence bag and said, "Can I get through,
please?" Lassiter pressed up against the shelves to let her by, and
Spencer had done the same but instead of moving next to Lassiter he'd squeezed
right on top of him. O'Hara was momentarily bottlenecked, but fought her way
free and out to the car. The problem was that in those few seconds, Spencer's
backside pressed firmly against Lassiter's front side. And in the immortal
words of George Costanza, it moved.
Since that moment, every
second Lassiter spent near Spencer had been torture. At first he was
preoccupied with the immediate repercussions. Had Spencer noticed? Surely not.
If he'd noticed he'd have said something smart-mouthed, like "Is that a
nightstick in your pocket?" He'd given Lassiter a look, though. He was
certain there'd been a look. It wasn't confusion or disgust or annoyance. It
was almost as if he'd never met Lassiter before and couldn't figure out how he
got into the store. That, of course, made no sense. As time passed and Spencer
didn't mention the incident, his anxiety grew. Clearly he would mention it at
some future point, probably when Lassiter was surrounded by co-workers. Maybe
in front of the Chief.
Lassiter had combed
through his mind for some explanation of this physical reaction. It
doesn't mean I'm attracted to Spencer, he'd told himself. It's
been so long since I had sex that I'd become aroused by a strong breeze. Maybe
I was responding to O'Hara. She's an attractive woman. Or maybe this is a suicidal
drive of some kind leading me to sexually fixate on the person who could most
easily ruin my career. None of the explanations offered any comfort. He
found himself wishing that he'd had some youthful same-sex exploration to fall
back on. Maybe then this sudden infatuation wouldn't be so alarming. As it was,
the closest thing he'd had to a gay experience was having a poster of Steve
McQueen from The Getaway on his wall for a year and a half in junior high. The
Cruickshanks incident left him hyper-aware of Spencer's presence and vaguely
horny every time the psychic was around. It was as if the fake suicide note had
become a prophecy that Lassiter's body was determined to fulfil.
Worst of all, Lassiter
couldn't be sure that Spencer wasn't reading his mind—or whatever it was
that he did. He had always been touchy-feely around the station, particularly
when he was in the grip of a 'vision.' But in the week after the Cruickshanks
case each touch seemed to taunt him with some secret knowledge. Spencer had touched
Lassiter's face and held his hand there for what seemed like forever, claiming
he saw visions of yellow brick roads and tiny little people. He'd placed his
hand on Lassiter's chest and suggested he come to Emerald City with him and ask
the Wizard for a heart. It was alarming and arousing, and more than a little
confusing. He'd only seen the Wizard of Oz once, as a child, and he didn't
remember much beyond the singing munchkins and the terrifying flying monkeys.
Spencer's whole song-and-dance made more sense later, when they had arrested
the victim's neighbour, who Lassiter had to admit, did kind of resemble
Margaret Hamilton.
Despite being a fraud and
a flake, Spencer got results. But the kind of results he'd been getting lately
were entirely too problematic. Maybe if Spencer kept a normal
distance, he thought, the sexual tension could re-submerge into whatever dark
recess of his psyche it had come from.
He tried verbally
rebuffing Spencer, but his orders to stay off his desk, stop touching him, or
remain outside the imaginary hula-hoop of personal space were ignored. Most
recently, Spencer had walked up casually behind him, placed both hands on his
shoulders, commented on how tense Lassiter was, and started massaging him with
surprising skill. Lassiter's physical response was to lean into the massage,
but his mental response was anger that Spencer had again ignored his boundaries
and did so in full view of his co-workers. How many of them are thinking
Drimmer had it right? He wondered. Hell, even I'm
wondering if he had it right. This kind of speculation could
undermine his authority in the station. This whole Spencer thing had to stop
now.
Lassiter spun in his
chair, grabbed Spencer by the back of the neck and pulled him off to a secluded
corner near the stairs. There was no reason everyone
had to see this.
"You just don't get
the message, do you Spencer?" Lassiter backed him up against the wall and
leaned in. "This is my workplace," he said through gritted teeth.
"I'm in a position of authority here. Why can't you just respect what I
do, even if you can't respect me as a person?"
Shawn was smiling, as if
the whole thing was a joke. I should have known this
couldn't be solved without violence, Lassiter thought. He grabbed
Shawn by the biceps and slammed him against the wall. That
was a little too hard, he said to himself, but then stifled the thought. Better
too hard than not hard enough.
"Leave. Me.
Alone." Lassiter looked Shawn in the eyes so he couldn't misunderstand or
laugh off the message. He saw surprise, and a large helping of hurt, but
Spencer wouldn't get the message if it were less blunt. "Stop following
me. Stop touching me. Just stay—away." Lassiter punctuated this last
word with a second slam into the wall. This time Shawn actually winced, and
Lassiter felt guilty as he turned and walked back to his desk, leaving Spencer
rubbing his bruised arms and looking after him with confusion, surprise and
something Lassiter might have recognized as curiosity.
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Lassiter Learns How to Bend