Chapter Text
Shawn’s furtive movements had every hair on the back of Lassiter’s neck standing at attention. Finally, after a week of tailing him, something was happening. The way Shawn had turned down O’Hara’s invitation to lunch with her and Guster, the way he’d hurried away from the station, and the way he looked over his shoulder as he slipped into the alley were all setting off Lassiter’s alarm bells.
Any way you cut it, he thought, Spencer was up to something. And if it had anything to do with how he was getting the inside information that enabled him to pull off this psychic detective crap, Lassiter wanted to know about it.
He’d trailed Shawn easily across town as he weaved in and out of traffic on his motorcycle, and now, as disappeared behind a nondescript door, there was a definite clandestine air about him. Lassiter’s pulse was racing and he felt the thrill that preceded victory. All the time he’d wasted watching Spencer rent movies and get take-out was finally going to pay off.
He waited a few moments and then slipped down the alley himself, stopping at the door. The windowless brick building had no markers, apart from a sign by the door that read 1976. Lassiter didn’t know if that was a name or a street address. He paused only a moment in the light from the bare bulb overhead before he, too, stepped inside.
The claustrophobic hall ended at a booth with a plexiglass window, like a low-rent cheque-cashing storefront. The only visible signage indicated that you had to be 21 years or older to enter, and that rooms cost $15 while lockers cost $5. The clerk behind the window, a tall thin man in his thirties with tattoos down both arms, lowered the book he was reading, looked at Lassiter appraisingly and then asked “room or locker?”
Lassiter considered flashing his badge to avoid paying cover, but hesitated. He didn’t want to risk tipping Shawn off. He pulled a bill from his wallet and passed it through the small half moon cut in the bottom of the plexiglass.
“Locker.” What is this place? He wondered. Some kind of rooming house, maybe?
The man passed over a key on an elastic band, which Lassiter looped around his wrist, and then a buzzer sounded and a door to his right opened, allowing him entry. On the other side, the clerk handed him a rough white towel, and turned back to his book.
The interior was dim, illuminated by black light, neon, and the occasional string of Christmas lights. He could smell cologne, sweat, chlorine, and something familiar that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The music was loud, like a club. Yet behind it, all around him, he heard the sounds of men’s voices lowered in murmured conversation, and beyond that, the sounds of a scuffle somewhere. He could make out some men drinking at a bar in the lobby, dead ahead. After days of surveillance he knew Shawn’s outline and body movements intimately, and these men, though the right age, weren’t him. He moved further into the building and tried to quash his growing sense of unease.
Spencer was definitely up to something here, he thought gleefully. And if he wanted to hide it from O’Hara and Guster then it was probably exactly what he’d been waiting for. Spencer has to have a source of information inside the department, he figured. Maybe someone in records. And now he’s meeting them here.
He put a hand to the wall and felt his way along a corridor past a series of numbered doors, turned a corner, past some lockers, and down another corridor. The building was overheated, and he started to sweat under his jacket. The place was a maze and he was already losing his sense of direction. Under the music he could hear the grunts of men working out. A heavy man wearing nothing buy a towel passed, and Lassiter was struck by the inviting look the stranger gave him. I must be in a gym, he thought. But what kind of gym has a bar in it?
Then, as he passed a partially open door everything suddenly became alarmingly clear. He hadn’t seen much—just a glimpse, really—but it had been enough. Men were having sex. Suddenly the lack of women in the lobby made sense. He stepped back, almost stumbling, as the pounding in his head seemed to sync with the beat of the bass, disorienting him. He leaned against the wall, and tried to clear his mind.
Maybe, he thought, still clinging to his original theory, Spencer is meeting his contact here. He probably thinks I’d never follow him into a place like this. And if he were honest then he had to admit that he probably wouldn’t have, if he’d known.
He felt a hand on his arm, and it took all his willpower not to pull his gun.
