Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Through current episodes, particularly strong from Heeeeere's Lassie and Shawn Rescues Darth Vader.

A/N: Okay, I'm not actually a big Jewel fan (indifferent to the voice, know only the stuff from the teen-years, don't like preachy adolescents who think that writing crappy poetry makes them deep - no offense to Jewel fans, just my biased opinion) but I think this song was written ABOUT Shawn Spencer, which made it perfect for this chapter.

Chapter Two: Foolish Games

Juliet sat with her knees folded to her chest and her arms crossed over them, blankets puddled around her, listening to Shawn snore. He didn't always snore, only after eating a large meal right before bed - which meant that he usually snored, since he almost always had a huge dinner (tonight it had been mango pineapple waffles with bacon, eggs, fried ham, sausage, and hash browns, and no goddamn wonder he was getting so pudgy). When he did snore, he didn't mess around - great, ragged goose-honk snores that rattled the windows, or so it seemed. If he wasn't snoring, he was talking. She'd learned a lot from lying awake, listening to him mumble in his sleep. Nothing she particularly wanted to know, but all of it fairly innocent. Gus was apparently as frequent a visitor of his nights as he was of his days, and he had yet to mention Juliet by name at all. She would have felt faintly affronted by it, if she wasn't moving past feeling anything at all.

She couldn't take the noise and she couldn't leave - it was her bedroom, for crying out loud - so she turned on the radio to her favorite light rock station and turned up the volume just high enough to mask some of the noise from her "partner." The term seemed more than a little laughable superimposed onto Shawn Spencer, and she only wondered why it had taken her so long to realize that. And what could she do about it, now?

"You were always the mysterious one with dark eyes, and careless hair. You were fashionably sensitive, but too cool to care. You stood in my doorway with nothing to say besides some comment on the weather. In case you failed to notice, in case you failed to see, this is my heart bleeding before you, this is me down on my knees. These foolish games are tearing me apart, and your thoughtless words are breaking my heart. You're breaking my heart."

Unbidden, a tear sprang to her eye and she snuffled it back guiltily. Shawn loved her, she knew that. Some part of her seemed to think that should be enough, but it wasn't, no matter what John Lennon said. All you need is love? Not without R-E-S-P-E-C-T, honey, as Aretha Franklin said in the words of Otis Redding, and respect was a quality Shawn was sadly lacking. She'd winked at a good deal of his disrespectful behavior over the years, putting it off as high spirits, joie de vivre, bon hommie, anything she could to excuse what was, in a grown man, basely inexcusable - Shawn was an incorrigible Sophomoric tease, too physically unintimidating for people to think he'd ever cross that thin line to bully, and a lot of the time his teasing had less to do with joviality and comradeship than it had to do with tearing someone else down in order to build Shawn's own self-esteem. Usually, that someone was her partner. And when he tore down Carlton, Shawn tore Juliet down as well, even though she thought he was too oblivious to realize it. And people said Carlton was socially clueless.

She wondered why she'd put up with the way Shawn treated Lassiter. In the beginning…well…maybe that wasn't so hard to figure out, Carlton had been terrifying to her back then, officious and mercurial and so very patronizing, though as Head Detective partnered to a moss-green rookie she supposed he'd had a right to be. Back then, when Shawn scored a point or two off of the irascible senior officer it felt like a minor victory to her, a quiet conspiracy she engaged to maintain her identity beneath the immense professional weight she bore as Lassiter's rookie partner. Later, though, when she knew Carlton better, knew that he took actual pride in her accomplishments even when he was talking down to her…why did she keep letting Shawn get away with his petty name-calling and disrespect? Well…because it was the status quo, she supposed. Because it was easier to simply accept it as part of Shawn's irrepressible nature rather than to make the effort to correct it. And maybe because Carlton seemed to enjoy the verbal war they waged on each other, to a certain degree. And maybe because it was also just a little easier to blame Carlton for it than Shawn or herself. After all, he was the adult in the equation, wasn't he?

