Rating and pairing you should now by now.

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

After experiencing less than one day of 'wedded bliss' Lisbon wondered why anyone would ever want to throw themselves headlong into moving in with someone.

Perhaps it was a side-effect of playing mother to three young boys so early in life but Lisbon had come to greatly value and appreciate her alone time, and having it abruptly torn asunder by this new state of cohabitation just wasn't working for her.

There was no one major issue that was making this assignment so unpleasant, rather a series of disruptions to her usual routine and, being by her own admission, a little set in her ways, it was enough to tick her off.

For example, Lisbon was accustomed to sleeping late when she didn't have to work whereas Jane, (if he had even slept at all which she was unaware of since he'd elected to settle on the downstairs couch) seemed to like to rise with the sun. Suffice it to say, she was not impressed the next morning when she was roused from sleep by banging and clattering coming from downstairs.

Grumbling to herself, she reluctantly rose from the comfortable bed with the intention of walking downstairs to give Jane a piece of her mind about what was an appropriate time to wake up and what wasn't.

She glanced into the mirror as she passed and was very glad she had. It wasn't like she was trying to impress anyone, it was just Jane after all, but still as a woman, she had standards.

She grabbed up her hairbrush and managed to pull it through the mess of tangles that her hair had become during the night. She tied it into a low ponytail and changed out of her pyjamas into jeans and a sweatshirt.

She took another glance in the mirror and was satisfied that she looked more like herself and less like some wild animal caught in a windstorm.

Jane beamed at her as she entered the kitchen.

"Good morning, wife. You're up early."

"I had no chance of sleeping in with the racket you were making," Lisbon complained. "What are you doing in here, composing a symphony with kitchenware?"

"In a sense," he said. "But rather than a melody I am composing a culinary masterpiece. Trust me, you'll be surprised."

"I don't doubt that," she said. "But I don't know how many surprises I can handle at the crack of dawn and with no coffee in sight."

"Cheer up, grumpy," said Jane, nodding towards the kettle. "Your morning shot of caffeine is on its way."

"Good," she said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

Jane, it transpired, knew his way around a kitchen. She watched him dart between the cupboard and the stove adding bits of this and that to the pan. The kettle reached the boil and she got up to pour out the water.

She fixed herself a cup of coffee and then absent-mindedly reached for another mug to make Jane some tea. Milk in first, water truly boiling, just like at the office.

Jane smirked to himself as he looked over his shoulder and saw her stirring the tea. She was the only person on the planet he would entrust with making his tea for him. Nobody else seemed to be able to master the exact process involved in making his tea exactly the way he liked it. He couldn't understand why. It wasn't that complicated after all. He remembered Rigsby's disastrous attempt that time he'd been blind and then Grace's attempt a few weeks later. He'd given perfectly clear instructions; they just weren't trying hard enough.

Lisbon brought the cup over to him at the stove.

"So," she said, returning to the table. "Does it pass the stringent Patrick Jane quality standards?"

He took a sip.

"Spot on," he said. "Now…breakfast. Tonight we're going into the depths of the L.A social scene, you're going to need your strength."

He turned around with plates of bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast and set one down in front of her.

"I have to say, I'm a little underwhelmed. All that banging and carrying on and all I get is this?" said Lisbon, testily.

"I bet you were expecting something gourmet," said Jane, gesturing towards the plate and grinning cheekily at her. "Hence, the surprise."

Lisbon felt the sudden urge to laugh and somehow managed to hide it by shovelling in a large forkful of eggs.

Pain in the ass he might be, but at least being around Jane was never boring. He certainly was full of surprises.

"You know," she said a few minutes later, after swallowing a piece of bacon. "I never picked you for the domestic type."

He half-smiled. "I never used to be," he said. "When my wife and I moved in together she told me that over her dead body was she going to be the one slaving over a hot stove every night. She said that if I was the one who was going to bring home the bacon, I'd better learn how to cook it as well."

