Work Text:
"Come on, that's not right and you know it! I just can't see it when I play it out in my head."
"Gus, play it back in your brain, I know we saw the same thing."
"I just don't see it playing out that way, there's something more here."
It's years of these comments before Gus finally asks, "Okay, what do you mean by that?"
"Hmm?" Shawn looks up from his laptop. "What, the camera grain thing? I told you they swapped to digital on season 4, Gus, you didn't need to google it to believe me."
"Not that, and I still don't believe they'd disrespect classic film like that. I mean the way you talk about remembering and imagining things."
Shawn sits back, eyes fully off his laptop. "How do you mean?"
"I've just never heard anyone talk about that kind of thing the way you do. Like it's a movie or something."
"I mean, it basically is," Shawn says with a shrug. "What, yours isn't?"
"No, Shawn!"
"What is it like, then?"
"I don't know. When I imagine something it's not like watching a movie, though. I have to work at picturing things, at least a little."
"Huh. Weird. Half the time I just see things, literally in front of my eyes." Shawn waves his hand in front of his face. "Literally, when I remember something I stop seeing things around me and see the memory. Same for when I piece things together, I stop seeing things around me and see what I imagine happened."
"Wait, what?" Gus sits up straighter, brow creasing. "You stop seeing things?"
"Again, you don't?"
"No! People don't literally see memories, Shawn, that's crazy."
"Huh." Shawn looks thoughtful. "Must be the eidetic memory thing, then. I thought everyone could literally rewatch things they saw, just, in worse quality. Sort of fuzzy, a little grainy. Sometimes things are highlighted."
"You're not pulling my leg, are you? That's really how your brain works?"
"How else did you think it worked?"
"I don't know! You know it's almost impossible to verbalize the inner workings of the mind and imagination!"
"I think I just did it pretty well, actually."
"Whatever, Shawn. I'm looking this up online, and i I find out you're messing around again, you owe me ice cream."
"And if you discover I'm telling the truth, you owe me ice cream."
"Deal."
"Told you." Shawn flicks his balled-up candy wrapper at the trashcan and misses.
"But it doesn't say anything about stuff being highlighted, so I still win."
"No, that doesn't count. Clearly that's just a side effect of The Sweetness mixing with the memory."
"And it's only near visual, it doesn't say anything about literally being unable to see the things around you."
"So mine is just stronger, probably because Dad had me sharpen it. ... Damn, I just gave him credit for something, didn't I? pretend you didn't hear that."
"Plus, it only applies to actual memories. You said it also happens when you imagine things. Check and mate."
"It does! Well, not always. Usually just on a case, or when I try pulling the psychic mojo out."
"Nope. Internet says you're lying about that."
"Well, then the Internet is the one lying. Which one do you believe, Gus? Your best friend for your whole life, or some random person with a laptop and love of lying?"
"You also have a love of lying, Shawn."
"... You've got me there."
"Thanks." Gus hangs up, and looks over at Shawn's desk, smiling smugly.
"Well, that's not good." Shawn checks his drawers for pranks, but nothing. "Alright, what'd you do? Am I about to stand up and have paint all over my butt or something?"
"I called your mom."
"You know her new number?"
Okay, that's can't go unaddressed. "I got her business number from the web. You don't know her personal number?"
Shawn just shrugs.
"Your folks are messed up. Now I wish I hadn't called her."
"I do too. Why'd you do it if we both agree it was a bad idea?"
"To talk about the memory thing."
"Again? Gus, I thought we dropped this last week."
"We did. And then you said that you just couldn't 'see' my suspect doing it on our last case."
"So perfectly normal phrases are cause for interrogating my parents now?"
"Yes, because, she said that's not how it works."
"Hers is only sounds, Gus."
"She said it's still not how it works, even with visuals. Your imagined wrap-up scenarios shouldn't be as vivid as your actual memories, and you shouldn't be unable to see the actual world around you when you remember things. She was really worried about that until I told her you were messing with me."
"I'm not!" Shawn leans forward. "Here, I'll do it right now." He puts his fingers to his head, and Gus rolls his eyes.
"Shawn, I've seen you do it a million times."
"Yeah, but get up and do something while I do this."
"You can just say you didn't see what I was doing."
