NOTES: This was written in response to a post Season 3 challenge with the prompts deli, crying, and "Jules hearts Shawn" ( that last one is a bit in the Psych book Mind Over Magic ). It ended up being much, much more serious than I anticipated, as you'll see, but I ended up really enjoying it and thought I would share it. The little heart symbol doesn't work on this website, so you'll have to imagine a heart where it says "hearts" -- you'll know when I mean. I hope you like it, and I'd love some feedback!

Deli Meet

They stood in the deli, frozen; her with her tiny individual packages of fillets tucked into the crook of her arm, him clutching a basket with three massive rib eye steaks, and they stared at each other. She might have expected it to be awkward -- Shawn had flat refused her the last time they'd seen each other. But she hadn't had her guard up, not here, and so it was even worse than she'd expected. She could see his free hand twitching, desperate for something to do, and she wriggled her shoulders uncomfortably. And then Shawn said, out of nowhere,

"Barbecue?"

Juliet shook herself.

"Huh? Oh…no, these are for dinner the next couple of nights."

She smiled at her, an odd assortment of anxiety and amused patience, and he shook his head at her like a teacher correcting an errant but adorable child. "I meant, do you want to come to mine? Dad can grill you the best steak you've ever had, but I give you fair warning: you'll never want to eat a steak in a restaurant again. He's ruined Outback for me."

"Uhm." Juliet knew he was trying to prove to her how normal things could be between them, but every time she saw him, she saw that look he'd had when he'd told her that her timing really sucked. When he'd told her he didn't want to go to dinner with her. She'd known better than to take a chance on Shawn. He was fun, sure, and he always made her laugh no matter how rough her day had been. She felt butterflies when he did those silly impulsive things or made those out-of-the-blue comments about how pretty she was on any given day. But he was not the guy you gave your heart to. Shawn meant well, he did, but he could not be serious.

"I better not," she said. "I was thinking of having Lassiter and his girlfriend over."

Shawn motioned to the butcher anyway, and held up a finger. Immediately, the man smiled and nodded, wrapping up another rib eye in butcher paper.

"Come on, Jules," he said, gently. "Come join me and dad and Gus for dinner instead. Lassie and his leading lady can come, too. We can have a battleship tournament."

But Juliet shook her head, eyes wide, and then, in a fit of mortification, she began to cry. The tears ran silently down her burning red cheeks before she could stop them, and she whirled away from him, trying to hide. She heard him set his basket down as she scrubbed furiously at her eyes and nose with her sleeve, but it was no use. Juliet had never expected that Shawn Spencer could make her cry, and yet…

"Jules," Shawn said, taking her shoulders in gentle hands. "Aw, Jules."

He sounded genuinely pained and it brought more tears to her eyes. She fought them -- and him -- as he turned her toward him and then his arms drew her into his chest and, in spite of herself, she breathed in the scent of him and let the tears come, right in the middle of the deli. She hadn't really cried for herself in a long time. But he'd truly surprised her and hurt her when he'd refused to go out with her, even if she understood all the reasons why.

"Juliet," he breathed, somewhere very close to her ear. She shook her head against his chest. His hands ran in wide, comforting circles on her back, completely focused on her. He didn't seem to care that she was causing a huge scene in the middle of the deli he frequented often enough to know the butcher. After a while, he touched her chin and drew her face up so that he could meet her damp gaze.

"I better not have dinner with you and your family, Shawn," she managed. His lips curled ever so slightly.

"The things you do to me, Juliet O'Hara," he murmured, and before she could ask what he meant, he had her head tilted back and he was kissing her softly -- softly, but thoroughly. His lips moved over hers slowly, and his tongue just barely brushed over her mouth, and Juliet was helpless against that. She stood, pressed to him, and let him kiss her with a degree of tenderness and patience she hadn't expected out of him -- that she didn't think she could expect out of any man anymore.

"Shawn," she breathed as he pulled away.

"I didn't mean to do that. I mean, not here," he told her, slightly distracted, and he did sound a little surprised. "But…"

"Abby," she said. Shawn didn't say anything. But he didn't let her go, either. She wondered what he was thinking, but she was afraid to know at the same time, and then Shawn shocked her by kissing her again. It was harder this time, much more urgent. His hands pressed her tighter to him, crushing their bodies together from hips to shoulders. There was desperation in this kiss, desperation and a fierce need. Every line of him was tense with it. And then, abruptly, he pulled away. He looked grim, and the eyes that held her gaze were stormy.

"Jules." There was steel in his voice, steel she almost didn't recognize. "It will be our time. I don't know why…" He shook his head, angry at not having the right words.

"Jules. When it's you. When it's us. That's it."

Something twirled inside of her, and her heart tripped three stories before remembering to beat. She wasn't sure she understood what he meant, not with the adrenalin running through her and hope just beginning to be born on fiery little phoenix wings. He picked up his basket, still clearly upset -- one of the few times she'd ever seen him honest-to-God upset and not making a stage show of it.

"What do you -- ?"

"That'll be it for me, Jules."

It was said so matter-of-factly, with so much certainty that it sucked all of the air out of the room for a minute, leaving her breathless. As she tried to rediscover gravity, at least insofar as her stomach was concerned, he took the forth steak from the butcher. Then he borrowed the butcher's sharpie and wrote something on the packaging before he paid for the meat. At last he held the steak out to her, and she took it with numb fingers.

"If you change your mind," he said, and she nodded. "Goodnight, Jules."

"Goodnight, Shawn."

She watched him go, still upset, still raw from everything that had happened to him recently. She knew how he felt. She stared after him until a moment or so after he'd disappeared, and then her eyes dropped down to what he'd written on the rib eye's packaging. Her eyes filled with tears again. It said:

Shawn hearts Juliet too.