The room was smaller than his college dorm, but made from a similar mold: a single bed attached to the wall with a thin mattress and a stark white fitted sheet that almost glowed in the darkness. He could make out a small bedside table and a full size locker. He sat on the mattress, glad for the support, and leaned against the wall. He turned his head as his peripheral vision caught movement and saw his own face, pale and wide-eyed, staring back at him. The wall behind him was entirely mirrored. His dorm room hadn’t had anything like that.
Shawn stood with his back to the door, blocking the exit, but Lassiter didn’t feel threatened or trapped. If anything, he felt relieved to see a familiar face. Shawn was wearing nothing but a pair of light grey boxer briefs. He had his arms crossed loosely, and one bare foot rested casually against the door. He was clearly waiting for an explanation.
“What the hell?” Shawn’s voice felt strangely reassuring. “You were following me?” Despite the intonation, Lassiter knew it was a statement more than a question.
“Maybe.” He certainly didn’t have any other excuse on hand to explain his presence in what he now realized was a gay bathhouse.
Lassiter leaned forward, rested his arms on his legs, and looked at a spot on the floor. He tried not to think about what must be going on around them, despite the sounds that carried through the thin walls and over the thumping bass. In dozens of tiny rooms, exactly like this one, men were touching one another in the most intimate ways possible, gratifying their lusts in the dark with strangers. The more he imagined it the more filthy it seemed, even if it did have an alluring and easy logic to it.
“Why were you following me?”
Lassiter laced his fingers together and leaned his forehead into them, shielding his eyes from Shawn’s near naked body. At least now he knew why the place was so overheated.
“You were…behaving suspiciously.” He cleared his throat. “The way you ditched O’Hara and Guster.”
“Did it occur to you that maybe I didn’t want them to know where I was going?”
Lassiter could believe that. He could only imagine what O’Hara and Guster would think of a place like this. O’Hara’s idea of two men together was shaped by television shows like Will & Grace. In her world gay men wore suits, had perfect hair and teeth, and walked around being sweet and witty. Men meeting furtively in dark room, exchanging anything but names, wouldn’t even occur to her. And Guster would be repulsed by the hygiene issues alone. Lassiter, on the other hand, understood the gnawing loneliness that drove someone to risk their reputation, and other things too, for the comfort of human contact, however fleeting.
“I’m sorry.” The words were hard to get out, but he meant them. Whatever need had driven Spencer here, he had no intention of judging him. The whole thing hit too close to home.
Shawn sighed. “So what, you thought I was meeting my contact? Exchanging money for police secrets and tips on psychic detection?”
“Something like that,” Lassiter admitted. He noticed a bowl on the bedside table, holding an assortment of condoms and tubes of lubricant like little ketchup packages. This was miles from what he’d expected to find Spencer doing. He wondered how often he came to places like this, how far he went and with whom.
Shawn smiled, his features fully visible now that Lassiter’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom. “So you came here to expose me,” Shawn said. He moved a hand slowly across his chest and then deliberately down his stomach, stopping at the waistband of his briefs. Lassiter realized he’d been staring and looked at the floor again.
“Your secret’s safe with me, Spencer.” He stood, and set his jaw, trying to look more self-assured than he felt. “Unless you’re breaking the law, I’m not interested.” He took a step forward, expecting Shawn to move aside, but he held his ground, fixing him with a stare from those bewitching green eyes.
“Sure about that?”
Lassiter tried to look anywhere but into Shawn’s eyes and found himself staring at the bulge curving against the front of his briefs, distending the grey jersey.
Oh God, he thought. He’s hard.
Lassiter ran a hand down his mouth and chin, and inhaled though his nose, trying to clear his mind of the fantasy it was unfolding, but instead got a head full of the musky odour of sweat and sex that permeated the small room. He placed his right palm on the door by Shawn’s head. If Shawn had stepped aside, he would have opened the door and left, striding through the hallways for the nearest exit. But Shawn didn’t move. And apart from an apprehensive glance at Lassiter’s shoulder holster, he didn’t look away.
