Jane struggled mightily with this dilemma over the course of the next week. He wanted what was best for Lisbon. He truly did. And he was forced to accept the conclusion that Brian fit the bill for that role much better than he did. After all, Brian was a stable, animal loving, baseball fan willing to take dance lessons against his better judgment. Brian was *nice.* And what was he, Jane? At worst, a revenge obsessed former charlatan. At best, a charming bastard.
Despite having come to the entirely rational conclusion that the best thing to do would be to encourage Lisbon's little romance with the vet to the best of his ability and relegate himself to the role of eccentric uncle to their athletically gifted and beautiful future offspring, he found that such a purely unselfish act was a bit beyond him. He couldn't stop plotting ways to sabotage poor Brian and whisk Lisbon away from him. It would be so easy. He could manipulate a strange woman into showing up at Brian's apartment while Lisbon was there and pay her to act like Brian had been leading her on. Lisbon, of course, would never tolerate any sign of infidelity. Upon reflection, however, he decided casting Brian as a cheater wasn't the most plausible scenario. He was so obviously not the cheating kind. He moved on. One of his more recent schemes involved tricking Brian onto a yacht and leaving him out at sea without a crew or a navigation system. This was by far the cleanest break imaginable. He wouldn't have to do anything to Lisbon—Brian would just disappear. So tidy.
Unaccustomed to having to wage war against his better self—normally his better self wasn't that great and needed no corralling to allow his worse self to have its own way—he was growing rather withdrawn. The team noticed and had been giving him a wide berth. Whether this was because they didn't want to be contaminated by his gloomy mood or whether they were just afraid that his downcast frame of mind was likely to precipitate a string of catastrophic events of even greater proportion than usual, he wasn't sure.
He'd taken to spending more and more time on the couch in Lisbon's office, both to get away from them and also in an effort to train himself to make do with the synthetic comfort of being near objects she touched, of being close to her by proxy by inhabiting her space when she wasn't there.
He shuffled into her office on Monday night, thinking to lay down on her couch to wrestle further with the question of whether he should put about a rumor that Brian was a terrible vet who'd had an awfully high number of pets under his charge disappear under mysterious circumstances, but when he entered the room, he found his intended destination was already occupied.
Lisbon was sitting there, staring straight ahead of her with her elbows on her knees and her hands knotted together in an attitude normally adopted only when she was brooding about a particularly elusive killer.
"Hello," he said in surprise. He gestured to the seat next to her. "May I?"
She gestured her acquiescence impatiently, but didn't look at him.
He sat down next to her and watched her, disquieted by her obvious air of mental distress. He racked his brain, trying to guess at its cause. "No baseball tonight?" he said lightly, trying to draw her out. Baseball was typically a safe topic.
"No," she said shortly. "We have a bye this week."
He hesitated. "I'm surprised to see you here," he admitted. "I thought you'd already left."
"I didn't."
"I see," Jane said with a frown. "No date with Brian then? Are you still keeping up with the dance lessons?"
"Brian and I broke up," she said curtly.
Jane's heart leapt and started to do a Conga dance inside his chest. "Oh?" he said, as neutrally as possible. "When was that?"
"This afternoon."
"Shame," he said. It was a good thing he didn't believe in God, or he'd be worried about being struck down from on high for being so blatantly disingenuous. "So- why did you kick Brian to the curb?"
"I didn't kick him to the curb, I—" She stopped, frowning. "How do you know he didn't break up with me?"
He waved dismissively. "Don't be absurd. Why would he break up with you?"
"Because I'm a cold, emotionally unavailable workaholic?"
He snorted. "Oh, please. Men don't break up with smart, beautiful women just because they work unconventional hours. Besides, no one in their right mind would ever describe you as cold. You're about as cold as the inside of an active volcano. So what gives? Why did you break up with him?"
Lisbon sighed. "I don't know. There was just something missing."
"What kind of thing?"
"I don't know," she said again. "Something that's supposed to be there."
"Ah," Jane said knowledgeably. "You mean the spark."
She turned her head to look at him. "The spark?"
"Yes, you know, the chemistry, the shiver up your spine when he touches you—the spark."
"Yes, I think that's exactly what the problem was," Lisbon said thoughtfully. "Perfectly nice guy, attractive, but no spark." She sighed. "Maybe it's me. I lack spark."
"Trust me, Lisbon, you have spark in spades," Jane said, thinking of the contact high he'd gotten just from touching her hair under the guise of freeing it from imaginary arachnids. "You just need to find the right… ignition."
"I'm serious, Jane."
"Hey," he said, vaguely alarmed by how upset she seemed. "So it didn't work out with you and Brian. People break up. Happens all the time. What's the big deal?"
She buried her head in her hands. "There must be something wrong with me. Any sane woman would be falling all over herself to have a guy like Brian in her life."
"Don't be ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with you. Brian wasn't the one, that's all."
