A/N: Okay. Now I'm freaking out. I thought I had until January to finish this. But now it seems I have to do it in *excited but very scared sheep noises* 14 days. And I promise I will. No matter what. This story ends on November 30th. It has to. For obvious reasons. I'll shut up now. No pressure ;-) Happy T-2 Mentalist Sunday! And thanks to Brookelyn for the impromptu cheese challenge & the much needed tears of laughter this morning :-).
Endorphins. They were great. Amazing, in fact. He'd almost forgotten about endorphins. And he wasn't used to their prolonged presence in his system anymore, which meant they were messing with his concentration. Big time. But as long as Lisbon was in his arms, the endorphin-production was not very likely to stop any time soon. And since he planned on keeping her there indefinitely, he was probably going to say a lot more stupid things before — and after — sunrise.
I always have.
The three words had not drifted out into the sea and the night and the past after all. They'd never even made it over the edge of the jetty. Lisbon had caught them before they could sneak past her into the silence.
Jane could tell.
By that one short, hard, erratic breath, that stole into her otherwise very even and carefully organised breathing pattern. By the twitch of a muscle on the side of her neck. By the way her pulse sped up, the vein in her neck suddenly swelling and sending small erratic vibrations across her skin and against his cheek.
It was a bit like putting an ear on a railway track to check for an oncoming train.
Although, pressing his cheek against a railway track instead of Lisbon's neck would be far less nerve-wrecking right now, Jane thought.
Because the moment the words had left his tongue, he'd realised what they implied, but it had been too late to re-phrase them.
For years she had believed that he didn't care about her feelings, her thoughts and opinions. That in most situations her disapproval was nothing more than a small inconvenience to him, since it meant losing time by either needing to argue with her or to come up with a plan to go behind her back. He knew it had hurt her, thinking that at the end of the day, he didn't give a damn about what she thought, despite everything. But he had.
And had gone ahead with every single one of his plans and schemes anyway.
And that was, on closer inspection and in retrospect, a lot worse than not caring at all.
He closed his eyes, swallowed the hot, heavy rock of fear that was suddenly stuck in his throat and it sank to the pit of his stomach slow and burning and heavy.
"Teresa?"
He whispered her name against her ear, trying to keep his voice light and carefree. She kept silent. Didn't move. He pressed a desperate kiss behind her ear, suddenly feeling helpless, for once not able to sense, to read or see what she was thinking.
Was she going to draw the same conclusion? Or would she see past the implications and spot the truth his endorphin-riddled mind had felt compelled to just sputter out without consulting him on the matter before?
The truth, that he was here today because of her. And only because of her. That it was caring about what she thought and felt and wanted, that had made him alter some of the most important plans and decisions of his life.
And, without being aware of it at the time, even since the very first day they met.
He remembered how, back then, she'd told him to clean himself up and how he found himself in the bathroom that evening, razor in hand, staring at his pale reflection in the mirror and for the first time leading the blade with determination and a steady hand across the stubble on his chin and not with a mixture of fear and longing and despair with shaking fingers towards his throat. He also hadn't been drinking that night for the first time in a long time. Just sat on the floor and stared at the image of red horror on the wall, watching the cold pale moonlight and the shadows following in its wake move across it, until the sun rose again. He remembered that he hadn't enjoyed the sunrise. The colours. The light. It hadn't meant anything to him. But he remembered that he had acknowledge their presence for the first time in a long time. The beginning of a new day.
He lifted his head and looked towards the water, at the happy silver sparkles of moonlight dancing on the waves. The light from the same moon. How different it now looked. And suddenly through the fear and the uncertainty, broke a longing and a need so great, it rose as a shiver up his back and escaped his mouth in a short, desperate sigh against her skin.
To see the sun rise.
With Lisbon in his arms.
He'd do anything for that.
When she still hadn't said anything after 47 seconds — not that he had been counting — he opened his mouth to tell her. All of it. Without holding back. But the memory was all emotion, cold fear, paralysing despair, silent screams and numbing pain and refused to be put into words. To make sure it would stay inside of him undisturbed a while longer, it gripped his throat tight and the world went red and white as he tried to breathe through the sudden panic. Pure instinct made him move and he pressed his face back into her neck, hands tightening around her waist. After a few seconds, he finally managed to force a short breath up his nose.
The air he inhaled, smelled like Lisbon.
And suddenly the pressure around his throat was gone and he was able to breathe again. The relief was so great, that he started pressing soft kisses on her neck and behind her ear, even though deep inside, he was still wrestling with words and memories, hoping, fighting, needing to find the right ones to make her forgive him. Once again.
Lisbon had noticed the shiver that had run up his spine, had heard the small distressed sound he'd made, had felt his arms tighten around her, his breath go funny on her neck, but was too preoccupied to react to any of it.
