A/N: Just a little something to pass the time until Sunday. I really hope that one day Jane and Lisbon will be able to look back on this angsty time, currently on the show, and find their way past it to something good. That's what this is about.

The Good Kind

Lisbon found him in his usual morning spot, outside the Airstream, sitting in an Adirondack chair and sipping tea while he watched the sunrise over Lake Austin. A gentle breeze played with his hair, the morning sunlight making it appear burnished gold. Jane heard her open the door to the motor home, but he didn't turn around. He waited patiently for her to do her usual morning ablation, which was to come up behind him and wrap her slim arms around his shoulders from behind. She kissed his cheek, then rested her chin on his shoulder.

"Good morning," she said quietly. Her soft hair, smelling sweetly of apple shampoo, brushed against his face, and he smiled.

"It is a particularly good one," he agreed. He nodded toward the lake, where the small, two-man sailboat rested on the sandy shore. "It will be a nice day for sailing."

He felt her cringe a little. She'd taken a nasty spill into the drink last time he'd taken her out for a lesson. His grin widened over his teacup at the memory of her sputtering in the dark blue water.

"You'll catch on eventually," he said. "And won't you be glad you did?"

"If man had been meant to swim, he would have been born with flippers," she said with mild sarcasm.

"Well, the goal here wasn't a swimming lesson, sweetheart. You keep getting those two things confused."

"Very funny." She kissed his cheek again and lingered there, noting how wonderful he smelled and how smooth his face was. It was Saturday: shaving day. The stubble certainly looked sexy, but razor burn in her most delicate places wasn't always fun—not later, anyway.

Jane set down his tea on the small resin table, then playfully disentangled Lisbon's arms from his neck and deftly pulled her into his lap. It creaked dangerously and she laughed, holding on now for dear life.

He kissed her until happy sounds from her throat replaced her laughter. After a few heavenly moments, he touched her nose gently before she snuggled down into his cotton shirt, resting her head over his slightly elevated heartbeat.

They were both quiet in their contentment, watching the fish jump in the middle of the lake, the blue herons wading along the shoreline in search of breakfast.

Jane sighed.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked rubbing his bare forearm beneath his rolled-up sleeve.

He kissed the top of her head, and then, without much hesitation now, he was completely honest.

"I was just thinking about how I almost lost this." She felt him shake his head in wonder at himself. "What a misguided fool I was."

Lisbon smiled, though she felt her eyes water in remembrance.

"Yes, you were," she said, because she would gladly put the blame on him for that horribly painful time. "Thank God I did something to put us both out of our misery."

"Yes, my dear, you did. But as I recall, you were the one who put us in that precarious position in the first place."

She rolled her eyes. It was an old argument.

"Maybe if you had made a move after you came back from South America, we could have saved months of agony. I wasn't getting any indication that you wanted anything more than friendship between us. What can I say? A perfect man like Pike comes along, and you expected me to pass that up? No red-blooded American woman could have resisted him. So I'd say it was more your fault than mine."

"Yes, you're right. All I wanted was your happiness, Lisbon. I was stupid to think that I didn't deserve a chance to prove it…to both of us."

It still gave her a twinge to think of him back then, so unusually lacking in self-confidence, so beaten down by the weight of his feelings of personal inadequacy. But then, so was she, not to have seen the longing, the inner turmoil so clearly shining from his sad eyes. She'd hated to see him so equally torn. She'd had to choose between going with Pike and staying with Jane, but Jane had to choose between what he'd wanted for himself and what he'd wanted most for her. She'd thought he didn't really love her, that he only wanted the best for a friend. They'd both been misguided fools, to have almost pushed happiness aside for their own stubborn beliefs about themselves and each other.

"I'm glad I came to your hotel room that night after I said goodbye to Marcus."

"You saved me from one hell of a hangover," he said with humor, but his voice cracked a bit as he remembered how lost he had felt, how totally and completely alone. In that twenty minutes he had sat on his bed sobbing, it had felt nearly as terrible as the night he'd discovered his family had been murdered. All he could think about was hopping the next flight back to the island and taking his place next to Roger at Alfredo's beachside bar.

And then the knock had come at his door…

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Jane," she said. "It's me."

He didn't think he could have handled another goodbye. She was such a kind-hearted soul, he was sure she'd wanted to see that he was all right. He hadn't been able to answer her from his side of the door. His throat had been too thick with his tears.

