NOTES: Takes place some undetermined point after the season three finale. This is just a story that came to me when I heard the song "Check Yes, Juliet" by We The Kings -- and it occured to me that the energy of the song was so Shawn, not to mention the fact that he definitely seems like the kind of guy that would just steal his leading lady away, no matter what the circumstances. It's total fluff, I make no excuses for it. But sometimes we need a little fluff in our daily lives, don't we? Please enjoy it, and I really appreciate feedback, so don't be shy! Thank you very much.

Check Yes, Juliet

Shawn Spencer hated a couple things in life. Traffic tickets, for one. Lines, for another. Rules. Dress codes. He supposed conformity wasn't a stretch. Oh, and fancy functions that he was actually invited to, with the exception of weddings ( which there had been a disappointing lack of lately ). He hated the whole routine; the suit, the hand shaking and ass kissing, and especially the general expectation that everyone will be on their best behavior or else.

"Or else what, exactly?" he said to Gus, who was sitting next to him, as they continued their conversation from before. They had planned on crashing the Santa Barbara's Police Department's birthday, and then Chief Vick had gone and ruined it by inviting them. The only upside to being asked to come had been Carlton Lassiter's reaction. Shawn had never seen a person's face get that particular shade of purple.

"I mean, what will they do to me if I'm not on my best behavior?"

Gus, smiling pleasantly to the people sitting nearest to them at the long table, said, "Shawn, just this once, I would really not like to find out."

And Shawn slumped in his chair, bored with the whole thing already. If he couldn't misbehave, what was the point? He'd brought his motorcycle since Gus had his route to finish before they'd met here at the hotel for the event. He could just slip out…but to go alone seemed so sad… Then he perked up. Juliet O'Hara had just walked in, smiling wryly at Lassiter, who had nearly bowed to the police commissioner on his way in. Maybe, he thought, drinking in the sight of that rosy silk dress on her, maybe the night's not a total loss, after all.

* * *

They had already sat through four speeches commemorating the SBPD's proud history, ect, ect, ect., when the woman next to her gave her a slight nudge. Juliet glanced over and the lady handed her a note. She recognized the handwriting at once, and a strange mix of anticipation and foreboding filled her. She turned her attention to Shawn, who was beaming at her, and she knew he had some kind of wildly inappropriate scheme cooked up in his head. She looked at him in what she hoped was a properly disapproving manner, then she unfolded the note. All it said was:

Are you with me?

and underneath that was a single checkbox marked yes for her to cross off. She sighed and dug a pen out of her bag, knowing Shawn was watching her closely. She wrote no, then she underlined it. Twice. And added a couple of exclamation points to be clear. After all, he was obviously up to no good, and anyway it was Carlton's turn, as head detective, to speak next. She passed the note back. But if she had been expecting him to be disappointed, he would have surprised her. He only smiled wider. He scribbled something on the paper and passed it again, and Juliet gave her neighbors at the table an apologetic look for being bothered. The note reached her and she opened it against her better judgement.

You hate this stuff, too. Check yes, Juliet.

She shot another glance his way, uncomfortable with how much she liked looking at her name in his handwriting, and wondering how he knew. He winked at her and put two of his fingers to his forehead, as if divining her thoughts using his psychic talents. He grinned again.

She shook her head.

He nodded back.

She gave him a look that said, whatever you're planning to do is something I don't want anything to do with.

His answering look said, Let's go before we both die of boredom and unfulfilled youth.

And then, right in the middle of Carlton's speech, he leapt to his feet.

"Spencer?" Carlton had hardly gotten the word out of his mouth before he began turning red with rage, somehow sensing that Shawn was going to ruin his carefully constructed, meticulously practiced and heartfelt address.

"I'm sorry to interrupt this terrible speech, but -- no, no actually I'm not sorry about that. Anyway. I'm sensing something. Loose…change. Loose slots. Someone is breaking loose! And running…running water. No." He frowned, twisting around the room, moving his arms in sinuous waves. The room had gone silent and Carlton had gone scarlet. "No, not water. Running, running wild. Running free -- away! Running away!"

"Mr. Spencer, are you telling us you're having a vision?" Chief Vick asked, unruffled but also unamused.

"Yes! I can see it now. One of the very near future. It's…it's a kidnapping."

Juliet suddenly had a very bad feeling about this vision.

"A kidnapping?" Chief began looking for her cell phone as Shawn nodded frantically, gripping his head as if it was aching beyond anyone's normal threshold for pain. Juliet's bad feeling intensified.

"Yes, and then an escape!"

