FIC: "Alone Together on New Year's" Part 2/2 (Lisbon/Jane, rated R)
Title: Alone Together on New Year's (Part 2/2)
Author: abelard
Pairing: Lisbon/Jane
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, nope.
Summary: Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon spend New Year's Eve and New Year's Day together.
Part One here
They enter Lisbon's apartment, a two-story townhouse that Jane estimates is exactly as large and as well-designed a dwelling as Lisbon could afford (with some hard negotiating, of which he is certain she is fully capable) on her CBI salary. He noticed, when he arrived earlier, that Lisbon has decorated her space in a sparse, modern style, and now he decides that a stranger would probably guess that a single man lives here. The browns and deep reds of the walls and the furnishings, the absence of patterns or florals or any light colors, the strict rectilinearity of the layout, all seemingly announce "hardworking bachelor." But Jane, being no stranger, is able to look closer and see the softness of all the textures that Lisbon uses in her space, all the high-quality textiles covering the sofas and chairs, and the plushness of the area rugs. He imagines walking around barefoot in her living room and sinking his toes into those rugs. A moment later, Jane realizes that walking around barefoot in Lisbon's apartment is not only possible, but likely. He is, after all, spending the night.
"See you in the morning," Lisbon says, and after a few curt instructions about where the downstairs bathroom is, and where she left a towel and washcloth for him, she walks upstairs, still wearing her coat and shoes, without so much as wishing him so much as a "Happy New Year."
Well, he isn't, after all, spending the night that way.
Jane changes into sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt and uses Lisbon's guest bathroom, which is nearly bare, except for some unused white hand soaps that are shaped like roses, which sit in a little pyramid inside a brass dish, and a hand towel hanging on a brass hook beside the sink. Jane can tell that the bathroom was cleaned recently - perhaps a week ago - but the fact that it wasn't cleaned yesterday means that Lisbon didn't clean it especially for him. Jane is glad. Ever since he first had the thought of asking Lisbon if he could spend New Year's with her, he's had trouble examining his own motives. But now he knows: he'd wanted to come because Lisbon wouldn't treat his coming as a special occasion. She wouldn't treat it like anything. He could count on her home as a place where he could be a complete non-event, and yet still not be unknown.
When Jane climbs between the sheets of the sofa bed in Lisbon's den, he wonders about how many weapons she keeps in the house (at least four, he decides, based on Lisbon's penchant for thoroughness and preparation), and drifts off, feeling safer than he usually does. When he is alone, he usually doesn't feel safe in the slightest.
*****
In the morning, Lisbon awakens before Jane. She's got eggs and bacon going on the stove and when Jane stumbles into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, his hair tousled beautifully and maddeningly without artifice, she sets him to work making toast and juicing oranges. When everything is ready to Lisbon's satisfaction (she makes him double-toast her toast), she gestures in the direction of a pile of DVDs next to her flat screen and tells him to pick something.
"Me?" Jane asks, and Lisbon almost wants to ask snidely who else she could possibly have been talking to, but she doesn't.
"I'm going to watch them all, anyway. Just pick one to start off with," she says.
She brought down pillows and spare comforters from her linen closet as soon as she got up, and she crawls under one fluffy cloud of down while Jane puts his selection in the DVD player. It's "WALL-E," just one of a hundred movies that Lisbon didn't manage to see in a proper theater when it came out. Jane eyes Lisbon, as if asking permission to use the other comforter, but Lisbon isn't one for niceties and lets her silence be her assent. She doesn't like to talk much on her days off, and she hopes that Jane gets that hint soon. Thankfully, he says nothing when he pulls the comforter over his lap. They eat their breakfast and drink their juice in silence, and the only sounds are the whirrs and beeps of the movie, and Jane and Lisbon's laughter.
They get through the first film and by unspoken agreement, take a break to do dishes. Lisbon washes and Jane dries. It's unnecessary of him to do anything, but Lisbon doesn't stop him when he picks up the dishtowel and stands by her side, receiving each plate and pan as she finishes rinsing them. She starts boiling some water for tea and Jane puts another DVD into the player. Fifteen minutes into "Iron Man," the tea is ready and Lisbon brings out two steaming cups and leaves one by Jane's feet, where they are propped up on her coffee table. They drink and watch companionably, without a word spoken.