Instead he reached out and took Lassiter’s left hand in both of his, stroking the skin lightly, his fingers rough and warm. Then, slowly, he pulled the hand forward until it was pressed heavily over the bulge in Shawn’s briefs. Lassiter could feel the heat radiating through the cloth and into his fingers, and the hard outline of the swollen muscle. He moved his thumb across the swell of the head and a thick wetness darkened the fabric and slicked his fingertips. Shawn stood there with his back to the door, his mouth slightly open, and his head tilted expectantly, daring him to take the risk. He squeezed it tentatively and the groan that escaped Shawn’s lips left him half hard. Yet while he might share the same needs, maybe even the same desires as Shawn, he had much more to risk.
As if reading his mind Shawn leaned forward and spoke, his voice low and smoky, “what happens in the bathhouse, stays in the bathhouse.”
It was the assurance that some part of him had been waiting for. He felt his self-control sinking under the tide of lust he’d been suppressing for the past two years. Almost before he’d decided to, he slipped his fingers past the tight elastic of Shawn’s briefs, wrapping his hand around his erection. Shawn grabbed Lassiter’s belt, and ran his other hand up the back of his head, pulling him down, toward his eager mouth.
Shawn must have had a drink at the bar, because he tasted like rum and coke. Even more than his hand in Shawn’s underwear, this kiss felt illicit. Perhaps part of the wrongness he felt lay in the fact that it didn’t feel as strange as he thought it should. Apart from the rough stubble of his jaw, kissing Shawn was like any other kiss—soft, wet, and arousing. Promising. Yet he had no idea what the sex it was promising might entail. A score of half-remembered homophobic jokes poured though his mind. He tightened his grip in Shawn’s briefs, and jerked his hand more franticly.
At least I know how to do this, he thought. Given how often he’d practiced on himself, he ought to. Shawn gasped and clamped a hand over Lassiter’s own, stilling his movement.
“If you keep that up you’ll miss the main event.”
“Main event.” Lassiter felt a shiver up his spine, half excitement half fear.
“It’s why I came here.” He loosened Lassiter’s tie, and pulled his dress shirt free of his trousers.
“Right.” Lassiter swallowed, let go of the hot flesh in his fist and reluctantly pulled his hand free. He’d almost forgotten that he’d interrupted a plan already in progress. He removed his holster, badge, and wallet, setting them on a high shelf inside. What kind of man Shawn would have waited for if I hadn’t come along, he wondered as he removed his dress shirt. Does Spencer have a type, or would any man do?
Shawn carded his fingers through Lassiter’s chest hair. “I love this whole Mark Ruffalo thing you’ve got going on here.” He leaned in and rubbed his cheeks across Lassiter’s pectorals, inhaling his scent.
“Thanks,” Lassiter said. In all the times Spencer had commented on the ‘sternum bush’ it had never once occurred to him that he’d wanted to bury his face in it.
Shawn motioned to the bed and Lassiter sat next to him, suddenly feeling like an awkward virgin.
It’s not too late, he reminded himself. You can still back out if you want to. He glanced at the door, uncertain whether he was making sure it was locked or considering bolting through it.
“I’m not sure that I can,” he hesitated, afraid to hear his anxieties made more real than they already felt. He shifted his posture on the bed to face Shawn and began again. “That is, I don’t know what you were expecting.”
“Well I wasn’t expecting those!” Shawn looked down at Lassiter’s sock garters, visible where his trouser legs had hitched up, and unsuccessfully tried to suppress a grin.
“What?” Lassiter said defensively. “They keep my socks up.” Then, in response to a raised eyebrow from Shawn he added, “Nothing else needs help. Trust me.”