"Whose?" she asked, dialing the police station. Shawn let go of his head and gave the chief a roguish smile which stilled her fingers. He said,

"Ours."

And with that, he grabbed Juliet's arm and pulled her to her feet. He ran and Juliet found herself being dragged behind him by the hand. Although she wasn't really fighting him. Later she'd tell herself it was because she was too surprised. But the truth was she wanted to escape -- wild excitement had her pulse pounding as behind her, everyone stared after them in shock. It didn't matter. They'd already hit the front door and were racing down the steps, and it took Juliet a minute to realize the person laughing in total surprised abandon was her.

"Shawn," she said, letting go of his hand.

"Run, Jules! Don't stop here," he urged her, and she could see his motorcycle parked on the opposite side of the street.

She stopped at the bottom of the steps, glancing back over her shoulder at the door of the building. She felt a little guilty for letting Shawn snatch her while her partner was giving a speech. She'd have to assuage Carlton's temper for months.

"Jules," Shawn said, and she looked at him. He'd stopped, too, a few steps out into the street. He was looking back at her, his head tilted slightly and wild mischief still dancing in his eyes. "Don't ever look back! Didn't they teach you how to properly escape in the academy?" With that, he grabbed her hand again and led her to his bike. She was still trying to decide if she should go back now and try to repair any damage she might have done by letting herself get dragged out of the hotel's ballroom in the middle of the evening when Shawn wrapped his leather jacket around her shoulders.

"Put that on," he said close to her ear, urgent. "And the helmet."

She tugged them both on properly before it occurred to her to argue. Perhaps that was when she realized for sure that she wasn't going to argue. He already had the bike purring by the time she'd finished pulling the helmet on. People were starting to come after them down the steps. And Juliet decided it was much, much too late to put a stop to this now. She climbed onto the bike behind Shawn, and she knew he was smiling triumphantly as she slid her arms around his waist.

"Hold on tight!" he yelled over the now-roaring engine as he gunned it. And then they were flying, gone before anyone made it across the street.

* * *

"The Psych office? This is where we're escaping to?"

Shawn looked at her, both his hands clutched over his heart as if she'd just shot him point-blank in the chest. Which she was tempted to do, after all that spectacle for this.

"Jules," he said. "You wound me. Of course this isn't our ultimate destination -- that's a surprise. This," he added as he unlocked the door and let her in, "is where I'm going to grab my extra helmet. And a jacket."

He was already shrugging out of his blazer. He peeked back at Juliet while he tugged his tie loose, and seemed struck by her there, still in his leather jacket over her very flattering dress. She caught his moment of seriousness, and then it was gone, and he was grabbing a jacket. After rummaging around in the lockers for a moment, he found a second helmet. And as she waited for this crazy adventure to continue, she started to have doubts. She definitely should not have run out of the SBPD's dinner.

Shawn caught her look. "The whole point of a dashing, daring escape -- or a kidnapping -- is not to say goodbye."

"It's not that part," she said. "Carlton was speaking. It's an event honoring the organization I'm part of, and it was mandatory, and…and--"

"It was a total snore," Shawn supplied, taking her hand again ( there was a lot of that going on tonight ) and leading her back to the waiting motorcycle. "That sort of thing isn't for us, Jules." He was terribly earnest about this point. "We need freedom! We need adventure." He got the bike going and motioned for her to climb on. "We need--"

"We need, or rather, I need, to have my head examined," she replied, and joined him.

* * *

He took her for ice cream cones on the boardwalk even though they were dressed for dinner parties. And as they wandered along the waterfront, he took a giant leap and took her hand for real this time, which he held in his own very gently. Juliet shot him a look but carried on with her ice cream cone. And he let himself enjoy the moment for a while. Then he bumped her with his hip.

"You're it!" he announced, and ran, his loose tie fluttering like a flag around his neck. He was afraid maybe she wouldn't chase him, but he heard her calling his name and a quick look proved that she was indeed running after him. As they hit the sand, she paused to kick off her heels, and then the chase was really on. She was fast, faster than he'd given her credit for. She caught him, tagged him, and was off in the other direction before he'd quite figured out what had happened. He chased her back, laughing even though it made it harder to breathe.

Tag on the beach lasted until Juliet had forced Shawn to say uncle, which he did, bent over double on the beach, his laughter breathless. Then they had to wander the sand until they found their shoes, and Shawn took her to a shop and bought her a stupid-looking stuffed turtle as a reward for winning. She fell in love with it immediately, but she didn't admit it out loud. Still, she was pretty sure she didn't have to. Even if he wasn't psychic, the flush on her cheeks was probably telling enough.