Shawn yanks his hands down and clicks his tongue. "Man, what do I have to do to convince you that this is how my brain works?"
"I hope you can't, because then that means you have hallucinations all the time, and I know you wouldn't go to a doctor about it."
"Hallucinations," Shawn huffs with a humorless laugh. "That's totally different, man. I'm not seeing or hearing things that aren't there around me, I'm using things I know to make a scene in mind and playing it out."
"But it's directly interfering with your perception of the current reality." Gus's smug look slides off as Shawn doesn't make any jokes back. "... You're really serious about this?"
"Oh, now that I might have something wrong with my brain-"
"No, Shawn, I didn't mean it like that." Gus stands up. "But you're serious? About seeing stuff like it's really happening, right in front of you?"
"Not always in front." There's a seriousness to Shawn's voice that Gus doesn't hear often. It's not angry, it's not upset, but it's not lighthearted either. It's... genuine. A little vulnerable. "Sometimes off to the side or behind me. It's clearer when I have more information or a solid idea to play off, and I'm not there. Not usually, anyway. It's more like TV, like I said, and I'm the camera, but I'm not a person."
Shawn glances up at Gus for one second before quickly looking away, searching his desk for something to fiddle with. "You're sure that's not how it works for everyone else?"
"Pretty sure." Gus sits in the armchair closest to Shawn's desk. "Shawn-"
"Did you ask my dad?"
"What?"
"If he sees things that way."
"No."
"So maybe it's from him." Shawn hunches back over his desk to keep doodling pineapples. "Probably some kind of trick or technique he drilled into my head."
"But-"
"I'm not seeing things." The sudden defensiveness makes Gus snap his mouth shut. Shawn balls up the paper and tosses it into the trashcan without looking. It goes right in, dead center. "Look man- it's enough that I can't just walk in a room or go on a date without all of this going on."
Shawn waves his hands by his head. Gus thinks this is the first time he's heard Shawn complain about his gift themselves, and not just the way his dad always pressures him to use them.
"If I'm hallucinating on top of that, I just don't want to know. So let's drop it."
"... Okay." Gus looks out the window. "You want some peanuts then?"
It works, Shawn's body language relaxing again. "Not today, I saw him sneeze into his hand and then fill a bag without the scooper yesterday."
"What?!"
Gus snaps his laptop shut, but it's too slow. Shawn's mouth quirks at the corners, like he's so overwhelmingly, evilly gleeful that his face can't process it yet.
"It's not what you think."
"Gus." Shawn puts a hand on his best friend's shoulder. "Gus, buddy. It's a lie, remember? If you need me to explain my process more just say so."
"I was just looking, Shawn."
"At How TO Tell If You're Psychic websites? Come on, buddy." Shawn pats his shoulder again and drops a packet of powered doughnuts onto the desk before sitting down in one of the window armchairs. "At least try to come up with a good backstory man. Wait, let me guess."
"No-"
But Shawn already has his eyes closed. "You came in today and sat around for all of five minutes before looking it up, because you're a fool."
"How'd you know-"
"The sweetness. Plus you had like a million tabs open already."
"Yeah, well." Gus adjusts himself in his chair, refusing to feel ashamed. "These websites say you're not alone."
"They all say that Gus, they're about ghosts."
"No, with the way you see things. Most of these are just random garbage, but some of the dinkier ones actually say the same as what you described when you imagine stuff."
"Gus-"
"I'm not saying you're psychic, but I'm saying that based on what I've found, you're not the only person who thinks like that. In fact, based on what I read, your eidetic memory and detective training work hand-in-hand with what you've got."
"What I've got?"
"And overactive imagination and out-of-body experiences."
"Great." Shawn stands up and grabs the doughnuts back.
"Hey!"
"People who psychoanalyze me don't get doughnuts, Gus."
"I'm not psychoanalyzing you! You seemed upset that I thought it was weird-"
Shawn scoffs. "When has that ever upset me? I'm proudly eccentric."
"-so I wanted to show you it's not that unusual. I was trying to be nice, Shawn."
"Well, you did it poorly, because now I know my brilliant mind works the same as people who think they can actually speak with ghosts."
