Fic--All I Need Ch. 2
Title: All I Need Ch. 2
Author: foreverwriting9
Characters/Pairings: Jane/Lisbon
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,369
Summary: This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. She’s supposed to be there. To stop him, to save him, because that’s who they are.
-
Grab your torch and follow me,
We’ll burn the boats back to who we used to be.
Neulore, ‘Shadow of a Man’
Lisbon comes home from work the next day later than usual, and it’s so dark that she doesn’t see the man sitting silently in front of her door until she’s almost standing right on top of him. Her hand flies to her gun just as his deft fingers slip out and clasp her wrist.
“It’s just me, dear.”
Her posture visibly relaxes. “Dammit, Jane,” she hisses, trying to hide the trembling in her voice, but he catches it and runs his thumb soothingly across her skin. “This was really the last thing I needed today.” She realizes too late what that sounded like. Even in the dark she can see his face fall just a little, the light in his eyes dim.
His hand drops away from her arm and she misses the warmth instantly.
“Oh God, Jane. No, that’s not what I-” Lisbon shakes her head, fumbling with the words. “I meant the heart attack you just gave me. I’ve had a rough day.”
“Oh.” The relief in his voice is palpable and sends something bright and hot skittering through her chest. “I just,” Jane stops, his expression helpless. “I had to see you again.”
Lisbon takes a step toward him, feeling the darkness press down around them. In any other circumstance it would feel suffocating, but here with him it feels liberating and strangely like coming home. "Jane,” she says softly, reaching out to brush a hand against his sleeve.
Jane doesn’t seem to notice. He runs a hand distractedly through his hair, his gaze locked on their shoes. “I tried,” he says, voice ragged and tired. “I tried to go back to what I was doing and forget that I had seen you. But it didn’t work.” He looks up at her and shrugs, the corners of his mouth curling upward. “You’re very distracting, Lisbon.”
She smiles back at him, and oh how she’s missed this. “I thought nothing was too much for your famed concentration,” she says archly, taking another step forward before she can stop herself.
“You are,” he replies without missing a beat. “Especially now.”
Especially now. The words catch in her throat, sweet and honest and raw. That implies things, lots of things, and she can already feel herself overthinking it, words and glances and gestures tangling together in her head.
Jane clears his throat, the noise making Lisbon jump slightly and pulling her from her thoughts. He’s watching her steadily, knowingly, and it sends a shiver down her spine. “I should probably go,” he says eventually, after a minute more of looking at her. And then he’s pressing two fingers lightly into her arm and disappearing into the night again.
(But this is not the goodbye she wants.)
He’s halfway to the street by the time she can get the words out.
“Or you could stay.”
He stops with a jerk, turning around to face her. In the faint glow of the streetlight, Lisbon can see something fragile and breathtaking flit across his features. Then he grins. “Or I could stay," he echoes, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back onto his heels, waiting.
Lisbon shifts from foot to foot nervously, casting about for something to say that won’t totally give away her desperate need for his presence. Jane raises an eyebrow at her silence. “I have tea,” she says lamely, gesturing vaguely to her apartment.
Jane walks back toward her, pulls himself to a stop only once they are standing toe to toe. “Is that an invitation, Lisbon?”
She rolls her eyes and is just about to say something sarcastic when his fingers around hers stop her.
He leans in close, nose brushing against her hair as he whispers into her ear. “I’d love to stay, dear, thank you.” He reaches around her then and pushes the front door open.
Lisbon’s mouth drops open. “You-” Her nose scrunches up in indignation. “You broke into my home?”
Jane waves a hand dismissively at her. “You make it sound so illegal,” he says, using the other hand that’s still wrapped around hers to tug her forward.
She resists at first, trying to maintain the glare that’s leveled at his head. “That’s because it is.”
“Technicalities,” he says with a blinding smile and another tug on her hand.
This time she gives in, following close behind him as he pulls her into the warmth of her apartment and shuts the door behind them.
