Title: The Pink Tablecloth
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Rating: T
Summary: And with that, Red John attended his first ever Valentine's Day party. Crack!fic.
While I don't exactly celebrate Valentine's Day, it seems that a certain serial killer might be celebrating it. Ha. I wrote this fic for the lovely WeBuiltThePyramids, who only agreed to be my Valentine if I wrote her a fic. So, here's hoping this fic is worth my countless hours of pestering. ;)
Red John loathed Valentine's Day.
He hated the flowers, he hated the candies, he hated the stuffed animals and above all else, he hated the sappy cards. He didn't care how much person A loved person B, as all he wanted to do was kill person A and B.
However, nobody ever took his hated of the holiday seriously.
Every year, without fail, one of his many friends would purchase him a gift of "love". Of course, that gift had to be something cute, something fluffy, something sappy or something heart-shaped, which annoyed him. Why couldn't they just ever devote their lives to him again instead of buying him something that made him want to go out and start a killing spree? (He had nothing against the fluffy kitten that one of his friends had bought him years ago, but he knew striking fear into the hearts of others just wasn't possible with a meowing kitten following him everywhere.)
So, sitting in his study on the morning of Valentine's Day, he wasn't exactly surprised when his first interruption of the day came from Rebecca.
"Sir." Rebecca stated which ultimately interrupted the light amount of reading that he was attempting to do. "It's Valentine's Day."
He glanced at her from behind his book, nonplussed. "So?"
"Don't you want to celebrate with all of us?" Red John continued to level Rebecca with a stare, silently asking her why she would even invite him to a pointless holiday party. "We all have a lovely time, sir. We tell stories, plan murder…"
"And may I ask whose murder is that we're all planning, exactly?" Red John interrupted her, as he set down his hardback novel.
"The members of the Serious Crimes Unit, sir." Rebecca said and Red John made no movement. "We've each taken a member of the Serious Crimes Unit and it's a game of sorts." Rebecca offered him a bright smile. "If you showed, Patrick Jane would be yours."
Red John bit the inside of his cheek. He could finish the rest of his novel (though he already knew the main character was going to die, the cop would become a prisoner of the serial killer and nothing would ever be resolved) or he could plan the death of someone, who he very much respected. It was tempting, but he still hated Valentine's Day and he still didn't want any fluffy gifts. "And there are no gifts for me?"
"Does my undying loyalty, love and devotion count as a gift, sir?" Rebecca asked. Red John shook his head; he automatically expected that from all of his friends. "Then no, I have no other gifts for you."
"Let's go then."
And with that, Red John attended his first ever Valentine's Day party.
At the head of the dining room table, he glanced around at his friends and tried to hide his disgust at the overwhelming amount of pink within the room. Judging by the same expression on Craig O'Laughlin's face, he assumed that Rebecca had taken it upon herself to decorate his dreary dining hall/meeting room in Valentine pinks, whites and reds.
"Rebecca was a little overzealous in her decorating this year, sir." Nicole Peck explained, as he spotted the pink tablecloth and heart-shaped bowls sitting in the corner of the room. "We usually allow her to color one side of the room, not all sides of the room." He watched her motion toward the pink curtains covering the windows and Red John rolled his eyes. Rebecca could do many things, but decorating was not her forte.
"I honestly wouldn't worry about it." Craig O'Laughlin commented with one of his hands wrapped around a pink shot glass. "The decorations stay up for about the first twenty minutes and eventually, someone manages to yank them down and burn them. It makes for an entertaining party." Nicole nodded in agreement, her blonde ponytail bobbing along with her head.
"Twenty dollars says that Martins will burn them first." Red John heard Timothy Carter say from behind him. He turned his head to stare at the friend, who wore no traces of red (aside from his hair). "Good morning, sir. I'm surprised to see you amongst us all, as I know you typically dislike Valentine's Day."
"I thought I would try something new this year, Carter." Red John lied. "Is this a problem?" Carter shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, before he moved to sit down next to O'Laughlin.
"I'll take you up on your bet, Carter." Nicole replied, after a moment of silence. Red John watched Carter eye her, before he slowly nodded. "I have a feeling; however, someone else will be burning down the decorations first this year."
"If you're talking about yourself, you're automatically disqualified from the bet." O'Laughlin said, sipping from his glass. "You can't bet and in turn, burn them down. It cheats the system."
"Not to mention my pocket." Carter answered.
"When have we ever cared about cheating though?" Shelli Clearwater, plopping down in a chair on Nicole's right side, asked. "Take last year's holiday party for example."
Nicole's eyes found his; a light dusting of pink covered her cheeks. "I don't think he wants to hear about that, Clearwater."
"Why wouldn't I?" Red John inquired, raising his eyebrow toward Nicole. He heard O'Laughlin chuckle and mutter something to Shelli, who merely grinned in response. "This is my home, after all. Aren't I able to inquire as to what happened here?"
"You are, sir. I'm sorry for my stubbornness." Nicole said. Red John waved her words away with his hand. "It's just not a story I like telling, for various reasons."
"Mainly for the embarrassment factor." Carter told and Red John eyed him, silently encouraging him to explain. "Last year's holiday party, someone," his eyes went to Nicole, who had her head bowed, "thought it was a good idea to drug the fruit cake and cheat others into eating it."
