Chapter Eight

Jane's smile remained with him up until they entered the elevator of the CBI building. Then he began feeling nervous. He always got a tingling, something of a spidey-sense, when Lisbon was about to tell him off. He'd grown accustomed to it, and sometimes used it to evade the scolding, but tonight it was different – there was no getting out of it, because if he tried to avoid it the telling off would only grow in magnitude until she found him.

"You're telling Lisbon," Cho told him, as if he were the one with such strong powers of observation. It wasn't a request, it was an order.

Jane frowned, clutching his daughter's pink unicorn closer to him. "I don't want to tell her," he argued weakly.

"She'll know just by looking at you that you've done something wrong," Cho pointed out.

"I haven't done anything wrong," Jane defended, even though the blood on his shirt and the sudden presence of a plush toy instantly made him suspicious. "In fact, I did the good thing today," he boasted.

"Red John might be dead, but Lisbon doesn't know that," he pointed out. "She just knows that you left the building during a Red John case, which usually means you've done something wrong."

He scoffed as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the hall. "Well if she's so suspicious of me doing something wrong, perhaps she'll figure it out for herself."

"You've got blood on your shirt," Cho indicated.

Jane looked down at himself. "Ah, that's helpful," he noticed, "now I definitely won't have to tell her."

"Tell me what?"

Jane's eyes widened a little as Cho approached his desk quickly, escaping before Lisbon could bring him into the equation. Jane, on the other hand, couldn't run away. He just turned on the spot to see her standing in the entrance to the kitchen area. He looked around for a distraction, found none, and then approached her, covering the blood with his jacket and the unicorn. "Lisbon. Hi," he smiled.

"Where the hell have you been?" she asked angrily. "We're in the middle of a case."

Oh, she was mad. Incredibly mad. He doubted if he'd ever seen her this angry before, actually. This was a special level of Lisbon Rage that was usually locked away. But now it was being unleashed – on him. "Yes, about that..."

"You're not on it anymore," she snapped.

"That won't be necessary-"

"I've had enough, Jane."

He frowned. "Do you even want to know what I've done with my evening?" he asked her.

"No," she shook her head. "If you tell me what it is, then I'll have to report it."

He held back the comment about her assuming such bad things about him, and gave her a tempting smile. "Are you sure you don't want to know?" he asked again. "It's really good."

She just stared him down. "You were supposed to be here two hours ago to meet with Hightower about the Red John press conference."

"I know," he acknowledged.

"You promised me you would be in that meeting, and you're late. Two hours late. Hightower went home an hour ago! Forgive me if that doesn't make me pleased to see you."

He held up a finger. "I can explain that."

"I can't wait to hear it," she said, leaning back against one of the break room tables and folding her arms across her stomach.

He frowned at her. "But a minute ago you didn't want to know what I did."

"I just want to know why you're late," she told him. "And at some point you're going to have to explain the unicorn, but right now the lateness."

"Oh, ok," he nodded, and then lowered the arm that was holding jacket as a cover. He threw the jacket onto the table nearby the one she was leaning against, setting the unicorn more carefully on one of the chairs. When he straightened up again, she had a full view of the bloodstain covering his side.

She stiffened. "What is that?" she asked, jumping up from the table and closing the gap between them, the mothering instinct in her instantly reaching her hands towards it.

"No, don't touch it," he told her, moving back a little, but she still attempted to see it. "I said, don't touch it, woman!" he scolded her lightly, batting her hand away.

"Why are you covered in blood?" she asked him. "What did you do?"

"I'm not covered in blood," he dismissed. "There's just a bit on my shirt where I didn't clean it off properly."

Her eyes widened, and despite her anger he could see a concern sneaking into her eyes. "A bit?" she repeated. "So there was more?"

"Oh, yes," he confirmed.

"Tell me you went to the emergency room," she groaned.

"Yes, I did." Even though it had been the answer she wanted to hear, it hadn't been the one she expected, so she stared blankly at him. "Oh come on," he whined. "Would you like to see the very professionally done stitches in my side, if you don't believe me?" he asked her. "Or perhaps you'd like to see my discharge paperwork-"

"Fine, I believe you," she waved off impatiently. "Now, what happened?"

He looked away from her awkwardly. "I did promise that I'd be here for the Red John meeting, so I really think that we should have that meeting now."

"You promised you'd be here on time," she added. "Besides, we can't have that meeting without Hightower."

"If you don't mind, I'd like to have a meeting without Hightower present," he explained.

"Why?" she asked, looking at him suspiciously. Jane shifted awkwardly, wincing from the movement at his side but the wince was mainly a 'I'm about to get in trouble' expression. Lisbon recognised this look, and she widened her eyes in disbelief. "Jane, what did you do?" she asked him. "You...you went after him, didn't you?"

"What?" he asked innocently.

"You went after Red John," she repeated, the statement no longer a question.

