Fic--As Oceans Cover Me
Title: As Oceans Cover Me
Author: foreverwriting9
Characters/Pairings: Jane/Lisbon
Spoilers: A little AUish, but spoilers for entire series
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,440
Summary: In his dreams, Angela is still beautiful, and she speaks with Lisbon’s voice. “You’re being selfish and childish and I want you to stop.” Patrick Jane and a jumble of memories.
-
A thousand silhouettes dancing on my chest,
No matter where I sleep, you are haunting me.
Of Monsters and Men, ‘Silhouettes’
(1.)
He’s learning Three-Card Monte the day his mother disappears, and this is all he can remember.
His father frowns at him, hands moving quickly as he shuffles the cards across the table for the hundredth time. “You know what your problem is?” he asks.
Patrick shrugs, young and heartbreakingly naive. “What?”
“You never pay attention.” The words are followed by a quick cuff that catches him right behind the ear. “Now,” Alex Jane says, slapping the cards down and squinting at his son in the fading evening light, “pay attention, and find the lady.”
(2.)
The sand burns his feet, but he doesn’t notice, because he’s too busy staring at Angela. Bright and blonde and beautiful, she half dances along the shore, laughing when the waves catch up with her and wash over her toes. (He’s going to remember this moment forever.)
(1.)
Patrick reaches forward and flips over a card, a red ace, and his father shakes his head. “Stop being such a wise guy and pay attention.”
"I am," he insists, moving to pick up another card. He has it clutched between his fingers, just ready to turn over, when Sam walks up, a frown tugging at his mouth. His hand claps down heavily on Alex's shoulder, and then Sam leans down to whisper something in his ear.
The words are quick and dangerous, and no matter what Patrick does he can't hear them over the joyful carnival sounds that twist and fall through the air around them. But he watches, he pays attention. (And one day, this will mean everything.)
His father's face hardens, brows suddenly knit together in anger. "Dammit," he says, pushing away from the table and sending the deck of cards fluttering to the dusty ground.
(3.)
“We’re very sorry, Mrs. Tomlinson, but we believe your son may have been kidnapped,” Lisbon says, compassionate and human and everything Jane is not in this moment. He watches her try to console the weeping woman before turning his gaze to the array of pictures displayed on the mantle.
“Your husband left you a few years ago.”
Lisbon looks appalled. “Jane, you can’t-”
Mrs. Tomlinson looks up from her tissue, eyes wide and red. “How did you know that?”
“You still have a very faint line on your ring finger and the only pictures in your house are of you and Jason.” Jane shrugs. “Ergo, you were married at some point and then divorced, what two, three years ago? Enough time for you to replace all the pictures he would have been in but not enough time for the mark on your finger to completely fade.” He hardly stops for breath before continuing. “Was the custody battle very bad?”
“Jane,” Lisbon grits out.
He turns to her, unapologetic. “This is how I work, Lisbon.”
(1.)
Patrick watches his father go, confused when Sam gives him a sad smile before walking away. He turns his attention back to the card in his hand, running a finger over the worn edges. "I am the Boy Wonder," he murmurs to himself, smiling at the way the words feel on his tongue. He flips the card over.
It isn't a queen.
This is all he remembers.
(4.)
(“I talk to my wife.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yeah. Yeah, but I talk to her all the time.”)
In his dreams, Angela is still beautiful, and she speaks with Lisbon’s voice.
“You’re being selfish and childish and I want you to stop.”
“This is for you,” he says, and the lie feels so right, like a puzzle piece finally sliding into place. If he tries, he really does believe the words.
She shakes her head. “No, Patrick, this is for you.”
He frowns up into the blazing, red-hot sun. Dream Angela has a way of being entirely too perceptive. "But if I do this, if I do this one thing, it'll make things-"
"What," Angela says sharply, "better? Easier?" She bends down and scoops up a handful of sand, watching as the wind blows the grains between her fingers and away, away, away. "You're a horrible liar."
(3.)
An hour later, with questioning and consoling over, Lisbon turns to Jane. “Let’s go,” she says, gaze not quite meeting his, but instead landing just a little bit to his right. The set of her shoulders says she’s annoyed. Annoyed with the case and its seeming lack of answers. Annoyed with him for being a self-aggrandizing ass that only makes her job more difficult.
