Teresa Lisbon paced on the landing at Patrick Jane's CBI attic door. She knew he wasn't in, but he would be soon.
Lurking. The feeling had been constant for a long time, at least the last year maybe longer. A nameless anxiety drifted in her blood that packed her shoulders like bricks high against her neck. It was getting worse. It pointed a foreboding finger to warn of an issue so powerful it could unravel her life. Take her life, if she didn't keep it close where she could watch it and know its every move.
Reducing the list of Red John suspects to seven had kicked her senses of caution and danger into overdrive. Hypervigilance. Nice word for paranoia? Except that Red John, the most dangerous serial killer, certainly in California, probably did have her on his list. He had threatened to destroy Patrick Jane's happy memories and kill until one of them caught the other. His life was not full of great moments, but she knew their relationship was the closest qualifying event. Teresa Lisbon's vulnerability as one of Red John's targets was inescapable.
What was she willing to die for? How did she want to live? Hers was an existential crisis with the deepest and most expansive personal impact possible.
There was a small commotion at the bottom of the stairs and a polite knock on the handrail. "Boss. We caught a case." Cho was calling up the staircase.
"Bare bones, Cho?"
"Guy named Van Allen. Sounds pretty routine."
"Okay, Cho, take the team and take the lead, keep me informed. I have business up here that won't wait."
Van Pelt piped up. "What's wrong, boss? Has something happened to Jane?"
"No, he's fine. Carry on, Van Pelt."
She got hesitation instead of the movement she needed. "Just go. Now. Nothing's wrong. I'll catch up with the team later."
Cho had already left and Van Pelt finally took off after him. Lisbon was relieved they would all be away for a while. She resumed pacing.
Everyone spoke of Patrick Jane as solitary and alone. True enough. But what was she, if not that? Patrick Jane was guarded, driven, obsessive. What was Teresa Lisbon? Maybe she'd give herself fewer points on obsessive. She relied on the law and its rules to take that burden. She wondered if Jane ever felt what she was feeling almost non-stop now.
Anxiety was a costume for the emotion she really fought, a manifestation of her submerged reality seeking a crack, a hole, an untended gate to freedom. And that lurking anxiety was the animal in her looking for a way out, thwarting her real desires. Every defense screamed for her to ignore it, leave it in the cage and get busy with something else. Caged, all she really had to do was show up to work and do her job well. Loose, and she could not predict who she would be or what she might do.
The anxiety was so constant, even when not strong, that it fuzzed what underpinned it, like static on a radio. Orchid Lane. It had roared from inside her on Orchid Lane, showing itself to her and to Jane at the same time. She was sure Jane recognized its nature long before she had. But that wild animal was coursing through her, not him, and it had taken everything to restrain it to the professionalism she required of herself. No time to find out its name in the moment. And Jane certainly didn't want it loose.
Since real danger awaited her in or out of the cage, why waste energy in a pointless power struggle with herself? Her instinct for survival, for real life, had finally united with her heart, where love and pain and desire secretly lived, dragging her into the light. And there, helpless as a motherless kitten, was something she could never part with and never ignore.
She was attached by love to another human being. A frail, needy love because it was unmated and malnourished. Yet because it was of her, it had innate strength and endurance, and an abiding will to live. It probably didn't have a chance in hell, but it was out of the cage, under her hand and her protection. Patrick had mistakenly called it Platonic. It was just unknown. Maybe it was Platonic on his side. She was just now speaking of it to herself. And she knew she must speak of it next to Patrick Jane, it's object.
Lisbon heard Jane's step on the stairwell.
When he saw Lisbon at the attic door, he stopped a few steps from the landing. Holding his breath and tentatively biting his bottom lip, he read Lisbon's face and body language, very familiar territory. So. It was D-Day in the attic. But what was the beach head?
"Patrick. I need to talk to you." She looked at him calmly and without reserve.
His first name. This talk was going to shake the foundations.
More to himself, he said, "Now." He could have phrased it as a question, but he already knew the answer. He added in a higher, softer register, "Okay," as he might to someone with a gun trained on him, giving orders. He walked past her to key the padlock and let them in, closing the door behind.
Lisbon didn't start talking right away. Probably wanted to wait until he was through shuffling his things into place, have his full attention. He opened the door to the balcony. "Want to sit outside? The weather's nice. Lisbon?" She hadn't answered right away.
"Sure. Sounds nice."
