[the Mentalist, Big Bang fan-fic] Tricking Stella- Accidentally Engaged
Title:
Author:
little_firestar (aka LizFromItaly on fanfiction.net)
Artist:
dearthursday
Link to art: coming soon
Word Count: +20.900
Rating: T
Summary: There's only one thing that, after so many years of celibacy, Jane hates more than dates- blind dates. Especially if arranged by a certain blonde truble-maker going by the name of Stella... but there's only one way to stop his opponent, and it's showing her that soon to be Mrs Jane has already entered into the picture. But when evidences will be needed, who will play the part? Easy- the one who always got his back, no matter what. Even if she'll have to sahre her life with him for a little while....
Disclaimer: sadly, it's not mine. But my brother forgot to buy me a Christmas gift, and told me he would make it better in a couple of months fro my birthday... hey, a girl gotta dream, right?
Story's un-beated, so, all mistakes are mine. Many thanks to
dearthursday for providing such an amzing and fitting art!
Please note: this si another post season 3 fic; but, keep in mind, that for the sake of story, season 4 hasn't happened yet, and never will, since in this reality the man Jane killed was, indeed, Red John.
She was mad, enraged, nervous, on the verge of a rather bad nervous breakdown and she didn’t even know exactly why. That was what Teresa Lisbon, senior agent with the SCU at the CBI, knew in that particular Monday morning - particular because she was witnessing something she had never seen before, something she had never thought possible: Patrick Jane, almighty consultant, oh so great mentalist that everything saw and knew, was actually pacing, from his couch right to her office’s front door and back, all the time staring at his feet and scratching the back of that head full of those glorious golden curls.
And that was exactly why she was mad, enraged, nervous and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Because Patrick Jane looked like he was panicking. And if there was a thing she had gotten to know about the man, was that he never panicked, ever. Not on the outside, at least, putting off the mask for everyone to see him, and if he was actually doing it, right before their eyes…. it could only mean troubles. Bad news. And that he had done (or was going to do, no matter what) something wrong- that probably would end up costing her that job she was so fond of. And that had the peculiar capacity of allowing her to keep living into modern day society.
“Jane!” she screamed at the top of her lungs once he, again, turned to come back to his couch, barely acknowledging that she had been there, right in front of him, to begin with. Another point in favor of her “Jane did something wrong” theory. The man saw everything, and knew a lot (not everything, thanks to God) and, yes, she was short, but not that much to miss her at all, and if he hadn’t seen her… then, it was really, really, bad. Kind of end of the world as she knew it scenario.
Turning on her heels to retreat to the safety of her office for the long, awaited heart to heart talk, she closed her eyes, hands already resting on her forehead, knowing too well that whenever Jane felt that bad was because he had done something extremely wrong without considering first the consequences …. Or he was going to, no matter what. Which was even worse, considering that she couldn’t collect favors around any longer, after having collected them for years and years thanks to the troubles made by a better left unmentioned consultant… and she couldn’t count on Bertram and Hightower any longer as well, since everything that could have been done, they did it when they literally saved Jane’s ass from life sentence or death penalty after the man had the brilliant idea of killing “Red John” out in the open in front of something like few hundred people - apparently, even if he was now the DA’s deputy in LA, Sebastian Stark hadn’t forgotten the time he used to be a high end defense attorney worth of checks with more than two couples of zeros, and even if he did accept to come back to basic at the end to defend Jane, he didn’t exactly did it for free, even if Lisbon herself had never been made aware of the particular conditions of the deal the three of them sealed in order to help Patrick Jane escaping that mess, letting him as clearer as possible.
She had even lied for him herself, a fact that the whole SCU was well aware of, and something that, if they had to be honest, troubled them all, not for the lie itself, but because they weren’t sure he could still deserve it, not after what he had done. And it wasn’t about killing Red John; they couldn’t, officially, share his vision, couldn’t agree with him, but they could understand. What they couldn’t understand was how he could have done it after having heard the bullets through the phone, knowing that Lisbon had been hurt… the same Lisbon who cared about him, the same Lisbon he was supposed to care about in return, but, apparently, his affection for the petite woman wasn’t as deep as hers, because not once he thought about running to her. Instead….
