Disclaimer:

Simon Baker: Hi, Psychedelica! Is it true you own the Mentalist?

Me: Hell yeah! You'd better believe it, baby!

Simon Baker: That's funny, because I thought Bruno Heller owned it. Look, here he comes now! (Looks around in confusion) Psychedelica? Psychedelica?

(We see Psychedelica hitchhiking to Mexico because she doesn't want to be sued by Bruno Heller, and she decides that to save all that time, she'll put a disclaimer on each of her stories admitting that she doesn't own the Mentalist)

A/N - This kind of fits it with my Mentalist story arc, but it makes perfect sense by itself. A note, though: In my story 'Mommy' (new chapters being posted soon, promise!) his Mom leaves when he is three. In this story, however, she is still with him when he's five. Sorry about the continuity! ENJOY!

Birthday Boy

Here it came, rolling around again, like it did every year.

June 17th, his birthday.

Jane told no-one on the sixteenth; none of the CBI agents seemed to realise he'd stayed the same age for all these years. Birthdays hadn't been the same since . . .

He screwed up his eyes and rolled over in the cheap motel bed.

30. His birthday had fallen on a weekend, so he and Angela had been hoping for a nice, relaxing lie-in. Unfortunately, when it came to his six-year-old daughter, no such feat could ever be accomplished.

Patrick awoke to an odd sensation, a lead weight on his stomach, pressing the air out of him. He cracked open one curious eye, to see his daughter's beaming face hovering inches over hi.

"Daddy, Daddy!" she chirped. "It's you birthday!"

She began bouncing with excitement, a rather unpleasant sensation when the little girl in question was knelt on your ribs.

"Oomph! Charlotte, you weigh a ton!" he mocked.

"Patrick, are you calling our daughter fat?" teased Angela, sitting up beside him and sliding Charlotte onto the mattress between them.

He leant over and kissed his wife, earning an 'ew!' from Charlotte.

Patrick smoothed his daughter's unruly hair and glanced at the clock on the wall. He baulked and checked he wasn't hallucinating by fumbling for the wristwatch he kept on his bedside table.

"Charlie . . ." he began evenly, calmly. "You do realize it's three a.m. . . ."

She nodded vigorously, her curls bobbing as she did so. "Yuh-huh. Aren't you excited, Daddy? I made you a card; do you want to see it?"

He sighed and nodded, then laid back on his pillow as she dashed off to fetch the card. I could really do with a cup of tea, he decided, but wasn't willing to move from his impossibly comfy bed.

Angela laid her hand on top of his, meeting his eyes. "We were all the same at her age. Birthdays are a big deal for a kid."

Patrick wrinkled his nose. "But Angie, it's not even her birthday!"

His wife shrugged. "She's Charlie. You should be used to her by now."

Jane shook his head, clearing his mind of this memory. Those days were gone – torn away from him. Just as his sweet Charlotte had taught him to love June 17th, the man known as Red John had taught him to despise it.

But even still, a hint of the child he had been so many years ago, he sat up in bed at quarter to twelve and watched the minutes tick by . . .

10. "Five, four, three, two, one . . . Happy Birthday!"

"Shh!" Patrick glanced fearfully around, hoping his friend Junior hadn't woken his dad. Luckily, his dad was a pretty deep sleeper.

His other friend Oliver leant in close and whispered, "So, how does it feel to be in double digits?" Oliver himself had turned ten five months ago. Junior, on the other hand, remained nine, a fact he wouldn't live down for three months until his birthday.

Patrick shrugged. "Feels the same as nine."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "Then you're not concentrating hard enough! You're ten years old, Paddy – the big one-oh! You're going to stay in double digits until you're a hundred!"

"I don't want to be a hundred." He shook his head firmly. "I want to be ten forever! I don't want to get old and wrinkly and boring!"

"And grumpy," added Junior. "Don't forget grumpy."

Oliver's brown eyes lit up. "Are we naming dwarfs now? Because you're also going to be sleepy, and dopey . . ."

"Sneezy," Patrick chimed in.

The other two cracked up.

"Sneezy?" Junior snorted. "Why would you be sneezy when you're a hundred?"

Patrick grinned and shrugged casually. "I don't know; maybe I'll be sniffing pepper."

Even though it made no sense and wasn't even funny, this statement set them off again, laughing so hard they were clutching their sides.

Patrick's dad shuffled slightly, and the three of them froze, suddenly silent. They weren't supposed to be here, cross-legged on the floor of the Janes' caravan with only a flashlight to illuminate their faces. Patrick's dad would never have given permission for a birthday sleepover, and Junior and Oliver's parents thought they were tucked up in bed right now.

Jane smiled to himself and swung his legs out of bed. That memory always held special significance for him, because it summed up his childhood growing up with Junior and Oliver. He'd been devastated when he and his dad moved carnivals when he was twelve.

Fully awake now, Jane padded across to the wardrobe and grabbed an old woolly blanket he'd had since before he met Angela. He only took it out occasionally in fear of it losing its homely, familiar smell.

