This fluffy ball of fluff, friendship and hints of something more (with only the slightest sprinkle of angst) was inspired by the upcoming holidays, and by the oh-so-fitting and wonderful Adele song "One and Only", hence the title of the fic. This song has Jane and Lisbon written all over it.
Disclaimer: "Rien du tout" is what I own. It all belongs to Bruno Heller, the genius behind it all.
One and Only
Still lying in bed, Teresa Lisbon rubbed the sleep from her eyes, looking at the numbers displayed on her alarm clock.
7:00 AM.
She desperately wished she could just snuggle back into her blankets and have a lazy lie-in, but she was on a mission on that particular off-day from work. Thinking about her plans for the day, she made quick work of getting out of bed and putting on a robe, before heading downstairs to have some breakfast. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she surveyed her living room and her kitchen area for a moment, a frown gradually marring her features.
Her apartment was, if she did say so herself, an unmitigated mess.
Seeing as her brother and niece were coming over in less than twelve hours to celebrate Christmas Eve with her, that state of affairs definitely posed a problem.
She had to admit that she had nobody to blame but herself. She had been the one to invite Tommy and Annie to spend Christmas Eve at her place over two weeks ago, so she had no viable excuse for the multiple unpacked boxes still taking up space in her apartment. She could only hope she hadn't accidentally thrown out the one containing Christmas ornaments and a small (but sturdy) artificial Christmas tree.
She shook her head at herself, and she went into her kitchen to eat a quick breakfast and have her first (and certainly not her last) cup of coffee of the day.
She was putting on a large Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirt over her black calf-length leggings when she heard a knock on her apartment door. Tommy and Annie weren't due to arrive before six o'clock that evening, so they couldn't be the ones at her door that early in the morning. As she walked down the stairs to answer the door, she heard the sound of a lock being picked. She had almost reached her gun (it was in the top drawer of her kitchen dresser) when the door opened, only to reveal a head full of luscious blond curls, accompanied by a grin and blue-green eyes crinkled in mirth.
"Good morning, Lisbon. I hope you slept well, because we have a lot of things to do today, and a tight schedule to maintain. Your brother and your niece are due to arrive around six o'clock, aren't they?" he asked her as he came into her apartment, his arms full of hardware store bags.
She could only stare at him as he put his bags on the kitchen table, apparently feeling right at home in her apartment. He acted as if it was a normal occurrence for him to show up at her door with multiple shopping bags at the crack of dawn.
"Well… yes, actually." she said, narrowing her eyes at him. She was getting ready to grill him about how on earth he had come to know that particular tidbit of information, when she realized that this was exactly what he wanted her to do.
Well, he was in for a surprise, then. She schooled her features into a pleasant smile before continuing.
"I hope those plans of yours include manual labour and Christmas decorating, Jane, because that is exactly what the both of us will be doing today," she told him as he took off his winter coat. As she came closer and reached for his coat, she noticed something highly unusual about Jane's appearance.
He wasn't wearing a three-piece suit.
More than that, he was wearing jeans. More precisely, dark blue jeans and an untucked (but very classy) light blue shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The epitome of casual… and drop-dead gorgeous.
She couldn't help looking him up and down -and trying to keep the blatant appreciation in her gaze to a less-blatant level- to make sure she wasn't imagining things. When she raised an eyebrow in silent question, Jane shrugged his shoulders and looked down at himself before meeting her eyes.
"Too casual?" he wondered aloud with a smile.
"No, just… very different," she replied, smiling back at him. "I like it," she boldly added, before turning away from him to put his coat away for the day in her closet upstairs.
"Thank you, Lisbon. And speaking of casual wear, who exactly is that Native-American fellow on your sweater?"
She could only laugh merrily at his clueless-ness when it came to sports. Her back to him, she didn't see the heat in Jane's gaze as he followed her with his eyes, his head full of dangerous thoughts about her shapely legs, and about what was hidden beneath her large (and peculiar) sweatshirt.
