Disclaimer: the characters and details mentioned are not my property; only this story is, and it intends no copyright infringement.

Consciously Unconscious

During his Freudian phase, one of Shawn Spencer’s (many) first dates happened to take place with a psychiatrist. She found it kind of hot that his mom was a psychiatrist, too, murmured in Shawn’s ear how he was a textbook Oedipal complex ripe for the plucking. This was sufficiently weird enough for Shawn to dodge her claws and escape the restaurant table for the restaurant bathroom and, from there, the bathroom window leading out into the alleyway. He got a few strange looks, but then, that was par for the course. Of course guilt and his father’s admonition to always be a gentleman no matter how freaky the lady (even when the lady was in fact a gentleman, as happened in yet another of Shawn’s first date mishaps involving his unaware wandering into the transgender community, one of those things that Shawn has always been glad happened while he was far from Santa Barbara because, had it happened in Santa Barbara, Gus would know about it, and so would everyone else, and Shawn would never be able to live it down) forced Shawn to sneak back into the restaurant, stealthily pay the bill, and sneak right back out.

That is not the point of this story. The point of this story is how, before his date had turned scarily maternal on him, she’d been going on and on and on about the current study of lucid dreaming. Given that Shawn never forgets anything, he doesn’t forget a single word of what she says – or does – no matter how brain-scarring it may have been.

Lucid dreaming is the application of a conscious mind within an unconscious state. Controlling dreams, rather than allowing them to control you, in other words. Shawn’s never bothered with trying to do it, mostly because he always forgets about his intention to lucid dream when he’s drifting off to sleep, and that’s one of the requirements of the whole experiment. It’s a bit frustrating, always forgetting the one last thing of the day you want to remember and waking up the next morning angry with yourself.

Shawn solves this dilemma via post-it notes. Post-it notes everywhere. Bright neon green, virulent yellow, electric blue. Scrawled on each: DON’T FORGET THIS TIME YOU IDIOT, because Shawn responds best when commands are worded the same way his father would put them.

That night he doesn’t forget. His bedroom is all dark corners. The window is open. Wind blows in; shirtless, the sheet pulled over his chest, arm flung over his eyes, Shawn breathes deep.

***

He’s walking through the police station, only the walls are so huge, they’re enormous, and the desks look as if made for giants. Shawn glances down at his hands and they’re tiny. “Shawn!” Juliet calls, just her voice, she’s nowhere to be seen, and he whirls wildly, searching for her.

Wait. Shawn thinks, Pause. There was a wind in the station, ruffling the loose papers and shifting across Shawn’s skin, but it stops at his non-verbal command. That’s right, this is a dream. And he hasn’t been a child for a very long time, no matter what pre-pubescent age he tends to act.

The world shrinks, or better, Shawn grows, until everything is the right perspective, and he turns his head and grins because Jules is there. She’s wearing a dress (the stupid prom dress, the one that made him think of “Pretty in Pink” because she was, but damn, he had the feeling that made him Ducky – who was awesome, yeah, but still didn’t get the girl) and her hair is down and her eyes are sparkling.

And because he can do anything inside the space of his own head, Shawn cues up floaty dance music from a nonexistent sound system, reaches out to grab Juliet’s hand, and twirls her into a dance. Where in reality Jules would laugh at him and pull out of his grip, in dream, Jules tilts her head back and laughs, her neck a long golden line, her hand firm and solid in his own. The music switches to tango, heat in the beat, and they fall into the rhythm of it with as little trouble as breathing. Shawn presses Juliet close to him and she presses close back, he dips her low, his hand on her waist keeping her steady – he leans down over her, so close he can smell her skin (he smelled her skin earlier that day, standing too close while in the grips of a ‘vision’, and calls up that sense memory now), peach-spice tang, his lips dangerously aligned with her lips, and Shawn thinks he is going to kiss her (and it won’t mean anything, but it will still taste sweet) – and then his mother is looking up at him from inside the circle of his arms and she says, “What’s the matter, Goose?” and Shawn has to concede that maybe that aforementioned ditched first date had something when she talked about Oedipal complexes after all.

***

Except, no, she really didn’t. Shawn loves his mother. But he doesn’t love his mother. That’s just too many shades of wrong.

Right? Right?

***

“Right,” Madeline Spencer says. Not the real one, the one in Shawn’s head, the one he dreams up. “I think we’re overdue for a serious discussion, Shawnie, about your faulty relationships with women.”

