Frankie Estacado listened to music that was older than she was by at least half again. The books on her shelves were mostly paperbacks, either second-hand or well worn, all of them fiction. There was nothing from her school in the room.

Patrick Jane walked on stocking feet through the smallish bedroom. She had stayed in this bedroom even when her parents had offered her the bigger guest room, because she had been living in it all her life. Tiny pinholes adorned the walls where posters had come down and replaced with other pictures. The bookshelf had worn holes into the paint at the corners; the bed had been pushed against the wall for years by the indentations in the carpet. And the woman who slept in it...

He was finding it hard to think of her as a woman, although she was of legal age, drinking age, almost graduated from college with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts. Heading towards a career in art therapy, or at least that was what she'd said. He suspected something more like child psychology. Maybe another bachelor's, up to a Master's, and then certification. For a second the patterns stood out clear in the room, telling him everything he needed to know about her. And then it was gone when he blinked and looked down and let go of the heightened sense of recognition. His job was to keep an eye on the girl, nothing else. They knew who was stalking her and why, they didn't need his skills any longer.

But they did need an extra body, an extra set of eyes and ears, so he was willing to help out. Rigsby was downstairs, probably asleep on the couch by now. The others had gone home for the night since it was his and Rigsby's shift.

"What are you doing?"

He looked over his shoulder at her, slipping right into the cool, easy charmer persona. "You should be asleep."

"What are you doing in my room?"

She didn't sound afraid or startled or even offended that a strange man was in her room. Somewhat strange; she knew him as attached to the police force and, as she'd put it, a little odd. But that didn't change the fact that she was more at ease with him being in her personal space than a woman of her age and background should have been. Unless it was living in the dormitories. She could have put him into the same mental box that she put her house-mates.

"Just looking." He smiled. All harmless. Not even touching anything. Nothing to worry about. "Go back to sleep. I'll leave you alone."

"Why are you interested in my stuff?"

He hadn't expected her to go directly back to sleep, but it had been worth a try. "I'm getting to know you," he told her, gesturing at the books and CDs, the few cassette tapes still scattered over the top of her stereo system that still, somehow, played cassette tapes. "Have you always been a loner?"

She didn't seem surprised. Or if she was the signs were too small even for him to read in the dim light. "Does that matter? The fewer friends I have, the less you have to work to protect me."

The statement could have been laden with all sorts of subtext straight out of The Bodyguard, and in a way it was, but unintentional. She didn't realize what she was doing, how she was focusing on him, and he wondered why. There was a kinship between them that she felt already, that he wondered if he should be feeling as well, and it was pulling her to him. Fascinating to watch.

"What?"

"I'm just wondering why you're worrying about our ability to protect you as far as it's convenient or inconvenient for us. Most girls your age..." It wasn't the first part of that that was important but the second. She didn't rise to his bait.

"Why wouldn't I be worried about your ability to protect me? I want to live. That means police protection, right now."

"So it does."

She sat up, crossing her legs in front of her, still mostly covered by the blanket but it wasn't the pose of someone who was used to sleeping in a nightgown. It left too much of her legs exposed, a sliver of underwear, and nothing in her room or her bearing up to that point had suggested that she was so immodest. She simply wasn't used to sleeping this way, or to having men in her room. No, put together with her behavior a moment ago, she was a boxer shorts and shirt girl.

"Why do you want to testify?"

Her expression suggested that she couldn't believe he asked the question. "Because people shouldn't be allowed to get away with what he did, I don't care how rich or influential you are." Simple, heartfelt. She truly believed that.

He liked that about her.

Jane came over and crouched down in front of the girl. Young woman. She stared down at him from the vantage point of her somewhat higher than usual twin bed. Dorm bedding. He wondered if she kept it that way because it was easier to make the transition from home to the college dorms and then decided that was overthinking it, although it was probably true. There was still no fear or worry in her eyes. She wasn't bothered by the fact that he was almost in her space. Interesting.

"You really would stand up to him for what he did."

Frankie shrugged. "He's a dick. And Heather didn't deserve what happened to her. She didn't deserve to be treated like that, she didn't deserve to be made to feel like she was nothing, and she killed herself because of him. Testifying isn't much of a sacrifice, no matter what he thinks he can do to me."

"That's very brave of you."

Her lips twitched. She wanted to smile but was either too tired or still too sad about her friend's death to quite manage it. He smiled for her. She reminded him a bit of Lisbon, full of a fierce desire to do what was right, to be a good person against her own inclinations. It was cute.

"I don't know if I'd call it brave..." she said, and he thought she did mean that.

He took a couple of steps forward, slow. Calm. "You're taking a stand. Fighting back, fighting for your friend. Isn't that brave?"

"I think it's just what needs to be done."

