A/N: So. Months after "Blue Bird" aired and despite frequent assurances — mostly to my completely stressed out self — why I wouldn't write a tag, I'm finding myself in the middle of one anyway. Even though it is probably pointless, because by now everyone probably wrote everything there is on the subject. But I just need to get this out of my system, after it had been sitting in my head for well over 2 months, before I can start a new stand-alone multi-chapter and/or the last of the "Dreaming"-series. It's turning into a quite lengthy tag, but I hope you might still enjoy reading this, despite it being a rather quiet story on a familiar topic.

Teresa Lisbon closed her eyes at the warm and tingling sensation, that his gentle fingers kept brushing with lazy, soft strokes across her skin. He slid his fingertips slowly along her jaw and down into the hollow of her neck, where he let them linger for a while — stroking, caressing, teasing, without haste, without doubt — before venturing out further, brushing over sensitive, previously unexplored skin, and, just for a moment, running his fingers boldly along and under the hem of her camisole, before tracing a new, safer path along her collar-bone up to her shoulder and to the side of her neck. After his movements stilled, she pressed her cheek into the palm of his hand with a soft sigh and rubbed her nose gently over his fingers. When cool air replaced the warmth of his skin on her cheek, she opened her eyes again to the sight of a soft smile and a gaze full of astonishment, love, gratefulness and peace mixed with a couple of unshed tears. He was lying on his side, close to her, watching her, his hand now tucked in between the pillow and his face. Not willing to accept the loss of his touch yet, she reached across the tiny sea of crumpled bed sheets between them and tapped her index-finger against his wrist. The smile on his face widened, while he freed his hand again from under his head and laced his fingers through hers. Then he whispered.

"I love you."

She suddenly lost sight of his loving gaze, when he slipped out of focus, his face, his eyes, his whole body melting into a hazy, shapeless form, swimming in front of her eyes in a blur. She felt her throat tighten in familiar panic and fear, twisted her upper body away from him, eyes frantically searching for the window, but the whole room was nothing more than a misty blur all of a sudden. She tried harder, even though the last thing she wanted to look at, the last thing she wanted to see, was the window and the threat of a soft glimmer of light beyond it.

It can't be morning yet. Not yet, please, not yet.

A hand reached through her panic, curled around her shoulder and pulled her with careful pressure back to her side and into a warm embrace. She blinked and at once his face came back into focus. Her cheeks felt suddenly wet, then a soft, warm touch whisked the sensation away.

"It's not morning yet, is it?", she asked, blinking a few more tears away.

He raised his eyebrows in something that looked like surprise and replied.

"Not for a very long while."

His reassuring words drifted away and the room fell silent again. From somewhere outside, an unfamiliar white noise washed against the window, but it was too faint and too far away for her to identify its origin. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered, as long as the world was still a dream and a half away and - at least for now - only belonged to them.

After a while, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and whispered into her ear: "But even if it were, no one is forcing us to leave this bed… well, at least not before Friday at 11am."

She closed her eyes and pushed her face into his neck with a sigh, then rolled out of his embrace and onto her back. She wanted to believe him. So badly. But she knew he was wrong. They were close to the dawn. And when it came, it would tear them apart again and all of this would be nothing more than the memory of a dream. A feeling of loss washed over her and made her turn back towards him. She saw him shrug, then a bright white light blinded her and she reached out to him in fear, trying to touch him, to hold on to him, but all her fingers caught was cool and silky fabric. The white noise grew louder, crashing against her head like waves on a beach, washing his last words away out into the sea of dreams.

"At least I think that's the check-out time…"

And that was when Teresa Lisbon woke up and stumbled onto the shore of reality and into a world that was endless white.

And apparently filled with overweight and clearly pissed off blue sea-gulls wearing sailors' hats.

She blinked.

The white world turned into more than slightly crumpled bed sheets and a pillow.

Which was a relief.

Realising that the fat, angry sea-gulls were not part of her imagination, but actually scattered all across the fabric of the pillow, was not.

It was, in fact, more than a little creepy.

