SHULES SHUFFLE

A/N: This is one of my favorite songs of all time, by a band recommended to me by a long-time friend of mine. It's interesting that I made this one first-person, since it's my PG-13 rated one. This is set sometime in the future, after Shawn and Juliet end up together and Abigail is long gone. As always, please enjoy and let me know your thoughts!


Find A Way. SafetySuit.

I was nervous now that we were finally here. In his apartment. In his bedroom. His eyes, normally so alive with fun and mischief, were serious now. I felt my insides rearrange themselves and I reached for the buttons of my jacket, feeling anxious. Feeling overdressed. Feeling the sort of anticipation I had never expected Shawn Spencer to excite in me. But he caught my hands, and there was something like a smile teasing his lips.

"What's the rush, Jules?" he asked, drawing my numb fingers to his lips. "Do you have somewhere to be? Or can you stay? I promise if you do, you'll get your way with me." The last was a joke, lightly and softly told, and I felt a shiver. He didn't have to say he wanted to do this right. I knew he did. I could tell how serious this was for both of us.

"You see," he was saying, drawing me closer to him, his lips tracing my hairline just behind my ear. I shivered again. "I spent so much time trying to capture the right mood. It's all about the atmosphere, Jules," he explained. I was losing the ability to concentrate as his mouth moved to my neck. I must have made a noise. I felt him smile against my skin.

I hadn't been planning on ending the evening like this. I was in my work clothes, for crying out loud. Not cute. But Shawn was easing the jacket from my shoulders as though it was a silk negligee, and I felt sexy anyway.

How does he do that? I wondered, and let my fingers find his hair. I was giving in. He'd known I would all along. Damn his psychicness. And thank God for it.

"That's it. Slow," he said, and I thought maybe he wasn't as unaffected by the mood as he was pretending to be. He ran his hands soothingly over my back and upper arms as I touched his hair, lost. The world outside the window stopped really existing, and I knew this was it. He'd made me stay. I was his.

"Jules," he managed, leading me toward the bed. Another time I might have fought him. But I'd been fighting so long. I was tired and he was offering a break from all the reasons why not. I couldn't believe how gentle he was. Shawn was touching me like he thought I might disappear if he used too much pressure with his fingers. We sank into a seated position on the edge of his bed and he kissed me for real. My fingers curled into his shirt, and I might have started to pull it off, but my concentration was shattered when my cell phone rang. And with that one sound, all the reasons why we couldn't do exactly what we were doing came flooding back into my mind. We both pulled away a little, and Shawn looked as though he was thinking that he should have been expecting that. He was the psychic. Maybe he really should have. I recognized the ringtone. It was work.

"Oh." I laughed, self-consciously. "I should…probably get that."

"No," Shawn said, and he was not kidding for once, not trying to be deliberately unhelpful. "You shouldn't."

"Shawn. I'm not even dressed right for something like this. These are my stake-out clothes." A lame excuse. But one of the very few I had.

"It doesn't matter, Jules. I could care less about what you're wearing." He shook his head and I saw that he was scared I would leave, scared that it would mean I didn't really want him. "Don't go."

"This is a mistake," I told him, and there was a knee-jerk, instinctive hurt in his eyes. I'd said those same words to him once before. "This could ruin our work relationship. It could ruin Psych. The Chief would probably suspend me or worse. Most of all, it could lead to botched investigations and --"

"Jules." Something in his voice halted my babble. "I'm scared. But I'm here. And I'm not going to leave. No matter what."

"But--" A thousand scenarios that would make him run from me rushed to the tip of my tongue. A hundred thousand. He smiled, just a little, perhaps reading my thoughts.

"I'll always be there, Juliet."

Maybe it was the sound of my full name from his lips. Maybe it was his promise. All I know is we were kissing again as my phone went to voicemail. Once more, the world faded and it was just me and Shawn. Once more, he'd convinced me to stay.

He reached for the buttons of my shirt but I stopped his hands at the top one.

"I really am going to let you have your way with me, you know," he said, chuckling, against my mouth.

"That's right," I replied, "you are. But Shawn…what's the rush?"