Call my name
"Get up, Jane."
Her voice sounded like mom sending you to school. He pulled the covers over his head when she turned on the lights, in order to avoid being blinded permanently, and he groaned. He deeply disliked being ordered around in the morning. It must have been half past 6 AM and, since he hadn't heard any phone call regarding a case, he couldn't understand what the hurry was.
She was walking around the room with the familiar sound of feet hitting the carpet. It rarely ever changed, no matter how tired she was. Without having to look, he could tell she was picking up his clothes from where he had carelessly thrown them the night before, while thinking of what to wear, which usually didn't take more than three minutes flat.
And then the melody of the quick but elegant footsteps abruptly ended and he could feel her piercing glare cutting through the covers to get to him.
"Jane, I won't say it again," she threatened.
He had heard her talk to him an infinite number of times before and her voice was endlessly sweet to his ears. In fact, he was sure he couldn't take never being able to hear her again. In twelve years, she had always called him by his last name and she had made it sound special to him, but still, lately it felt strange to hear, over and over and over… He wanted her to call him by his first name, at least sometimes. He didn't move.
"Jane…" Teresa called yet again, more and more like the mother who knows her child is going to run late but doesn't have the heart to pull the covers.
That was it. He got out of bed – more like rolled over the edge and almost fell on the floor – and looked at her with sleepy eyes, greeting her good morning with a yawn. He assured her he was up and then he clumsily dragged himself across the floor to the dresser. And he made a bet with himself, which he had not done in a while.
By the end of the week, he would have Teresa Lisbon call him what he wanted her to.
"What's the hurry?" he asked.
"I just thought we would get there early."
A lie, of course. He took some clothes out, placed them on a chair and went to the bathroom for a shower. Something was telling him she had already taken hers. When he got out ten minutes later, she was in the kitchen. No mystery about what she was doing there. The whole house was filled with the smell of coffee and tea.
"You lied!" he called in her direction, while putting a shirt on.
"What do you mean, I lied?"
Oh, he loved doing that. Let the games begin.
"If you were trying to get to work earlier than usual, you wouldn't have wasted your time with doing things one by one. Most likely you would have let the coffee machine do its job while you showered. Also, if you were in a hurry, you wouldn't have made omelette" he added, sniffing the air again.
"Okay, maybe I woke up early so I'd have time to eat for once. Problem?"
He shook his head, unsatisfied. Well, at least she was trying, even if it wasn't her best shot yet.
"You don't eat in the morning, Lisbon. Not unless I make breakfast and talk you into it."
"I was hungry."
Now, that sounded like giving up!
"I'd say that's strange. You're never that hungry when you wake up, because" he stopped, looking for something to back him up. He found a box of chocolates on the table and pointed at it victoriously. "… you eat sweets when you stay up late with paperwork, and don't have the chance to fully consume them in your sleep. So with no serious reason left, I fail to see why you would wake up early. You're not a morning person."
"Where are you trying to get with this?" she snapped, now standing in the doorway so she could see him
Making Teresa Lisbon cranky right from the beginning was not going to make his goal any easier to achieve, but he loved a challenge. And he couldn't miss a chance to play the game with her.
"You didn't wake up early, because you never really went to sleep last night. I demanded that you go to bed, which you did, but you got up right after I had fallen asleep, opened a case file and began sinking in paperwork." he assertively stated.
"That's thin, Jane." she remarked. "Even for you. You don't sleep well. You would've heard me."
"Hell, I do sleep. Like a log. It just takes a little something." he countered, a tiny smile on his face making her frown and blush, which was quite an interesting combination. He went on:
"After you became too tired to read words properly, you stopped, but you didn't feel like sleeping, so you started doing stuff around the house, which explains why this room is so tidy compared to how I recall leaving it."
She was leaning against the doorframe, a foot flat on the ground and the other crossing the first and resting on the tips of the toes, right hand on the wall, left hand on her hip. He couldn't help but smile. Psychologically speaking, that position gave away the fact that the person was about to quit or change the topic, as they felt like they were losing. He kept talking.
"However, you were too kind to wake me up, so you kept the noise to a minimum, avoiding loud appliances. I have to tell you, this is heartwarming. Thank you, Teresa."
"Oh, shut up."
Patrick Jane was still grinning like an idiot, and it came to him that he was lacking any kind of conservation instinct. You don't smile at someone whose glare could kill a dragon all by itself. A quiet sigh escaped the woman's lips, but he knew she wasn't as frustrated with him as she wanted to appear. She liked it when he did that. That was, after all, part of the reason why he did it.
"Since you burned so many calories, you got hungry. But you were also kind of bored, dare I say in need of human interaction, and waiting for the time it got acceptable to wake me up. Also, that would have made a good excuse for you to cook, since I like omelette. You don't like cooking, never did, but you do like doing the small things that bring a smile to someone. I would have gone with the idea that you made it for me and never ask a thing. I have to tell you, I'm rather proud. I nearly bought it." he said, still grinning.
Teresa sighed and rolled her eyes, distancing from the wall to stand upright. She turned around and went back into the kitchen, to save the breakfast just in time.
"How did you figure it out? That I never went to sleep? I could have done all that in two hours." she said, rather for the sake of playing the game, even if she was also a tiny bit curious. It couldn't have been the black circles under her eyes. She had carefully hidden those.
He walked into the kitchen after her and cracked the window open. As she was placing the plates on the table, he motioned to her chest.
"Your sweater's inside out."
She looked down and scoffed in disbelief and annoyance, fixing the issue on the spot.
"Thin." she whispered. "You have nothing on me, it was a hunch."
"A hunch all right. And how often are those wrong?"
"You also made half of it up." she added, giving him an all-knowing look.
Pffft, of course he had!
"Suspecting me of that? I'm hurt." he stated, an amused lilt in his voice.
"Jane, I've known you for far too long already."
Apparently, she had started doing the same thing he did: state something, see it works, go with is as if you always knew. She was learning… This could possibly get dangerous for him.
As they ate, he started making a list of ways he could possibly convince – trick – her into calling him by his first name. Quite obviously, Lisbon was easiest to manipulate when angry. Maybe he could just refuse to answer to "Jane" until she either slapped him or gave him what he wanted.
Or he could have asked.
But he wasn't going to. Why ask for something instead of trying to see if you can take it yourself? Where was the fun?
Her soft voice made him snap out of it.
"What are you thinking of?"
"Nothing."
"High voice." she warned him, imitating his tone.
"Right."
After all, it was going to get dangerous for him.