Cold Reading
Shawn moved through the forms he'd been practicing for months now. Meditation wasn't really his thing, but Blair and Oz could be surprisingly persuasive, especially together. Blair would talk a mile a minute and overwhelm the senses, just for Oz to cut in with a pointed question that you were agreeing to before your brain had caught up. (Shawn was filing that method away to try later.) It helped that the meditation Oz had recommended wasn't just sitting on the ground with his eyes closed. He became far too aware of his discomfort and his thoughts tended to race and then go into overdrive when he was forced to sit quietly. Even his father had given up trying.
"Why did you take the job with Adam?" Theo asked eventually. She'd taken to mediation surprisingly well. The sitting down kind, not the sweeping motions that Oz had taught Shawn that made him feel like he was in a Karate Kid movie.
"It seemed like a good idea," Shawn said, not able to shrug as he shifted to a new position, eyes still closed.
"You're the son of a cop, you knew it was suspicious, but you still took it," Blair said.
Shawn didn’t like being reminded of Henry. He wasn’t as angry as when he’d first left, not when he’d fallen into the strange stability of Adam’s cobbled together family. He could come and go, he could do or be anything, and they were all still there for him, still in his corner supporting him. Between his mother’s distant care and his father’s overbearing expectations, he’d never felt like they were unconditionally on his side. Even now, he was still surprised by the support of people who owed him nothing.
"It was good money.”
"Which should have made it even more suspicious," Theo added.
Shawn scoffed at the idea of it. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been suspicious, he had been, at least initially, but then he’d turned and seen Adam. Adam who might try to appear ordinary but hadn’t been like anyone Shawn had seen before. Of course he’d been curious.
"Adam wasn't going to hurt me."
"How did you know that?" Oz asked.
"He just seemed harmless."
"Adam is many things, but he's never harmless," Blair said.
Shawn remembered spotting the way Adam moved like a trained fighter even under the casual slouch. How his baggy sweater only mostly hid the shape of a gun when he turned. The feeling that set Shawn's hair on end just from being in his presence.
"Sure, but he wasn't going to hurt me."
"How did you know?" Oz asked again.
"He felt safe," Shawn said, even though he couldn't have said why. Everything about Adam should have triggered the training Henry gave him, but it hadn't, it still didn't, even though Shawn knew even better now how dangerous Adam could be. But Adam would never hurt him, would never hurt any of them, that was like one of the fundamental laws of the universe.
"Have you noticed anything since you began meditating?" Theo asked instead of pursuing the previous line of questioning.
"I can focus better?" Shawn said, ending in the higher register of a question since he wasn't sure what answer she was looking for.
"You've explained before how your observation works," Blair said. The other three had been endlessly fascinated by his brain and how he processed things. and it had resulted in questions bordering on interrogations on more than one occasion. "Has that been easier?"
"Yeah," Shawn said, and this time he did stop and shrug, opening his eyes to see them all staring at him. "What is this about?"
"You said when you observe things, put together clues about a location, that you can visualise what happened there with weirdly specific details," Blair said.
"Details that aren't always obvious from the things you've observed. Like conversations that took place or clothing worn," Theo said.
"I just have a vivid imagination."
"From what we've been able to verify from the examples you've given us, your visualisations are true down to the smallest details, which makes them closer to visions," Blair said.
"You're psychic," Oz added.
"No I'm not." Shawn backed up a step. "I'm just good at observing things. Like that there were 6 hats in Starbucks this morning when we got coffee. Two beanies and three scarves too, but those don't count as hats."
Theo's eyes narrowed and her expression tightened in the way it always did when he mentioned the hat thing, but it wasn't a compulsion, it was just something he did without thinking now.
"You visualised that woman the other day called her Collie Bacon."
"She had long hair on her sweater. Too coarse to be human and Collie was just a guess," Shawn said.
She’d been slim and athletic, her hair in a practical ponytail. He didn’t think Yorkie, Pekinese or Shih Tzu would have fit and Collie was the first medium-sized, long-haired dog he thought of.
"And the dog's name?"
“She said it in conversation,” he said, even though he knew she hadn’t. But food names were common at the moment, the chances of guessing it wasn’t that astronomical.
“No, she didn’t,” Blair said almost gently.
"I don't know, okay," Shawn said, freaking our more than a little and losing all the calm his meditation had granted him.
"Close your eyes," Oz said.
"Why?"
"Trust me."
Shawn closed his eyes and felt Blair rest his hands on his shoulder.
"Focus," Oz said from in front of him. "Focus on the people in this room."
"You are safe, there is nothing to fear with us," Blair told him.
Shawn let the familiarity wash over him, let it sooth away from worries and anxieties.
"You are safe, there is nothing that can hurt you here."
"Now tell me the first thought that pops into your head," Oz said.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s alright,” Blair said. “It doesn’t matter if nothing happens.”
They said that, and he knew they probably meant it, but he couldn’t help the old shadow of failing to meet expectations.
“Your abilities are amazing,” Theo told him softly, earnestly. “We are curious, but we do not expect anything more from you. Whether our belief is true or not, you are enough.”
Shawn breathed out a shuddering sigh and let his senses focus on them. Blair’s fingers flexed against his shoulders, his curiosity getting the best of him. Oz breathed quietly in front of him, his presence unimposing but also somehow unmoveable. Theo sat to his left, her breath barely a whisper, but somehow her presence in the room was just so much more. She was barely leashed righteousness and determination.
"Theo, have you called your sister?"
"What? Why?"
A phone rang and Shawn opened his eyes. They all stared at each other a moment before the phone rang a second time. Theo scrambled to her feet and rushed over to her bag, answering the phone with shaking hands.
“Shirley?”
Theo paled and sat down because of what she heard on the other end of the phone call. She answered shortly, voice carefully controlled until she finally ended the call.
“Arthur is dead. Nell’s husband is dead,” she said.
“I’ll call Adam,” Blair said.
“I’ll call Ned,” Shawn added.