Author's Notes: Another Mentalist Kink Meme fic (please see my profile for a link to the LiveJournal community). Prompt was "Last Friday Night - bonus point for the use of handcuffs".

WARNING: there is a mention of force and getting someone drunk, but when the smut gets smutty, it is clearly consensual.

AN-2: This isn't the smuttiest of smut-fics. Hope it's still a good read.

Teresa Lisbon called in sick on Monday. There would be questions about Patrick Jane that she did not want to answer. On Tuesday, the questions were still there waiting for her. This time she was better prepared to face them. Shaking internally as she walked into her boss's office, eyes cast down as she spoke, she begged for confidentiality from one woman to another and told part of the tale he had composed for her; she did not have it in her to tell the ugly, painful lie he wanted added to it. The tremor was real enough - heartbreak and fear for the man she loved will do that to a woman. No, she did not want to file a complaint. She had been able to get free last Friday night - not soon enough to follow him, but she would rather put it all behind her.

It was some months later when duck hunters in a remote part of a state park three hours' drive south of Sacramento noticed charred, twisted bits of metal in the inlet of a stream into a pond at the bottom of a mountain with a narrow, poorly maintained access road. Forensics experts later found them to have been from a pale blue Citroen DS, circa 1972. The information was passed on to missing persons departments of law enforcement agencies across the state of California. Patrick Jane's case file got re-categorized from "voluntary missing person" to "missing, presumed dead".

She had let him in when he knocked on her door. The crazed, desperate look in his eyes were a step beyond his usual Hunt For Red John crazed desperation. He stalked past her into her living room, went through to the kitchen and helped himself to the bottle of tequila she kept in the freezer. She followed him, leaning against the counter to watch him. After a couple of good slugs, he handed the bottle to her. She took a drink as well.

They stood there, eyeing each other. When several minutes had passed, he took the bottle back for another round.

She gently said, "Talk to me."

"Nothing to talk about, Lisbon."

"You didn't come to my apartment because it's the only place you can get tequila this time of night. You didn't come here for no reason."

"I didn't come to your apartment to talk."

"Then why did you come?"

He waited the space of a few breaths before speaking again. "Why do people say, 'It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'?"

She searched carefully for the right words. That he would come to her when he was struggling with his loss, trying to work through the grief rather than hide from it behind a shield of rage - it meant something to her. "Love changes but it doesn't die. That makes it worth the grief and pain. It makes us more human - better, stronger."

"Do you believe that?"

"Yes."

He put the bottle down and launched himself at her across the narrow kitchen. One hand cradling the back of her head, the other stroked down her cheek, down her neck, caressing her collarbone. He kissed her with all the desperation she had seen in his eyes when he came in. She did not pull away, but responded only by pressing her lips back against his, giving no further encouragement.

"Please don't send me away. I need you tonight," he whispered as he caught a breath.

"Jane, what are you doing?"

"Make me human again. Make me better. Don't turn me away." He nuzzled her neck, up to her ear, and caught her earlobe between his lips.

"We can't."

"What if you weren't married to your job? What if I weren't seeking revenge for my family? What if things had been different - they died some other way - and I were free? I want things to be different." His words came out in a fevered rush while his tongue traced the whorls of her outer ear and one hand fiddled with her top button.

"This isn't right, Patrick."

"No, it IS right. It's all the rest that's wrong. Did you mean it when you said you believed it is better to have loved and lost?"

She did not answer so he asked again, "Did you mean it, Teresa? Or was that just a white lie to comfort me?"

"I meant it."

"Then that's what we have to do now. We don't get more than tonight. I'm leaving. You'll be safe from Red John if I disappear." He undid the button he had been playing with and stroked the skin beneath it. "Don't you want to know what it feels like to spend the night with a man who is as in love with you as you are with him? I know you haven't had that. I can't give you "happily ever after". The closest thing to a happy ending I can get for us is to not let Red John kill you. It's been so long since I spent the night with a woman I love. There won't be another chance. Please." He closed his eyes, rested his forehead against hers, and spoke so low his voice cracked.

