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Shawn stood in front of the small crowd, his feet slipping ever so slightly on the sand as he bounced around from suspect to suspect, throwing his words in their faces with far too much joy considering the last week. They’d all been on edge, worried and stretched thin at a pair of teamed up murderers galavanting across Santa Barbara whacking families. All single parent households, one kid, suspected of mirroring their own home lives, a fact now proven by Shawn’s vague mentions of evidence provided by spirits.
“And you, Turney, are the worst!” Shawn crowed, making a wide circle around the woman whose hair was limp, still dripping seawater from her ill-advised attempt at escape. Buzz was also soaking wet, but he looked a lot less like a drowned rat. Gus, standing a few feet away, internally reasoned Buzz was too large to ever fit the picture of a simple rat. Rodent of unusual size, maybe, but he had a feeling he’d still look large in comparison.
“Spencer, can we get on with this?” Lassiter growled, still gripping the partner’s handcuffs as he held him in place.
“Sure thing, Lass-mass!” A pause, considering. “Not my best,” he conceded and then he turned the show back to eleven.
Shawn beamed, spinning back towards Turney from where he’d glanced at the head detective, “You’re the one who kidnapped the last parent. Crappy plan, by the way. Who takes a guy before he even leaves the dock? The boat was still there! If you’d at least taken it out a few miles we probably wouldn’t have even found you.”
Turney sneered, spitting her words at Shawn like she could spew enough heat to cause the sand beneath his feet to swallow him up before encasing him in a glass prison below the surface, “You’re lucky we didn’t get your father like we planned!”
Shawn’s grin didn’t falter, not to an untrained eye, at least. Gus could see it, the slight drop of his lips, the flash of fear across his eyes a dark shadow quickly tucked away. They’d all known what Turney and Sanger were looking for. They’d made it clear if Shawn and the SBPD kept their investigation going they’d pivot and go after their loved ones. Shawn was the only one on their team to fit the bill.
He’d been on edge all week and Henry, to no one’s surprise, had ignored the offer of protection and had continued on with his daily routine unencumbered by fear. Henry had been lucky. The only reason the twisted crew hadn’t gotten the drop on him was due to a pipe springing a not so small leak in his basement. It ruined his routine fishing trip, the one he refused to cancel despite the very near threats.
Gus still wasn’t sure if it was coincidence or Shawn’s doing. He’d ask later, once they found Mr. Remmer, the still missing father to the guy standing behind the barricade, his calls occasionally heard over the surf. For now, Gus was watching Shawn closely, a different sort of sinking feeling in his gut.
“Pretty sure you’re the lucky one on that front,” Shawn replied, all false cheer and airiness.
Lassiter broke in again, tired of the games and maybe sensing Shawn needed an out, “So tell us where Remmer is and maybe we’ll let you have a phone call to your lawyer before we throw away the key!”
“I’d rather die than give it up,” Turney hedged, ignoring Buzz’s slight tightening of his slippery hold on the perpetrator.
Shawn, opening his mouth, stepped forward. Gus could see it, the instant he had to reroute. Shawn raised his hand, ready to point down the shoreline towards the lifeguard tower they’d already scouted a few days prior. It had been a hideout of Turney and Sanger as kids, allowing them to feel more like siblings together than two neglected kids wasting their youth holed up in a shack on the beach to keep warm. Shawn was going to just say it, Gus knew, his big psychic presentation over and having already covered him in sand and a ribbon of seaweed that was still tangled on his foot.
Shawn was resourceful, though, and knew better than anyone how to make dime turns to protect his own secrets. His hand twitched slightly and he was quick to cry out, loud enough to drag all eyes up to his face. “Oh, Jules!”
“Shawn?” She asked, confused and tentative as she stepped towards him, eyebrows creasing like a cheap pillow. He’d already done his theatrics. This wasn’t the normal script.
Shawn’s arm spasmed, hard, and Gus saw the pull of his lips that denoted extreme pain and discomfort. Using this to his advantage, Shawn yelled out again, grabbing towards his shoulder like he was being forcibly thrown around. He sort of was.
“Shawn?” Juliet tried again, ignoring her partner’s annoyed sigh at the display.
“I can see it!” He cried out, arm jerking again, bending and straightening against his will, fist squeezing invisible items. “Jeremiah Remmer, I can see him!”
Juliet’s eyes widened, always so easily dragged into the chaos of psychic displays, ready to take any information Shawn gleaned and run with it. “Where is he, Shawn?”
Shawn’s arm continued and, likely to hide how unnatural and uncontrolled the motions were, he flailed with his other arm and dropped to his knees in the sand, spraying everyone’s legs with sediment. “I see white… a white picket fence!”
“Like their house?? Is he at home?” Juliet asked, glancing to Carlton who had an eyebrow raised, but hadn’t yet moved to grab his walkie to radio any black and whites. They’d done this song and dance enough.