“Jane, dammit! You are unnerving me with that pacing! Drop it and come here!” in her mind, it was supposed to be an hissed sentence, but, truth to be told, it was quite the opposite- an honest to God scream, the last hope for opening up that thin skull that happened to cover what was supposed to be Jane’s brain- if the man still had one, of course. Because it was bad enough that the man had fired at another human being surrounded by thousands of witnesses, no, he kept doing idiocies after idiocies, pulling stunts after stunts forgetting (or, maybe, simply not caring at all) about what good old judge Swenson ordered… she really couldn’t understand how the man could be that… that much of an idiot. How could he not get that her was constantly watched over and monitored? How could he forget that, first mistake, first broken rule, he’d be out of the CBI for good just to be sent again in jail?
She momentary froze in both fear and anticipation, like that moment was just meant to happen, remembering how, thanks to Stark, the jury didn’t find the consultant guilty of first degree murder, thanks to the fact that “Red John” had been armed at the time and was in the process of escaping in hope of kill yet again and again, but, still, they didn’t list it as justifiable homicide, but as an excess of legitimate defense (forgetting that he did use a weapon that wasn’t his to begin with, but unregistered, probably stolen, coming from who knew where, and that he carried and used it without being licensed), and, instead of jail (that would have been earned, considering his happy and playful behavior during the trial) , the too good to be true Swenson sent him back to the CBI, with minimum wage, kind of a social work… too bad the consultant kept behaving like the 5 years old he swore he no longer was from over 35 years, making the gates of the Maximum Security State Penitentiary of Pelican Bay closer and closer each passing day. Not exactly a comfortable thought.
It can’t be worse than cold blood murder in front of thousands of witnesses. She though once she saw him actually entering in her office and taking a seat in front of her- not the couch he had given her one year prior, but the chair in front of her desk, an unusual behavior that made her foreseen the worst. Well, now at least she knew that whatever it was, it was really bad, and if his unusual demeanor wasn’t proof enough, he even kept silent. And he was looking at her with puppy eyes and a light blush. And he was nervous -the whole world knew that Patrick Jane didn’t do nervous, socially awkward, he could do, especially if having to deal with other women, but nervous was definitely another pair of shoes. Nor he usually was silent, like now. And blushing? She didn’t think it had already happened before.
Good. Now she knew for sure that the Apocalypse was coming to get her with her bony fingers. Or was that Death? “Dammit, Jane, what did you do this time?” she begged like a child, exasperated, fighting the urge to hide her face and hit it against her desk. She wasn’t exactly looking forward a cerebral commotion just to add injury to the injured. Especially because of him. He wasn’t worth days in a cold and sterile hospital room.
“I may have done a small mistake, that, though, could have eventually escalated into a bigger mistake, and I’d really need your help to remedy to this unfortunate situation…” Lisbon could see he was struggling to keep his façade in place, trying to look calm even if he wasn’t feeling it at all… and she didn’t know what she was supposed to feel. Part of her was kind of relieved, because it was quite a novelty seeing the man asking for help, showing that he had understood they were a team and a surrogate family of sort, but… he was asking her for help, not Rigsby, Van Pelt or Cho… which, in her mind, equaled to the sentence “Jane’s superior is that close to losing her job because of her consultant”, which equaled big troubles for her.
She mentally wondered if McDonald’s and Burger King were ready to hire a former lady-cop close to 40 who had spent her life sending behind bars criminals and dealing with idiotic consultants fully unable to follow any kind of law and moral and/or ethic rule of behavior… oh well, at least, even if the economy was going to hell, food was still on top of people’s priorities.
