A/N: Hi there, everyone. I'm pretty excited to start a new story again. This one has been on my mind and waiting to be written for a couple of weeks now, so I guess I have no choice…Hope you enjoy.
By the way, for the story's sake, Minelli is still boss, but Boscoe is still dead. Just so you understand.
Disclaimer: Simon Baker for Valentine's Day probably won't happen, so I don't own him/them now and I won't own them/him in two weeks either…oh well. On with it.
Stay
Prologue…
So this was it. She'd had the party, done the tearful goodbyes, packed her personal belongings in a box and now she was looking at her unfamiliarly empty office, letting her eyes scan the place one more time, burning it into her memory before shutting the door with a gentle click and sighing.
There was nothing here to stay for. Her team had matured, they would do well with Cho as their new boss and she was about to go on a new adventure, a new job, a huge step up her personal career ladder. She ought to be proud of herself; she knew Rigsby, Cho and Van Pelt were, even though they said they were going to miss her a lot. As she was certainly going to miss them. All of them. Not one more than the other.
Angrily, she bit back a sob, wishing she could wipe away the first tear sliding down her cheek, but with her hands now full carrying laptop and box, cursing herself and her lack of self control would have to replace the action.
It was too late to look back, much too late to undo the many wrongs that had brought her to this decision. Whatever there had been, she had most radically thrown back at him. And in retaliation, he had done nothing to stop her from gliding down the slippery slope of misery it had landed her on.
No, much as she had tried to, as much as she had looked at the situation and the events that had taken place during the last five months from every different angle, she could find no fault in his actions, only in her own.
Unless she could blame him for giving into her in the first place…
Setting the box down on an empty desk, she sat down on the couch. His couch, allowing her ever wallowing mind to take her back yet again, to that one evening of weakness, five months ago…
Chapter 1
The victim of the homicide they'd been called in for was a 45 year old man. The murderer a seventeen year old girl; his stepdaughter. She had confessed to letting her father trip over some toys so he would fall down the stairs. She hadn't meant to kill him, she had only wanted to render him temporarily incapacitated, so she could make a run for it, along with her two small brothers of nine and six years old.
According to her statement, their father had become a raging mad alcoholic after their mom had been hospitalized with serious brain damage after she had tried to kill herself by swallowing everything she could find in the medicine cabinet and underneath the kitchen sink.
The situation had become unbearable when the father had turned all his rage toward his children, blaming their alleged bad behavior for his wife's problems. While the girl, being the oldest and not his own child, already got the lion's share of his wrath, she had also tried to protect her siblings by taking the blame for their misconduct as well.
It had all just become too much for her.
Lisbon had sympathized with the girl, maybe more than she should have done. But it definitely felt like she was looking in the mirror, taking her back to the past, where she had been in the girl's shoes, trying to deflect her own father's rage from her three brothers. Until the day he had taken his own life and had in fact, liberated all of them.
She had thought she was over the guilt, the pain, the useless anger directed at her dead father without him being there to be the actual target.
Investigation done, reports made and children being brought to safety (the DA had promised her to go easy on the girl and Children's Services had promised to try and keep the brothers together), she and Jane had driven home in silence. For once, she lacked the energy to fight Jane for the wheel, so she let him drive; staring out the window of the passenger's seat without seeing anything. Jane had only put his hand on hers in a feeble gesture to comfort her.
But she had needed more. When he had pulled over in front of her house, she had shyly asked him to come in. Without a word, he had followed her inside, closing the door behind him. And when she approached him, touched him, caressed his cheek and pulled him toward her to kiss him, he had kissed her back. Sweetly, softly, gently.
Only when she had tried to take him upstairs, had he wavered. Woken up, so to speak. Let go of her. Pleaded with her, first only with his eyes, then with whispered words. She had to understand. They should not do this, couldn't do this. They were coworkers. Friends too, surely, but not…he was begging her not to ask too much of him. Not because he was afraid of her, or so he told her.
More because he was afraid of himself. For her sake. For taking what did not belong to him, not yet anyway, not under these circumstances. For the regrets that would certainly come on the morning. For the respect they would lose for the other one, for themselves.
But she hadn't listened. For just this one night, she wanted to feel loved, feel his warm arms around her, let herself be swallowed by his lips, be drowned by his caress. Just to forget she had once been the exact same girl she'd had to take into custody today.
He had put his suit jacket back on. He had taken the car keys back into his hand and was about to turn away from her, when she had launched herself at him. She was too desperate, too emotionally drained for him to make much sense of her words, but he heard one word loud and clear, over and over again.
"Stay."
His resolve had broken.
Reviews are as always appreciated.
A/N : There's another story developing in my head. Since "The Guardian" is on rerun here in The Netherlands, Simon's other alter ego, Nick Fallin, is begging me to give him a nicer outlook on life (such a tragic character) as well as a girl who treats him better than yucky Lulu. I'm willing to grant him that wish, but only if I know the story has any hopes of actually being read. By my current Mentalist readers, perhaps?
Ant thoughts on that? Let me hear them.