Three words.
How was it that sentences with just three words could mess you up so completely in a few seconds? Jane would probably say that given the fact that the human mind can only hold on to four things at a time, it had just enough capacity to add an emotion to the words, before filing the whole thing neatly away as a set, thus creating a powerful memory. Or that there was no room for distraction and deception within the confines of a three-word-sentence. It was pure. The essence of all things. Good and bad. Either truth or lie. But Jane seemed suddenly occupied with kissing her neck and she had no intention of interrupting such an important task by discussing semantics with him.
Besides. She had a much more important topic to think about.
Three words. Lisbon let them sink in. He'd always cared. Always. It was something so wonderful and terrifying and painful all at once, that she felt dizzy for a moment and not really sure what she felt at all. It was wonderful, because, well, he cared. And now that she knew, doubt at his motivation for certain nice things he'd done vanished with a happy sigh. And yet. He'd still done all the bad things regardless and what did that mean? That he hadn't cared enough? Or that he was simply able to set aside everything when he felt he needed to. She knew he was capable of that. She'd seen him do it. And not just once. And not only to other people. And what did that imply for the future? Their future? That he'd do it again when it suited him? To her? To them? A gust of that familiar feeling of resignation, of heaviness, of cold and doubt settled in her bones like an icy north wind on a gloomy winter afternoon in Washington.
She closed her eyes, not knowing what to do or to think. Only that this might be a recurring theme in their relationship and that she needed to make a decision on how to deal with it. Now.
Based on three words.
The essence of things.
The truth is.
It scares me.
I love you.
Yes, I did.
For me, too.
I always have.
And then there was a last one. Not in her memory. But close to her ear. Just as quiet. Just as soft. And more than a little scared.
"I am sorry."
After another 23 seconds — and this time he didn't even try to pretend to himself that he hadn't counted or that his blood-pressure was fine — he finally got his reply.
Lisbon turned in his arms, careful and slow, not looking at him, eyes closed and cast down. She didn't try to get out of his embrace, didn't put pressure on his arms to make him let go. She just stood in front of him. Silent. Tense. And then, just as he was about to say it again, she suddenly took his face in her hands and looked up, gazing deep into his eyes.
His knees suddenly did the funny wobbly thing from earlier again, when a soft smile spread across her face, the silver moonlight dancing in her eyes now, all happy and bright and alive and she whispered in a voice so soft, so quiet and yet so sure and certain:
"We are here. Nothing else matters."
And then she kissed him. Pulled his head down and kissed him with so much conviction, so much love, so much affection that his central nervous system and pituitary gland started to put in overtime and his mind went blank for a while.
When conscious thought returned, somewhere between pulling her lower lip into his mouth and sliding his hands back into her hair, he wondered briefly if he should do a list. A regular schedule. A menu. One carefully selected truth per week, served preferably Friday night after dessert. Because he wasn't sure how much truth they both could handle in just one night. There were two more that needed saying before the sun rose, he was very well aware of it, but for now he was determined to steer them back into calmer waters again. Well, once they passed the cliffs of workplace related uncertainty anyway. Which he was confident he could navigate through without making either one of them needing to walk a plank or to cause any permanent structural damage to their ship.
He gave her cheek a playful nudge with his nose.
"Not even the gossip?"
She wrinkled her nose and sighed.
"Can we drop this?"
"It apparently really worries you, so. No. We cannot. But speaking of dropping things…"
He pointed to his foot, then let go of her and hobbled towards the edge of the jetty, before sitting down with a sigh. He turned a little sideways so he could stretch out his injured foot along the edge of the jetty, while drawing the other one up to his chest.
"That's better."
He winked at her and patted the wood beside him. Lisbon flopped down next to him and drew her knees up to her chest. Her toes stuck out just a little beyond the edge of the jetty and she titled her head and looked down into the dark water. Jane watched her and the kaleidoscope of butterflies in his stomach rose once more, when she bit her lower lip in excitement, curiosity and just a touch of fear, when her eyebrows rose a little and the hint of a smile twitched in the left corner of her mouth. She wriggled her toes without even being aware of it. Jane grinned.
"Go ahead. Do it." he said.
She frowned. The sort of frown showing the deep level of concentration needed to decide which kind of ice-cream to pick or how to chose the precise moment to start running across a filed in the summer rain. A very young kind of frown. She leaned forward and peered closer into the dark water, then shook her head.
"Uh… No. I don't think so. There are things in there."
"Things?"
"Sharks. Jellyfish. Fish. Things. Fishy things."
The age of her voice now suddenly matched the age of her frown and Jane almost suffocated again, only this time it was happiness and life taking his breath away, not fear and death. God, she could be cute. He hadn't allowed himself to think and feel that so loud and clear and guilt-free ever before. It felt good.
