Shawn had learned a lot more from his father than just detective tricks. If there was one lesson that Shawn could take away from his childhood, it was that Spencer men never let their emotions get the best of them. It didn't matter if you were treating a woman like a person, a princess, a Greek goddess, or a person again... you could never ever let her see you cry. Or hurt. Or admit that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong.

On a conscious level, Shawn knew that his father probably wasn't the best man to take relationship advice from, but the damage had already been done. Besides, what other role models did he have? His best friend hadn't had a relationship that lasted more than two months since his college days, and Shawn could only look on in sympathy as the head detective he worked under suffered through a divorce that left him coming to work every day with bags under his eyes and a heavy heart. On the surface, his buddy's parents, the Gusters, seemed to have a happy marriage - but Shawn had witnessed firsthand the lies and deceptions that lurked in the shadows of their otherwise welcoming home. The only couple Shawn knew that was supposedly living happily ever after was the chief and her husband, but frankly, Shawn was starting to wonder whether this Mr. Vick character even existed at all.

It was easy for Shawn to hide his feelings. He was already putting on a mask every morning before he left what he had lovingly dubbed his 'laundromapartment'. He had to - there were some things that he just couldn't let people see. Like the fact that the images of the bodies he'd seen, preserved in every gory detail by his eidetic memory, sometimes kept him awake at night. Or that beneath the layers of his happy-go-lucky exterior, there lived a part of Shawn that didn't want to diffuse every situation with a witty comment or a boast about his gorgeous hair. And then of course there was that tiny inconvenience that Shawn wasn't actually psychic. So what was one more thing? Shawn knew that one day, his mask would have to crack, but until then his feelings for Juliet would just mean one more layer in the pile - just one more addition to his daily routine.