musicalluna

Juliet flushed, trying to pretend she couldn’t hear the sound of liquid sloshing back into a glass, accompanied by a faint choking noise.

"Shawn, stop it," she whispered, taking a dainty sip out of her own glass.

"Jules," he rasped in return, "this stuff is awful. I don’t care if it cost eighty dollars for a bottle. Whatever happened to wine in a box? Cheap and tasty."

Juliet flashed a weak smile at the woman next to her, who was shooting sideways glances at Shawn, giving him the evil eye. "Shawn," she hissed, "you promised you would try to enjoy this."

"I did no such thing," he said. "I told you I would go with you. I told you I hated wine, but I would go anyway. I'd do a lot of things for you, Jules, but I can't choke this stuff down, sorry."

Juliet ducked her head as they received their next glasses. Maybe this whole wine-tasting thing had been a bad idea. She'd thought, hey, it's alcohol, how bad can it be? But Shawn's taste buds clearly made a distinction between "alcohol" and "wine". And as much as she hated to admit it...

She grimaced as she took a sip of her newest glass. These were pretty bad. It took all her will power to gulp down the mouthful and not spit it right back into the glass as Shawn kept doing.

He apologized when he'd spit this particular mouthful out. "Sorry, Jules, I'm just not a wine connoisseur kind of guy," he said, setting the glass on the table.

Juliet sighed, staring as she swirled the wine around the glass a little. "You're right, Shawn," she said and looked up into his eyes. "I don't think I am either."

A grin slowly broke across Shawn's face and he leaned forward a little. "Does that mean...?"

"Let's get out of here."

~ * * * ~

A half an hour later Juliet was trying to smother snorts of laughter in Shawn's chest as he described the first time he and Gus had gotten completely and utterly drunk together.

"...no, no, I swear," he said. "You can get anything out of him when he's been drinking. Not that it's all that hard in the first place."

"You are so awful to him," she said, smiling happily up at him.

"Hey, Gus gives as good as he gets," Shawn said and then with a grin, waggled a beer can at her. "You're happy, Jules?"

She smiled and said, "With a KFC feast and beer? A girl couldn't ask for more."

Shawn's grin broadened and he wrapped his arms around her, dragging her with him as he fell sideways on the couch, just to press a kiss to her mouth.

"Now you're speaking my language."