Lisbon was shocked at this unexpected snippet of personal information from Jane. Usually he played his cards very close to his chest when it came to discussing his past, but Lisbon couldn't pretend she wasn't curious. It was like her consultant had this whole other life that he kept separate from his current one, and she wanted to know about the kind of person he'd been back then, before all his heartache. How was wife-and-daughter Jane different from Jane today? Could he ever go back to that? Did even he want to?

Surely he must. He couldn't go on being miserable forever, it would destroy him and she had a feeling it would destroy her too. He was part of her team, one of the few people she could call a friend, and she'd been watching the strain of it all taking its toll on him for years now. Nobody should have to suffer as much as he had.

"What was she like?" Lisbon asked, cautiously.

Jane pondered how to answer the question honestly without revealing too much. He wanted Lisbon understand him better but he couldn't risk letting her in too far, it would make things too complicated. He fingered the ring on the chain around his neck.

"She was a bit like you," he said finally. "Feisty, with an extremely low tolerance for bullshit." He paused, and smiled reminiscently. "She'd have liked you."

"You think?"

"Oh yes. She was forever telling me that I needed to get some more sensible friends who weren't blinded by my abilities to stop my head from getting too big. Someone brave enough to tell me exactly where the line was, and pull me up when I stepped over it. I didn't think such a person existed until I met you."

Lisbon flushed with pleasure, and Jane lapsed into silence. It seemed he was finished sharing for the day and she knew better than to push for more details. She was surprised he trusted her enough to even tell her that much. It meant more to her than she would ever tell him, but from the way he smiled at her as she got up to clear the table, she thought he might have guessed.

With Jane, you could never be sure.

The doorbell rang, and the two of them exchanged bewildered looks.

"Did you order something?" she asked Jane.

He shook his head. "Are you so averse to holidays that you're getting some excess paperwork couriered over? Because I wouldn't put it past you."

Lisbon snorted. Jane was being ridiculous. She was not averse to taking vacations; she just preferred to enjoy them sparingly. Very sparingly. There was nothing wrong with that. And the catching up with paperwork thing didn't sound like such a bad idea either. Maybe she should call Minelli and have him send some. She might even get ahead for a change. The thought made her smile.

"That wasn't a suggestion Lisbon," said Jane, giving the impression as he so often did, that he was reading her mind. "Come on, this isn't even a real vacation, it's undercover work."

The doorbell rang again.

"Don't you think you should get that?" asked Jane and she scowled at him as she pulled the door open.

On the step stood a young woman with blonde hair in spiral curls. She smiled at Lisbon as she pulled the door wider.

"Hi!" she said, at such a decibel that Lisbon feared the glass in the door might break. "I'm Annabelle Beckett. I live next door." She pointed unnecessarily at the house beside theirs. Lisbon was sorely tempted to ask whether she'd been born with that uncanny gift for direction, but restrained herself with difficulty. Getting the locals offside was hardly the ideal way to begin this assignment.

"How nice," she said instead, hating how insipid she sounded. "I'm Rachel Hayne." She held out a hand to Annabelle who shook it enthusiastically with both of her own.

"It's nice to meet you Rachel. I am sort of the social coordinator around here and I thought I should take this opportunity to welcome you to the neighbourhood."

"Thanks," said Lisbon uncomfortably. This woman gave off an unmistakeable air of fakeness as though everything she said had been rehearsed a million times in the mirror before she said it. She even looked fake with her blond hair, blue eyes and designer couture from head to toe. She was a living testament to the L.A stereotype.

Annabelle's smile had not faltered during Lisbon's silence. If anything, it seemed to have gained in intensity as though it drew power from other people's discomfort. "So what brings you to L.A?" she asked.

Lisbon answered with the first thing that popped into her head. "Work," She'd give anything to be in her office right now, with the door locked to counteract surprise visits from Jane, rather than here trying to remember how to negotiate normal social interactions. It had been a while.

"Ah yes," said Annabelle, nodding solemnly, like this information was of the greatest importance. "And what is that you do?"

Lisbon's brain stalled. She hadn't given a moment's thought to what she'd say if someone asked her about what she did for a living.

