![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fandom: Psych
Characters: Shawn Spencer, Burton Guster
Words: 1,590
Rating: T
Warnings: Hallucinations, paranoia, blood, drowning, loss of reality
The water was rising too fast. He was doing his best, but it was too dark to properly see anything. He wasn’t going to make it in time.
“You know you can’t save her,” the voice taunted. That voice which never failed to freeze his blood. “She’s going to die because you weren’t fast enough. Not smart enough.”
No! He had to get there in time. He knew she was here somewhere.
Except, the water was now over his head and he still couldn’t find her. The tide was coming in too fast. He needed to swim to the surface — needed to breathe — but he couldn’t leave her to die. Not like the others.
His lungs and throat burned from lack of oxygen.
It took him a moment to realize the water was suddenly gone. Vanished. It was still dark, though, and he couldn’t move at all.
Hands scrabbled for anything to touch, something that would indicate where he was. He couldn’t feel anything. Just the darkness.
The burning in his shoulder told him where he was, though. And he needed to get out. Needed to escape before the car stopped and his captor was able to finish the job.
He reached out again, but still felt nothing. Not the metal of the car, not even the old rubber mat on the floor. Where was the latch so he could get out?
“Hurry up, kid,” came a completely different voice, this one more impatient than predatory. “I showed you a million times how to do this. You don’t have any excuse not to figure it out.”
Even though it was already too dark to see anything, he shut his eyes as he continued to frantically search for a way out. He couldn’t shut out the voice, though.
“This is your own fault, you know. You’re going to fail. Like always.”
Well, maybe if you’d actually help!
The darkness was overwhelming him, making it hard to think or move. He couldn’t get out. He was trapped.
He needed air. He was going to suffocate…
Eyes flying open, he struggled to sit up, but found himself tangled in something large and restricting.
He couldn’t get enough air. Couldn’t breathe. Painful gasps dragged in and out, but he was still suffocating.
Where was he? What was happening?
Hands grabbed him, holding him still, and causing his panic to ratchet up a few more notches.
“Shawn, stop! It’s Gus. You're okay. Calm down.”
This voice was nothing like the other ones. It was safe. He could trust it.
Slowly, the world shifted into focus as he concentrated on calming his racing heart. Breathing became a little easier and he didn’t feel like he was dying anymore.
Blinking, Shawn looked around the brightly lit room.
He was on the couch in Gus’s living room. The heavy object that had trapped him was nothing more than a blanket. Light streamed through the windows, indicating the late morning hour. Gus was sitting on the coffee table, looking more than a little panicked himself.
Groaning as he rubbed some of the sleep out of his eyes, Shawn pushed himself into a sitting position. The blanket was slightly damp with sweat, but he didn’t particularly want to push it off anymore. Instead, he grabbed the edge and pulled it a little closer.
“How long was I out?”
Gus didn’t even glance at his watch. “Forty-three minutes,” he supplied in a tone of voice which clearly indicated he didn’t believe it was long enough. Considering it’d been weeks since his last full night of sleep, Shawn was inclined to agree.
“I still have those sleeping pills, you know,” Gus tried for the fifteenth time in as many hours.
Shawn barely repressed a shudder at the thought. The dreams were hard enough to escape from as it was. The idea of having a sedative in his system was beyond terrifying.
He’d been regularly rinsing out his water bottle in fear of Gus slipping something into it while he wasn't looking. And if that seemed a bit paranoid, well, he really didn’t care. Rationality was purely a matter of perspective anyway.
“Nah, I’m good, buddy. Thanks for the offer.”
A sharp laugh directly behind his shoulder caused him to flinch involuntarily. He managed to force himself not to look, though. Mostly because Gus was still staring at him like he was a glass object about to shatter with the slightest touch. And that analogy hit way too close to home for his tastes.
“I’m hungry,” he said, clapping his hands together, desperate for a change in topic. “Not that I’m entirely against the idea of cold pizza for breakfast, but — and I don’t say this often — I’m actually in the mood for some real food. What do you say we grab some sandwiches from that deli on the corner?”
