Fic: Sleepless

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Sleepless
Chapters: 1/1
Author: csi_sanders1129
Genre: Drama. Romance.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 1,840
Pairings/Characters: Shawn Spencer/Carlton Lassiter.
Synopsis: In which Shawn has a sleepless night and Lassiter can help.
Comments: Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: insomnia. Note: established relationship, kind of ignores canonical events because I have no idea what’s happened in the last two seasons. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Shawn Spencer is exhausted.

He stifles a yawn as his eyes dart around the dark room. The clock on the nightstand reads 4:07 in its bright green numbers. There's a single red dot of light from the phone he has charging on the dresser (if it weren't at all of 6% battery life he would be entertaining himself with the latest Angry Birds levels). But it's the annoying flickering of the streetlight outside the window to his left that is really grating on his last I-notice-everything nerve.

He drums his fingers against his pineapple pajama-clad thigh, his foot bouncing sporadically against the hardwood floor.

"This is so boring," he sighs.

He stands, crosses the room and walks back and then crosses again and walks back again and again and again because even though he's exhausted and everything hurts, he seems to have a surplus of manic energy that's just begging to escape. The pacing speeds up slowly, until he's more jogging than walking and okay, what?

He checks his phone - only 8% now, no messages, screen still dim, clock reads 4:21 - and then forces himself to sit back down.

Shawn flops himself back down on the bed, landing face-first on his pillow. A sigh, and he's settling in when he hears the familiar sound of his neighbor's car (squeaky brakes, and something on the undercarriage is annoyingly loose), which wakes the other neighbor's unruly Rottweiler and spurs it into a barking fit. He rolls to his back, pulls his pillow over his head and contemplates whether or not he could accidentally smother himself were he to fall asleep like this. He's pretty sure he couldn't, not enough pressure, but the thought is enough to send his mind indexing through case files in case he's ever seen a case like that.

Finally, he decides that, no, he hasn't, but that only sends him to thinking about the case he and Gus wrapped up today - yesterday, now - and he doesn't really want to think about that.

So.

Out of bed again, and this time he makes it out into the hall. He can hear the sounds of the trash-truck as it makes its weekly rounds, slowly approaching the house with its stupidly annoying beep-beep-beep warning.

"This is ridiculous," Shawn grumbles, though it's hardly the first time his observant abilities have cost him a good night's sleep since his father honed him into this state of unendingly perceptive. He makes a hasty retreat to the living room, where his laptop, and the noise cancelling headphones Gus got him for Christmas, are calling his name. There are 18 episodes of Freaks & Geeks in his Netflix queue and he can watch at least half of them before his alarm goes off at 8:00 if he skips all the random bits of episodes he's already seen.

He makes it through two.

Not by the time his alarm goes off, but by the time some random thought ("I wonder if I can bulk order RingPops?") assaults him and makes him stop the video to spend thirty minutes comparing prices. This reminds him that he hasn't eaten anything since sometime yesterday morning and sends him wandering to the kitchen.

The clock on his seldom used oven reads 6:22.

He finds a bowl and spoon that are passably clean, finds milk that is passably drinkable in his fridge, and then locates the box of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms hidden behind all of the other sugary cereals (Count Chocula, Trix (not just for kids), and Cookie Crisp) that shield it. He takes one bite of the sugary deliciousness and wonders why the non-marshmallow pieces in Lucky Charms all look like cat food.

"Ooh," he hums to himself through a mouthful of cereal, as he realizes that his phone is probably done charging by now and that he can call Gus and ask him. He would totally know. And then he can get back to defeating the evil, green pigs that keep stealing eggs. He makes his way back to his bedroom and is surprised to see that he has seven missed calls.

"Someone was persistent," he says, hitting the call back button.

"Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

Shawn fake yawns into the phone, "How do you know I'm not? Maybe I was. Maybe I slept through your calls. All seven of them."

"I happen to know that sleeping through your obnoxious ringtones is a physical impossibility, Spencer. Even for you." A pause, a knock at the front door, and "also, I can see you."

"That's a good reason, then," Shawn admits, ending the call as he returns to the living room to open the door. Lassiter is standing there looking less than pleased. Shawn notes that he must've come straight from work (he was there all night dealing with the fallout from yesterday's case), given his wrinkled shirt and slacks, the loosened tie, the coffee stain on his jacket, and the fact that he looks just as exhausted as Shawn feels.

"You should be sleeping."

"I'm fine," Shawn stresses. Lassiter is almost as annoying as his dad. "It was nothing."

Lassiter rolls his eyes and invites himself in. "Getting drugged and kidnapped isn't something most people consider 'nothing,' you know."