Because this is a dream, his own head, Shawn could say, I think that may be rooted to how you abandoned me when I was a teenager. I mean, just maybe. Because he blamed Henry for that, but he blamed Madeline a little bit too, in the deepest, darkest parts of his brain that he doesn’t admit exist, most of the time. Because it hurt too much to hate the woman who left him, because if he hated her then she wouldn’t come back, she would just stay gone, because it was easier to hate the man who stayed, because no matter how Shawn raged against him, he would remain.

But Shawn could never hurt any incarnation of Madeline Spencer, not even the one he made up in his own head, and so he winces and says, “Can we not?"

The police station morphs around them, and suddenly they’re in Chief Vick’s office, only it’s decorated like how it was when John Fenich ruled the station with an amiable iron fist. Madeline sits behind his desk, authority undeniable.

“Now,” Madeline folds her hands in front of her, posture straight but relaxed, expression intent and caring. “Why is it that you never go on a second date with anyone?”

Shawn hasn’t sat down. He paces. He flings his arms around, tousles his hair, tries to escape out the door. “We’re not doing this,” he protests. “We are not psychoanalyzing my subconscious while my consciousness is unconscious.”

“You protest a lot,” Madeline remarks. “To create a distance. To forestall talking about anything serious. You dodge anything that takes actual emotional commitment, son.”

I learned from the best, Shawn wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, “That’s not true. I have an emotional commitment to my job.”

“A job grounded in fundamental untruths,” Madeline says. She leans back slightly, her body a gradual decline, her short hair tilting across her face. “Tell me, how many women have you actually been honest with?”

Shawn stares at her. She stares back.

Madeline says, “How many women do you actually trust?”

***

He’s outside, at the pier, watching Abigail in her babydoll dress and jean jacket, the clips in her hair, the nervous way she stands – how she fidgets, shifts her weight from one foot to the other, shoves her hand in her jacket pocket – he catalogues her.

Moment of truth. He keeps telling himself he’s going to go forward. He keeps telling himself he’s going to not screw up this hard-won chance. This date with Abby has been the one thing he hasn’t given up on, out of a very long list – the one thing he has worked long hours for, sweated over and hoped for – it means so much. It means too much.

He’s watching Abigail, and he can’t move.

***

He told her the truth. Sort of. Eventually. Not the whole truth, but the truth he owed her. And she kissed him, and it was perfect, it was a door finally closed, it was a question answered, and the answer was, “Too late, maybe then, but not now.”

***

No, no, the whole point of lucid dreaming is control.

***

“You’re not here,” he tells Madeline, and she makes a startled face and disappears.

“Shawn?”

He turns his head, and Juliet is there. She’s wearing a jean jacket over a babydoll dress, heels on her feet giving her extra height, long blonde hair straightened and falling down her back, clips holding it off her face. She smiles.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Juliet says. “You ready for our date?” She moves toward him, she moves, he’s standing still and she’s moving, she’s right there. She leans forward, head angled as if for a kiss. It’s a lie.

It’s all a lie. His head is a lie. Shawn is lying to himself and worse, has dragged Juliet into it, and it feels wrong. It feels a desecration. But he can’t move. He can’t move.

***

He’s eight years old and his mom is picking him up, twirling him around. He’s in her arms and he feels so safe.

“Hey, Goose,” she says. “It’s okay. It’s all okay. Everything’s going to be fine.” There’s light coming from somewhere, maybe from inside him, because Shawn believes her. She loves him, she wouldn’t lie, she would never leave him, never move away from him, she’s holding him now and she’s never going to let him go.

Shawn closes his eyes. Concentrates. Controls.

The world around him wrenches and he’s at the pier watching his teen self staring at a distant Abigail. He’s not eight anymore, he’s a grown man. Juliet stands beside him. She takes his hand. Her grip is callused and soft, paradoxical.

Shawn doesn’t look at her, but when he speaks, his words are for her hearing and no one else’s. “I will tell you,” he says, insistent, voice soft. “Soon. Not yet. But I will.”

Juliet doesn’t say anything, but that’s okay, because it’s not like she’s really there anyway.

***

It’s too bright when Shawn opens his eyes, too early. He lies in bed, sheets kicked to his feet, hair rumpled and mouth foul with morning breath. He doesn’t have the energy yet, but soon he’ll gather the will to move.