Disclaimer: Nope I still don't own it.
Lisbon had - like any normal person - a few vices. Not anything too serious though.
She always seemed to fall for unavailable men. Not that that was a crime per se, 'cause she would never, in a million years, act on said feelings. When once in a while she did manage to find a good reliable man, she ran away before anything got too serious. I guess you could say she got issues with men, but that was really no wonder given her childhood history. She hadn't really given all this much thought before, but after working with Patrick Jane for years some of his sharp perceptive skills had rubbed off on her. And after turning forty she had on a few occasions turned those skills toward herself, trying to analyze her life and herself in general. She was almost prone to call it a midlife crisis. Evaluating if she had she gotten everything she wanted out of life at this point of it.
Her running away instincts was a way to avoid getting too attached to another human being, that could only ever end in pain and misery. You can't have one without the other though, but she had long since realized that if she could spare herself of the heartache she would sacrifices ever feeling loved again. Feeling happy for a short while couldn't compensate for feeling miserable for the rest of your life. Feelings weren't productive, so she pushed them away and buried them deep down, hoping they'd never surface again. It wasn't as if she was a selfish person, all the caring she had left inside her was turned towards other people. She looked tough on the outside, but her core self was as fragile as a house of cards and she protected it by the only means she had left, denial of what is important in life… love.
xxx
Growing up she'd had a few boyfriends, but Greg had been her first serious one. As soon as marriage was in the cards though, she had fled. All the way out of state, as a matter of fact. She needed a change of scenery and she found that it was oddly refreshing, getting away from all her troubles.
In San Francisco she had slowly fallen for Bosco, but he was a married man, and hence on the no touching list. She wouldn't want to be the reason why a family fell apart, she knew how fast everything could get screwed up, both from personal experience and from her job. People would do the most stupid things some times, all in the name of love.
Since then she'd casually been dating men from time to time, nothing too serious. She told herself that she was too busy for a real relationship, that her work was too important. But it was all excuses and deep down she knew that. It wasn't that she was lonely or needed a man to fulfill her life, she was quite the independent woman, but sometimes she wished she had someone to share the little things with, to cheer her up when she was sad and to laugh with when she was happy.
Her neurosis seemed to get worse with age. Now when she liked somebody she had completely stopped dating them and instead graduated to just sleeping with them. One night stands was all she could handle. Walter Mashburn was a perfect example. He was a relatively nice man, sure he had some quirks, but who didn't and he seemed to care for her at least.
xxx
It had taken him leaving before she realized she had done it again, or rather her heart had. She had fallen for an unavailable man. This time however she wouldn't so much split a family apart as the memory of one. But that could be just as bad. Her own father's memory of her mother had made him go crazy and Jane was close enough to the edge already. No need for her to push him any further. So much for daughters going for father figures.
As before though she had no intention of acting on these feelings, but for some reason she couldn't just run away this time either, so she was stuck. She figured it must be that she had settled down and made some sort of roots here in Sacramento, she must be getting sentimental in her old age. And it wasn't like he felt the same anyways. Out of all the men she'd wanted or liked this one was the first she was sure didn't reciprocate her feelings.
xxx
Then something strange happened, and all in the course of less than a minute, but that was enough for her world to be completely turned around.
It had been another one of Jane's brilliant plans, which had ended up failing miserably, yet again.
He was supposed to shoot her so he could bring Red John her dead body. It had to be in a semi-public place in order for the scheme to work. Her office at the CBI was where things had changed.
First of all he'd hugged her, not a normal, hello or nice-to-see-you hug, it was more clingy and desperate, a needy kind of hug she'd only ever experienced coming from one of her frightened brothers.
Jane was a scaredy cat, no arguing that, but for some reason this felt different. As if his concern was somehow directed at her. She had abandoned that thought pretty quickly though, it had only just crossed her mind for a split second. So she had lightly hugged him back, dismissing the distressedness of his body language, with the fact that this was a Red John case, and they always seemed to put everybody on edge, especially Jane. But then he'd pulled back, aimed the gun at her, and he'd said 'Good luck,' followed by her first name, which he didn't use that often, so together with the hug it threw her a little, but it was the next two words that really made her stop dead in her tracks, so to speak. If it wasn't for the fact that she was supposed to actually play dead, she would have called him out on it right then and there. 'Love you' two such innocent words, put together, had the power to form so many possible outcomes.
xxx
It was true they'd both been hyped up, but was that the real reason for Jane's Freudian slip, and was it really an excuse for forgetting about it later. Lisbon was not so sure. It wasn't even a good excuse, not coming from Mr. My-memory-is-a-mighty-fortress-from-which-no-fact-ever-escapes-once-committed. His denial of the whole thing had made her even more sure that something had definitely changed, but if it had changed for the better or for the worse, wasn't quite clear to her, the jury was still out on that one.
The whole thing had taken a backseat to the Red John case while it was still ongoing. But once it was over, and they once again had failed to catch the monster, and suffered yet another casualty, he had taken her hand in his, something he had never done before, not like this anyway. And then they had just sat there, for the longest time, on that little dirt hill in the middle of the dessert, holding hands, not saying anything, just silently supporting each other and drawing strength from the other.
And in that moment she knew, he did reciprocate her feelings. But was he ever going to act on them, not likely. For once she wasn't the heartbreaker but the one getting her heart broken. So there was really no need for her to run away this time, the damage was already done. She just had to cowboy up and get on with her life as usual. It would be hard she knew that, but she also knew she had to try, both for his sake and for her own. Maybe that was what love is all about, being ready to make sacrifices no matter what the cost, and being happy about it at the same time.
Things might change in the future, or they might not. Maybe they'd stay friends forever, maybe they'd go their separate ways. But none of that seemed to be important, the only thing that mattered was the here and now. Worrying about what might or might not happen would end up driving you crazy. Life is one big gamble and Lisbon had realized in life you win some and you lose some, and what's important is what you make of it.
A/N: I don't really like how this turned out. It started out ok, I think, but I suck at endings so if you made it this far without gagging I'm impressed. Thanks for reading.