Her hesitation went unnoticed however, in fact it seemed Annabelle had lost track of the conversation completely. She was looking at something over Lisbon's shoulder, totally distracted. Lisbon immediately recognized the symptoms of a person unexpectedly confronted with the appearance of Patrick Jane. How many times had she seen it in cops, crime scene techs, lawyers, witnesses, suspects, ADAs, court staff, and even once a judge? The last had been particularly useful as it happened the judge in question had been presiding over their case that day. While Lisbon wouldn't go far as to say the judge had ruled in their favour purely for that reason, she suspected that Jane's presence in the courtroom hadn't hurt their chances. That had been a nice change.

"Hey," he greeted Lisbon easily, appearing at her side. "Who's this?" He put on his most charming smile for Annabelle and Lisbon discreetly elbowed him in the stomach, muttering "Show-off" out of the corner of her mouth.

"You love it," he hissed back.

All of a sudden, Annabelle seemed to regain the power of speech.

"You didn't tell me you had a family!" she shrieked half-hysterically, half-resentfully.

"You didn't ask," said Lisbon. "This is my-" Try as she might, she couldn't quite bring herself to say the word 'husband.' "-This is Will," she amended, "And Will, this is Annabelle, our new neighbour."

"It's a pleasure," said Jane, shaking Annabelle's hand, who let out a shrill giggle more appropriate to a pre-teen schoolgirl than a grown woman. "I take it that you're the go-to girl around here."

"Well, yes," she answered, beaming at him. "How did you know?"

"Well you've been the first to come by and introduce yourself. I just guessed."

"You're a good guesser," Annabelle simpered.

Lisbon had had about as much she could take of this nauseating display. Being friendly to people was one thing, but openly flirting with another woman's husband? That was not on. Never mind the fact that they weren't actually married, it was the principle of the thing. The last thing they needed was more complications; she was going to put this little infatuation to rest, once and for all. She didn't know what made her do it, but she reached out and grabbed Jane's hand, locking their fingers together.

"Shouldn't we go and finish unpacking, honey?' she said.

The effect was instantaneous. Annabelle's face fell faster than a stone, and Jane turned to look at her as though she'd just suggested they take a day trip to the planet Saturn.

"We don't mean to be rude," she said to Annabelle, forcing herself to keep the triumphant smile off her face. "But the place is still such a mess."

"No worries," trilled Annabelle, recovering faster then Lisbon would've liked. "I have to go anyway, I'm throwing a party tonight and I have to call the caterers. Hey, why don't you guys come along?" she suggested, with a glowing smile that Lisbon noticed was directly aimed at Jane. "You'd be very welcome and it'll be a good way for you to get introduced to everybody."

"We'd love to," said Jane, without missing a beat.

"Great! I'll call the security company and have them add your names to the list. It's starts at seven, dress is smart casual. See you later!"

Waving at them, she turned and walked back to her own house.

Lisbon glared after her until she disappeared, and then slammed the door shut in irritation.

"She really got under your skin, didn't she?" said Jane, smirking at her.

"No," said Lisbon, stubbornly.

"Right. So you're conveying your complete and total indifference by trying to break my hand. Makes sense."

She'd been focusing so hard on sending non-verbal "back off!" messages to Annabelle, that Lisbon hadn't even noticed how hard she'd been gripping Jane's hand. Embarrassed, she immediately let it go.

"Thank you," he said, inspecting his hand and flexing his fingers. "Now would you please drive me to the emergency room? I think I'm going to need reconstructive surgery; it feels like you've broken it."

"Enough smartass remarks, funny man, or the next thing I'll break will be your jaw."

"Duly noted. But am I permitted to ask a question?"

"No."

"Excellent," he said, ploughing on anyway, as she'd known he would. "How come you're allowed to call me 'honey' but when I say it to you, I get threatened with grievous bodily harm? Seems like a bit of a double standard to me."

She remained silent, hoping that if she didn't answer, he'd let the subject drop. No such luck.

"You want to know what I think?" he asked.