There will definitely be a lecture once they’re in the car.
As they move toward the front door, Mrs. Tomlinson follows, suddenly reaching for Jane’s arm as he tries to slip outside. Her fingers dig into the fabric of his jacket and hold tight, desperate. “Mr. Jane, please. Do you think Jason’s alive? Is there any reason to hope?”
Jane stares at her, remembering Angela barefoot and laughing in the sun. Charlotte smiling up at him from underneath her blankets as he told her a bedtime story. “No,” he says, and then walks away.
(5.)
"Mr. Jane, how do you plead?"
He can feel Lisbon's gaze heavy on his shoulders, disappointed and sad and he never meant to hurt her. (But that didn't stop him from doing it anyway.)
"Mr. Jane?"
He looks up at the judge, calm in a way he hasn't been since he came home one night to find his life in bloody tatters on the floor. Breathing's suddenly so much easier. "Guilty," he says, the same way he would say it's raining or that's the killer.
Lisbon stands up and leaves the courtroom.
(3.)
She doesn’t even let him in the car.
Jane tugs at the passenger side door for a full minute, uncomprehending. Finally, the window rolls down, and he can just make out Lisbon’s narrowed eyes and frown through the opening.
“You.” She jabs a finger in his general direction before reaching for her keys and starting the car. “You get to walk back.”
He rolls his eyes. “Lisbon, don’t be so dramatic. Let me in.”
“Oh,” she says, voice a touch too calm and nonchalant, “I’m not being dramatic. I’m serious.”
“But-”
“No.” Lisbon leans across the center console, glaring at him. “You do not get to talk to people like that, do you understand? Especially victims. We’re supposed to be helping them, not rubbing salt in the wound.”
Jane glances down at his shoes, looking petulant. “Yes, mom,” he says, unable to stop the retort.
She doesn't say anything else, just rolls the window up and then drives away, leaving him standing in the street of some anonymous suburban neighborhood, all alone.
It takes him five extra hours to get back to Sacramento, between stopping for lunch and convincing people he's not a murderous hitchhiker, and the first thing he does upon entering the CBI is greet Lisbon with a bag from Marie's. She recognizes the apology for what it is, and gives him a small, tired smile. "Are you bribing me, Jane?"
He shrugs. "I've got to keep myself on someone's good side," he explains. "I think I'd like it to be yours."
(6.)
They don't talk on the way back from Malibu, not until Lisbon pulls the car into the dusty parking lot of a diner and says, "Eggs?"
Jane nods, suddenly starving. When was the last time his amnesiac self ate? The thought sends something grimy and unpleasant skittering through his chest. He was someone else for days and he might have done anything in that time.
Biting back a rising sense of panic, he slips out of the car and follows Lisbon into the diner. He crowds her the entire time they wait to be seated, fingers brushing along the small of her back and curling desperately into the fabric of her shirt. She doesn't acknowledge what he's doing, but when they finally slide into a booth, she lets her knee press into his under the table.
“What was I like?” he asks eventually, flicking a packet of sugar through his fingers.
Lisbon shrugs, gaze falling to the glass of water in her hands. “I don’t know. Different, I suppose.”
(5.)
The second day of the trial, Lisbon visits him in prison for the first time.
He grins at her, going for charming, but he just looks exhausted. “Did you miss me?” he asks, leaning forward in his uncomfortable metal chair to rest his arms on the table between them.
Anger streaks across her face, pulling down hard at her mouth. "You son of a bitch," she whispers, words sharp and unforgiving.
(The thing is, he should have told her not to love him.)
Jane pretends not to hear her. “I’ve missed you too," he says, watching her eyes narrow at the sentiment and hating himself for putting that look of disbelief on her face. "Prison's not all it's cracked up to be," he muses, trying to fill the silence. "It's so boring-"
"You killed a man."
It startles both of them, and he can tell from the way she says it that this is the first time she's admitted his crime out loud. Coming from Lisbon, it sounds like the worst deed in the world.
(6.)
"Bad different?"
Her brow furrows, a long beat of silence falling between them before she finally looks up. “Just...different,” she says.
