Work Text:
Gus looks up from his desk when the woman walks up to his cubicle at Central Coast Pharmaceuticals. With her dyed-red hair and messy cardigan, she looks a bit like Molly Weasley, from Gus’s favorite book series ever, Harry Potter.
Gus smiles at her across the desk while she looks down at the thick envelope in her hands and squints.
“Oh, dear,” she says. “I’m looking for someone. Can you help me, Mister —?”
“Guster,” Gus says. “Burton Guster. For whom are you looking?”
“I was looking for you,” the woman says, standing up straight and handing Gus the envelope. She doesn’t look like Molly Weasley now. “Burton Guster, you’ve been served.”
Served. Served. Gus is so angry, it takes a full minute before he remembers to tear open the envelope and figure out what’s going on.
It’s not like Psych hasn’t been sued before. There was the fraud case filed by the little old lady whose cat was never actually missing. (Shawn told the woman her cat was meowing to her from beyond the grave about two minutes before the cat started meowing to her from her house’s crawl space.) There was the time Woody got them sucked into a geocaching experiment gone wrong — Gus still hasn’t forgiven Shawn for that one — and then the time Gus left a negative Yelp review for the Jamaican restaurant down the street.
This, though. Gus blinks and looks down at the paper again, but it still doesn’t make sense.
Petition for dissolution of marriage, Burton Guster and Shawn Spencer.
He gets out his phone, looks down at it, and then puts it back in his pocket. There are some things a man has to do in person, and asking your best friend why the hell he’s decided to bust up your lifelong friendship and your business together is one of them.
At the Psych office, Shawn’s got an elaborate Hotwheels track set up, and he’s using toy cars to try to ferry jellybeans from the office kitchen to the couch. When Gus slams into the office, Shawn looks up, and a tiny dump truck loaded with pineapple jellybeans misses his mouth and crashes into the wall.
“Gus!” Shawn bounces up from the couch. “How’s it shaking, mi amigo?”
“How’s it shaking?” Gus slams the envelope down on the desk. It’s too light to produce a satisfying sound, but he slams it down again just for effect. “You’re breaking up Psych?”
“What?” Shawn looks genuinely confused. “No. Of course not. I would never do that to you, buddy.”
“So explain this,” Gus says, and throws the paperwork at Shawn. “We can’t get a divorce. We’re not married.”
“Oh, we most certainly can. We’ve been married for five years, Gus. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you forgot every one of our anniversaries.”
“Married?” Gus stares at Shawn. The word still doesn’t make sense. “Married?”
“It’s a very simple word, Gus.” Shawn sits down on the couch and puts his feet up on the coffee table.
“I don’t buy it,” Gus says. “No way. You can’t get married to someone without their consent. And I—” he points a finger at his chest — “never consented.”
“Of course you can’t marry someone without consent!” Shawn reaches behind the couch and pulls out another envelope and tosses it to Gus. “You can take advantage of that one time they got really drunk in Vegas, though.”
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Gus opens the envelope.
Inside, there’s a Nevada state marriage license, a little worn around the edges, in the names of Shawn Spencer, psychic detective, and Burton Guster, pharmaceutical salesman. It’s signed. By both of them. Gus recognizes his handwriting, although the edges of his signature are shaky.
Behind the license, there’s a bunch of photographs. Shawn walking down the aisle with a ridiculous bouquet of silk flowers. Gus, visibly drunk, walking down the aisle with a bridal tiara on his head, and then another shot of Gus taking off the tiara and putting his arm around Shawn. There’s a nice shot of the Elvis impersonator behind them, hands raised in a classic Elvis pose, and then a shot of Shawn and Gus, kissing.
Gus hides the photo of the kiss back in the envelope and sets the marriage license on the table. “Great,” he says. “The one time you get my name right.”
“I’m pretty sure you can’t just duck out on a marriage because you give the wrong name,” Shawn says.
“Are you telling me you’ve been letting me file our taxes as singles for five years, Shawn? Do you realize how much money the marriage penalty has been costing us?”
“Really?” Shawn tilts his head to the side. “So you’re saying this is a good thing?”
“No, I’m saying….” Gus trails off. “This is unacceptable, Shawn.”
“Oh, sure. Except when it’s getting us some marriage penalty.” Shawn tries to raise one eyebrow. “Marriage penalty. You know what that makes me think of?”
“No, Shawn.”
“It’s a sexy surprise,” Shawn says.
“No, Shawn.”