He pushed himself a little further back with his uninjured foot, until he could lean back on his elbows, taking pleasure in just watching her think for a few moments. Then he said:
"I promise to save you from all the scary fishy things. Go on, I know you want to do it. The water shouldn't be too cold."
She turned her head to frown at him, clearly not convinced, despite his rather convincing tone of voice.
"You? Saving me? From getting my feet bitten off by a shark? What are you going to do? Hypnotise it into thinking it's a clown-fish?"
He gave her an offended look and a huff.
"What? For your information I've dealt with nasty man-and-woman-eating fish before. And quite well, I might add."
She scoffed.
"What, like loan-sharks?"
He shook his head and pointed a finger at her.
"Reasonable assumption…."
Then snatched the finger back again.
"But no. Real nasty man-eating fish."
She raised her eyebrows and her voice.
"Really? When? Where?"
"Ah… South Dakota. Late Eighties. In a big glass tank with a ridiculously heavy metal lid and lock on top. With handcuffs on. And a black bag over my head."
Now there was a memory he was also very uncomfortable with, but absolutely certain he'd be able to share without risking a panic-attack in the process. Only permanent damage to his pride and self-esteem, but since he knew it would make her laugh, he decided he could live with that.
"…wearing nothing but a pair of the most hideous and tight stars-and-stripes-covered-speedos you can think of…"
She started laughing. Hard. Loud. Free.
"… trying not get eaten, not to drown and most of all not lose the little dignity I still had left, while doing a ridiculously cliched cheap underwater Houdini act. Five times a week. For two month. In front of a few hundred people across the lovely Mount Rushmore state. You know. Great faces. Great places. Although there were all a bit of a bubbly blur from my point of view."
Lisbon gave a snort, then finally managed to push out a sentence between two fits of laughter.
"Oh my god. I wish I could have seen this. Please, tell me there's a photo or something out there somewhere. Please."
Jane moved his good foot in a happy motion from side to side, which somehow seemed the equivalent of a dog wagging its tail.
"Ah. I'm afraid you're out of luck. It took me three years to find and destroy all the evidence relating to that particular gig. Mind you, it wasn't easy to erase that rather embarrassing job from my CV, but I'm glad I managed to in the end. Anyway…"
He sat up and slid back to the edge to sit beside her again and made a sweeping gesture towards the ocean beyond.
"… since I managed neither to drown nor get eaten by predators, it proves that my underwater skills are in fact excellent, otherwise I wouldn't be here."
Even through the laughter she noticed he had left something out.
"So what about your dignity then?"
He glowered at her and growled.
"I don't really feel comfortable to talk about it…"
Now she was on her back. And crying. Genuinely crying, hands holding her stomach, her whole body shaking with laughter. He let himself fall back, until he was lying next to her and propped himself up on an elbow, grinning, watching her trying to catch her breath. When she finally did, he reached out a hand and wiped a few remaining tears of laughter off her face. After a moment she asked.
"Was it dangerous?"
Jane shook his head.
"Nah. Just a trick. A tricky trick. But ultimately just a trick."
He grinned that very adorable lopsided Jane-grin, then shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. Lisbon wasn't sure if he had any idea how handsome he was, when he was just himself. Then a thought occurred to her.
"But what about the sharks? These are dangerous animals, so…"
Jane interrupted her with a small squirming sound, before admitting.
"Okay. Wasn't really sharks."
"What then?"
He shrugged.
"Catfish. We couldn't afford sharks. My… co-host loved to fish. He caught them in a river before we went on the road."
She shook her head.
"Catfish?"
Jane nodded.
"Yes. Big ones, though. And believe me, those are quite nasty creatures. Way worse than sharks. Moody. Really moody fish."
"So how did you survive being in a tank with grumpy fish then?"
He grinned. Did the thing with his foot again.
"I found their one true weakness."
Lisbon rolled her eyes, but indulged him nevertheless.
"Which was?", she asked.
"French cheese", Jane replied.
"Tossing them a few chunks of Bleu des Causses made them quite mellow and happy for about 30 minutes — which was more than enough time for me to get in and out of there without getting bitten or worse."
Lisbon raised her eyebrows.
"French cheese?"
"Yes. French cheese saved my American bacon. Literally."
She shook her head with a snort.
"You're making that up."
"No. I am not. Catfish love cheese. Google it, if you don't believe me", he said and flopped onto his back, crossing his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. Lisbon frowned as a thought occurred to her.
"Jane?"
"Hm?"
"Why were you in a tank with cheese-eating catfish?"
He shrugged.
"What can I say? I was young and I needed the money."
She rolled onto her side and tapped her index-finger against his elbow.
"I thought you were with the carny and your Dad in the 80s?"
"Ah. No. Not during that particular summer. Long story."
