A/N: I was in the mood for something fluffy and humorous, and this idea occurred to me, especially after I re-watched Van Pelt's reaction to the idea that Jane was coming on to her in "Fugue in Red." This is set in mid-Season 1, back when Rigsby's love for Van Pelt was as yet unrequited, and Van Pelt of course was the rookie on the team.
Fire with Fire
Chapter 1
Wayne Rigsby looked longingly after the tall redhead as she headed to the break room to refill her coffee mug. He sighed a little and turned back to his computer screen, while the two other men in the bullpen mentally rolled their eyes.
"Merely making cow eyes isn't going to win the hand of that fair maiden," Jane commented from his prone position on the nearby couch.
"It also turns my stomach a little," commented Cho under his breath.
"You probably just got a bad sausage biscuit," Wayne countered irritably.
Cho's lips twitched in amusement. He always enjoyed it when he'd goaded Rigsby enough that he actually fought back a little.
"Besides," Rigsby continued, this time glancing toward Jane, "it's against regulations to do anything more."
"Regulations smegulations," Jane said cheerily. He sat up, the conversation suddenly taking an interesting turn. "Haven't you ever experienced the excitement of a secret lover?"
Cho snorted a little in spite of himself, but Rigsby pointedly ignored him. "No," he admitted sadly. "Have you, Jane?"
Jane's expression grew nostalgic for a split second before he said: "Yeah, and there's nothing more stimulating." He quickly turned the spotlight back to the unrequited lover before him. "You need to step up your game, Wayne, or some other lucky suitor will take her away before you even set your cap."
This time, Cho physically rolled his eyes. "That's a load of crap. It's best he steer away from that career killer."
"Hey—" Rigsby protested.
"Don't listen to him, Wayne," Jane said. "Cho there is dealing with latent oedipal issues, which is why he's never formed any lasting relationships of his own."
"Hey—" Cho protested.
It was Rigsby's turn to snort. "So what do you suggest I do?" he asked his new champion.
"Why, write her a secret love letter, of course. Maybe throw in a bit of original poetry."
Rigsby gulped, his nervous gaze shooting toward the doorway, expecting Van Pelt to remerge at any moment. "What should I say? I've never written any poetry before."
"I could help if you like," Jane said, happy for a new and interesting project. There had been no new cases for days, and he desperately needed some sort of entertainment or he'd likely go mad. Rigsby's little problem would just fill the bill.
"This is a bad idea," Cho warned.
"Tell it to your mommy," Rigsby shot back. Jane chuckled, and Cho just shook his head, unfazed by the insult because he foresaw nothing but disaster at the end of this misguided experiment. Rigsby would get his.
"Look, Jane," Rigsby said, lowering his voice, one eye still on the door, "don't make it too mushy. I just want to get a hint if she's open to a relationship."
Jane nodded. "Don't worry; I got this."
Just then, Van Pelt returned, two steaming cups in her hand. She set one on Rigsby's desk as the tall agent looked up from his chair at her in awe.
"I just made this fresh," she said, "and since Cho and Jane don't like my coffee…Two sugars, right?"
Rigsby swallowed, momentarily tongue-tied. "Yeah, right. Uh, thanks, Van Pelt. That was…nice of you."
She shrugged and smiled brilliantly at him. "No problem."
Rigsby watched as she went back to her desk, happily sipping from her mug as she got back to whatever project she'd been working. Rigsby shot a hopeful look at Jane and the consultant grinned confidently back.
A piece of cake, Jane said to himself. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Three days later…
Van Pelt knocked timidly on the frame of Lisbon's open office door, and at her boss's absent nod, she came inside.
"Uh, Boss," she began, always a little nervous around Lisbon, who could be a little gruff and intimidating at times. "You mind if I close the door?"
Lisbon was immediately concerned, and the junior agent suddenly had her full attention. "Sure. Something wrong, Van Pelt? Have a seat."
The redhead complied.
"Well…I'm not sure it's anything exactly wrong, but I felt I should tell you about this, just in case."
"Go on," Lisbon nodded encouragingly. Van Pelt shifted uncomfortably in the chair in front of her desk, but knew that now that she'd finally gotten the courage to talk to Lisbon about this, the best thing to do was just spit it all out at once.
"I've been receiving these strange e-mails, and they're making me a little… uncomfortable."
Lisbon's eyes narrowed angrily. "Is someone sexually harassing you? Because that's something I won't tolerate in this office—"
"No! No, ma'am. It's hard to explain. Would you—well, do you have time to read them real quick?" She held out the sheets of paper she'd been holding. "I uh, printed them off."
