Title: Noted
Fandom: Psych
Rating: G
Characters: Shawn and Gus
Word Count: 850
Summary: Required to do a homework assignment, Shawn has his own ways, and own reasons, to follow the rules.
Badges: For Brave New Fandom, Governor of Gendom, and Time Turner.


"Shawn, what is this?" Gus held out the beaten up blue notebook that he had found in Shawn's backpack while digging for some of the Red Vines he knew were buried in there.

Shawn glanced up from the Game Boy that he been focused on for the back half of math, which happened to be the last class of the day and Shawn's least favorite. He kept the hand-held under the desk to the teacher wouldn't see it, the sound down so that she wouldn't hear it. Which was too bad because the game was a lot more fun with the sound effects, though math would probably be a lot more fun with sound effects too, he thought. "My history notes," he whispered back.

"Since when did you start keeping notes in class?" Gus asked.

"Since Mr. Stilson started requiring them, then threatened to tell my dad if I didn't turn them in."

Gus had the notebook on the desk in front of him and was flipping through the pages, unable to believe that Sean could have suddenly become studious about anything, even with the threat of detention hanging over his head. It only took him a couple of pages to verify his hunch. "Shawn, this is just a bunch of random letters."

"No, it isn't. Do you have any idea how boring that would be, thinking up random letters for pages and pages. There are only 19 letters. Eventually I'd run out of combos." On screen, his character died. With a sigh Shawn shut the game off; he was never going to be able to concentrate if Gus wouldn't stop talking to him. Reaching over, he pointed to a three character combination in the notebook. "That's the word 'the'. I write down everything Mr. Stilson says... Except the uhms. He uses way too many uhms to keep track of."

With that hint, Gus figured out what he was looking at. "You're keeping your notes in code?" he asked incredulously. He lost control of his volume for just a second, long enough for the student sitting in front of him to turn around and shoot him a glare. Lowering his voice again, he continued, "What if Mr. Stilson wants to read these?"

"Gus," Shawn sighed, "Don't be the little squiggly line over the n in jalapeño. It's a simple substitution cypher. If Stilson is that interested in what I'm writing down, he can figure it out. You'll notice that I got an A," Shawn added, flipping back to the front of the notebook and pointing at a scrawled red letter on the inside cover. "I think what I'm proving here is the Stilson doesn't actually check out assignments."

Gus looked thoughtful for a moment then rejected the idea Shawn had planted with a sharp click of his tongue. Vast experience had taught him that if he tried the same stunt Shawn did, he would get caught. Besides, he didn't want to waste his time having to crack the code of his own notes to study from them. He flipped through the pages one last time, then shoved the notebook back into Shawn's backpack, the search for candy temporarily abandoned.

"Mr Spencer, Mr Guster, would you care to share with the rest of the class?" the teacher interrupted.

Gus sat up, hastily donning his innocent expression. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Shawn slipping the Game Boy underneath his leg.

"Gus was just helping me check my notes," Shawn answered. He offered the smile that so often kept him out of trouble, especially with this teacher. She bought it, and the excuse, and went back to writing on the board.

Glass marveled at this; somehow Shawn always seem to escape the consequences of his actions. He waited until the teacher was distracted with writing an equation then leaned back over to his best friend. "Shawn, you can't keep playing games with your education. Eventually it's going to catch up with you."

Shawn shot him to look of pure incredulity. "Gus, shush. I'm trying to pay attention here." He gestured to the board. "This is going to be on the test."

"How do you know?"

Shawn drummed his fingers on the desk for a second, then capitulated an answer. "Because she's standing to the left side of the board," he said like it was obvious. "She always stands to the left when she says something she thinks is important." He gave Gus a second to work through the truth of his observation.

Gus wasn't so sure he was right, but now that he knew what to watch for, he was going to do it. Shawn could be making it all up, but with something like this he probably wasn't. Gus nodded and picked up his pencil to write down everything the teacher said. Shawn, however, did not. "You're not going to take notes?"

Shawn scoffed. "Come on, Gus. Writing stuff down isn't important. It's all up here." He tapped the side of his head. "Passing is all in figuring out how to play the game."