Part 3: That thing you said...
Lisbon felt her eyes flutter open again and saw the predictably stale white paint of the hospital ceiling staring back. A quiet little "beep-beep-beep" sound accompanied her weary attempts to fully blink back to consciousness. As her fingers fumbled lightly on the sheets, she felt another hand encompass her own. "Jane," she managed, looking across at him where he sat on the edge of her bed. Again, he was completely in her personal space. She could get used to this.
"Lisbon," Jane said back, staring into her eyes with an intimate, pensive mixture of happiness and relief. "How do you feel?"
"Horrible," Lisbon admitted, moving her neck from side to side, glad she could do so. One arm was in a sling, but her legs weren't in traction or anything, which was a pleasant surprise. Her head felt full of cotton balls, though, like the aftertaste of a bad concussion.
Taking in Jane's rumpled appearance - which was not calculated on his part this time, she could tell - and the lumpy pillow that was draped over the back of a nearby chair, Lisbon had to assume he'd slept by her bedside.
"How long was I out?" she asked.
"The accident was yesterday," Jane explained.
"Who hit me?" Lisbon couldn't help wanting answers the more awake she got. Her knee-jerk curiosity came spilling out as usual. "What about the case?" She tried to sit up straighter, and Jane put a hand on her shoulder, gently indicating she should rest.
"You were hit by a man sent by the drug ring to move the body," Jane explained, quiet anger at the perpetrators evident in his tone. "Given that the driver was out of his mind on drugs, which is why he plowed into you, it stands to reason he was set up to take the fall for this murder. Cho and Fischer are looking into who the real culprit is."
"And you're not?" Lisbon inquired.
Jane shrugged dismissively. "I've got better things to do right now."
"Huh. Maybe I wasn't hallucinating," Teresa theorized aloud.
"What do you mean?" Jane asked, his voice more tense and sincere then she'd possibly ever heard it.
"When I thought you said..." she hesitated, wondering if she wanted to go down this road again.
"...the thing you said," Lisbon continued, spurred on by the warm touch of his fingers on her hand. "You said it again, what you said when you fake shot me. You know..." You said you loved me. Even now, as close as they were, she was intimidated by the depth of her feelings and the fear of acknowledging the heavy weight of the emotion between them.
Jane took a deep breath. "You never imagined me saying it, either time," he replied slowly. "I think you know that very well, Teresa." He looked down at their joined hands against the dull grey sheets and then back at her. "I love you. I'm in love with you."
Tears sprang into her eyes, and Lisbon laughed with the tart burst of joyful surprise that his words inspired, just hearing those words cast out into the universe as if they were perfectly natural, after all that waiting.
Jane reached out and wiped a tiny teardrop away, then leaned down carefully and brushed his lips against hers. "I've wanted to do that for so long," he whispered, his stubble grating deliciously against her face as he pulled slightly back.
"I'm in love with you too," Lisbon half-whispered, surprised at her easy capacity for an honesty that had previously terrified her.
"I know," Jane grinned, smugness returning to light up his features. She batted at him with her non-bound hand, the other one snugly encapsulated in an awkwardly-angled contraption she wanted off right now.
"You bastard," Lisbon snarked. "I'll get you for that."
"I hope so," Jane replied, stroking her fingers slowly, in circular patterns that made her heart beat faster rather than calming her.
"Why tell me now?" Lisbon asked, even though she knew the answer. She deserved to hear him say it, though.
"I thought I might lose you," he admitted, powerful emotion swimming in his eyes as he gazed at her. "I felt like I did that night at Brett Partridge's, only worse. The worst feeling in the world. The idea that you might leave me. And you'd never even know how I felt."
"Maybe I did know," Lisbon sighed. "Sometimes. I thought I did. And then you'd throw me off and make me doubt it again. Like lately, with Fischer. What's that all been about, anyway?"
"I was afraid," Jane answered without hesitation. "I've never gotten over that feeling that I could never tell you how I felt without losing you somehow. First it was because I'd have been putting you in danger." Lisbon nodded, thinking of Red John.
"And then," he continued, "I couldn't tell how you felt when I got back from Mexico. I thought I'd made you wait too long and you might not want to..." He paused and then said, "To be honest, I've been flirting with Fischer to try and get a rise out of you. But instead, you went and got a new boyfriend, so..." he trailed off, his face expressive of a secret tide of his own jealousy Lisbon found oddly vindicating.
"Hmm," Lisbon couldn't believe the time they'd wasted worrying about how the other felt. "Well, I could pretend to be surprised you'd use some innocent bystander as a pawn for your own purposes, but..."
Jane guffawed. "Oh please, Lisbon. How about Johnny FBI? What were your motives in hooking up with that sap?"
"Sap?" Lisbon repeated, more amused than annoyed. Clearly, Jane had been more than a little jealous. "Well, I wasn't dating him to get a rise out of you."
"You don't need to make me jealous to do that, Lisbon," Jane murmured, a mischievous glint sparkling in his eyes that undid Teresa completely and made her want to hide in the pillow. She knew how intensely she must be blushing right then.
"I was dating him," Lisbon couldn't help laughing despite the seriousness of the discussion, "to try and move on from you."
