AN: First Psych fic. I have most of this story posted on livejournal and thought it I should try it here. So, here goes! Enjoy! And go easy on me, yea?

Disclaimer: I do not own the television show Psych. I do not own the characters of the television show Psych.

Killer Queens and Dancing Bees

Chapter One

Shawn made jokes. He couldn't help it, that's just how he was. Jokes made things less real, more bearable. Jokes meant Shawn was being Shawn, and Shawn being Shawn was normal.

Shawn being Shawn meant no one had to stay up at night waiting for the buzzing in their head to cease or until exhaustion finally took hold.

Shawn being Shawn meant anxiety pills didn't have to be used as an escape and most certainly weren't stock-piled in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Or under the kitchen sink. Or between the mattresses. Or at the office. Or in the back pocket of a pair of pants at all times as a constant reminder of a tightening chest, loss of breath, the spinning of a room, tremors in fingers and hands and arms and legs and knees.

Shawn being Shawn meant everything was right with the world and that no matter how bad things would get, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, there was a silver lining to every cloud, the sun – though it disappeared for a while – was always guaranteed to return.

So when Shawn Spencer was found in his apartment, staring vacantly at the ceiling as white foam bubbled past his lips and trailed down his jawline to the pillow beneath his head and the paramedics diagnosed it as an overdose, those closest to him knew that Santa Barbara's days of sunshine were limited, that the clouds' silver linings were disappearing, and that with every second that Shawn's life dimmed, so did the tunnel's light and their chance of escaping the darkness with it.

0 o 0 o 0

Voices without faces. Darkness. And pain. Oh, pain. Cloud. Fog. The voices faded and returned, like an antenna searching for reception.

"-damn lucky he didn't lose his liver."

Familiar. The face nearly forming in his mind and replaced by agony, by rage, by disappointment. Alive? Either that or in hell. Heaven couldn't hurt that much.

"It was a mistake." Sympathy. Someone for his cause. "It had to be. You guys know him. He wouldn't-"

"He swallowed more than two dozen pills!" Anger. Someone against him. Someone who didn't believe him, who had never believed him. "This was no 'mistake.' He tried to kill himself. He's lucky to be alive!"

"Did anyone think that this might be . . . that it could be related to his . . . ability? I mean, all the things he sees . . . They must take some kind of tole." Soft. Gentle. A woman's touch.

"You people are still hung up on that?" Oh no. The deceit. It was coming. The fateful, condemning words that would end him. "Well, let me set the record straight. That kid right there-" He could feel the atmosphere clog with disgust. "-is no psychic. He's a fake."

They stung worse than he thought they would, the words. He was over. Done. Diminished into piles of ashen defeat. Had the verbal vomit not been spewed forth from his own blood puddles he might have remained intact.

But he could feel himself deteriorating, slipping further and further from reality. His limbs were separating from his body. He could feel them floating away. The great ebony sea, full of restless shadows and hungry beasts, waited to swallow him down, deep beneath its endless waves with no remorse.

"But he knew so many things. He solved cases! How could he? How could he fake that?" Blissful ignorance. He missed that. Well, wished he could miss that. He couldn't really miss something he hadn't had to begin with.

"Because I made him that way."

Awkward silence. Stunned, perhaps. It wasn't every day those words were said. And they echoed. Not only in his mind but in the space around him, glittering like confetti and tickling his skin as they rained down.

"'Made' him?"

"Conditioned him. He sees little details, so small they almost aren't there." Secrets bled into the open, ruining, staining. And blood stains would stick, stay, dance in oblivious faces until their blatant meaning was understood. "His photographic memory absorbs everything. He remembers it all."

"And you made him that way?" Disgust, disdain. Pity. This was headed in the wrong direction. Something was going to be said that couldn't be taken away. And then where would they be? "You took a little boy and turned him into . . . some sick experiment?" She sounded so sad, so heart-broken. For him?

"I gave him the best police training anyone could ask for." Defensive. Stuck to shrapnel-laced old ways. Tattered veins still pumping gasoline and scotch.

"He was a child!" Hysterics. Only a woman. Distressed over her Romeo, Juliet with lips as wet as morning. Shakespeare had nothing on poetic injustice. "He was a child, and you took that away from him. You . . . I can't believe . . . God! You're disgusting!"

"Hey!" Shouting. He hadn't heard a shout like that since the day his mother left . . . "Don't you dare try to tell me how to be a father. You've never been a single parent." Neither have you, Dad. "I watched his mother walk in and out of his life for years, and I saw how that affected him. I did what I did to make him strong, to keep him from having to resort to this."

"And that's supposed to make it right?" Her voice climbed an octave. Footsteps in the hallway. A hushed, frantic voice. But the fighting continued, just like it had at home. Just like it always had . . .

Visions ran rampant. He couldn't breathe, not even with the oxygen mask over his face. It was happening. It always happened when he was little.

So Shawn did what Shawn hadn't done in a very long time, not since his parents had been together. It was the most effective way to stop the fighting, to cease the shouting.

Shawn fisted the crisp hospital-issue sheets beneath his fingers. Shawn ground his teeth painfully. Shawn sucked in a shuddering breath.

And Shawn screamed.

AN: All right, the second part is somewhat confusing, what with the lack of names and the dialogue. But I figure that is what it must be like for Shawn, trapped in darkness and only relying on his hearing and muddled thoughts to figure out what is happening. But I promise to elaborate more in the next chapter, maybe re-do this scene outside of Shawn's perspective.

Until then, Kats and Kittens. Catch you on the flip side!! :)