We Stood Like Statues.
Prompt (from my friend Marley): "Sometimes it's not about how much you do or don't care. Sometimes life just gets in the way and things aren't meant to be."
Author's Note: Thank you so much to Rach (lil smiles) for editing this story for me! You are absolutely wonderful and anybody who hasn't read your work is missing out. I don't own the Mentalist. Lyrics belong to Jack's Mannequin. Reviews are always much appreciated!
Hours pass, and she still counts the minutes
that I am not there, I swear I didn't mean
for it to feel like this,
like every inch of me is bruised, bruised.
"Final boarding call for Flight 1615 to Atlanta. Final boarding call for Flight 1615 to Atlanta. All passengers please approach Gate 7B at this time..."
Lisbon squeezed her eyes shut, hoping against hope. Where the hell was he? She knew Jane had a tendency to run late, but this wasn't an impromptu lunch meeting. This was a premeditated planned trip, and it was important to her. He shouldn't have been late for something like this.
She was the last person sitting in the boarding area, and to her chagrin, an airport attendant approached her. "Miss, are you ready to board?" No, she wanted to scream, no I'm not, because I can't do this alone and I don't know where the hell Jane is.
"I'm waiting for someone," she said feebly, aware of how pathetic she sounded even to her own ears.
"Ma'am, it's the final call for this flight. If you don't board now, you won't be able to because the plane needs to leave." When Lisbon was silent, the attendant tried again, "Ma'am?"
Lisbon stood up and walked away from the boarding area, with every intention of leaving the airport without looking back.
xx
The phone was ringing persistently.
Jane scowled, smothering his face with his pillow. This was all his damn fault but it didn't keep him from being angry, mostly at himself for being such an insensitive jerk and for letting it get this bad in the first place. He was a bloody coward but he couldn't pick up the phone, couldn't bring himself to face her, even if it wasn't in person. But the phone had been ringing nonstop since eight fifteen in the morning, half an hour after the flight was supposed to take off.
Feeling his stomach sink further, he took the telephone off its cradle. "Hello?"
"How dare you, you asshole."
It wasn't Lisbon's voice and to his surprise, he felt a flood of gratitude. He could take anyone's disappointment and anger and not really care—he just couldn't stomach Lisbon's.
"Van Pelt—"
"Don't even start with me, Jane. She needed you on this trip, you knew that. She needed you, and you're going to let her down just like everyone else in her life? What kind of man are you?"
He took a deep breath. "Where is she? Is she on the plane?"
"No, Jane, she isn't, and you'd be an idiot to think that she would be. She's in her office, drowning herself with paperwork. And just so you know, she hasn't said a word to anyone, but it's so blindingly obvious that she's a mess. I hope you're very happy."
Van Pelt hung up, and Jane was alone once again, wishing that he had the balls to successfully smother himself with the pillow.
xx
"We are leaving for Santa Barbara in ten minutes. You will not be needed. You can either stay here or you are free to go home."
Lisbon's first words to him since work on Monday morning were detached and aloof, much like they had been when he had first been hired as a consultant on her team. He noticed the lack of contractions in her communication, recognizing it as a defense mechanism and an attempt to sound less casual and more in command.
Jane hadn't been able to sleep the night before, opting instead to lay in bed staring blankly at the ceiling and rehearsing what he could possibly say to her. He had practiced pretending nothing had happened, he had practiced a heartfelt apology, he had practiced an explanation. And yet, when he got up to take a shower and get dressed for work at six in the morning, he still hadn't had a solution.
Feeling like an idiot, he found he could do nothing but nod when she was finally right in front of him. She spared him a split second of eye contact before walking past him. And although it was ridiculous, he couldn't help but feel as if he was just standing there like a statue as he let her walk out of his life.
xx
"Good night, Boss."
Jane was feigning sleep on the couch again when the rest of the team finally returned at just past two in the morning. He assumed Van Pelt and Rigsby had gone straight to their cars to go home, and he waited for Cho to pat Lisbon on the shoulder and leave the building. He heard the familiar sound of Lisbon sliding her key into the lock on her office door and head inside, shutting it behind her. He strained to hear the noise of the door locking again, but could not—or maybe he just didn't want to—hear it.
With a sigh, he rose from the couch, heading straight for her door. He wouldn't be able to face her if he didn't do it now, and maybe two oh seven in the morning was the best time to have this conversation with her. He cared for Lisbon; he couldn't just brush off what he had done.
He pushed the door open and felt his heart ache at the sight he saw: Lisbon sitting at her desk, poring over her paperwork, just like he had seen her a thousand times before. It could have been any other night, any other moment, and he might have been able to annoy her, charm her, and eventually coax her into having a very late dinner.
She didn't look up when he entered, although he knew she was very aware of his presence. Her shoulders tensed and she started to write faster, as if she was desperate to get as much work done as she could before his inevitable interruption.
