You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (In a Box Under The Ground)

Rating: M, for cock grabbing, nudity.

Pairings: Shawn/Lassiter.

Warning: Shassie slash. Creepy situation. May trigger taphephobics.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: Carlton and Shawn are buried alive.

Note: So far all my stories have been really long, because I like the build-up of sexual tension before they actually get together. I wanted to see if I could write something under four pages that still functioned as something other than porn without plot (which I love reading, but probably can't write). Due to feedback from reviewers I've added four more chapters.

Carlton Lassiter awoke to a darkness so complete that he couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed. He tried to sit up and realized three things very quickly: first, he was in a small enclosed space; second, he had a headache; and third, he was not alone. He felt along his side to where his cell phone was clipped to his belt. He flipped the device open and used the light to examine his surroundings. He was in a box, approximately seven feet long, four and a half feet wide, and two feet high. And the body pressed against him was Shawn Spencer, immobile and silent. He checked for a pulse. Shawn was alive, but unconscious.

Better to leave him that way for the time being, Carlton thought. There's not much room in here. The last thing I need is Shawn freaking right the hell out. It was going to be hard enough to keep himself from panicking. He checked his holster. At least my gun is still here.

Carlton tried to piece together the timeline. He'd been investigating the disappearance of a local woman and was questioning her neighbour, Ms. Montresor. Shawn had shown up, uninvited, and pushed his way into the interview. She'd made them tea.

Of course, Carlton thought. We've been drugged. And, he examined the wood, locked in some kind of trunk?

Carlton looked at his cell phone. He didn't have any bars. No calling for help. He kicked hard at the top of the box and a shower of dirt poured in around his feet. He coughed and pulled his shirt over his mouth, waiting for the dust to settle.

Fuck. Not a box then. We're in a coffin. This is not good. If he'd been alone he would have kept on kicking. But he couldn't leave Shawn behind to die. Carlton wondered if this was some sort of wish fulfilment. In the two months since he'd realized that his feelings for Spencer were more than just friendly, he'd imagined dozens of ways the two of them might find themselves alone together. Buried alive in the same coffin was not on that list. If it comes down to it, he thought morbidly, I could shoot myself in the head and give Shawn a few more minutes of oxygen. From the darkness next to him Shawn stirred.

"Lassie?" He sounded confused, but Carlton assumed that scared wasn't far behind.

"I'm here." He tried to sound reassuring, but his voice cracked slightly.

"Where are we?" Shawn turned on his side and looked at him in the light of the cell phone.

Do not say 'buried alive.' He took a slow breath, then said, "We're in a crate under the ground."

"Damn!" Shawn flashed back to their visit to Ms. Montresor's house. "I remember seeing a tiny piece of white powdery something on the saucer of my cup. I thought it was sugar but it must've been some kind of tranquilizer." He made a low wail of exasperation. "I feel so stupid right now." He pulled out his iphone and pressed the home button. "Are you getting any bars?"

"No. But then that's not surprising. There's no reception underground."

"Okay. So far, so sucky." Shawn looked at his cell phone again. "Have you tried getting out yet?"

"Yes, I have. It was not a success." He pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered if his headache was an effect of the drugged tea or the first sign of oxygen deprivation. He sighed.

Shawn shone his cell phone light at the bottom of the crate and saw the dirt.

"So I see. We've got maybe forty-five minutes before we suffocate. Unless we panic, in which case we die faster. Either way, we'll be dead by 4:00 p.m. at the latest."

"What, is that some psychic premonition? This is no time for your ridiculous act, Spencer. There's no one to show off for here." This is clearly a sign that my interest in Spencer was doomed from the start. The guy can't even be honest with me when we're facing certain death.

"It's not a premonition, Lassie, it's math." Shawn looked at the clock on his phone. "It's ten to three now. It was two when we arrived. We talked for fifteen minutes before she offered us tea, and it took maybe ten minutes for it to knock us out. Someone must have helped her move our bodies. They had to dig a hole if they didn't have one already. That took some time. We've been in here fifteen minutes, tops."

"And this helps us how?" Carlton was fascinated by Shawn's logic, but unclear where he was going with it.

"You don't watch a lot of Mythbusters, do you, Lassie? They established that a standard casket holds about an hour's worth of air. This box is about double that, but there are two of us. So we've got forty-five minutes of air left."

"That's how you do it all, isn't it?" Carlton turned on his side and looked at Shawn with wonder. "You're not psychic. It's all just deduction."

"Let's focus on this buried alive problem. You can berate me for lying to you in the afterlife, okay? Assuming we end up in the same place of course. I've been a little naughty."

"Forty-five minutes isn't very long." Oh God, Carlton thought, do not start going over all the shit in your life that you wish you hadn't put off until later.

"When Hodges and Brennan were buried by in a car by the Gravedigger in Bones they punctured the spare tire to get more air."

"Great. That does us no good since we're not in a car." Just when Shawn proves he's a genius, he also proves he's an idiot. It's kind of endearing, really.

"Adrian Monk was buried alive in a car too. He used the loud music from the stereo to signal his rescuers. It's all mostly car burials nowadays. Our burial is seriously old school."

"My phone plays music but there's no way we can make it loud enough to get through however many feet of dirt we're under."

"Then we're left with the Sydney Bristow/Nick Stokes/Adrian Monk method. We wait to be rescued."

"I thought you said Monk used the car horn."

"That was the second time he was buried alive. It happened in season 3 and again in season 6."

"Anyone could have this happen to them once," Carlton allowed, "but twice just sounds like carelessness." He tried to sound optimistic. "Look, maybe we will get rescued. If O'Hara notices I'm missing she can track me with the GPS in my cell phone."

"So she has to notice you're missing and become alarmed enough to trace you within the next forty-five minutes. Please tell me there's a good reason she won't just think you went to lunch?"

