Chapter Text
Lisbon would like to have said that the day had been going well before Jane had walked in on her - but she’d pretty much been in a bad mood as soon as she’d woken up.
More than likely the result of her restless nights sleep; for some reason or other she’d woken up at least once every hour until finally it had been time for her to get up at six. By which time, it had felt like she hadn’t even slept at all - the constant disruption of her REM cycle completely messing with her system.
Teresa hated nights like that, they almost always guaranteed she’d wake up with a painful migraine.
Like this morning.
Unfortunately for Lisbon, her weariness from her lack of sleep was visible in her complexion; something she noted with disdain after reluctantly looking in the mirror-
Dark under-eyes illuminating the tiredness on her face, and hair that was just slightly missing her usual perfection, no matter how hard she tried to tame it, it still looked a mess.
She looked a mess.
She just hoped people wouldn’t notice too much, as she left her apartment..
Then, to truly set in her bad luck of the day, she’d gotten stuck in traffic for 25 minutes on the way to work. Seemingly endless rows upon rows of cars at a standstill for nearly half of an hour, steadily building her annoyance at the day, and just life in general.
She was annoyed in that way when everything feels like it’s going wrong, and it makes you want to just go home, curl up in bed and watch a movie alone.
And avoid everyone.
Especially a certain blonde consultant, who she knew was likely to cause some bother today - irritate some cop going through a divorce, or maybe a balding traffic warden.
It was enough to make Teresa put her head down on the steering wheel in defeat, a sigh of frustration leaving her lips alongside a softly muttered curse, until the cars in front of her eventually began to creep forward.
Finally
The last thing she’d needed today was to be late - there were so many cases from the last few weeks that needed to be written up, and she definitely didn’t want to be bringing them home with her.
Teresa considered her apartment a work-free zone.
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Unfortunately for Teresa, and everyone else in the CBI office, her day did not improve once she got to work.
As soon as she stepped out of the elevator onto the CBI floor, a young woman with long, blonde hair, who had been looking down at a piece of paper in her hand rather than where she was going, managed to walk directly into her.
Spilling her hot, black coffee all over the front of Lisbon’s white shirt.
It was definitely fresh, with the heat that it spread over Lisbon’s chest.
Dark, boiling liquid dripping down her shirt, the stain getting larger as the seconds went on.
“Shit-”
“Oh my god, Agent Lisbon I’m so sorry! I wasn’t watching, I-” the woman started to dab at Lisbon’s shirt with a napkin she’d been holding.
Somehow managing to make it worse, rather than better.
“Please, stop”
Teresa cut her off, finishing with a cool “it’s fine” as the woman murmured another “I’m so sorry”, before Teresa quickly walked away to her office. Leaving the young blonde to clean up the mess that she’d made on the floor, whilst the brunette attempted to clean up the mess over herself.
It was even in her hair-
As if her hair hadn’t been messy enough before, now the front ends were soaking wet and definitely going to be smelling like coffee for the rest of the day.
This had honestly nearly tipped her over the edge, maybe she just shouldn’t have come in to work today, she thought.
It seemed like the universe was trying to tell her to just go home and avoid everyone like she wanted to, and she was definitely considering it.
The only positive was that she kept a spare change of clothes in her office, in the bottom-right drawer of her desk - and deciding to choose speed over modesty, Lisbon shut her office blinds and began to change her shirt rather than going to the bathroom down the hall.
At the exact moment that she took her soiled shirt off, Patrick Jane decided to stroll into her office -
Lisbon cursed the day the CBI decided to install these doors
without putting locks on them.
“Hey, Lisbon-”
Teresa jumped with the surprise, turning around as fast as humanly possible (practically giving herself whiplash)
“JANE - get out! Don’t you know how to knock?”
She didn’t think she’d ever seen Jane move so fast -
and Teresa had seen him run away from a case faster than it had taken her to turn around to ask him something.
He’d mumbled something sounding like an apology as he fled, but Lisbon didn’t care. She’d never been so embarrassed.
Yet another point for the shitty day she was having, and one less point to her. It was 9am and she was already willing the day to end.