The picnic wasn't actually a police sponsored event, but it was close enough that Shawn was more than a little flustered when he suddenly found himself face to face with the former Mrs. Carlton Lassiter, who was apparently an old friend of the hostess.
She was surprisingly nice, elegantly beautiful, and a bit of a flirt; the sort of woman that, if he'd met her on the street, he would have liked instantly.
And just for that, Shawn hated her a little bit more.
Shawn Spencer was infuriating, aggravating, maddening, irritating, exasperating, vexing, irksome, annoying, and at least ten different kinds of crazy.
Lassiter couldn't prove it, but he had a hunch that Spencer was deliberately and methodically trying-and possibly succeeding-to drive him just as insane as the fake psychic.
But there was a pineapple in his fridge and a second toothbrush in his bathroom, so maybe crazy wasn't so bad after all.
Shawn stood stiffly between Gus and Lassie, wished that his mom had been able to come, and resolutely refused to look in the casket, because if he looked he would see and remember, and the last thing in the world that he wanted to remember forever was the sight of that faded husk of a body that was most certainly not Henry Spencer.
The California sun was bright and warm and he hated that it wasn't raining so he'd have something to blame for the wetness on his face.
Because as effectively as Shawn had once learned that he hated his father, he'd somehow just as effectively relearned how to love him.
For the most part, Juliet liked the way Shawn acted around her.
He was attractive, the attention was more than a little flattering, and it was just the sort of pick-me-up that she occasionally needed after working an admittedly less than 'feminine' job.
So Juliet allowed the flirting and the jokes and the occasional 'close talking', but she didn't let herself take it seriously, because she was smart and intuitive and had eyes, so she knew without a doubt that Shawn's heart already belonged to one of the station's detectives and it most certainly wasn't her.
Shawn was sweeping up hair in the oldest barber shop in Kansas when he got the call from Gus.
There was a party going on in the background and Gus' slurred words were good evidence of exactly how much he'd had to drink, but since Gus was Gus, he still managed to make a pretty solid argument.
And so, because Gus was waiting for him with promises of pineapples and good times and a truly awesome start to 2006, Shawn pointed his bike toward Santa Barbara and took off.
Thank you for reading! Feedback is overwhelmingly appreciated.
I started out just wanting to write a Shawn-meets-Victoria story, but after three sentences I realized that I liked it just the way it was. Then I remembered seeing someone doing a series of three sentence fics, and thought I'd give it a try. It was surprisingly fun and more difficult than I'd expected; I tend to be kind of long winded.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.