Patrick set the chair on the balcony for Lisbon and turned the empty burn bucket over for himself. He waited quietly. Lisbon took her seat and waited for him to look at her face. She smiled benignly. Must be really big if she was trying to put him at ease.
"You know I've demanded the truth from you."
Uh-oh. What had he done? He couldn't think of a thing, but he was feeling a little apprehensive. He never lacked for things to be guilty of. "Yes. I do tell you the truth now." Except for what I don't say.
"You've never demanded it from me."
From Saint Teresa? "Because you don't lie." Except for what you don't say.
"I've been holding something back. Something big, that I really hoped would go away. In my defense, I haven't known what it was until very recently. And I wanted it in its cage. I know you would rather I stay silent, but I have to tell you, Patrick. As my partner, this knowledge is your right. But to me, it possibly means my life."
Patrick's silent attention was fully on Teresa. He was beginning to sense what was coming. He really didn't want to have this conversation. And she hadn't asked for one. Only to tell him something. He nodded in her pause that she should continue.
"So many parts of my life were unexamined, and I didn't want to look. Somebody else looks, reflects. Teresa Lisbon charges on."
Patrick clasped his hands in tension, and nodded. A grim smile straightened his lips. "That's our Lisbon."
"Lorelei knew this before I did. Sean Barlow knows this. Probably lots of people know or see it easily. Red John surely knows. I've tried to keep it caged and unknown. But I can't. Do I go to my grave with such a wonderful secret? My secret is worthless to me in a cage. And it's certainly worthless to you there." Teresa took a quiet, deep breath.
"I love you, Patrick."
Now? Here? He felt pain. It grabbed his back and filled his chest with an aching sorrow. Teresa dangled the one thing he couldn't have and couldn't deny himself. Patrick looked up at her from a vaguely collapsed posture in his seat, elbows on his knees and hands at the ready to cradle his face or press his hair against his head. He didn't think he could contain it. Her next words collapsed all his defenses.
"I don't mean Platonic, or friends, or colleagues. I mean real love. With hot blood. Paired for life. Helpless and unmoored. Wrecked sheets. Even babies. That's what I have for you. It's that simple."
Teresa waited, but Patrick did not look at her. "And I'm not waiting to see what Red John will do. Red John will probably come after me whether my love for you is in the open or not. So, that's all I have to say. Except I have to ask you a question. Because we can't take our lives in our hands on pretend information. It's too dangerous. We have to know what's real. Especially between us."
Now Patrick raised his head and faced her. At first he looked like every small boy that cries, and she'd seen her share. It was something in his good looks that made his face fall apart in the same utterly open and appealing way. He made no attempt to hide it, looking right at her until it completely overwhelmed him. Then he held his head in his hands, overtaken by sobs that barked out of his shaking body like begging dogs. His sorrow blocked every thought in his mind.
Teresa felt sad for his pain but she didn't interfere with it.
Several minutes passed before Patrick began to recover. He tried to gather the threads of what Teresa had told him. He knew about Teresa's cage. The cage that was breaking her heart. He'd watched her try to escape, to him, several times, and he'd always made sure to flush her back in and set the pin again. He had been hurting her, to make himself comfortable. But more, so that she could be safe from Red John. And that made him comfortable.
It was a relief, too, knowing that Teresa couldn't get at him to touch the feral in him. He ran free to run his life as he saw fit, but controlled the wild in her. And the tragic bonus was it foiled the wild in him that would receive her. It was so fucking screwed up. The inextinguishable fire in him that had only her name on it was banked so low that Teresa couldn't see it. Good job, Patrick.
"You don't have to ask that question. You know I love you." His breath was still in crying spasms even though the tears had stopped for the moment.
"Yes, I suppose I do sometimes. But you need to say it. And I don't know how you love me. Did you mean it when you said Platonic? That's important now."
"Platonic. No. I just couldn't stand there and let you throw us away as a couple, as a ridiculous thought. It hurt. I was surprised you would say it. I was trying to fix it, without going too far."
Patrick looked at his wedding band. The pin in the cage door. He jerked the ring from his finger and threw it into the attic, cursing its hold on him, the way he had used it. Teresa's heart fell to see it. Did he think that was necessary?
"No!" She ran to find it and picked it up. He couldn't have really wanted to lose it or he'd have tossed it over the balcony instead of into the room. When she returned to Patrick he held his hand up to show that he would not take it, sobbing again. She put it in her jacket pocket. If he couldn't treasure it right now, she would treasure it for him until he could again or decided on another place for it. She returned to her chair.
