A/N: Hey there Mentalistas. I, waterbaby134 was honoured to be asked by Donna and starry to participate in this tag. I can only hope to live up to the flawless chapters they both have contributed to this story.

I've never written a babyfic before, and have no personal experience in this area, so I'm a little nervous about this, but I enjoyed writing it a lot. And needless to say, working with these two extremely talented ladies is a true privilege.

Thanks must go to glindaloveshoes for her unwavering support, as I doubted myself.

Part III

The third trimester…

It had been a race against the clock to have the house ready for the baby's arrival. As Teresa's due date had gotten closer, Jane had been working the contractors overtime to get the place into shape.

There'd been more than one argument between him and a disgruntled plumber or electrician as the work progressed and Teresa's stomach grew. He'd have kept them working around the clock if he'd been able to, but instead he'd been forced to simply shell out more money as an inducement to keep them on the site for as long as possible each day. But no matter how fast they worked, or how many bills moved from his hand to their pockets, the fear that they would not be finished in time gnawed at him a little more every day. It was his responsibility as a husband and father to provide his new family with a roof over their heads, and the way things looked at the moment, he was going to fail at the first test.

He arrived back at Teresa's house in a bad mood, and slammed the door to the Airstream with unnecessary force. What the hell had he been thinking, taking on a project this big in such a short timeframe? Hubris had always been one of his biggest failings, and the fact that he'd thought he could pull this off in only a few months now seemed laughable.

He forced himself to pause before he reached the door, and take a few calming breaths. It wouldn't do to have Teresa see him freaking out like this, the last thing she needed was stress in her final trimester.

It wouldn't be long now, her due date was only weeks away, she was exhausted all the time and taking bathroom breaks with such frequency that they'd decided to switch sides of the bed so as to give her a shorter walk to the bathroom during the night. Today had been her last day of work before her maternity leave kicked in and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't grateful. She'd stopped going out into the field a month ago, but it had made uncomfortable to think that he wasn't around to help her if she'd needed something. Cho and his team had of course stepped up to the task with gusto, but as her husband, all the food cravings, and back pain were supposed to be his duty to attend to.

Well, he said 'duty' but in truth, he'd cherished almost every second of it. He'd never thought he'd be given a chance like this again, so every back rub and late night strawberry run had felt like a gift to the wonderful woman who had made it happen.

She looked around when she heard his key turn in the lock and smiled at him. She was lying on her side on the couch, munching on a bowl of peanuts as the evening news played out on the TV screen. Despite his annoyance with himself, he smiled a genuine smile back at her; she still lit up the room like she always had.

"Hey sweetheart," he said, kissing her gently. "How's my beautiful wife this evening?"

"Your child spent most of the day kicking the hell out of me," she said, trying with difficulty to pull herself upright and he hurried to her side to help her.

"Well you can't blame that on me," he said, once he'd gotten her settled again. "Kicking ass and taking names is your forte darling, not mine. And the baby's been spending most of her time around other ass-kicking cops, it's no wonder that she's picked up a few things."

"Well now he seems to have taken a leaf out of your book and gone to sleep," she said, resting her hands lightly on her stomach.

"She's had a big day," said Jane. "Fighting crime before she's even born yet has got to be some kind of record."

Teresa rolled her eyes. 'I can't believe that you're still fighting me on this. I've told you before, the baby's going to be a boy."

He chuckled a little, and kissed the top of her head. 'Sweetheart, when am I ever wrong about these kind of things? If you'd just accept it, things would be a lot easier around here."

'The day I admit that you're always right is the day Cho tells us he's quitting the FBI to become a can-can dancer," she retorted, but he could hear the affection under her annoyance, and leaned down to kiss her again.

"I look forward to that day," he said. "And now for two reasons."

She was gazing at him intently as he pulled away from the kiss, beautiful green eyes probing his.

He really hoped the baby would have her eyes.