"The only person who liked fruitcake was Hardy, however." O'Laughlin finished and the conversation lulled for a second, as all of them remembered Dumar Hardy. Red John glanced around the room again, only to find one of the pink tablecloths gone. "It looks like someone has already started burning the tablecloths and Martins isn't in the room." Carter silently passed over twenty dollars to Nicole, who merely grinned.
O'Laughlin downed the rest of his shot. "Enough conversation; we need to get this started, as I have places to be." Red John watched Shelli roll her eyes.
"Of course you do, Craig." He heard the malice in the brunette's voice. "Maybe next year, you'll actually bring her around. I'm starting to think she's invisible."
Nicole glanced at him. "O'Laughlin's has a lover, who he plans on celebrating Valentine's Day with."
"Are we discussing Craig's ghost lover?" Lorelei Martins inquired and Carter nodded, before he stood from his chair and offered it to her. She accepted the chair with a brilliant smile, while one of her hands went around O'Laughlin's arm. "If she doesn't appreciate your skills, I most certainly would…"
"Rebecca!" O'Laughlin called out, before Lorelei could finish her sentence. The dark haired woman paused in the middle of hanging gaudy decorations to stare at him. "Can we start this already? I'd like to leave at a decent hour."
"I'm finishing my…"
"Enough with the decorations, Rebecca." Red John ordered and Rebecca nodded, dropping the last few tablecloths to the floor. "I've also got plans for this evening, which means this death planning needs to start soon." Everyone stared at him in surprise. "What?"
"Sir…" Nicole started, hesitantly.
"What?"
Carter smirked, slightly. "I think Rebecca mislead you." Red John turned his head to stare at Rebecca, who seemed frozen to her spot. "We do discuss death, but our first order of business is the gift exchange."
"Gift exchange?" Red John almost leapt from his seat, enraged. "Did I not make my stance on Valentine's Day perfectly clear? I hate this holiday! This holiday makes me want to slaughter all of you with a dull arrow."
Everyone continued to stare at him.
"You have an arrow?"
Red John fixed Lorelei with a stare. "Metaphorically speaking, yes. I…"
"Sir," O'Laughlin interrupted, hastily. "I mean no disrespect here." Red John eyed him, narrowing his eyes. "However, we do gift exchanges every holiday."
"Valentine's Day isn't a holiday."
"It's on the calendar." Rebecca pointed out. "Hence, we're having this gift exchange." He watched as Rebecca plopped a badly wrapped package with a card in front of him. "Happy Valentine's Day, sir."
"And this is why we could never do secret gift exchanges." Shelli muttered under her breath, which caused Lorelei to laugh. "Someone can't be patient enough to do this properly." Red John eyed them both, as Lorelei motioned toward the end of the table where a large pile of pink-wrapped gifts sat.
"Your carelessness will get you killed, Rebecca." Carter commented and Rebecca rolled her eyes, before she motioned back to his present. Out of courtesy, Red John read the card first.
Rebecca's gifted card was all white, aside from the hanged stick figure and a noose. The black, bold letting inside the card read, "You've Got Me Hooked. Happy Valentine's Day!" It was his turn to roll his eyes. Why couldn't card companies be more original?
"Do you like it, sir?" Rebecca asked with a large smile across her face.
He glanced up from the card to stare at her. "Not really, no." Red John tossed the card aside, which Nicole grabbed.
Rebecca lost her grin. "Oh."
"You couldn't come up with anything more interesting than, you've got me hooked?" Nicole snorted. "A two-year-old could do better than that." Red John watched her pass the card off to Lorelei, who also snorted. "Hell, even the drug dealers I know could do better than that!"
"Yes, Rebecca." Lorelei agreed. "Stick figures really promote the idea of Valentine's Day, now don't they?" O'Laughlin replied with his own snort. "If I had gotten him a card with a stick figure on it, his little stick figure would have been painting the white card red with Patrick Jane's blood."
"My heart bleeds for you." O'Laughlin joked.
"Blood is red, this card is white…" Carter started, but trailed off after a moment of silent musing. "I hate rhyming."
"You and everyone else, Carter." Shelli agreed, scowling.
Red John glanced back at Rebecca, who seemed to be dying of embarrassment. "I'll open your gift now." He said nothing else, as he swiftly undid the vibrant pink wrapping paper and stared at the pink ceramic frog.
Do all serial killers put up with this or is it just me? Red John wondered silently, as the entire table of friends (named and unnamed) burst out laughing at Rebecca's silly little gift. Rebecca crossed her arms against her chest and he rolled his eyes again.
"It's a nice gift, Rebecca. You did excellent." He lied through his teeth again and he almost gagged at Rebecca's smile, before he felt her lips press against his in a kiss.
Without a trace of uncertainty (as he tried to inconspicuously wipe the woman's taste from his lips), he decided Rebecca would be the next one to die. He already had the perfect role in mind for her too.
After all, his method of picking friends to die had nothing to do with who fit the role best.
It all had to do with who was stupid enough to purchase him a Valentine's Day gift on Valentine's Day.