A/N: In honor of the year anniversary of when I posted my first Shules fic—which I should probably look over and clean up—I wanted to write a little something. Can't believe it's been a year, almost 170,000 words, and 33 fics! Crazy!

Anyway, I decided to go back to my roots and write a little pre-relationship pining, with a hint of falling asleep together for flavor. Hope you like it!

Title comes from "The Waiting" (1985) by Tom Petty.

Juliet woke up with a start, her heart pounding, and the scream she'd been just about to let out in her dream stuck somewhere in her throat. It took her a minute before she remembered where she was, recognizing at last that she'd been sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of Shawn's living room.

It had been an awful day—Shawn had been kidnapped, taken by surprise by a suspect that he was tailing. Gus, who had been on the phone with Shawn when he'd been taken, since he was out of town for some kind of pharmaceutical sales conference, had immediately called Juliet. She and Lassiter had gotten to Shawn just in time, and Juliet had made a snap decision and taken a shot at the perp who had been pointing a gun at Shawn when they arrived.

In the scuffle that ensued-as Juliet rushed to untie Shawn and Lassiter to the perp she'd shot-the perp's partner had escaped, but not without a few choice, threatening words for Shawn, which is what had led Juliet and Lassiter, under the Chief's direction, to spend the night here, at Shawn's apartment, just in case the suspect showed up. They were allowed to sleep—and they all had—but Juliet had slept incredibly restlessly, haunted by her nightmare, in which she had missed her shot, and arrived to where Shawn had been held only to find that Shawn's time had run out.

She lay there in the dark, trying to calm her breathing, while still shaking herself further awake so that she wouldn't go back into the nightmare if she fell back asleep.

All at once, she heard a thump from Shawn's room, followed by a muffled swear word. She glanced over to where her partner was hanging lankily off the couch. He didn't appear to have so much as stirred.

Rolling her eyes, she sat up. A lot of help Carlton would be if someone actually had broken in. Also, she'd seen him drink at least three cups of coffee since they'd gotten here at 8pm after all the processing at the station, so it was a little bit impressive that he was sleeping so soundly.

But there wasn't time to dwell on that now. Slowly and silently, she undid the zipper on her sleeping bag. She hadn't heard anything since the thump, and presumably she would have if someone really had snuck in, but she needed to check it out.

Silently, she made her way to Shawn's room, not giving herself even a second to dwell on being in Shawn's room this late at night. The circumstances were far different than any she'd imagined that could lead her to his room at this time of night, anyway. Not that she'd imagined it before, or anything. She shook her head at herself. Get a grip, O'Hara. So not the time, she told herself.

"Shawn?" She whispers, peering around the corner of his doorway and into his bedroom. "Are you okay?"

"Jules?" His voice is confused, and she follows the sound to the ground on the far side of the bed, where Shawn is sitting, tangled in a ball of sheets and blankets, looking barely awake and disoriented.

"Shawn, are you okay?" She crouches beside him, looking him over, wincing as she takes in the cuts on his face and remembering all that he'd been through today.

"I fell out of bed," he says. "I was having a dream about me and Gus riding a giant pogo stick, and I guess I must have gotten a little overexcited."

She looks at him skeptically. By the distress that still lingered on his face when she first saw him, she's willing to bet the dream he'd woken up from hadn't been a happy one. But she doesn't call him out on it. "A pogo stick, huh?" She asks. "Is that really a two-person thing?"

"Well, not with that attitude," he mumbles.

She laughs. "Come on," she said, holding out her hand to help him up. "You gotta get back to sleep, it's been a long day for you."

"Did I wake you up?" He asks.

"No," she says—truthfully— "I was already awake." She doesn't elaborate, and he doesn't push her on it.

She helps him untangle from the pile of sheets on the floor, watching him wince as the fabric brushed against the cuts and rope burns on his skin from being tied up earlier in the day. Shawn is uncharacteristically quiet, and she's unused to seeing him in this vulnerable state, further solidifying her theory that he hadn't really been having a fun dream, but rather, that he was battling something very similar to the dream that she'd woken up from moments ago.

