Work Text:
The hospital hallway seemed to stretch into the distance as a man leaned against the sterile white wall, his plaid shirt adding a splash of color to the engineered blankness of the area around him. His legs jittered with the frantic energy of someone who needed to move but couldn’t do anything to help, and his teeth worried at his lips while he pulled his crossed arms tighter around his body. He stared at a closed, nondescript door and silence seemed to hang on the heavy antiseptic air as he waited.
The door opened, and the man stilled, his eyebrows creasing in worry as a woman walked out, her blonde hair pulled up in a tight bun, her eyes red, and her lips quivering. She saw him and her face crumpled as she walked into his outstretched arms, burying her face in his chest as she sobbed out, “Shawn…”
Shawn wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight as the sustained tone coming from the open door was turned off. He kissed her hair and whispered quietly, “Jules… I’m so sorry.”
Juliet sat in the car, staring vacantly out of the window as she wiped away tears from her blotchy cheeks. “I’m sorry. This is stupid. We weren’t close, most of the time I didn’t even like him…”
“He was your dad,” Shawn said simply. “I mean, if my-” he cut himself off with a quick head shake and the car was silent for several minutes. His fingers started to drum on the steering wheel as his free leg jittered. He looked over to check on her a few times before finally speaking up again. “Want a smoothie?”
“Smoothies are happy foods,” Juliet said to the window in a small voice.
“Technically, they’re an anytime-food. Like ice-cream.”
Juliet’s face twisted into a semblance of a smile before it shifted back to blank emptiness. “I don’t want a smoothie.”
Shawn nodded and watched the road for a minute before asking, “What about ice-cream?”
“I just want to go home,” Juliet whispered, her voice growing thick as her eyes started to fill.
Shawn looked at her in concern before gently answering, “Ok.”
They drove home, the silence only broken by quiet, hitched sobs and quiet, murmured assurances.
“Do you want to know what I can’t stop thinking about?” Juliet asked that night as she picked at the carry-out food in front of her.
Shawn tensed and looked up from his plate, his eyes darting between her and the door before he seemed to force himself to relax and ask, “What?”
“I didn’t say it.”
Shawn’s eyes darted to the door again before he hesitantly asked, “Didn’t say what?”
“I had this whole speech planned. Everything I’ve ever wanted to say to him, everything I’ve always wanted him to understand… It was my last chance, you know?” She bit her lip and pushed the food around on her plate. “I didn’t say it. I looked at him and just… told him that I loved him and I’d miss him.” She let out a wet chuckle. “My last words to him were a lie.”
Shawn stared at her as his mouth moved wordlessly and his leg began to shake. He shook his head in frustration and his eyebrows drew together in thought before he hesitantly started to speak. “Did you know that my Dad-” he winced and then soldiered on, “he actually kept a hamster in the freezer for months before he finally buried it when I was asleep.”
“Shawn…” Juliet sighed.
“No, no. This has a point, I promise. It’s just… I would freeze up whenever we tried to bury him. I could think of things I wanted to say, but they didn’t seem like they were what I was supposed to say, and I couldn’t just say what I needed to say, you know?” Shawn shrugged and looked down under the pretense of cutting his next bite of food. “It was what you needed to say.”
Juliet looked up and studied Shawn for a long moment before her shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “Maybe…”
A week later, Juliet was at her desk, quietly finishing up another stack of paperwork while chewing her lip in concentration. A blank piece of paper and a pink pen plopped down in front of her, breaking her flow. She sighed and looked up. “Shawn, I’m busy. Go bug someone else.”
“Tempting, but no. We’re having a bonfire tonight: S’mores, hotdogs, the whole enchilada,” Shawn popped up and sat on her desk as he leaned over to tap the blank paper. “You’re going to write that stuff down, the stuff you wanted to tell your dad.”
Juliet stiffened and stared at the seemingly innocent blank page. “Shawn, I told you, I’m fine.”
“You timed yourself taking apart your gun for over an hour last night,” Shawn pointed out, not unkindly. “It’s all clogged up in your head. You need a plunger.”
“Gross,” Juliet grumbled as she gave him a light glare.
“Yeah, it is. And it needs to get out. So…” he tapped the paper again, “get it out. Then tonight, throw it in the fire. Tell yourself it’s cleansing, tell yourself the smoke will take the message up,” he took in her skeptical scoff and asked, “tell yourself the flames will take it down?”
Juliet’s glare deepened and Shawn held his hands out in surrender. “Look, what’s the worst that can happen? If it doesn’t work, then you can go back to your gun, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
Juliet’s lips pulled into a small smirk and Shawn quickly corrected himself. “I’ll talk about other stuff instead of this. Just… I’m worried, ok? Let me try to help?”
Juliet hesitated before reaching out to pick up the pink pen. She stared at it before setting it off to the side. “I’ll think about it.”
“Ok,” Shawn said softly. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead before standing up and giving her a large grin. “You better prepare yourself. I make a mean s’more.”
“I’ve seen you cook. If you don’t burn it, I’ll be surprised,” Juliet answered back dryly.
“Duh, you have to burn it, that’s what makes it good!” Shawn argued as he backed out of the precinct.
Juliet continued her work, but her eyes kept gravitating towards the blank paper and the pink pen. She finally sighed and cleared up her desk, leaving work early for the first time in years. She sat in her car for a long while, staring at the white rectangle laying against her steering wheel before she finally began to write.
The warm, orange fire crackled and popped as Shawn ate his third hotdog with an arm wrapped around Juliet. She stared at the dancing flames, at the embers skittering across the ground before dying away, at the burning log and its black, crusted bark that fell away to reveal untouched wood beneath. She dug into her pocket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper, opening it up and reading it quietly before standing to hold it in the flames.
A tongue of fire began to grow from the edge, and smoke curled up from it, a thick gray wisp that danced and twirled before fading into the darkness. Juliet watched as the words were taken away, small flickers of color flaring up when the ink met the flames. She held the page until the fire reached her skin and she had to let go, her hand speckled in ash and her fingers slightly burnt.
The last fragment of her message curled and blackened as she turned to sit next to Shawn again, her cheeks glistening in the firelight as she leaned into him with a small smile on her face.