She blinked again.

She hadn't noticed the emotionally disturbed wildlife before. Maybe, because she'd been far too tired at the time and had something much more important to look at, something that, aside from being the only thing she wanted to look at for the rest of her life, had been located on top of the pillow — hence preventing her from seeing the hideous things in the first place. Something that was clearly gone now.

Or rather: Someone.

She frowned, released the bed sheets from her iron grip and raised her head a little, still too sleepy and sluggish to sit up straight. Instinct, logic and experience turned her eyes into the direction of the bathroom. But there was no spill of light coming out from under the door. The room beyond was dark.

"…Jane?"

It came out as nothing more than a whisper and she wished she could take it back, because that little quiver in her voice, that slight hesitation at the beginning, made her realise, she was not just asking him where he was, but somehow asking herself if he had actually been here at all.

She shut her eyes, too scared to follow that thought, afraid that by digging into the hazy memories of the last three days, she might find that the haziness was not a result of fatigue, but that all of it had just been part of her dream.

She dug her fingers back into the sheets, holding on, as another thought struck.

Oh god.

She realised she knew someone, who'd find pillow-cases with kitschy angry sea-gulls on them hilarious enough to buy and use them.

And it wasn't Patrick Jane.

She took a deep breath to calm herself down, but it had the opposite effect. The air carried a faint smell of salt, which would have reminded her of the sea, if it hadn't been mixed with a touch of lavender and a whiff of something citrusy, that in combination with the salty scent triggered a different memory.

That of a man's cologne she had become very familiar with over the past few weeks. A pang of loss shot through her, a searing hot pain, that burnt her heart and left her mouth dry and an aftertaste of ashes at the back of her throat. She swallowed hard.

It had been a dream.
Just another dream.
No. No. NO.

With something between a groan and a whimper, she rolled to her right and onto her stomach, before letting her head drop down into the pillow, thereby splitting the flock of offended sea-birds in half. Confusion, guilt and disappointment rose hot and painful up from her stomach into her throat like bile.

She pushed her face deeper into the fabric.

The pillow was still a little warm.
And it didn't smell of lavender. Or citrus. Or salt.
Instead she caught a hint of tea and sunscreen and…

Jane. The pillow smells like Jane.

She raised her arms in a gesture that was a mixture between relief and annoyance and let them crash into the bed again, the resulting thumping sound masking the big sigh of relief that escaped her lips.

It wasn't a dream. It was a memory, she thought a little stunned, while breathing in his scent and rubbing her cheek across the warm spot on the pillow.

She sat up and, taking in her surroundings, identified the misleading scents not as the artificial ingredients of the cologne Marcus used to wear, but very real parts of a strange flower arrangement and an overflowing fruit basket on the dressing table on the other side of the room. So the salty smell did belong to the ocean.

The Atlantic Ocean.

Which was right past the two big open bay doors, only a few steps away from the bed.

The hotel bed.

Their hotel bed.

Finally her brain managed to throw back the blanket of hazy, heavy confusion deep sleep had previously spread over her and suddenly everything was back in its place.

Well, except for Jane.

"Jane?" she called again, noting with some satisfaction that this time it translated into: "Where the hell have you wandered off to in the middle of the night?"