“No!” Shawn moaned, arm swinging up on the next spasm, a gasp erupting. Gus felt an old, familiar nausea settle in his esophagus, tipping close to terror as he waited with bated breath to see if Shawn’s body was giving in. His vocal chords spasming wouldn’t be an immediate giveaway, but the continued traveling of the focal impairment, or partial complex seizure, would. One neck twitch or a few garbled words through spasming lips would be too much to explain away with ease.
Thankfully, it seemed contained and Shawn heaved a breath, eyes drifting to Gus for a brief moment. The silent message received: I’m okay. Gus nodded, imperceptible unless anyone was watching closely. No one was, eyes on Shawn’s preternatural display.
“White wood! Painted! I see… I see…” Shawn built, rolling through the slowing jerks of his left limb, “I see a life preserver!”
“The lifeguard tower!” Juliet called and after a quick nod from Shawn, his arm finally pointing in the direction of the recently rebuilt thing, she began to race down the beach with at least ten cops in tow.
Lassiter and Buzz turned to walk their prisoners to the cars, both now screaming in rage, their lividity at being caught and foiled now full force. Gus paid them no mind, picking his way across the hilly mounds of sand to his friend, crouching low.
“Shawn?” He asked, a million messages conveyed in a single word.
Shawn, head still down, huffed a slow breath. His left arm was pressed to his side, fingers curled around his knee loosely. “It’s fading, it’s okay.”
The reassurance did nothing for Gus who forced Shawn to look up, meeting his eyes with another sharp clap of his name.
His eyes were sincere, if tired and pinched, “I’m good. Seriously, Gus.”
Gus sighed, standing and grabbing Shawn by the good arm to haul him up as well, “I told you this case was too much.”
Shawn rolled his eyes, though it wasn’t as strong as normal, weakened watery coffee to his normal espresso emotions, “I saved the guy, didn’t I?”
Gus huffed, helping his friend to walk across the sand and back up towards the street, “You nearly just blew it, you know. They could have noticed.”
“Nah. They’re used to me flinging myself around,” Shawn argued as they ascended to regular concrete, slowly pulling away from his best friend to their normal distance. His legs were fine, after all, even if his left arm burned from hyperextending it and contracted muscles, still jittering in shaky twinges by his thigh.
“That’s the only reason you could’ve explained away that level of twitching. What if you didn’t know where Remmer was?”
“I did, though, Gus,” Shawn, exasperated, began heading away from the crime scene and towards the office. All he wanted was to dump the sand from his sneakers and drop on the couch for a couple dozen hours.
“Shawn, you can’t hide it forever! It’s bad enough you’re,” his voice dropped low, not caring they were out of earshot of most everyone from the precinct, “faking the psychic thing. You can’t hide this too.”
Shawn groaned, stopping to meet his friend’s eyes, “It’s barely an issue. They are way better than they used to be and it’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”
Gus gave him a pointed look and Shawn laughed a little.
“Bad choice of words, Worrywart, I know.” Shawn shrugged, turning back towards his destination, feet carrying him there on autopilot. “Seriously, it’ll be fine. They only happen when I’m really stressed and I haven’t had a big one in ages. It’s stupid easy to cover the small ones.”
Gus muttered, voice thick with indignation, “Only because you have crippling ADHD and pretend to be possessed regularly.”
“Exactly!” Shawn cheered, as if any of their conversation was normal or sensible. “So, we’re all good! Even if anything… fishy were to happen, we’d be fine. No one would even question it!”
Gus keened in aggravation, both at Shawn’s disregard for the possibilities as well as the return of the terrible fish code Henry had tried to instill surrounding Shawn’s “episodes.” “Come on, son!”
Shawn laughed as he walked into their unlocked office, kicking his sandbags from his feet, the seaweed crumbling like confetti along with them. He tugged off his hoodie, balling it up and flopping down onto the couch. “Hey, you’re the one who said we needed a word for it.”
“Because you kept refusing to say seizures!” Gus argued, opening his desk drawer to grab out the mini vacuum as well as a takeout menu.
“They’re like.. barely seizures,” Shawn argued liquidly, hoodie now under his head on the arm of the couch like a pillow.
“Just because they’re not epileptic doesn’t mean they’re not seizures,” Gus replied automatically, aware they’d been having this exact argument since Shawn’s mom—and three ‘second’ opinions—diagnosed him at age of eleven.
“Sure they are,” Shawn mumbled, consonants drooping as they were weighed by exhaustion and sarcasm.
Gus only sighed.
Shawn, a glimmer of a smile on his face as he began to drift away, mumbled back, “Don’t forget my Al Pastor Tacos, extra pineapple,”
“You know I won’t,” Gus replied, already dialing the number on the landline.