"Teresa, I know how to be married well. And it's not possible to give us the attention we need. Not until Red John's gone."
"I have to trust you about that because I have absolutely no idea how to be married. That's far away."
"Not to me."
"What are you saying, Patrick?"
Getting on his feet, Patrick waved Teresa to hurry and stand up with him, much like he would hurry her out the door on a case. Reaching for her, he didn't wait until she stepped into his arms, but pulled her there, hugging, constantly shifting and pressing to bring every possible surface of her against his own body.
"I love you, Teresa. Not living it is a poison to me sometimes. I want it. I want everything you say you have for me. I want anything else you haven't even thought of. I want what I haven't even thought of. But most of all, I want it to be permanent." He sniffled and a smile flashed in his wrecked face. "I'm a traditional man."
Teresa pulled back and looked at him with a twinkle in her eye, a tease from their normal life.
"No, really. Don't play with me, Teresa. I want you for my wife. Sometimes I burn with that desire, a torment of what I can't have."
Patrick really was such an emotional, romantic man.
Teresa walked into the eye of his storm. "All that matters to me is what we feel right now. And every change it goes through from this minute on. And just because it's love, it doesn't have to be developed now. We just have to know it now. Before we head into the end game. And knowing that you feel the same about me, it gives me strength, Patrick. I hope I give you strength. I want to know what we have, not what we might have had."
"But I want to develop it."
"Then kiss me for now. I want to see how you taste. " She jostled him, another tease between friends. "How can you make me wait?"
She looked into his ravaged, beautiful eyes until they closed as his lips pressed tentatively against hers. Then he took a breath like stoking a furnace and captured them hungrily, his desire rising in a cadence of puppy whines, needy and insistent, greedy. He was nearly lost as he thrust his tongue into her waiting, open mouth, using his new purchase to explore the flesh of the lips that fed on his own.
Everything in him, everything about Teresa urged him to go further, to take her and let her have him. That's when Patrick broke. They couldn't. Not yet. If they did, he'd never hunt Red John down. And Red John would catch them and kill Teresa. He forced himself from the nourishment of this fresh closeness, choking new sobs against her shoulder and squeezing her so tight she squeaked and he relented just a little. The pain of his interminable and continued restraint flowed out with the longing for everything more.
Teresa stroked the back of his head. "Shhhhhh. It's okay. I can't either."
"You can't?"
"No. If we do, I'll never let you out of a bed. Or off of a couch. Or away from a wall. Or out of the shower. Or up from the kitchen table. Or even let you stand on your feet. " She ran her fingers through his curling hair, feeling the heat of his emotion even in his scalp. "Well, you can stand. I'll just climb you." Her wicked smile soared straight into his stirring male flesh. "We'd never catch Red John and take our lives away from him."
Patrick laughed, feasting on Teresa's words of solidarity and understanding, revived by the enticing scenario she painted for him. Such wonderful promises beyond the barrier. "I know. You understand?"
"Of course I do, Patrick. Why would you think I wouldn't?"
"Because it's Red John. And nobody knows what he can do like me."
"I think I have some idea. Because look what he's done to me already. Kept me from probably years of happiness with the love of my life. Maybe he's even stolen my babies."
"No." Patrick smiled mischievously. "I have those."
"Good! Don't you let them out of your sight! I'm counting on you to bring them to me." She held his face and kissed his forehead. "Now, please, sit in the chair here and I'm going to fix you some tea from that extensive shop you have in your attic corner."
"Don't forget to put the milk—"
"I know. The milk first. I see the little bottle in its bowl of ice. Now, relax and let me take care of it."
Patrick felt an exhaustion he hadn't felt in years. It filled the immense landscape left by the tension that Teresa had taken away. His thoughts tumbled there.
The aftermath of a good cry was almost like the aftermath of good sex. Well, certainly not as happy, but something just as enervating. And it had been a very long time since he'd had either. It wasn't over. The real cry came late in the night when he allowed his loneliness and new separation from Teresa to fill him until he finally gave in to its call for abandoned wailing. He eventually hugged himself to sleep, rocking, only to dream that she made love to him, unfettered and primal, as he awoke in his sticky bed with a hand drenched in Teresa's babies.
Patrick's longing was chastened as he thought of Red John stirring somewhere in the night.
Teresa lay in her bed thinking of Patrick, moaning and inflamed by the reality that infused her fantasies like very strong tea.