A/N: I always thought the "barely poisoned" storyline was handled pretty poorly. Like, I'm just supposed to believe that Juliet wasn't at all worried when Shawn was in the hospital overnight? As if.

Anyway, I got to "Chivalry Is Not Dead…But Someone Is" in my current re-watch last night, and a couple of these lines just came to me, so I had to throw something together.

Title comes from "Every Rose Has its Thorn" (1988) by… (yes, I had to do this)…Poison.

As Lassiter leads Prescott out of the interrogation room, Shawn slams his hand down on the table, turning to Juliet. "I don't get it, Jules. There's something going on with Prescott. I don't trust that guy at all."

"Well," she says, shrugging, "he doesn't exactly trust you either."

Shawn tsks at her. "It's because I could run circles around him when it comes to that gentlemanly dating crap, and he knows it."

"Shawn, you went on one date yesterday, and you wound up in the hospital."

"Jules, that wasn't a date, that was work. Little more than an excuse to eat pineapple pizza, even. I was just trying to scope out what Gillian was up to, which I thought I was doing on your recommendation, I might add. Not that it matters, since Prescott is clearly the one who poisoned me."

Juliet raises an eyebrow at him, looking him over. "You just don't want Lassiter to be right."

"No kidding. Do you know how much work that would involve if he was right for the first time? I mean, they'd have to close all the banks, the stores—we don't have time to put another national holiday on the calendar, Jules. At least not today."

Juliet lets out a sigh, shaking her head and throwing her hands in the air. "Fine, do you have a better idea?"

Shawn shrugs. "I will if you give me another thirty seconds. It doesn't take much time to come up with a better idea than Lassie's got."

Juliet raises her eyebrow at him again, challenging him.

He frowns. "What, you mean now? I just got out of the hospital, Jules."

She sighs, looking down at the case file in her hands again. Shawn is quiet for a minute.

She should know by now to never trust a moment of silence with Shawn.

He clears his throat. "So, what do you think, Jules? Were you a little concerned about me when you heard I was poisoned?"

Juliet scrunches her nose, squinting at him. "I heard barely poisoned."

He looks a little hurt, and she almost feels bad. "You too, Jules? My dad and Prescott I'd expect, but you?"

She studies the case file in her hands again, considering what to say to him. Of course she'd been worried. She'd just gotten home when she'd gotten a frantic phone call from Gus, telling her that he and Shawn were on the way to the hospital. She'd felt her heart drop into her stomach at his voice on the phone. He didn't know what was wrong with Shawn; didn't know how serious it was.

She'd fallen to her knees when he'd told her Shawn wasn't responding, accidentally knocking over the glass of wine she'd just poured herself in the process. She hadn't even cleaned it up, just watched the wine seep into her rug, trying to stop the anxiety thrumming through her from leaking into her voice and making it all worse for Gus.

She'd wanted to head to the hospital right then, but Gus had told her to wait. Henry would meet them there. They'd call as soon as they had more information.

She'd gone anyway.

She couldn't help it. She couldn't not be there if Shawn was really sick. He was too important to her. But she respected Gus' advice and waited, staying in her car in the parking lot, going back and forth between putting her hand on the door handle-half-convinced to just say "screw it", and run in and see him anyway-and coaxing herself to stay in her seat, trust that Gus would call with news.

By the time he did, she'd been beside herself with worry. Gus had told her that the doctors had confirmed that Shawn was poisoned, but didn't yet know what the effect would be. They'd pumped his stomach to get it out of his system, and then they'd given him something to help him relax and sleep while they observed him overnight.

"We won't know more for a while," Gus had said. "Shawn's dad is sending me home to get some sleep. He'll stay with Shawn tonight and I'll come back in the morning."

Juliet had nodded before remembering that Gus couldn't see her. "He'll be fine, Gus," she'd said. "If they pumped his stomach, that means that you guys got there pretty quickly after Shawn ingested it. That's a good sign. He'll be okay."