She put her hand to his cheek and guided him back to her lips. Her kiss was tentative, experimental, as though she were tasting the idea. He did not give her long to examine what she was feeling before he began devouring her mouth once more. As the heat between them exploded, she responded in kind. Fierce and hungry, their mouths were the center of their consciousness for several minutes. When they broke apart, breathing heavily, he said, "Please say 'yes'."

"I won't say 'no'."

"That's not the same as saying 'yes', and you know it. Say it."

She stepped closer to him, ducked her head below his chin, and said, "You're really leaving?"

"Yes."

"Put your arms around me."

He complied, holding her, stroking her back, drawing her flush against his body. "Say it," he demanded.

"Yes." She had wanted to interrogate him about what he had said about being in love, but she knew the result would be terrible. If she asked, and he had been saying the words only to manipulate her, she would hate him. If she asked, and he had been sincere, he would resent her distrust and the whole thing would simply shut down.

With one hand he tilted her face back up to his. With the other he pressed her lower body against his own. When he kissed her this time, he was more focused, more seductive, less desperate, less out-of-control. Thrusting his tongue along hers, he drew her into a rhythmic give and take.

She threaded a hand in his hair and started working on the buttons of his vest with the other. He stroked her cheek and caressed the back of her neck with the hand that was not holding her body against his.

Breaking for more air, he asked, "Bedroom?"

"Yeah." She took his hand and led the way.

Once in the bedroom, they stripped each other between ravenous kisses. They made love more than once through that night. Hot and hard, he surged into her. She took him sweet and slow. They felt dirty and sensuous as they retreated to shower together before collapsing for a bit of rest. When the gleam of false dawn began to reflect in Lisbon's bedroom window, Jane roused her with his mouth on one nipple while he teased the other with a skilled hand. When she shuddered a last lazy release, he kissed her mouth and began to prepare her for his departure.

"Tell them I forced you."

"No."

"You don't have a choice here. You're drunk and I took advantage of you." He spoke in a soft, suggestive voice. "You were too slow to fight me off."

"It takes more than one sip of tequila to make me drunk. Why do you want me to lie about this?"

"If you tell them that, they won't look as hard at the rest of the story. You see, Lisbon, there is one last rock for me to turn over. If Red John is under it, one way or the other, this will all be over. Either way, you'll be safe."

"Jane, please don't do this. What if it doesn't work out the way you think?"

"If he isn't under that rock, I have to get out of your life, disappear, get as far away as possible so he won't come after you because of me."

"We're better off working together. We always have been."

"But we still haven't caught Red John. And If I don't do something fast he will target you. I cannot, will not let that happen. I'll die before I let him take you."

"It's my risk, my choice."

"No, it's not. I can't risk it. I won't risk it."

He stopped talking for a moment, and kissed her again. He leaned over her, grasping her wrist and stretching her arm above her head.

"Just tell them I forced you. I didn't give you a choice. I got you drunk and took advantage of you."

"No. That's not how this happened. I'm not drunk. I wanted it as much as you did. Jane, Patrick, why are you saying that?"

He gently bit her lower lip, and as she gasped and shivered, he clicked a handcuff around the wrist he held, then swiftly secured the other cuff on a sturdy rung of the headboard of her bed.

Eyes blazing in anger at the liberty he took, she bucked him off her body.

"I'm sorry, Lisbon. I'm trying to keep you safe from Red John. And I'm doing what I can to stop this from damaging your career. But no matter how safe you are, you are still going to get hurt, so I'm sorry."

In that same state park, further into the forest, was a small dug-out shelter. By the time anyone else stumbled across it, it would take an archaeologist to determine which bits of detritus belonged to the gold-hungry madman who first called the place home, and which belonged to hunters of another time, and which belonged to the madman murderer who met his end here. It would take a forensic anthropologist to determine which rusted hunting knife had caused that end, and other forensic experts to determine which bits of blood spatter belonged to the madman, and which to the quivering killer who ended him.