The turtle was stuffed between them as they drove to the next surprise destination. She was glad for the break from laughing -- her cheeks had begun to hurt. And she was glad for his warmth as they raced the wind, and she hardly noticed the clouds gathering overhead.

* * *

They arrived next at a park Shawn used to play at as a kid, and he gleefully revealed his hidden treasure -- two coolers full of fresh water balloons.

"Did you…plan this?" Juliet asked. Shawn laughed at her.

"Why, is it romantic? Beginning to feel yourself falling hopelessly in love with me in spite of the socio-economic pressures of the time, which conspire to keep us apart?"

"So…you always have a bunch of water balloons lying around in a secret lair you and Gus built in these bushes when you were kids?" she asked. Shawn shrugged.

"We challenge the little league team that practices here. We're better at this than paintball. Besides, Gus and I usually win. His arching meteor bomb is an art form. Our old school pal wrote his doctoral dissertation on the mechanics of it," he replied with an amount of innocence that might have shocked someone a little less used to Shawn's outrageous claims.

Juliet's response to this, however, was to crush a water balloon on his head.

"Jules! The hair!" But she was already re-armed and ducking into the thick bushes that camouflaged Shawn and Gus' hideout. "This means war, you know!" he hollered after her. He got ( surprisingly high, surprisingly girlish ) giggles as an answer.

So he stalked her using his Indian blood. She had removed her shoes again, and he could see her bare footprints in the damp soil. He stayed low, looking for signs that she'd doubled back to confuse him, and was completely shocked when a water balloon exploded against his bent back. He snap-straightened and looked up, and there, perched very prettily in the lowest branches of an old oak, was Jules. She was laughing, her dress tucked around her legs to protect her modesty. He narrowed his eyes at her and she laughed harder -- until he tossed the balloon up in such a way that it landed directly in her hap.

"Shawn!" Cradling her second balloon in the crook of her arm, she nimbly hoisted herself up a little higher and held the balloon over his head. He was laughing now -- but not for long.

"Just how much do you value your hair?"

Shawn gulped. He valued his hair quite a bit, and Juliet, wily as she was, knew that.

"Okay, okay, no more water balloons. Okay?" he asked, squinting up at her. He fully expected her to drop the balloon on him anyway. It was what he would have done. But she climbed down with the balloon still cradled in her arm and not splattered all over his face.

They headed back toward the hideout and just as Shawn was going to ask what she was looking so smug about, he felt a water balloon come into direct, soaking wet contact with his ass. Still, he had to smile a little as she pulled her hand away, because that balloon was not the only thing that had come into direct contact with his ass. And that was worth a wet butt.

* * *

Amazingly, Shawn had managed to keep up the exhilaration that she'd had when he'd first kidnapped her from the dinner party, and the stuffed turtle was smooshed between their bodies, reminding her of how welcome his spontaneity could be.

They were lost now, or at least Juliet was. In the three years she'd lived in Santa Barbara, she hadn't ever spent much time exploring outside of downtown or the areas immediately around her suburban neighborhood. But they were getting higher now, flying under a cloudy night sky, and below them the urban sprawl of Santa Barbara glittered like stars spread over hilltops. She didn't even mind how fast Shawn was taking the curves. In fact, it added to the whole feeling that she'd really broken free, and even though the wind was whipping past her, Shawn was warm, and her blood was pounding from the heights and the speed and the sense that she was above all of the worries that had been plaguing her recently.

She'd known it would be like this with him -- off on sudden adventures, endlessly subjected to surprises and flights of fancy. His world would revolve around making hers fun whenever he could. But for all his childishness, she sensed something more to him -- something he kept very private, even from his best friend. A seriousness. A sense of duty ( evidenced by his continued work with the SBPD ) and deep loyalty ( like his lifetime friendship with Gus ). And she knew, although he tried to distract people from the fact, that he was very smart. But she was a detective -- a good one -- and though it had taken her a while to be sure, she was certain now that what the world saw of Shawn Spencer was only the tip of the iceberg.

Shawn finally slowed to a stop on a hilltop looking down over Santa Barbara and the ocean. She guessed they were somewhere near one of the city's water supplies, but she couldn't be sure in the dark. She climbed off of the bike and tugged off the helmet, and was left in awe of the view. Shawn, with an unusual amount of shyness, joined her a moment later.

"I found it once, when I was just driving. I used to do that…just drive." He sounded uncharacteristically introspective. Juliet nodded, not wanting to spook him. Shawn was the kind of guy that needed a back way out, an escape. She had never suspected, when they'd first met ( and he'd annoyed the hell out of her by talking incessantly through an entire sting operation ) that he'd still be around three years later. Consistency wasn't his strongest point. Then again, he was still in Santa Barbara, still best friends with Gus, still working with the SBPD. Maybe she'd been wrong about him running away all the time.