The familiar little crinkle in her forehead began to appear and the smile slowly slid from her face.

"You're upset," she said, still surveying him carefully. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said, casually, and then looked down at the half empty bowl of peanuts. "Let's get some real food into you." His planned escape was halted when she suddenly reached for his hand and held it fast.

"Liar," she said, without an ounce of self-doubt. "Something's bothering you. What is it?"

"It's nothing," he insisted. "And I don't want you to get upset over nothing."

The questioning look turned into a glare. "Since when is it a good idea to anger a heavily pregnant woman?" she snapped. "I can't be held responsible for my actions if you piss me off, so you better start talking."

So he told her everything. About the problems with the power supply, about all the busted pipes in the bathroom. How three of the contractors had approached him on separate occasions today with some new unforeseen cost that had to be paid right away. How at the rate they were going, they'd be lucky to have a house to move into in a year, never mind a couple of weeks.

"I'm sorry," he said, when he'd finished, pulling her into his arms (as best he could, given the baby bump.) "All I wanted was for everything to be perfect for you and the baby, but I think the universe is conspiring against me."

"Hey." Her fingers pulled gently through his hair. "I don't care if we have to stay here a little longer. I don't even care if takes you another decade to get the house finished, I've already got everything I need right here. I've got you, and the baby, and that's all that matters. Ooh!"

Alarmed, Jane pulled away from the hug and held her at arm's length. "What's wrong?"

"It's OK, it's OK," she caught her breath. "I think the baby's ears were burning, he just kicked me again."

He laid a gentle hand on her stomach to feel the baby bounce back at him, as though responding to his presence. Not for the first time, he wondered if it knew that he was there, Teresa said the strongest kicks tended to happen when he was around.

"We're going to be OK, you know," she said. "The three of us. Even if we somehow end up camping in the Airstream for a few days with a newborn. We're going to be just fine."

Somehow (and he flatly refused to attribute it to divine intervention, no matter how much Teresa insisted) the house was deemed to be liveable a few days before the due date. Perhaps the contractors had been appreciative of his increasingly deep pockets over the last few months, or perhaps they'd simply had enough of his constant nagging, but they'd done the hard yards over the course of a week and got the job done.

He felt a surge of pride as he led Teresa by the arm towards their new home. Almost everything had fallen into place, now they were just waiting for the final piece of the puzzle.

Teresa's due date came. And went. In a private moment, Jane had almost laughed at the irony of it all. He'd been rushing to beat the baby's arrival, but it seemed that their child had no intention of going anywhere for the moment. But of course, with his pigheadedness and Teresa's stubbornness in the mix, he supposed he shouldn't have expected anything less.

Two days passed, and then three. Teresa was getting increasingly uncomfortable, and therefore increasingly irritable. Being as he was the only one around, he found himself the constant target of her anger, but he found he was handling it better than he had when Angela had been pregnant. After all, he'd had many years of practice at withstanding her furious tirades, and he knew it would all be worth it when their child finally arrived.

Four days overdue, Teresa's water suddenly broke in the parking lot of the local farmer's market. They'd gone out for the morning and made a stop on the way back in order to stock up their kitchen with fresh fruit and vegetables. Instead, the contractions had started as they'd been walking back to the car, Teresa's involuntary shriek of surprise drawing the attention of several other patrons, and startling him so much that the bag of food promptly hit the ground.

His heart broke to see her face screwed up in pain, as she desperately clutched at his arm and a few of the curious bystanders came rushing to their aid.

"Patrick," she managed to say over the surrounding furore. "I am not having this baby in a parking lot with twenty people watching. I don't care how you do it, but get me to the hospital. Now."

With the assistance of a burly young man from the nearest fruit stand, Jane helped his wife back to the car and got her back into her seat. Rushing around to the driver's side, he noticed the remains of their shopping strewn around the parking lot and cringed.

"Don't worry about it man," his young helper said. "We'll take care of it. You've got somewhere more important to be."