Gus is trying to think. It’s not the first time Shawn’s lost it, but — marriage? Five years ago?
“Why now?” Gus asks. “Why did you do this? Why divorce? What the hell, Shawn?”
“Remember last week? I’m filing for dual custody of any future servings of fries quatro quesos dos fritos. No more cutting me off.”
“You got married to me because you wanted more double-fried cheesy deliciousness five years in the future?” No. Gus doesn’t buy this.
“Of course not,” Shawn says, like he’s being totally reasonable. “That’s just when I realized I wanted a divorce. And half of your future burritos, in perpetuity.”
“That’s not how divorce works, Shawn,” Gus says. “That’s not even how burritos work. You can’t just cut them in half, you have to unwrap them, carefully, from one end.”
He stares down at the envelope on the table. Half of his future burritos. Half of his —
Shawn gets up. “You want a burrito?”
“So much,” Gus says. Shawn’s just lucky Gus is hungry, because he’s angry about this. Confused. Both. Definitely both.
Confusing things are for tomorrow. Burritos are for today.
Gus leaves the envelope behind.
Neither of them mention the marriage certificate. Shawn has a look in his eyes when he goes to steal one of Gus’s fries quatro quesos dos fritos, or when Gus doesn’t want to share the last of the jerk chicken, but Gus ignores that.
They work cases. A burlesque performer hires them to find a missing emerald. The missing jewel ends up being part of the same case Juliet and Detective Lassiter are working, the one with the man found drowned in the ocean with fresh water in his lungs. Shawn solves it with inside information from Woody and a scribbled note on a two-dollar bill at the crime scene. They get pineapple smoothies to celebrate, and if Gus pays for both of them, it’s not anything out of the ordinary.
Gus isn’t thinking about the marriage.
He’s especially not thinking about the photograph of them kissing.
Because he’s never thought of Shawn that way. Sure, Gus has had a few man-crushes in his day. But Shawn — his best friend?
One night, after another uncomfortably sexy dream about Shawn holding a bouquet of fake flowers in a very strategic location, Gus gets up and drives the Blueberry over to the Psych offices. The folder is still where Shawn left it, in the top drawer of Gus’s desk, where anyone could see open up the drawer and see it.
Where Gus could see it. He wonders what Shawn’s thinking. What it looks like in Shawn’s mind. If Shawn wakes up from dreams where —
Gus shakes his head and opens the envelope.
There’s actually three photos of them kissing. Gus only saw the first one when Shawn showed him the envelope the first time. The first photo’s the wedding photo, Shawn dramatically holding the arm with the fake bouquet out wide while kissing Gus.
It’s the other two photos that make Gus pause, slip off his shoes, and lie down on the couch to stare. In the other two photos, Shawn has his hand to Gus’s face, his other arm wrapped around him, like there’s nobody else in the world but Gus.
Gus lies back and tries to imagine it. Tries to remember. He was there, wasn’t he? Shawn couldn’t have faked this, or maybe he could have, but…. Gus called the Clark County Clerk’s office and confirmed that the marriage license is legit. And he’s pretty sure that if Shawn had Photoshopped this, he wouldn’t have been able to resist adding in some fog or smoke effects, or maybe a couple killer robots.
He stares at the expression on Shawn’s face in the photographs until he finally falls asleep.
Gus is at his office again, entering his weekly sales reports into the system, when Bridget in the next cube over giggles.
“It’s your hot boyfriend,” she whispers to Gus. “He’s out in the parking lot.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Gus says. Just his husband. But the complexities of a Vegas wedding while very drunk aren’t something he wants to explain in the workplace. “How did you —”
There’s a noise from one of the window offices, like someone’s throwing gravel against the glass. Gus locks his computer and gets up to go look.
Shawn’s in the parking lot, leaning back against the Blueberry and looking up at the windows. When Gus pulls out his cell phone and waves it, Shawn shrugs and pats his pockets and shrugs again.
Gus tries calling, but Shawn’s number goes straight to voicemail.
“You should go see what he needs,” Carla says, from the cube on the other side of Gus. “I wish my husband would visit me at work like that.”
“He’s not my husband,” Gus says, irritated. “We’re just partners.”
Carla and Bridget exchange a look, and Gus shakes his head. “Not like that! We’re partners in a psychic detective agency.”
“I wish my husband had a head of hair like that,” Bridget whispers, and then they both break out into giggles.