He tilted his head at her, making sure she did mean that. There was no sense about her that said she was putting on a show for his benefit, or trying to convince herself. She really did think it was what needed to be done, and she was doing it. He missed that kind of simplicity in life. All the things in her room, the little things she did, pointed to the kind of person who gravitated towards simplicity. He missed that.

Her lips curved upwards, not a smile but the impression of one. "What are you looking at, sir?"

"Well, I'm looking at you, miss."

One more step and his toes were almost at the edge of her bed. Close enough to reach out, though neither of them did. Frankie looked up at him without blinking or looking away, direct. He had the feeling she paid attention more than most people to what she saw and heard. Or maybe only in certain situations. Again, reminding him of Lisbon.

"What is it, Francesca?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Don't call me that."

"Frankie." he smiled. She didn't pull back. So, perhaps she wasn't seeing as much as he thought she was, after all.

He leaned forward. It wasn't one of the smartest things he'd done lately, but it was his choice. And her choice. By the way her body arched forward, straight-backed and upthrust. By the way her hand now rested on his bicep, personal, intimate. The way her lips were parted, the way her eyes darted all over his face, keeping the intensity and focus where he was looking at her but too energized to stay still. The rhythm of her breath. A thousand little things told him that this was her choice just as much as it was his.

A little voice in the back of his head called him a pervert for what he was doing regardless of her being well over the age of consent.

Their lips met. She tasted of cherry chap-stick and the szechuan chicken she'd had for dinner. Too much pepper, not enough soy sauce. He leaned down a little further, hands pressing into the bed where they rested on either side of her and she leaned back, forcing him to lean in further if he wanted to continue. Keeping her arms off of his neck, either because it was too certain of a gesture or because she didn't want to trap him. He thought it was probably the latter. She kissed as though she was sure of herself.

She kissed him as though she knew what she was doing. Not sloppy, not hurried, taking her time and unfolding her legs so that they rested over the edge of the bed, calves on either side of his legs. A woman in control of herself and her sexuality. No, there was no longer any doubt as to whether or not she wanted this.

Whether or not he wanted it, now, that was another matter. His mind and body were both in overdrive, his body reminding him just how long it had been and his mind whirling, ticking away all the possible outcomes from best to worst in alphabetical order. Apathy. Arrest. Break-up. C is for...

Her hand slid down the front of his shirt, over his vest, resting. His mind stuttered with the sudden pressure more than the warmth, the pressure of her hand. Her other hand slid through his hair and he wondered for a second how he had ever forgotten how nice it felt, just to be touched that way. Being touched that way triggered his hands to remember what to do. He leaned forward enough that he would have fallen if he hadn't planted an intervening knee on the edge of her bed, banging his shin in the process. His hands came up to brush his fingers through her long, sleep-tangled hair in return, cupping her face, making it tender.

As tender as it could be until they were both too distracted to realize how close to the wall they were leaning and the back of her head connected with a soft thump. For a second they both froze, listening. Rigsby didn't hear well enough for that. Either because he wasn't perceptive or because he was half deaf from arson investigations, Jane wasn't sure and he wasn't going to think about it at this juncture. "Are you okay?" he whispered.

She nodded. Smiled a little. "I'm fine."

"Good," he said, and kissed her again before he lost control.

And then he was climbing onto the bed with her, because she had leaned back and to one side this time and her arm had slid around his waist and it was either move with her or risk doing one or both of them further injury. No, he didn't want to sacrifice this moment yet. Not to injury or separation due to the pesky little matter of spatial logistics.

It was high school all over again. Far closer for her than for him, sure, but that's what it was. His arm stretched out along her pillow, her head resting on his arm, her arm resting around his waist and both of them kissing with gentle, lasting touches of lips. His other arm was cocked halfway behind him with his hand resting against the back of his head only so that he didn't touch her further. So that he didn't lose control. Not when her lips moved to part his lips and taste what he'd been drinking. Not when her fingers traced the inner edge of the collar of his shirt and over his neck, skin on skin. Not when she reached out with her leg and curled it around his and pulled his hips in against hers.

This was something he couldn't allow himself. Kissing her and making out like teenagers was an indulgence. This was overdoing. Her kiss became hungry and her arm tugged tighter around his waist and she rolled onto her back and that was an invitation he almost couldn't refuse.

It would have been easier if this had been a set-up. A game. If he had been playing her like he usually played people. If he had only come into this with a plan this might have all been averted. Lesson perhaps learned. Always come into this with a plan, always, even if it's just a young woman's room. When you don't have a plan, you don't have a direction, and when you don't have a direction you are free to wander wherever you want to in that moment, whether or not it's a good idea. Whether or not you should let yourself be tugged onto the twenty two year old woman and he could hear Lisbon in the back of her mind. You're old enough to be her father.

