Work Text:
Gus had thought he'd been prepared for anything when it came to Unexpected Presences in the Psych office.
When he steps through the front door to find a young woman sitting at the always-empty "front desk", dressed in a full sweater and slacks despite the California weather, he realizes he hadn't been prepared for that at all.
She's definitely not there to be eye candy, her bright pink sweater completely obscures her body shape and she's got a light purple polo underneath, fully buttoned up and covering as much as possible. She's also way too young for either him or Shawn to be comfortable looking at in that way, early twenties at most. She looks up at him, her frizzy and flyaway plagued pixie cut pinned back with two plain black barrettes at her temples, and smiles. Her pink-and-green eyeshadowed eyes crinkle up, and her bright magenta lips form a genuine yet professional polite smile.
"Mr. Guster! Shawn wasn't expecting you to be in this early, he's still out grabbing some breakfast. It's nice to meet you!"
"Uh, nice to meet you too." Gus approaches cautiously. He gets a better looks at her up-close. She's wearing colorful eye and lip makeup, and clownish amounts of blush, but no actual cover-the-skin makeup, her acne breakouts fully on display. Her pants are a strange almost 80's-like plaid, mainly black or a shade near black with bright pink, teal, and purple thin lines making the pattern. She's got shin-length socks on with little Christmas themed cats all over them, and a pair of orthopedic dress-style black pleather shoes.
"Is Mr. Guster how you'd like me to address you?" she asks in a voice as bright as the shade of her lipstick. "Shawn said he preferred just Shawn, but thought you'd like the more professional route better."
"Um, Gus is fine. And you are?"
"Oh, Sid." She sticks her hand out to shake.
"Your parents named you Sid? Odd name for a girl."
"Chosen name! My partner came up with it, actually. But anyway, would you like me to read off the appointments for the day?"
"We have appointments?"
"Yes, you have a 10:45 coming in to get a reading about if her band will take off in the next few years, something about her parents giving her a deadline for it or else she'll have to go to college. Afterwards there's a 12:15 coming in for advice on his career path, he's concerned he's committing to the wrong company and has a few offers he's thinking about taking. After that there's only a 6:30 who just wants a general reading because she's curious about what it's like." She reads this all off of one of Shawn's old laptops, adjusting her pastel purple see-through glasses as she peers at the screen. "Shawn told me specifically not to book any 'Are they cheating' cases this week, so it's a little sparse at the moment."
"Oh. Well... good work." Gus nods to her, and she beams at him.
The phone next to her rings and picks it up, answering with a cheery "Thank you for calling Psych, the private psychic detective agency! How may we help you today, tomorrow, or last week?" She giggles at the cheesy line, but looks quite proud at the same time.
Gus sits at his desk and watches her until Shawn comes back. She just sits there, answering the phone and writing things down and working on some kind of visual projects- is Shawn ordering merchandise? - and not-so-subtly sneaking glances at her cellphone every once and a while. When Shawn walks in she greets him with that endless professional-yet-childlike cheeriness, and he greets her back with a grin and a pineapple smoothie.
He plops down on the armchair by the window. "Well, Gus? What do you think?"
"I think you went and hired a receptionist without talking to me about it." Gus snatches his smoothie away with a 'tsk'. "What're you doing, Shawn? We can't afford to pay someone a salary on just one case a week!"
"We aren't! You told me to start taking more private cases, remember?! Even the lame ones." Shawn gestures towards Sid. "I got tired of doing all the other stuff myself, so I put out an ad while you were busy with the pharmaceuticals convention all week. Dude, check out her resume."
Shawn hands over the papers, and Gus takes them with a huff. His frustration smooths out into impress as he reads it. "Wow. Experience in retail, service booking, customer service, office management, and marketing? How old is she?"
"Nineteen, Gus! And look, she had references and everything! Check out that article she wrote for her last job."
Gus skims it. It's a clear marketing ploy article, but it's well-written and comprehensive. The tone is conversational without being casual, and clear without being pushy. It reads like something the actual trained marketing department at Central Coast would come up with, not some kid with a hobby and a couple years of on-the-job experience. "No way a nineteen year old wrote this."
"Dude, she's a writing expert. Check this out, SID!"
She perks up, getting out of her chair and walking over to them with her hands clasped in front of her. "Yes?"
"Gus here, doubts your writing proficiency."