Jane was already hard at work when she came back to the kitchen. He was putting plates and glasses from the morning and the night before in hot soapy water, yellow rubber gloves covering his hands. She walked over to the sink and took a hand-towel to dry the dishes as he washed them. She looked at him from the corner of her eyes, wondering if he thought about how comfortable they were doing such a domestic task together.
She found it quite… comforting. And that frankly unsettled her, which is why she decided to break the silence to stop overanalyzing this simple act of washing dishes together.
"The Native American on my sweater represents my favourite hockey team, if you must know," she said conversationally.
"A team from Chicago, I presume?"
"You would presume right. But that was an easy presumption, Jane. I'm sure you can do better than that, since you claim to know everything about me," she said with a small smirk. "Which you clearly don't, if I recall a certain hammering incident."
Jane answered her with a smirk of his own.
"I admit that I overestimated your patience with my antics on that particular occasion," he conceded. "But I can do you one better right now. Your favourite hockey team isn't actually this Chicago-based one. It's the Boston Beavers."
She looked at him in shock, not even managing to giggle over him grossly misnaming her favourite team.
"How on earth could you even know that?"
"Your favourite hockey player of all time is Bobby Orr, and you used to watch him play for the Beavers with your father when you were little. So it stands to reason that the team he played with the most would still be your favourite, since your heart can't help associating it with the good moments you shared with your father then," he said, his tone softening as he finished speaking.
She shook her head in utter disbelief that he would know that about her, and smiled wistfully as the memories he spoke of surfaced in her mind. Even though she was just a little girl when she and her dad watched Bobby Orr play together, she would always remember these moments fondly, as they were some of the few absolutely untainted memories that she had of her father.
"You got me there, Jane. And it's the Boston Bruins, by the way. Please show them some respect," she told him with a falsely-stern look.
"Meh. They should win more Super Cups if they want me to name them properly."
This time, the girly giggle his response deserved did erupt from her lips. If that man didn't exist, she would have to invent him just for the sheer entertainment value he procured her.
"Isn't that right? Jane, you're truly one of a kind."
They finished washing the dishes in companionable silence. Their next step was to start unpacking the boxes that remained in her living room. She quickly peeked in all of them to determine what went where, in order to tell Jane so that he would know where to place things without her help, as they each had three boxes to empty.
They worked efficiently, so that an hour later, there were no more boxes littering her living room floor. Jane hadn't stopped commenting on her choices of reading material, as the boxes he was unpacking mainly contained books ("Mmm, I didn't take you for a fan of vampire stories." She wasn't; she had received this particular book series as a gift from her best friend, but she still hadn't even tried to read them. She didn't bother correcting Jane, only shrugging her shoulders at him before focusing her attention back to her boxes. Jane was apparently so certain of himself that he didn't even question her non-response to his claim. "You should try Anne Rice's novels instead; at least the vampires don't actually glitter in the sunlight…" She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing).
Finished with this chore at last, she surveyed the newly exposed space with her hands on her hips, satisfied with their progress so far today. The only downside was that her Christmas tree and ornaments had not been found in the boxes.
"We did a pretty good job, Jane. There are actually spots of floor that I had never seen before today, believe it or not," she said, chuckling lightly.
"I have no difficulty believing that, Lisbon. And fortunately, I have everything we need to fill up some of that space quite nicely, if I do say so myself," he told her with a smile, putting his hand on her lower back to guide her towards the kitchen table. Even through her thick sweatshirt, she felt her skin heating up at his seemingly innocent touch.
Reaching the table, he let her go to open some of his shopping bags with a flourish, looking at her expectantly and grinning from ear to ear. She had no choice but to mirror his giddy grin when she saw the multitude of Christmas decorations the bags contained. She saw shiny red and gold tinsel and tiny ornaments, colourful Christmas stockings and lights, Santa Claus figurines, wreaths of mistletoe, and two of the smallest artificial Christmas trees she had ever seen.
