Patrick's eyes matched his suit.

It was an innocuous and random thought that flickered through her mind and once she'd noticed it she couldn't stop seeing it. Like a tiny fist squeezing that little bit of air out of her lungs every time their eyes met. It was distracting.

He'd come over to make sure she was all right. She hadn't answered her phone in a couple of days, and she'd forgotten to call him to make sure that he knew her cell phone number was being replaced, too. She didn't have any idea where her last one was, and she wasn't going to take a chance.

So, here he was. In her tiny apartment half-boxed up, strewn with exam notes and books and flyers for part-time summer jobs and internships. It looked a mess. She was pretty sure he didn't care. She was pretty sure he was taking in the mess and reacting to it in small ways that she couldn't see.

"I..." One hand made a twisting gesture at her side. "I should have told you. Sorry about that, I didn't think..." I didn't think you'd call in those few days. I didn't think you'd check up on me. I didn't think you'd be worried. Any or all of those were true.

"It's all right." He shrugged it off with a brief sideways glance and then his eyes were back on her, too intense for comfort or safety. They'd started out this bizarre friendship with business, and for one night it had been something else she still couldn't forget, and then it was even stranger. She didn't know what to make of him. Of what he was doing around her. "At least you're safe."

Not well, not doing all right, safe. She wondered at his choice of words and briefly thought about asking. Not that it would get her anywhere.

"How have you been?"

Anything to avoid more stilted conversation. If he gave her an answer she could use it to leapfrog into another topic or something, anything but this awkward silence. She didn't know what it was but it made everything tense and hard between them and she wanted it to be smooth. Relaxed and easy.

"All right. I got shot at, that was exciting." He said it a little too brightly. She could picture him getting shot, now, crumpling over, bright blue eyes going dull and dead. Thanks.

"I bet it was." Her arms folded over her chest, and her voice sounded more fragile than she wanted it to. She was still seeing blood on her arms, on the ground where Bradley had fallen. Jumped. He had jumped, and she knew who had put that idea into his head. "You shouldn't get shot at." She didn't know where that had come from.

He blinked at her. "I didn't get shot."

"I know." Too quickly. She spoke too quickly, overtop of his words. "But you got shot at. You shouldn't be in the line of fire, you should be waiting ..." Behind everyone. Behind the cars. Away from the bullets.

"Frankie..." His hand curled around her elbow, as though he could steer her to a better place that way. She didn't jerk away, though she did twitch at the way he touched her. He let his hand fall again. Of course he noticed that. He noticed the small things.

And now that he wasn't touching her anymore she missed it ten times as much. Wanted to crumple up against him. "I mean it, Patrick. You're not ... not exactly a John Woo action hero."

"I'll be fine. Besides, Lisbon would kill me if I got shot, I'm a terrible patient."

That made her smile. Especially paying attention to the fact that he said got shot instead of got killed, she smiled. "Somehow, I can believe that."

"You should have seen the time..." He started to say something and there was the barest pause of a hesitation between that and his next words. She wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't gotten used to being hyperaware of everything he said and how he said it. "... I hit my head and went temporarily blind. Apparently it's something that can happen."

Under other circumstances she would have pursued it, resolved not to be distracted. "I can't imagine you blind. You must have been a cranky patient."

"I was mean."

"I bet."

And then more silence. The conversation lapsed to a close and all she wanted was for this awkwardness to end. She wanted to feel safe inside her own body again. To feel like it was hers instead of a borrowed puppet that she wasn't quite used to and didn't know where all the controls were.

He'd tried. He was trying, bless him, he was trying to comfort her and had held her and stroked her hair and made everything okay again, for a little while. And it had worked, for that little while. And then she had moved back to her parents' for a few days, and then she had gone back to her apartment just long enough to finish out the school year and start packing, and she kept seeing things. Feeling his weight on her in the bed, crushing her, despite the fact that he was gone. Not just in jail, gone, where he could never touch her again. Jane had done that for her. Patrick Jane.

She reached forward and laid her palm on his chest, over his vest, open. She wondered if it was the same vest he'd worn that night in her apartment. The texture was smooth and soft, real silk, tiny slubs catching on the rough surface of her hands. The body beneath it was warm.

Jane's eyes widened just a bit as she reached out to him, waiting for her to do something else. He relaxed, just fractions of an inch at the shoulders and the eyes and the hands, when she didn't.

