Shawn, You're No George Clooney: Part II

[musicalluna]

Title: Shawn, You're No George Clooney: Part II
Fandom: Psych
Author: MusicalLuna
Rating: T
Characters/Pairings: Shawn, Gus
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Humor
Warnings:

SPOILER WARNING for High Top Fade Out as well as pretty much all of season four prior to that episode, just in case.

Set in the week following High Top Fade Out.

Complete: No
Summary: Shawn and Gus steal--pardon--borrow Henry's boat and soon discover the meager amount of boating experience between them just might land them at the bottom of the sea, sleeping with the fishes
A/N:

Disclaimer: Much as it pains me, I do not own Shawn or Gus, I only get to play with little dolls of them in the sandbox known as the internet. PLEASE DON'T PERSECUTE ME FOR LOVING THEM TOO MUCH.

Any thoughts of justifiable homicide fled from Gus mind the second he caught sight of one of the passengers on a yacht that had tailed them out of the harbor.

 

The woman now spreading a towel out on the foredeck of the yacht had skin literally the color of bronze; long, absurdly full, luxurious black hair that had Gus' fingers twitching as he imagined running them through it's silken length; and she had legs that stretched from here until at least early next week.

 

“Oh my god,” he murmured, shamelessly admiring her (definitely not gawking, or anything undignified like that).

 

“What?” Shawn said warily, but Gus was hardly paying him any attention anymore. “Is this one of those tricks so you can distract me and get close enough to give me a purple nurple?”

 

The woman on the yacht glanced over at them as she sat down and Gus smiled as wide as he could, waving a hand jauntily. “Hello!” he called.

 

She smiled and waved demurely back.

 

“Really, Gus? Again with the women? Even after everything that happened last week?” Out of the corner of his eye he could see the incredulous and slightly exasperated look on his best friend's face. He wondered vaguely if that was what he looked like when Shawn was doing something he had recently gotten flak for.

 

Gus ignored him, calling out across the water, “This is pretty nice weather, isn't it?”

 

“And people call me the womanizer. That is so messed up,” Shawn grumbled, shoulders hunching the way they always did when he didn't get his way.

 

Over his shoulder, Gus said, “That's because you seduce women, Shawn. I romance them.”

 

Shawn snorted. “Oh, you romance them, do you? Since when is finding a girl's downstairs little heart tattoo six hours after you've met her considered 'romancing'? Especially when you find it three times.”

 

“That was different, Shawn!” Gus said, his face getting hot. “You said you'd never mention that again!”

 

But Shawn had already latched onto that particular train of thought, his expression turning contemplative. “The only thing I'm not sure about is who seduced who.”

 

Gus glowered at him. “It was a mutual seduction.”

 

One of Shawn's eyebrows quirked. “Mutual seduction? So what, you like, saw each other in the bar and made a seduction deal? 'I'll be seduced by you if you'll be seduced by me'? You did go at it three times. Which is just wrong, by the way—”

 

“You're just jealous because you're lucky if you can make it to round two,” Gus retorted, lip curling slightly.

 

Shawn plowed on as though he hadn't heard him, which was one of his best tactics for avoiding information he didn't like. If he just kept haranguing about the things that got under Gus' skin, sooner or later Gus got too worked up to harass him back. “Was it a swapping thing? You, her, you? Or vice versa? It matters, because that means one of you got more seducing in. Or was it simultaneous seduction?” Even knowing exactly what he was doing didn't make it any easier to brush off. Gus' annoyance rose by about five notches when he broke out the voices. “'Oh, medium dark and sexy, you're so hot.' 'As a matter of fact, I am. You're not so bad yourself.'”

 

“I do not sound like that!”

 

Again, he was ignored. “'Oh, let me show you my naughty little heart tattoo',” Shawn breathed in a high-pitched voice. Then in his slightly more masculine Gus-voice: “'I like me some hearts'.”

 

He punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up, Shawn!” Even more embarrassing than Shawn's terrible impression of him was the fact that Shawn wasn't doing half bad on the dialogue. She had offered to show him her heart tattoo, and Gus had replied, “Well, I do like hearts.”

 

Not that Shawn would ever hear about that.

 

This time Shawn did stop talking, but he traded the voices in favor of french kissing obscenely with the air in front of him.

 

Gus finally snapped and responded with the most articulate noise of aggravation he could manage. Then he shoved him. “You're a jerk!”