"No!" he defended. "How do you know that I didn't run into a table or something?" he asked.

She untucked his shirt with a strangely practiced ease, and inspected the stitches that he'd already torn the uncomfortable gauze away from. "Because you have an incision that looks exactly like a knife wound with five stitches in it. No one gets that from running into a table," she shook her head in disbelief. "I can't believe you. You lied to me. Again!"

He shrugged. "I went to the emergency room, no harm done-"

"No harm done?" she repeated incredulously.

"Ok, it was a stupid idea," he agreed. "I can admit that in hindsight."

"That's an understatement. You're an idiot, Jane."

"As I've been told by Cho, the emergency room nurse, my discharge nurse, and then Cho once again," he confirmed, carefully observing her blazing eyes. "You're mad at me."

"Yes."

"I was just trying to help," he explained.

"It could have cost you your life!" she argued.

"Ah," he realised. "You were worried."

She indicated to the blood on his shirt. "You disappeared and came back hours later covered in your own blood."

He held up a finger. "Technically, not for the first time-"

"You need to stop being careless," she told him.

"Teresa, if I were being careless, I'd be dead now," he told her solemnly.

At that, there was a definite silence, one that hung in the air for quite some time. Without asking, she'd assumed that there was an encounter with Red John, and somehow, for reasons she wasn't entirely sure of, Jane has escaped with his life and five stitches to hold him together. She'd considered this another warning, of Jane crossing the boundary between being as close as Red John wanted him to be, and closer to him that he would allow him to be. But now, she knew that something deeper had happened.

"Tell me what happened," she ordered.

He averted his eyes, darting them around the room. "You didn't want to know," he reminded her.

"That was before you told me you could be dead," she told him. "Now, I want to know, and you're going to tell me everything or I swear to God I'm going to put you back in the hospital before he puts you in the morgue."

The threat was clear, but unnecessary. "That won't be happening," he assured her with a confident smile.

"Not this time!" she argued unknowingly. "You said it yourself, he's out to get you!"

"And I'm alive," he pointed out."Can't you be glad of that?"

She resisted the temptation to punch him. "You have to understand that you have limitations. You aren't immortal, Jane."

"This?" he asked, indicating to his injured side. "This isn't a limitation, this is a scratch."

"It's a stab wound!" she corrected him. "And if it were half an inch deeper and an inch further round your back, it would have damaged your kidneys and the bleeding would have been fatal."

He nodded slowly. "I see we're having a glass-half-empty day today," he noticed.

Her eyes bore holes into the back of his skull. "This is not funny," she told him sharply.

"Do you know what isn't funny?" he challenged her. "The way you're so mad at me and you keep calling me 'Jane', when a few days ago you were calling me by my first name and telling me that you had intimate feelings about me."

"We are not going into that right now," she told him.

"Did you mean that?" he asked her, ignoring her input.

"Jane-"

"Did you mean what you said, Teresa?"

"Yes," she groaned. "Yes, I meant it. Happy now?"

The grin on his features was testament to the fact that he was. "Ecstatic."

"That doesn't mean that this isn't still complicated," she added. "I meant that part as well."

"It doesn't have to be," he shrugged.

"The job comes first, Jane," she reminded him.

"The job on the whole," he asked her, "or just this case?"

"The job," she confirmed. "The job that consumes most of the waking hours of our lives."

"At least we're together when we have work," he smiled gently. "Most couples can't say that."

Her brow furrowed. "We are not a couple. We're-"

"What are we?" he asked her.

"I don't know," she rushed, trying to get back to the matter at hand. "Jane, this isn't as simple as you want it to be-"

"Yes, it is," he smiled.

"No, it's not," she shook her head. "Especially not when you're constantly going to be pushing me away every time that Red John's name comes up in a case."

"That won't be happening anymore," he assured her.

"And why is that suddenly going to change?" she asked him, not believing him for a second.

"Because Red John's dead," he told her simply.

And the news that was supposed to make her happy, to have her throwing herself into his arms, instead made her angrier than she'd ever been during this conversation. "Excuse me?" she asked, her voice dangerously low. Perhaps he'd been reaching for the stars when he thought that this might be good news for them..."

"He's dead," he repeated. "His body's on my kitchen floor...but Cho's dealing with that," he assured her, before she rushed to start focusing on the case.

She seemed to become angrier with every word he spoke. "You promised me," she seethed.

"I did," he acknowledged. "I didn't kill him," he defended quickly. "I didn't, I swear, I know I promised you, so I didn't. Cho did it."

"Cho," she repeated.

"Yes."

"Cho killed Red John."

"Well, I certainly couldn't have done it," he pointed out. "I had my arms tied behind me and a knife to my throat. Cho arrived at my house and found it in the kindness of his heart to come to my rescue and shoot the bastard before he could put that knife across my jugular like he was planning to, and then when the body fell he was still holding the knife and it caught me in my side, as you can see. So, Red John is dead," he explained. "Things are simple."

