Five Golden Pineapples
by: apple jacks jules
Note: Written at the request of fyd818 :) (who I sure hope loves it *raises eyebrow* ;).). The muse left us last night, so we gave each other prompts to write for the day. Mine, basically, was Shawn trying to draw something for Juliet and *insisting* on using a pineapple colored crayon. And...this is the result O:) Enjoy!! :D
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Shawn sat across from Juliet at the kitchen table, gesturing animatedly in an effort to explain his thoughts quietly and not wake up Chief Vick's daughter. He wasn't sure how, but somehow, the woman had coerced him into helping Juliet babysit for the afternoon; and now Iris was napping. But Shawn wasn't sure how to explain himself to Juliet without getting loud if she didn't understand. At least she was laughing, though.
"Shawn, I'm sorry, I don't get it," she said in an amused voice. "Now would you get down off that chair and sit on it like a normal human being?"
"Jules, you've met my family. Since when do you consider me normal?" She rolled her eyes.
"Please just get down," she begged, tugging his arm gently. He obeyed.
"Alright, if I can't make you understand me in my usual psychic way, how do you expect me to explain it to you?"
"Could you write it down?" she suggested. Shawn frowned thoughtfully.
"I could. But the spirit world has been playing with my translation skills lately; what it tells me in English has been coming out of my mouth in Italian or Japanese." Juliet raised an eyebrow.
"Really?"
"Yes! And sometimes, if I'm trying to psychically read something, I start saying it out loud in Pig Latin."
"Pig Latin, huh?" she repeated. Shawn nodded vigorously.
"Es-yay! But then it gets kind of mixed in ith-way aye-may normal speech. Crazy stuff." She giggled.
"Yes, I can see that. Why don't you just try to draw it for me instead?" Shawn sat straight up, grinning.
"Now that could work." He dove across the table for Iris's coloring things---a mixed box of crayons and the only sheet of paper that had yet escaped her three-year-old scribblings---and got to work.
"Gah! he shouted suddenly, startling Juliet halfway out of her seat.
"Shawn!" she hissed, throwing a worried glance at the ceiling and praying that he hadn't woken Iris up. He followed her gaze, and for a few moments, there was silence. "What's wrong?" she whispered eventually, relaxing a little. Shawn turned to her with wide, panicked eyes.
"I can't find the pineapple flavored crayon," he whispered, sounding horrified. Juliet felt her eyes widen in shock that he had just screamed over that, and Shawn took advantage of her stunned silence to shift through the box of loose crayons again.
"Shawn, there is no pineapple colored crayon," she managed after a minute. He nodded in agreement.
"Of course there isn't; it's clearly pineapple flavored."
"Crayons don't have "flavors"," she informed him. Shawn huffed in disbelief.
"Really, Jules? Really? Did you spend almost an entire month working in a Crayola Crayon factory? Let me tell you, those six weeks..."
"Six weeks? That's a month and a half, Shawn."
"I-I was, um, sick for several of them," he muttered, blushing. "But that is not the point, here, Jules! The point is that while I was there, they decided to make a very special set of crayons; "Delicious Tropical Flavors". And one of them was pineapple." He dug around through the box again and came up with a handful of crayons. "See? Coconut Brown, Krazy Kiwi Green; even Rich Mango Madness. See how it's all three colors of a mango?" He held up the crayon for her inspection. "Oh, and look! They eve have the special addition Grecian Grape Purple, from another set they made that month."
"Grecian Grape...?"
"Yes, I know. I insisted that it was tropical, too. But do you understand the appalling lack of pineapple here?"
"You know, there are other colors that I'm sure are close, Shawn."
"No, Jules, no! I refuse to use anything less than the best; it must be that pineapple flavored crayon! Now if only I could find it..."
"Maybe Iris used the crayon up," Juliet suggested.
"No, no she didn't. I definitely saw her using it, but it was a brand new crayon. She couldn't possibly have finished it already..." He trailed off, muttering to himself, and Juliet rolled her eyes.
"Maybe you can figure it out psychically while I go check and make sure that you didn't wake her up."
"Yeah, okay," he mumbled distractedly, holding two crayons up to the light to compare their colors. Juliet shook her head, laughing to herself, and headed up the stairs to peek in the little girl's room. Still asleep. Thank God.
Downstairs, she could still hear Shawn mumbling to himself, and as she was about to close the bedroom door again, he gave a soft shout of victory. She winced. Does he have no concept of quiet? she wondered. But another glance into the room told her that Iris was, amazingly, still asleep. After a few minutes of silence from both the three-year old and the thirty-three-year-old who might as well have been three, she headed back downstairs, wondering why it felt like she was babysitting Shawn more than Iris.
Shawn was still sitting at the table, hunched over his paper and scribbling busily on whatever it was that he wanted her to see. Juliet watched him for a moment, then went over to the sink and got two glasses of water, certain that Shawn would want something after his intense "psychic drawing episode". She slid back into her chair and took a sip of her own drink, waiting in patient silence until he threw down the crayon and displayed the drawing with a flourish. She leaned forward to examine it with a confused frown.
"Shawn, this is a drawing of pineapples."
"Five delicious golden pineapples, to be exact," he said proudly, letting her take the paper from him to look more closely. "You see why I needed that crayon?"
"I thought that you were trying to explain a psychic dream-vision that you had about my future."
"Well, yes! Look at this pineapple," he tapped one of the fruits he had drawn. "That one is you. And this one here, right next to it, is me.
"Shawn...?"
"And the rest of them are Gus and Lassie and my dad...or the chief, the vision wasn't quite clear on that. Actually, it could have been someone in your family, too. But you know what this all means, right?"
"No idea," she assured him, folding up the paper and hiding it in her purse. His grin widened.
"The pineapple is the international symbol of love, Jules! The dream means that we're supposed to get married, and everyone will come to the wedding and well all live in Peru together like one big happy family! You know, they've found mummies in Peru..." Juliet laughed.
"Nice try, Shawn."
"So that means you'll consider it?" he asked hopefully. Juliet pushed a glass of water into his hand.
"Have a drink," she advised. "All that creative storytelling must have made you thirsty."
Defeated, Shawn accepted the glass and took a sip. Once he swallowed, though, he grinned.
"Why'd you keep the picture, then?" he asked. Juliet shoved his shoulder.
"Shut up, Spencer," she said affectionately. "Just shut up."
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fin.
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Note: So there you go; some nice, light Shules fluff. Thoughts? O:)