Insomnia

by veritygrey (raventree)

Summary:

Motels have thin walls. And somtimes lines get crossed.

Notes:

The Mentalist belongs to Bruno Heller.

Chapter 1: Motels

 

Theresa Lisbon had stayed in a lot of motels during her career. There's a sameness to them that she's come to find reassuring, a solid constant amongst the continually changing ways people find to hurt and kill each other. The mattresses are always uncomfortable, the alarm clocks never work. She has a 50/50 chance of a hot shower. The walls are always thin. Recently, she's added another constant to her list. Jane never sleeps. Not for more than a few hours at a time. He'll have a shower, watch a little TV, pace back and forth til the sun comes up. Lisbon can hear every step.

 

 

Chapter 2

They share a bed one night. It's perfectly innocent, a convention in town, a mistake with the reservations. It happens more often than Lisbon would like. They're both mature adults. It's just one night. The bed is big enough for the both of them. Jane makes a flippant suggestion about putting a pillow down the middle. Lisbon returns quickly, questioning his mental age. She wakes up before the alarm goes off, with Jane's solid warmth pressed against her back, his face buried in her hair. His free arm curls around her waist, his hand resting just below her breasts. Her first thought is that it's the longest she's ever known him to stay asleep. It's intimate, and delicious, and the temptation to just fall asleep again is overwhelming. But she's his boss, and he still lives in the house his wife and daughter died in.

Chapter 3

They don't speak on the way back from Tijuana. They don't speak when Lisbon pulls up at her own home, instead of Jane's house, or even the office. He is silent, almost indifferent, as she leads him into her house, her bedroom. Silent, as she strips them both down to their underwear, draws back the covers and sits him on her bed. She pulls the sheets up, over them and turns out the lights.

"Teresa?"

"I know."

For a long time, the only sound is his shattered sobbing. They don't talk about it in the morning. She calls first shower and washes the salt from her skin.

Chapter 4

 

Lisbon ignores it as best she can. She focuses on the case, the visit to her brother's, the to-do list she has yet to commit to paper. Anything but Jane's confession. She goes home and can't get it out of her head.

  "We've never discussed this...because I thought it went without saying...when I catch Red John...I'm going to cut him open and watch 

 him die slowly. Like he did with my wife and child."

 Calm, matter-of-fact, totally honest. It takes most of a bottle of wine to send her to sleep. In the morning, Lisbon makes an appointment to see about getting some sleeping tablets. She can't help but wonder if it's the future, and not the past that keeps Jane awake at night.