Gus tsks at Shawn and opens his laptop back up. He goes back to reading the page, and glances up at his friend from behind his screen. "... Hey Shawn?"
"Yeah?"
"You think the peanut guy is still sick?"
"Nah, he should be fine." Shawn pulls out some paperwork from the station and groans. "A fi- really? We're filing things away now? Why'd you have them send this over?" He reads it. "What is this, a witness statement? Gus."
"Nothing to do with me."
"It's got a note from Buzz stapled to it that says 'Here's what you asked for, Gus, have a good day.' Look, he added a smiley face. That's adorable."
Stop calling full grown men 'adorable'."
"He's not a full-grown man. He's a full grown Labrador that turned into a man, and you can't prove me wrong. ... This is from our last case."
Gus starts to sweat.
Shawn narrows his eyes. "This is the statement about the thing with the van..." He looks up. "Gus... why exactly did you ask me to explain that deduction to you in as much detail as possible?"
"Just curious, like I said then." He knows it's a bad lie. Even a non-Shawn would clock it.
"Oh, Gus. Buddy, you're not seriously thinking I'm psy-"
"Why're you checking the mail anyway? You never do that."
"I felt like checking it today."
"Why? Felt important?"
"Oh my god."
"I can see it, clearly!" Shawn shouts, hand to his head as he stands atop the picnic table in the park. He swivels around, pointing among the crowd of soccer moms gathered for their now ruined potluck. "You, June, despised Carol for her status among the neighborhood! The best barbecues, the best garden, the best book club picks-"
"This is absurd," June spits, looking frantically at Jules and Lassie. "You can't believe him!"
"AH!" Shawn stumbles back, squishing a plate of lasagna under his shoe. "Oh, sorry, um- it was all veggie anyway, it's-it's not much of a loss. Ahem. Oh, OH, OH! I feel it! I see it and I feel it! You and Carol were both looking to become head of the PTA, and you knew she was a shoo-in! It was just one more in a long line of titles you wanted that she took!"
"She didn't even want to ban the right books from the classrooms!" June backs away. "She-she flaunted everything! She was tacky!"
"You couldn't stand it." Shawn points at her. "You just couldn't stand it, any longer! She got the house you wanted, her husband got the promotion over yours, she got the parties and the gossip and all you got were passive-aggressive pies!"
"Those stupid pies," June seethes.
"That's what she's most upset about?" Jules says, not whispering but not shouting.
"It was the final straw. You went to her house and you gave the pie back, but she laughed at you! She told you it wasn't a big deal!"
"SHE DID!"
"And so you took that glass pie dish and you slammed it over her head! You did it over and over, until she couldn't. laugh. any. more."
"Yes," June sobs as her fellow soccer moms collectively make a wide berth around her. "Yes, I did! She didn't even try! Every pie was overcooked, every decoration in her house was the wrong color for the walls, everything was wrong! She was ruining my LIFE!"
"Sure," Lassie says as he cuffs her. "Four bedroom with no mortgage to pay off, seems like she really dragged you through the mud."
"It's only two full bath," June sobs as she's lead away. "The other two are only half-baths, it's squalor, it's a slum-"
Shawn hops down from the table and wipes his heel on the grass. "I'm reminded yet again why I'm not a homeowner, Gus."
"You're not a homeowner because you don't make money, Shawn, not because you chose not to be."
"I've heard it both ways."
Gus's eyes flicker over to June sitting in the squad car. "So how'd you know Carol laughed at her?"
"Oh, not this again."
"What?! I'm just asking a question, Shawn!"
"No, you're yet again digging into my head because you have somehow gotten sucked into the lie that you help me fake!" Shawn whisper-yells.
"All I asked was how you knew she laughed!"
"I knew because that's what people like this do! They laugh at each other and make fun of stupid things until one of them snaps!"
"Did you see her laughing?"
"GUS!" Shawn grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. "Snap back into the real world, I am begging you!"
"Get off of me!" Gus slaps Shawn's hands off. "Fine! What else have you seen through this case?"
"What?"
"What other things have you seen?"
"Why are you asking?"
"If anyone is here right now that you 'imagined' something about, we can settle this by asking them."
"This is ridiculous."
"Scared I'm right?"
