A/N: Hullo all! Hope the holiday season is finding everyone in the best of health. This is just a sudden, weird one-shot that popped out of nowhere, and so here it is. I am trying to make some headway on the other two fics and with any luck, something should happen there soon. I may be getting another one shot up – something that's a tad Christmassy (you have to love that fluff) so lets see how it goes. As always, many thanks to those who take the time to leave comments; they're much appreciated. Love to all!

Call to Balefire1: I'm dying for Chapter 2 of Something Beautiful (begging on hands and knees) wink

'I am FED UP with Romeo and Juliet!'

A moment's silence followed seventeen year old Faith Hunter's exasperated exclamation.

Sitting across his daughter at the dining table in their cozy kitchen, Shawn blinked, his newspaper still held aloft between his hands. Angela, drying the dishes at the sink turned around and regarded their daughter amusedly.

'What's wrong, dear? Trouble with the final project?'

Faith groaned and let her head drop to the tabletop. She muttered darkly under her breath, 'It's been nothing but trouble from day one. Smithson is a ruddy sadist.'

Angela rolled her eyes, and walked over to gently stroke her daughter's ruffled locks. She looked over at Shawn only to find her husband, chuckling in mirth and manfully trying to restrain his giggles. Shaking her head in exasperation, Angela ran her hands through Faith's brown locks, so reminiscent of her father's.

'Is everything alright, honey? You seem very stressed out over this project.'

Faith looked up, her face drawn up into a pout that again starkly reminded Angela of Shawn and flung her arms around her mother's waist. Pressing her cheek into Angela's stomach, Faith's muffled answer sounded frustrated and cutely mutinous.

'I'm stressed out because this has to be one of the most illogical stories I've ever had to analyse.'

Shawn stood up, his face stretched into a teasing grin. Taking his coffee cup over to the sink and folding his newspaper, he pointed it at his wife. 'Ah, the rational one surfaces again. That's my cue to exit – our daughter's all yours tonight.'

Angela glared back but her voice was tinged with mirth. 'Oh no, you don't. You sit right down, Shawn Hunter. Don't you bail out on me.'

Faith drew back, looking up at her parents enquiringly. 'See? That's what I mean! Romeo and Juliet were unutterably stupid – they bailed out on each other! And what happened? Just that they went and killed themselves in one of the most unbelievably stupid leaps of logic that I've ever read about!'

Putting her own cup in the sink, she turned around and gestured at her parents, 'I mean, come on…I know you guys had your difficulties and what not, but you never bailed out on each other – this true love nonsense is idiotically portrayed in this so-called play!' She huffed and crossed her arms, a grumpy frown on her face.

Angela said, 'What makes you think we've never broken up?' at the same time that Shawn looked immeasurably proud and proclaimed, 'Of course, we've always been together!'

Faith stared at her parents, whipping her head back and forth between them as her mother expressively threw up her hands and her father directed an uncharacteristically sarcastic eye-roll at her.

'What…?' she ventured, and then stopped to clear her throat. 'What do you mean, Mom? Broke up? You guys? That's impossible!'

Angela smirked wryly. 'Glad to see your faith in us sweetheart, but we have broken up…'

'…just for a little while' interjected Shawn hastily. 'And only once in college…uh…'

Angela laughed in disbelief. 'Are you kidding me?' Turning to a still agape Faith, she loftily said, 'Your father here has broken up with me a grand total of three times.'

And she stalked over to the sink to continue her earlier activity.

Silence reigned for a few minutes in the kitchen. Shawn shuffled his feet uncomfortably, aware that his daughter was looking steadily at him. He caught her beady eyes just as they narrowed and inwardly groaned.

Oh God. It was going to be a long night.

'Dad?' Faith's voice carried a steely formality and Shawn winced. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Angela placing a hand over her mouth. Oh, she was so going to pay for doing this to him, he thought. Grim determination overrode him – he was going to exact his revenge somehow.

'Dad?' asked Faith again. Ah the authoritative voice again - this really was not going well at all. Now, his daughter had stood up, arms crossed, tapping one foot and looking expectantly at him. 'What's this I'm hearing about you breaking up three – three!- times with Mom?!?!'