Gunning the engine, and peeling out of the parking space, he was almost relived when another contraction began as the watching crowd burst into applause. Teresa would have been mortified.

The newest Jane was going to be a handful; he knew it for sure now. He or she was clearly already well versed in making a scene.

Almost twelve hours later, a nurse placed their newborn baby into Teresa's arms. Her brow was shining with sweat, and her face was flushed red from the exertion, but to him she'd never looked more beautiful, as she smiled down at their son.

He was a father again. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and then a long kiss to her lips, while the baby squirmed between them.

"I'm so proud of you," he told her. "He's perfect."

"I told you he was going to be a boy." The experience of the labour seemed to have temporarily robbed his angry little princess of a little of her boundless stores of energy, but she still managed to shoot him a triumphant smile at beating him. Some things never changed.

"Yes you did. But you know, I've never cared so little about being wrong," he said. "I love him." He kissed the baby's head, and then his wife again. "And I love you. So very, very much."

"Come here," she said, and as he leaned towards her, she captured his lips in another long kiss, only broken when their son made a sudden cooing noise.

"Sorry kid," Jane said, with a smile. "You're gonna have to get used to seeing that. In eighteen years you'll understand."

"Eighteen?" she scoffed. "If he grows up to look anything like you, the girls will be chasing after him long before that."

"And then running in the opposite direction when his gun-toting, overprotective mommy and Uncle Cho tell them to leave him alone."

Teresa shifted the baby a little in her arms, as he gurgled happily up at them both.

"So what are we going to call him?" he asked her. "I was really hoping for Elizabeth, but under the circumstances, I'm thinking it would be a little inappropriate."

Convinced as she had been that they would be having a son, Teresa had been giving it a lot of thought during her pregnancy, and she kept coming back to that first conversation they'd had in the car coming back from the doctor's office, about Irish names.

"I'd really like to name him Aidan, after my grandfather," she said. "What do you think of that?"

"Aidan," he echoed. "That's a good strong name. And if nothing else, your grandfather did have excellent taste in cars." He smiled down at his son. "I like it. Aidan Jane."

"Aidan Patrick Jane," she said, avoiding her husband's eyeline by adjusting the baby's blanket, and he sighed.

"Sweetheart, we talked about this," he said. "I told you I didn't want to name him after myself."

"It's his middle name," she said. "And I think I deserve something for being right about the gender." She opened her eyes wide, and bit her lip in the way she knew always drove him crazy. "Please?"

He sighed once more. "All right. You just had my baby, so I guess I can't say no to you right now."

She grinned cheekily back at him. "I knew I could get you to agree. It was all in the timing."

Jane shook his head in mock disbelief. Even now, a few minutes after having a baby, she was still keeping him on his toes. He was a lucky man.

"Well played, my lovely wife. Well played."

Six weeks later…

As the wails of their newborn son pierced the air, Teresa was inherently grateful that their home was isolated enough for them not to have any immediate neighbours. If they had, they'd no doubt have been knocking their door down weeks ago, demanding they keep the noise down, and being as exhausted and sleep-deprived as she was, she might have been a little less than neighbourly about it.

There was once a time when she would have been able to sleep through an express train trundling through her bedroom, but now she was instantly attuned to every sound coming from the next room. At the first sounds of Aidan stirring, she'd been hoping if she left him be, he might settle down again on his own, but no such luck. He was very much his father's son when it came to drama and craving her attention. The thought made her smile. His middle name certainly was a fitting one.

Here she was, Teresa Lisbon, wife and mother. Who would have thought it?

At her side, said husband grunted in his sleep and rolled over, and in the dark, she rolled her eyes. After almost a decade of chronic insomnia, of course he would choose now to start sleeping peacefully through almost every night, so much so that she had to physically kick him out of the bed sometimes when it was his turn to get up with their son.