Despite their disagreements of the last few weeks and his ever-growing obsession with Red John's identity, he had still taken the time to figure out that she had a family Christmas dinner tonight, and that she desperately needed help to set up her apartment accordingly, without her ever mentioning it beforehand.
She reached for his hand on impulse, and squeezed it warmly for a few seconds, letting her appreciation shine in her gaze. His own eyes crinkled with the pleasure of sharing some holiday magic with her.
"Thank you, Jane. I couldn't have chosen more beautiful decorations myself, to be honest." she said with emotion. "Shall we?" she added, letting go of his hand to gesture towards the living room.
"Absolutely. Let's spread some of that Christmas magic around. But first, we need the appropriate ambiance."
He rummaged through one of his bags for a moment, before taking out two music albums that he took great care to hide from her as he walked towards her sound system to put them in the multiple-compact-disk player.
The triumphant smile he aimed at her as Michael Bublé's voice came out of the speakers made her shake her head in amusement. She was indeed a fan of his music, and she might have had a tiny bit of a celebrity crush on the guy. But so did half of the female population in North America, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to assume the same about her, right?
All right, so maybe he did know her pretty well. She wasn't about to tell him that yet, though.
"Now that we have the right ambiance, how about we transform my apartment in a true Christmas Wonderland?"
Jane's smile only widened at her deflection, looking incredibly pleased with himself.
"I promise your brother and niece won't recognize your apartment once we're finished, dear."
It took them over two hours to fully decorate her living room and kitchen, but the end result was absolutely enchanting and heart-warming. Her apartment now looked like a home, and not just the place where she lived in between her hours at work. The Christmas lights and tinsel brought new warmth to her living space, and the other ornaments made her otherwise bland apartment look joyful, for a change.
She was starting to realize that Jane, in his giving-you-anything-less-than-a-pony-for-your-birthday-is-unacceptable way, was really trying to do something special for her. She was genuinely touched, as she knew this was his way of saying that despite their tumultuous interactions of the last few months, he wanted to make her happy, at least for this magical time of the year.
Looking around her newly-decorated apartment, and then over at Jane, who was once again beaming at her, she felt her heart swell with happiness and… other feelings that she didn't dare put a name on for the time being. When she finally found her voice, she held Jane's gaze, a grateful smile grazing her lips.
"Jane, this is… incredible. I could never have accomplished all of this without you being here today. I hope you know that."
"It's my pleasure, Lisbon. To be honest, I... I know I haven't been the easiest person to be around since I came back to the CBI, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to… well, I wanted to make you happy, for a change," he stammered, something highly unusual for him.
She was relieved to see she wasn't the only one getting caught up in emotions at the moment.
"I really appreciate it, Jane. And for the record, I am happy to have you around, even when you make me want to punch you in the nose," she told him with a wink, to lighten up the mood. He let out a laugh, which meant she had succeeded.
"Likewise, Lisbon. Except for the part about wanting to punch you in the nose, of course. Though my nose and I do appreciate your restraint," he said slyly. "Now, how about some sandwiches? You know how any kind of manual labour makes me hungry."
They ate some lunch to reboot their energy levels, and by the time twelve o'clock rolled by, they were getting ready to continue making Lisbon's apartment visitor-ready. They decided to split the remaining tasks, so that by four o'clock, almost everything would be done, and Lisbon could go wash up and get dressed, her mind at ease.
Jane volunteered to clean up the kitchen and the living room and to start preparing dinner once he was done, leaving Lisbon to tidy up the bedrooms and the bathroom upstairs.
This time, Jane turned on a classical music radio channel, so that Christmas music could once again be heard throughout the apartment. From upstairs, Lisbon heard Jane whistle and hum along to the music while he worked, making her do so in turn.
Lisbon finally made her way downstairs a couple of hours later, only to find Jane already peeling potatoes and preparing some hors-d'oeuvres for her and her visitors. Tommy and Annie were bringing the cooked turkey, and she had bought decadent desserts the day before, so all they needed to prepare now was gravy, potatoes, and the appetizers that Jane was already working on.