"Not quite," he muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

She wasn't as content with that as she should have been. She pressed her head back against the pillow and tried to look at him. He threw up all manner of obfuscating gestures at her, confusing signals, pressing his hips back into hers, touching her cheek with a tender hand, mixed messages. Rampant sexual desire with near-chastity with an almost paternal desire not to hurt her that was wiped away as soon as the word 'paternal' entered his mind. Not that. That had no place here.

It was just then that he realized she was wearing a slip, panties, and nothing else.

And the way they were pressed together she couldn't fail to notice him noticing. Ahem. There had to be a graceful way out of this. If he wanted to think of one. Jane wasn't sure he wanted to think of a graceful way out of this. Half an hour ago he hadn't minded, right now he didn't want to be a private adjunct to the police department. And he didn't want her to be half his age, but there wasn't much he could do about that one. He was thinking too much. She was touching him, but slower, sensing his unease if not able to pinpoint the cause.

"Are you okay?"

I haven't been okay for a while. "Of course." Pause. "Are you?"

In answer to that she kissed him, one hand diving up under his vest and tugging up his shirt and running her bare palm over his bare stomach. Warm hand, though not warm enough to disprove his theories about cold feet and cold legs. It was a sloppy means of seduction and confirmation that worked better in fiction than it did in real life. He still didnt know if she wanted this or if she thought it was what was expected of her. He did not want to go to bed with someone because she thought he expected her to.

So he didn't kiss her back, and she broke off the kiss and frowned up at him. "Do you want to do this?"

He might have paused too long, from the way her head dropped back onto the pillow. This was awkward. "I don't not want..." And stupid. "This isn't what I came here for. And considering the circumstances, it isn't exactly ..."

"Appropriate?"

"I was going to say, healthy."

Frankie was undoing the buttons of his vest as he halfway loomed over her, propped up on both hands and one knee. And before she answered she put fingers to his shirt as well. "I'm not confusing this for coercion, if that's what you mean. I'm not in this for anything except to feel good. I'm not doing this to feel better about myself, or to take control of my sexuality or anything. You're sweet," she smiled up at him. "And you're pretty hot."

"Only pretty hot?" He had to take the straight lines he was given.

"You're damn sexy. So come here, sexy man, and stop worrying so much."

As though there was a chance in hell of that happening. Still, he did. For all the truly bad reasons he had been considering, and discarding all the good reasons not to go through with it. With a smile on his face that should have worried her, he leaned in and allowed himself to shed jacket, vest. To kiss her.

He had further to go than she did, as far as clothes went and the shedding of them. And she didn't seem to need to restrain herself at all in order to take her time playing with the buttons on his shirt, pushing his shirt off and caressing over his shoulders as he did. She had a light touch, subtle, and he liked that. He could barely remember the last time anyone had touched him like that except...

Hot liquid behind his eyes as she kissed him again. Roaring in his ears. Moving on autopilot, thank god she didn't notice.

When he could open his eyes again and see what he was doing he started touching her. No fair that she should have all the fun. Or all the work, either, not that he saw it as work. If he had, well, he would have shut her down a long time back. His fingers crept up along the outside of her thighs, pausing at the top of her underwear, then up further underneath her nightshirt. And over her ribs, which made her squirm and giggle, which made him smile. She smacked the side of his hip for that.

"Jerk."

He chuckled. It sounded loud in the silence, contrasted against their whispers. It sounded... it was a sound he didn't usually hear out of his own mouth. More appropriate to someone with darker hair and a feline grace who wore a long coat and used two improbable guns at the same time.

All thought along those lines went away when her lips touched the base of his throat. And that sound he made then was familiar, from late nights in bed when their baby girl was asleep, from less than a handful of times later. Her fingers worked his belt undone, slipped it out of the loops and let it slide to the floor behind their heads. His breath quickened at the implications, leaving out entirely that she wasn't touching him anywhere in particular yet. Oh, he did want this. He was sure he wanted this.

And yet. "Um..." Pushing himself back up on his elbows and taking a breath, realizing her shirt was hiked up to expose her breasts and he didn't remember doing it, he blinked. "I didn't..."

"Come prepared?" She scooted up until her head almost hit the wall again, reached out to the bedside table and fumbled at the drawer. A second later he heard the rattling of foil that, in this context, was unmistakeable. "Come on, Jane, how old do you think I am? I got sex ed with my Saturday morning cartoons."

That didn't make him feel any better.

The condom, at least, satisfied his peace of mind. And it seemed to satisfy hers that not only did he not object, he'd thought of it first. She didn't rush to strip him down, taking her turn to trail her fingers up his ribs with a much less amusing effect. He wasn't ticklish.

Scraping her nails over his chest and catching a nipple did not count as ticklish.

