Stuck in an Office with You

by PeterPanic

          Lassiter looks like he has just swallowed a lemon. He glances down at where Spencer has decided to fall, sprawled out on the floor, body curled slightly to one side, a cheek pressed against the thin carpeting. His face is flushed; his back rises up and down in time with his breaths. Lassiter knows that Spencer’s running days are over, at least at this very moment. He knows he’s responsible for Spencer now, and hell would freeze over before he’d let anything happen to him. Damnit, he mutters darkly.

            He decides to speak contrarily, “You know you’re not my damn responsibility. You’re not even supposed to be here.”

            Spencer’s eyes open and he squints upwards, clearly trying hard to raise his eyes to Lassiter’s level. “Noted,” he croaks against the floor.

            Lassiter seems surprised that the psychic pest isn’t able to say anything more, but he supposes the shock of receiving a six-inch long piece of wrought iron to the gut would do that. And he knows that shirt he tied around Spencer’s middle is about as ineffectual as a piece of Scotch tape on a sinking ship. He can’t see it, but he knows it’s soaked through. Lassiter props himself against the white block wall and rests a temple to the hard surface. He doesn’t know which way to go anymore. Correction. He doesn’t know which way to go that wouldn’t involve confronting an assortment of armed adversaries.

How do these things even happen?

Spencer is still panting. Sweat beads on his face. He is no help at all. He is busy keeping himself awake and alive.

Damnit. Lassiter grips his gun, holds the Glock 17 close as if for comfort, like a teddy bear. It’s an ugly, utilitarian sidearm, but he loves it all the same. He closes his eyes so that he can think. There is a groan. Lassiter looks again immediately at Spencer.

“My butt,” the idiot randomly says.

Lassiter wonders if the delirium has come full force now. Maybe this is the final swan dive into unconsciousness and eventual death. Somehow, he doubts Spencer would like his last words to be ‘my butt,’ although on second thought, knowing exactly who they are coming from… “

Spit it out,” Lassiter growls. He doesn’t want to spare the sympathy, not when doing so would get them nowhere. If Spencer was going to die on Lassiter’s watch, then the moron was going to die knowing that he was a fuck up. However harsh that seemed, Lassiter embraced his own pragmatism. The world is a harsh place. And Spencer is the definition of a fuck up.

Spencer’s back hitches once, twice. His hand clutches at the unforgiving carpet and leaves a coating of half-dried blood. It is nauseating. “My butt,” Spencer tries again. This time his voice is slightly more insistent. “It’s vibrating.”

His butt is what? Comprehension dawns as Lassiter spies the cell phone shaped bulge in Spencer’s back pocket. He checks his own phone, just to see if service had returned, but there’s still no signal. Not even a single bar. Lassiter quickly pushes away from the wall, hand stretched out towards Spencer’s back pocket. Gingerly, he slides the cell phone out of the denim pocket. He spares one glance at Spencer. From so close up, Lassiter can see his situation clearly. The man’s face is bathed in sweat. He’s shivering, guarding his gut with one arm. He is awake, but his eyes stare forward, clouded by a ruthless sort of shock. It’s as if he can’t believe he’s here right now, lying on a floor with a hole in his belly. Lassiter has to agree that it would be a shock to anyone. He himself is a little in shock; he’d loathe admitting it, but it’s reality.

Lassiter is glad to step away with the phone clutched in his hand. His back hits the wall. The vibrating has stopped, of course, but the phone is getting crystal clear reception. It takes him a moment to figure out the unfamiliar layout of Spencer’s phone, but once he does, the first number he finds in the Missed Call category is his partner’s. There’s a new voicemail, but he doesn’t have time for that. He puts the phone to his ear as he looks again at Spencer. He hasn’t moved an inch from where he had initially collapsed after their run-about through the empty hallways. He has to admit that Spencer put out some tremendous effort.

The call is picked up immediately. He remains calm despite the relief that washes over him. “Shawn?” O’Hara asks. There’s worry in that voice, but mostly it’s urgent. “Shawn, where are you?”

“He’s with me,” Lassiter answers, not even bothering to address himself as somebody other than Shawn. “For now.” He rakes a hand over his face. His shoulder blade digs into the wall behind him, pinching the skin and going a little bit numb.

“Are you able to move towards the exit?” O’Hara is asking. She doesn’t ask about Spencer.

Lassiter knows there are two answers to that question. Yes and no. Without Spencer or with Spencer. He settles for something oblique, “Spencer is in bad shape.”

There’s a brief silence on the other end. “What happened?”

A jagged piece of wrought iron is what happened. But again, Lassiter settles for something obliquely non-specific, “He was stabbed in the gut.”

There was sound of talking now on the other end. “The Chief wants to talk to you,” O’Hara suddenly says by way of transition. He knows that she wants to ask for more details, but he also knows she’s locked in her job.

Lassiter is engaged in a brief visual circumnavigation of the area immediately around Spencer. He really should move him closer to the wall, or into the vacant office further up the hall. He is an open target, despite the fact that he already looks dead. “Fine,” he answers his partner. Like everybody else, he wants to move the civilian far away from this situation.

“Detective Lassiter,” the chief’s voice lunges out of the cell phone. “I need you to try to get to the exit.”

Lassiter almost rolls his eyes. If it were that simple, he would have done it half an hour ago, before Spencer got skewered. “I don’t know who’s between here and there,” he answers. He knows it’s a gimpy answer, but he’s dragging with him a severe handicap. Lassiter’s eyes land again on Spencer as he explains, “I have Spencer with me. He’s zero help right now.”

