To See What I Can See

[musicalluna]

Title: To See What I Can See
Fandom: Psych
Author: MusicalLuna
Rating: T
Characters/Pairings: Shawn, Lassiter, Juliet, Shawn/Juliet
Genre: Fluff
Warnings: None
Complete: Yes
Summary: Shawn still gets that feeling when he thinks about that night so many years ago on the pier.
A/N: The end of a dry spell.
Disclaimer: I don't own anybody.

 

Sometimes when Psych is between cases and Gus is busy at his other job (they stopped calling it his real job eight or nine months ago because, really. Who would they be kidding?), Shawn goes down to the station.

 

He doesn't go there to talk to Karen though.

 

He doesn't go to talk to anyone, actually.

 

It's usually early in the morning—just after eight, when the night shift has just headed home and the day shift is just getting their coffee—because he knows no one really expects to see him before noon. It's a lot easier to sneak around even if people just subconsciously don't expect you to be there and he gives off that “late riser” vibe like flashing neon.

 

So he goes early in the morning. Sometimes he even wears one of Gus' blazers and a tie because he knows he's pretty average-looking (at least out of the corner of an eye) and, again, subverting expectations works ridiculously well, even on trained professionals. It's worked for him so far. He's gone “undercover” at the station almost a dozen times now and only had someone really look at him once.

 

Funny enough, it had been Buzz who had caught him slinking around, and while flipping through a file as they passed one another in the hall to boot. Just a flicker of the eyes in his direction and then, “Hey, Shawn. It's good to see you.”

 

It had caught Shawn off-guard. “Uhh, yeah, hey, Buzz. How are you?”

 

“Great,” he had replied and looked up with a genuine smile. “You look good in that jacket. The pinstripes—” He made an up and down gesture with his hand that Shawn had no idea how to interpret and then smiled again. “Well, I gotta get going. Have a nice day!”

 

Dumbfounded, Shawn had stood in the center of the hallway staring until Buzz was out of sight. Then he had slipped back into stealth-mode, marveling at how he could still be surprised.

 

Juliet and Lassiter still have yet to even glance in his direction, which is what really matters, since they're the ones he watches.

 

Although to be totally honest, he's only watching Lassiter because the two of them are inextricably linked. Lassiter and Jules, that is.

 

He likes to see Juliet as she is when he's not, well, around. He knows that just the knowledge of his presence changes Juliet's behavior in little ways—not because he's special (although he certainly likes to think he is), but because that's just how people are. Different relationships cause different facets of one's personality to show and Shawn wants to know the Juliet that doesn't have a miniature-him nudging her in the cerebellum.

 

And he kind of just wants to see how she and Lassiter interact.

 

When he first starts observing them (not spying on them) he gets jealous. At one point he gets so jealous that he nearly blows the whole thing. Because when he and Gus aren't around, Juliet and Lassiter are kind of chummy. In the laugh-over-private-jokes and finish-each-other's-sentences and have-a-special-take-out-place kind of way. Shawn had always imagined Juliet being weary and put-upon by her irascible partner, always apologizing in his wake and being chronically burdened by his neuroses, but instead they share some of those neuroses (like the freaky police-code lightning rounds when one of them blurts out a code and the other counters and then they go back and forth like that, all worked up like they're verbally sparring and—God, it's just so lame). She also spends a lot of time giving him these starry-eyed looks that just give Shawn the creeps because the only way he knows how to describe the look is World's Biggest Fan. Juliet not only isn't long-suffering because of her partner, she enjoys it. Loves it even! She idolizes him!

 

Lassiter!

 

And so, at first, he's disturbed. Wildly jealous and he takes it out on Lassiter without even realizing it, until Gus asks him off-handed one day why he's acting like such a huge dick toward Lassiter lately, since he's pretty much just being the same old Lassie. Shawn can't answer him because he doesn't realize until later that the jealousy he thought he had been controlling so well had really just been using him like a Muppet.

 

He had followed that realization up with several stealth visits to the station in a row, telling himself that exposure would dull his reaction.

 

It had worked, just not for the reasons he expected.

 

Seeing Lassiter and Juliet together and seeing how they worked together just ate at his stomach for the first three or four days. He hated that Lassiter had all of these inside jokes and wordless exchanges and just that he knew Juliet so much better than Shawn did. Lassiter was—well, he was Lassiter. But when Shawn was finally so sick of their little moments of camaraderie that he made himself focus on the other parts of their relationship, he started to see Lassiter through Juliet's eyes.

 

And, grudgingly, he had come to realize that their relationship was based on her admiration and respect and while it still gnawed at the pit of his stomach when she nearly fell out of her chair laughing at something Lassiter had said, Shawn couldn't resent him for it.

 

When he and Juliet started dating it got even easier because then it didn't seem like Lassiter was the one who knew all her secrets and all of her little idiosyncrasies. Now his stealth visits are almost entirely gut-gnawing free. He just enjoys watching Juliet be so spectacularly herself. And, though he'd never admit it to anyone, he likes seeing the respect Juliet gets from Lassiter, even if it's sometimes hard-won.

 

He'd gotten chills watching her interrogate a suspect to confession with Lassiter just standing back in the corner of the room, watching with this look on his face—he was trying so damn hard to play it cool, but his pride just couldn't be stifled.

 

Shawn had come to this point where he understood that Juliet and Lassiter had a special kind of partnership, but he hadn't really realized that it went two ways, that Lassiter needed and respected Juliet. Even when he was showboating and talking to her like she was fourteen, when it really came back down to it, Lassiter counted on Juliet.

 

He thinks Lassiter's not half-bad, now. He'd never say as much, and it'll be a cold day in hell before Lassiter returns the sentiment, but Shawn's okay with that. They're different people. Lassiter is uptight and a little bit out of his mind, and Shawn, well, Shawn bugs the hell out of him.

 

But Juliet respects him. Likes him even. And that's all Shawn needs to know.