“So, tell me, who’s gonna hear me begging for clemency this time?” Hearing the words, he barely suppressed a smile; he wasn’t going to actually smile, though, because of her exasperated tone, even if the way she was already giving up on the fight was almost irresistible. Even if he was used to it, because 98% of the times it was how their “battles” tended to end, she still surprised him, accepting what she called herself “stupid ideas” every time he spoke, even if she had to put up a fight before doing so, even if he was who he was and had done what he had done, breaking, he knew it, the trust they had so hardly built in years of hard work. “Jane?” she almost whispered, voice low and worried, but not worried for her, he could see it. Even with everything he had done, Lisbon still kept worrying about him. She was really something, Saint Theresa.
He lifted, again, his eyes to meet hers as her voice awoke him from the reverie he had fallen into, victim to the memories he couldn’t help but experience yet again… his heart lost a beat, like it had done more than once in the last few months when the dark haired woman was concerned, and Jane decided it wasn’t the moment nor the place to think about it, too scared to really face what it meant for his relationship with Lisbon, but, mostly, for him in particular…. Even if Red John was long gone, Jane was sure he wasn’t ready yet to move on, even if every time she was close his heart lost a beat, and there was a good chance that the right time would never come at all. And besides…
Besides, there was the not so insignificant particular that Lisbon was worth much more than him, a former fraud who enjoyed lies and deceptions, using everyone and everything to fulfill his selfish needs and desires, too caught into his own web to remember who he was supposed to care about, look after, his greatest mistake, his greatest regret, what made him for all eternity a man only for half, a broken creature who forgot all about living, someone who just existed, who saw everyone experiencing life but unable to be protagonist of his own.... definitely not someone Lisbon should have been interested in, not with the life she had gone through, because he knew it. She deserved better, more.
“My problem is…. Stella’s coming to town.” He smiled his megawatt killer smile, doing his best to seem normal and calm. He hoped he was doing his best impression, considering that, lately, Lisbon was keeping giving him a hard time. After almost 9 years year spent alongside each other, as co-workers first, friends lately (and then, maybe, just maybe, even something more, in the security of their own hearts) it looked like the woman had learnt what his Achilles’ heels were, the holes in his armor. (Did she know she was his biggest hole, his biggest heel?).
She remained speechless for some instants, so long it looked like an eternity, her heartbeat so slow it was imperceptible, almost inexistent, and all because of a name, Stella. The name he told her, a female name, one she didn’t know, never heard before, someone who made him nervous, who worried him and definitely not negatively.
“Stella, you said?” she tried to sound as natural and casual as possible, scared that he could understand, know what thinking about him with another woman did to her, and she couldn’t allow it. Never look frail, never look too human, too woman, especially to Jane. She could go on through everything, but not unrequired love, not with him knowing about her feelings, it’d be too much, too humiliating, too demoralizing…. She couldn’t comprehend the chance of working with him, with Jane knowing, and if she couldn’t have him as a lover, she’d stick with the friend, but renouncing to the whole package was something she wasn’t willing to loose yet, but… but, deep down, she knew, like she had always had, that it was something that couldn’t last for the eternity, this kind of state of grace he was into, a man free from the ghost of his past and from any kind of romantic relationship. One day, he’d walk into the sunset with another woman, and that day she’d renounce any claim on him, making room for the one he could really belong to, but right now, right now she wasn’t ready to, not yet, and it was just… wrong, and unfair.
“I never told you about Stella? Weird, I thought….” He red her with his curious eyes, wondering whether she was lying or not, and smirked, a smile of joy on features signed by years of sufferance but still kissed by the bright Californian sun, and she lowered her eyes, desperately trying to hide the deep red nuance her face was getting. “I thought it was in my file. Well, doesn’t matter, we can easily remedy that- Stella is my sister.”
“Jane, you don’t have a sister, so stop bullshitting me” she didn’t know if being exasperated or simply laugh, sure more than ever that Jane was actually pulling one of his stunts on her, also because the opposite wasn’t acceptable… was it possible for her not knowing such a basic fact, that he could have forgotten to share it with her, or, even worst… had he deliberately forgot to tell her?