He sat on the floor cross-legged, just like he'd done that night in the caravan, and watched the seconds tick down to the 17th, blanket draped over his shoulders like a cape.

5. Paddy's eyes were drooping, but he wasn't going to miss this for the world. Mommy said that the minute the clock struck midnight on his birthday, magic became reality. He didn't think twice about the fact that the clock was eight minutes slow.

Just as he was about to nod off, the hands aligned at the top of the clock. Paddy hadn't quite mastered reading the time yet, but one time he recognized was midnight.

"Mommy, Mommy!" he squealed, bounding onto his feet, and then remembered. Mommy wasn't there. She'd miss out on whatever magic happened, and so would Daddy. Serves them right for not being here, he thought grouchily.

Paddy swayed on the balls of his feet, the excitement cancelling out the exhaustion he'd been feeling previously. He was going to stay up all night. He'd never stayed up all night before, but he was a big boy now. He was a whole five years old, much older than he'd been when he was four.

For some reason, the thought of staying home alone all night made him whimper. The caravan suddenly seemed very dark and very, very scary.

Paddy wondered what Mommy had meant by 'magic'. His mind was instantly filled with visions of witches and trolls and – God forbid – dinosaurs. They were the worst of all.

He felt his knees begin to shake. Every shadow or unexplained shape became a horrifying monster, each one bigger and with sharper teeth than the last.

"Mommy?" he called out, hoping the magic she had talked about was strong enough to bring her back to the caravan.

Nothing. Paddy swallowed and began to tremble. Even at five he recognized the signs of a panic attack – he had them often enough.

Sucking on his thumb in the hope it would prevent hyperventilation (he didn't know the word but he certainly knew the feeling), he crossed the caravan to his parents' pull-out bed. He leapt onto it from a distance, wary of under-bed monsters that nibble at children's toes.

He found the woolly blanket and pulled it around his skinny frame, a hollow feeling in his stomach. He thought about called from Mommy again, but he knew she wouldn't come.

After all, he was five years old, not an idiot.

Jane sniffed at the musty old blanket, inhaling the scents of lavender and strawberries and pine needles and oranges. Along with the thought-evoking, comforting smells were some less pleasant ones, reminders of sickness and injuries and the 'flu.

Three minutes. He stopped breathing in the aromas of the blanket and closed his eyes, vaguely aware that his uncovered left foot was getting chilly, but too comfortable to do anything about it.

He began to hum a Bach piece his wife used to play him on the piano, but quickly lost the tune so hummed 'Kumbaya' instead.

17. It was a very different June 17th indeed. Patrick slept through most of it, fleeting dreams and images passing over his eyelids like a slideshow.

He was aware of Angie by his side, sometimes holding his hand, or forcing him to sip stale water, or at one point crying. Unless that bit had been a dream.

Painfully, in a half-conscious state, Patrick mused on how different this birthday was.

It was just him and his girlfriend, stuck in the middle of a forest like fugitives with no roof over their heads. Thank God it was June and not Christmas-time.

But there was no Dad. No Oliver, no Junior, like when he was a little kid. No Luca, or Mike, or Stephen. No Mom. Just him and Angie.

What a time to get sick

Patrick moaned, feeling his body convulsing.

"I want to go home," he heard himself choke out.

Angie's soft, cool hand rested on his sweaty forehead, pushing a couple of overgrown locks out of his eyes.

He may have kicked her. Felt his foot connect with something hard, heard her sharp intake of breath.

It was two weeks later, when he was better and she was still badly masking her pain, that he persuaded her into going to hospital and they found out she had two broken ribs.

Angie's doctor saw the bruises on her abdomen and confronted Patrick about it, accusing him of beating her.

He'd never punched someone so hard in his life.

Jane smiled softly to himself. He'd always look back on that moment with fondness, because it had been the moment he'd realized quite how in love he'd fallen with his beautiful Angela.

11:59:59 flickered over to 12:00:00, and Jane closed his eyes, making a silent wish. He rarely got round to making birthday wishes, but these last few years, nothing had stood in the way. He was alone.

With a wistful sigh, Jane opened his lids and glanced around, feeling oddly disgusted at himself. Here he was, a lonely almost-forty-year-old man in a cheap motel room, wrapped in his childhood blanket and counting the seconds until another year swept by.

Angela wouldn't even recognize the man she married.

Letting the blanket fall where it dropped, he picked up the digital clock and hurled it against the wall. Whatever it was made of, it was certainly resilient. He slipped one shoe on and stamped his heel on the face, watching in satisfaction as the bold, black figures vanished.

Jane set his jaw and flexed his fingers. He set his fist, about to punch the wall, but drew himself away at the last moment and ended up punching his pillow. Better for the wall and his fist. And the hotel bill, of course.

That night (or morning, rather) he fell asleep curled in a fetal ball at the foot of the bed, woolly blanket in one hand and smashed alarm clock in the other.

And as Jane woke the next morning, he acknowledged the fact he'd passed another milestone, and restarted the 365-day countdown until the next June 17th.