And which was, at least for the time being, the only important question that needed answering.

~~~ 10 hours, 4 cups of tea, 3 cups of coffee, a shower and 3 blueberry muffins earlier ~~~

Jane's hand caught the breaking wave with ease. He ran a thumb over it from deep trough to rising crest, while tilting his head a little and narrowing his eyes. He pushed the wave down experimentally, let go of it and waited for it to rise again. It did so with a tiny happy squeaky sound.

The sound Lisbon made, while he was occupied with inspecting the black metal door handle, was neither tiny nor happy. And he wouldn't have described it as squeaky either.

It was, though, he thought with an accompanying grin, a very familiar and reassuring sound and he wouldn't mind listening to it all day.

But then again, he wouldn't mind just listening to her breathe all day. In fact, as far as he was concerned, any kind of Lisbon-noise was fine, because it meant she was still there. Not that he had been worried she might vanish into thin air the moment he turned his back on her to open the door, because that would be quite stupid.

He closed his eyes, tried to count to ten.

Well, ok, not that worried anyway.

At five he opened his eyes again and turned around to look at her.

Just to be safe.

Her head was titled to the side, one eyebrow raised at him with clear impatience, her arms crossed in front of her chest, her bag sitting next to her on the floor. The familiar Get-a-move-on-Jane-frown on her face melted into a very new, but much more welcome, soft and warm smile. When he lifted his eyes to look into hers, he felt the corners of his mouth curve up into a similar expression.

Well, probably not quite similar, because he suspected he was by now grinning like an idiot again. Not that he cared. He drank in her smile, her face, her eyes and the happiness he saw flowing fast into every fibre of her, once their gazes had locked again.

He felt his knees starting to get weak and even though the beautiful, kind, amazing woman in front of him could certainly claim credit for that particular reaction, so could fatigue, insomnia and general exhaustion. He needed to get some rest. Both of them did.

To prevent them from falling once more into a blissfully silly emotional paralysis, he cleared his throat and responded to her earlier noise of impatience with a shrug and lopsided grin.

"Sorry, force of habit. I see a nice door with a nice lock, I just have to get a good look at it."

The new loving smile rolled into an old amused one, while she uncrossed her arms, placed her hands on her hips and shifted her balance a little to the left.

"So you haven't found something else to complain about then?"

Jane leaned his back against the door and stroked his chin.

He had done a lot of complaining ever since Abbott had shown up to get him out of the TSA-dungeon at the airport. Abbott hadn't minded either, but actually seemed to enjoy this whole thing rather a lot. Jane had watched him from the other side of the window, talking to the TSA-guy. Abbott had kept a stern and serious expression on his face, the clear amusement at a complaint the man made with wild gestures directed at Jane and Lisbon, only visible in a tiny twitch of his left shoulder. After a while, Abbott had finally turned to Jane and raised his eyebrows. Jane had given him a shrug and a lopsided grin. Lisbon had hidden behind Jane's back, blushing furiously.

He'd caught her hand in his then and the world had stood still.

And then the door had opened and Jane, with an exasperated sigh that carried the words "Finally! You took your time…", started complaining — and caused Abbott's left shoulder to twitch again.

Not that Jane had anything to complain about, really, he'd only done so in order to create a bubble of old and familiar normality around them, that allowed Lisbon and him to execute necessary tasks like leaving the airport and getting a cab and a room, instead of staying in the TSA-jail and grinning at each other like idiots for all eternity. So far, it had worked rather well.

He pushed himself off the door again and shook his head.

"No. Nothing. And I'm not saying this place isn't nice, all I am saying is, there was no need to shift us halfway across town and downgrade us from four stars to two", Jane said with a sigh, then, frowning at the pink plastic star-fish-key-ring no. 508 in his left hand, added.

"Or three, if you count this one."

Lisbon picked up her bag again, while Jane turned back to the door and pushed the key into the lock. The door it was attached to, was made of dark wood and painted a deep blue. A row of swirly waves flowed gently across it, before they crashed on the shore of the wooden door frame and then continued on the other side of it as white delicate lines on a light blue wallpaper, rolling silently down the corridor towards the reception area of the hotel.

"I'm sure it's nice, it's just a bit too… maritime for my taste", Jane said with a sigh, frowning at the pink star-fish again. "I bet they picked this hotel on purpose."