She studied him like she had often done in the past, and come to a simple realization: the answer to her last question was a yes, he could have deliberately forgotten to share Stella’s existence with her, because it was a classic Jane thing to do, solving mysteries, reveal secrets but never his, beating around the bush for so long, with those eyes and those killer smiles his opponent could only forget what they were talking about to begin with.
“Oh, yes, I indeed have a sister, Lisbon, even if, technically, for both the law and genetic Stella is “merely” my half -sister. We share only the same mother, you know, she was born after my parents divorced and I got a step-father I saw, I think a couple of times in my whole life… let’s say I wasn’t exactly too close to mummy after she abandoned the carnie circuit for a plain and boring life as an ordinary housewife.” He almost chuckled at the memory, but without any hint of humor, and in his lowered eyes, Lisbon saw the shadows, shadows she had seen already so many times hunting the man’s life, the shadows of regret and guilt.
“You, Patrick Jane, have a younger sister.” She smiled a bit, surprised, imagining how a female… Jane could look like. Was she super-model good looking like her half brother? Or was she completely different?
“Yep, and, unfortunately, even if she is younger than me, Stella is kind of… authoritative- I love her, I really do, but she has too many ideas about how I should live my life, ideas I’m not exactly keen about, so every time she comes to visit, I end up hiding in some hole telling her I’m on an out of town case in order to avoid stupid arguments or stupid arguments escalating into colossal arguments with screams of rage, and, I think, once even broken dishes, but I could have dreamt that, I wasn’t exactly myself at the time.”
“So, she doesn’t like that you work with law enforcement? Listen, I understand she may be worried, or even see this as a dangerous job, but, c’mon, that’s exaggerating! You are not supposed to have a gun, I’m not the one sending you on the first line against barbarians, even if you do tend to get into the same troubles I kept ordering you to avoid.” She scrolled her head, rather disturbed, like this Stella was questioning her decisions towards the man’s well-being (while it was completely Jane’s own doing), and then, suddenly, it hit her, something she remembered hearing once, a sentence said by one of Jane’s old friends, a certain Pete. Or was it his wife? “I seriously hope it’s not because you work with us, with you being a Jane and us being cops... it’s not a bad thing that you developed a minimum of semblance of honesty!”
He didn’t like the use of the affirmation “minimum of semblance of honesty”, not a bit, and got him to stare at Lisbon with crossed arms and clenching teeth, desperately fighting the need to use some witty or not too nice remark that he knew she couldn’t appreciate at all. But, even if it was hard, really, really hard, he still resisted, because he was quite a good (or at least soft) man when it come to her. But, really, he hadn’t liked that sentence at all. He wasn’t some kind of monster (despite having killed a murderer), and even when he lied and manipulated, he did it for a greater good. “She is unnerved by the fact I’m not thinking about remarrying, Lisbon” He grunted, annoyed by how judgmental of him and his own family she had been. Because even if she kept worrying about him, Stella, her mother’s daughter, was proud of what he had achieved in the last decade or so. Well, not completely- apparently, she shared with Lisbon her opinion about the way he murdered Red John.
“Oh” She just said, blushing yet again of that deep red nuance he happened to love so much. There wasn’t anything she thought she could say, or even just think. Yet again, she had to admit that the thought of Jane dating, or worse, getting married was just too painful for her to consider.
“Yeah. Stella is disturbed by the fact I keep refusing dating, so she has decided it’s her mission to introduce me to every single female from 21 to 60 she happens to know, something I’m not exactly a big fan of. And that brings us yet again to the starting point: I need your help.” He got comfortable on the chair, looking at her like he did when he shared one of his master plans. The old Jane was back-in part, at least.
“Well, telling that we have an out of town case it’s no big deal for me. I don’t agree with your actions, but I can understand them. But, in your shoes, I’d….”
