A/N: I do not own the characters, but I'm fairly proud of the plot, which is mine. Steve Franks and USA own Shawn, Gus, Lassiter, O'Hara, Henry, Vick, Santa Barbara, the Psych name, and, of course, the incomparable Buzz McNabb.

Set immediately after (and a little bit during) 3x11 (like I have to tell you that it's "Lassie Did a Bad, Bad Thing). So, there're spoilers for that. Rated for some language and some content.

Prologue: The Awkward Conversation That Every Father Dreads

Henry Spencer has been around the block once or twice. Well, a few times, if you can believe it, and in his days he's seen some pretty shocking stuff. He's seen a man willing to kill for a comic book; he's seen a woman drown her children, insisting that it was the best thing for them; he's seen women under arrest for solicitation trying to pick up cops in the police station (and he's seen more than one succeed); he's watched more kids OD on the cheap stuff than he can remember, and too many of them were familiar (but, then, that was just a part of the price of being a cop and a father). In short, Henry had seen some things, and it wasn't often anymore that he was truly shocked.

When his son had shown up on his doorstep with the head detective of the Santa Barbara police department in tow, insisting that Henry had to keep an eye on him, he'd been more interested than surprised, especially after hearing what Lassiter had done (which, for the record, had surprised no one). And when Lassiter had turned out to be a complete, screw-loose dope when he didn't have criminals to chase, well, Henry didn't think anyone had been too surprised about that one, either.

No, the real shock had come in the afternoon when Henry had found Lassiter asleep on Henry's couch. A depressed cop was nothing new, and with the way he'd blown through Henry's entire stockpile of canned goods and watched six straight hours of COPS, sleeping at odd hours had really been the only sign Lassiter had left to exhibit.

And when Henry found Lassiter in a certain…condition, well, he was a man after all, and these things happened. Morning wood aside, things were pretty much the way Henry had expected to find them. But when Lassiter had turned in his sleep, started moving against the couch, the name he muttered to himself in a voice Henry chose to characterize more as whisper than a whimper; now that one Henry had not seen coming.

"Shawn," Lassiter moaned, shifting his hips in a way Henry had hoped to finish his life without ever having to see another man move.

Henry groaned. "Oh, hell."

Henry waited. He hated waiting, sitting on information like this, but he knew there were more important things to be thought of just at the moment; Lassiter's career was on the line, after all, and Shawn's credibility. He waited until the very second he heard that the case had cleared to call them. But call them he did. It took a lot of convincing, but finally he managed to secure a meeting.

Henry sat now at his kitchen table on a beautiful Saturday morning, staring across at the only two people he suspected he could trust with the information he had been sitting on so uncomfortably for nearly two days. He decided there was nothing to be lost in being clear, and he got it out immediately. "What gets said in this house does not leave this house. The second you leave this house, this conversation never happened. When I say this is secret, I mean a "take it to your grave" secret. This is not a funny story we will share one day, this is not something you write home about. Under torture, you do not crack. On pain of death, you do not talk. This goes no further than my kitchen walls." Henry stopped, forcing a moment of prolonged eye contact with each in turn. "Now, what are we going to do about those two?"

Gus, for his part, was trying his best to look uncomfortable and uninterested, but Henry knew him better than that. He couldn't decide if the look meant that he and Shawn had yet to have this particular conversation, or if Shawn had made him swear not to tell Henry, but he did notice that Gus had found something absurdly interesting on his ceiling to stare at rather than look Henry in the eye. "What two?" Gus asked, trying to sound oblivious.

Henry rolled his eyes. "Gus, Shawn needs you on this one. Now man up and get serious. Shawn and Carlton are…they need to get it figured out, and it needs to happen before one of them gets himself shot."

Gus hedged, looking around the room again for something to focus on. But O'Hara, the eternal optimist that she was, was smiling. "Oh, thank god. I've been trying for three years to get those two in a room together, and nothing's worked. I, for one, would be glad for the help."

Henry grinned, glad to see someone was willing to cooperate, then shot a hard glare at Gus, who seemed inordinately interested in the doors to Henry's cabinets. "Okay, Detective O'Hara—."

She smiled, interrupting. "Given the nature of what we're doing here, I think it'd be okay for you to call me Juliet."

"Okay, Juliet, then step one is to cover ground on what you've already tried. Maybe there's something there we can build on. Right, Gus?"

"Man," Gus whined under his breath, his resolve visibly crumbling. "I promised myself I was gonna stay out of this one." He sighed, casting an annoyed glare at Henry. "Fine," he finally agreed, "But if it gets too weird, I'm out."

"Way to be a friend, Gus," Henry muttered sarcastically, turning back to Juliet. "So, detective, you have three years of intel over the rest of us. Let's hear what you've got."

Juliet began her report, and Henry grinned. With a framework of three years to work with, this might actually work. With a little dedication from O'Hara and some support from Gus (and of course all the brain power Henry himself could spare), Operation Romantically Challenged might actually have a shot in hell after all.

Good. If nothing else, Henry could definitely say that those two deserved each other.