Author: Regency

Title: Trigger-Finger Safety

Fandom: Psych

Pairing: Shawn/Lassie

Spoilers: None.

Rating: G

Word count: 641

Summary: Lassie watches over an injured Shawn and has mixed feelings about it.

Author’s Notes: Written for the comment_fic prompt Psych, Shawn/Lassie, hurt/comfort with awkwardly!nurturing Lassiter. Frankly, not as awkwardly!nurturing as he could have been actually. Damn.

AN II: You know the drill. All the constructive criticism you can lob.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Psych. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me.  No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

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He's breathing funny, Carlton thought askance of the figure curled up on his couch for reasons beyond explaining.

Spencer had his arms tucked around him, pressed delicately and protectively against his cracked ribs. He'd been drugged out of his mind since early morning when Gus had dropped him off at Lassiter's with a list of care and feeding instructions that made gerbils seem low-maintenance.  Carlton still wasn't sure why he hadn't protested, why he hadn't--at gunpoint, if necessary--demanded that Guster take his trouble-making best pal back to their lair and out of his hair.

                I guess it just didn’t occur to me. He frowned, then scowled at the man he grudgingly cared for.  If there was anything Shawn Spencer did well, it was attract danger.  It wasn’t only that, but he also seemed to wear a sign on his back with an arrow pointing to whomever he was with that said, “Pummel, assault, shoot, or what have you—here.”  Carlton couldn’t decide if he was more annoyed at how many people seemed to want Spencer dead on any given day or at how often it was that the one their enemies targeted was rarely the one hit.

                You can’t put people in danger, Spencer.  One day, someone’s going to die because you can’t take things seriously. He’d said it not too long ago and he still believed it.  There’d come a time when his mumbo jumbo wouldn’t be enough, and it would be on a day when it really counted.  Carlton didn’t think he’d be able to look Spencer in the eye again if he had blood on his hands.  That was all that kept this relationship going—that he didn’t.  He sometimes wondered if that would always be enough.

                He sometimes wondered if a day wouldn’t come when someone else wasn’t the only person that Spencer got killed.  Carlton wasn’t worried about dying himself. He had his gun, his gut, and his brawn. He’d either survive or it was simply time for him to meet the David to his Goliath. Spencer had only one of those and few others at the Santa Barbara PD had even that much. Especially not my top score at the firing range, he boasted to himself.  He crossed his arms, satisfied, as he stood unwitting guard over his resident downed psychic.

                Without him, Spencer didn’t stand much of a chance against an eighth of the bad guys they ran into on a weekly basis.  He sighed, admitting to himself that without Spencer they wouldn’t have come close to most of those same bad guys.  Spencer was a danger because he was good.  He was also a danger because, in spite of what he might insinuate, he couldn’t predict everything.  Chances were that the one thing he wouldn’t be able to predict would be the very thing that could have saved his life.

                It was that notion that kept Carlton on his feet while the other man slept.  Even in his home, he hesitated to rest.  He couldn’t see the future and he couldn’t see through walls.  He only had his human eyes and his well-honed trigger finger.  That was all that had ever stood between him and the end of his life in the field.  Today, it was the very thing that would keep Shawn safe as he recovered from being too stupid and too heroic to live.

                Carlton rolled his eyes as the throw blanket Spencer had commandeered slipped to the floor.  He picked it up and re-covered the slumbering “psychic detective.”  He wasn’t sure he believed in the magic, but he believed in the intent behind it.  Shawn sought justice as he did, if for other reasons.  The least he could do was keep him alive.

                “Just for today,” he groused aloud, but tucked the afghan around him just the same.