(There are things she wants to ask him, things she needs to say, but she lets him have this moment, lets things be bright and loud and wonderful just for this night.
She doesn’t know it at the time, but this is exactly what Jane needs.)
The next time she sees him, he’s sitting on her couch, weeks later, sipping tea, when she returns from a run.
“Jesus, Jane,” she swears as she pushes her front door shut behind her and tries to calm her pounding heart. “You need to stop scaring me like this.”
He turns around to smile at her, teacup half raised to his lips. “Today is a good day, Lisbon.”
This is the Jane she knows, Lisbon realizes as she makes her way toward him. He looks younger, the sadness she’s been so used to seeing lately suddenly replaced with something lighter and almost carefree. The smell of tea permeating the apartment makes something in the pit of her stomach ache with want.
“I missed you,” she blurts out.
If possible, his smile widens even more. “I missed you too.”
She flushes and ducks her head in response, shuffling her feet as she tries to decide what to do next. Jane’s gaze slides across her shoulders, and she can feel it in the answering tingle of her skin. She needs to get out of here before she does something reckless.
Without looking back at him, Lisbon moves into her kitchen. The smell of tea strengthens and her eyes flutter shut for a moment. She never thought she would see Jane with a teacup clutched between his fingers ever again and it’s overwhelming to suddenly have him back when she thought she had lost him.
From the next room, she can hear him cough, and she wonders for the umpteenth time if he really can read minds.
Lisbon clears her throat, trying to shake the gnawing feeling of loss that seems to have taken up permanent residence in her bones lately. “Why is today a good day?” she asks, snagging a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Well for one,” he says, “I’m here, with you, drinking tea.”
She swallows a gulp of water the wrong way and is left spluttering quietly until she manages to regain her composure. “And the other reason?” she finally gets out, voice a little shaky.
He pauses, seems to savor the words individually as they roll of his tongue. “I’m one step closer to finally being rid of Red John’s minions.”
Lisbon walks out of the kitchen and leans against the wall, arms folded across her chest as she takes him in. “Are you going to tell me what that entails?” she asks, but she already knows the answer.
“No,” he says, placing his cup on her coffee table. “And don’t even bother with that whole ‘I’m a cop’ thing, dear. It won’t change my mind.”
She frowns, but she’s not surprised. “Will you do two things for me then?”
Jane’s gaze fixes on her, his eyes clear and ocean blue. “Anything.”
She can see his steady heartbeat pounding away in his neck, and all of a sudden she finds it hard to breathe. “Tell me how you did it,” she says hoarsely, pushing herself off the wall and coming to sit opposite him on the couch. “Tell me how you faked your death.”
He shifts so that he’s sitting slightly closer to her, his hand along the back of the couch almost brushing her shoulder, and then he shrugs, his voice low. “I did cut myself,” he says, rolling up the cuff of one sleeve to show her a spidery scar, “but it was shallow and not in the right place.”
Lisbon’s fingers brush over his wrist before she even realizes what she’s doing and Jane’s eyes slide shut at the sensation.
“Where did all the blood come from then?” she asks softly, trying to keep her voice steady but not quite managing it.
He opens his eyes slowly, gaze heavy with something she can’t read. “The hospital,” he says. “They had some of it stored away for medical purposes, just in case. It wasn’t that difficult to swipe some of it. I had it hidden in my jacket, and when the time came I just punctured the bag...” He trails off, noting the unease on Lisbon’s face. “The rest was really just a clever biofeedback trick and a well paid friend disguised as an ME who was willing to pronounce me dead.”
She remembers the ME vaguely, a nice enough looking man who kept watching her curiously as she sat beside Jane’s body and gave quiet instructions to the rest of the team. He’d handed her wipes so that she could clean the blood from her skin.
Jane’s hand touches her shoulder lightly, pulling her from her thoughts. “Is there anything else you want to know?” he asks.
