Fic--Burn Your Way to Me
Title: Burn Your Way to Me
Author: foreverwriting9
Characters/Pairings: Jane/Lisbon
Spoilers: For Red Dawn
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,199
Summary: She is whole and beautiful, and he knows that she will try to fix him, to stitch all of his pieces back together again. Episode tag to Red Dawn.
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And we don’t even know where we’re going,
But I’m sitting with you and I’m glowing.
The Script, ‘Glowing’
He wakes up from his nap just before Lisbon leaves her office.
“You have a case,” he says, watching her with unfocused eyes from his position on the couch.
She walks toward him slowly. “Yeah, we do.” The hazy afternoon light turns her eyes a vibrant green, and they watch him cautiously, curious and alive.
He wants to love her.
She is whole and beautiful, and he knows that she will try to fix him, to stitch all of his pieces back together again. (He knows too that she will fail; there are some things you just can’t fix.)
Lisbon leans down so that she is almost eye level with him. “Do you want to come, Jane?”
Jane. No Mister, no Patrick. He suddenly feels like a part of the team, and that thought fills him with more warmth than he’d like to admit.
“Sure, Lisbon,” he says, testing her surname on his tongue and smiling at the way it tastes. “I’d love to.”
They ride down in the elevator together, standing with their backs pressed against opposite walls. Jane shoots her an easy grin, loves the way she already looks skeptical of what he might say.
"You know," he drawls, "I can read minds."
Lisbon arches an eyebrow at him. "Oh can you?" she asks, sounding completely unimpressed. “What am I thinking right now?”
Jane puts a finger to his temple, pretending to concentrate. “You’re thinking that hiring me was a very bad idea, that you hope this case is solved quickly with minimal paperwork, and that you’re hungry, because you skipped lunch.”
Her mouth hangs open a split second too long, and when the elevator doors slide open, she practically bolts out into the lobby. Jane follows after her, a smile tugging at his lips.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” he asks, and she already hates that smug tone in his voice.
“I don’t know,” she huffs, making her way to the car. “You’re the psychic, you tell me.”
Jane stops in his tracks. “There’s no such thing as psychics,” he says, his voice low and dangerously serious. (This is the difference between now and then, between a beautiful young family and a darkened room spattered with blood. This is what haunts him every minute of every day.)
Lisbon turns around to face him, realizing she has inadvertently struck a nerve. “Jane, you don’t have to come with me to this crime scene if you’re not-” Ready. Okay. Sane.
He waves a hand dismissively at her. “I’m fine,” he says. “Really. I want to come with you and shake down some perps. Dirtbags. Sleestaks. Whatever your derogatory term of choice.”
She almost laughs, catches herself just in time. “Suspects, Jane. We call them suspects.”
He looks mildly disappointed by this news, and proceeds to pout at her until they reach the car. Then his expression brightens. “Can I drive?” he asks, and he looks genuinely excited by the idea.
His barely contained enthusiasm sends something warm skittering through Lisbon’s chest, but she tamps down on the feeling easily, ignoring his too blue eyes and lopsided smile. “No,” she says firmly, because she has this very strong feeling that Jane is actually a horrible driver.
There's a look on his face that should warn her that he's up to something. (Years later she'll recognize it, but right now she has no clue.) Jane slips his hands into his pockets. "Then how are we going to get to the crime scene, Lisbon?" he asks innocently.
She frowns at him. "I'm driving."
He slowly pulls a hand out of one of his pockets, relishing the moment before the punch line. "And how will you be doing that?"
The car keys suddenly appear in front of Lisbon’s nose, dangling from his fingertips.
She opens and closes her mouth several times, trying to decide if she should punch him now or wait for an explanation first. “You stole my keys?” she grinds out between her teeth.
His eyes crinkle in amusement, and for the hundredth time since their introduction, Lisbon realizes that he may just be the death of her. “Stole is such an ugly word,” he says airily, moving to the driver side door of the car.
Lisbon crosses her arms, trying to look serious and formidable, but it has no effect on Jane whatsoever. “I’m not getting in that car with you.”
“Well then,” he says, pulling the door open and sliding behind the wheel, “I guess I’ll just go by myself and you can stay here.”
She scoffs at him. “Right, like I’m going to let you show up at a crime scene unchaperoned.”
Jane starts the car. “Then what are you doing waiting around Lisbon? Get in!” he calls over the roar of the engine. “By the time we get there Cho and Rigsby will have solved the murder and we’ll have had this argument for nothing.”
She stands stubbornly for a moment, thinking over his words. Then she sighs. “I’m going to regret this,” Lisbon mutters, kicking at a loose stone and then swinging the passenger side door open. As she slides into the seat and turns to glare at Jane, she’s greeted by his blinding smile.
"I forgot to mention,” he says, tapping a beat against the center console, “not only can I read minds, but I'm a pickpocket too."
She rolls her eyes. “Great.” Her voice is heavy with sarcasm, and Jane could get used to this, would love to spend every day for the rest of his life antagonizing this pretty cop and watching how she reacts. (There’s something about her. Something that reminds him of hope or home or light. Something he hasn’t felt in a very long time.)
"Hey," Lisbon says, poking him in the arm, and Jane realizes that he's been staring at her, “are we going or what?"
"Yeah." He nods, brushing his hand over the wheel. "Yeah, we're going." With a devilish grin, he throws the car into reverse and hits the accelerator, quickly changes to drive, and then peels out of the parking lot.