Shawn meekly walked over to the table and took a seat. Peering up, he saw Faith go over and stand by her mother who gave him a smug look. 'Oh enough already! Your Mom's just getting you to side with her!'

Faith scoffed, 'Ok, then lets have your version of events, Dad. I'm still not able to comprehend that there was a time when you guys actually broke up – you're so together that my classmates don't believe it until they see it!'

Shawn blew out a breath. 'But we didn't get here without our share of difficulties, Faith. There were quite a few heavy things that the two of us had to work through, and…'

'…and he decided that commitment would only make things worse, so he broke up with me three times', interrupted Angela, passing by to place their dried dinner plates in a cabinet.

Faith slapped a hand to her forehead in exasperation, making it impossible for her mother to suppress a wide grin but she schooled her features instantly. 'I can't believe it!' the young girl exclaimed. 'Do you actually mean to tell me that Dad used the whole Its-Not-You-Its-Me routine on you, Mom? And you just accepted it!' Before Angela could reply, Faith turned to her father. 'Dad, you've got to be kidding me…please tell me that you didn't have this fear of commitment…' Faith said the last three words within air quotes of her fingers and Shawn's face took on a reddish hue and a desperate look.

'Well…I, it was really difficult, and so soon and hey, it….I was scared alright?!?!' he finished with a growl and a grumpy pout and slumped into a chair, crossing his arms on the table and resting his chin on it.

Angela regarded him for a moment, affection and love shining in her eyes and then she sat Faith down at the table. She reached over and ran a hand through Shawn's hair and laughed when he sulkily jerked his head away and turned his face to the wall.

She studied the tabletop for a moment and then spoke softly but Faith heard every word and the strength within them. 'Honey, it doesn't matter that we broke up three times or whatever it is. Honestly speaking, I don't think I could have married anyone else but your father.'

'Even if you hadn't gotten back together in college?' Faith's voice was low and pained – it bothered her to think of her parents ever having been apart.

Angela grasped her daughters' hands and answered in a firm voice that brooked no refusal. 'Absolutely. I love Shawn so much that eventually, someway or another, my life would have been linked up with his.'

'But…but then if you loved him so much even back then, why did Dad break up with you in college?' asked Faith bewildered.

'I'll get this' sighed Shawn. He ran a hand over his face and then moved it to cover Angela's. His wife intertwined their fingers and smiled warmly at him. Drawing strength from her, he proceeded. 'Saying I love you to your mother was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do, sweetheart.'

Faith blinked. 'Why? How can you not love Mom?'

Angela smiled through her tears at such a heartwarmingly innocent yet treasured sentiment and engulfed her daughter in a warm hug. 'Thanks' she whispered, choking down a sob.

Shawn's eyes never left Angela's as he tried to answer the very same thing he'd been asking himself ever since he'd first laid eyes on her in high school all those years ago. He gave her hand an affectionate caress and continued. 'Faith, there's one thing you have to know and believe – no matter how long we were apart at any time, I never stopped loving your Mom, ok? Knowing that was one of the few certainties that I ever had in life.'

'Then why was it so hard to say it, if you believed it so much?' questioned his daughter softly.

Shawn sighed and his fingers quivered as they gripped his wife's hand tighter. She responded with a reassuring squeeze and opened her mouth to answer but he held up a hand. 'No, its ok – its my duty to answer this…honey, you know our family history, right? Angela and I have always been open with you and your sister about our parents…'

'Yes, I know its still painful to talk about, so you don't have to if you want' answered Faith, understanding and sadness in her voice for the suffering her parents had undergone – a shudder ran through her imagining her home without either one of them in it.

Shawn nodded. 'Well, it was never easy for me to admit to myself that I wanted commitment. Deep down, I really did – I was searching for someone to love, someone I could share myself with and when your mother actually came into my life, it really was like the bolt from the proverbial blue. All at once, I was forced to acknowledge that I couldn't toy around with feelings and emotions anymore and that scared me, Faith. It was a stark question of how much I had grown and how much I was willing to make that fearsome leap across my own fears.'

His daughter gazed back avidly at him. Shawn took a deep breath, gulped and continued softly, almost wistfully. 'I would never have been able to do that without your mother, Faith. She's been the strength I needed from the very day I met her.'