“Then go without him to clear the area.”

Lassiter pauses, mouth slightly open. He had taken that option off the table once before. He hadn’t wanted to leave Spencer behind, alone and basically defenseless. He watches Spencer’s shivers transition to full-on tremors. She has the privilege of objectivity; she isn’t standing next to a critically wounded civilian. She doesn’t have blood under her fingernails.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, knowing that moments are being wasted by indecision. No, he hadn’t wanted to leave him, but her suggestion makes more sense than anything else. Either now or later, Spencer is going to die by the hand of a criminal. Cautiously, Lassiter considers another option, one in which he manages to save both the day and the department’s brand new pet psychic. “Fine,” he agrees. He isn’t one for words right now, and apparently neither is she.

Lassiter drops Spencer’s phone into his own pocket. He feels the weight of it as it presses against his leg. It’s almost a comfort, a connection to the outside. He holsters his gun for safekeeping before taking the two steps towards Spencer. Lassiter doesn’t want to leave him in the middle of the hallway. He feels that he should afford him at least a basic sense of shelter. Briefly, he considers where to grab the man.

“Lassie?” Spencer is asking, overcast hazel eyes searching the space in front of his face.

“You’ll be fine,” Lassiter mumbles. It’s a tired expression. A worthless platitude. And a lie. “I’m just going to move you over here. Okay?” He settles on grabbing Spencer under his arms. He doesn’t wait for any type of consent. Grinding his molars, he drags the man towards the wall and into a darkened office. The friction of the carpet makes it difficult. Spencer cries out only once, but after that he still isn’t completely silent. He is making an odd sound, something like a keening moan. It makes Lassiter want to go deaf. He doesn’t want to hear that sound.

“Lassie?” Spencer asks again. It’s a noise in between a pant and a mumble. “Lassie?”

Lassiter ignores him for the most part, although his eyes land on the smear of blood darkened carpet he’d left behind. That wasn’t obvious at all. He almost laughs. He reaches down to touch Spencer on the forehead. His skin rivals the temperature of a coffee pot. Already he is racked with infection. That happened surprisingly fast. Lassiter looks briefly at the shirt covering the once gaping wound. At this point, it is barely oozing, but there is no telling what is happening inside the psychic’s gut. He is glad it is out of sight. The only thing he can see is Spencer falling into delirium. “You’re not my damn responsibility, Spencer,” he repeats the lie. “And I don’t care what happens to you.”

Lassiter is pissed off. Spencer isn’t just his responsibility; Spencer is his duty. He had taken an oath to protect civilian life, and protect he would. But that didn’t mean he had to admit it out loud. That didn’t mean that Spencer had to know that he cared, even if it was just slightly and because it was tied to a deep sense of allegiance to a badge.

He doesn’t know if the young man registers anything he has said. The breaths come and go with difficulty, sometimes deep and sometimes shallow. Lassiter swipes at the sweat on his own face, realizing at the last moment that his hand still has blood on it. He grimaces and wipes it roughly on his pants. The blood is tacky, and it doesn’t rub off easily.

Lassiter has to get going. He straightens from his crouch. The sound of his cracking knees seems to reverberate in the vacant starkness of the office doorway. He aches.

Grabbing for his gun, he takes one last look at Spencer. “I’ll be back,” he tells his seemingly insensate companion. “Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

In the mean time, Spencer must have managed to locate his face. Lassiter feels the stare. He pauses, on the brink of staying and going.

Suddenly, Lassiter finds himself bending down and grabbing something from under his pant left, near his ankle. This is a stupid idea. He tells himself that several times while he simultaneously reaches out with his Colt 380. It’s a small pistol, some might even call it a junk gun, but it’s a viable backup weapon. Lightweight, easy to conceal, and as potentially dangerous as any other gun. Carefully, reluctantly, Lassiter shoves it into Spencer’s hand. This is a stupid idea.

Lassiter makes sure Spencer is still watching him. “Hold it tight and pull the trigger,” he says by way of instruction. “And try not to shoot me or yourself.”

Spencer is looking at the gun now, staring at it. He doesn’t appear particularly afraid. Lassiter can’t decide whether that’s a good or a bad sign. Never had he ever thought he’d willingly lend a gun to Shawn Spencer, but now -- in this moment and in this circumstance -- it felt right. At least now Spencer had something. Whether or not he would be alert enough to use it correctly… well, that is the question, isn’t it?

And then Lassiter turns, his own gun held at ready, safety off. He slinks down the length of the hallway on the balls of his feet, passing under one clinically bright light after the other, glancing into one vacant office after the other. He hears Spencer in the distance, calling out in a strangled panic, “Lassie? Lassie? Where are you going? Don’t leave me here! Lassie?”

Lassiter is amazed the man is able to rouse himself to speak at such a level. He finds it hard to ignore the cries; they are terrified, desperate. Lassiter isn’t an animal; he falters and considers turning around. But he can’t. He grits his teeth and sets his face into a grim expression of determination. Spencer is on the edge of delirium; he probably doesn’t know exactly where he is or what’s going on. But at least he has a gun. Lassiter shoves aside any logic suggesting that giving guns to delirious man-children isn’t the best idea. He’s gone over this before, and he’s made his choice.

The cries eventually fade into whimpers as Lassiter guides himself away, turning here and there, keeping careful track of his progress. This place is like a labyrinth. He hopes he can remember his path.