A New Perspective on an Old Theme

A/N: This is the start of Shassie . . .
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. . .Easily admitted or readily acknowledged he was liked by everyone, up to and including one irascible head detective who put on a show for everyone (a show that was brilliantly planned and wonderfully executed, and one for which he should win an Oscar) that convinced everyone he really didn't like the younger man.

No one else in the entire sphere of his association knew that he felt anything more for the psychic than just the annoyance and anger he always showed, if not outright detestation. He examined himself in the hospital window, and knew that despite the hair that never moved, the tightly held posture and the body that never bent, he was a good-looking man. He’d certainly turned a few heads in his day . . .still turned them, actually. In fact, the one time a year when he allowed himself to wear the jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers he kept hidden in a box under his bed, and didn’t put in the hair care products, he actually turned quite a few heads.

He wondered if he would turn Shawn’s, and licked his lips as he closed his eyes. There were so many times that Shawn had tested him . . . had tested his resolve to remain angry, to remain aloof -- to not let the younger man see exactly how he was getting to him. He opened his eyes and looked briefly at the floor as he tried not to sigh -- he really hated sighers. He gazed back out the window and knew that while he was a good many things, and could convince a lot of people of equally as many things, the one thing Carlton Lassiter couldn’t do, and tried not to, was to deceive himself for any great length of time. He was far too moral a man for that.

He inclined his head slightly, and thought of the times when he’d physically restrained the younger, certainly more vibrant man. He remembered all the times he’d ordered Shawn to leave his presence and take his childish mental attitude with him, and smiled sadly.

There really was a difference between childish and childlike, though he had never seen it before, and he grieved for that lack of understanding. He thought back to all the times he’d verbally ordered Shawn to leave the ‘crime-scene-of-the-moment‘, physically escorted him away from them, and even tried to throw him around any given room at any given time, and sometimes just for the sake of blowing off some steam.

Carlton realized that he was finally forced to look at himself and his actions, and knew that his anger had not been directed at the man, they’d actually, every single time, been directed by him. Shawn Spencer had actually made Carleton Lassiter aware of the feelings that he’d managed to convince himself years ago had been nothing more than a childish exploration of his own sexuality (and that of a few others). No, those feelings were nothing more than precursory explorations of all that it supposedly meant as one decided to become a man and what the clear cut responsibilities of becoming one were.

That his marriage had both been childless and failed, was no real surprise . . . not when he actually sat down and forced himself to think about it. As much as he’d convinced himself that he’d loved the woman, there was one thing that he couldn’t love about her, besides the fact she had two of the worst, most interfering parents anyone would be unlucky enough to have. No, the one thing that had irked him above all things, was that she wasn’t a him. Whebn his marriage had so disastrously collapsed, he’d even briefly flirted with his ex-partner to try and convince himself that he could still have a ‘normal’ life.

He also had used both his ex and his former partner to try and completely forget the fact that his heart, and his well-ordered, neatly-planned life, had been broken by not just any ‘him’, but by the one ‘him’ he‘d sworn he‘d love until the day he died. Incidentally, it was the only him he‘d sworn he ever could, or indeed, would love. Carleton had managed to completely bury his pain and hurt, behind an angry, strictly heterosexual façade. That very same façade that he’d convinced almost everyone, and for the most part himself, was the true Carlton Lassiter.

But then -- then, along came that damnable, irrepressible Shawn Spencer.

His scowl deepened and he clenched his hands into fists as he remembered how Spencer . . . Shawn . . . had all but waltzed into the police station and managed to convince everyone, well, almost everyone, that he was psychic. Lassiter remembered the joy in the bright green eyes that seemed to laugh at everything, but most of all, at Lassiter himself. His lips narrowed as he remembered how he had been more than a little shaken when several metaphorical doors in his mind he’d long ago thought he’d slammed shut and locked, suddenly blew back open with the force of an atomic bomb going off in his mind.
He rolled his eyes as he acknowledged that it wasn’t only his mind that had reacted with almost no self-control, and it had taken everything in him not to kiss the younger man senseless the first time he’d thrown him up against a wall.