Lisbon gave a small snort.

"Of course they did. The FBI figured someone with your refined taste would be terrified of sea-shell-lamps and plastic dolphins. So instead of just finding us any place to stay until the TSA gives in and lets you back on a plane, they probably spent hours last night trying to find a hotel like this, because booking you into Sea World would be the perfect punishment for messing with the federal government", Lisbon said sweetly. Jane turned back towards her, face screwed up in playful indignation.

"First of all, I wasn't messing with the federal government. I was closing a case for the federal government and put my life in danger while doing so, so in fact, I don't deserve punishment, I deserve a medal…"

He turned back towards the key in the lock.

"… or a 500-dollar-high-end-hotel-suite with 24 hour room-service for a week."

Lisbon's bag dropped back to the floor with a surprised thud.

"You closed the case? The plan actually worked?", she asked in disbelief.

"Yes."

"Who? When? How?"

"The two women. A while after you left. I'll tell you later. And second of all, all I'm saying is that I don't see why they checked us out of our hotel, only to book us into this one. Waste of time and resources."

"Probably because they thought, we wouldn't need it anymore, as I was going to DC and you were going to jail", Lisbon said, picking up her bag again. "So why did they kill her and how?"

"Could we discuss sensitive subjects like doing prison time and people killing people inside the small and kitschy but probably still very nice hotel-room instead out here in the corridor?"

Lisbon couldn't suppress a small yawn any longer. She stretched her back and said.

"Fine. But I really don't care if it's small and kitschy, as long as it has a decent bed."

Jane chuckled and turned the key in the lock. Behind him, Lisbon blushed furiously once more and rolled her eyes at him.

It was a heavy door and a heavy door-handle. Which was good, Jane thought. Once closed, it would keep the world and all the crazy and scary things it contained at bay for a few hours. Keep them outside this room. Jane was confident, the door would also be up to the job of keeping certain things inside the room as well. He gave the wood a small knock and grinned. Just as he thought. Pretty sound-proof.

When he pushed the door open, Lisbon walked past him into the room, her shoulder brushing his arm gently, her fingers stroking the back of his hand in passing. He deflected the urge to catch her hand with his and pull her against him by grabbing the door-handle tighter and pulling the door back towards the lock.

Just then it occurred to him that a) he just missed a perfectly fine opportunity to steal a quick kiss and b) that he must be seriously sleep-deprived if his brain hadn't adjusted yet to the fact that deflecting things was no longer necessary.

The door closed with a slow soft thud and a silent click. When it did, it shut the world and everyone else in it out for good.

They were finally, at last, alone.

They stood there, in the silence of the late morning, facing each other, Jane in the gentle, cosy shadows by the door, Lisbon engulfed in sunlight streaming in through the bay doors behind her.

Neither said anything. Neither moved. For a long while.

Then Jane finally looked down, clearing his throat.

"So.. uh… what now?"

Heavens, wasn't he the epitome of elegance and confidence today.

He couldn't help but rolling his eyes, slightly annoyed with himself. Lisbon laughed and moved towards him. Three small steps later she was so close, he'd only have to lift his arms a little to touch her.

She beat him to it.

The sudden feeling of the warm, soft skin of her hands and arms sliding over and around his uncomfortable clammy neck, made his knees go weak again and this time it was entirely her fault.

When he shifted his weight a bit to find his balance again, his ankle protested with a jolt of pain.

Which he didn't really notice.

Because the world — outside and inside the room — had shrunk to the eternal green of her eyes, looking into his, looking more alive and happy and at peace than they had on any given day during the last few months. Her smile was wide and soft and the only shadows in her face where a result from being awake for far too long.

Marvelling at the sight, he wondered for a moment what she saw on his own face.

Whatever it was, she evidently liked it, because the fingers on the nape of his neck started to softly explore the skin in the immediate vicinity, before finally pushing gently into his hair. He closed his eyes, the rush of emotion triggered by the simple touch so intense, he was afraid he'd make an embarrassing whimpering sound at any moment.

Which he didn't.

He did, though, finally manage to make his own body move and wrap his arms around her waist.

And then, with something that might have been a whimper after all, he leaned down and pushed his face into her neck and pulled her close, arms tightening around her, like he never wanted to let go again. After what could have been seconds or hours, Lisbon pushed him back with a laugh.