Gus ran a hand over his head, blowing out an exasperated breath. If the guy had any hair, it would probably be standing on end right now. Or going gray from worry.
Shawn didn’t even want to think about the state of his own hair. Personal grooming sort of fell by the wayside around the same time his sanity decided to take a long hike off a short pier.
“Shawn, I think it’s time we consider getting help.”
“For the sandwiches?” he quipped halfheartedly, because he knew exactly where this was going. “Gus, I know we’re not the peak of physical fitness, but I’m sure even we can manage—”
“This isn’t funny, Shawn!”
The outburst caught them both by surprise. Gus’s eyes widened almost comically as Shawn’s mouth snapped shut. They stared for a full minute before, surprisingly, Gus was the one to break the silence.
“I'm sorry. It’s just... This is serious. Like, really serious. How much longer are we supposed to keep doing this? You need sleep. And, frankly, so do I.”
And this is the moment when he should probably insert a joke to diffuse the tension. Or any random remark that could derail this conversation and lighten the mood. Except, nothing came to mind. And then it was too late; the words he’d been trying to avoid even thinking about were tumbling out of Gus’s mouth and he had no way of stopping it.
“We can’t keep pretending this is going to go away on its own. It’s not going away, it’s only getting worse. We need help. Professional help. Because I’m really trying my best here, Shawn, but I’m not evenly remotely qualified to handle this. Neither of us are.”
Shawn’s hands clenched around the edge of the blanket.
Gus was wrong. This wasn’t a huge deal. It was fine. He was fine. A few nightmares were perfectly normal, especially given some of the more stressful cases they’d been dealing with lately. Nothing wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with them leaking into his waking moments, either. After all, he’d always had an active imagination. Plus the whole sleep deprivation thing. A very reasonable explanation for it.
And the vividness of them… well, that could be explained by his eidetic memory, couldn’t it? His brain could store every small detail of an event, so it stood to reason that it could use that information to create realistic scenarios in his head.
Right? Nothing abnormal about any of it.
Nothing to be concerned about.
A sharp coppery tang filled his nose, and Shawn glanced down before he could stop himself.
His hands immediately let go of the blanket at the sight of the dark red seeping out of his own skin. It spread rapidly, stinging and burning as it ran over the backs of his hands and dripped off the ends of his fingers. Stomach churning, he stared helplessly at his bloodied hands. A panicked thought flashed across his mind. If this was all in his head, why did it hurt so much?
Hot tears started to pool behind his eyes. “What’s happening to me, Gus?” he whispered roughly.
His friend reached over and grabbed his hand, oblivious to the fact that he was further smearing the blood everywhere. He squeezed reassuringly, and with maybe just a tinge of desperation. The firm grip helped ground Shawn, making it easier to ignore the sticky sensation coating his skin.
“I don’t know,” Gus murmured, looking ready to start crying as well. “But we’ll figure it out. And we’ll do whatever it takes to fix it.”
“I can’t make it stop.”
And that, Shawn realized, was the most horrifying part of this whole thing. There was a reason he wasn’t a fan of heavy medications, and why he rarely drank more than a single beer or cocktail. He needed to be in control of his mind. It was a key part of himself.
As much as he had a complicated relationship with his “gift”, Shawn had grown up being able to see the world through a unique lens. And now someone had tilted it out of focus.
If he couldn’t trust his own mind, how could he trust anything?
“I can’t control it.”
Gus’s hand squeezed harder. It would have been uncomfortable, except it offered a lifeline he was more than anxious to cling to.
“I know. But it’s not real, Shawn. Whatever it is, however scary it looks, just remember it’s not real.”
Shawn glanced back down at their joined hands, and the slowly congealing blood on them, feeling nauseous at the smell drifting up from it.
He shook his head, swallowing hard.
“It’s real to me, Gus.”