Shawn takes the bait. He looks around and, with a huffed laugh and sly look, takes off. "Hey! Debbie!"
The woman looks up from where she's packing up the potluck. "Oh, not you again. Don't you have more ghosts to speak to?"
"I do. In fact, one is bothering me right now." Shawn elbows Gus. "The spirit is asking me to verify a vision I had of you. It was fuzzy, and possibly a malicious spirit trying to deceive me. I need to check."
"Fine. You have until I'm done bagging this up."
Shawn raises one hand to his head and presses his middle fingers fingertip to his temple. "Early in this case, I had a vision of you doing your dishes and seeing June and Carol's husband arguing on their front lawn."
"You already asked me about this."
"Yes, I did. But the spirits are insisting there are details that were cosmically tampered with." Shawn gives Gus a smarmy look, which is odd, since he's trying o prove something he thought is wrong. "I... I heard you humming, yes. I believe it was... Livin' La Vida Loca."
He looks at her with a face that says he fully expects to be wrong. But her jaw drops.
"Y-yes. How-how did you know that? I don't even like that song, it just-it came on while I was driving earlier that day."
"Oh, um... well, that-that's good, then. That that part was right." Shawn takes a second, and then nods. "Um, I also see the detail of you opening your window to hear it better. You thought it could be interesting gossip for... a lunch with your sister?"
"Yes!"
"Really? ... Okay, um-" Gus nudges Shawn to get him to keep going, because Shawn is visibly losing his nerve. "I also see..."
He squeezes his eyes shut tighter. "I see... you dropped a plate when you heard June accuse Carol's husband of insider trading. It was a... blue? Plate? One of those ones that's more of a bowl, really. And it chipped."
"Yes." Debbie hasn't been bagging food for a while now, staring at Shawn with complete awe. "Yes, and-and I thought I should stop listening then."
"But you didn't." Shawn blinks his eyes open. "Even though you told us you did the first time we did this, right?"
"... I-I didn't want to be considered complicit if it turned out true... oh, I-I didn't- tell the spirit I'll report her husband-"
"No need, ma'am," Gus says soothingly. "He was investigated already, he's clean."
Debbie deflates with relief. "I didn't mean to lie, I just... I was scared."
"It's fine." Shawn turns on his heel and speed-walks to The Blueberry, visibly rattled. Gus lingers for a moment to give Shawn some space.
"Thank you for clearing that up, his visions can make it difficult to tell what's relevant and what's not sometimes."
"I-I can't imagine. How does he manage to live, with that in his mind all of the time?"
"I'm still figuring that out too, honestly." And now so is Shawn. "Have a nice rest of your day, Miss Debbie."
Gus jogs to The Blueberry. As soon as he gets in, the puting Shawn beside him speaks up.
"That doesn't prove anything. I probably saw the chipped plate when we talked to her."
"You didn't go through her cabinets."
"Could've been in the dish drainer."
"Was it?"
Shawn doesn't answer. Only he can conjure up an image clear enough to re-examine like he's right there in the room in real life, so Gus can't say for sure if the plate was put away or not. But Shawn knows.
And his silence says everything.
"I'm not entertaining this, man." Shawn tosses the ball up and nearly misses the catch on it's way back down. "It was a couple of weirdly good guesses. Besides, it was all tiny, irrelevant details. I still got our last case wrong half the time."
"We've checked with witnesses for our last three cases, and you were able to describe details you shouldn't know for all of them."
"I do that all the time."
"But you can't explain how you got those guesses right. Come on Shawn, guessing that the kid who only wore pastel floor-length dresses was a hardcore hip-hop fan? There was nothing about her that should have tipped you off."
"Some of what I notice is subconscious, you know, I'm not always aware of every little thing my brain picks up on. That's what a gut feeling is, man."
"Sometimes, for sure. But sometimes it might be psychic visions."
"If these are real psychic visions, they're the most useless visions of all time. Do you really want to be friends with a psychic who can guess the shoes someone was wearing last Tuesday but can't find a murderer until the fourth try?"
"All the websites and books-"
"Why do I talk to you?"
"-say that the less a psychic practices seriously, the more they get wrong."
"That's just a way to cover their asses when other fakes get caught."
"Or, you just need to practice, and we can stop making fools of ourselves with false accusations."