But, as usual, Shawn was disinclined to allow things to remain so serious. He glanced at her, smiling because her dress was dirty and her hair was wild, and she was still in his jacket, and then he placed his hands on his hips. "So, Jules -- this is your great escape--"

"It's my kidnapping. I believe it's your great escape."

Shawn waved a hand. "Details. What do you want to do?"

"I…don't know," she said, just as the clouds burst open over their heads. In just a few moments, they were drenched. Juliet couldn't believe it, but Shawn…Shawn was laughing as though this was the perfect turn of events. He grabbed her and they jogged over to a small grouping of trees, where they might be at least semi-sheltered from the rain.

"I have an idea," he said after a moment.

"Oh yeah?" Juliet looked at him from under wet strands of blonde hair. "Does it involve getting tagged or having water balloons smash open in your lap or getting rained on?"

He laughed again, softer, and pushed the hair out of her face. "No," he admitted, "but I think it's pretty good."

"So…what is it?"

Before she could prepare herself, his hand had slid into her wet hair and he'd dipped slightly, bringing their lips achingly close together. Juliet, whose pulse had never really recovered over the course of the night, caught her breath sharply, and in spite of promising himself he'd be cool, Shawn made a low noise deep in his chest at the sound of her.

"Very close talking," Juliet said, remembering.

"Yup." He was trying so hard to sound smug and not like he was as desperate to kiss her as he was. Juliet laughed again, and he almost broke and pressed his mouth to hers anyway, but somehow his willpower held.

"I have something to tell you," he murmured.

"What's that?" she breathed, her eyes closed, her fingers finding his shirt and anchoring there.

"I…you said the best things are worth waiting for and you're right." He moved just a breath closer, and his lips were brushing over hers with every syllable he formed. "Jules. I'm trying to be one of the best things."

Juliet opened her eyes. She paused, and then she whispered, "I know."

"I don't think I'm there quite yet. I don't want to screw this up. I have to…get better at relationships. At not hurting you because I refuse to take life serious," he said. "But I'm close, Jules. I'm close."

Her fingers tightened in his shirt, and she felt her heart throbbing like an African drum in her chest. She whispered, "I know," again.

"Wait for me?" he asked, so vulnerable that she wondered if this was even the same Shawn that had kidnapped her earlier in the evening. But of course it was, this was the Shawn he only trusted himself to be when he was with her. The best thing he was talking about.

"I'll wait," she promised, and was surprised not to feel any sort of hesitation or regret. What happened to that strong, confident, rational guy she was waiting for? The guy with the good job and the sensible plans for a serious future?

It sounded so boring now, when she was pressed up against Shawn's chest, feeling his heart pounding just as hard as hers while their breaths mixed in the wet night air.

"Okay," he managed, sounding as though she'd relieved him from a terrible burden. "Okay," he repeated.

"Shawn," she murmured, almost on her tip-toes now.

"Yeah?"

"Will you please, please stop close-talking and kiss me now?" she asked, and before she closed her eyes again she could tell he was smiling. And then his other arm was pulling her up and tight against him as he dipped a little lower -- just a little -- and gave her the kind of kiss she'd thought only happened in the romance novels that she sometimes snuck to work.

* * *

He dropped her off, dirty and damp and tired, but happy, at her place. The rain had stopped after a half-hour or so, and true to form, the Californian sky had cleared again. He'd wrapped her up as warm as he could and driven her home much slower than he'd taken her in the first place. They were standing now on her doorstep, and he was shifting a little awkwardly. Juliet took her keys out of her bag, the stuffed turtle smashed against her chest.

"How was your first kidnapping?" he asked.

"Fun," she admitted.

"Your second kidnapping will be even better."

"Shawn--" she warned, suddenly worried, and he only grinned at her devilishly.

"Oh no, I'll just throw rocks at your window until you come with me. I won't budge," he promised, and Juliet had a feeling this was one fight she was going to lose.

"Goodnight, Shawn."

"It'll be all planned out," he told her, lost in his scheming already. "Maybe I'll steal you from work, and--"

She stopped him by pressing a quick kiss to his lips. "Goodnight, Shawn," she repeated. He grinned down at her, totally besotted, and it made her smile back.

"Goodnight, Jules," he replied, and when she was safely inside, he tottered back to his bike. He was really, really glad, he decided, that she'd checked yes.