It disturbed her to think she'd really been that unfair. Carlton was all of thirteen years older than her, and only six or seven years older than Shawn. Most of the time he was the mature one, but he wasn't the only adult. Dammit, they were all adults, and they ought to act like it, Shawn included.

Shawn especially.

How many times had he promised, in just the time they'd been dating, that he would change? That he would grow up? Buy a car? Take responsibility? Show some respect? Start spending his own money for a change rather than continually stealing Gus's company credit card? No resolution to that effect ever lasted more than a week. You could almost set your clock by it. Certainly you could mark it on your calendar. In all that time, what had once seemed charming and quirky had gotten…old and tiresome. And the scary thing was…she thought he might be considering a marriage proposal.

He was a con man. That was the crux of it. She'd considered his Big Lie harmless - beneficial, even, given what he did with it, but was there truly any such thing as a harmless con? Reuniting with Frank after so long made her think about that very carefully. Shawn wasn't bilking helpless widows out of their life savings with bogus séances - that she knew of - but still, he was perpetrating a con just as elaborate as anything Frank had ever done. And…sometimes she thought he didn't have the strongest moral compass even when the lie was discounted from the equation. He seemed downright enamored of Pierre Despereaux, for instance, and sometimes Juliet wondered about the abrupt shift in his emotional state when the late art thief was mentioned. He'd gone from jauntily certain the man had faked his death to abjectly despondent to…jauntily resigned? It made Juliet wonder what he was covering up. Add to that the fact that he thought hacking into Lassiter's computer and bank account was a "joke" and pretty soon Frank started to look almost honest by comparison.

Juliet didn't think she was ready to get married, and she damn sure wasn't ready to make the same mistake her mother had made, marrying a con artist. Her mother's mistake was excusable because she hadn't known what Frank was until years later. Juliet had no excuse at all. And when she pictured the family she hoped someday to have, it certainly wasn't Shawn she saw by her side. The man who stood in his place was faceless and unnamed, but he was an entirely different breed of cat, so to speak. He would be strong - physically, yes, but mostly emotionally, a rock she could cling to when she needed support. He would be gentle, because God knew she'd never tolerate an abusive man. Quiet but outspoken, because she no more wanted a man who'd be cowed by her than one who would seek to dominate her. He did not have to be charming, and in fact at this point she would welcome a degree of brashness - she'd had her fill of charm. She'd read a line recently in some book or other, a Brit lit mystery of the type she devoured in her spare time, about how charm was a shallow quality, designed to deceive the unwary. Perhaps the author had met Shawn Spencer before typing out that line.

Lost in her uncomfortable thoughts she didn't notice that the snoring had stopped, not until arms wrapped around her from behind and a wet pair of lips latched onto her neck. Startled, she rammed her left elbow into his solar plexus and a right-hook into his over-long nose.

"Ow! Damn, Jules! What the hell?" he whined through the fingers of the hand he clapped to his bleeding beak. She was shaking, still caught in the reflexive adrenaline rush of being taken unawares, and also…of having come at last to the decision she'd been circling for a long time.

"Shawn, you need to leave."

He looked at her over his blood-soaked fingers, eyes huge. He was dripping onto her designer sheets, no doubt, but she didn't worry about it. It would be the last time he'd leave any stains in her house or on her heart.

"Jules…what?"

"Leave. Now. You and I, Shawn…we don't fit. We never did, we never will. It's over."

He laughed, thinly, nervously. "Jules, that's not really very funny…"

"No. It's not. Not everything is supposed to be funny, Shawn, in case you don't know that. Some things are serious. This, right now, is serious. I'm tired of your games. Get your things and go. Just…go."

Sheepish, silent, he dressed and slunk away with his proverbial tail between his legs. "I'll…can I…call you later?" he asked at the door.

"Much later, Shawn. Much."