He certainly did look peaceful, he was even smiling a little in his sleep and she wondered if he were dreaming about her. He sometimes did; she heard him murmuring her name under his breath every now and then. She tended to leave him to sleep on those occasions, but she'd be starting back at work in a couple of weeks and she needed to catch up on her sleep.

She tried whispering his name, and shaking him, but he slept on, so she switched tactics by reaching over and poking his shoulder. Hard.

"Ow," he grumbled, eyes opening sleepily. "What was that for?"

"Your son is awake."

"So is yours." He pulled the covers back over himself.

"It's your turn," she said, snatching them away from him again, and grinning at his decidedly unmanly whimper of protest.

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is."

"No it isn't. I distinctly remember getting up with him several hours ago." He tapped his temple. "Memory palace, my dear," he said. "I never forget."

"If you don't get out of this bed in the next five seconds, I'll give you an ass kicking you won't soon forget either," she snapped.

"Well that would be a shameful waste of energy," he said, "considering the other, pleasanter things we could do in this bed." Under the covers, his hand found her thigh and began to gently stroke it.

She couldn't completely suppress her body's reaction to his touch; it had after all, been a while since they'd last had sex, but she wasn't about to let him use her pent-up frustration just to get himself out of this. So she reluctantly peeled his hand from her thigh.

"Nice try. Go."

She felt an odd mixture of satisfaction and disappointment as he sighed, and slowly pulled himself out of the bed as the baby's cries in the next room reached a sudden crescendo.

"All right," he muttered to himself. "I'm coming, buddy." Then, he pulled on a pair of pyjama pants and shuffled out the door.

In the next room, she could just make out his soft voice as he attempted to settle Aidan, whispering, crooning, and even a few bars of an old lullaby she'd used to sing to her brothers. She pictured him cradling their son in his arms, rocking him gently with that loving look in his eyes like she'd seen him do ever since the day he was born.

She'd never forget waking up after the delivery to see him holding Adian for the first time, father and son. She'd never seen him look so happy, and the baby had been staring up at him too with almost equal adoration, as though he knew already how much he was loved. He'd grow to up to idolise his father, she could already tell, and she knew she'd have to mentally prepare herself for having two mischievous males running around the house. They would be partners-in-crime, just as she and Jane had once been, and maybe she might even be able to persuade them to let her join them sometimes.

The baby's cries continued for some time, and when they failed to cease, Jane carried their son into their bedroom, jiggling him in the hopes of calming him.

"Never send a man to do a woman's job," he said, approaching the bed, and gently transferring the baby from his arms to hers. "I think he just wants his mommy right now."

'Shhh,' she held her son against her and hoped that the steady sound of her heartbeat might soothe him. "It's OK," she whispered. "It's OK. Mommy's here now. It's OK."

She felt the mattress shift beneath her as Jane got back into bed beside her, and slipped his arms around her shoulders.

"Look," he said. "He's already starting to calm down a little. He just wants to get in good with the ladies."

"Like father, like son," she said, with a laugh, as the baby's cries finally subsided and his eyes began to close. They stayed silent for a few minutes for fear of rousing him again, and it was only when she was confident that their son had fallen properly asleep that she turned to her husband again.

"Thank you," she said. "You've given me everything I ever wanted."

He drew her to him, and kissed her again. "And you've given me more than I ever thought I could possibly deserve. I love you."

"I love you too. And I know the three of us are going to be happy here."

"Did you get a glimpse of the future then, Teresa Lisbon Jane?" he said with a chuckle.

"Of course not," she whispered, nestling further into his arms. "Everyone knows there's no such thing as psychics."

AN: Starry here! I hope everyone enjoyed reading this little fic of ours! We had a fun time writing it! Stay tuned for more stories from each of us (individually and maybe together again sometime ;) ) - just because the show is over doesn't mean the fun is ending! If you're interested, the three of us (har har, see what I did there?) are all on Twitter: donnamour1969, waterbaby_134, and starrynineteen (someone is apparently using my number). Thanks for reading!