A/N: Hi Mentalist friends - I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and not going too stir-crazy in these uncertain times. Please drop the gang a line to let us know how you're doing if you can. In the meantime, here is some fic to distract you from worrying too much about the state of the world right now. Let's try to worry just the right amount and find hope and laughter where we can. Love to you all - ink.
xxx
As she settled into a routine over the next few weeks, Lisbon found, somewhat to her surprise, that she actually enjoyed working at the paper. With the exception of the malevolent Givens and the moronic Kirby, she liked her coworkers, and the work was interesting. She'd always read the news voraciously. Keeping abreast of current events frequently provided valuable context to her work as an investigator. One of her few indulgences was to spend Sunday mornings before eleven o clock mass reading the paper from cover to cover over a leisurely cup of coffee. Now she had the unlooked for opportunity to get an insider's perspective on the operations of a real news organization. And despite her resentment of the sexist way the assignment had come her way, she even enjoyed writing the obituaries. It was nice to take a moment to celebrate the treasured relationships and accomplishments of a person's life rather than focusing all her attention on the brief window of time bracketing the moment of the person's death. This experience inspired her to pitch an idea for a regular feature to Hollis and Givens for a series of profiles of people serving the community. She'd quickly realized that the obits by themselves weren't enough to keep her occupied full time. Givens didn't seem inclined to share out the work for the metro beat in a more equitable manner, so she figured pitching an original feature was her best bet. Hollis had been enthusiastic about the idea and Givens sour, but he'd grudgingly accepted the pitch without much of a fight. Taking death out of the equation entirely was a fairly radical concept for Lisbon, but she found she was quite looking forward to the prospect.
Jane, for his part, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his new job as well. He came home every night full of tales of his students' adventures, asking Lisbon her opinion about new ideas he had for lessons, and delivering his own scathing opinions about the vice principal, catty parents, and some of the more obstreperous students. Reading between the lines, Lisbon could tell that the predominantly female staff were all completely enamored with him, but that was hardly unexpected. Jane in jeans with his tweed jacket, neatly trimmed new beard, golden curls, and dazzling smile was a potent package even when he wasn't being adorable with a pack of small children.
So far, she'd adjusted to living with Jane with surprising ease. Jane liked to cook, a task she loathed, so there was little discord over household chores. She'd offered to take care of cleanup after meals, but they usually ended up doing the dishes and other chores together. She'd made half-hearted protests at first, feeling vaguely guilty that she wasn't pulling her weight. But Jane had just kissed her and insisted that acts of service was one of his 'love languages,' and besides, he liked spoiling her and kissing her neck while they did the dishes together, so she had nothing to worry about.
The other stressors that usually put pressure on their relationship were absent, too. Red John and Lorelei were temporarily out of the picture. Jane hadn't disappeared unexpectedly. His mere presence at her side throughout this ordeal represented a tremendous sacrifice that she was constantly amazed by and grateful for. Jane had also taken pains to curtail his natural penchant for making mischief, recognizing that they couldn't afford to draw any degree of unusual attention to themselves by riling up fat cats who annoyed him. Besides, he was busy with his students. Aside from a constant, low-level war with the vice principal, he didn't even seem to miss making trouble. Best of all, even if he did decide to cause mayhem, Lisbon wasn't responsible for dealing with his behavior.
And all that was aside from the amazing sex. Despite her admittedly high expectations in this area, Lisbon had not been prepared for the intensity of sex with Jane, both in terms of emotional depth and sheer frequency. She craved the man with an alarming sense of desperation, and if his behavior was anything to judge by, he felt much the same way.
"This is gonna taper off at some point, right?" she asked him once, still gasping for breath after a particularly memorable encounter in the shower. "I mean—having sex this often is not normal. No way we can keep this up indefinitely."
"Undoubtedly," he said, lowering his mouth to her neck. "We're at the tail end of the bell curve, for sure." And then he'd lifted her onto the counter and proceeded to contradict himself.
In fact, aside from missing her team and her family, only two things about their situation troubled her in any significant way. First, the knowledge that this respite was only temporary. Despite the fact that she knew rationally that the only reason they were there in the first place was because of the imminent threat from Scalzi, that threat felt abstract, removed. It didn't feel quite real. The threat from Red John, on the other hand, had infiltrated their lives like smoke, affecting every breath and clinging to their skin long after the source had drifted out of reach. But that, too, felt distant now. She still worried about her team, her brothers—but Jane thought Red John was likely to lie low until the trial, and he was usually right about things like that, so she allowed herself to breathe easier. As a result, she found herself doing as Jane suggested and thinking of this whole bizarre experience as a kind of prolonged vacation.