“No.” Lisbon’s voice is firm this time; she just needs the basics, not the insidious details. She doesn’t want to know how much time and effort and thought went into making his death successful, making her think she had lost her best friend for forever.
Jane nods, seeming to understand. “What’s your other request then?”
She looks at him, really looks at him then. He is all scars and sun and tragedy, but he is hers (and she is his), and that is what matters more than anything. Lisbon swallows roughly. “Be safe, Jane.” It’s a wish and a hope and an order all rolled into one and it makes him smile.
“I will, Lisbon. I promise.”
She doesn't tell the team about him. Partly because she's sure Jane needs her to keep it a secret until he's finished with whatever it is he's doing and partly because she wants to keep him to herself.
The sixth month anniversary of the day she washed his blood out of her clothes comes and goes without any word from him. She starts to get antsy. Rigsby and Cho start trying to slip her decaf coffee when they think she’s not paying attention. She begins having such a difficult time focusing on paperwork that Bertram starts mentioning her unused vacation days.
Finally, one day, Lisbon walks into her office and finds a huge vase of blue and purple hydrangeas waiting for her on her desk. Nobody knows who they’re from and the card that accompanies the flowers is blank and unsigned. This starts about ten new rumors, all spiraling and spinning off one another, about Teresa Lisbon and her secret admirer.
But for Lisbon the message is clear.
I’ll always come back to you.
Several days later, she wakes up and pads downstairs to make herself some coffee, only to find Jane asleep on her couch. The smile that pulls at her mouth is instantaneous and beautiful. She watches the early morning sunlight filter through his curls before carefully putting a blanket over him and then moving into the kitchen.
She returns to his side fifteen minutes later with a hot mug of coffee in one hand and a freshly brewed cup of tea in the other. He’s awake by now, blinking owlishly up at her when he smells the tea.
“Five,” he croaks tiredly.
“Good morning to you too,” Lisbon says, handing him the tea and trying to ignore the warmth that spills through her chest when he clumsily takes the cup from her, his fingers sliding against hers.
He rolls his eyes affectionately at her and swallows a quick sip of tea. “Five more Red John disciples,” he explains.
“Oh.” She needs to sit down. “Five. Just five?” She lowers herself slowly into a nearby chair.
Jane nods, wrapping one hand around his cup in a way that Lisbon finds distracting. “He didn’t leave behind hundreds of followers willing to continue where he left off. And the ones who are willing don’t possess nearly the same drive or skill that he did.” He nods again, as if reassuring himself, and then looks up at her with a cautious smile. “Five.”
Her gaze drifts over his shoulder to the nearest window, where everything is sky blue and glimmering with sunshine. She can feel the hope lodging itself somewhere in her ribcage, curling pleasantly up her spine. “And then you can be alive again?” She’s clutching her mug too tightly, and she can feel the hot ceramic starting to burn her palm and the pads of her fingers. Jane reaches forward and loosens her grip, plucking the mug from her grasp.
“And then I can be alive again,” he says, tapping her knee to draw her attention back to him.
Lisbon can see her hope mirrored in his eyes, a dangerous, delicate thing that draws her in and drowns her all at the same time. (But she can’t do this, not again.) Her fingers twist into the fabric of her jersey. “I just...I can’t-” She stops, suddenly overwhelmed by all the things she’ll have to go through again if she loses him this time for real. The pictures from last time flash before her eyes in a kaleidoscope of black and white smeared with red. His blood covered curls. The hazy funeral. The empty couch.
It will break her the second time around.
“Lisbon?”
She’s shaking.
“I’m fine,” she says, but the words are hollow and she can’t quite meet his gaze.
Suddenly, Jane’s standing in front of her, the morning sunlight catching in his hair and a promise hanging in his eyes. He rests one hand lightly on her knee, leaning forward until she’s forced to look at him. “Everything will be all right, Lisbon,” he says, voice sure and steady, “I swear.”
She has no choice but to trust him.