"I didn't-"
"YES, you did. So, how about showing off for him a little? It's fun, trust me, he's great to show off too."
"Oh, um, did you have anything specific in mind?"
"Yes, actually, if you could write up a little ad for the paper that could convince non-believers to give us a try." Shawn smiles at her all lopsided and false sweetness, eyeing Gus smugly. "And uh, if you could sit right here so Gus can see your screen and know you aren't cheating."
"Okay, I guess." Sid grabs the laptop and sits where they can both see her screen. She opens up a document, and her fingers go flying across the keyboard.
Psychics may not be everyone's cup of tea when it comes to personal beliefs, but here at Psych, the Private Detective Agency, our track record speaks for itself. With dozens of cases under our belts, including such high-profile solves as The Shabby Murder and The Jackson Hale Murder Trial, there's no doubt that Shawn Spencer and Burton Guster get results. Whether it's through true psychic ability to commune with a world beyond our own, or just by some great luck and intuition, we get things done. Just ask our 100% solving rate.
"What?" Gus reads it over again. "How'd you write that in less than five minutes?!"
Sid shrugs, grinning pridefully and bashfully at the same time somehow. "I've been writing my whole life. I analyze everything I read. Plus, marketing fascinates me, even if I don't always agree with the ethics used by some."
Shawn smirks at Gus. "Now do you see why I hired her? Plus, she's ordering us awesome t-shirts to sell to people!"
"Alright." Gus nods. "But why's a nineteen year old wanting to work for us anyway? Shouldn't you be out, you know, partying and stuff?"
"Ah." Sid waves he idea away, or maybe swats it away. "I don't do that kind of thing. Even if I did, I'm allergic to alcohol, so it'd be pretty stressful."
"See? She's perfect."
"Thank you for calling Psych, the private psychic detective agency! How may we help you today, tomorrow, or last week? ... Ah, I see. So you're concerned your partner is cheating... may I ask what leads you to believe that, if it's not too personal? ... Mm-hmm, I see. Well, just a moment, I need to confer with the spirits about- no, no I'm not psychic myself, but I've been given some tools to make contact."
Shawn gives Sid a thumbs up as she pretends to consult a Ouija board.
"I'm so sorry, the spirits are saying they can't help you with this one. No, no your partner's energy is blocking them from viewing his activities. If you'd like we can try again..."
"Two weeks," Shawn mouths.
"Two weeks from now, they're saying. Well, that's when they think there might be an energetic shift to allow them to observe him. I'm sorry, I don't understand the spirits process, I just relay their messages. If you have anything unrelated to your partner that you'd like us to look into- oh, you have a missing package?"
She glances at Shawn again. He shakes his head. "Never packages," he mouths.
"I'm sorry, the spirits don't deal with packages and parcel shipping. They don't like cardboard boxes. You know how cats can see ghosts? And how they love cardboard boxes? Those facts are more entwined than you may think. Alright, thank you for calling. I hope things work out for you! Have a wonderful rest of your day!"
Sid hangs up, and Shawn gives one single grand clap. "Perfect. I couldn't have done it better myself."
"Uh, Shawn?" Gus waves his friend over as Sid beams and does a little happy wiggle in her chair. Gus eyes her warily. "Doesn't that kind of give away to her that you're, you know? Fake?"
"Not at all." Shawn slaps Gus on the back. "Look, buddy, I told her the truth about it, sort of. There's some cases I just don't want to spend my valuable time and energy on, and people tend to be more accepting of that when they think it's on the spirits end instead of mine. None of that says I don't actually communicate with spirits."
"And what about when we bring evidence back? Make your boards? Talk about cases in a way that makes it obvious how we actually solve things?"
"Gus, she's only on the clock until we need her to be! She knows it's part time, she liked it that way! Her employment contract only promises a minimum of four hours a day that she works, and more than that we just pay five bucks extra."
"We what?! Shawn, show me that employment contract right now!"
"Hello, welcome to Psych, the private psychic detective agency! Do you have an appointment with us today?"
Gus looks up from his research and sees two familiar figures standing at the entrance in shock. He tosses a ball of paper at Shawn and nods at the door so Shawn can watch too.
Lassiter flounders for a second under the onslaught of pitched-up cheerfulness as Jules quickly recovers from the shock of an actually professional greeting.