Slow burn and abrupt lunges. It wasn't a steady pace at all; they'd be touching and feeling their way along and then some more of his misgivings would fall away or he'd find a sensitive spot on her and they'd push forward in another burst of frenzy. The next such burst brought her slip entirely over her head, off into the corner, banging her elbow on the wall as she worked her arms out of it. Not elegant, but it was done. He kissed it better and watched her smile with a tiny smile of his own. And then he moved his kisses inward to the curve of her breast. Lips and tongue and soft skin that tasted of cocoa butter soap. The old accustomed sensation of making a woman gasp by suckling at her flesh in ways entirely non-Oedipal. Apparently you didn't lose it for lack of practice.

She didn't say a word as they worked on shucking off his pants together. First rolling them down over his hips as low as her hands could reach, then propping himself up on one elbow to somehow wriggle out of them without falling off the bed. Boxers went much quicker. Then her panties. Clean blue cotton almost gray in the moonlight. She hadn't started the night intending this to happen.

They put it on together, first her hands, then his hands, cool latex and cold spermicidal gel. They both had to watch what they were doing so, not so much kissing then. Lips pressed flat in concentration, her eyes flicked down between their bodies and up to his face for a moment as he finished and hesitated. He stared back at her wide eyes parted lips not swollen from kissing but a naked, young stare. Was she wondering how they would deal with this in the morning? Did she not want to do this anymore? Hell of a time to back down now, but be damned if he'd force himself on her.

Her mouth closed again, and this time he closed his eyes when she leaned up to kiss him, one hand sliding down his back. Decision confirmed, or so he guessed, because her leg slid up to pull him down and it took them both a second of bumping up against each other to get it right. She was tight. She gasped a little and not, he thought, with pleasure as he slid in. And paused, because if she wasn't ready then should they really be doing this? And then that moment passed, too, as she tilted her hips a little and the rest of it was smooth and easy. Snug. Felt good.

Whatever that initial snag had been it must have felt good to her too, because he heard her breathing quicken. She was quiet, and so was he, and most of the time they were kissing awkwardly with pauses for breath and bumping of noses, out of rhythm with the way they moved around each other lower down. He tried to take more time to touch her but as narrow as the bed was, moving his weight from his hands led to leaning either too precariously over the side or his shoulder up against the chilled wall. It didn't seem to matter; she did enough touching for both of them, fingers through his hair, over his back. It was nice. Lovely.

It was over too quick. He didn't stop thinking about all the little things until right at the end when his body took over and his thoughts blurred together in a hard knot of pleasure. Almost as soon as he was done he started to wonder about her, except her legs were trembling in erratic shivers against his body and he could feel her still pulsing around him. Still neither of them said anything as he eased out and heard her hiss again, as she scooted up against the wall and made a little squeaking noise.

"You okay?"

"Mm." She nodded, sitting up far enough to grab the blankets and pull them up. "Cold wall."

"I noticed," he smiled, even though he didn't feel it, indulging in a moment to just lie back on the bed and watch her, head propped up on one hand and elbow planted in the pillow.

It didn't feel like after sex. He wasn't sure why, but it didn't. Well, okay, the increasingly cold and sticky condom did. He didn't look at her as he peeled it off, tucked it back in its wrapper. Her fingertips closed over his and the wrapper, sliding along the last length of his fingertips as she took it from him and tossed it into the bin on the far side of the room. It went in, for a miracle. He looked back over at her.

"You should sleep." And with that, standing and finding his clothes and pulling them on again, feeling her eyes on him and feeling like some kind of thief in the night. Like a client leaving a hooker.

Frankie nodded. "Probably. I'll go back to sleep in a minute." But she didn't get dressed again, herself. Just watched as he pulled his clothes on in smooth and mechanical movements, buttoned up his shirt, vest over, slender fingers making sure everything was in place in gestures more appropriate to the previous century. The one before that.

She slid out of bed and out from under the covers and stood there, naked and cold in front of him, smoothing down the front of his vest. Tucking his jacket on as he helped her, because it was more her dressing him and him helping now, and straightening him up. From client to one half of a couple in two seconds. Or was it only his perception changing her body language like that. The fact that his perceptions might be suspect bothered him. He lifted his head and shelved that for later, after the case.

And now it would be impossible for anyone on the team to tell that anything had happened. There was Jane, back to his old self. She watched him for a moment with a quiet expression from which he nonetheless took unhappiness and rejection, then crawled back into bed and under the covers. He felt like a heel.

"I'll be right downstairs if you need me," he told her, as though they hadn't just made out, made love, had sex, whatever you wanted to call it. She nodded, and he left. It was as easy as going down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom, looking over at the officer propped up in the chair and snoring, all round at the bright lights in the living room, everything in its place, everything so normal. So benign.

Jane slipped past the sleeping Rigsby and into the downstairs toilet and spent a couple of minutes all to himself, heaving bile and the remains of a glass of tea into the sink. This was not what he had wanted. To come so close and brush up against it and know it was all fake? This wasn't what he had ever wanted.

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