In the seat next to him, Lisbon lets out a barely contained shriek that makes his pulse spike unexpectedly. "Jesus, Jane!" she swears, fingers reaching over to dig into his arm tightly.
Oh yes, he could definitely get used to this.
He dreams in black and white and green, and every morning he appears in front of Lisbon’s desk with coffee and a muffin.
Lisbon takes both gingerly from him, and as her fingers brush against his, Jane pauses a moment to measure the amount of surprise resting in her eyes. She expects him to stop showing up every day, and he wants to prove her wrong. He wants it to be a well-known fact that he will show up day after day to chase murderers with her and read the Red John files.
He’s not sure what it will take to convince her.
One day, Lisbon slips up and forgets that they normally don’t talk to each other during these early morning greetings.
Jane shows up in front of her desk the day after a long and horrible case, and when Lisbon looks up from her paperwork, he has sunlight in his hair and her coffee cradled in his hands. (She has never seen anyone more beautiful and broken.) The words just tumble out of her mouth.
“You’re here.”
His smile is real. (But she doesn’t know that yet.) “Of course I’m here,” he says. “I’ll always be here.”
She stares at him, fingers straying to the cross at her neck. “Why?” The question comes out blunt and harsh, but she has to know.
Jane sets her coffee down at the edge of the desk and shuffles his feet, his gaze wandering over to the nearby window. “I have nothing else to do,” he admits softly, and suddenly Lisbon remembers the crime scene photos. The blood red toenails and the leering smiley face. The cascade of blonde curls across the floor.
Something tightens in her throat. “Oh.”
The look in his eyes stops her from trying to console him. He doesn’t want her pity, doesn’t want hugs or platitudes. He wants this, wants to hunt down killers and drown himself in red hot revenge.
“Okay,” she says, reaching for her coffee. “Okay.”
Jane watches her sadly for a moment, then fishes a paper bag out of his pocket, pulls her muffin out with a flourish, and then hands it to her. “Good morning, Lisbon,” he says, as though he’s trying to erase the last few minutes and start their conversation over.
Her fingers catch on his as she carefully takes the muffin. "Good morning, Jane," she whispers back, her heart giving an odd little lurch as she notices how the dark of his pupils has suddenly swallowed all the blue in his eyes.
He gives her a crooked little smile and then wanders over to his couch, stopping once to glance over his shoulder at her. When he catches her still watching him, he waves. Lisbon rolls her eyes, ducking her head quickly to hide her blush and desperately trying to return her focus to the paperwork in front of her.
Jane spends the rest of the day alternating between watching the way she methodically fills out forms and trying to come up with ideas to make her life more exciting. He can’t stop himself from thinking that what Teresa Lisbon needs in her life most of all is someone to keep her on her toes, and he supposes that maybe, he’d like to be that person.
When the CBI finally finishes its much needed renovations, Lisbon ends up in an office surrounded by walls, and Jane discovers that he actually misses her. Which is ridiculous, because they're still on the same floor, the same team, and it's not as though she's disappeared from his life. Still, Jane finds himself resenting the glass walls, because they separate her from the bullpen (and from him).
The only way to alleviate the ache in his chest is to spend as much time as possible inside those walls with her.
(It quickly becomes a habit.)
At first, he sticks with sauntering into her office unannounced while she’s in the middle of discussions with other people. Then it progresses to ignoring the closed door and annoying her while she’s focused on paperwork. After that he just starts picking the lock and, whether or not she’s actually there, he sneaks into her office.
Then someone offers Lisbon a couch, and Jane suddenly wants to spend even more time in her office. (It was warm and smelled like Lisbon and home before, but now it is comfortable too, and he simply cannot resist.)
Lisbon catches him the morning after the first time he actually spends the night on her couch.
He means to leave before she gets there, he really does. But he is so tired, and one minute her office is dark and cozy and the next it is bright and full of noise because he has scared Lisbon half to death.
"Jane?" she says incredulously, bending over to retrieve the briefcase and keys she dropped when his sleeping form startled her.
"Oh, hey Lisbon," he responds nonchalantly, as though she hasn't just caught him vulnerable and asleep and on her couch.
She presses a hand to her heart momentarily, and Jane can see her pulse thudding wildly in her neck. "Is this a normal thing?" she asks, and despite the look on her face she sounds vaguely amused. "Breaking into my office while I'm not here and falling asleep on my couch?"
Jane shrugs. "It just kind of...happened."
“Oh.” Lisbon waits a beat, as though expecting him to stand up and leave. When it quickly becomes apparent that he’s not actually going to move, she speaks again. “And now you’re just going to stay in here?” The question sounds almost hopeful, and this is what convinces him to stay.
He smiles, folding his hands behind his head. “That was the plan.”
Lisbon accepts this with a small nod, moving toward her desk and hanging up her coat. Jane is just about to fall back to sleep when she speaks again.
"What about your couch?"
When he opens his eyes she is watching him thoughtfully, fingers trailing anxiously across her desk. He swallows around the sudden feeling that catches in his throat. (This is his life now. A haze of revenge and death and Lisbon, Lisbon, Lisbon.) "I like it in here," he says finally. You're here. "I'm sure my couch will understand."
She ducks her head, smiling down at the pens and papers that cover her desk. “I’m going to go get coffee,” she says softly. “Do you want some tea, Jane?”
Something warm and dizzying bursts through his chest at her offer, and he does nothing to hide the grin that tugs at his mouth. “I’d love some, Lisbon.”
(He never does tell her that she makes his tea wrong this time.
He drinks it all anyway.)