A/N: Welcome to Intuition! I started this fully intending it to be a simple one-shot. And, like almost everything I write, it just kept going. This is a two-shot and it's going to stay a two-shot. No more, no less. It's a little bit of a different take on the 'Shawn becomes a real psychic' stories out there, so have fun and review!
Disclaimer: Totally and completely not mine. But we can pretend, can't we?
Warnings: Shawn/Lassi slash and it gets a little gory towards the middle of this part, which is the reason for the rating.
Intuition
Part One
Shawn Spencer doesn't really believe in the paranormal or psychics and all that mumbo-jumbo. He laughs at Gus' stories about ghosts, and scoffs at people who claim to be real "psychics". Shawn believes in logic, and evidence. He doesn't mind letting people believe that what he does is magic, because it keeps him out of jail. But, if forced, he could explain his solutions, provide evidence; what he comes up with doesn't just appear out of thin air.
Yet, for all his skepticism, Shawn can't shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen. It's a feeling that has been haunting him for days, and he cannot find any support for it. He doesn't say anything to anyone, not even Gus, because there is no evidence. It is just a feeling, unshakable and hovering over his head like a storm cloud. He's felt something like this before, before a motorcycle accident when he was in his early twenties. This feels stronger though, more sinister, and it has Shawn on edge.
He's not as happy-go-lucky; he's more serious and nervous, unlike the normal steady, if eccentric, Shawn. His eyes are everywhere, searching for something, anything to prove him right or wrong. He can't see the danger that he knows is there, and that scares him even more. He is certain that something is lingering in the shadows, like a rattlesnake in the bushes waiting to strike.
They've just put a close to their latest case, a case that everyone—Jules, Lassiter, his Dad, and the Chief—fought to keep him away from. It was a serial killer who apparently chose his victims at random and killed them in exceedingly gruesome and torturous ways. Shawn found the connection between the victims (they all ordered their take-out from the same Chinese restaurant) and figured out who the murderer was (the delivery boy).
He even caught the guy by ordering from the restaurant, knowing that he fit the profile he had figured out. Sure enough the killer showed up with his Lo Mien and a flare gun, intent on firing a few flares straight down Shawn's throat.
It had been a close thing, but Shawn wasn't as weak as he looked and he had been smart enough to call for backup before the guy got there—albeit only a few minutes before the killer was due to show up, and he had neglected to tell Gus about his brilliant plan—but everything was fine in the end. The killer was behind bars and Shawn only had to get three stitches. Gus didn't talk to him for an incredible stretch of three hours (a record for him) and if Lassi glared more than usual for a few days afterwards it was only to be expected.
But this isn't like that. Shawn hadn't been scared through that whole ordeal—okay, maybe he had been a little frightened when a serial killer was trying to shoot flares down his throat, but who could blame him for that?—but Shawn finds himself shaking from terror of something that he knows is coming.
Chief Vick calls and asks if they can come to a crime scene, and Shawn knows that this is it. This is the bad thing that had been haunting him. He wants to scream that they should all leave the place as fast as they can, but he doesn't. He says he'll be there as soon as possible. Then he turns to Gus, who is already pocketing his keys and turning for the door.
"Hey Gus?" The feeling is starting to get clearer and Shawn knows. Someone is going to die.
"What Shawn?" Shawn hesitates. He wants Gus to stay behind but he can't bring himself to say it, even if he's starting to believe in his feeling.
"Nothing," he says, shaking his head. "Let's go."
The scene is a building downtown, but it isn't like a normal crime scene. There are police barricades up and a crowd of people and press waiting outside. Buzz is waiting for them and waves them through. The presses aren't happy with this, and question who he is, but Shawn ignores them. Gus looks sideways at him, because normally Shawn would make some kind of comment, but shrugs it off, thinking that maybe Shawn is finally growing up.
Buzz leads them into the elevator and punches the button for the third floor. "What is it, Buzz?" Gus asks on the way up. Buzz only shakes his head, looking paler than normal.
"It's bad."
The doors open and they need no direction: the group of cops hovering outside of the room, some of them with sickened expressions, mark the room. Shawn and Gus head towards the room, Shawn reaching the door first and stopping Gus before he can even look in.
"You should stay outside, Gus." Shawn says. He has seen crime scenes before; hell, he had grown up looking at his father's crime scene photos. But this…this is bad, and Gus has a weaker stomach. Gus folds his arms. "Trust me." Shawn says.
Gus hesitates and then shakes his head. "No, Shawn, I'm going with you." Shawn closes his eyes for a second and then nods, knowing that Gus will turn around the minute he sees the room. He steps over the threshold and Gus looks in and gasps.
There is blood everywhere. On the walls. On the ceiling. One the floor. It's like a scene from a cheap slasher film, but it's real. He can smell the coppery scent of blood; he feels like he's drowning in it. Gus chokes, gagging, and turns away. "I'll wait outside." He gasps out before running.