"Cho killed Red john," she repeated again.

"Yes, he did," he confirmed. "And I'm glad for it."

She frowned, clearly more confused than ever. "You are?"

He nodded. "Cho killed him because it was his job. I wouldn't have killed him for the job. For what it's worth...you were right," he said. "The vengeance wouldn't have changed anything. I can see that now."

And now, she gave him a small smile. After the secret she had shared with him, it meant a lot to her to hear him say that. "I'm glad," she said softly.

Now that she was simmering down from her anger, he took a breath. "Cho's calling Hightower," he explained. "I expect she'll be here soon, so we don't have much time."

She frowned a little. "Time for what?"

He pulled her in for a deep kiss, surprising her with the speed and urgency in which he coaxed her towards him. "Time to be honest with each other," he told her, the words whispered against her lips in a way that made her shudder.

"Patrick," she sighed.

"That's better," he smiled against her. "First names again. I much prefer it that way."

"What do you want, Patrick?" she asked him directly.

"Do you want to the long answer or the short answer?" he asked her.

"I want the truth," she told him.

He put one hand on her cheek, keeping her close to him just in case she felt the need to pull away. "The truth is, I want to spend every day with you," he told her honestly. "I want to wake up beside you every morning and go to sleep with you in my arms. I want to fight over whose turn it is to wash the dishes and insult each other over our choice of movies and books. I want to be the one who gets to kiss you after they've pissed you off. I want you to make fun of me for burning dinner, the one who yells at me for not putting my socks in the laundry hamper, and the one who forces me to get out of bed. I want to watch you fall asleep when you're so desperate to stay awake, I want to take my time getting to know every little habit I haven't figured out yet. I want us. I want you and me."

She was silent again, and then startled herself out of whatever fantasy land she'd visited while he was speaking. Her first reply was a breathy whisper against his lips. "You...you seem to have thought about this a lot."

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about this," he told her. "Not since that night..."

"Patrick," she murmured, somewhat hesitantly.

"You asked for the truth," he reminded her. "And the truth is that I'm in love with you, Teresa," she gasped at this. "And if you can look me in the eye and say that you don't feel the same, I'll drop this and never mention it again, but I have to take the chance that you do because it's killing me being so close to you all the time and knowing that I can't..." he was wordless at this, and finished his sentence again by kissing her. When he pulled away, he shook his head. "If you can do that, I'll leave, but just...say something."

She responded by kissing him fiercely, forgetting that they were still in the break room where anyone could walk in and see them. It wasn't long before tongues were clashing furiously, mouths melding together so intricately as they had done a few nights previously. The kiss moved them, both emotionally and physically, so that when they parted Lisbon found herself pressed against the counter beside the fridge, with Jane holding her fast against him, stirring feelings that had lead them to falling into bed together the other day, feelings that she never thought that she would have for Patrick Jane of all people. Yet, there he was, whispering committed words that would usually have her running a mile away from the man, but instead it bought her closer to him.

"So, does this mean..." he whispered, breathing heavily against her when they parted.

"You know what this means," she said simply.

"Wow," he breathed.

She sighed. "I'm just not sure how this is going to work."

"That, too, is simple," he assured her. "You're going to give into my charms after all these years and we'll be deliriously happy together."

She smiled, but shook her head. "I'm serious, Patrick."

"Do you think I would have risked everything if I weren't serious?" he asked her. "It's going to be hard and we're going to have to stand up for what we want and prove to everyone that it isn't a mistake, but I can do that. I can defend our relationship, fighting for us rather than against. I will fight for us, if you're in this with me."

"You love me," she whispered.

"Yeah, I do," he nodded. "I love you." She was silent..."but you don't love me?"

"No, I do," she insisted quickly. "It's..it's a hard word for me to say."

He laughed gently. "You think it was easy for me?"

She smiled sadly, ducking her eyes away for a moment. "The only man I ever said 'I love you' to stole my two-year-old, did unspeakable things to him and left his body in a ditch. I told Mark that I loved him and he responded by taking my Ben from me and shaking the life out of him." She put her hand on his cheek. "I know that you're not the monster that he is and you could never hurt anybody in that way, but I haven't been able to say those words since. You know the way I feel about you, but I need you to give me time to be able to say it."

He nodded. "As long as you do feel that way."

"You know I do," she assured him, pressing her lips to his once again.

When they parted, she sighed heavily, leaning her head against his shoulder. "The unicorn?" she asked him.

"Oh," he remembered, looking over his shoulder. "It was my daughter's," he told her.

"Why did you bring it here?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to."

"Ok," she accepted.

"You ok?" he asked her.

"This is really over, isn't it?" she realised. "He's really gone."

"Yeah, he is," he murmured.

He felt her smile against him. "It's quite nice to know that I'm not going to be murdered."

"Yeah," he nodded, wrapping his arms around her. "That's quite a relief for me as well."