Jane cocks his head, trying to read his recent shenanigans in the line of her shoulders or in the way she grips her glass. "But what did I do?" He still can't wrap his head around being someone that was him but not him, someone not weighed down by bloody red demons or the golden ghosts of everything he's lost. How does that even happen?
"You solved a case," she says, sounding sad for reasons he can't quite fathom. "Of course, you also caused a commotion and insulted people while you were doing it."
He smirks. "That doesn't sound too different."
"No," she replies, "it doesn't." Because she can't explain how hard it was to look at him and see a man she knew but didn't really know. A man who stared at her and didn't see trust falls or ponies or shared sundaes on the roof. A man who wanted to leave all of that.
Jane squints at her in the harsh diner light. "There's something you're not telling me," he says.
Lisbon shakes her head, weary with everything. "There's nothing else to tell."
He watches her for a beat longer, trying to pressure her into sharing more, but the moment is gone, and suddenly she finds the water in front of her immensely fascinating. Jane frowns, unconvinced. It doesn't matter what she says, he can tell he almost broke her heart.
(7.)
Sometime between Volker’s threats and Red John’s ever-looming presence, Jane takes a moment to really stop and look at Lisbon.
Her face seems made up of sharper edges, the yellow glow of her desk light slanting at weird angles across her cheeks. Shadows smudge under her eyes, giving her a bruised, damaged look that he doesn’t like. She's still beautiful, will always be beautiful, but there's a tension that works itself into every line of her body now that's entirely new.
It makes something in his chest ache.
He slips into her office with a cup of tea balanced between his fingers and a tentative smile pulling at his mouth. “Burning the midnight oil, I see,” he says by way of a greeting.
Lisbon startles at the sound of his voice, sending papers and pictures scattering across her desk. “Just finishing some work,” she explains hurriedly, grabbing for the loose papers and shoving them back into their folder before he can get a good look at them. Even then, he knows it’s her file on Volker by the way she holds it, like it might simultaneously bite her and be the answer to all her questions.
He sighs, because he never wanted any of this for her, and he has no idea how to even begin to make things better. He takes a quick sip of tea, watching her carefully over the rim of his cup. “You’re a good cop, Lisbon,” he remarks eventually, voice soft and full of everything he’s too afraid to say.
Her eyes widen, her mouth dropping open a touch. “I know,” she says, but she doesn’t look like she believes him at all.
(5.)
“You’ll come visit me again,” he says, smile tight and not nearly bright enough to fool her.
Of course. The answer’s written all over her face. She’ll never be able to quit him, not even when he’s wrapped in prison blue, hands splattered with someone else’s blood. Rather than respond, Lisbon pushes back from the table and stands up, throwing down a crinkled paper bag before turning on her heel and leaving.
Jane takes his time reaching for the bag, gaze focused on her retreating back and the sway of her hips instead. When he finally does look down at the gift she left for him, he laughs.
It’s a blueberry muffin.
(It’s also a promise.)
(8.)
The ocean sounds the same. He's not sure why, but he thought it would sound different now.
The tide rolls in, surf bubbling up over his battered shoes and seeping into his socks. He’s won, and he should feel exultant, but he’s just so tired. Years of running, of plotting and counter plotting, and it’s suddenly over. (Now he just sees blue, blue sky and an endless list of possibilities.)
He’s lost.
"Señor?" A man taps him on the shoulder, a concerned expression etched across his face.
Jane shakes his head. I'm fine. He swallows around the words. No matter how hard he tries, they won't come out. Finally, he resorts to gesturing at the man, palms out. I'm fine, leave me alone.
The man backs away, concern morphing into uncertainty, and a mumbled stream of apologies falling from his mouth onto the hot sand. He's gone as quickly as he appeared, and then it's just Jane again.
Somewhere in the distance, island birds start singing, and he thinks he could learn to like it here. It's certainly no Sacramento, but there's sun and sand and people who don't look at him and see tragedy. As lost and untethered as he is right now, he’s also free.
He leans down, peering into the clear water around his feet. "I did it," he murmurs, pressing his hands into the sea and watching the fragile swirls of red that curl and eddy out from his palms. "I did it."
That's all he can say.