"Oh, yeah?" she challenged him. "He was damn near perfect! If he wasn't the one, then who the hell is?"
He opened his mouth to reply, but he had no response for her.
"That's what I thought," she said bitterly. "God, I am an idiot."
"You're not an idiot," he said automatically. Brian was the idiot—if Lisbon had ever tried to break up with him, he wouldn't have taken it lying down. He would have tricked her into giving him a second chance—or two hundredth—whatever it took to stay with her.
"I really, really am."
She was so cute when she pouted. He felt a thrill of victory that Brian would no longer have the privilege of admiring that delicious lower lip when she scowled. "Don't be so gloomy, Lisbon," he replied, having more difficulty than ever in containing his glee. "Plenty of fish in the sea, and all that. Better luck next time."
"God, you're an ass," she said, disgusted. "Can't you even have the decency to *pretend* not to be happy about this?"
"I'm sorry," he said, but he suspected his effort at sincerity may have been undermined by the smile threatening to split his face in two.
She glared at him. "I absolutely loathe you right now, you know that?"
He grinned. "Hey, you're the romantically incompetent one—no need to take it out on me."
She snorted. "Right. Like I'm the only one around here incapable of having a normal relationship."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
She turned towards him and assessed him critically. "You really want me to answer that?"
He affected an indifference he didn't feel. "Certainly."
"God, Jane, you're like the poster boy for unhealthy relationships."
"I have healthy relationships," he said, stung.
"With who?" she said.
He set his jaw. "I had perfectly healthy relationships with my wife and daughter."
"Yes," Lisbon said quietly. "You did. But what about since then, Jane? You have this consuming obsession with a killer, you don't trust anybody, and you have no close relationships."
"I trust you," he said, not for the first time.
"Yeah," she said, resigned. "I know."
Well, that was progress, anyway. She didn't have to sound so unhappy about it, though. "I'm close to you," he persisted.
Her eyes skated away from his. "Yes."
"So there you have it," he said. "Evidence of my ability to have a healthy relationship, right there."
She looked at him incredulously. "You're not seriously using our relationship as an example of healthy emotional behavior, are you?"
"Certainly," he said, taken aback. "Why not? We're good friends, we can count on one another when the going gets tough—it's kind of ideal, when you think about it."
"Are you crazy?" she said flatly. "We're about as unhealthy as it gets."
"I take exception to that statement, Lisbon. Many people would kill to have what we have. Why would you suggest otherwise?"
"Are you freaking kidding me? After all the times you've lied to me, tricked me—"
"Oh, don't trot out that old line about the tricks and lies—that's just the surface stuff. Underneath, we're all right, really."
"No, we're not."
"What's so wrong with us, then?"
"We're a co-dependent mess!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Lisbon." He could see how one might describe them as co-dependent—they had come to rely on each other in small domestic ways over the years, but they were hardly a mess. He brought her bear claws and coffee when she skipped breakfast, and she provided him solace and encouragement whenever he started to sink into a downward spiral of depression when one of his Red John schemes failed. What wasn't healthy about that?
"It's the truth. Neither of us has had a real relationship in forever because we have each other as stand ins for the real thing. We're each other's emotional proxies. I can't remember the last time I went out on more than one date with a guy before Brian, and you don't even try to date at all."
This conversation was giving him a headache. "Why would I want to date?" He didn't need to date. He had Lisbon.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Love and affection? Companionship? Sex?"
She had him there, he thought, thinking again about the periwinkle dress and the freckles. And her neck. And the way she smelled now, sitting next to him.
"But you don't care about that at all," she continued, oblivious to his train of thought. "Look at you. You're thrilled to death that things didn't work with me and Brian, because that means you have your old playmate all back to yourself."
"I like to think I'm not so selfish that I would be happy about something that caused you unhappiness, Lisbon, no matter its effect on me," he said. He would like to think that, but all the evidence pointed to the fact that he was exactly that selfish. "I have nothing against Brian. He's a stand up fellow—bad luck for him that he didn't succeed in capturing your fancy."
"Please. Don't act like you weren't jealous of him."
"I wasn't jealous," he lied.
"Yes, you were. You were acting like a kid with an old toy—you don't really want it until someone tries to take it away from you, and then you refuse to give it up."
He disliked the metaphor. Of course he wanted it—her. "What if I was acting like a kid who didn't want to give up his favorite toy—the only toy that really mattered to him?"
"Whatever, Jane," she said wearily. "Call it what you want. Just—next time, could you go a little easier on the emotional manipulation?"
His heart thudded loudly in his chest. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… everything. The way you were looking at me when I came back to the office in that dress, that whole thing with my hair…"
He avoided her gaze. "It was a really big spider, Lisbon."
"Look, it wasn't a big deal. Or, it didn't have to be, anyway. I could have handled it, if it was just that. But you couldn't let it rest." She turned away again, and he almost missed the slight hitch in her voice. "Why did you have to buy that damn house?"
