Title: Losing My Mind: a fic in five parts (I. Spend Sleepless Nights)

Author: Jane Westin

Pairing: Shawn/Carlton

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Not mine. Never mine.

Notes: This is my warm-up (ie, first time writing slash, first time writing Psych fics). Please forgive the lack of plot; I had to get used to the characters before I could think about giving them a murder to solve. I think I know them well enough to put in a little more storyline next time. Thank you for reading!

NOTE: Format changed due to some weird mistakes on my part. Now it's five chapters, but no extra story. I'm sorry.

Shawn is mostly fine, mostly.

Sure, it was a last-second, barely-scraped-by rescue by Lassiter. Sure, it was kind of - okay, totally - Shawn's fault that Gus had ended up with a Desert Eagle pointed at his sweet, sweet dome. Sure, Shawn had actually seen Rourke's finger tighten on the trigger before Lassiter's single shot whistled by Shawn's ear, clipping his pinna before finding its mark directly between Rourke's eyes.

But Shawn is mostly fine.

Mostly.

Shawn realizes that he has made it through the last three episodes of True Blood without noticing Sookie's legs at all. He's hungry, even though he'd eaten an entire box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal bars for dinner less than three hours ago. His body feels jittery and itchy on the inside. His bones hurt.

He reaches for his phone, dials Gus's number. It rings five times and goes to voicemail.

He counts out his heartbeat for a full minute before he calls again. One-ten. Voicemail.

Another minute. One-twenty-four. Voicemail.

Forcing his voice to sound casual. "Dude, I need your help, I can't find that bag of Werther's Originals I bought yesterday."

One-twenty-nine. He puts the phone down, picks it up again, goes to his text-messaging screen. Candy emergency. Call asap!

Come on, Gus.

Shawn walks around the couch four times, drops to the floor, does twenty push-ups. Tears open a second box of cereal bars and eats two in quick succession. Twenty more push-ups, and then a couple of Tony Horton-style wacky jacks, just because he can.

When his phone rings, he jumps for it so fast he almost drops it. "Gus!"

"Dude. You put them in the freezer." Gus's voice, irritated, tinny through the iPhone speaker. "You remember I'm on a date, right?"

"Oh! Right!" Shawn forces a laugh. "Right, the freezer. I was just...I...hypoglycemia."

"Shawn, it's been three days. You don't need to check on me every half hour. In fact, I'd be indebted to you if you didn't." A little gentler now, still prickly.

"No, right, you misunderstand...I mean, I have to go. Freezer burn." He ends the call, tosses the phone on the couch.

"Oh, this is ridiculous," he says, to no one, but it isn't really, because Rourke's finger had moved on the trigger and Lassie had come out of nowhere and Rouke's finger had moved and HIS FINGER HAD MOVED and oh God he had almost lost Gus. He feels like throwing up. Because he had almost lost Gus, and that meant that Gus could be lost, anyone could be lost. He could wake up tomorrow and find that Gus and Henry and Lassie and Jules and maybe even Buzz had piled into a VW van to go to Coachella and accidentally driven over the edge of the Grand Canyon. His phone could ring any time and it could be that platinum-haired rookie at the station telling him that someone was dead. Dead. D-E-A-D dead. How can Gus be on a date when he could die any time? When anyone could? This isn't fun. Oh no, this isn't fun at all.

Is this how real people feel all the time, heavy and sick with dread?

Dead. Dead. Dead like those girls and dead like Rourke.

Lassie had killed Rourke.

Shawn jumps to his feet, grabs his keys, slams the door behind him.

He screeches to a halt in front of Lassiter's house, a tiny rental Lassiter had moved into after Juliet's disastrous attempt at a surprise party. He's forgotten his helmet, but it doesn't matter because Gus is alive and any of them could die at any moment anyway.

He stands on the stoop, fidgeting, realizing somewhere in the back of his mind that showing up at Lassiter's house is just a hair shy of insane - so many guns! - and not really caring. He rings the bell, jabbing at it fast, three times. He bounces on his toes until he hears the deadbolt flip and then the door's opening and Lassiter is there. Frowning, but he doesn't look angry, just bemused and a little cranky. Still in his work clothes, dark grey slacks, white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top two buttons undone. No tie. Chest hair curling above his undershirt, so solid and real, is this what Lassie always looks like at home?

"What are you doing here, Spencer?"

His eyes are so blue.

How can Lassiter be standing there like...like a person, like a normal regular persony person, when he had picked Shawn up off the tracks right before they ended in a Looney Tunes cliff and a "Bridge Out" sign and carried him across to the other side? How can he do this every day when he does this every day?

So many questions. Shawn's head feels like a balloon that's been overfilled. Pretty soon the top of his shiny, too-thin skull will rupture and all those questions will scatter everywhere and Shawn will be left headless and confused and flailing, and Lassiter will still be out there saving the day.

"Spencer." Lassiter's frown deepens; those little anger-dimples appear on either side of his mouth. "What. Are. You. Doing here?"

Shawn opens his mouth. Closes it. He can't meet Lassie's eyes.

And because it doesn't matter anyway, because nothing does, he does the thing he has wanted to do for almost two years but has been too scared to do, and reaches out, and places both hands flat on Lassiter's chest.

He feels Lassiter startle, feels the sharp intake of breath. Feels Lassiter sway, not backwards away from Shawn, but slightly to the right. Sees, out of the corner of his eye, Lassiter's hands come up to brace the doorframe.

"Psychic vision?" Lassiter says, and Shawn thinks it's probably supposed to sound sarcastic but Lassie's voice is too tight and Shawn knows him better than that.

He keeps his eyes on his hands, silhouetted starfish against Lassiter's white shirt because the porch light is off, and Lassiter isn't moving. The pads of his first and second fingers are over Lassiter's collarbones. He can feel Lassiter's heart pounding against his right palm. One-oh-seven. One-twenty-two. And he still isn't moving.

"No." He swallows because his throat is dry and oh, who removed the air from the porch? "Don't get lost." Because it doesn't matter.

But then suddenly it does, everything does, because Lassiter's hands are moving, up and off the doorframe, long fingers wrapping around Shawn's. Gently peeling Shawn's hands off his chest. And Shawn realizes where he is, what he's doing, what he's done.

"Oh. Lassie. I-" And now he does meet Lassiter's eyes.

Such an odd expression on Lassiter's face, that little vertical crease between his eyebrows, his lips pulled tight like when he's angry, but he doesn't look angry. And his eyes are blue, blue, blue swallowed up in big black pupils.

"This isn't where I parked my car," Shawn says lamely. He pulls his hands away, steps back, jumps the three steps off the porch. Gets on his bike.

Drives back home.