Shawn loses himself in thought again. "I get calling it kidnapped when a kid is kidnapped, but why when adults are something-napped? Why not mannapped or womannapped? Dogs are dognapped, right? Not kidnapped. Why do they get their own subgroup?"

"Is it bad that I can't tell the difference between your normal rambling and concussion rambling?"

"I don't have a concussion, Lassie," Shawn assures him. "I have no symptoms of a concussion. I would know, because I did have one after Drimmer bashed me over the head with his gun and this is nothing like that. In fact, this is like an anti-concussion because concussions make you sleepy and unfocused and I'm wide awake and totally aware."

"No," Lassiter says, "those aren't symptoms of a concussion. But they could be symptoms of PTSD," because unlike Shawn, he was listening when they were at the ER yesterday and now he's even more worried than he was when Shawn wouldn't answer his cell phone.

Shawn frowns. It's not like he can tell Lassiter that he's dealt with sleepless nights and hyperawareness all his life (because even though they're kind of together, he's still got the fake psychic thing going on and that's not a secret he wants blown), that it's not because of yesterday. He wasn't any more alert than usual - he picked up on the same things he always does. Squeaky brakes, barking dogs, loud trash-trucks - all things even a less perceptive person would pick up on were they awake to hear them. Nothing special.

"Lassie," Shawn says, determined to get this idea out of the detective's mind before he can take the idea and run with it. "I'm fine. What happened yesterday was in no way fun, entertaining, enjoyable, or any other good adjective ever - getting chloroformed and thrown into the back of a car and beaten up because the bad guys mistakenly think that doing that will prevent the police from investigating them is definitely less fun than a barrelful of monkeys," absently, he wonders who would find that fun, "but it wasn't that bad. I just couldn't get to sleep. That's all."

Lassiter still looks skeptical, so Shawn opts for distraction.

He closes the space between them, which wasn't much to begin with, (Shawn always seems to gravitate into Lassiter's personal space without even meaning to do it) and kisses him. Lassiter drops the jacket he's had tucked under his arm and his hands come up to frame Shawn's face (careful of the bruise marking the not-concussion just off his temple) as he returns the kiss.

"Later," Lassiter's voice cuts into Shawn's plans. He'd already pulled one all-nighter on this case before Shawn had disappeared outside of the police station yesterday morning and he hasn't stopped since. Subsisting on coffee and adrenaline had kept him going until the criminals had been caught and all the paperwork had been finished. His worry over Shawn got him here in one piece, but now that he knows that he is debatably okay, exhaustion is battling for victory over his desire to assure himself that Shawn is here and alive and mostly fine after the stressful kidnapping incident.

"Okay," Shawn says, his voice light and relaxed as he pulls at Lassiter's loosened tie, tossing it over a nearby chair and then working at buttons on his shirt. He pulls Lassiter in for another kiss and walks them back down the hallway like that, pushing the shirt off of the other man's shoulders and letting it hit the floor somewhere along the way. "Just helping," he says.

Lassiter laughs at him. "I can see that." But there are hands on his belt and maybe his resolve to sleep now and do this later breaks a little bit. "Come on," he says, pulling at the old t-shirt Shawn's wearing, letting a hand slide under the worn fabric.

Shawn grins against his neck as they stumble into his room. Lassiter stops him long enough to peel the old shirt off of him before pushing him down onto the bed. Shawn watches as Lassiter strips himself of the rest of his clothes before climbing over him.

"You sure?" Lassiter asks him, as if he weren't the one to start this.

He answers with a kiss, lifting his hips to press against Lassiter's, earns a guttural, "Shawn," for his troubles (which is a victory in and of itself because Lassiter hardly ever calls him by his first name), when the detective grinds back down against him.

And then there's a hand shoving past his pineapple covered pajamas and curling around him and he's quick to mirror the move, too. They both move with practiced ease because they've kind of done this a lot in the months since they first started this weird thing together. And it doesn't last long this time, they're both too tired and too relieved that this chaos is over for it to last long, but when it's over Shawn's eyelids feel heavy in a way they wouldn't last night and Lassiter looks just as close to the edge of sleep as he is when he rolls to his side beside Shawn.

"Sleep now," Lassiter insists, once they've kind of cleaned themselves up. An arm curls loosely over Shawn's chest, pulling him in closer. Blankets get pulled up and around them both, and they settle in for some much needed rest.

Shawn lies there and relaxes into Lassiter's hold until the noises outside - birds chirping in the early morning (clock reads 7:02) sunshine, school bus driving by to pick up the twin boys who live down the street and the trio of kids who live across the road, unruly Rottweiler barking at school bus - don't register anymore and everything fades to quiet darkness.