Jane instructed her to take over potato duty, while he went over to the sound system once again. Lisbon was quite curious as to what was the second album that he had brought over, and she could only approve of his choice when she heard Adele's soulful music echo in her apartment.
"Ah, so my hunch was right; she is one of your favourite singers, yes?" he asked her with a self-satisfied smirk, going back to his hors-d'oeuvres.
"She is. And yes, you have proven your point. You do know a lot about me, Jane. But I am still not telling you why I keep a hammer in my desk. I think it's healthy for you to be kept on your toes a little, don't you?"
"Don't worry, Lisbon, there's still plenty of mystery surrounding your various quirks and preferences. I just happen to be better than most at figuring them out, that's all."
They exchanged a meaningful look, and they started to talk about less meaningful topics, like the latest case they were working on, their favourite Christmas movies, and the best New Year's countdowns they had witnessed.
Another hour passed by before they put the finishing touches to the food and did another round of dishwashing. As Lisbon turned away from the kitchen sink to start taking out utensils to set the table, she felt Jane come up behind her, as one of the last songs of Adele's album started to play. He gently took her hand.
"Would you do me the honor, Teresa?" he murmured, even as he started to lead her towards the living room.
She could only nod her head, feeling a little light-headed when she realized exactly what song was playing. She was certain that Jane was also perfectly aware that this particular song hit a little too close to home for them.
You've been on my mind
I grow fonder every day
Lose myself in time
Just thinking of your face
Almost three years ago, at the Rancho Rosa high school reunion, they had maintained a safe distance from each other while they had danced. Now, alone together in her apartment, a few hours before Christmas Eve, they stood in the middle of her living room, his hand in hers, silently gazing at each other.
She let go of his hand, only to place both of hers on the back of his neck. Jane snaked his arms around her waist, and his hands settled on the small of her back. He tugged her closer to his body, and she put her head down on his shoulder.
As they gently swayed to the music, she could only think that she had never felt as blissfully content and as painfully sad at the same time. She imagined he felt the same, if the slow movements of his hands upon her back and the fast beat of his heart were any indication.
When she felt his lips touch the top of her head, she felt her eyes well up. But she decided to fully enjoy the heavenly feeling of being in his arms while it lasted anyway.
As the last notes of the song hung in the air, Lisbon raised her head from Jane's shoulder, and indulged in one last caress of her fingers against his neck.
"Thank you for the dance, Jane," she said softly.
"The pleasure was all mine, Lisbon. And not just for the dance, either. I hadn't had such a good time in… a good long while," he replied with a sincerity that tugged at her heartstrings.
They shared a smile, and they reluctantly let each other go. Before she could say anything else, Jane looked at the time and asked her if she could go get his coat, while he set the table for the three members of the Lisbon family who would celebrate Christmas together in a couple of hours.
Once Lisbon came back to the kitchen with his winter wear, she had made up her mind. It was her turn to do something nice for Jane.
"Jane, why don't you have dinner with us? There's plenty of food for one more, and I'm sure Annie would be especially happy to see you. Everyone should be with family at Christmas, and I would hope that you already knew you are an important part of mine."
She could practically see the internal struggle he put up with himself reflected on his face. After a few seconds, she finally saw the beginnings of a smile on his lips, and she felt her heart soar.
"I do know that, Lisbon, and I'm thankful for it every day, believe me," he said earnestly. He still took his coat from her hands, continuing before she could protest, "We both have to wash up and get dressed, and unless there's space for two in that shower…" he teased, wiggling his eyebrows.
"In your dreams, Jane," she replied with a laugh –secretly thinking for now…-, "I'll see you in a couple of hours, then?"
His grin answered her question before he even said a word.
"I wouldn't miss it."
End.
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed it, because I sure had a lot of fun writing it. Having been condemned to the couch for the last two days (and the next week and a half) with a sprained knee, it's been kind of therapeutic to write this fic, to say the least. Thanks for reading, and happy holidays!