She'd said all the right things, but she didn't know if she believed them. After she'd told him to call her if he needed anything, she said goodnight to Gus. She felt a little creepy a few minutes later, as she watched him exit the hospital, unbeknownst to him—this kind of surveillance felt very different from the kind she was used to on duty, which didn't usually involve watching her friends without their knowledge—but she didn't approach him.

After Yin and Abigail and coming back to work, things had been a little weird between her and Shawn lately, and she wasn't sure she wanted Shawn to find out that she was so concerned about him that she'd shown up at the hospital. If she actually saw Gus in person, she had no hope that that information wouldn't make its way to Shawn.

She'd made herself wait another half an hour—the longest half hour of her life, in recent memory—to give Henry a little time to himself with Shawn before she went into the hospital and asked where Shawn's room was.

In a stroke of good luck, Henry was already asleep, in a chair in the corner of the room, by the time she'd arrived in Shawn's room.

She'd sunk into a chair that had presumably been Gus', right by Shawn's bedside, and just watched him for a moment. He looked okay—he looked like Shawn—but he was hooked up to a couple machines, and there was something a little unnerving about seeing Shawn so still, so quiet, when most of the time, he was bouncing off the walls.

She didn't dare speak to him, not at first, not wanting to risk waking Henry. If at all possible, she didn't want him to know she'd been there either.

She thought of the last time she'd been in the hospital, when she and Shawn had had their roles somewhat reversed. She thought about what he'd said to her then, how she'd wondered if they were about to move forward at last, finally catch up with each other after years of running away in an endless game of tag.

They hadn't, but if Shawn had felt anything that day like she felt now, she understood what made him start to confess, or whatever it was that he had started to do.

She'd reached out her hand to hold Shawn's in hers while she thought about it, idly rubbing patterns on the back of his hand with her thumb. With her other hand, she pulled the hairclip out of her hair, trying to release some of the pressure in her head that had been built by stress and worry.

It didn't help much.

Suddenly, Shawn groaned in his sleep, his brow scrunching up as if in pain, and she'd stood up in alarm.

Before she could stop herself, she placed a kiss on his forehead, then ran her thumb soothingly along his wrinkled brow. "Please be okay, Shawn," she whispered. "I—I don't want to miss out on the prize, either."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Henry start to stir in the corner. Wrenching herself back from where she was standing over Shawn, she forced herself to pull her hand away from where it rested, against Shawn's cheek. She wrenched her eyes away from his face at last and left the room, trying desperately the whole way home—and through most of her sleepless night-to convince herself that he would be just fine.

"Jules?" Shawn asks, startling her out of her memory.

She looks down, embarrassed, as she realizes that she has no idea how long she'd been quiet. "I guess I was a little worried," she mumbles.

His eyes sparkle teasingly as he looks at her. "What was that you said? Didn't quite catch that."

"I said I was a little worried."

He smirks at her. "Oh, I know. I just wanted to hear you say it again. You know what they say, Jules—second times the charm."

"That's the third time."

He raises his eyebrow at her. "What's that? You want to say it a third time? Go ahead, Jules, I'm all ears."

She rolls her eyes, pushing her chair back from the table and standing up. "You've gotten all you're going to get out of me. Don't press your luck."

Shawn laughs, heading for the door while she gathers the papers from the case file on the table. "It's just as well. I'm a little low on luck after I tried to loan Gus some on his date with Eugenia last night, not that that paid off."

Juliet makes a non-committal noise as she checks to make sure the papers in the file are in the proper order.

Shawn turns back to look at her. "Oh, Jules? One more thing—."

She looks up at him questioningly.

Shawn reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small object—he's too far away in the open doorway for her to tell what it is—and tosses it to her.

She catches it, and at once she feels her cheeks flush crimson. It's her hairclip, and she knows exactly where it came from.

He grins cheekily. "You left it on my nightstand at the hospital."

With a wave and a wink, he turns away. He's disappeared down the hallway before Juliet realizes she's sunk back into her chair at the table, her cheeks still hot.

So much for being discreet.

A/N: As always, I welcome any thoughts you might have! I hope that if anyone else was bothered by this storyline, this fixes it a little bit! Thanks so much for reading! Have a wonderful week!