When he's gotten back in bed, the sheets untangled and smooth once again, she resists the urge to offer him a gesture of comfort, smooth back his hair or press a kiss to his furrowed brow. Instead, she says, "Well, goodnight," and turns to walk out of the room, suddenly half-hoping he wouldn't let her go that easily, though she doesn't know what, exactly, she's hoping for when she considers it further.

She's almost out of his bedroom when he stops her.

"Jules?" he whispers.

She turns back to look at him through the darkness, moving closer to the bed. "Yeah?"

"You can—you can stay here. I mean, you know, if you want."

"Shawn," she says, feeling her cheeks flush at the thought of it.

"It's just—you're on the floor in there, and there's plenty of room here—I mean, it's a king bed, you know-and if I fall again-."

She looks him over, taking him in, trying not to notice how cute she finds his rumpled, messy, sleep hair, or the way his eyes are sort of sheepish, shy, but a little hopeful all the same.

She realizes that she's been silent for a moment too long, shaking her head. "I can't believe I'm considering this," she comments under her breath, much more to herself than to Shawn.

"I mean, it's a wooden floor," he continues, and she detects a shred of embarrassment in his tone, which makes her heart soften a little bit. "You can't possibly be comfortable out there. And this bed—it's like laying on a pile of fluffy little bunnies. Which is frowned upon, socially, but I think if there were a way to harness that fluffiness without actually injuring the bunnies, it'd be a real moneymaker-."

He's rambling, she notes, and she sees on his face a little fear, like he knows she's going to turn him down, and he'll be embarrassed when he thinks about it later. It's a side of him she likes—not that there's a side of him, she's learning (literally or physically) that she doesn't. It's a side that's soft and caring and gentle, the side that makes his eyes go soft when he looks at her, that leads him into close talking and brushing hands on a roller rink and cupcakes on her desk when he knows—without her ever saying—that she's had a hard day.

At last, she looks at him sternly. "No funny business?" she asks, still not letting herself think too hard about the fact that she was actually considering getting in to bed with Shawn, knowing that if she did, she would stop herself immediately.

He sighs. "Jules, what kind of man do you think I am? Plus, I'm in a weakened state. Now, come on. There's plenty of room, and there's no reason to make yourself sleep on the floor again."

"Fine," she says at last, after another long moment of silence, "but we're putting a pillow barrier between us, and if Carlton somehow catches a glimpse of this, it's all in the name of protecting you, got it?"

He laughs. "Understood, Detective."

She gets into bed before she can stop herself, and Shawn is right—his bed really is uncommonly comfortable. A person could get used to this, she thinks, and then blushes crimson, stopping herself before she maps out an entire future with the man next to her. She shifts around, trying to get comfortable, finally lying flat on her back, wide awake as ever.

After several moments, both of them staring up at the ceiling, Shawn's voice breaks through the silence.

"Hey Jules?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how you said I didn't wake you up earlier? You know, when I fell?"

"Yeah?"

He pauses for a moment, which confuses her. Then, he asks, "why were you awake?"

She was quiet for a moment, unsure of how to respond. She didn't want to lie to him, but neither did she want to admit that she'd been awake because of her nightmare about him.

At last, she opens her mouth. "I wasn't sleeping so well," she says. "I…had a nightmare." She squeezes her eyes shut as she speaks, willing Shawn not to ask for more information, not wanting to admit how frightened she'd been as she dreamed about him.

But she wasn't going to get that lucky.

She feels the bed move a little bit as Shawn rolls over onto his side so he could face her. "You did? Do you—do you want to talk about it?" She could hear the concern in his voice—it wasn't like him, and yet somehow, it was very much like him, but the sweeter, softer him that seemed to only come out for her, in private moments like this one.

"No," she says at first, hearing the uncertainty in her voice, distracted by his sudden closeness and attentiveness.

He studies her carefully, as though he's trying to see if she's really okay, and she feels suddenly vulnerable, watching him watch her. The bed suddenly feels too small and too wide all at once—he's so close to her that she could easily reach out to him, trace the planes of his face with her fingers, and she's suddenly tempted to do just that. The pillow barrier has somehow gotten lost, tangled somewhere down by their feet, instead of between their shoulders where it had started out.

"You sure you don't want to talk about it?" he asks.