Lisbon reached across her desk for the plain white copies, and, at first she almost violently began to read. But as her eyes drifted down the page, they began to noticeably soften, and by the end of the first letter, she was smiling a little.
She glanced up at Van Pelt. "Wow," she couldn't help saying. "That was just—wow. Are they all like this?"
Van Pelt nodded. "Believe it or not, they just get better."
Lisbon's eyes widened, and she went on to the next page. After she'd finished with that one, she actually reached up to wipe self-consciously at her misty eyes.
"Holy crap," Lisbon commented, feeling her face flush scarlet. "This is—well, I can see what you mean."
"I know, right?"
"Any idea who these are from?" Lisbon asked.
"I did a trace of the e-mail address and it's positively an internal CBI address, but it's a newly formed account. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but at first I thought it might be Agent Rigsby. He's sort of looked at me in a certain way, you know?"
Lisbon nodded. It was certainly no secret that Rigsby had a huge crush on the rookie agent. "But you don't think it's him now?"
Van Pelt shook her head. "I don't mean to say that Agent Rigsby isn't capable of writing something like this, but it somehow doesn't seem quite his style."
Lisbon quietly agreed.
"I figured he might have copied some of the poetry from somewhere," Grace continued, "but when I plugged in a few lines into a search engine, nothing came back. I'm pretty sure it's original. It's certainly very personal. I mean, the descriptions of me physically are close to home."
Van Pelt felt her own face redden in embarrassment. She didn't want to sound conceited, because the flowery, old-fashioned words were touchingly beautiful and highly complementary. But Lisbon seemed to understand her meaning.
"I have no doubt whoever wrote these is totally smitten with you, Van Pelt, that's quite obvious. But you say you're uncomfortable. Would you like me to try to put a stop to this?"
Van Pelt's heart lurched. "I don't know, Boss. What if it isn't Rigsby after all? What if it's someone else more…appropriate. I guess I really just needed to tell someone about this. Like I said, I don't want anyone to get into trouble."
"Well, if it isn't someone on the team, it would be all right for you to pursue a relationship if you really want to. So then, we've likely eliminated Rigsby. I'm not liking Cho for this either."
Both women chuckled a little at the thought of the serious Cho secretly carrying a torch for the younger agent. Definitely not his style either, but then again, he did read some awfully romantic novels and poetry books, thought Grace. Hmmm…Then a thought occurred to her, and it seemed so totally out there that she almost didn't mention it. But Lisbon would probably have some great insight into her next suspect.
"I did notice something peculiar about Jane lately," Van Pelt said a moment later. Lisbon felt a tightening in her chest and wondered at the strange feeling. Maybe she'd had a bad sausage biscuit that morning.
"Oh," Lisbon said casually. "What's that?"
"Well, he's been sitting at his desk, jotting things down on a yellow legal pad."
"Jane's been jotting? Jane never jots."
This was a particularly annoying fact about Jane, in Lisbon's opinion. He never wrote down anything she told him, not names, not addresses, not important case points. She never saw him with a notepad, even during staff meetings. He'd told her one time that he need only hear something once, and he'd committed it to memory. (Well, things he deemed important, anyway.) When she'd challenged him on this, he'd told her to write a list of a hundred nouns. It took her an hour to compose it, but once she had, he asked that she read the list to him slowly, one time. When she'd gone through the list he was able to recite every word back to her, in order, even backwards. It had been truly amazing. It had cost her a dollar to find out how he'd done it.
"Mnemonics," he'd replied simply, his smile smug. Despite her threats of bodily harm, he wouldn't return her dollar.
That's why it was so suspicious now that Jane was actually putting pen to paper, not to mention the fact he was sitting in his mostly unused desk to do it. That implied a certain seriousness and dedication rarely seen by him, with the exception of cases involving Red John.
"You don't think Jane could be writing this stuff, do you?" Van Pelt asked, not exactly horrified, but it was definitely a little…disconcerting. Grace allowed herself to ponder what it would be like to be loved by Patrick Jane. She'd be blind not to notice how devastatingly handsome he was, how charming, how intelligent, how entirely capable he was of coming up with love letters that would move even the stoic Lisbon to tears. Van Pelt shivered a little. Could she handle such a strong personality as Patrick Jane?
"He's just a consultant, right?" she ventured. "Not officially a team member, is he?"