She watched him. Closely. He was still the very picture of relaxation, still smiling, still seemingly content and his answer had been casual dismissive, as if it was just not a very interesting story to share. He looked the same as five seconds ago.
But she knew he wasn't.
She felt it. Like she had before. Only this time, she was not preoccupied with her own thoughts and feelings. And knew. He struggled with something. Like before. She raised herself up, shifted, until she could lay her head on his chest and wrap one arm possessively around his waist and the other around his neck. He still didn't open his eyes. Or switch off the fake smile. Or take his hands away from behind his head to hold her against him. He just lay still and silent beneath her. She pressed a kiss on top of his heart.
"Tell me another time?", she suggested.
Relief washed over his face then for a second, followed by a flash of sadness. Then the fake smile was back up, but it broke into a million pieces, when she said his name, touched his cheek and brushed a thumb across his skin.
He opened his eyes. They were dark and wide and it took a while until they managed to focus on her. Even though she wanted to stay where she was, she thought, that he might need a little space. So she sat back up again. Moved. As did Jane. Without a word both of them edged to the end of the jetty again, knees drawn up, both of them staring out into the night in silence. Then, after a while, Jane interrupted the solemn chorus of ocean waves again.
"Teresa, there's… "
He sighed.
"There's a lot of things that I need to tell you. WANT to tell you. Things that… I haven't shared with anyone. But I don't…"
She saw him struggle. Against himself. The night. The past. And she reached out. Screw space. He'd had enough of that during the past few years and it had gotten him nowhere. Time for a different approach.
No rush. No pressure. But no more hiding in the attic. Or in South America.
She slipped her arm under his, rested her head on his shoulder, put her other hand on his knee, fingers slowly and gently stroking up and down his calf. After only a second in which she should feel tension and fear build inside of him, he let it go again with a loud sigh and put his arm around her, drawing her closer, turning his head, until he could press a long thankful kiss into her hair. Then he tried again.
"There's a lot things that I need to say to you. Have to say to you. Want to say to you. That I haven't … shared with anyone. But it's terrifying, because sometimes even if I want to, I can't. I just. Can't. And it has nothing to do with you, it's… "
He shrugged.
"Like there's certain doors that I just can't unlock."
"There is no such thing as a door that you can't unlock. If there's one person who can, it's you."
He shook his head.
"It's not that kind of door, I'm afraid."
"Hm", she contemplated it for a few seconds, then suggested. "I think it's the kind of door that will not open with a hair-pin or a credit-card. Maybe it's the kind of door that will only open with a key. So go. Find the key."
His fingertips brushed against her chin and when she felt him lean in, she closed her eyes, heart beating fast as his lips touched hers, and she wondered how, no matter how many times they'd done this tonight, it still felt so incredible and new. Heat and feeling and peace and excitement first curled up into a tight ball and then bust into a thousands sparkles of light inside her soul, making her hands shake, her heart beat hard and fast and her head spin, just in that very moment before their lips touched. Before either of them closed the gap between them, before lips parted and tongues met. Just in that one second before the kiss became a kiss. In the one second it was not yet a kiss, but a promise.
When he drew back after a while, he made her another one, pointing his head towards the water.
"You'll save me?", Lisbon asked.
"Yes, I will", Jane said.
She was still reluctant. He chuckled.
"Ah, come on Lisbon, where is your sense of adventure?"
She laughed, then rested her head against his shoulder once more and pressed a soft kiss into his neck.
"Don't you think I've indulged that enough already during the last 48 hours?"
He draped an arm around her shoulder again and grinned.
"You mean by signing on with me?" He frowned, then nodded. "Probably."
She laughed and stroked his cheek. He pressed his face into the palm of her hand.
"Let me just say: Teresa Lisbon,…"
He leaned over and pressed a kiss on top of her nose, then added.
"…you are very brave."
"No."
Her voice was suddenly serious now, the hand on his cheek stopped and stayed still, while she slid her other hand into his hair and her eyes sought his. When she caught his gaze, she said softly.
"You are the brave one, Patrick Jane."
Jane blinked. Rapidly. Turned his head away form her and looked out into the night and the ocean and the sparkles of happy silver moonlight. Far away, just above the horizon he thought there was a patch of lighter blue, a soft, small glow.
He smiled. Then said.
"First time for everything."
And let his uninjured foot slip off the jetty and into the ocean. A moment later he heard a happy sigh, then felt something brush against his calf. He smiled and drew Lisbon close. And they just sat there for a while, feet dangling in the water, watching the stars and the night.
A/N: Next and antepenultimate one sometime at the end of next week, if all goes to plan. Will hopefully have all ten fingers available for typing again by that time as well, which should speed things up a bit (doing this one-handed drives me nuts ;-) Thanks for still being here. It means a lot.