It's exactly what Lisbon wanted to do on New Year's Day, and was going to do anyway by herself, and she's grateful that Jane hasn't ruined it. She'd had visions of him trying to tell her fortune with tarot cards, pulling coins out of her ear or doing other parlor tricks that he would find so amusing and she would only roll her eyes at. Sometimes, at work, she is infinitely grateful for the ridiculous distractions he provides to the team, in the midst of their grim and sometimes dangerous labors. But on her time off, she wants to be subjected to no entertainment other than six-month-old Hollywood blockbusters. If Jane had started in with antics, she would have told him to go. She'd even practiced a couple of lines when she first started making breakfast - Try hypnotizing me today and I'll smack you had come to mind - but now, four hours later, she's happily shocked that he's not at all the smartass fast-talking charmer he always is at work.
He's quiet. He's just as quiet as she is. Jane. Quiet.
Lisbon shakes her head and smiles, and it's not at the movie.
*****
After "Iron Man," Lisbon gets up from the couch and stretches. Jane tries not to look (too hard) at her sweatshirt riding up, exposing her stomach, as she reaches for the sky, her eyes closed. When she lowers her arms and opens her bright eyes, she asks in a neutral (and yet, perennially commanding) voice, "Hike?"
Jane nods. He likes this. He likes Lisbon not making small talk or pleasantries. She could have said, "It's a beautiful day. What do you think about going for a walk? There are some great trails around here...." She could have played the Good Host. But no, not Teresa Lisbon. She gets up, she says "Hike," and then she leaves to put on jeans and a t-shirt while you do the same, and then ten minutes later she's out the front door and you'd better be ready to jump in the car when she does. He likes the complete and utter absence of bullshit. He, who speaks nothing but bullshit most of his days, who has made millions of dollars from making his b.s. seem like gold, and who still uses it to more worthwhile effect on suspects of every walk of life, is so relieved to spend time with someone like this. Someone who doesn't know anything but What Is. Who doesn't use extra words or extra motions. Who never smiles unless she feels it.
Jane's smiles are mostly worthless, empty. Meaningless. He deploys them like weapons, like bait, like oil to grease someone's wheels. That's why he loves Lisbon's smiles. They are weighty, heavy. Like metal. Like stone. They're not given lightly, and he hoards them in his memory.
Lisbon smiles a lot while they're out hiking in the hills. They don't talk much, but they do some. Mostly about the flora and fauna that they encounter, which leads to a few stories about boy scouts (Jane wasn't one) and girl scouts (Lisbon was one), and science classes in junior high and high school and college, and a habit that they both share: when they encounter a plant or a flower whose name they don't know, they look it up later. They both do this. Lisbon seems to think it's a weird coincidence that they have this habit in common, but Jane understands it.
He's known for a while that he and Lisbon share odd corners, have strange and uneven overlaps of personality and mind. Every outfacing aspect of them differs. But the terrain inside....Jane sometimes thinks that if he could reach into himself and pull out the glowing jewel that is at his core, it would be the same color as Lisbon's.
Or no - it would be a complementary color, he corrects himself.
*****
Lisbon says she plans to cook an Irish beef stew for dinner. Jane asks, "Can I help?" Lisbon says, "You can dice the vegetables," and that's that. He stays for dinner.
When they're all done and the dishes are cleared, it's not late but it's nearly Lisbon's usual bedtime. Despite this, she asks if Jane wants to go look at the night sky for a few minutes. She's happy whenever she can take Patrick Jane by surprise, and this is one of those moments that makes her happy. "Sure," he says, trying to look like he expected the invitation but she knows he didn't.
"I like the stars," Lisbon says, deciding it's okay to share that with him. She tries not to assess every word that she says to him before she says it, but this is her life that he's entered for this day, this is her world and who she is, and she has to judge what parts of herself she can expose and what she has to keep wrapped up. For now, at least. For the foreseeable future.