Jane realized belatedly that she was dangerously near tears. This was alarming—Lisbon never cried. The only time he could recall such a thing occurring was when she'd been afraid she was losing her mind when that deranged psychiatrist had poisoned her and tried to frame her for murder. "I thought you liked it," he said lamely.
"Of course I liked it. I liked it too much." She still refused to look at him. "I couldn't figure what was bothering me about it at first. But then when I got back to my own apartment, I knew. I suddenly hated my apartment, just because it was nothing like that house. It was like you took every thought and dream I ever had about what a home should be like and threw it in my face."
"I didn't—" he said, aghast. "I would never—that wasn't my intention."
"Whatever your intention was, Jane, that's what it felt like." She took a deep breath. "I know you feel guilty about your wife and child being killed, and you still want your revenge on Red John. I understand it, even though I don't agree with what you're doing, and I'll help you, to the extent that I can and stay within the law. But I don't want to just be your girl Friday the rest of my life. You may have condemned yourself to living a half life, but leave me out of it. I didn't sign up for that. I want the real thing. I want that house, and someone in it to love me with their whole heart. And for you to dangle that in front of me, when you knew exactly how much I wanted it, without having any intention of ever giving it to me yourself… frankly, Jane, it was just cruel. It felt like you were punishing me for even trying to have that life." She sighed. "Even if I failed miserably."
He couldn't breathe. "Lisbon—"
He needed to be closer to her. He wasn't conscious of moving, but suddenly he found himself pressed up against her on the couch, leaning into her space, his hands cupping the sides of her face.
She leaned away from him, eyes wide in alarm. "Jane, what are you doing?"
He closed the distance between them and answered her question with a kiss. He tried to put everything he'd been thinking and feeling over the past few weeks-hell, the last decade- into that kiss, so she would understand, so she would know, but just in case she hadn't gotten the message, he broke the kiss and blurted out, "I bought the house for you. I want that life, too. A whole life. I don't want to be a stand in."
She looked somewhat like someone had just hit her over the head with a hammer. "You—you don't?"
"No. I want you all to myself. I've been contemplating sending Brian to Siberia in an unmarked shipping container for the better part of the last several weeks." And then he kissed her again, because he needed to taste her again.
She broke the kiss to glare at him. "Siberia, Jane? Seriously? If I find out that you have hurt or damaged one hair on Brian's head, you are going to be very sorry." Then she kissed him back.
"Stop talking about Brian," he growled, pressing his lips to her neck.
"God, I must have been dropped on my head as a child, to prefer you over Brian," she gasped, as he trailed his kisses lower. "He was such a *nice* guy."
"You don't like nice guys," he told her, biting down softly on her collarbone.
"I… do… too…" she said, having difficulty marshalling her thoughts while he was doing that to her.
"No, you don't. You like arrogant troublemakers."
She ignored him and focused on the feeling of his fingers creeping up her waist under her shirt. "It was so refreshing, not being tricked or lied to all the time," she sighed.
"You mean boring," he said, pinching her hip lightly to bring her focus back to him. "Admit it, you missed having someone to yell at. I bet Brian never made you angry, not once."
She leaned up and sank her teeth into his lower lip. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
"For you it is. You need someone to challenge you."
"You certainly do that," she muttered, permitting him to kiss her neck again.
"And you need someone to spoil you," he said between tastes. She was just as delicious as he'd imagined. "I told Brian that."
She tilted her head to give him better access to the soft skin of her neck. "You gave Brian dating advice about me?"
"I was trying to be nice, since apparently that is a quality you value. Didn't really stick, though."
He kissed her softly parted lips again, and their tongues dueled together gently. When they parted several moments later, she asked, "What about Toby?"
He shrugged. "You like dogs."
Now she was laughing at him. "You got a dog and bought a house because you were jealous of Brian?"
"Cho told the others that I got a dog and bought the house because I was trying to impress you," he informed her. "He seemed to think that I was trying to prove to you that I could be stable and dependable."
She snorted. "Oh, yeah. Stable and dependable, those are two words I definitely associate with you."
"I can be those things," he told her.
She grew serious. "What about Red John?"
He shrugged. "We'll keep looking for him, and you'll have a much better chance of convincing me to not to kill him than you did before. Still not a great chance, but a better one."
She looked skeptical, but didn't argue. There would be time for that, later.
He squeezed her hand. "It's almost certain that he's going to come after you, you know," he said, his voice breaking ever so slightly. "Because of me."
She touched his face. "We'll deal with it as it happens, Jane. That's all we can do. It's worth it, for me."
"The full life?"
"Yeah."
"Me, too," he said, and was surprised to find that he meant it.
She kissed him again, and for some time, there was no further talking.
The next morning, Cho found a crisp fifty dollar bill pressed into his copy of Wuthering Heights.
