Er. A little angsty. Takes place 2 years in the future.

The first time she kisses Jane, she is not distraught.

There hasn't been a rough case, and they haven't had a Red John run-in for months. Nothing has happened to remind her of her parents; nothing has happened to remind him of his wife and daughter.

Neither of them are drunk. He hasn't carried her home from a bar, and she hasn't opened her door unexpectedly to find him there. It's nothing so dramatic as that.

It happens early on his forty-second birthday, in her office, after all the others have left for the day. She lays his gift on her desk, and playfully refuses to let him open it until midnight.

It is a basket of oranges, the kind she knows he likes but doesn't know why, and a vial of expensive, spicy cologne. He opens it immediately, and spreads some on his wrists, before flicking her on the nose with it.

And then he looks at it, at her, and whispers softly, "I'm touched." Much more sweet than he normally would. Maybe knowing that she doesn't really have the extra one hundred dollars this must have cost her.

And Jane, sweet, is new. And so she leans forward, and he leans forward, and they kiss.

She's imagined this enough times, and this is not what she pictured. Enough times when the energy has run high between them, tension thick, that they've resisted the temptation. She wouldn't have thought that a quiet moment in her office would do them in.

It's softer than she's pictured, and slower. There isn't the wrenching in her stomach that she always thought there would be. There is nothing but gentle, sturdy affection.

She has the feeling, as he kisses her and then pauses to breathe her in, hands creeping up into her hair, onto the nape of her neck, that he is memorizing her, imprinting moment after moment on his brain to come back to after this is over, and they are both cold again. For when they go back to their work, back to his never-ending search.

For the first time ever, she sees a worn, tired man in front of her.

She closes her eyes hard and opens them, trying to get all of this, trying to capture the whole thing, with an urgency that shocks her.

Because she knows, the first time she kisses Jane, that it will be the last time.