"I do, too," says Jane, next to her. They are sitting on her picnic table on her back patio. Although it's winter and most people store or cover their patio furniture, she leaves out this table all year long for expressly this purpose: to sit on when she wants to look at the stars at night.
"Do you have a favorite constellation?" Jane asks.
Lisbon hopes he's not fishing for information to use against her - to tease her about, or even worse, to base his predictions or analysis on. She hopes his query has absolutely nothing to do with astrology. She takes a breath and she says, "Well, I like the moon best." It's not a direct answer to Jane's question, and anyway, he already knows her sign, and furthermore it's the truth, so she feels safe in saying it.
Jane looks at Lisbon to the point of staring at her. She reminds me of the moon, he thinks, and then he has a hard time understanding why that is. He decides it's because the moon is luminous, and looks solid and still even though it changes all the time, and that these are some of the ways in which Lisbon is beautiful to him.
******
They say goodnight with no flourishes and no urgency. Jane thanks her for letting him come over and Lisbon shrugs and smiles, and Jane knows she's enjoyed their time, too. He would like to give her a hug, as would be appropriate between friends who'd spent New Year's together (he thinks), but they would never hug after spending days on end together on a case, and so it seems like now is not the right time to start exchanging hugs with Lisbon. So he raises a hand as a gesture of goodbye, and walks out to his car. He notices that Lisbon watches him pull out of her driveway before she closes the door.
Jane can think of a lot of paths that his relationship with Lisbon might take. None of them are easy. But he believes that all of them will be worth it. He has sudden visions of another holiday spent in Lisbon's house, on Lisbon's couch, in which they only need one comforter, rather than two, because they are sharing. He imagines pulling her towards him, till she is underneath him, giggling (ah - what he would give to hear the sound of Lisbon giggling), and he is dragging her sweatshirt up, up, over her head, and her pajama pants down, and she is breathing heavy in his ear and moaning as he invades her space, way, way more than he just did today.
The next time they do something like this - and Jane doesn't know much about his future, but he feels secure in saying there will be a next time that he and Lisbon do something like this - Jane decides that he will give Lisbon a hug before he leaves. Next time.
end
Author: abelard
Pairing: Lisbon/Jane
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, nope.
Summary: Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon spend New Year's Eve and New Year's Day together.
Part One here
They enter Lisbon's apartment, a two-story townhouse that Jane estimates is exactly as large and as well-designed a dwelling as Lisbon could afford (with some hard negotiating, of which he is certain she is fully capable) on her CBI salary. He noticed, when he arrived earlier, that Lisbon has decorated her space in a sparse, modern style, and now he decides that a stranger would probably guess that a single man lives here. The browns and deep reds of the walls and the furnishings, the absence of patterns or florals or any light colors, the strict rectilinearity of the layout, all seemingly announce "hardworking bachelor." But Jane, being no stranger, is able to look closer and see the softness of all the textures that Lisbon uses in her space, all the high-quality textiles covering the sofas and chairs, and the plushness of the area rugs. He imagines walking around barefoot in her living room and sinking his toes into those rugs. A moment later, Jane realizes that walking around barefoot in Lisbon's apartment is not only possible, but likely. He is, after all, spending the night.
"See you in the morning," Lisbon says, and after a few curt instructions about where the downstairs bathroom is, and where she left a towel and washcloth for him, she walks upstairs, still wearing her coat and shoes, without so much as wishing him so much as a "Happy New Year."
Well, he isn't, after all, spending the night that way.
Jane changes into sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt and uses Lisbon's guest bathroom, which is nearly bare, except for some unused white hand soaps that are shaped like roses, which sit in a little pyramid inside a brass dish, and a hand towel hanging on a brass hook beside the sink. Jane can tell that the bathroom was cleaned recently - perhaps a week ago - but the fact that it wasn't cleaned yesterday means that Lisbon didn't clean it especially for him. Jane is glad. Ever since he first had the thought of asking Lisbon if he could spend New Year's with her, he's had trouble examining his own motives. But now he knows: he'd wanted to come because Lisbon wouldn't treat his coming as a special occasion. She wouldn't treat it like anything. He could count on her home as a place where he could be a complete non-event, and yet still not be unknown.