Gus isn’t staying here for this. He unlocks his computer, saves his half-finished sales report, and shuts down. He can deal with this tonight. After he deals with a certain non-psychic.
The one who isn’t really his husband.
“Hey,” Shawn says, when Gus comes out of the building. “What took you so long?”
“I have a job, Shawn.” Gus unlocks the Blueberry and throws his sales case and laptop bag in the back. “It’s Thursday.”
“And my cell phone decided to celebrate Thursday by taking a trip to the great beyond,” Shawn says.
“You dropped it in another toilet?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that theory.” Shawn hops in the front seat of the car. “Come on! Lassie could be trying to get us for a case right now!”
“Detective Lassiter never calls us for cases.”
“I’ll buy you a pineapple smoothie,” Shawn says. “If you buy me a new phone.”
Gus gets behind the wheel. Pineapple smoothies — there are worse places to start.
Lassiter doesn’t call them on their next case. The chief does, when Juliet’s dad, Frank, comes into town and someone tries to sell Santa Barbara Mission to a couple of credulous tourists from Nebraska, one of whom ends up dead. Shawn and Gus manage to find the real killer — the tourist’s wife — and the real con man, too. Turns out one of Frank’s old enemies decided to try to frame him.
“I never would have been that sloppy,” Frank says later, while Juliet watches him with a mixture of frustration, love, and exasperation. “You all know I cover my tracks better than that.”
They do. When he leaves, he takes the Psych office candy dish, and neither of them even notice him carrying it.
“I think he took our extra soap, too,” Gus says, once he’s done a full audit.
“And a little piece of our hearts,” Shawn says, looking off down the beach.
“Whatever, Shawn.” Gus starts making a list. The office has eight different brands of licorice, some of them imported from countries Gus has never heard of, but they’re almost out of toilet paper.
One Monday, there’s a measles scare and all of Gus’s regular doctor’s offices are closed for testing and decontamination, which means a day in the office without anything to do. Gus ends up pulling up his and Shawn’s past tax returns and putting together amended returns, just to see what they would have saved if they’d filed as married.
It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself. He’s not seriously considering this. At all. He just wants to know how much Shawn cost them, over the years.
The numbers don’t say what he was expecting. They don’t save anything by being married — maybe the cost of a couple pineapples and a Tour of Fried Food for Two at Kitty O’Haggerty’s. At best.
Gus is disappointed, and then he wonders why he’s disappointed, and then he deletes the new tax returns and calls eight other doctor’s offices to take his mind off of it.
Lassie gets framed for a murder at a World War One reenactment, and they uncover the true killer. Juliet goes undercover inside the choir of a local church, and they help her find the woman who embezzled the church’s money and killed another choir member to cover it up. Shawn and Gus infiltrate a community of high-adrenaline video-loggers, and rack up a few thousand hits themselves in the process. (Shawn claims the hits are viewers in awe of his vlogging prowess. Gus knows it’s the video of Shawn tripping on the beach.)
Neither of them mention the marriage certificate.
Gus thinks about it, though. Every time he has a weird dream about their wedding (and he’s a little creeped out by himself, that he’s started looking forward to the dreams. He can never let Shawn know). Every time they split a burrito. Every time they order jerk chicken, or cheese fries, or onion rings with wacky sauce.
A few days later, they’re inside a local fiber arts store, watching a knitting circle from behind a stack of pink, fluffy yarn. They’ve been on the trail of the Knitting Needle Bandit for five days. It’s longer than Shawn usually stays on one case, but the Bandit’s robberies have brought them into a dark underworld of black-market yarn and smuggled knitting needles.
“You want to go down to the food truck circle after this and order one thing from every truck’s menu?” Shawn asks.
“You know that’s right,” Gus says.
“I think they’re wrapping up here,” Shawn whispers. He motions for Gus to follow, and they both back out of the yarn shop.
Outside, Shawn takes his phone out to call Lassiter, and then the door to the shop bangs open, right into Gus’s face. Gus’s nose starts bleeding and he staggers backwards.
“Shawn —” He tries to pinch his nose, which hurts. He's bleeding all over his shirt. “Shawn?”
There’s a crunching sound, and then Shawn starts wheezing. “Call Lassie,” he says. “Psychic down!”
The next few minutes are a blur of red and blue flashing lights, while Detective Lassiter and Juliet race down the alleyway next to the shop to capture the Knitting Needle Bandit.
Gus isn’t watching that part. He’s crouched down, beside Shawn, who’s sprawled against the stucco wall with a knitting needle sticking out of his chest.