Shawn steels himself and heads further into the room. He stops, frozen to the floor beneath his feet when he sees the body.
The corpse—he can't even think of it as a human because it isn't anymore. It's a sack of blood and guts and bone and skin. He can't even tell if it is male or female—has been turned inside out. The bones have been chopped, the intestines trail across the floor, the muscles and ligaments are shredded. The head has been detached from the body and has been scalped, the grayish-pink brain displayed for all the world to see. The eyes have been gouged out, and the teeth have been pulled and littered around the rest of the body.
Shawn spins away, gagging, and for one dizzying moment thinks he is going to vomit. He feels the bile burning in the back of his throat and fights it down. He will not throw up in a crime scene, he will not, he vows. The bad feeling, multiplied by a thousand times now and ringing in his head like warning bells, does not help, but he manages, somehow, not to puke.
He turns around, avoiding looking at the corpse, and instead looks at Juliet, Lassi, and Karen. Juliet has her head buried in Lassi's chest, which makes Shawn jealous, though he won't admit it, and not because it isn't him that she's using for comfort, but because he isn't the one touching Lassi in such a personal way. Lassi, who normally shies away from P.D.A. doesn't even seem to realize that she's touching him. His hands are clenched and he's trying to avoid looking at the corpse. Karen is looking a Shawn, a handkerchief over her mouth. She looks nauseous, but the determined set in her eyes says that she isn't going anywhere.
"I'm sorry you have to see this, Mr. Spencer." Shawn shakes his head, waving the apology away. "Mr. Guster?"
"Hallway." Shawn replies shortly. He feels like he's falling and terror grips him tighter than ever. He almost knows; the feeling is so close and he can almost pinpoint what is going to happen, what is going to go wrong, who is going to die. If he knows maybe he can stop it.
"We need all the help we can get on this one. Anything, anything at all that can help."
Shawn isn't listening to her. His eyes are wide and his fists are clenched and his entire body is stiff and rigid, as if he is having a real psychic fit. He's so close, so goddamn close.
"Mr. Spencer?" Karen asks, worried.
Tenth floor. The killer. He's still covered in blood. Shawn is staring but he sees nothing in front of him. He carries an entire kit of knives, his tools of torture. The victim was alive through the most of the massacre, alive and breathing and screaming through the sock in her—it was a her, with golden hair and blue eyes, who could have been only twenty—mouth. The killer's eyes are blue too, blue and feverish and mad. Crazy eyes. He waits on the tenth floor, a smile on his face. There's a bomb hidden in the bathroom, but he won't detonate until after he gets his next victim, and no SWAT team or bomb squad while enter when he's got an entire hotel full of hostages.
Shawn's heart is racing and his jaw is clenched so hard that he thinks his teeth might shatter. His vision focuses on the three people in front of him, who stare at him, worried.
"Get everyone out of the building." Shawn's voice has never been more serious in his entire life.
"Mr. Spencer, what—?"
"Get everyone out of the building. Now."
"Spencer—," Lassi growls, striding towards him. Shawn knows now what he has to do, but he has something he has to do before that. As soon as Lassi is within grabbing range Shawn seizes the front of his shirt, drags him down, and smashes their lips together.
Shawn puts all of his desperation and fear and love—yes, love—into the kiss. Lassi is as stiff as a board at first, unyielding, but then relaxes and draws Shawn into his arms and kisses back. They break apart when breath is absolutely needed and Shawn rests his head against Lassi's chest, the detective's arms still wrapped around him.
"What—?" Lassi says.
Shawn looks up. "I love you." There is complete silence in the room. "There's a bomb in the bathroom and the killer's on the tenth floor with the detonator. Get everyone out of the building." He takes one more look at the group, especially Lassi, the man he loves, and then takes off running. He hears Lassi curse and start after him, but Shawn is smaller and quicker. He was on the track team for a month in high school, before he lost interest, and the speed has always stuck with him.
He blows past the officers and Gus, who is leaning against the wall. He knows that Gus will hate him for not saying goodbye, but there's no time. He looks gazes with his best friend as he goes by, and Gus reads something in his gaze, because he runs after him. "Shawn!" He screams.
Shawn pulls the fire alarm as he runs past it, making doors all around him open. He hits the elevator up button as people stream into the hallway, slowing Gus and Lassi down. Lassi overtakes Gus and reaches the elevator as the doors slide closed. "Shawn!"
Lassi beats on the closed doors with his fist, as if hitting them hard enough will bring Shawn back. Inside Shawn hits the button for the tenth floor and then slumps against the back of the elevator, breathing hard and shaking.
Someone is going to die, he knows. And it's going to be him. He'll be damned if he lets it be anyone else.
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