Make-Believe
Author: rancidaluminum
Summary: Shawn tries to force himself through the cracks in the wall Juliet has put up between them, and he knows that if she would just pretend along with him, everything will go back to the way it was before. Short-but-not-too-sweet Shules set somewhere between (and including spoilers for) Deez Nups and Office Space.
Author's Note: Not mine. Everything belongs to USA and Steve Franks etc., of whom I am not even remotely affiliated. No copyright infringement is intended.
She can't forgive him for the lies.
This is the one thing that she has made perfectly clear from the start of this mess, and if Shawn Spencer has met anyone more stubborn, more able to carry out the promise without bending, it's probably only his father, and experience has told him that no amount of needling, no brute force (even in the form of terrible jokes) will break through the barrier that has gone up between them.
But he needles anyway.
He tries to force himself through cracks in her wall, create hammers out of words that he can use to turn the tiniest chips into gaping holes so he can squeeze back through to the place in her heart that he so desperately wants to return. He's claimed it, even if she seems to have forgotten, but that doesn't change the fact that it's his and he's prepared to reclaim it if he has to throw himself down at her feet daily just to show her how much this is breaking his own heart.
Metaphorically, of course.
The Spencer resilience doesn't come in the form of tears or begging (not much, anyway) with clasped hands and bent knees. It comes, as everything else, in jokes, in pretending nothing is wrong, with the hope that after a time maybe she will get tired of fighting him and pretend along with him until it is no longer pretending. It comes in the form of a soy latte every morning that she refuses to drink so as not to encourage his behavior, but he never sees her actually throw away. He takes that as a sign of encouragement.
Shawn Spencer is stubborn too, and while few things in his life have warranted this level of fight from him, he is prepared to fight until the very end. And since he isn't sure yet what it will look like to reach the end (Her dating another man? Marriage to that man? Kids? To him, none of these things are truly final- he knows from experience that marriage isn't a guaranteed end) he knows that he will keep trying until his heart stops constricting every time she walks by, until his arms stops curling around the empty space in his bed that used to be filled with her.
When she refuses to look into his eyes, he watches her, waiting for her to look back even though she never does. When he puts his fingers to his temples at a crime scene and she cringes, he continues even though it breaks her heart because you can't pretend everything will be okay if your life comes to a screeching halt in front of everyone. He hopes that she will forgive him for that too, because if he can't play the psychic, if he can't makes jokes and solve crimes (right now the only thing keeping them in close proximity) then he will have to admit that it really is over and that is the one thing that he refuses to do.
Every night they go their separate ways and every night Shawn's mouth is full of words that he wants to aim right at her heart and shoot, but most nights he waits so long that they fall out in jumbled pieces, hardly making it to her ears and when they do she just looks at the floor and shakes her head. That was in the beginning. Now he is getting good at swallowing the words, but they don't stop coming back night after night. He wants to keep saying them, building them up until they have the force that he needs them to have, but he doesn't want to hurt her anymore. So he decides it is better to keep to the indirect approach and instead of 'I love you' he says 'I'll probably just have Chinese', and instead of 'this is killing me, please let me come home', he says 'because Gus doesn't want to go alone'.
Until one night he is tired of the indirect approach. He is tired of swallowing his words when all it does is leave him without an appetite and create a residual pain in his abdomen, a pain that, joined with the one in his heart left by her and the one in his lungs from the panicky breaths they supply every time he starts to think that maybe he really has reached the end and just missed the signs, is twisting his insides up so much that tonight he is having trouble standing straight. Probably the three beers at his dad's isn't helping, but what it does help is to steel his determination and get him out the door of his apartment in the middle of the night and to hers in a walk that is a complete blur by the time he is knocking three times at her door. Their door.
She answers it quicker than he expects, and he can tell by the way that her arm is stiff at her side, tucked just behind her hip that she has her gun ready just in case and he loves her even more in that second. Her eyes are dark and resolute and he can tell that she hadn't been sleeping either.
She softens only slightly and her right arm doesn't relax any when she realizes who is at her door.
'Shawn,' she whispers angrily, 'it is 3:00 in the morning.'
He marvels for a moment at the emptiness of that statement, and wonders if she is biting back words too, hiding them behind meaningless declarations.
He nods dumbly in response and doesn't say anything, loading his tongue up with so many ways of saying 'I love you' that he starts to lose count. His uncharacteristic silence alone speaks volumes and Juliet looks around before pulling him roughly inside.
'Are you drunk?' are her first words, and while her tone is clipped her gun is now on the table and her hand is scrubbing the back of her neck. Her eyes have relaxed slightly too and even though her other hand is firmly gripping her hip, Shawn is encouraged and smiles as he says 'Yes. No, I mean. Just a little.'
'What are you doing here, Shawn?'
She keeps saying his name, like Gus, like his dad, a sign of frustration that he is well acquainted with.
'I forget', he tries to say, but it comes out 'I miss you'.
She sighs. 'You should go home. It's late and we both have to be up early in the morning.'
'I miss you,' he says again with more force.
'Shawn…'
'I miss you, Jules,' he says, this time with a slight crack in his voice that he is embarrassed about but can't stop the avalanche that is coming up from his abdomen and out through his lungs and he clutches his stomach as it happens. 'I am so tired of seeing you every day and having to keep my distance. I'm tired of the things that I have to keep inside for so long that they are starting to eat away at me just because I can't stand that look of pain you get every time I tell you that I love you.'
Her face crumples and he points emphatically at it.
'Yeah, that one. And mostly… mostly I'm tired of being the only one pretending that things are on their way back to normal and I just really wish that at least every once and awhile you'd pretend too just so I know that this isn't really the end and that maybe you'll forgive me someday, even if someday is a long way from now.'
She bites her lip, and when she speaks she is careful, deliberate. 'It hurts too much to pretend, Shawn.' She looks exhausted.
'It hurts more to not.'
After a minute of awkward silence and racing hearts, she opens her mouth argue, Shawn can tell by the fire in her eyes, but then it is extinguished so fast that Shawn doesn't even have time to register what has happened before she is crushing her mouth against his so hard and so unexpectedly that he has to grab the arm of the couch to keep from falling over and backwards into the coffee table. But he doesn't hesitate more than a second before kissing back, the pain that he has held inside these last few weeks rushing out of him, pressing him against her so hard that he wonders briefly is he is hurting her but when she pulls herself even closer into him he decides that neither of them really care. He reaches under her shirt and presses his palm against the small of her back, reveling in the softness of her skin and the way that touching her so intimately wraps his body around hers in such a perfect fit and for a second he lets himself forget.
And he wonders if she is forgetting too as her mouth trails his neck and along the underside of his jaw or if she is punishing herself by choosing to remember, but if he starts to worry about that he is certain that he will not be able to pretend and the alcohol settling in his empty stomach creates a pleasant buzz that encourages him to stop thinking completely and focus only on the feel of her skin against his, and the way she lifts the shirt over his head with such desperation.
And he pretends just for one night that she has forgiven him, and he pretends not to know that tomorrow is going to be just a little bit harder, to go back to rejected lattes and knitted up insides and rebuilt walls.
As he falls asleep that night, he allows himself to smile and pretend that everything is going to be good again. And as he wraps his arm around her waist he pretends not to notice that even though his hand is touching skin and his body is wrapped tightly around hers, it feels so much like grasping empty space.