Lisbon looked at the young woman before her, so different from Lisbon herself. She seemed so fresh, so untouched by the horrors Lisbon had seen in her fifteen years of law enforcement. It wasn't beyond all probability that Jane might be drawn to someone like that, someone who might make him feel younger, who had nothing about her to remind him of his haunted past. It had been five years since he'd lost his family, after all. It was certainly past time for him to consider moving on with his life, way past time for a fling. As a matter of fact, Lisbon cared enough about him to want that for him. She ignored the vague feelings of disappointment at the thought that he hadn't shared with her his desire to move on. They were friends, weren't they?
"I'm not sure how the rules apply to someone in Jane's position," Lisbon replied neutrally. "But don't you think he's a little, well, oldfor you?"
Van Pelt blushed anew. "I don't know. Does age really matter when it comes down to it? We're both single, over twenty-one. And have you looked at him lately? I mean, that hair, that smile-" She stopped, realizing she'd taken this conversation way beyond the realm of a workplace dilemma.
Lisbon couldn't help feeling that this entire conversation was just too surreal, and at the very least, way too personal. Yes, of course she'd noticed Jane's thousand-watt smile. She'd have been dead not to. It was one of the things she loved most—she shook her head in consternation.
"What would you like me to do about this, Van Pelt?" she asked, her voice suddenly sounding cold, even to her own ears.
Van Pelt sighed, oblivious to her boss's change in mood.
"You're right about Jane. If it is him, it's seriously inappropriate, and have you noticed he still wears his wedding ring? But I don't know what I could say to politely get him to stop. I'm not very good at situations like that. I don't want to hurt his feelings, and I'm afraid I'll just make things even more awkward. I mean, I have to work with the guy."
"Have you replied to any of these e-mails?"
"No. I wouldn't know what I could possibly say to them."
Lisbon nodded. "Okay, let me handle this."
"What?"
"Give me your password, and I'll answer these letters as if I were you, on your account. Then, you can either block him or get yourself a new e-mail address."
Van Pelt looked at Lisbon a moment in trepidation. She still wasn't totally certain this was Jane's doing, and the letters were so lovely and certainly a tremendous boost to her ego, no matter who they were from. Could she be passing up the chance at a lovely romantic encounter by putting a stop to them?
"I don't know, Boss—" she began, but Lisbon was already in fix-it mode.
"May I keep these e-mails?" she asked Van Pelt. After all, there was still one she hadn't read yet, and she'd need to re-read them to formulate a reply.
"Uh, sure."
"Well, thanks for bringing this to my attention, Van Pelt. You shouldn't be bothered with letters of a personal nature at work, not matter who they're from."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Your password?" Lisbon prompted, eyebrows raised expectantly.
Van Pelt borrowed a pen and wrote down the password on a sticky note, already regretting that she'd gotten her boss involved with this at all. She supposed she just wanted to commiserate with a woman, and since she hadn't had time yet to make many new female friends in Sacramento, Lisbon had been the most obvious, albeit unconventional choice.
"I'll get to this as soon as I can," Lisbon assured her. "Don't worry about a thing."
"Okay. Thank you, ma'am." And Van Pelt beat a hasty retreat out of the senior agent's office. She went back to her desk, purposefully avoiding looking at her teammates, especially the snoozing consultant with the angelic curls.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Back in her office, Lisbon picked up the third e-mail from Van Pelt's secret admirer. The simple, heartfelt words touched a place inside her on such a deep level that Lisbon felt her pulse rate increasing, her palms growing damp. She had never read anything more beautiful outside a novel, outside a work of Shakespeare. She imagined the man who had written it, and her thoughts kept returning to Patrick Jane.
Patrick Jane in obsession mode was a force to be reckoned with—it was well-known how he behaved whenever Red John reared his sadistic head. He would become single-minded, oblivious to anyone who would attempt to interfere with his getting what he wanted. Lisbon knew instinctively that Jane would be exactly this way toward a woman when he was first falling in love with her. He'd throw out all the stops and woo her until she couldn't see straight. If these letters were any indication, poor Van Pelt would have no idea what hit her. And Jane had to realize that he was much too old and too damaged for the likes of her. Yes, it was up to Lisbon now to put a stop to it before both their hearts were broken. She had a good team here, and the last thing she wanted was for a doomed romance to break that apart too.
At least, that's what she told herself as she reread a particularly enchanting ode to Van Pelt's titian hair.
A/N: Yes, I am totally mangling and somewhat ripping off Cyrano De Bergerac, lol, but with a slightly surprising twist, I hope. Let me know if you like it so far, please?
P.S.: Just found a great new Chummer fic (thanks to Nana) called "I'm in Here," by mia101. Look it up. It's really fabulous!