"Hi, nice to meet you," Jules says, almost matching the near inhuman tone Sid has. Gus keeps hearing Sid clarify to callers that she is not, in fact, an answering machine or robot, and he can't blame them for the confusion. Jules nudges Lassiter. "I'm Detective O'Hara, this is Head Detective Lassiter. We're here to see Shawn about a case."
"Oh, yes, the detectives! Shawn told me to expect you sometime today, would you like any coffee while you meet with him? He wrote your preferences down on the wall."
"We'd love some." Jules nudges Lassiter again, keeping her smile plastered on, and Lassiter finally seems to recover.
"You work here? Willingly?" he comes out with.
"And happily," Sid says with a tilt of her head and a giggle. "Right this way, and I'll grab that coffee for you both."
As she passes by Shawn and Gus's desks, Gus sees her smile fall right off into a near scowl as soon as her back is to the detectives. But a minute later when she's returning with the coffee, it's back.
"-a little swamped in lame cases right now, so please tell me you have something good for us," Shawn says as Sid silently sets down the mugs and then heads back to her desk. Gus eyes her warily, looking for another drop in the facade. None occur.
"We do, actually, and we tried calling but-"
"Ah! I turn off my phone now when I'm in the office." Shawn kicks his feet up onto his desk and smirks a little. "Really helps clear my sense to have someone else handling my worldly heedings, when I need to be handling my otherworldly heedings."
Gus hears Sid stifle a snort of laughter behind him.
"Yeah, well, the only thing you're heeding now is the Chief's request." Lassiter tosses down a case file with a bitter expression. "I can't believe we have to visit you jackasses in this slobhole now just to give you a case."
"Now now Lassie." Shawn begins flipping through the file. "You can just call Sid and I promise, we'll hop right into the Blueberry. Does the Chief actually need our help on this one? Seems a little obvious."
"We thought so too, until we got a confession note signed with only a last name, and it's completely unconnected to the case. We have no leads on who it came from." Jules glances at the desk as the phone rings and Sid launches into her greeting. "How old is that girl, by the way?"
"I'm nineteen," Sid says, covering the phone mic, half-turning in her seat and smiling again.
"Oh." Jules takes in Sid's outfit, which today is a paisley-patterned button-up shirt, completely boxy and unflattering in cut, paired with plain black jeans and a thick gray cardigan Gus has seen almost every day since her first shift. When she doesn't have that cardigan she has long-sleeves and/or sweater vests to go with them. He should really suggest some medications for better blood circulation to the poor girl.
"You dress like an old lady," Lassiter so eloquently voices. Gus thinks about the affinity for cardigans and sweaters and finds himself nodding in agreement.
"Thank you." Sid seems to genuinely take it as a compliment.
Lassiter doesn't seem to know how to respond to that, so he turns back to Shawn and scowls at him. "Are you taking the case or not?"
"Oh, I definitely am. Sid, block off my schedule for the next... two days? Two days, Gus? Yeah, two days."
"Am I to call the clients with appointments and tell them to reschedule?"
"Am I to call?" Jules mouths, looking at Gus with her nose wrinkled in confusion.
"She just talks like that," Gus whispers. "We didn't ask her to."
"Depends," Shawn says over Gus and Jules's little conversation. "What've we got coming up?"
"Well, later today you have a meeting with the CEO of a small startup company, he wants to know if he should sell the business to an offer he got or if he should stick with it. Tomorrow you have two appointments in the late morning regarding stolen garden items, they're neighbors though so I bet it's each other or someone living next to both of them, so it shouldn't take too long... and then the last day is actually clear right now."
"We can keep those," Shawn says, handing the case file back over to Lassiter. "Good catch with the neighbors, that'll really help the psychic juices get flowing on that one."
"I also have their addresses here if you need to do a house call in this case."
"Perfect. Jules, Lassie, we'll see you at the station tomorrow at noon-ish sharp."
"You can't just-"
"Done with that coffee?" Sid asks, walking over and reaching for he mugs. "Yeah? Great, I'll just clear these away..."
Gus watches the subtle dismissal set in as Lassiter and Jules both pause, and then get up, and head out.
"Thank you for coming in!" Sid exclaims as they leave. "I hope you both have a wonderful rest of your day!"
"Are we sure she's not actually a robot?" Gus whispers to Shawn once the door shuts.
"Of course we are. ... Mostly."