When Jane climbs between the sheets of the sofa bed in Lisbon's den, he wonders about how many weapons she keeps in the house (at least four, he decides, based on Lisbon's penchant for thoroughness and preparation), and drifts off, feeling safer than he usually does. When he is alone, he usually doesn't feel safe in the slightest.
*****
In the morning, Lisbon awakens before Jane. She's got eggs and bacon going on the stove and when Jane stumbles into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, his hair tousled beautifully and maddeningly without artifice, she sets him to work making toast and juicing oranges. When everything is ready to Lisbon's satisfaction (she makes him double-toast her toast), she gestures in the direction of a pile of DVDs next to her flat screen and tells him to pick something.
"Me?" Jane asks, and Lisbon almost wants to ask snidely who else she could possibly have been talking to, but she doesn't.
"I'm going to watch them all, anyway. Just pick one to start off with," she says.
She brought down pillows and spare comforters from her linen closet as soon as she got up, and she crawls under one fluffy cloud of down while Jane puts his selection in the DVD player. It's "WALL-E," just one of a hundred movies that Lisbon didn't manage to see in a proper theater when it came out. Jane eyes Lisbon, as if asking permission to use the other comforter, but Lisbon isn't one for niceties and lets her silence be her assent. She doesn't like to talk much on her days off, and she hopes that Jane gets that hint soon. Thankfully, he says nothing when he pulls the comforter over his lap. They eat their breakfast and drink their juice in silence, and the only sounds are the whirrs and beeps of the movie, and Jane and Lisbon's laughter.
They get through the first film and by unspoken agreement, take a break to do dishes. Lisbon washes and Jane dries. It's unnecessary of him to do anything, but Lisbon doesn't stop him when he picks up the dishtowel and stands by her side, receiving each plate and pan as she finishes rinsing them. She starts boiling some water for tea and Jane puts another DVD into the player. Fifteen minutes into "Iron Man," the tea is ready and Lisbon brings out two steaming cups and leaves one by Jane's feet, where they are propped up on her coffee table. They drink and watch companionably, without a word spoken.
It's exactly what Lisbon wanted to do on New Year's Day, and was going to do anyway by herself, and she's grateful that Jane hasn't ruined it. She'd had visions of him trying to tell her fortune with tarot cards, pulling coins out of her ear or doing other parlor tricks that he would find so amusing and she would only roll her eyes at. Sometimes, at work, she is infinitely grateful for the ridiculous distractions he provides to the team, in the midst of their grim and sometimes dangerous labors. But on her time off, she wants to be subjected to no entertainment other than six-month-old Hollywood blockbusters. If Jane had started in with antics, she would have told him to go. She'd even practiced a couple of lines when she first started making breakfast - Try hypnotizing me today and I'll smack you had come to mind - but now, four hours later, she's happily shocked that he's not at all the smartass fast-talking charmer he always is at work.
He's quiet. He's just as quiet as she is. Jane. Quiet.
Lisbon shakes her head and smiles, and it's not at the movie.
*****
After "Iron Man," Lisbon gets up from the couch and stretches. Jane tries not to look (too hard) at her sweatshirt riding up, exposing her stomach, as she reaches for the sky, her eyes closed. When she lowers her arms and opens her bright eyes, she asks in a neutral (and yet, perennially commanding) voice, "Hike?"
Jane nods. He likes this. He likes Lisbon not making small talk or pleasantries. She could have said, "It's a beautiful day. What do you think about going for a walk? There are some great trails around here...." She could have played the Good Host. But no, not Teresa Lisbon. She gets up, she says "Hike," and then she leaves to put on jeans and a t-shirt while you do the same, and then ten minutes later she's out the front door and you'd better be ready to jump in the car when she does. He likes the complete and utter absence of bullshit. He, who speaks nothing but bullshit most of his days, who has made millions of dollars from making his b.s. seem like gold, and who still uses it to more worthwhile effect on suspects of every walk of life, is so relieved to spend time with someone like this. Someone who doesn't know anything but What Is. Who doesn't use extra words or extra motions. Who never smiles unless she feels it.