“Well, actually, that’s not the point. You see, couples of days ago, she called me, telling me everything there is to know about this friend of a friend of a friend who lives here in California she absolutely needs to introduce me to, and how I absolutely have to go to dinner with this lady one of these days, and I know I should have said just to drop it and get lost, but Stella is my little sister and she can be kind of cute, and even if it’s paradoxical, she just cares about me, and so, I just didn’t know what to say because I didn’t want to hurt her, and I thought that maybe…. I could tell her… that I kind of met someone, and that we are crazy about each other and are currently in the process of projecting our future together…. You know, marriage, average 1.2 children, nice cottage with garden and a white fence, two cars in the garage and a cat and a dog, that sort of things.”
Just his surname, whispered like a lament, left her lips as Lisbon massaged her temples. She knew that nothing good could come out of that kind of lies, and besides, she had a bad feeling. She shivered, realizing what his words could mean for her, why he was telling her these things.
“I know, believe me, I do, it’s just that it took me years to make her close her mouth, and it was… I felt free! Only, she then asked me about all the details, and so I had to improvise, and so I may have told her that we are getting married. The two of us. So, would you mind playing my soon to be bride for few days, for the sake of one of the longest friendship relationship you had in your whole life and don’t try to claim the opposite because I know it’s true?” he never breathed once while he talked, closed eyes to avoid her enraged expression once she’d realized what he meant, what he had actually said about them.
But he got only silence, a long, interminable silence. “Lisbon?” he dared to call her, in the same tone she had used with him just minutes before, and, finally, he opened his eyes, wondering what punishment she was working on in her mind, but once their eyes met, he didn’t saw anger. It only looked like she was asking if she had been traveling across universe, ending in another one, different from her own, where rules didn’t exist nor apply, a place she didn’t know anything about, she didn’t understand.
“Just, tell me if I got it right: since you don’t want your sister to arrange blind dates for you, you told her you are getting married. With me.”
“Well, if you put it that way…. Yes, I’m guilty as charged.” she sank into her chair, breathing in and out deeply, at closed eyes; still, the moment Jane moved to join her and sit on the edge of her desk, she suddenly become fully aware of his very presence. She could feel it, the warmth of that masculine body, the hormones he emitted, his scent…the clear scent of his marine aftershave, the perfume of the freshly laundered grey three pieces suite, the sensation of freshness and cleanliness that come from him in general. “It’s not going to be that much, you should just pretend to be in love with me for few days. I don’t ask to be cheesy or find me irresistible, even if I’m aware it’s hard not finding me irresistible….” His voice was somehow amused, low, a velvety caress whispered on her skin, and she couldn’t help but wonder…. Did he know it? Was he aware of the fact that she did find him irresistible, and that in a perfect world, the world of illusions, inside her most secret dreams, so secret it took her years to acknowledge them, he always asked her to be his and not for an act but for real, forever and ever?
That was the kind of chances that didn’t happen twice, and maybe it was just what she needed to forget about Jane and move on once and for all and get a decent love-life worth of the name instead of one night stands, to remember herself, and accept, that he wasn’t going to suddenly wake up one morning and acknowledge her existence as a female being, deciding that he couldn’t live any longer without Teresa Lisbon’s love. Besides, maybe he was a terrible boyfriend material and she didn’t know it yet.
“I was quite the actress back in high school” she admitted, smiling, with false nonchalance, scrolling her shoulders, looking into Jane’s eyes, a man who was smiling happy and proud of the smile he usually let for cases solved thanks to his so-called genius.
“We’ll have to be careful, Stella is almost as good as me when it comes to cold reading people, fooling her will not be easy. We’ll have to be at our top and seem veritable.” He paused, like reflecting, then he faced Lisbon yet again, and she remained at open mouth, thinking about where she thought he was going, flushed, exited but scared as well by the new situation. “And, speaking of which, I fear we’ll have to share my house for few days, and maybe…. Even consider the possibility of sharing my bedroom, if I’m not asking too much.”
He grinned. And she merely blushed, making him just grin furthermore.
Yes, she was both scared and exited by the new development, exited because she’d be, even if just for an act, Patrick Jane’s girlfriend, and scared because there was a good change he was going to find out about her feeling for him.
But saying no had never been an option. Because she wasn’t ready to give up on him, to let him go. Not yet.