Eventually, though, they would have to return to their regular lives. Red John would resurface, Jane would do something crazy, and she would have to deal with the fallout yet again. She just had to remember that this—this perfect house, the jobs that didn't revolve around murder, this present and attentive Jane—this was the illusion. All the death, the constant threat to their lives, the secretive, prone-to-disappearing Jane—that was reality. As long as she remembered that, she would be—well, maybe not okay, but at least not surprised when the crash inevitably came.
This tied into her second fear. Namely, the persistent, nagging doubt about how much of Jane's newfound affection and physically demonstrative nature was part of the role he was playing.
That he was playing a role was not in doubt. The jeans, the Prius, the conscious effort to stay under the radar by restraining his natural instinct for creating mayhem…those were the obvious elements of the act supporting the persona of Patrick Meyers. But he was here. He'd left Lorelei and Red John behind to be with her. He'd given her peanut M&M's and told her he loved her. Made love to her like she was the only woman on the planet. Surely that was real?
When they were making love, everything felt real. Colors richer, whisper soft sounds amplified. Every sensation a thousand times more vivid and intense. Then, she felt certain that this—thing between them was real. That it was the most real thing she'd ever experienced.
But after—doubt crept in. Was she succumbing too deeply to the illusion?
Jane, reading some of this off her, did his best to reassure her. He tried to give her the words he thought she needed, to calm her with gentle touch. Lisbon, unable to adequately articulate the depth and nature of her fear, let him soothe her with his sweet kisses and kissed him back a little desperately on these occasions. But the cycle repeated.
Xxx
"It's out!" Jane said excitedly, setting down a plate of eggs on the table without ceremony as Lisbon shuffled into the dining room and collapsed onto one of the chairs around the dining table, still only half awake.
"What is?" she said sleepily, looking around for coffee.
Jane handed her a cup. "The first profile," he informed her. He bent and gave her a smacking kiss on the lips. "It's wonderful, Teresa. I loved every bit of it."
"You already read it?" Lisbon said, gratefully accepting the coffee and taking a long sip.
Jane nodded. "Twice." He retrieved the paper from the kitchen and presented it to her proudly. "Ta da!"
"Mm," Lisbon said around a mouthful of eggs.
"Aren't you going to read it?" Jane said, incredulous.
"I wrote it," she pointed out. "It's not like the content is going to come as a surprise to me."
Jane tsked his disapproval and sat down across from her, stealing a bite of the fruit he'd laid out on her plate. "Don't you want to see your byline?"
"My fake byline?" she said, amused. "I've already seen it on the obituaries page."
"This is different," Jane insisted, and pushed the paper towards her.
She obligingly took it up and turned to the article, a profile on a retired teacher who used to work at the public school where Jane worked. Seeing her byline beneath the title did give her a strange little thrill, after all, she realized, even though it was under the name of her alias, Teresa Meyers.
Jane snatched the paper from her. "My turn."
"You just said you already read it," she said, exasperated.
"I've only read it twice so far," he said, as though this were perfectly sound reasoning. "I propose a compromise. I'll read it aloud."
Lisbon grimaced. "Please don't."
Jane, of course, didn't listen. He proceeded to read the article aloud while she finished her eggs. Lisbon had to admit her words did show to advantage under Jane's energetic and dynamic reading. When he finished, and Lisbon was working on her fruit and her second cup of coffee, he asked her a hundred questions about the teacher she'd spoken to, wanting additional detail about the man's life that Lisbon hadn't had the leeway to explore in the article due to the restriction on the word count the editor had imposed so she wouldn't exceed her allotted column inches. Lisbon obliged him, answering his questions and adding some of her own observations that hadn't made into the final draft of the article.
Jane looked pleased as punch. "Well, this calls for a celebration, doesn't it?"
"What do you have in mind?" Lisbon said, wary, but not unwilling.
With great ceremony, he presented her with a card with a snowy mountaintop scene printed on the front. When she opened it, a printout of a reservation for an upscale resort in the mountains fell out. She read it, then looked up. "You're really serious about this skiing idea?"
"Come on," Jane urged. "It'll be fun."
She looked at the reservation. "This weekend?"
"No time to waste," Jane said. "The snow will be melted soon."
Lisbon had to acknowledge the point. "I guess we're going skiing, then."
Jane beamed. "Excellent."
