Title: Stealing
Rating: T
Characters: Jane/Lisbon
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Stealing
He's come to the conclusion that he is stealing from her.
That's what those furtive glances, those lingering looks at her back whilst she's berating someone, calming them down or just simply doing her job are. Stealing. He's taking something that isn't his. She's off-limits, mainly due to his own rigorous rules (and some of her own, too). But that doesn't change the fact that she will never, ever be his.
She doesn't notice, or at least, he doesn't think she does. Teresa Lisbon might be a good Agent, but she's not blessed (cursed?) with heightened powers of observation.
What she also doesn't know is that she is stealing from him, too. She may not be tall (she is barely 5'4"), with long, blonde locks (short, dark hair, never past her shoulders) or the mother of his child (she's his boss for crying out loud) but there's just something about her. Lisbon is still stealing emotions from him that she has absolutely no right to do so.
Like the time his pulse raced just that little bit faster because Kristina Frye demanded they hold hands. (He knew the deal with séances, why the hell did he have to stand next to her?) Or, the smile that erupts across his face every time he made her blush. (That occurred surprisingly often. Embarrassment was one of the emotions she particularly struggled at hiding.) And the way his heart just breaks every time she looks at him with disappointment just dripping from those honest eyes. (Maybe he should stop bending the rules quite so often…) She is even beginning to invade his scant dreams. (Can't quite blame her for that one.)They are emotions he singled out for his wife a long, long while ago. Yet, the tug in his heart is saying otherwise.
Every night when he sleeps in the CBI, he's absorbed in the smell of stale coffee, yesterday's pizza and just that faintest whiff of cinnamon soap.
The spicy sweetness of the soap is enough to drive Patrick Jane to tears.