A/N: Thanks for the amazing response to this story, whatever you are a registered reviewer (and I hope I remembered answering you), anonymous or a follower. Thanks, thanks, thanks… and on with all the answers to your many questions!
For the following two weeks, until she knew the pills wouldn't be effective again, Lisbon made excuses after excuses; sometimes she would be tired, and decided to go to bed early; sometimes, she would stop at work until the early mornings, working on this or that case; and then, there were the out-of-town cases, where she and Jane slept in separate rooms due to FBI policy and she wouldn't have to lie at all to her husband, and for those couple of nights she had an actual and true excuse to refuse his touch and his erotic caresses, she was grateful. Then, few weeks later, when she thought she was finally out of the blue, she realized that there was a good chance she had done it all for nothing.
Few days before, Grace had come over to visit while she was in Austin attending a seminar on cyber security, and Teresa had taken the day off to spend it with her long-time friend. In the evening, she had been very tired, and in the night she hadn't felt well, her stomach a real mess, and had decided to blame it on something she had eaten while out. But then the fatigue and the "bug" had kept her company for many other days, and Lisbon wasn't stupid; yes, she had never been pregnant, but she had seen her mother go through pregnancies, had read all about it, and she was pretty sure that no bug was supposed to be that nasty.
For few days, she was able to hide it, or at least kept the bug excuse up, but at a certain point it all became too much, and even Jane got worried about her when she refused coffee. But she had learnt a couple of tricks from him, and even in that occasion she had a reliable excuse to use with her husband.
"I'm just nervous, I think." She said, managing a smile, gulping down a mouthful of bread and butter, hoping that the rest would follow more easily. "I mean, today's your first day of official service after the end of your sentence."
Jane rolled his eyes at her. "You know I should be the one nervous, right?" he asked, chuckling in that way that turned her inside out. "Unless you are scared and fear that I'll eventually be accused of treason, terrorism, or whatever…"She didn't even bother him with an answer, just glared in his general direction and then, as soon as she was finished, she left, giving him a quick peck on the lips.
That day she was going to an appointment with her doctor, and had asked to Cho to sort of cover for her, saying to the others that they were supposed to go and meet a witness in one of their ongoing investigations.
Of course, she hadn't told him that she wasn't going with Jane because he didn't agree with starting a family of their own, but had said she didn't want to bring false hopes up, just in case, and that if she was indeed pregnant, it would have been a special gift for his new life as a man fully free. Her former subordinate had looked at her weirdly, and Lisbon couldn't help but wonder if he knew about Jane's "choices.", if there was something about her behavior that was screaming the truth in his face; she wouldn't have doubted it, after all, Cho was a person who didn't show a lot his emotions, but he was a good judge of character and she wouldn't put past him something like that; he was no Jane, there was no doubt, but in the last few days she had been alternating between peaks of joyful hope and depths of nervous despair, trying to maintain a calm outlook only in the hope of fooling Jane. After all, what else she could do at that point? Nothing. Exactly like Jane if the doctor would have confirmed her suspicions; nothing, if not accepting that their family was going to get bigger before he had planned.
When she got home it was late in the evening, and her heart filled at the sight of Jane sitting on the couch, two glasses of red wine on the coffee table in front of him, smiling mischievous at her as he patted the space next to his body. Shaking her head, amused, she left on a chair her purse and her jacket, and, abandoned midway to the couch her shoes, she joined her husband, snuggling at his side with a breath of relief. Jane smiled, and then took the two glasses, offering Lisbon to drink from his hand. She blushed and accepted, but after one sip, she moved away, shaking her head.
"You sure? There is a lot to celebrate. I am an FBI agent as from today, after all." She wanted to laugh: Jane wasn't exactly an FBI agent, but still a consultant, but he seemed to like to think of himself as of a federal agent, and if that made him happy, she wasn't going to fight with him about this. "And this Merlot has an excellent bouquet."
She laughed, wondering when and how he had picked the necessary knowledge about wine bouquets; she could almost see him, a man in his middle thirties, dressed to the nines and reading greedily Wine Spectator and Wine for dummies to impress the riches and the so-called celebrities.
"Finish yours and don't worry." She said, sweetly, her head on his shoulder, as Jane put an arm around her, his hand on her side, and brought her impossibly closer to him. he drank the wine, and then turned, his eyes searching for hers, and as he gave her a small kiss on the lips, he moved away a rebel lock of hair from her green eyes. Without breaking eye-contact, she took a big breath, and then, in a flash, she told him what she wanted to- almost. "I went to see my doctor, today."
