Blame Game

[musicalluna]

Title: Blame Game
Fandom: Psych
Author: MusicalLuna
Rating: T
Characters/Pairings: Shawn/Juliet
Genre: Humor, Fluff
Warnings: None
Complete: Yes
Summary: Shawn is hurt and Juliet blames herself.
A/N: Gosh. I'm having a hard time getting these requests to cooperate. I have several of them half-written, but they're resisting being finished. This particular fic was 3/4 written last week and I'm just now finishing it off. :D
SS requested this...ages ago. XDDD So here you are SS! I hope you like!
Disclaimer: They're not mine. Probably better they aren't.

 

Juliet hesitated, lingering near the door of the hospital room and chewing her thumbnail, while the others, Karen, Lassiter, Henry, and Gus, approached Shawn’s bed chattering in hushed tones, with a lightness and a faint sense of relief.

For over three weeks, Juliet had been finding post-it notes left on the front door of her house, on her desk, and on her car windshield. It was a little creepy, getting seemingly random notes ordering her to break up with her boyfriend of two months, but she had asked Lassiter about them and he hadn’t seemed concerned. Unfortunately, the stalker had been far more serious than either of the detectives anticipated.

Then one morning, on his way into the Psych office, Shawn had been attacked.

The stalker had come out of nowhere, swinging a baseball bat. With the first blow, Shawn’s left arm had been broken and four of his ribs fractured. The second blow had just missed as Shawn staggered away from him, stunned, and the third had clipped him in the head before shattering the front window. Gus had burst out of the office at that point, Shawn dropping at his feet, and before he could even process what had just happened, the stalker had vanished.

Shawn had been rushed to the hospital and Gus had called Lassiter, finally allowing himself to freak out a little bit since Shawn had disappeared into the bowels of the E.R. After that, for him it had been a blur of telephone calls, police officers, and doctors. Things had briefly slowed down when Henry arrived, as he took charge, obviously shaken despite his attempts to appear otherwise.

Realization had set in for Juliet the moment Lassiter said the words "Spencer" and "assaulted". Shawn had been hurt because she hadn’t done anything about the notes and now he was in the hospital. The very idea made her feel sick.

She and Lassiter had arrived at the hospital minutes after Gus’ call and Lassiter had immediately gone into detective mode, checking first to find out Shawn’s status before leaving to go to the crime scene. He left her behind to wait for Shawn to become available, oblivious to her distress.

Sixteen stitches, four neurological tests, and a bright red cast later, Shawn was finally starting to come around again. By the time the doctor had set him up in a room, Lassiter had returned and Karen arrived just in time to accompany the group up to see him and the pain medication had taken most of the edge off. Juliet lingered quietly at the back of the group as they walked in; Shawn looked terrible. The wound on his forehead was still slightly swollen and six of the stitches trailed down to point at the arch of his eyebrow, edged by a dark mottled red and purple bruise. On top of that, despite the pain medication and despite his attempts to hide them, small winces flickered across his face with every breath. The guilt and horror at what had happened to him because of his relationship with her was almost overwhelming.

And that was what found her lurking uncertainly at the back of the room, afraid to approach her own boyfriend. Lassiter, the first to run out of easy banter and the most uncomfortable in this particular situation, was the first to notice her hanging back. "O’Hara? What are you doing?" he asked and nodded toward the bed. "Shouldn’t you be fawning over Spencer about now?"

Juliet bit her lip and looked away. How could she face Shawn when she felt responsible for what had happened to him? "I…"

Lassiter’s eyes narrowed. "O’Hara, are you blaming yourself for this?" She tightened her arms around herself and that was all the answer he needed. "This is not your fault," he said sharply.

"I should have done something. I was getting those notes and they were getting more and more cryptic every time I got one. I should have done something about it!" she said. A brief burst of laughter from the bed quickly turned into a muffled cry and she winced. This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been involved with her.

"What? What could you have done? You had no idea who was sending the notes, and they never overtly threatened you or Spencer. There was nothing you could have done, O’Hara, you know that."

"I know, b—"

"No. There is no ‘but’. There was nothing you could do to stop this. Now go talk to your boyfriend or he’s going to think you couldn’t care less about him," he said gruffly.

She shook her head. "I don’t know… What if…what if it’s better that we’re not together? What if this happens again?"

"O’Hara, Spencer means everything to you, am I right?"

She swallowed. It was uncanny how he, of all people, noticed things like that, and that he could be so candid when talking about it. "Yes," she whispered.

"And I would bet my badge that the idiot would give his life for you without a second’s thought. So tell me, why exactly it is that you think ripping his heart into tiny little pieces would be the best thing to do for him?" he asked.

"I…it…"

"Mmhm. He’s running out of people to chat with, and if you’re not there to fill the gap when he reaches it, I’m pretty sure he’ll start acting up to compensate for his heart break, so please, spare us all the drama of trying to keep him in bed, and go talk to him, would you?"

Juliet nodded and said softly, "Thank you, Carlton."

"Just go."

She turned back toward the bed and Shawn’s eyes caught on her. "Jules!"

She smiled and moved forward to kiss her boyfriend.