"And now?" Jane asked, leaning close to her again, running his fingers over her mouth in that hypnotizing circular pattern he'd used on her hand. Now her insides were thoroughly gelatinous. "Now what do you want to do?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," Lisbon retorted. She leaned her face up and kissed him the way she'd wanted to do so many times, running her good hand through his hair. It all felt just the way she had always imagined that it would, which was insane. His mouth was thoroughly delectable, his control over her desires undeniable.
"Well, for one thing, now I have to break up with 'Johnny FBI', and you have to have some kind of talk with poor Kim to explain why you won't be playing verbal footsie anymore."
"I didn't actually date Kim, though," Jane pointed out. "Unlike you, I have limits."
"Oh, please," Lisbon snipped merrily. She wasn't looking forward to that break-up chat or hurting a good man's feelings, but she was too wrapped up in Jane right then to devote much mental energy to anything or anyone else. Had she earned the right to be that selfish after all this time?, she briefly wondered.
"Just wait until you're back on your feet," Jane murmured. "I'm going to give you the night of your life." Okay, now that was distracting.
Lisbon blushed furiously and felt her eyes widen to their full capacity. "Is that so?"
"You bet. I have a lot of lost dates to make up for, you know."
"That's true," Lisbon agreed. "What was that name you called me earlier, by the way?"
"You mean Teresa, Teresa?" Jane grinned his trademark huge grin. "Are you thinking about calling me Patrick now, too?"
"Maybe," Teresa allowed, "under the right circumstances."
"Now who's flirting?" Jane asked, kissing her again. She could feel his restraint because of her injuries, and despite the fact that anyone could've walked in right then, she cursed the sling and her messed up, sore state.
Speaking of anyone walking in...a brief knock was the only warning before Cho entered, bearing a typically sparse floral arrangement that he set down on the small table beside her bed. Cho looked tired, reflecting his continued hard work on the case. He crossed his arms, quickly assessing Jane and Lisbon's positions, their faces barely an inch apart.
"About time," Cho said matter-of-factly, crossing his arms and flashing a very rare and extremely small smile that warmed Lisbon's heart. She blushed again.
"Excuse me?" Jane asked. "I'm sorry, what, Cho? Weren't you the one who told Rigsby it was crazy of him and VanPelt to think me and Teresa were in love?"
"Wait, Rigsby and VanPelt knew?" Lisbon questioned, intrigued.
"Of course they knew," Jane continued smoothly.
"I was just trying to cut the tension that night, man," Cho explained. You looked like you were about to have a heart attack when Wayne brought it up."
"I did not," Jane insisted, but then he laughed inevitably. Lisbon laughed again at the way she and Jane had tried to hide their feelings for so many years. Now it seemed absurd. Even Cho made a noise that sounded distinctly like a very short chuckle.
As Cho filled them in on the progress he and Fischer had made in finding the killer, the culprit who'd tried to cover their tracks with a patsy, Lisbon settled into the habitual flow of exchanging theories with him and Jane. But after a few minutes, Jane himself intervened.
"Okay, I think that's enough work for you today. Remember, this isn't our case anymore," he reminded Lisbon.
"Jane, are you being..." Teresa trailed off, intrigued and flattered more than irritated by his presumptive and somewhat controlling manner.
"Protective?" Cho put in. "Yeah. Definitely. I'm gonna leave before I throw up," he remarked, nodding at them both while failing to conceal another minuscule smile on his way out.
"Jane, are you trying to protect me by not letting me do my job?" Lisbon asked after Cho left, unable to hide the fact that this pleased her, though it went against her nature in every way.
"Definitely," Jane said in that low, sexy tone again. "Lie back. I'm going to get you some extra pillows and blankets, and order you some real food. You'll see, I'm going to take care of you, Lisbon."
"Patrick?" Teresa stalled him, trying out the sound of calling him by his first name.
"Teresa?" Jane smiled, sitting back down beside her.
"Right before I lost consciousness, after I was hit, I heard you start to say something else. You said, 'I love you. As long as you know that...' and then I blacked out. I was just wondering what you said after that." She stared at Jane, all pretenses of not being fascinated by him completely discarded.
"I didn't finish what I was saying because then I saw you go out," Jane recalled. "I don't know what I would have said, but what I meant was that I had to tell you, that I needed you to know. It was all I could tell you and all I could think of at that moment. That I loved you. I hated myself for waiting so long to be honest with you. As long as you knew, at least it wouldn't be completely for nothing. But if anything had happened to you, I never would have forgiven myself."
If anything had happened to you...a vague phrase that revealed Jane's inability to give voice to his fear that she could've died. Jane's voice shook subtly and she wanted to comfort him in the midst of all the guilt she felt emanating from his very being.
"Hey, I waited too long to tell you, too," Lisbon said, taking his face in her hands. He leaned down for yet another soft kiss and then rose once more.
"I'm serious about those amenities, Teresa," he said with that same protective, romantic expression that made her deliciously self-conscious and let her feel well taken care of indeed.
When he headed out to update her supplies, Lisbon tried to relax. Because this time, despite his track record, Teresa knew Jane wasn't going to run out on her. This time, he was staying.
She was right.