Chapter Text
It had been a full day since the incident had occurred and Shawn hadn't shown up since reappearing magically after the strongly traumatic incident that involved her ex-partner. Her car was parked along the sidewalk gazing on toward the heavily forested area that was blocked off by yellow tape that was as familiar as the moon was to the dark side of the planet. She waited and waited and waited focusing her attention on the crime scene.
She sat upright as a figure emerged then paused, sighing, then hung his head, having a long moment of pause that was decorated in heartache and stress and annoyance in everything that was obvious knowing Shawn Spencer. When he lied, he acted serious, not absurd, or immature.
He still looked unnaturally young since the last time that she had seen him. He looked like a thirty-one year old rather than the man who was in his late thirties approaching the big forty. It's as if time itself had rewinded and been kind upon him letting him be young again, taking pills, drugs, whatever, that helped him turn the clock back.
O'Hara unbuckled from the car then opened the door, closing the door beside her, rushing toward the figure, her hands clenched into fists with all the anger that had resurfaced since the day that he just vanished out of her life.
She rushed after Shawn then locked her arms on to his shoulders giving the best enormous hug.
Shawn stumbled back caught off guard.
"Jules, woah there!" The familiar laugh that she knew all those years ago holding some humor and the warmth that she had nearly forgotten, a laugh that sparked old memories to resurface, feeling him rest his hands on the side of her figure, reminding her of times where they kissed that had mellowed out during the period leading up to his sudden disappearance. "easy girl.."
"I missed you."
Shawn stepped back taking her hands looking at her, then a flash of pain, his eyes squeezing shut. His eyes flashed open, out of breath, surprised, then saw the family heirloom on her finger.
"Oh..." Shawn replied
"Oh...." O'Hara withdrew out of the hug, frowning, furrowing her eyebrows, tilting her head. "what?"
"Jules.." Shawn was shaking his head. "I..." grimacing before continuing. "I ... I am not that guy who gave you that engagement ring."
She stepped back looking up and down in a moment of shock facing the pseudo psychic.
"You are Shawn Spencer."
"Agonizingly to my distress, I am."
"You are the guy who proposed to me."
He squeezed his eyes shut then exhaled.
"Jules, I would really love to ask that guy what the hell he was thinking starting a relationship with you knowing you can't live with lies in a relationship."
"We got over that tough patch after some time apart." O'hara recalled. "A couple weeks."
"You obviously know I am a psychic pretending to be a fake one." Shawn said.
"Shawn...." She looked at him so, concerned and worried.
Shawn looked at her blankly for a very long time until he started processing that, in fact, she was more familiar to him not being a psychic.
These select few facts were horrendous. Which made this hour even harder when it came to talking to her. Someone that he well liked as a close friend and colleague in the Santa Barbara Police Department. Someone that was the bane of the existence of criminals and lies. Someone perched cross from the head detective's desk. He clasped his hands together then pressed his fingers against his lips taking in a inhale.
"Most definitely not a fake." He clasped his hands together in a prayer like fashion. "Bad news that I have live with my entire miserable life," he turned toward the forest summoning a smile then facing the detective. "makes it difficult to cultivate many friendships."
Her blue eyes flipped open in a moment of shock and disbelief registering the change in her significant other once she stepped back withdrawn the gun from her person aiming at the younger man.
"If you are not Shawn then who the hell are you?" O'Hara replied.
"Not a clone." Was the answer.
"Long lost younger brother." O'Hara guessed.
Shawn threw his head back with a distinctive hollow but sharp laugh.
"If he went to this island with rich folk that did crimes and misdemeanors and cloned themselves to pay for the price of their crimes then this would be even more messy."
"W-w-what?" O'Hara asked, squinting.
Shawn held his hands up looking so innocent with his head lowered facing the detective.
"Infinity pool." Shawn began to reference. "Alexandra Skarsgard. Mia Goth." Lifting his eyebrows trying to jog a memory. "Cleopatra Coleman?" Leaning to his side the further that he went about the movie. "Set on Lil Tolq.... It's on Hulu."
"A hula hoop?"
"The app?"
"The app."
Shawn nodded so slowly in response to the remark.
"The app." Shawn repeated to her misfortune.
She slightly lowered the gun facing him for a long tense moment.
"It's closing this year?" All he got was blanks then slightly lowering the gun at the clarification that made so much sense. "Folding into Disney+ with Timon and Pumbaa and DuckTales and Darkwing Duck?"
A harsh glare was on him.
"And National Geographic, Pixar, Star Wars. We get a black superhero who's powers aren't electricity. Gus is over the moon about that hero," waving his hands from side to side reflecting over it. "flaws and all."
The blanks and gun aimed right at him over the jarring dialogue.
"Next you are going to say McDonald's is going to take over the world and become something like weyland-yutani with Disney."
"McDonalds-Disney?" Shawn replied, incredulously .
A heavy pause rested between them in the air between them in which neither knew what to say.
O'Hara lowered the gun slowly in the minutes that ticked by and put it back in its holster.
It was Shawn but it wasn't her Shawn in the slightest that burned and hardened her heart. She stare at the younger man studying him for all that he was worth seeing the good old days shining through. He wasn't frustrated, annoyed, or still hung over Trout.
Trout's mere existence was a hindrance to the one that she called home. The one that made her feel whole and complete. She watched him lower his hands proceeding to approach her. Slowly. Stepping through twigs and crunching gras beneath his shoes as his hazel familiar eyes rested on her.
"Jules, fill me in about why Lassie is a beat cop."
"Why should I tell a psychic?"
"The spirits give me flashes with no context."
"And Gus?"
"And sometimes they don't give me it. Sometimes it is very emotional and disorienting flashes."
"So he gave you grief about..."
"The other me leaving him so suddenly."
"Where have you been all day?"
"Trying to fix things," he turned back in the direction of the forest. "it's a literal dumpster fire."
Like chaos, literal chaos. Upsetting chaos.
He turned his attention back toward her.
So O'Hara proceeded to fill him in on everything that she knew and went through leading up to a old normal being shattered and destroyed.