Okay! Second Mentalist fic. Primarily Jane in introspective, but some Van Pelt/Rigsby mentions, and a nod to Lisbon/Jane at the end, because I never can resist.
Jane does alot of things from the worn brown couch outside Lisbon's office.
He goes over open cases in his mind, one detail upon another. He counts the tiles in the ceiling out loud while the others do paperwork, a practice which annoys Cho, in particular, to no end. He muses on his colleagues most often, asking himself when Lisbon might have had her last date or what Rigsby might have worn to his Junior Prom.
The one thing he never does is sleep, although he frequently pretends to. He is doing this now, reclining with his arms crossed and eyes heavy-lidded, watching Van Pelt and Risgsy, who are directly in his line of sight. They are sitting at their desks, directly across from one another, trying hard to work but being distracted by the spring sun leaking through the window.
Van Pelt is reading a case report, and absently nibbling at the Hershey Kisses she keeps in a cream-colored bowl in the corner of her desk. Rigsby occasionally leans over and steals one, only to be caught at it and duly admonished by Grace. She would sound forbidding, but her stern tone is undercut by a sweet, bemused smile. She pushes the bowl slightly toward him, (an action Jane believes is done subconciously, almost certainly without her knowledge) inviting him to do it again. He does, but seems to derive more pleasure from her than the candy; Jane watches his eyes narrow with concentration as she daintily peels off the silver wrapping, dart to her mouth and linger there as she places the chocolate between her lips. A slow smile comes over his face, one that has some wickedness and mystery and a little bit of lust—but mostly adoration.
It takes Jane a second to recognize the smile, where he's encountered it before—and when he does, it almost knocks him over. In himself.
He used to be Rigsby, he thinks, when he was years younger, with women. He had never really been a player, although his physical genetic gifts coupled with his gift of understanding human nature would easily have lent themselves to it. In the end, he had always been too earnest, too eager, too able to get caught up in it, all qualities that were ill-fitting a womanizer. He would find himself in idealization verging on worship of the lilt in a woman's voice, the different flecks of color in her eyes, the way she might have giggled with her shoulders pulled up to her ears. He is sure that Van Pelt is not the first woman Rigsby has admired in this manner because he remembers those days—before he met his wife-- when he was just like him.
Jane used to fall in love all the time. Something about his ability to observe people, to look into them, gave him a view of a person as a whole, complex being—he admired the intricasies, the contradictions, the thousands of tiny parts that made a whole, however seemingly mismatched. It was almost like admiring a painting by taking it apart—brush stroke by brush stroke—rather than seing the whole and simply finding it pleasing, like most people did.
He suspects that if he were to ask Rigsby what he likes so much about Van Pelt that he wouldn't get a simple "She's beautiful, she has a great personality." He'd get a bit about how shiny Grace's hair is on Mondays, or the way she eats her pizza backwards, starting from the crust, or how she laughs completely silently. Rigsby is not a man generally given to long-winded articulations, but Jane is almost sure that in this case, he would be. Rigsby studies Grace incredibly concientiously, analyzing each tiny little bit, filing bits of it away for later review.
Jane doesn't look at people the same way he used to, he knows that. Since his wife and daughter died, he tends to view nearly all people through the lens of his ultimate goal—as a means to an end. He doesn't like this in himself, the callous growing over his vision and limiting it, but finds that he has less and less control over it. He doesn't admire the little things, the subtlety, the artistry of humanity, not any more. Certainly not the way he did when he was in his twenties.
Van Pelt is only pretending to read the file now, she waits for Rigsby to stick his hand in the bowl again. He sits with shifty eyes and guiltily grabs a candy, only to have Van Pelt playfully smack his hand. She giggles a little and it surprisingly isn't silent, but sweet and girlish. He notices Rigsby's eyebrows quirk up in surprise at this and Jane nods, having been given confirmation of what he has been suspecting, and his mouth relaxes into an indulgent smile, feeling twinges of longing.
Lisbon leaves her office just then and walks to stand in front of Jane's couch. She is focusing hard on an e-mail on her blackberry, and does not seem to notice him.
Teresa has green eyes that are so bright and so clear as to be almost blue—since that day that Jane told her how great she looks in green, she wears it considerably more often. He suspects that if he were to call her on this she would deny his words had any impact, but continue to wear the green anyway. She tends to fidgit impatiently in moments of quiet, most likely a leftover habit from the more flighty days of her childhood-- before her mother died, before she had to take care of her father and brothers. It is probably one of the only things from that time she has kept. She tugs unconciously at her lower lip with her right thumb and pointer finger when she concentrates, or when she's nervous, or when he's reading her and she's trying to keep him from seeing anything. She does this now, scrolling down on the email in her phone with her eyebrows furrowed.
Lisbon peers up, and catches the pensieve look in Jane's face. He expects her to glare at him in annoyance, as she tends to do when he gets too close to her and her ever-guarded secrets. She doesn't. She unexpectedly grins at him, shakes her head when he doesn't look away, raises her eyebrows knowing that she has scored a point. Jane stores this bit of information in his head for later, for when he will attempt to fit it in with all the other things.
He lays back onto the couch and closes his eyes, suddenly smiling.