A/N: Psych isn't mine, and neither are my beloved Shawn and Jules.

Juliet is seven the first time her dad attempts to quit smoking. She finds him out in the backyard, behind the shed, with a cigarette, not even ashamed.

"You said you were quitting, Daddy!" she exclaims.

"I will, darling, I will," he says.

He doesn't, though.

He makes two other attempts before her eighth birthday, and by the time she catches him smoking again at age eight, she doesn't even say anything to him, just looks up at him sadly.

"Let me tell you something, Jewel," he says, "some people can quit things. But others can just make several very good attempts."

It's not a good defense, and neither of them pretend that it is. By her ninth birthday, he's long gone. In the end, it turns out, when it really mattered, he was very good at quitting. A little too good, in fact. She finds herself wishing he weren't able to quit after all.

Almost twenty years on, Juliet has never quit anything in her life. But then again, she's never done anything she'd wanted to quit.

Not quitting, for her, is noble. And not just because it's the opposite of what her father did in the end. She's taught herself to never quit, not ever. It's an imperative, in her line of duty. So it comes as a surprise, the first time she realizes she has something she wants to quit.

It's an even bigger surprise to realize that maybe she can't.

The first time she feels really, deeply attracted to Shawn, it scares her. Sure, she thought he was good-looking before, and he really does make her laugh, and she's even had fleeting moments of attraction to him, when he read her palm and understood her so easily, or when he sought her out in order to help Carlton solve his impossible case. But she hadn't yet felt her stomach flip like this, hadn't been hit by the sudden realization that the idea of dating him isn't unappealing, and is maybe a little…tempting?

She pushes the thoughts away as quickly as they come, but she still knows she had them. She pulls him aside, tells him she doesn't put any stock in their compatibility tests; he deflects, saying he copied hers verbatim.

Strangely, his deflection doesn't feel like a relief. No, the feeling of relief comes when she looks into his eyes—a cool, muddy hazel—and realizes that her detective instincts are telling her he's probably lying.

No, she tells herself, firmly. No. You will not be attracted to Shawn Spencer like this. So she gets up and walks away, leaving him at the table. And that night, when he creeps into her thoughts again as she tries to fall asleep, she squashes every memory of the look in those deep hazel eyes. In the morning, she's forgotten about Shawn. For now.

The next time her feelings give her pause, she's sitting with him on the couch at the Beta Kappa Theta house, and he's looking at her, and suddenly, out of nowhere, the couch feels too small. She's too close to him, and it scares her that she wants to be closer. So she pulls back, says something about her chipped nail polish, and she pretends nothing ever happened.

For a while, this continues. Feelings of desperate attraction to him pop into her head, uninvited, and she pushes them away. She tries not to count them, afraid if she does, she'll realize how often it happens. Almost every time he looks at her, makes her laugh, flirts with her while somehow still respecting her and her authority in a way even other detectives are unable to do. So she doesn't count them, and she doesn't listen to them, and she certainly doesn't indulge them.

The thoughts keep coming, anyway.

And then one night he's standing there, looking into her eyes, his lips so close to hers that if either of them moves, they'll be brushing against each other.

She half prays he will move, while the other half of her focuses all her energy on evening out her breathing, keeping her feet firmly planted where they are, not giving in even though she wants to so badly.

She's not even surprised by the attraction, this time, see. It's not even the first time she's wanted to kiss him, although it's the first time she's come quite this close.

"That's what friends are for," he said, but his shaky breath on her lips tells her he doesn't believe it.

The thing is that they are friends, though. Over the course of the past year and a half, he's become one of her best friends, one of the people she looks most forward to seeing, and she can't deny that he's become incredibly important to her. And she's not ready to lose that, not ready to roll the dice on what might happen if they jump into…whatever this is.

And yet, she's finding it incredibly difficult to step away from him. She's forgotten how to move, how to breathe, almost, and as he purses his lips so they press so gently just above her lip, she's just as tempted as he is to make this something else, to let go and fall into the mistake they've just discussed.

Because the truth is, she's not at all sure it would be a mistake after all.

But no, this isn't their moment. It's been a long day, and it's turning into a long night, and she knows she won't sleep tonight because she'll be going over this moment again and again in her head, trying desperately, as usual, to convince herself that she feels nothing but friendship for him.

He pulls away, finally, and again she hopes to feel relief.

She doesn't.

Instead, her mind betrays her again and she fights a desperate urge to follow him, pull him back to her. So she pulls out her gun and begins to disassemble it, telling herself once again to forget him, forget this, and just move forward. It's just attraction, mixed with close friendship. Of course it's confusing. She tells herself, again, to ignore it.

And so it goes, on and on, pushing thoughts of Shawn out of her head becoming a part of her daily routine, though a part she's determined not to notice. She convinces herself it's not a big deal, it doesn't have to mean anything, and that the two of them are a bad idea.

She almost believes it.

And yet, every day she finds herself back at square one.

She starts to give in, in little ways. She goes to his class reunion, telling herself it's because she missed her own. She tries not to smile too big when he places the crown on her head, and when she fails, she excuses it away as a leftover fulfillment of a high school experience she didn't have. She lets her hand brush against his…okay, press against his, as they skate together in semi-darkness, and if no one sees them, it doesn't count.

And once, she goes to return Gus' shoes in her date outfit, hoping to see him while she's dressed to the nines, hoping to see the look in his eyes when she tells him her date's been called off, hoping it will give her confirmation of…something. She tries not to notice how happy she feels when he asks her to go for a walk with him.

When they finish eating, she finds herself hoping their hands will happen to brush against each other again, like they did at the skating rink. When she realizes this, she dismisses it. Just a trick of the emotions of the day. And besides, there are too many witnesses, here on the boardwalk.

But she can't resist studying him out of the corner of her eye as they walk along. The lighting is hitting him just right, and he does, as he said, look pretty good in the golden hour. He looks pretty good in just about all lightings, though, she thinks idly, before she catches herself.

"Some people can just make several very good attempts," she mutters.

Shawn looks up in confusion. "Huh?"

"Nothing," she says. And it is. For now.

Isn't it?