She never stopped to look at him, and saw emotions running wild through his mind. She could see the fear and the despair, and she could well imagine what scenarios could populate the mind of a man who had lost everything already once in his lifetime. He opened his mouth again and again, but no sound escaped, but then Lisbon shook her head, her hands warm and so, so alive on his neck, forcing him to lift his face and look at her, see the truth: he wasn't going to lose her, not now, not over this, at least. "Jane… I'm not sick. I'm…" she paused, the breath died in her throat, but she had always been brave. She had always been a fighter: and this was a battle she was going to fight. And win. "I'm pregnant."
"What?" He just said after a long silence, his voice all but a whisper, his skin ghostly pale, his eyes in a world she didn't know of.
"I'm pregnant." She repeated, and this time her eyes looked at her own feet; she knew there was nothing to be ashamed of, but there was a little part of her that felt guilty, a little part of her that was scared of how Jane was going to react to the news. Of course she knew it wouldn't have been easy, she knew what he wanted, after all, but she had been sure that, being the intelligent man that he was, he would have accepted the reality for what it was and rolled with the tide.
"How?" he demanded, his eyes ice-cold, his hands fisting at his sides. He wasn't going to hurt her, both because he wasn't that kind of man, both because he was well aware that she was stronger than him, but the was something of utterly scare in his monosyllabic sentences, in the icy glare he was sending her way, something that was way worse than any perp she had ever met, Red John drawing a bloody smiley on her face included.
"I… I forgot one pill." She said, faltering. "Just one."
"One's enough, isn't it?" he said, and suddenly he stood up, and went right before her, looming over Lisbon like the ghost of some horror story, the monster ready to devour his prey after having tortured her. "You stubborn, little…" he gesticulated, shaking his head. "You wanted a baby and what, played Russian Roulette with your pills?"
"Jane!" she screamed, her eyes teary and she stood up, looking down at him despite her height, but he ignored her, keeping talking like she wasn't there, like that wasn't supposed to be a discussion between the two of them.
"You always have to be right, and people always have to follow your rules, uh? You have to get your own way, come hell or high water."
"I didn't plan it!" she protested.
"Of course, it happened only right when you wanted it to, but by accident." He chuckled darkly, his voice filled with angry sarcasm. Teresa took a step back, barely recognizing the man before her. or maybe recognizing him all too well: that wasn't her Jane, but the one who had hunted down Red John, a man obsessed and with only one thing in his mind. What had he said? Come hell or high water. "What an idiot, to think you would have never gone behind my back…"
She closed her teary eyes, and braced herself, her hands on her still flat stomach as she listened to his accusations. "It was an accident, Jane, I just forgot. That day we fought at the office… when I thought you had left me…"
He looked, if anything, more furious than ever, his eyes narrowed and glittering, his voice icy. "Are you blaming me?"
"No. I'm not blaming anyone. I mean, I know I should have remembered, but I didn't, and we're having a baby." Her eyes stung with tears. "Jane, I know you think it's too soon, but it's happened. Please—can't we just be glad?"
"No," he said coldly. "I'm not glad. I feel sick to my stomach. I don't want this baby. I don't want it!"
She put out her hands to touch him, draw him close to her, sooth his obvious pain with her caresses. It had worked until that day: it had to work now too. "You can't mean that!" she said. "Not really, it isn't true!" He had told her he wanted to have a family with her one day, didn't he? He couldn't have lied to her about this. She had seen him in the past; he loved children. He did have to want a family of his own. Unless…
Unless she had been right when they had first started to play this dangerous game, and she was nothing more than second best, a mere rebound for something that couldn't be any longer.
"I DO!" he snapped, putting his hands between them, trying to put some distance between himself and his wife. He shook his head, in silence for a few, brief instants. "Don't touch me, just, don't touch me now. Just, leave me alone, all right?"
She watched in horror, for the second time in few weeks, as he took his jacket and flown the room, slamming the front door as he left, he didn't stay out all night, and Lisbon knew, as she had looked at him from their bedroom, that Jane had merely paced the garden for hours and hours. At a certain point, she had gotten to bed, keeping her eyes open as she waited for him; but when he come back, he didn't say a word, didn't check if she was awake or not, and she was still too shaken by his outburst to be the one to break the silence. So, as he went to bed at her side, putting as much distance between their bodies as he could, she simply laid in the dark, listened to his breathing until the sound didn't tell her that he was either sleeping or faking it.
When she woke up in the morning, Jane was already buttoning his shirt, while she felt heavy-headed and nauseous again. He looked at her, but didn't dare to meet her eyes, concentrating instead on his cuffs. "You'd better go back to bed. I'll call the office and tell them you'll run late." He simply said as he approached the door.
