Work Text:
Van Pelt was proud to say that she had firmly never given in to whatever caffeine addiction had the rest of the office in a chokehold. She would take a cup of coffee here, some tea there, but she never allowed it to become a regular habit in her mornings, unlike the rest of the team.
Rigsby, Cho, Jane, and Lisbon were in the break room every morning like clockwork, and interspersed throughout the day. It seemed silly, to Van Pelt, the claims that they needed it to work properly, although she would never tell them so. Rigsby had confided in her once that without a cup in the morning, he developed a small headache.
She just can’t see the logic in it. Why would she want to take something regularly that, when taken regularly, would not only dampen the effects it has when she takes it say… once a week, but would also give her pain when she stopped?
Pouring herself a glass of water, she looks over to where Jane had just filled the kettle and was now waiting for the water to boil. She can’t even imagine how much his head would hurt were he to stop.
No matter how much Jane proclaimed that he was simply, “Trying to keep up with all you coffee drinkers! You all get two or three times the caffeine from a single cup, but no matter, I simply get to enjoy the process!” Van Pelt still noted that he must be drinking far more - it was an uncommon sight to see Jane without a teacup in his hand some days.
Something itched at the back of her brain, as she thought about it, the same way it felt when she was working a case and some piece of evidence wasn’t lining up. She couldn’t figure out quite what was bothering her…
Jane shoots her a sidelong glance, a look that says, I know you’re thinking something, stop it, and she coughs, embarrassed at having been caught staring and read so easily as usual.
Jane goes back to his business, rummaging around in the cabinet in search of the box of tea. Returning successfully with a small “aha!”, he places the bag into the cup and pours his water over it, then leaves the break room.
It dawns on Van Pelt as she watches his back retreat.
What was bothering her was that he had never asked for more tea.
This wouldn’t have been such a strange fact - the office staff replaced depleted supplies - except that with the amount Jane drank, surely there had to be times between him taking the last bag and the staff getting around to refills that he wanted a cup.
Normally, Jane was pretty vocal about whatever he needed around the office, whether it was him whining that he needed his own desk, or demanding the oddest of supplies to solve a case. So, it struck her as odd she had never heard him complain that his drink was out. Whenever the coffee ran out in the break room, the whole office knew pretty quickly.
Once, Rigsby and Cho had gotten into a bickering match about who got to have the last cup, only broken up from becoming a full blown argument by Lisbon stumbling upon them and demanding they return to work (grumpier than normal, as she hadn’t had her caffeine either).
They were only saved from a day of unproductivity from both men by Jane, who brought a tray of coffees on his way back from questioning a suspect that Lisbon had very clearly told him not to speak with.
On his way to her office, he had set down two of the coffees on Cho and Rigsby’s desks. Van Pelt had no doubt they were exactly the correct orders. To her surprise, he’d then set down a bag on her desk which, upon further inspection, contained her favourite kind of lemon loaf. By the time she raised her head to thank him, he was already in Lisbon’s office.
The blinds were raised, and he could see him press the cup into her open hand mid yell with an innocent smile. Lisbon, through the glass, deflated a bit. Still angry, but the wind had been taken out of her sail.
Van Pelt remembered thinking Ah, there’s the ulterior motive.
At the time, she had brushed it off as Jane being his regular manipulative self but… she never did thank him for that lemon loaf, did she?
He’d brought them coffee (and her a snack) a few times after that. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to when it happened, except that it happened about… once a month…
Oh, Jesus. He’s been buying us coffee whenever the machine runs out, hasn’t he?
She nearly drags a hand down her face at how obvious it was. How had none of them noticed?
She sets down her water, pulling Jane’s tea box out from the cabinet. There are only four bags left in it. Patting down her pockets she finds her pen and uncaps it, swiftly marking a small corner cardboard in black. Satisfied, she places it back in the cabinet with a quick glance around the break room to make sure nobody had entered, and then she leaves.
The next day, she checks back in. The box has three tea bags in it.
She’s grateful to see that, at the very least, his consumption was a little less than she had thought, even if he was probably replacing the tea boxes on his own dime to hide how much he was…
Her train of thought comes screeching to a stop.
The pen mark is gone. The staff hadn’t come in for cleaning and refill yesterday. It’s a new box.
Shit. That’s-
Van Pelt doesn’t know much about tea, but that had to be a lot of caffeine.
Suddenly, she’s struck with a sense of discomfiture.
It felt wrong, to know something Jane didn’t want her to. The universe was out of balance. It was supposed to be the other way around. She peers out into the rest of the office. Rigsby, Cho, and Lisbon are crowded around a computer, talking about the case. Jane has his feet kicked back up on the couch as usual, occasionally chiming in to the conversation.
She closes the door again, looking at the tea box in her hands. Unsure of what to do with her newfound discovery, she quietly tucks the box back in its place.
A week later, she knows that Jane knows she knows.
She knows this because of the look he’s started giving her whenever she sees him with a cup in his hand. It’s a look that quietly says don’t bother and back off all in one.
She’s not sure how he figured it out, of course. Just sure that he knows. Him reacting this way is an admission that he realizes he has a problem, which makes everything so much worse.
And maybe it’s not that big of a deal. Maybe Van Pelt is overreacting, but she can’t help but pay more attention now.
Because Jane drinks two, even three cups sometimes, under the guise of one, refilling them back to back, and nobody notices because why would they be monitoring tea like that? so when they think he’s having two or three cups he’s actually having six or even nine.
He has it before a case, after a case, during, even! So Van Pelt can’t help but let slip whatever tell she has (she still can’t figure it out) that informs Jane that she’s worried.
Sue her.
Eventually, Jane responds in kind.