"How are you sleeping?" She didn't look good. She looked tired, strained, wild around the edges. She looked like she was coming to pieces more thoroughly than she ever had before. It startled him.

"I'm..." she shrugged. Her palm dragged down an inch or two over his chest, then rose back up again. "I don't know. All right, I guess."

Not well, then, but she didn't want to admit to it. She wanted to be brave. Beautiful, brave girl. He should tell her that she didn't need to be brave, that it was all right and not shameful at all to fall apart for a little while, but he didn't know how to do that without sounding patronizing. He also wanted to suggest she ask for a prescription for something to help her sleep. He could have given her something to help her sleep but the thought of providing her with narcotics turned his stomach. He realized why five or so minutes later.

"You don't sound too sure of that," he was saying instead.

"It's exam time. No one sleeps well during exams, they're too busy studying."

He gave her a look. He knew better than that. He knew she knew him better than to believe he'd buy that. "Frankie."

"Patrick."

She was one of the few people who could use his name and sound natural doing so. Odd. Only now she was using it as a wall around herself, hiding the worst of the damage from him because if he laid it out in front of her she'd have to face it. Usually he drew it out of people and threw it in their faces anyway. He didn't want to, with her. She was still too fragile.

All right, not usually. Some people didn't deserve to have those things thrown in their faces. Grace usually didn't, but she did put up with him when most people would have thrown their hands up in despair; she was nicer than she should have been to him. Frankie didn't.

So he didn't.

"It will get better," he found himself saying. "You'll have nightmares for a while. It'll feel like ... an eternity. But it will get better."

She was looking at him like he had all the answers, and he didn't have any answers. He didn't even know where that came from. Instinct. He had hunches, he listened to them, more often than most people's. Then again, his hunches were more often based on the tiny observations that most people discounted.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Frankie nodded like she believed him, even though she had no reason to. She wasn't taking his eyes from his face, and he didn't look away as long as she wouldn't. Her eyes were dark, wide, bruised around from lack of sleep, bloodshot at the corners. She wore it better than someone with paler skin would have, but she still looked exhausted.

In another minute she would stretch up and close those last few inches of distance between them and kiss him. She would put her arms around him and try to be close. He didn't know what he would do then. Physical contact, as fleeting as it had been several months ago, and then a week or two ago, it wasn't what he wanted. This was the comfort of physical contact turned on its head, she needed it because she needed to feel safe again. He needed it because he needed... his needs were more complex.

He needed her to be safe, and to heal, and that wouldn't happen if she kissed him. If she was able to seduce him into bed with her.

"Frankie..." He curled his fingers around her hand and gently moved it off of his chest. "Don't. Please."

"Patrick..." She couldn't ask him for it so she had to say his name and hope he understood what she wanted. He did. But what she wanted wasn't healthy for either of them, and he didn't want to do the wrong thing right now.

Sometimes, yes, he did.

Three times made a charm. She wasn't going to let go unless he stepped back, so he did, dropping her hand as he did so. Now, with no physical contact between them, the buzzing heat was starting to die.

"You'll be all right," he told her. Calm voice, strong, with the will behind it to make what he said into truth. "In time. You will."

She didn't look so sure about that.

"You'll work through it. You're strong. And you'll be better for working through it on your own, figuring it out for yourself."

"Just like that?" she demanded. It had been a harsh thing to say, he knew. But true. And what she needed to hear. "You helped me get this far and you're just going to..."

"I'll check in on you later," he told her, stepping around her and towards the door. Too awkward and too rushed, but he needed to move before something else happened that would be a bad idea. She followed him, of course, almost tripping over some of her boxes in her haste.

Her fingers caught his sleeve. "You can't..." His expression turned to ice as he turned around, his temper provoked despite his best efforts.

"Yes?"

She opened her mouth to say something but closed it again, thinking better of it. Her fingers clenched on the sleeve of his jacket and then let go, and she took a step back. He'd scared her. He hadn't meant to do that.

Out of the doorway, into the hallway, turning to face her. He'd come over to reassure her and help her, and all he'd succeeded in doing was frightening and upsetting her. This had been a bad idea. If she called again... "Goodbye, Frankie," he told her, instead of half a dozen other things.

He headed down the hall and towards the stairwell, listening for the sound of the door closing behind him.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.