"I'm fine, Jane." She simply said, stern. She lifted her head, daring him to defy her. It wasn't just because of what he had said about her baby – their baby – it was a matter pride. She was pregnant, after all, not sick; billions of women had done it before of her, her own mother had done so four times. She could do it. She could still go to the office and do her work, and expecting, all at the same time.
But as soon as she ended the sentence, she ran towards the bathroom, and kneeling on the white porcelain, threw out what little she had had for dinner the previous evening. She left the room, and saw Jane still on the threshold of their bedroom, hands in the pockets of his slacks. "You can go. I'll get to the office with my car."
His mouth tightened, and he left without kissing her goodbye. For the rest of the week, and the following one, they existed in a state of armed truce, mouthing polite nothings at each other, sleeping apart in the same bed, putting on a front of polite tolerance whenever they were on the job; she didn't dare to be the one to break the news to Abbott, and Jane didn't mention breaking the subject with his boss, like he didn't care if Teresa was on desk duty or out in the field, risking her own life and the one of their unborn baby.
On Saturday, she went to the hairdresser, and while she was waiting she found a magazine and read an article about 'Your First Baby'. One of the common problems, the writer said, was the father's jealousy of the new baby. The wife must be on her guard, and not devote all her attention to the baby at the expense of her husband.
Was that all it was? Teresa wondered. Jane had said more than once that he wanted her to himself for a while, when she had dropped the subject of having a child for the first time. And yet she couldn't believe that he was so immature(despite everything pointing to the contrary, at times.); it might have been possible in his first marriage, when he had been younger, vain and self-centred, but she couldn't believe it could be what was going on with him; not after what had happened to his first family.
Still, she was clutching at straws now. Anything was worth trying. Perhaps he did resent her preoccupation with the question of a baby. Maybe he really felt that she saw him more as a means to an end than a person she loved in his own right- hadn't he joked about the fact that she seemed to consider him a baby-maker more than her own husband at least once, after all?
She went back home, and started the dinner, knowing that he would be out until late to play poker with Cho and another couple of fellow agents; when he arrived, she was stirring the sauce for their pasta, the coffee table in front of the couch already arranged with their best clothing and two candlesticks with blue candles.
"Is this a special occasion?" He asked rather dryly, his arms crossed as he joined her in the kitchen, leaning against the aisle at her side- the closest they had been in the whole week.
"Sort of," she said evasively. "I'm making it one, anyway. I bought some wine. Can you pour it, please?"
"Do you want to start now?" he asked as he handed her a glass.
She sipped with one hand while stirring with the other, then put down the glass to remove the pot and turn off the heat, simply nodding with a bright smile on her face.
She took the plates and joined him in the other room, where Jane had already lit the candles, and was lounging in a corner of the sofa, his glass in his hand, his eyes on the fire she had started earlier, although the weather wasn't particularly cold.
"How did the game go?" she asked, and his eyes crinkled with slightly cynical amusement, but at least he smiled, if a little tightly.
"Meh, you know." Which meant he had won at least a couple of rounds. "Do we really have to talk about it? I don't feel too chatty right now."
They didn't say a word, but the silence was too much for Lisbon to bear, so she turned on the cd player, and soft jazz music filled the room as they ate, and when the plates were empty she took them to the kitchen and brought back the dessert.
"You've got to admire it before you eat it" she said, placing the cup on the table between them, offering him a spoon. He smiled as he saw that she had prepared a Sundae, and his heart filled with tender and sweet memories of the many ice-creams they had shared when they were just co-workers, merely friends; her heart lightened, as was the first genuine smile he had given her in days.
"Teresa… what's this all about?" he asked as he looked for her eyes-finally. She hadn't seen his eyes in days, and she was glad to have a view of his stormy ocean.
She kept in silence for a while, then, when she saw that he wasn't talking, nor stopping to look into her eyes, she took all her courage and finally spoke, reading it all as a signal that he was ready to have the talk. "I didn't do it on purpose, Jane. I swear to you I didn't. Oh, perhaps my subconscious had something to do with it. But I wouldn't have ever cheated on you like that deliberately, and you know it."
Jane reached out his hand and pulled her head down to his shoulder, kissing her dark hair like he had done so many times in the past; and yet, it didn't feel the same, but like there was an edge to him in some way. "No, you wouldn't." He said slowly, his hand stroking her hair. "I know."
She sighed a breath of relief on his neck, her hand clutching at his shirt front. "I'm so sorry, Jane."
He raised her head with his hand under her chin and kissed her. "I'm sorry, too. I spoiled your big news, didn't I?"