'But' questioned Faith gently, 'didn't Mom also have a parent who walked out? What I don't get is how you could be together through high school and then suddenly decide that you needed to be apart! I mean, Mom must have had some fears about commitment too but she didn't push you away in high school or college…'

It was Angela's turn to sigh, 'I did that a while later, sweetheart. When your father wanted to get back together, I didn't agree for the longest time because I was scared that I'd do exactly what my mother did to your grandpa.' She looked over at Shawn to see him looking back lovingly at her. 'I care about him too much to do that to him.'

'You didn't break up with him, though!' burst out Faith, eyes wide and voice near-hysterical.

Shawn gestured for her to calm down. 'It's also a question of how people take things, honey. Your mother has always been emotionally stronger than me. From the beginning, she was the rational one – the person who would think before talking, look before leaping and calm and unflappable. I was the coward…'

'No you weren't' interrupted Angela forcefully. 'I never thought of you as a coward, Shawn.'

'But I was' he insisted, regret heavy in his voice. 'I loved you, and yet I was scared of telling you. So I pushed you away, broke up with you and then my pride wouldn't let me ask you to get back together again for a long time.'

Angela simply smiled. 'And maybe it was my pride that made me push you away for a while, too.'

Shawn's eyes bulged. 'What?!?!'

Angela laughed. 'Of course, a large part of it was my fear about me ending up like my mother but I can't deny that deep down, there was a part of me that wanted to make you work hard at winning me back.'

Faith hooted. 'Woohoo! Way to go, Mom!'

Shawn said sarcastically, 'So much for the daughters are attached to fathers theory.'

Their daughter shook her head and gathered her books. 'On second thought, maybe Romeo and Juliet had it easy compared to you guys.' She grinned slyly and dodged the punch to her shoulder by her dad. 'I'm going into the lounge to finish this up and rethink what I know about my parents – I still can't believe you broke up three times!'

Angela chuckled. 'Well, now you know then.'

Faith stopped on her way to lounge. 'Wait a second…do you mind if I tell Felicity all this stuff?'

Her mother gazed back at her and Faith was disconcerted. It was the sort of stare wherein she felt her mother's voice in her head, guiding her and talking to her when she was in a dilemma. She nodded understandingly. 'Ok Mom, I get it. She'll get to know this when the time is right, correct?'

Angela walked over and hugged her warmly. 'You're 17, dear, and she's only nearing 15 now – maybe she'll meet frustration in love her own way and then perhaps we or you can tell her then, ok?'

After Faith had left, Angela turned around to see Shawn watching her carefully, thoughtfully. 'What is it?'

He rubbed his chin speculatively, 'So you wanted me to work at winning you back, is it?'

Angela rolled her eyes but the blush in her face couldn't be masked. 'I'm not denying that it made me feel wanted at the time – you'd dumped me before and I was scared that you'd just wake up, suddenly decide again that you didn't want this and I'd again be left behind.' Her hands were wiping the cloth against the dishes again, when another pair caught them in their own and stilled their movements.

'And now?' Shawn's whisper grazed her ear and floated over her cheeks; she couldn't repress the shiver that raced through her whenever he pressed himself to her like this. Thankful for the support that her sandwiched position derived from the counter, she exhaled slowly, 'What do you mean?'

He wrapped his arms around her and gave her an affectionate squeeze, 'You're not still mad at me, I hope? I've done some really stupid things but I pray that you still love me. And by the way, I was ready to beg you on my hands and knees…'

He kissed the skin below her ear and tightened his embrace when she leaned back. 'I love you, Shawn. And I don't think I could stop no matter how stupid you've become although I really hope you're out of that phase now.'

He laughed and they exchanged a tender kiss. Shawn was about to kiss her again when a frustrated yell reached them, 'Mom! Help! I can't find my new denims anywhere!'

Angela giggled as she leaned her head against her husband's shoulder. 'Felicity's so dramatic – sounds like the turmoil of the century. Oh well, I'd better go try and help before the girls' room becomes like World War Three.'

Shawn brushed his lips against her forehead and rolled his eyes as his younger daughter emitted another call of distress in a suitably anguished tone. 'We're coming, we're coming; hold your horses!'

And husband and wife left to tend to their wounded young.