"So that's what this is all about? You just want me to accuse fewer people? That's how process of elimination works, Gus!"
"We're trying it again, right now." Gus wheels his chair over to Shawn's desk.
"I'm not doing this."
"Yes, you are." Gus thinks for a moment. "Try to tell me what your dad said to me after that birthday party where you caught someone trying to steal the cake corner I wanted."
"When we were nine? How do I know you'll even remember that well enough to say if I get it right?"
"Trust me, it's burned into my memory." Because it freaked him out.
"This is stupid."
"Just tell me what you think happened after you left. He scolded you for tackling the kid as they ran away, and you left, and I wanna know what you see when you imagine what happened after that."
Shawn shrugs, face scrunched with hesitant frustration. "I-I don't know Gus, something like-"
Henry kneels down and pats Gus on the shoulder. He gives the child a sharp smile, looking at the door Shawn had just stormed through. "Just you wait, Guster. Someday you'll be able to tell people your best friend is the perfect cop."
"-or something." Shawn opens his eyes and pulls his hand down from his head. He locks eyes with Gus-
Who's mouth is open and eyes wide as they can get.
"What?"
"That was word for word, Shawn!"
Shawn blinks, and then scoffs, a crooked grin spreading across his face and his leg beginning to bounce nervously. "Okay, I just happen to guess what my dad said to you decades ago-"
"No, no," Gus moves closer, pressing one hand to the desk as he fully rounds it and then putting both on Shawn's shoulders. "Dude, I mean the whole thing was exactly like that. The kneeling to my eye level-"
"That's just how he used to talk to us."
"-and the weird smile-"
"All his smiles are weird, it's something I thank the universe every day I didn't inherit."
"-the way he said 'perfect' that made me a little worried he wanted to replace you with a robot-"
"Because he probably did want to."
"Shawn!"
"Gus!" Shawn slaps his best friend's hands off of his shoulders. "I am not psychic! Come on, I thought if either of us was going to forget that one day it'd be me!"
"Well I think you are!" Gus stands and puts his hands on his hips. "You know, this is actually making a lot of little things make sense to me."
"What? No, don't pretend you've always thought this." Shawn shakes his head. "This is going too far, okay?"
"I haven't always thought it, but now some things make sense! Like when you told Nigel St Nigel to stop smoking before you did your noticing-things squint at the electric box."
"I just didn't want the man to have holes in his lungs."
"How about you getting on board with your own joke theory with the Frazen case?"
"That was just me being even better than I realized, and the day I vowed to never dismiss my own jokes again."
"Uh-uh." Gus steps back and points at Shawn, making Shawn cross his eyes to watch his hand bob back and forth. "No, I know this is real. Do it again."
"Gus, it doesn't work like that."
"How does it work then?"
"I don't know, man! Sometimes I just get an idea in my head and it plays out! This is kind of insulting, honestly!"
"How?!"
"You're saying all of my hard detective work is just because some spirits told me something!"
"I'm not saying that at all! I know most of it is just you figuring things out, but I think you really do have some psychic abilities! You're always guessing what I'm gonna say like you can read my mind-"
"Because we've known each other our entire lives!"
"-and you always end up being onto something even with your wildest theories-"
"That's called luck-"
"-and you always manage to get us into the right places at the right time to come face-to-face with the bad guy!"
"Those are bad situations, so that would mean the spirits hate me. Do you want a psychic friend who's being lead into death traps by ghosts?"
"Shawn-"
"Gus, I'm being serious about this. I. Am not. Psychic. So drop it."
"Nuh-uh, no way. I'm getting you to believe it."
"Yeah, good luck with that."
"Really?" Shawn looks at Gus, completely unamused.
"The websites say they work."
"Crystals." Shawn gestures at his desk. "You have covered my entire workspace with crystals. This is getting sad, man."
Gus shrugs. "They're supposed to help open the third eye and hone psychic abilities."
"You sound like a hippie."
"You sound like a guy in denial."
"I'm not doing this." Shawn opens a drawer to shove the crystals into. "Really?! The whole drawer?!"
"All of them. And I put some in the kitchen."
"This is a problem. You, have a problem."
"Yes, and it's name is Shawn."
