Title: Speed
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jane/Lisbon
Spoilers: None
Summary: Jane and Lisbon. In a car. He's driving too fast. She hates it.
Notes: Couple of swears
Prompt: reason behind Lisbon's complaints against Jane driving.
Speed
He'd insisted. He'd bloody insisted upon driving her car to the crime scene. Patrick Jane had only been working for the SCU for three days, reckoning if he could work out her favourite colour, of all things, she should allow him to drive. And naturally, using his stupid mental tricks, he did.
Lisbon cringed as they careered around yet another corner, this so-called consultant taking it way, way too fast. She clenched her jaw as her hand tightened on the door handle, to the extent that her knuckles began whitening. This was definitely going to be the last time she ever let him drive her anywhere.
She gasped for air. She did not want to die. Not like this, not like…
Lisbon shook her head and refocused. Carefully, she counted from one to ten slowly, trying to bring her breathing back under control. She absolutely was not going to make a fool out of herself in front of that sonovabitch consultant that Minelli had foisted upon her.
All she could see was her mother. Her beautiful, caring mother kissing her gently on the forehead whilst ensuring her daughter was strapped safely into that death trap. Just to go to the pharmacy to pick up a cold remedy to treat Teresa's cold. It was so terribly mundane. The other car had come out of nowhere. She had had her eyes firmly shut as impact was made, and the car spun. The sensations her body was subjected to was like some sick kind of fairground ride.
It had taken her half a minute to gain the confidence to open her eyes. It took another five for someone to stop and call 911, having discovered a little girl bawling, begging her Mommy to wake up. The bastard that hit them hadn't even had the decency to stop and see if either of them had survived.
Luckily, she had survived. Just a broken leg. When the kind nurse told her that her mother had died in the accident, she refused to believe. It wasn't until her tear-stricken father wrapped his arms around her, kissed her gently and told her 'Mommy's gone' that she began to realise she'd never see her mother again.
Lisbon never wanted to revisit those memories again. It had taken years of compartmentalisation for her to be able to cope, yet she still had an allegedly irrational fear of speeding, especially for a cop. If she could wish them away, she would have, but naturally that wasn't possible so attempting to forget was the closest she could get.
When Jane pulled to a halt, it was a blessed relief to get out. The moment he'd locked the car, she immediately snatched the keys out of his hands, glaring.
"You drive too fast," she announced. "You could have got us both killed."
"I do not," he retorted.
She breathed in deeply, glad for the cool air. At least the jumped-up psychic who wasn't hadn't seemed to notice just how nervous she had become in the car. However, something made her think that this would be an argument they'd revisit many a time.