“Hang in there,” Gus says. His nose is bleeding all over Shawn’s leather jacket and he can’t tell if it’s all his blood, or if Shawn’s bleeding out. He can’t — he can’t lose Shawn. Not like this. Not to a knitting needle.
“I think I’m actually fine,” Shawn says. He’s still got a wheeze in his breathing, but his grip is strong when Gus reaches out to take his hand. “Just need to catch my breath.”
He reaches up with his other hand, like he’s going to take the knitting needle out of his chest, and Gus grabs his hand before he can. “No, Shawn,” he says. “Leave it in.”
“You sure?” Shawn squints. “Are we going punk?”
Gus doesn’t say anything, just keeps his hands on Shawn’s to stop him from trying to pull the needle out. Gus saw an episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive on The Discovery Channel about this type of wound. The knitting needle’s point could be in Shawn’s heart. Pulling it out —
“I refuse to lose you,” Gus says. “Not like this, Shawn.” He clutches Shawn’s hands and tries to mentally will the ambulance to get there faster.
Shawn sits back against the wall of the knitting store and meets Gus’s eyes. “I’ve got a very strong sense that I’m going to be fine,” he says.
“Shawn!” Gus tries to stop Shawn from pulling out the needle, but —
Shawn takes off his jacket. The knitting needle stays embedded in the outer pocket. Shawn’s chest is completely uninjured.
“I knew there was a reason I was carrying around those pineapple Twizzlers,” Shawn says, and then Gus throws his arms around him.
“Hey! Gus, buddy, it’s okay.”
“It is not okay, Shawn,” Gus growls, and then he pulls back and looks at Shawn.
I almost lost him, he thinks. If the knitting needle had gone a few inches to the left, or if the Knitting Bandit had used a steel knitting needle —
Gus leans forward and kisses Shawn before he can stop himself. Before his brain can tell him what a bad idea it is, that Shawn doesn’t feel like that about Gus, that it’s not the type of relationship they have.
Shawn freezes, for just a moment, but it’s long enough for Gus’s heart to sink.
But when Gus starts to pull back, Shawn puts an arm around him and pulls him closer. Shawn’s lips on his lips, Shawn’s hand roving over his back, Shawn’s everything, right there, with him.
Gus stops thinking. Somewhere, Lassiter and Juliet are running down a woman who knows how to use knitting needles to kill, and he doesn’t even care. He just wants to be this close to Shawn. Forever, if he can arrange it.
“I thought I’d never get to do that again,” Shawn mumbles, when they finally part.
“Again?” Gus brushes a hand up against Shawn’s face. “Right. The wedding.” He lets himself slump down beside Shawn, leaning up against the dirty stucco of the building. “How long have you —” He’s not sure what his question is.
“It was a stupid idea,” Shawn says. “The wedding. It was right after that whole thing with Mira and I figured I’d marry you and then nobody else could. You know? I just wanted to protect you, and we were really drunk, and it seemed like —” He stares down at the asphalt of the parking lot. “But then we kissed, and it was an amazing kiss. Like really really good. Top ten kisses. It deserved to be in a John Hughes movie, Gus.”
“Like the kiss we just had doesn’t?” Gus asks.
Shawn motions to Gus’s face. “With all the blood you’re rocking, this is definitely more of a Tarantino vibe.”
Gus winces and pulls his handkerchief out of his pocket. “So?”
“So I realized what we were missing, man.” Shawn shrugs. “But then you didn’t remember, and I thought — I figured you were just pretending, to spare my feelings or something, because you didn’t feel that way about me, and you didn’t want to bust up Psych.”
Gus holds the handkerchief against his nose with one hand. He reaches his other hand out to hold Shawn’s. And then he puts his handkerchief down and pulls Shawn towards him.
Five years. Gus isn’t wasting another second.
“Why did you fall down?” Gus asks, after the EMTs have checked them both out and he’s changed into a clean shirt. “If you didn’t actually get stabbed in the heart.”
“Oh, that.” Shawn looks away. “While her hand was trying to stab me with a knitting needle, her knee was going for the family jewels.”
Gus looks at the slender, pale-haired woman sitting in the back of the police cruiser and winces.
“You can make it up to me,” Shawn says. “Later.”
“Let’s pick up two orders of fries quatro quesos dos fritos on our way back to the office,” Gus says. “To go.”
Shawn squeezes Gus’s hand. “You know that’s right.”