"Jane!" She'd pounded harder. "Open up. Please. I need to talk to you."

He'd always been a masochist, punishing himself by denying his true desires, while at the same time forcing himself to stay within arm's length of them every single day.

And so he'd gone to the door. He knew he was a mess, but he could deny her nothing (except his true feelings, of course).

When she'd looked at him, her face ravaged by her own tears, his heart had picked up speed, and in that moment he'd given up the con. He could no longer hide the fact that he was in love with her, that he'd be truly lost without her. He'd been secretive and controlling, just like she'd always believed he was. But Jane had every intention of saving her, whether she'd wanted saving or not, even if that meant saving her from himself.

"I—I can't do it," she'd told him. "I can't go to D.C. Marcus is perfect. He's stable. The kind of man I'd always thought I'd wanted. But I was wrong, Jane. You may not love me, but I—I love you. I'm willing to wait for you to realize what you truly feel for me, even it means I will never have you. All I know is, a life without you in it could never be happy. I'd just be fooling myself with Marcus."

She swallowed hard, and looked down a moment in abject fear and shock at what she was finally doing. And just like that, she'd done what she'd told him she might someday: she'd surprised him. Utterly and completely. He stared at her achingly beautiful face, momentarily at a loss for words. But then they came, and he couldn't stop them. They flowed from his mouth like an underground spring.

"I know exactly what you mean," he said finally. His shaking hands came up to rest on her upper arms. She looked up at him with wide eyes. "I don't want you to go, Teresa. I want you to stay with me. Here—Austin—South America—I don't give a damn, so long as I can be with you. This may be the most selfish thing I've ever done in my life—and that's saying something"-he gave her a watery smile—"But you have to know how much I love you. Am in love with you. You don't have to wait for me to catch up. I'm there already."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner," she whispered, and he rightly detected a hint of anger in her tone He felt without looking that her fists were clenching. She wanted to sock him in the nose. He almost laughed at the comforting familiarity of that notion.

"Because I was letting you make your own decision," he replied. "I didn't want you to accuse me of manipulation—"

"Which is the exact same thing as manipulating me," she countered, clearly allowing her weeks of frustration to take over. "You wanted me to make a decision, but you didn't give me all the facts. How was that fair?"

"It wasn't. But I was only thinking of you, Lisbon. I knew what you wanted from me, and I didn't think I could live up to that. I'm a damaged, troubled man—"

"Bull shit."

Her sudden profanity brought an unbidden bark of laughter. "What?"

"You heard me."

She pushed his chest so that he was walking backward into his hotel room, and she forcefully shut the door behind them.

"You think I don't know who you are, after twelve years? Why do you think I've been pining for you all this time, that I haven't been in a serious relationship since I met you? Because I loved you, you idiot. You've consumed my every thought for so long that when Marcus came along it was a relief to finally have something normal to think about. And I tried to make that enough for me. But I must be damaged too. You've ruined me for anything normal. But you know what? I don't want normal. I want you."

And then she went up on tiptoe and kissed him. For a stunned moment he stood there, eyes open, while she closed hers and pressed her trembling lips to his. At her sudden insistent breach of his mouth with her tongue, he revived his senses and pulled her roughly to his body. His hands slid up her arms to her hair, and he tilted his head, deepening the kiss, their tears mingling on already wet cheeks…

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The heron took flight before them, it's wide wings flapping, a small fish in its beak.

"I promise I'll never be that stupid again," Jane said, and his hand moved to settle on the barely discernible bump of her stomach. She tensed slightly, and he wondered when she would summon the courage to tell him her news. He hoped she wasn't afraid of his reaction.

He felt her smirk against his chest. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Jane."

"Oh, I won't. I've turned over a new leaf." He smiled, and the slight weight of the diamond ring in his slacks pocket made him feel buoyant as a sailboat. "No more secrets. How about you?"

"Only the good kind," she said.

He nodded. "I suppose I can live with that."

It was ironic, he thought, how some secrets were wonderful, while others can nearly tear people's lives apart.

Jane picked up his cup again and took a sip, smiling even though the tea had turned cold in his cup.

The End

A/N: I can't believe—I refuse to believe—that we only have two more episodes left of "The Mentalist" ever. Please, someone, pick up this show! We deserve to see what happens next.