"Okay," Carlton said. "So we can't count on rescue. Uma Thurman used kung fu to fight her way out of this same situation in the second Kill Bill movie. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer clawed her way out of her grave in season 6. I don't have any martial arts training but I've thrown some punches in my time and if we—"

"Lassie!" Shawn smiled at him in the glow of the cell phone. "You do watch television, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I watch Criminal Minds, and Cops and Without a Trace and NCIS and the First Forty-Eight and all the CSIs except the one set in Miami." Shawn looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "I just don't care for David Caruso."

"Buffy? That's hardly crime fighting, unless you consider vampires the criminals."

"I watched it for Willow. I liked her." He paused a moment, then added. "I even cried a bit when Warren shot Tara."

"Who didn't?" Shaun flashed his cell phone light around the box, examining it. "So your plan is that we try to kick and punch our way out of this thing?"

"It's a risk, but with two of us I think we can do it." And if we can't, I'll try shooting our way out. The sound would deafen us both, but it would definitely penetrate the wood.

"And the dirt that will inevitable pour in here like tweens in the side door of a Justin Bieber concert? What do you suggest we do with that?"

"Come on!" Carlton said, frustrated now. "We may as well try to escape. Frankly, faced with imminent death the alternatives don't look so bad." He pulled his tie off and unbuttoned his shirt. It was getting extremely hot in the claustrophobic box now. Unless that's an effect of panic, or a sign of impending suffocation.

"Going by that logic," Shawn said, looking the detective in the eyes, "there's no reason you can't confess your sexual attraction to me."

"What?" How the hell does he know? I've only known for the past eight weeks.

"You heard me, Lassie. You like me. The pretended annoyance, all the touching—it's obvious."

"The touching?" Carlton's voice rose. "You're the one who's been touching me." I haven't touched you in any way that couldn't be interpreted as professional. Or as indicative of violent dislike.

"Exactly!" Shawn said. "I touch you inappropriately all the time. And you let me. Now either you're the least homophobic straight guy in the world, or you're interested. Which is it?"

"I'm not gay, Spencer." Although straight doesn't seem to quite fit lately either.

"Don't want to box yourself in?" Shawn laughed. "Too soon for buried alive humour? Fine. I'm not talking labels, Lassie. I'm talking lust. Admit it. You want a sip of my milkshake."

"I'm not having this conversation with you, Spencer." The possibility of dying is difficult enough without having to add in sexual rejection.

"Please, call me Shawn, just to see how it feels."

"No. This is ridiculous." Besides, he thought, I already call you Shawn in my head.

Shawn, already close, wrapped an arm around him.

"What are you doing?" Carlton asked. His head was filled with both hope and dread. Maybe I've already passed out, he thought, and this is some kind of hallucination.

"An experiment, like on Mythbusters." Shawn's mouth was inches away from his. "These could be our last moments together, Lassie. Kiss me. I know you want to." Shawn put a hand on the side of Carlton's face and leaned in, stopping just short of his lips, and hung there, breathlessly waiting. Carlton was used to Shawn's lack of personal space, but it had never been this overtly sexual before. It was intoxicating.

Suddenly, before he was aware of having decided to do so, he was kissing Shawn, tasting the saltiness of his skin and feeling the wetness of his mouth and the stubble of his jaw. He didn't wonder what O'Hara or Vick or Henry or his mother would say or any of the other thoughts that intruded whenever he'd thought of kissing Spencer before. Nothing outside of the box mattered.

Shawn touched Carlton just below the belt. He pulled back instinctively but there wasn't anywhere for him to go. Shawn ran his fingers over his cock through the thin fabric of his pants, and felt him swell in response. He squeezed gently and Carlton groaned and pushed against him.

"Oh my God, Shawn," Carlton pulled back from their kiss. "If you keep doing that I'm going to use up all the oxygen," he panted.

"Maybe it's worth it." Shawn looked around at the box walls. "We might even be able to have sex in here, if I …Hey. I just realized something."

"What?" He felt a chill along his spine. Shawn was using his 'I've solved the mystery' voice.

Shawn ran his hand over the wood above them, wrinkling his brow in thought. "In the Mythbusters episode the steel casket started to buckle after four feet of dirt. This wood's holding up fine. We can't be buried very deep. I think your kung-fu plan might work after all."

"Really?" The elation at the thought that they might not die was followed by a wave of nausea as he wondered about the consequences of their brief sexual encounter. It wasn't so much a question of whether Shawn would tell anyone, but rather, who would Shawn tell first?

"It's worth a shot," Shawn said. "I figure we can't be more than three feet below the ground."

"You could get hurt," Carlton said. "We could both get hurt." Carlton was thinking of suffocating in an avalanche of dirt, but in the back of his mind he was also thinking of the emotional landslide that might ensue if they made it out alive.

"Time heals all wounds," Shawn said. "Except mortal wounds. Let's avoid getting any of those. Come on, Lassie. Let's kick this coffin's ass, Buffy style." He curled his hands into fists.

"Listen," Carlton put a hand on Shawn's shoulder, "Can we agree that what happens in the box stays in the box?"

"Maybe." Shawn smiled and kissed him again. "But only if you don't tell anyone that I'm not psychic. Except of course Gus and Henry. They already know I'm not psychic, so I get to tell them that we're sleeping together."

"We're not sleeping together." But I can take that as you'd like to? Carlton's heart was racing.

"Not yet. I figured we'd save that for the 'thank God we're alive' part of the day. Your place of mine?"

"Mine." Lassiter took Shawn's hand and gave it a firm squeeze. "Now let's get out of this fucking box and arrest that crazy bitch." They took a deep breath and pulled their shirts over their noses and screamed as they struck out with their fists. Dirt poured into the box.