She simply shook her head, sniffing. "It doesn't matter. I knew you wouldn't be pleased, really, because it was too soon. Only I didn't realise you'd be quite so angry. I thought you'd get over it, and be glad. It's our child, not just mine. And I wouldn't want it if I didn't love you so much." She paused as he stared in awe at her; she knew he was aware of her feelings, but it was the first time she was actually voicing them. "I love you, Jane." She said earnestly, determined to convince him of it. "Even if you couldn't give me a baby I'd still love you, but you have, and—if it's possible, it's made me love you even more."
His smile was wry. "Yes, I have. And I suppose I'll just have to accept it."
Uncertainly, frustrated, she looked for his eyes, and forced him to look at her. "Why is it so hard?" she asked. "You didn't really mean it when you said you don't want it, did you?"
"What's done is done," he said, loosening his hold on her. "The ice-cream is melting."
Getting that for Jane for now the topic was over, she offered him a spoon and started to eat from the glass dish. Stoic acceptance was less than she had hoped for, but perhaps it was all she could expect. She felt a little spurt of exasperated anger. He had made a decision to wait, against her wishes, and not only she, but nature itself, was to abide by that, apparently. Maybe he had become a little too accustomed to making decisions for others with his schemes and manipulations and cons, and perhaps she had let him go on treating her like a child, or worst, a subordinate, for too long. He didn't necessarily know best just because he was Patrick Jane, almighty closer and mentalist and supreme con artist. "You can't always order life exactly to your specifications," she reminded him. "Sometimes things just don't go according to plan."
"Do you think I don't know that?" he asked violently, and she cringed when hit by the memory of the perfect family she had seen in his picture, him, young and rich and famous and powerful, and his beautiful wife and daughter. Of course he knows it. He had lost everything in an heartbeat.
Shaking her head, she muttered, "I'm sorry. I guess I'm just disappointed that you're not happier about the baby."
"Give me time. You always tend to expect too much from me, Teresa. Try to ease up a little, hmm?" he said rather wearily. "So… tea?"
She nodded, pleased that he was offering her tea instead of coffee. Maybe he was getting used to the idea. Maybe he was worrying about their child's health, after all. She smiled at him a little anxiously when he came back with the cups, and afterwards they sat side by side, his arm around her shoulders, her hair against his cheek.
"Tell me, Lisbon," he said, rolling between his teeth her "old" surname like it was the most erotic, or he was talking dirty to her in bed, an hand busy playing with her dark hair. "Were you trying to seduce me over a meal?"
"A little?" she admitted, a bit guilty because she had been caught red-handed doing something he considered all but childish. "Why, did it work?" she snorted, sure that no, it hadn't worked, but then she turned to look at him, and saw that mischievous light in her eyes and she blushed at the realisation.
When he began kissing her, she responded eagerly, and some minutes later she begged him to take her to bed, and smiling against the tender skin of her mouth, Jane nodded his agreement and took her in his arms, bridal style, and practically run to their bed.
He all but threw her on the bed between giggles and laughs and smiles, and he began to explore her, frantically, having missed her too much since she had told him about the baby and he had refused her the comfort of his naked skin; it was just as good as ever, his caresses driving her frantic with desire until she was hovering on the edge, waiting for him to take her over the brink, but at a certain point he started to hesitate, holding back.
Frustrated and puzzled, she looked for his face, and suddenly realised that something was wrong. Unable to believe what was happening, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him with desperate passion, and he reciprocated, his hands biting into her shoulders, his mouth bruising. But then he suddenly broke away from her and rolled over on his back, his hand over his eyes.
"I can't!" he said, angrily,
Stunned, she sat at his back, and massaged his shoulders through the think cloth of his shirt. "Jane…" She said tentatively, as he moved away from her. "What's the matter?"
"Can't you tell what's the matter?" he asked, his voice filled with dry humour.
"I know, but, what I mean… why?"
"I don'tknow, all right? It never happened with…"
With Angela. With Lorelai. With all the women who had gotten me aroused in the years, when I just got rid of my urges on my own. He didn't need to say it at loud- she got the message loud and clear, and it broke something in her heart.
Abruptly she lay back on her own pillow, and when his hand touched her arm she retreated from his touch.
"I'm… sorry, Reese." He said. "Can I do something for you, darling?"
"No!" She said sharply. "I'm all right."
She felt humiliated as well as shocked. He hadn't really wanted to make love to her, only she had set the scene so carefully and it must have been obvious that she had in mind a passionate reconciliation. She had practically seduced him, and he had gone along with it until his body had rejected her of its own accord. Women could pretend passion—not that she had ever needed to with him—but men could only fake it up to a certain point. She turned her back on him, curled herself into a ball under the blankets, and waited for sleep to come. It didn't.
For the both of them.