Jane's smiles are mostly worthless, empty. Meaningless. He deploys them like weapons, like bait, like oil to grease someone's wheels. That's why he loves Lisbon's smiles. They are weighty, heavy. Like metal. Like stone. They're not given lightly, and he hoards them in his memory.
Lisbon smiles a lot while they're out hiking in the hills. They don't talk much, but they do some. Mostly about the flora and fauna that they encounter, which leads to a few stories about boy scouts (Jane wasn't one) and girl scouts (Lisbon was one), and science classes in junior high and high school and college, and a habit that they both share: when they encounter a plant or a flower whose name they don't know, they look it up later. They both do this. Lisbon seems to think it's a weird coincidence that they have this habit in common, but Jane understands it.
He's known for a while that he and Lisbon share odd corners, have strange and uneven overlaps of personality and mind. Every outfacing aspect of them differs. But the terrain inside....Jane sometimes thinks that if he could reach into himself and pull out the glowing jewel that is at his core, it would be the same color as Lisbon's.
Or no - it would be a complementary color, he corrects himself.
*****
Lisbon says she plans to cook an Irish beef stew for dinner. Jane asks, "Can I help?" Lisbon says, "You can dice the vegetables," and that's that. He stays for dinner.
When they're all done and the dishes are cleared, it's not late but it's nearly Lisbon's usual bedtime. Despite this, she asks if Jane wants to go look at the night sky for a few minutes. She's happy whenever she can take Patrick Jane by surprise, and this is one of those moments that makes her happy. "Sure," he says, trying to look like he expected the invitation but she knows he didn't.
"I like the stars," Lisbon says, deciding it's okay to share that with him. She tries not to assess every word that she says to him before she says it, but this is her life that he's entered for this day, this is her world and who she is, and she has to judge what parts of herself she can expose and what she has to keep wrapped up. For now, at least. For the foreseeable future.
"I do, too," says Jane, next to her. They are sitting on her picnic table on her back patio. Although it's winter and most people store or cover their patio furniture, she leaves out this table all year long for expressly this purpose: to sit on when she wants to look at the stars at night.
"Do you have a favorite constellation?" Jane asks.
Lisbon hopes he's not fishing for information to use against her - to tease her about, or even worse, to base his predictions or analysis on. She hopes his query has absolutely nothing to do with astrology. She takes a breath and she says, "Well, I like the moon best." It's not a direct answer to Jane's question, and anyway, he already knows her sign, and furthermore it's the truth, so she feels safe in saying it.
Jane looks at Lisbon to the point of staring at her. She reminds me of the moon, he thinks, and then he has a hard time understanding why that is. He decides it's because the moon is luminous, and looks solid and still even though it changes all the time, and that these are some of the ways in which Lisbon is beautiful to him.
******
They say goodnight with no flourishes and no urgency. Jane thanks her for letting him come over and Lisbon shrugs and smiles, and Jane knows she's enjoyed their time, too. He would like to give her a hug, as would be appropriate between friends who'd spent New Year's together (he thinks), but they would never hug after spending days on end together on a case, and so it seems like now is not the right time to start exchanging hugs with Lisbon. So he raises a hand as a gesture of goodbye, and walks out to his car. He notices that Lisbon watches him pull out of her driveway before she closes the door.
Jane can think of a lot of paths that his relationship with Lisbon might take. None of them are easy. But he believes that all of them will be worth it. He has sudden visions of another holiday spent in Lisbon's house, on Lisbon's couch, in which they only need one comforter, rather than two, because they are sharing. He imagines pulling her towards him, till she is underneath him, giggling (ah - what he would give to hear the sound of Lisbon giggling), and he is dragging her sweatshirt up, up, over her head, and her pajama pants down, and she is breathing heavy in his ear and moaning as he invades her space, way, way more than he just did today.
The next time they do something like this - and Jane doesn't know much about his future, but he feels secure in saying there will be a next time that he and Lisbon do something like this - Jane decides that he will give Lisbon a hug before he leaves. Next time.
end