"Hey Lisbon, how did Santa Barbara go?" He winced as soon as he said it, he hadn't meant for those words to come out as he had just decided to go with the heartfelt apology approach.
For a few minutes, the only sound was from her pen scratching against paper, and he thought she wasn't going to give him a response. Then she said, "Fine. The case is almost solved."
He swallowed, nervous like a third grade boy about to ask a girl on a date, "Oh?"
"Yes. A high school boy stood a girl up on a date, and less than twenty four hours later, her dead body turns up. I like the boy for the murder—"
The irony wasn't lost on him. He faltered, "Lisbon—" She finally looked up at him for the first time, and he realized he didn't even know what he had been planning on saying.
"What?" she asked, uncharacteristically loud, when he didn't continue. "What is it, Jane? What's the matter? I thought you came to talk about the case?"
"I didn't come here to talk about the case," he said robotically. "I came here to talk to you. I came here for you."
Lisbon only scoffed, "You've made it painfully clear multiple times that you don't really care about me, Jane. That's fine. I don't have time for your mind games, and I certainly don't have time for you to mess around with my head."
"How can you say I don't care about you? Especially after the last four days?" Jane demanded indignantly. Images swam through his mind like a current—the last four days had consisted of an evolution in their relationship, of kissing and handholding and tangling around in the sheets at her apartment.
"You stood me up," she said flatly. He felt a pang in his heart at her unforgiving and cold expression. He knew he had fucked up, he had made a habit out of it his whole life, but somehow it hurt more than he expected coming from Lisbon. "You knew how hard it would be for me to face my brother for the first time in almost fifteen years, and god Jane, you were the one who even pushed me to see him in the first place. I didn't want to! You once told me that I could trust you, that you wouldn't let me down—but you weren't there when it really counted, and now I know that all you wanted to do was get between my sheets."
"Lisbon, it was never like that," he protested immediately, taking several steps until he was close enough to lean over her desk and look her in the eye. "You've got to realize, I never planned any of this and I didn't want this to happen. This was what I had always tried to avoid. The last four days were a mi—"
"No," Lisbon cried out in frustration, standing up so quickly, that sheets of paper went flying into the air. "No, you don't get to say that, Jane. You don't get the last word this time. You don't get to manipulate your way into my personal life, and then call it a mistake, and you will never have that right. Because if there is one person who has been fucked over by this mistake of getting involved with you and who has suffered the most, it's me. You can't possibly feel more regret than I already do. And if you have a goddamn inch of respect for me, you will get the hell out of my office."
He stared at her as if he could not seem to understand her words. Had she always felt this way? Had he always been so ignorant and heartless? She deserved so much better; they both knew it. "I never meant to hurt you," he said.
Jane wanted to laugh at his own naïveté—before entering her office, he had thought that he could not feel any worse. It always surprised him when he was wrong.
xx
Lisbon didn't get any work done that night.
She didn't go home, sitting at her desk and staring at nothing in particular, wondering why nothing ever seemed to go right for her. She had been foolish to expect otherwise, foolish to think that given some time, she would be able to fall in love with Patrick Jane and he with her. Jane was a wounded man with scars too deep to heal, and she wasn't sure that she was capable of being in love either. She was a woman who saw black and white, whereas Jane could only see gray. It never would have been the fairytale that she had secretly wanted so badly. He would never love her, never be able to give her what she desperately needed from someone. She had confused her feelings with the truth and now she would have to move on.
She left her office at half past five in the morning, planning on going home and then calling in sick. Jane was still on the couch, speaking immediately as if he had known the exact moment she would come out.
"I was going to say the last four days had been a miracle."
Lisbon pushed the front door open with one hand. Her expression was blank. "I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe in mistakes."
xx
Lisbon returned to work two days later, well rested.
There was a single red rose sitting on her desk, and hundreds more scattered all over her office floor, both an apology and an offer, the only kind Jane knew how to give properly. He was asking her to start over and turn a new page and forget everything that had happened. And although she knew she could never truly do that, she also knew they couldn't continue what they had stupidly started.
"Trying to seduce the boss, huh, Jane?" she heard Rigsby quip from the other side of the wall. "Aren't roses a little too cliché, even for you?"
"Me? Seduce Lisbon? Well that would be quite the miracle, wouldn't it?"
She recalled the feel of his lips on hers, the oceans of his eyes, his crooked smile. She remembered the childish antics, the charming jokes, the attentive way with which he made love to her. And then she accepted his offering. She couldn't change the way things were, and she'd be stupid for trying. Jane might not have been good for her, but she would be an idiot to let him go completely. She'd learn to take what she could get. Something was better than nothing at all.
"Jane, if you don't clean up this mess in my office within the next five seconds, I'm going to shoot you!"
And don't fly fast. Oh, pilot can you help me?
Can you make this last? This plane is all I got
so keep it steady, now,
cause every inch you see is bruised.