She really, really didn't, but she had a feeling that she was about to hear it whether she liked it or not.

"I think," he went on. "You were feeling a little threatened by our new friend Annabelle. I think it made you upset that she liked me so much, and you wanted to nip that in the bud."

"And what exactly are you implying?" she asked him.

"I am implying, my dear that the green-eyed monster came out to play."

"Don't be such an idiot!" she snapped at him. "I was just trying to sell this stupid husband-and-wife thing. This assignment relies on us being believable as a couple!"

"And you think part of that is staring people down like an angry lioness?" asked Jane shrewdly. "Come on I could practically feel the sizzling waves of hatred coming off you while I was talking to her."

"Well how do we know she's not involved in the drug ring?" asked Lisbon, defensively. "We need to stay alert."

"Yes, but if she is involved," said Jane patiently. "Don't you think your less-than-friendly demeanour might tip her off that we're onto her?"

It always made her day so much worse when she had to concede that her consultant might be right about something, It was like a giant slap in the face for her and all she stood for, that sometimes doing things properly and by-the-book simply wasn't the way to go and that deviating from the rules a little could actually be the most practical course. Most days she resented it, sometimes even fought him on it just for the hell of venting her frustrations, but today, if it meant they could get off the topic of her supposed 'jealousy,' she'd take it.

"Fine," she said. "I'll take it down a notch."

He grinned at her.

"You come across a little full-on at times. It can be confronting for some people who aren't used to it." He began to walk away back down the hall.

"Oh," he added, pausing. "Just in case my hunch was correct and you are a tiny bit jealous, you should be assured, my wife, that I only have eyes for you." He winked at her, and disappeared around the corner.

He hadn't lied to her just then; Lisbon had been practically the only woman of consequence to him for longer than he cared to admit. It was widely acknowledged in the CBI that the two female agents of Serious Crimes weren't half bad to look at, and so there was no shortage of men finding excuses to make detours through the bullpen (especially rookies) to catch a glimpse of them. For a long time, Jane had observed this and simply laughed, but things had been changing over the last few months or so.

At some point, he found that his eyes wandered to Lisbon's office a lot more than strictly necessary and that watching her perform even the most mundane of activities was an excellent form of entertainment. He had started taking note of who went in and out of her office and kept tabs on the single men that did so most frequently. He had even become slightly passive-aggressive towards people that he had known for years, and liked, because he'd caught them checking her out over the top of a file.

It had taken him a while to actually acknowledge what he was doing and at first, he attributed it to natural, brotherly feelings attained over their years of working together. He had accepted that this couldn't be so when he realized that he had no such protective feelings towards Grace, quite happy to lie back chuckling as Rigsby tried to restrain himself from dismembering whoever was hitting on the pretty redhead that day.

But when it came to Lisbon. it was a different story. When the woman he cared for had been the target of these advances, suddenly it wasn't so funny, and he showed it. Eventually, the other agents had got the message. As far as anyone but Patrick Jane was concerned, Teresa Lisbon was off the market. Period.

He didn't remember being this way with his wife. When walking down the street with her if he noticed men passing by gave her a once-over he would smile, proud that he had gotten what so many others wanted, that he had been the one she had chosen. It gave him a little boost to his ego.

But with Lisbon, he couldn't be sure of anything, least of all her feelings, so rather than being regarded as amusing idiots, these men had to be considered as potential rivals. So easily could someone else reach out and take what he had been pretentious enough to claim as his own.

The little display at the door just now gave him a chance to hope like he'd never hoped before. Whatever she said, she had been jealous. He should know; he'd been brimming with it for ages whenever anyone else so much as looked at her. Was there some possibility that the two of them could create something real out of this farce? There was a spark between them, he'd felt it when they kissed and he was sure she had too. Was that all there would ever be, or could the spark be nurtured into a flame?

He would just have to wait and see what the next couple of weeks held in store.

A little shorter than the others, but I'm pleased with it. This chapter was written in a hotel room, on an aeroplane, and in a shuttle bus on the way home from my holiday, forgive me for any errors.