“Oh, that much I can make out from here. Although maybe I should make a closer inspection.” Shawn kneeled on the floor in front of him. Lassiter felt his pulse quicken as Shawn unbuckled his belt and undid his trousers, pulling the zipper wide and sliding his hand past the elastic of his boxers.
Lassiter’s breath deepened as Shawn enveloped him in the hot wetness of his mouth. He felt a rush at the pressure and movement of his tongue, and at the sight of the psychic’s bobbing head. He ran his hand along Shawn’s jaw, feeling his stubble bristle under his fingers, then gripped a fistful of Shawn’s hair and tentatively pulled him forward. Shawn obliged, and Lassiter buried himself in his throat. Shawn made three or four deep plunges and Lassiter groaned and let his head fall back, feeling at once grateful and smug. After all the teasing, all the joking and all the innuendo, he had finally found a way to shut him up. That it should take a cock in his mouth seemed somehow fitting. He relaxed his grip and Shawn rocked back on his heels, gasping. Lassiter noted that Shawn was still hard, the wetness on the front of his brief now a dark circle.
“You’re lucky I was a semifinalist in the Santa Barbara annual hotdog eating contest,” Shawn said, “otherwise I might have taken that personally.” He pulled off his briefs, his nakedness echoed by his reflection. He reached into the bowl on the bedside table and tossed Lassiter a condom.
Lassiter caught it in his left hand and the tension in his jaw unwound a little. This answered one of his questions as to what his role was expected to be. He felt relieved and immediately wondered if that said something bad about him. But as attractive as he found Shawn, there were some lines he couldn’t see himself crossing. Shawn clearly didn't have those inhibitions.
If it hadn't been for Shawn's insistent hands, Lassiter wasn't sure he'd have had the nerve to completely remove his pants, but a few moments of fumbling and they were both naked on the thin mattress, which despite its location, did not feel as if it had been designed to accommodate two people.
Not side by side anyway, he thought. Lassiter sat up on his knees and frowned.
“Losing your nerve?” Shawn asked between kisses on the detective’s neck. “I promise, I’m not a giant preying mantis that devours teenage virgins, and there’s no serial killer hiding in the locker waiting to murder us for being slutty co-eds.”
Lassiter climbed over top of Shawn. “The bed’s too small,” he complained. “It’s like trying to make out in a Mazda Miata.”
“I was thinking the most awkward game of sardines ever,” Shawn said as he wrapped his legs around Lassiter’s waist. “Okay Lassie. Rock me like a hurricane.”
As he kneeled between Shawn’s legs he told himself that the fear and vulnerability he read on Shawn’s face was just a trick of the light. After all, given where they were, how innocent could he be?
“Are you sure about this?” he whispered, realizing the question applied to himself as much as to Shawn.
“As sure as I am that every episode of Children’s Hospital will be offensively funny.” When Lassiter’s forehead remained wrinkled, he added, “That’s a yes.”
Lassiter’s conscience tugged at him as he rolled on the condom and coated it with lube. He'd never done this to anyone before. To his mind, this was something only hookers and…men in places like this did. He told himself that he was only giving Spencer what he wanted, but tried not to think that it might be something he wanted too. Sure, he'd imagined doing this a few times before, as part of a scenario where he taught the fake psychic a lesson, and it usually involved Shawn making a tearful apology. It didn’t say anything about his masculinity, he hoped.
If it hadn't been me, he assured himself, it would have been any of these other men. Hell, for all he knew this was just a warm up, and Spencer would service half the guys in here before he left. Assuring himself that he wasn't taking anyone's innocence, he gripped the condom at the base and pushed forward. The entry was more difficult than he expected, and gripping Shawn's hip, he pushed harder, sliding suddenly past all resistance. Shawn hissed and his back arched. Lassiter's guilt fought with his defensiveness, until the guilt won.
“You okay?” he asked, his hips stilled.
Lassiter wondered if this were some kind of an act for his benefit. If so, Spencer had seriously misjudged his gullibility. Spencer had probably done this dozens, maybe hundreds of times, he supposed. The word cockslut came to mind.