She swallows, her throat suddenly dry. "Um…I, uh, well," she stammers, and she's glad that it's dark in the room, because she knows her cheeks must be flaming red. Clearing her throat, she tries again. "Well, I—I was dreaming about earlier today," she says slowly. "With what happened downtown. And you-well, I didn't get there in time, in the dream." She shakes her head, not knowing what else to say, surprised by the sudden tears springing to her eyes at the memory of her dream. "And I got there, and you…you," she trails off, knowing Shawn understands what she means without her having to say it.

She watches him, seeing the concern for her in his eyes while she blinks away the water in hers. But then a change comes over his face, and she knows he's going to say something to bring some levity to the situation, the way he always does when he's truly distraught. Sure enough, she watches the corners of his mouth quirk up at that, his eyes glittering with amusement the way they always seem to when he flirts with her. "Well, how about that, Jules? You dream about me."

She rolls her eyes, sighing, rolling back over so she's flat on her back, not looking at him anymore. Suddenly, she feels his hand reach out, threading his fingers through hers. "Hey," he says softly. "I'm right here. I'm safe, I'm fine—thanks to you, by the way—so you don't have to worry about me anymore."

She nods but doesn't say anything, squeezing his hand unconsciously just to make sure that he's still there.

After a moment of silence, he says, "I wasn't really dreaming about me and Gus on a giant pogo stick."

"I know," she says gently.

He strokes his thumb gently across the back of her hand. They don't say anything else—they don't need to; their joined hands communicate more than enough.

The next time she wakes up, it's not from a nightmare, but it still takes her a second to adjust to her surroundings. She feels safe, warm, unbelievably content, and for a second before she opens her eyes, she's not really sure why. The sun is beginning to rise, the dim morning light coming in through the window behind Shawn's bed and streaking across her face.

Shawn's bed?!

It's not the sun after all that startles her when her eyes snap open, it's the fact that sometime over the course of the night, the barrier they'd put up between them—the one that had previously ended up down near their feet—is now gone entirely. Their hands are no longer intertwined, but that's only because Juliet's head is resting on Shawn's chest, his arms curled protectively around her. She's holding on to him just as tightly, and his cheek is pressed against the top of her head.

She's never been this close to him before, and she tilts her head for a second, watching him sleep, tempted as she was last night to reach up and touch his cheek. She's struck by how good it feels to wake up with him like this—she's known she had feelings for him for a long time now, and she's even imagined this exact scenario a dozen times, but she didn't know that it would feel like this, that she would feel so safe and happy in his arms that it almost makes her tear up.

But Shawn is asleep, and he's probably not even aware that they ended up like this. In fact, if he was, he'd never let her hear the end of it. And if Carlton were to see this…

Oh no, Carlton. She has to get out of here before he wakes up and notices that she's no longer on the floor of the living room.

Giving herself one last second to dwell on how nice it feels to be here, with him, even if he's asleep and doesn't even know about this, she gently and reluctantly pulls herself away, gingerly extracting herself from Shawn's embrace and getting out of bed. She allows herself one more long look at him—peaceful in sleep—and takes a second to recognize how grateful she is that he's okay, that she made it to him in time yesterday, that she could protect him.

Well, protecting him was how it had started, but hadn't he been the one to protect her once he'd realized she'd had a nightmare last night? She eyed him again with a little suspicion, thinking it over. Maybe ending up in Shawn's arms hadn't happened quite so accidentally after all. She smiled, looking at him fondly. Maybe someday, they'd be ready for it to happen not-so-accidentally again.

But not yet.

Yanking her eyes away from him, she turned, heading back to the sleeping bag that her partner will expect to see her in when he wakes up.

After all, if Carlton had caught them like this, he'd shoot Shawn before the perp ever got a chance. But someday—someday when Carlton wasn't sleeping on the couch in the next room, someday she hoped would be sooner rather than later—she wouldn't mind waking up next to him again, nightmare-free and warm and safe.

A/N: Just thought the world needed a little more Shules fluff. As always, I would love any comments or feedback you might have! Thanks so much to everyone who has read anything I wrote over the last year, and especially those who have left kind words or feedback! I am so grateful for you!

Happy July, everyone!