He catches her in the break room, because where else, and brews a cup while staring at her.
It’s a challenge, and it’s frustrating, just like everything else about Jane, that he won’t just talk to her. It feels almost like he’s trying to bait her into not talking to him by issuing her a challenge, like she would let it drop out of spite. At the same time, maybe he was truly challenging her just to get it over with.
Not knowing whether it was what Jane thought she would do or not, she proceeds anyways.
“Fifth cup today?” She asks, as casually as she can sound.
Jane smiles, any trace of that challenge wiped from his face, and responds easily, “Ah, well. Who’s keeping count, you know?”
He waves a hand dismissively. Van Pelt narrows her eyes. Her intention isn’t to corner him into talking about it if he really doesn’t want to, but she doesn’t know how to broach the subject so lightheartedly.
Jane probably reads this easily, because the smile drops off his face in the silence that follows his statement.
“Wow. You’re actually concerned about this, aren’t you?” He asks.
The idea that the surprise in his voice might be genuine makes her chest hurt.
“Grace. I’m fine,” Jane says, voice so earnest. The sound of her first name shocks her. “It’s just tea. Caffeine,” he shakes the box, “Not like I’m doing crack.”
“It’s just a lot of it,” Van Pelt says, unsure of how else to respond.
“Yes, well. Have to keep the mind well oiled if I’m going to make myself useful,” he’s back to grinning, that tone of confidence and dismissal loud and clear.
Van Pelt, for once, hears the double meaning.
To make himself useful.
How often did he feel this way?
She feels her expression fall, certain that a look almost akin to anguish takes over. She’s always been too expressive, and there’s almost nothing she can do to hide her reaction to the discovery that her coworker views his health so transactionally.
And Jane? A look of genuine surprise and fear takes over his face. She’s done something he hasn’t expected, and it only serves to make her feel even worse.
For a moment, it looks like he is about to say something. To tell her something that she’s certain will be the most honest thing he’s said to her about himself, something that might reveal himself from the hiding place that she never even thought existed before now.
It’s going to be important, whatever he has to tell her.
Van Pelt understands his fear. It’s scary to be understood, to be read so cleanly like an open book. Must be scary, to be on the other end of that for the first time.
So she does her best to keep her body language open, smooths her expression into something halfway between open and worried, waiting to hear what he has to say.
But then, he runs.
Not literally, but he turns and walks out of the break room too quickly, nearly shoulder checking the doorframe on the way out as if Van Pelt needed any further proof how disoriented he must feel.
Van Pelt could only wish that she was like Jane, that she could have read what he had truly wanted to tell her in that moment.
But she wasn’t.
In an uncharacteristic show of her frustration, she snatches the tea cup he had left behind and pours it down the drain roughly, watching as the bag falls into the sink with a small noise and the black liquid swirled away.
Black tea had the most caffeine, her Google searches had told her.
Rigsby stumbles into the room, breathing elevated. Van Pelt turns around, startled.
“Jane said you- you needed help?” He asked between breaths.
And wasn’t that typical. Sending a worried Rigsby her way as a distraction.
“No, no. I’m fine,” she tells him.
“What? Are you sure?” He whirls around to look at the door confusedly, as though he might find Jane there, “Why would he-?”
“Jane operates in strange ways,” she says.
She wouldn’t force Jane to talk about it - it would only make him clam up and divert more. Nor would she tell anyone else about it if he didn’t want her to.
It didn’t seem important, but she knew better. Just tea, after all, but it was obviously important to Jane.
“He’s not trying to steal something from my desk, is he?” Rigsby asks, straining to see his desk from inside the break room. Satisfied with the apparent lack of Jane at his desk, he turns back toward her again. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yes, Rigsby,” Van Pelt sighs. “Let’s get back to work.”
There’s another box of tea in the cabinet. Black tea, decaf, with a small pen mark on the back.
She’s not sure if he’ll like it, or even drink it, but she had to do something.
It turns out the pen mark was unneeded, because he tries it the very next day, not bothering to hide it from her as she had expected him to.
She eyes his tea throughout the day as she had been, with no change in the morning. She’s a bit disappointed, but not surprised. Then, in the afternoon, on his fifth cup, there it is.
Instead of the regular brand, the tag displays the decaf.
She lifts her gaze to find him looking at her across the room. He’s giving her a soft smile, a different one from his usually wide grin, and he raises the cup at her in a small salute.
Then, as though nothing had happened, he turns back to the conversation with Cho and Lisbon to laugh, exclaiming, “Really? Neither of you saw the way her secretary looked at him? They’re obviously having an affair. If we want to start looking for a murder weapon, his house would be a good place to start!”
A week or two later (enough time that Jane assumes she won’t connect the dots regarding his motivation?) Jane walks in with a tray of coffee again.
The machine hasn’t run out of coffee.
Rigsby and Cho practically whoop with joy as they grab the higher quality coffee, clapping Jane on the back in thanks. He straightens up a bit under the praise.
There are two lemon loaf slices in the paper bag he delivers to Van Pelt. So casually she almost believes him, Jane says, “Lucky you, they screwed up the order. Hope you’re hungry.”
“Thanks, Jane,” she says, carefully so as not to indicate that she knows the reason why.
He nods. She can’t fully tell, but he seems like it might be in satisfaction that she hasn’t figured him out. She doesn’t break the illusion.
This is a thank you lemon loaf as much as Lisbon’s coffee was an I’m sorry all those weeks ago, but for whatever reason, he doesn’t want her to know it.
As Jane wanders off to give Lisbon her drink, Van Pelt writes an email to the office manager requesting that they start stocking decaf teas in the break room. She’s already bought a few to keep in her desk for when they run out, but obviously it was easier to just make it official.