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“I know how to solve the case!” Patrick Jane said, sitting bolt upright on the couch in Lisbon’s office.
She jumped a little, almost spilling her coffee. “I thought you were asleep!” Lisbon huffed.
“Contrary to popular belief, what you call ‘sleeping’, I call brainstorming. I get some of my best work done while napping.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You said you know how to solve the case?”
They had been working on a case for the better part of a week, a murder at a high school that had been tough on everyone on the team. It was always harder when it was kids, and the fact that it seemed almost foolproof was beginning to annoy Lisbon. Usually, younger people cracked easier under pressure, but all the suspects in their case seemed completely innocent. The rest of the team was getting frustrated at the lack of progress, and they kept reviewing the interrogations with the suspects, to no avail.
The star of the basketball team, Connor Radford, had been found dead behind the bleachers in the gym, and there were traces of illegal drugs found in his bloodstream. This struck Lisbon as odd, because his mandatory drug screening from a week prior came back completely clean, leading them to believe that someone else submitted the sample for him. Van Pelt was waiting on DNA results from the medical examiner, and hopefully, it would lead to some sort of breakthrough.
The team had already interviewed the basketball coach, a couple of teammates, the victim’s girlfriend, his math tutor, his lab partner, and his roommate. Lisbon couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation, and it was beginning to wear on everyone. Everyone except Jane, that is.
“Yes, I know how to solve your case,” Jane said carefully. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“But if you want it all wrapped up neatly in a bow, you’ll go along with it.”
“I always do,” Lisbon sighed.
“Excellent,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Gather up the team, I only want to go over this once.”
_
The team was seated in the bullpen, Jane on his couch and Lisbon sitting on the edge of Van Pelt’s desk. Cho and Rigsby looked anxiously at each other as if trying to guess what Jane had in mind.
“Hey, boss? I just got the DNA results back. The sample from the drug screening doesn’t match Connor Radford’s DNA pattern at all,” Van Pelt said, reading off the email from the medical examiner.
"So someone submitted a sample in Connor's name, so the motive could be drug-related," Lisbon finished. "Good work."
“Aha!” Jane sat up slightly. “And this further proves my point that the person we are looking for is a student at Folsom High School.”
Cho looked dubiously over at Jane. “How do you know?”
“Yeah, we have almost no evidence,” Rigsby said.
“A betting man would say it’s not great odds, but I’m about eighty-seven percent certain that our killer is a student. And there’s only one way to find out,” Jane said.
“What way is that?” Van Pelt asked, spinning around in her chair to face Jane.
“Simple. What event is coming up at the school that no self-respecting high school student would miss?”
Four pairs of eyes looked expectantly at the blonde on the couch.
“C’mon, you guys are no fun. Humor me,” Jane commanded.
“Um, a football game?” Van Pelt guessed.
“Nope.”
“A house party?” Cho asked.
“Nope.”
“I, uh, is it prom?” Rigsby said, not quite following.
“Oh god,” Lisbon recalled seeing flyers for a Halloween themed dance when they had investigated the school. “Please tell me you’re not talking about the Halloween dance?” Lisbon begged.
“The very one!” Jane sat up and pointed at Lisbon. “Now, of course, we’ll have to go undercover…”
“What? Why?” Lisbon demanded.
“Jeez woman, will you let me finish? All I have to do is set a trap, we show up undercover, and voilá! Our killer will be revealed,” Jane explained.
“So what you’re saying is, we show up incognito to a high school dance and make an arrest?” Van Pelt wondered.
“Precisely.”
Rigsby cast a worried glance over at Lisbon. He knew she wouldn’t like the idea but would give it a shot since nothing else seemed to be working.
“Fine. Who were you thinking would go?” Lisbon asked reluctantly.
“You and I will be the only agents in the building,” he replied decisively. “Kids see cops, they run. We’ll never catch them that way. Rigsby, Van Pelt, and Cho will be waiting outside in case the culprit runs, but our job is to find them.”
“But what if they see Lisbon?” Cho asked.
“Don’t worry, they’ll never recognize her,” Jane answered.
“Why?” Rigsby questioned.
“Because she’ll be in disguise.”
Lisbon raised her eyebrows. “Like a ‘hide your cuffs and gun’ situation?”
Jane hummed thoughtfully. “More like...a Halloween costume.”
Van Pelt tried to stifle a giggle at the thought of Jane and Lisbon staking out a high school Halloween party in costume.