However, he’d covered all that physical and mental confusion with his anger, and forcefully and physically ejected Shawn from the station and his life . . . or so he’d thought. But Shawn had come back -- just like that damned cat from that awful child’s song that he could never understand how adults could sing to a child. And he just kept coming back, no matter how mean, how forceful, no matter how much anger he threw at the pest, he just kept coming back for more.

Upon serious reflection, Lassiter knew, with everything he had in him, that he never should have touched Shawn . . .never laid his hands on him, never got close enough to smell him. It was almost intoxicating what the feeling of Shawn being under his hands did to him, and he gritted his teeth as he remembered how much just being near to him made him feel. And secretly, so very secretly, he enjoyed every torturous moment of contact, even if Shawn was dancing him through a kitchen to a dead guy, or . . .he licked his lips and ran a hand over his face . . . if Shawn plopped himself right in his lap as he’d pretended to be possessed by the spirit of some minor actress who’d been killed.

How Shawn hadn’t felt the response to his presence in Lassiter’s lap could only be credited to the fact that the older man was very adept at thinking of something other than the beautiful man in his lap. Although, it did take a few cold showers at home, and some serious hand action, to drown the memory of that exact moment when Shawn had presented himself to Lassiter as if he were some kind of delicious present just for him.

Lassiter knew that if he gritted his teeth together any harder, they would crack, and he forced himself to relax his jaw muscles as he turned his head and looked at the door. It was all he could do to stand still, stay in his place, and not storm into Shawn’s room and demand just what the hell he thought he’d been doing.

Why had he, without so much as a thought (which was always what more than half of Shawn’s problem was) risked, and lost, his very life to save not only Juliette, but Karen, and himself. He, Carlton Lassiter, the very man who did his absolute best to destroy Shawn’s ‘psychic’ career at almost every turn . . .except when he needed Shawn, of course -- needed him for a case that was.

And yet, oddly enough, no matter how badly he treated Shawn, the younger man had always come when he’d been called. Oh sure, he always had something wise or smart-assed to say, but he always came.

Yet, now, just when Shawn needed him the most, and when the others needed someone to be there for Shawn in ways they couldn’t, there he was, using his anger, his reserve, his past pain, and more importantly, his guilt, to make things worse in order to cover up what he truly felt for the man.

But, what on earth would Shawn do if he suddenly marched into his hospital room, stalked up to the bed, grabbed that oh-so-tempting, stubbly face between his hands, and planted a hard, passionate kiss on those pale pink lips?

He almost snorted aloud. They’d probably have to use the crash paddles on Shawn, and when he woke back up, he’d probably press charges for sexual harassment. After all, other than a few actions when he was ‘possessed’, and for a few moments where he acted as if he were nothing more than high school freshman going for maximum shock value, he had never really made any kind of intimation that he might even be the least bit interested in males. And there were certainly a long line of women in the last couple years who could certainly say that Shawn was definitely physically useful, up to and including one Juliette O’Hara . . .thankfully that relationship had died as soon as it had been born. Physical compatibility and pheromones could only get a couple so far.

Lassiter mentally shrugged aside that line of thought as irrelevant, and turned his mind to the present. He was very glad they hadn’t actually had to waste the time he and the others had used to see Shawn having to chase down his killer. He was also very glad they’d managed to grab the bitch who’d put them all in positions they really had no business being in, and certainly not over Shawn, not to mention forcing issues that Shawn should never have had to face. He felt especially happy that he, personally, had been the one with the pleasure of throwing her resistant ass into handcuffs and ultimately, a jail cell.

However, now, Shawn was facing going into a mental ward because of her, and a cozy jail cell, even one in which some of the most hardened criminals he knew were thrown into, sometimes together, due to ‘lack of space’, was far more than the bitch deserved. Had Carlton known ahead of time what was going to happen, and how Shawn was going to suffer, he’d’ve cheerfully taken the bitch down, and she never would have seen the light of day again . . . not to mention the fact that no one would have found the body . . . ever.

Angrily, and yet, still remaining under his strictest, most renowned control, Carleton turned and walked out of the room.