 

Shawn shoved back, nose thrusting upward. “Well, you smell like decomposing fish guts!”

 

Forcing himself bodily into Shawn's personal space, Gus made use of the quarter-inch he had on his best friend and snapped at him, “You make no sense and you're a liar!”

 

That did it. Shawn let go of the steering wheel, joining the fight in earnest. “You couldn't keep the man code if your life depended on it!” And then he used the move he'd accused Gus of being about to use just a few minutes ago.

 

“OW!” Gus covered both nipples with an arm protectively and then lashed out with his other hand, flicking Shawn's ear with neatly manicured nails.

 

“SON OF A BI—” Shawn broke off into furious hisses of incoherent pain while Gus watched on with just a little smugness. Unfortunately, his gloating lasted just a moment too long, giving Shawn the perfect opportunity to lunge at him and jab his pointy white boy fingers right between Gus' ninth and tenth ribs. He howled, but managed to land a flat-palmed smack on Shawn's left flank.

 

Shawn arched away from the impact with a girlish squeal and then grabbed for the sensitive flesh on Gus' upper arm, pinching and twisting, hard.

 

“SHAWN!” he bellowed.

 

They both collapsed, panting, to the deck.

 

Gus clutched at the spot on his arm (which was definitely going to bruise if it didn't turn into the mother of all blood blisters) glowering at his supposed best friend.

 

“Okay—okay,” Shawn gasped out, his hand hovering over the bright red flesh on his side. “I think we've made our points.”

 

“You mean you've made your point. No way this is over with you getting the last hit in!” He kicked out, nailing Shawn right in the center of his bony shin.

 

Shawn yelped, immediately forgot about his stinging side, and curled up, hands clutching around the wounded leg. That would bruise, Gus was certain of it.

 

“You cheated,” he whined, still writhing around on the deck.

 

“You asked for it,” Gus panted in reply. “Don't mess with me, Shawn.”

 

As they both lay there, the boat simply drifting aimlessly on the open water, their breathing returned to normal. Shawn spread out on his back, staring up at the billowy white and gray clouds overhead. Gus knew they should probably get back to actually driving the boat, but right now he was just too content to sit and watch the sky. After several minutes of peaceful silence, Shawn's head shifted to the side a little and he said, “What were we fighting about again?”

 

Gus shrugged and watched as one of the clouds shifted shapes, throwing a dark shadow over a large patch of steely blue water. “I don't know. Something stupid you did.”

 

Shawn's eyes rolled in his direction, but he didn't bother lifting his head. “Why is it always something stupid I did?

 

“Because I don't do stupid things unless you trick me into it,” Gus shot back.

 

A pause and then Shawn's lips pursed. “Touché.”

 

Another few moments of silence staring up at the sky and Gus asked, “So you really don't know where we're going? If we are actually going somewhere. Right now I'm not convinced you didn't just want to spend time with me.” He smirked. Shawn never made it easy to judge; he was just as likely to trick him into picking up a new case as he was to drag him off just for the fun of it.

 

“See! And you doubted my sincerity.” Shawn pushed his elbows back, half sitting up with them bent beneath his shoulders. “A girl did die on the island. It may or may not be a case, but—” His hands spread open. “—a day on the water, just the two of us? It's a win-win situation.” He grinned crookedly.

 

Gus grinned back. He was even more likely to multitask. “So you do know where we're going.”

 

Shawn rolled his eyes. “I found out the girl was dead from a newspaper article, Gus. Of course I know where we're going.” He pushed to his feet and went back to the wheel, favoring the leg with the bruised shin just slightly. Trying not to smirk outright, Gus followed, getting to his feet and moving to stand at Shawn's shoulder.

 

“So where are we going?” he said.

 

“Isla Nublar.”

 

“Shawn.”

 

He sighed theatrically. That was pretty much the only way Shawn ever sighed. “Santa Cruz.”

 

Gus peered over his shoulder at the navigation equipment. He frowned. “Shawn. We're going west. The islands are south. Have you been paying attention to the nav system at all?”

 

Shawn's lips pushed outward, then tucked back in. He shook his head. “Nope.”

 

“This is why I won't let you have any fun,” Gus said, shaking his head in disgust.

 

“Because we're going the wrong direction?”