Shawn spit into his hand and tugged at his flaccid cock until it was once again rigid in his fist.
“Okay,” he panted, his breath coming faster now, “We're good.”
Lassiter pumped into him, slowly at first, amazed at the grip of the muscles surrounding him, and then harder as pleasure overrode his anxiety. He watched Shawn jerk himself off, open-mouthed and gasping before him. Despite being aroused by the sight, he felt a slight revulsion at the idea that any man should like being used in this way.
Surely no normal man could take it in the ass like this and look that turned on, he thought.
The pace of their sex increased and Lassiter felt sweat slicking his back and trickling down his arms. He gripped Shawn’s shoulders and buried his head in the crook of his neck.
“Oh God, Lassie,” Shawn cried out, whether in pain or pleasure Lassiter wasn't sure until he saw the cum squirting across his chest. For a moment he was disgusted. A torrent of insults poured through his mind, and the hard and rough fucking he was giving Shawn suddenly seemed no better than he deserved. The thought was too much. Lassiter came, gritting his teeth and turning his head away from the mirror.
For several breathless moments he lay helpless, Shawn, beneath him, panting. When his muscles revived he gripped the base of the condom and pulled out, noticing Shawn wince as he did so. He peeled it off his rapidly softening cock and dropping it into the garbage can. He hated the idea of leaving his DNA behind, as if the room were a crime scene, but the alternative—taking it with him—was even more repulsive. Sweaty and exhausted he wiped himself down with the rough towel he'd been given and then leaned back against the cold surface of the mirrored wall. At least this way he didn't have to see the guilt on his face.
Lassiter grabbed his shorts and pants from the floor and began to pull them on. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette of this place was, but somehow he didn’t think it involved cuddling or invitations to dinner. He was eager to go home and take a shower. Maybe rinse himself with Dettol. Yet despite his itch to put as much space between himself and Shawn as humanly possible, there were some questions he wanted answered before they went back to their lives and never spoke of this again.
“I have your assurance—”
“—that I won’t spill this faster than an Exxon ship passing a bird sanctuary?” Shawn cut in. “You certainly do.”
“You do this often?” he asked, hoping that Shawn did. Maybe that way it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal.
Shawn smiled. “First time, actually. It's not as easy as it looks in pornos. It’s like trying to fit the entire Law and Order Collection into a case designed to hold Arrested Development.”
“Right.” Lassiter smiled mirthlessly and nodded his head in surrender. If Spencer wasn’t going to tell him the truth what was the point in even trying?
“But then you’d know that if you’d been following me longer,” Shawn said, looking down at the white sheet and toying with a wrinkle.
Lassiter, his hand on the doorknob, paused, turned, and raised an eyebrow. “You knew I was following you?”
“Duh! You were easier to spot than Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bruce Lee at a square dancing competition in Wisconsin. You: binoculars and a latte outside the Blockbuster on North Milpas, 2:45 pm. 3:20 pm, you again, binoculars and Burger King takeout, across the street from the Taco Bell where I was eating lunch. I know your whole following-me routine.” Shawn smiled. “It’s flattering, really. It got my hopes up. Why do you think I led you here?”
“Led me?” Lassiter’s mind refused to believe what he was hearing. If it were true, then Spencer hadn’t…wouldn’t have…. But he refused to let his mind go there. Spencer was lying, as usual. He had to be.
“I mean really, how else could I have gotten you into a place like this? It was too good a chance to pass up.”
Lassiter felt his face flush with anger and embarrassment. “Screw you, Spencer.”
“Not for a couple of days at least” Shawn said, wiping himself with a towel and grimacing as he did so.
Lassiter opened the door and strode angrily into the hall. He could feel his lunch rising sourly into his throat, and knew he had to get out of the building and somewhere he could clear his mind and think. Or avoid thinking.