Hey, guys! This is my first contribution to the Psych fandom. I've written a few stories for National Treasure, but it's been a while since I've posted anything…anyway, I'm slightly obsessed with Psych, and I've been wanting to write something for it for a while now. "Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark" provided a lot of story fodder for me, so…here we go! This has been lightly edited, and pretty much the first thing I've written for a while. I appreciate all criticism, especially of the constructive variety! :]

Disclaimer: I own nothing Psych related except season DVDs and a T-Shirt that says "Don't be a gooey chocolate chip cookie."

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I love you.

Those words were so common. Really, he heard them uttered every day. He read people's lips as they whispered lovingly. Watched as the words took effect and hearts melted like chocolate in the Santa Barbara summers. The chocolate that always melted over everyone's hands and smeared over clothes. It was messy.

Which is precisely why those three words never passed from his lips. He didn't want to have to clean up that mess.

I love you.

He closed his eyes. It was only three words. Three simple words, none of them reaching past one syllable.

His stomach lurched.

Okay, Shawn, he thought, You don't need to throw up. Not now. Focus.

So, he did what he did best. Analyzed.

Start with the first word. It was simple.

I. Well, that wasn't hard. One letter. I was just the one putting out the emotion. Perhaps a one-sided emotion. I was what melted the chocolate. The start of the problem.

Shawn rubbed his eyes as best he could with his hands bound in front of him.

Love. That one was more difficult. Complicated. It didn't seem like it would be hard to examine. Love was just an emotion, after all. Emotions should be buried. Emotion could be dangerous. It wasn't fact. Love was the chocolate, and all the stains that came with it. Sometimes you can't get those stains out.

A bump in the road jolted Shawn, and he clenched his teeth. A hiss of pain was lost in the shriek of wind.

You. Those three letters contained the whole purpose of the phrase, the objective. You was the one that everything was aimed at. The victim, if you will. You was the one who heard the three words, had to endure them if they were wanted or not. Had to decide what was fact, and what was simply a falsified emotion. You was the one covered with the chocolate-y mess.

I love you. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to face those words, even though they rang loud and clear in his ears and ricocheted around his brain. Who was to say if he had really meant what he said? Who was to say if the one those words were directed at realized their true meaning, and melted under their influence.

Shawn shook his head, which was filled with nothing less than a raging headache from the undignified hit he'd taken earlier. Maybe he should just blame this whole I love you mess on the head injury.

But as he spotted the blue car in the distance, he couldn't pull his eyes away. He was probably just imagining it, but he could just see the blonde head of Juliet in the driver's seat. He couldn't draw his eyes away. Blame it on the head injury again.

As he watched it draw nearer, he couldn't help but think of what he'd gotten himself into. Everything he'd done, and said. Everything he hadn't.

I love you.

He tried to draw himself away from those words, but he could feel himself falling.

I love you.

It was crazy. Just melted chocolate. Plain, and messy.

I love you.

The thing with chocolate was, he mused, that it just tasted so sweet.

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Tell me what you think! I hope you enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to writing more Psych stuff as time rolls on.