 

“No. Well, yeah. Basically.” They were on their way to Hawaii! Shawn was crazy enough to propose something like that, but he hoped he wasn't stupid enough to actually try it. Then again...

 

Shawn grinned. “But that's what you're here for, Captain Nemo. You're my pointer-in-the-right-directioner—”

 

“Okay,” Gus said, pointing a finger at him without bothering to look up from the equipment, “you can stop butchering the English language there. And you can turn this boat around.”

 

“Aye, aye cap'n,” Shawn said, throwing off a lazy salute. He brought the boat around again, Gus watching the equipment carefully to make sure they were really turning in the right direction. He wasn't really in the mood to go to Hawaii. A cold breeze washed in off the water and sent shivers up Gus' spine, his shoulders tensing. Beside him, Shawn shivered too, his arms pulling in closer to his body.

 

“I dunno what's up with this weird gray hazy thing the sky has got going on, but it needs to vamoose so we can get some sun,” Shawn said, aiming a distasteful look up at the nearly flat gray expanse overhead.

 

Gus made a noise of agreement, his eyes too directed skyward. He hadn't even noticed the sky going gray or the sun disappearing. Not that there had been that much sun in the first place, but still. Weird.

 

After getting them back on course again, Shawn reached for the red fleece pullover he'd brought along and tugged it over his head, asking, “So, aside from your bloodhound-like olfactory receptors, how is it you know that we were going in the wrong direction?”

 

Arching an eyebrow, Gus said, “Seriously? Shawn, this entire section of the panel here is dedicated to the navigation equipment.” He waved at said panel, complete with large GPS screen.

 

Shawn continued to look nonplussed. “So?” His fingers waggled at the device. “I don't know what any of that stuff is supposed to mean.”

 

Gus huffed and wondered, not for the first time, how Shawn could be such an idiot when he was so smart. “It's not rocket science, Shawn. They make equipment like this intuitive because the entire point of it is to try and help amateurs keep from getting lost at sea. The people who actually know what they're doing don't need GPS equipment like this.”

 

There was an extended pause and then: “It still doesn't make any sense to me, dude. All of these little squiggly lines...”

 

Gus stared at him, deadpan. “You mean the writing?”

 

“Lat 34.369228, Lon –119.846764 is not English, Gus and you know as well as I do that I'm not good with languages. Or numbers.”

 

Gus rolled his eyes. “It's our latitude and longitude, Shawn. It tells us where we are. Like this little dot shows us. Even you can read pictures.”

 

Shawn shook his head. “Whatever you say. I'm hurt; you trust me so little that you actually wasted your time learning all of this stuff on the off-chance that I might drag you out on a boat again?”

 

Looking up from the GPS panel, Gus stared at him. “What do you mean wasted? Where are we right now? We might actually get to the islands thanks to me. If I hadn't learned how to do it we'd wind up stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on our way to Greenland.”

 

Shawn made a face. “'The North Pole' would have been more effective. But it was a good effort to try and shake it up a little.”

 

Gus grimaced and half-shrugged. “Half-assing the exaggeration ruins the sense of drama, doesn't it?”

 

“Just a little bit,” Shawn said with a small nod. “Weird how that works. Greenland is probably more difficult to get to but the North Pole sounds better. Go figure.” He glanced around at the choppy waves stretching all around them and said, “So, Great Navigator, are we heading in the right direction?”

 

Giving the equipment a good once over, Gus nodded. “Yep. We're finally on our way.”

 

“Sweet. I'm thinking it's time to break open the picnic basket, Boo Boo.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously.

 

“You know that's right.”

 

They bumped fists and Gus took the wheel as Shawn went to retrieve a few of the refreshments he'd packed into the basket. Peering out the windscreen, Gus was surprised to see that the horizon to their right wasn't a flat gray like the rest of the sky. Thick puffs of gray and darker gray clouds were built up over it, making the line of water in the distance look nearly black. Those were definitely rainclouds.

 

They were also miles away.

 

Shawn returned, brandishing a huge sandwich at him. “Even Shaggy and Scoob couldn't make sandwiches this awesome.”

 

“Mm,” Gus said, eyeing it hungrily. “No, they couldn't.” He opened his mouth to take the first bite and a gust of wind whipped around the corner of the helm, sending a chill prickling down the back of his neck.

Part I   Part II   Part III   Part IV   Part V   Part VI