A/N) Before you start... am I the only one who is reminded of the Mentalist when I hear 'Love you right' by Euphoria? Maybe it's just due to a younger Simon Baker's presence. Anyway, I was listening to that, and I decided to keep everyone who is waiting for me to finish 'Red Sky in the Morning' appeased, so I wrote this. Hope that it satisfies you until I have time to actually write up the final two chapters in the story in question. I also thought that it would be nice to share this with the world - it would be greedy to keep it all to myself.

-Seven x x

...

Emerald

I have always insisted that green was her color, but all she would ever do was to respond with a soft frown and a cute diversion tactic then tell me to get back to work. Even though I could see her blush clear as day, I would do as she instructed because otherwise she would get embarrassed, and although she was adorable when she pretended to be angry and when she tried to reprimand me without smiling, I knew that I should reserve my charm for a more special occasion, lest she become immune.

Lisbon had an emerald green shirt, which she wore one day, and it took me completely by surprise. It suited her eyes better than perfectly, and if I were not a master of deception and misdirection, I would have blushed when she frowned at me and asked why I was staring.

When in response I told her she looked beautiful in that shade of green, her porcelain skin flushed darker and she rolled her eyes at me. She was suspicious of why I was staring, as she expected everything coming from my mouth to be a lie. This made it easy to tell her the truth and at the same time hide my attraction for her. Hidden in plain sight. However it also meant that every time I tell her she's beautiful and that any man in his right mind would and should think so, she tells me to shut up and get into the car. It felt like just another form of rejection to me.

I knew that she knew. How could she not? While I was the best at my attention to detail and my tricks and my lies, I sometimes forget that she was also one of the best at what she did. Detecting. If she could not see what even Rigsby the loving but blundering grizzly bear had a suspicion about, that did not bode well for her future in this particular career. She knew how I felt about her, but still she held me at arm's length, and I realize that I have become weary of our dance. She refuses to let me through her carefully planned defenses, and she concentrated on doing so extensively that she failed to notice that I had lowered mine.

She was always telling me that I should let someone in, even though I knew that she doing that thing again, where she gave people advice that she never took herself. It has always been a pet hate of mine when people did that, but I was willing to let that aspect of such an otherwise wonderful woman slide.

Despite all of my prompts and my hints and my propositions, all she ever did was tell me to shut up and get back to work. The day after I more or less admitted to her that her green shirt made me think her beautiful, I assumed that it was in the laundry when she turned up in the morning in a sourly faded red sweater. The month after that day, I realized that she had not worn it since because I had called her beautiful. Yes, she definitely knew that I loved her, and I knew that she was falling in love with me. The sticking point was the fact that she could not decide if our love was worth the risk.

She pushed someone else away last week: a young woman who had extended her hand in friendship. A woman who had let Lisbon know that she needed someone, to talk to, and not to judge her. Her defenses were eroded away, and had dissolved somewhere along the broken path of alcohol, abuse and loneliness. She was shattered and twisted; tired of returning back to the same old life where she was strong, for her children to convince them that she could take anything the world threw at her, when she wasn't even strong enough to convince herself.

Lisbon had pushed this fragile woman away, too scared to let this woman who reminded her so much of herself anywhere near the door to her metaphorical castle.

Yesterday though, the stakes changed. The woman had committed suicide, leaving her children with an abusive father and the strained memory of a broken mother.

There were too many parallels for my Lisbon to handle, and she fled from the crime scene, mumbling a hasty and unbelievable excuse. I had watched her go, and distracted the team when they tried to follow her. Their intentions were admirable, but she needed to be alone right now, to dwell on those emotions which were pulling her two separate ways.

On the one hand, she could block it out. What she would not be able to block out though was the fact that woman had died inside the walls she had built around herself, only finding a door when she had run out of air. She had blocked out the abuse of her father, ever since she was a little girl, and had consequently entered into another abusive relationship with her partner, and it had broken her beyond repair.

This brought her to the other hand. Letting someone into her room, which she had constructed for herself when she was a child and her mother left her, was a harder prospect than she thought possible. Lately, she had pulled even further into this room, curled up in a corner and insisting that she's fine when I can tell that she is not. She liked the concept of being in a relationship with me, but still she had been disappointed so many times in her life that she did not need the pain. Blaming herself for the woman's death would only build her walls taller and stronger, so she could not escape.

Although Lisbon is no doubt convinced she could have helped by listening, she knew deep down that this woman was beyond the turning point. While that was the conscious problem which Lisbon thought she had, I knew that she was scared of how far this woman had gone, before she realized she needed to let someone in.

I haven't seen her since. I've been sitting on this brown couch since the indefinable hours of the early morning, but I haven't seen her beautiful green eyes or sleek black hair or infectious smile in anything save for my daydreams. Cho was already in today, reading a classic while Rigsby bothered him about the date he had the night before. Van Pelt kept sneaking glances at Rigsby, and everyone pretended not to notice when their eyes met and he blushed.

Any other day I would have watched, perhaps gently chided from the sidelines, but today I could not concentrate. All that was on my mind was those damn green eyes, and that silk green blouse. And how wonderful the woman who owned them both was.

I should hate that blouse. It is the reminder of the day the woman I love showed me that she doesn't want me as her lover. It was a hallmark of rejection, and of how guarded she was. How isolated from anything she ever felt which was beyond her control.

The elevator dinged, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of lively color.

No, it couldn't be.

Lisbon's eyes met mine, and there was clarity in them which I had never seen nor sensed before. She had made her decision, and I had to smile as I realized that I was one of her choices. The one she had chosen.

There were no words, merely knowing glances sent and held, and I felt a deep twisting in my chest, as if my heart no longer belonged to me.

She broke the gaze, and strode to her office with a bounce in her step which she hadn't possessed the morning before. It was an unspoken agreement: meet me in my office if you want this Grinning, I hauled myself off of the couch and straightened my suit jacket ignoring the strange looks which were thrown my way because of my sudden cheerfulness, and began to stroll casually towards her office.

I am so in there.

...

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