"What is this- did you sign me up for a meditation class?!"
"This Friday."
"You signed your completely unmedicated ADHD and hyper-observant friend up for a meditation class. I'm going to end up torturing that poor teacher, Gus."
"If you genuinely try at it, I'll buy you a year's supply of corn nuts."
"... A whole year?"
"A whole year."
"One for each day."
"I have the check from our last case set aside just for this."
"Fine. But when I'm still not psychic by the end, you're not allowed to go back on this deal."
"Fine."
"Fine."
"Fine. ... These crystals are actually kind of cool. Dammit, I might take some home., look at this. This one is shaped like a butt. ... You found the cool ones on purpose, didn't you?"
"One looks like a pineapple."
"Which one- oh, yeah, look at that! This, is delightful. But this, as a whole, is still a problem."
"We'll see."
Shawn sits at his desk, staring at the wall, as Gus does a little victory dance behind him.
"Yes, yes, we are finally in the clear-!"
"Gus." Shawn buries his face in his hands. "Please give me at least one minute to process this? Should I be the one celebrating having actual superpowers?"
"You're not the one who thought we'd get caught!"
"We still might, it-it's barely even actual visions." Shawn looks at the board of their latest case, the one solved in the morning and the one solved in record time, the one solved thanks to a very small detail and a gut feeling.
And the one irrefutably, undoubtedly, solved by a psychic vision.
"It still happened!" Gus continues his dance. "I told you those crystals and classes would show you! What, what?" He fans himself. "What?"
"This is the weirdest turn my life has taken," Shawn mumbles, rubbing his face. "Of all the ways to find out, it had to be a vision like that? It wasn't even cool."
"Cool is getting paid, Shawn, and it made that happen!"
"But a vision of the victim's flu symptoms? That's- Gus, that's just lame."
"Lame? You knew the guy never had clamminess, that was the whole key! He never had clammy hands, so he never lost grip after falling off that balcony, he was pushed. That was the entire closing argument, Shawn, the killer confessed right away!"
"I could've found other evidence." Shawn sits back in his chair, arms crossed. "Something better than 'Oh, he wasn't sweaty!' What kind of wrap-up is that?"
"Shawn, seriously, what's up with you? Why aren't you more excited about this? We're not lying to cops anymore, you've got actual superpowers, and we can probably solve cases twice as fast."
"Because, Gus, how would you feel if you learned you had superpowers your whole life and just never noticed, so now you have to go back and think about everything you've ever done to try and find out what was you just being an awesome genius and what was some kind of metaphysical interference?"
Gus stops his dancing. "What?"
Shawn grinds his jaw.
Gus sits down.
"... Am I even actually a good detective? A good shot? Have good instincts?"
"Yes, you are. We both know you are."
"Do we? We didn't know I can have visions for three whole decades, so-" he laughs, sharp and bitter.
"... Well, I think it all just goes together." Gus picks up a pencil and starts writing down ideas on how to help Shawn hone his newfound skills. "You can have visions and use your detective skills to examine them way more effectively than a psychic without could, and you can recall each one perfectly. All of the website I read talk about how frustrating it is to have a vision that only become relevant weeks later, and by then it's hard to remember. You don't have to deal with that."
"... That is pretty cool, I guess."
"Plus, they say mind-reading is possible once you practice enough, especially with people you're already close to."
"We already know I can do that." Shawn's mood sours again. "We don't know each other so well I can, I just can."
"I think it's both. You've never practiced it, so maybe we've just known each other so long you managed to do it anyway."
"Are you saying... it was the magic of friendship?" Shawn cracks a smile. "That's adorable, man, really."
"You know that's right." Their friendship is adorable, and he's proud of that fact. "Besides, you realize what you can do once you practice having clearer visions?"
"What?"
"Confuse your dad."
Shawn blinks. And then grins. "Gus. You mad genius."
Gus bows a little.
"He'll never know what hit him! Oh, that'll drive him nuts! He'll never be able to figure out how I'm figuring things out!"
"And now when Lassie says you're a fake, you can hit him with real psychic information."
"Holy- Gus! Why didn't you point this out form the beginning?! I would have totally gotten on board! Show me those websites right now, I'm about to psych it uppppp!"