"Shower."

He blinked at her in slight confusion, having lost all sense of… everything, except for her warm body pressed against his, her arms wound tight around his neck, her nose pushing playfully into his chest and the small sigh that, now in retrospect, had signalled the impending end of their embrace.

"What?"

"That's what's next. For you. You need a shower and I need to make a call."

He frowned at her. Not because she'd told him he smelled bad, she definitely had a point there.

"You sure?"

For a moment the joy in her eyes dimmed and she cast her gaze down.

"I can't delay this… I need to do this now."

He nodded.

She looked small and lost all of a sudden, shoulders slumped down, head held low. With the sun in her back, sad shadows crept into her pale face.

"Teresa…" he called softly, but she wouldn't meet his eyes, instead turned her head, so her gaze was flickering across the room, from the bay doors and the ocean beyond to the bed, over the inevitable sea-shell-lamp on the bedside table, the dressing table on the other side of the room, the ceiling with its painted white fluffy clouds and finally down to the wooden floor, her feet and her discarded bag, where her gaze stopped. Eyes still, her hands started twitching, not sure if she wanted to retrieve her phone from the bag, stuff her hands safely into the pockets of her jeans, let them just stay still at her sides or move them back over his skin.

Knowing the answer and seeing her struggle with rising guilt because of it, he said her name again. When she didn't reply, he reached out for her and started moving.

Or rather: Tried to.

Because shifting weight was one thing.
Taking a big step, something entirely different.

Before he could fall flat on his face, Lisbon had caught him, her fingers now curling determinately around his elbows to steady him. After a while, she released her grip and let her fingers trail in a slow and steady motion down his arms to his wrists. This time he did catch her hands with his and squeezed them with gentle reassurance.

When he noticed the sudden spark of happiness returning to her eyes, and how her hands were now resting still and content in his own, he leaned in closer. He closed his eyes, the fear of her vanishing and all the other things he was afraid of, welling up inside of him for just as long as it took his lips to find hers. Then all there was, was the tingling feeling of her hands in his hair and the soft pressure of her lips against his. He wrapped his arms around her again, her warmth covering his cold and fatigued body like a blanket. The kiss they shared was slow and sweet and this time no one was telling them to stop.

So they didn't.
For a while.

He was kissing her tenderly, slowly, savouring every second of their tongues dancing to a slow tune, hands brushing ever so softly over fabric and skin, lips moving in a gentle rhythm. Losing all sense of time or place or memory or purpose, he felt a warm tingling in his solar plexus, like something rising from a long, dark sleep, uncurling, unfolding inside of him with a brightness and a warmth and a force so strong, it would have taken his breath away — if the woman who was kissing him hadn't done that already.

When they broke apart, Jane leaned his forehead against Lisbon's, eyes closed tightly against the morning and the world, breathing deeply in and out, trying to hold on to this strange feeling of warmth and life inside of him. Then, through a wall of fatigue and exhaustion and the thundering of his own heartbeat, he whispered in a small, hoarse gasp:

"Thanks for saving me."

Gentle hands wiped away tears he hadn't even realised he'd shed. He opened his eyes to the sight of equally unexpected tears shimmering brightly in Lisbon's eyes. When she took his face in her hands, brushing her thumbs lightly over his cheeks and smiled at him, her voice almost breaking with emotion, he knew she'd caught his meaning.

"Anytime. Always."

He grinned at her. "Can I hold you to that, next time Cho's considering punching me for snatching the last muffin from the break-room?" He shuddered at the thought. "Hungry Cho is one of the most scary things I've ever come across."

She blinked back the tears with a sobbing laugh that was wrapped around a term of endearment that sounded suspiciously like "idiot" to him. Then she put her hands on his chest and gave him a small, gentle shove.

"Now go. And when you're out of the shower, you'll let me take a look at that ankle."

"You don't have to. It's fine."

"I do. And it's not", she said, giving him a stern look. When she passed him, she brushed against his side, her fingers curling back around his just for a moment. She pressed a soft kiss to his shoulder and then she was out of the door. Jane just stared at the space where she'd been. Then he limped towards the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes, stained and sweaty from clinging to him for what had felt like a week, behind him.

Next up: A shower-scene. What else. ;-)