“You think that’s funny?” Lisbon demanded, whipping around to face her.
She quickly wiped the smirk off of her face.
“Jane, that’s ridiculous. Can’t someone else do it? Van Pelt could do it,” Lisbon pleaded.
“No, she can’t, I’m afraid. Our Grace is much too tall. You, my dear, are the perfect height.”
Lisbon rolled her eyes. “Fine. But I swear to god if you try to make me do some stupid line dance, I’ll shoot you.”
_
Of all the places Lisbon thought she might be on a Friday afternoon, she never thought she would end up shopping for a Halloween costume with Patrick Jane. He seemed uncharacteristically excited about the whole ordeal, whereas Lisbon was not at all happy at the thought of having to go undercover as a high school student.
They had been spending more time together as of late. Jane would come by her apartment for dinner and a movie every once in a while. It was getting harder for Lisbon to ignore her growing feelings for him, especially as recently she had been finding his antics at work more amusing than annoying. They still weren’t dating by any extension of the term, and Lisbon knew and respected that he might not be ready for another relationship for a long time.
He didn’t have many friends, and she didn’t know many people whose schedules fit around hers, and so they kept each other company most of the time. Lisbon was beginning to consider him a real friend, and he had opened up to her a lot in the past couple of weeks. She knew from experience that talking to someone about your past is hard work, and she was glad to be that friend for Jane. Nonetheless, she was not enthusiastic about going to the Halloween party with him.
“What kind of costumes are you interested in, Lisbon?” Jane asked as they wandered through the store, trying not to set off any of the motion-sensing animatronics.
“Not sure. Something simple,” she answered hesitantly. It had been a long time since she had done anything festive for Halloween.
Jane’s eyes sparkled. “What if we were to coordinate our costumes?”
“Like what?” she asked suspiciously.
“Nothing too corny. What about superheroes? You seemed pretty keen to make me into one when I lost my sight that one time,” Jane said mischievously.
It had been pretty funny, Lisbon admitted to herself. She couldn’t resist teasing Jane about his heightened senses, or as he called them, his new ‘superpowers’.
“Superheroes are fine,” Lisbon relented. “I haven’t seen that many movies, so you probably know more about it than me.”
Jane skimmed a hand along the shelves of fake swords and shields. “Okay. Hmm, you could be Wonder Woman. You seem to have a lot of similarities.”
“As tempting as that sounds, Jane, I could do without wearing a super short skirt in front of people. Maybe something that involves pants, or leggings underneath a skirt at the very least,” Lisbon said.
Jane picked up a Captain America shield from the wall. “Lisbon, did you know that Captain America’s so-called ‘indestructible’ shield has actually been broken by four people in the comics?”
“How do you have time to read all of these?”
“Meh, here and there. I read most of them when I was a kid. It’s good memorization practice, you know. Remembering what lines of dialogue go with what frames. It helped me build my memory palace. From there, you can go to bigger things with more words,” he explained.
“Like Shakespeare?”
“Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Jane recited. “It’s from Henry IV.”
Lisbon shook her head. Show-off, she thought.
Just then, Jane pulled a costume off of one of the racks and held it up. “What about this?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? I mean technically she’s a villain, but this isn’t a skirt!”
“Jane, I am not going to be running around in a, uh, whatever that is! A catsuit!” Lisbon said, her voice rising a couple of octaves.
“Aw, come on, Lisbon! It’s just Catwoman!”
“No.”
Jane put the costume back. He would have enjoyed seeing Lisbon wearing that for sure. It figured that she wouldn’t be interested, though.
They meandered over to the back of the shop to look at the rest of the costumes. Lisbon definitely thought she had made a big mistake in agreeing to this. Surely Van Pelt could take her spot, she thought.
Jane hummed, browsing the costumes one at a time. Ever since Lisbon had joked about making him a superhero all those months ago, he had been dead set on convincing her somehow to wear a Halloween costume. The whole party probably wasn’t strictly necessary to catch their killer, but it did help, and besides, it would give Jane a chance to see Lisbon in something other than her formal ‘work only’ persona. He had been enjoying spending time with her outside of work, she was a much more fun person when she let loose and forgot about rules and responsibilities for a little while. Jane hoped that she would at least try to have a little bit of fun.
Lisbon grabbed an Iron Man helmet off of a shelf. “Hey Jane, what about this?”
“Are you joking? It would be impossible to breathe in that thing, let alone see!”
“Hey, you said your other senses are heightened when you lose your vision,” Lisbon accused.
“I may have exaggerated. It’s a lot harder to do things when your vision is impaired.”
Lisbon burst out laughing. “So the Great Patrick Jane finally admits I’m right?”
“Oh wonderful Teresa, I retract my earlier statement about my superpowers,” Jane said, bowing teasingly towards her.
She smacked him in the shoulder.
“Come on, Jane. Let’s just pick something and go, we’ll never make it to the dance at this rate,” Lisbon said, smiling at his attempt to make her laugh.
He disappeared behind a rack of decorations. She kept rifling through the costumes, looking for anything that would be appropriate to wear. Suddenly, Jane poked his head around the corner.
“Lisbon, come here. I think I’ve figured out our costumes!” he said excitedly.
She groaned inwardly, prepared for the worst. When she joined him in the other aisle, he held up two costumes triumphantly.
“What do you think?” Jane asked.
Lisbon raised an eyebrow. “Batman and Robin? Don’t you think it’s a bit cliche?”
“Nonsense! It’s a classic, Lisbon.”
“Oh really?”
“Absolutely. When you think of a ‘dynamic duo’, don’t you think of Batman and his trusty sidekick, Robin?” Jane asked.
“I guess,” Lisbon relented. “To be honest, they kind of remind me of us.”
“Huh. I never thought about it like that. You make a good Robin.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. You think you’re the Batman in this relationship?”
“Of course,” he said indignantly. “I’m the manpower behind this whole operation after all.”
“Please. I’m your boss, obviously, I’m Batman.”
“Technically, you are neither my boss nor my subordinate. I’m not a cop, more like a cop adjacent, so, therefore, I am aside of you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she countered. “I’m in charge of you, so, therefore, I’m Batman and you’re my Robin.”
“But who comes up with these schemes to catch the killers? Me. So that makes me Batman. Besides, it’s not so bad to be Robin. In one issue, he defeated King Snake, who’s said to be the most powerful villain in the DC Universe,” Jane explained.
“You’re such a nerd,” Lisbon mumbled. “If you like Robin so much, how about you go as him?”
Before they could argue any more, a girl wearing a Halloween shirt and a name tag came up behind Lisbon.
“Hi! I’m Casey,” the girl said. “I work here, and I couldn’t help but overhear that you’re looking for some costumes.”
“Nice to meet you, Casey,” Jane said. “We were just deciding on who’s going to be who.”
Casey noticed the capes Jane was holding and her eyes sparkled.
“Oh my god! That’s adorable, are y’all a couple?” she gushed.
“No, definitely not,” Lisbon said quickly, blushing. “I’m actually his boss, but we, uh, have to go to a costume party.”
“What she means to say is no, we’re not dating, but we need to find costumes that go together,” Jane amended.
“I see,” Casey said, grinning. “So who’s Batman and who’s Robin?”
“She’s Robin,” Jane said, gesturing at Lisbon.
“I will be the adult here and indulge your childish fantasy of getting to play the vigilante hero, okay Jane? But if you start referring to me as your sidekick,” she threatened.
“I know, I know. You’ll shoot me,” Jane said, rolling his eyes.
Casey stifled a giggle at the exchange and went to the register to ring up the costumes.
_
Later that evening, Lisbon found herself dressing in the Robin costume to stake out the Halloween party.
Of all the things I could be doing on a Friday night, she thought miserably.
The costume that Jane had picked out for her was a pair of green leggings with a long red shirt that came down to her thighs. A yellow belt rested around her hips, and of course, the damned yellow cape was fastened around her neck. She pulled her hair up into a ponytail and groaned.
How anyone could actually look good in these costumes was beyond her.
Lisbon buzzed Jane into her apartment, and he swept his mask off quickly and efficiently.
“Well, Lisbon, are you ready to relive your high school years?” Jane asked enthusiastically.
“As ready as I’ll ever be. I look ridiculous in this costume.”
“You look cute. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting,” he said, reaching into his pocket.
“And what’s that?”
“You need a mask,” he said, handing her a black piece of fabric. “To protect your secret identity,” Jane explained.
“Nerd,” Lisbon said under her breath, but gave in and tied the mask over her eyes. Fortunately, it was big enough so that she could see perfectly.
“Now come on, or we’re going to be late meeting the team,” he said, practically dragging her out the door.
On the way there, Lisbon mulled over the fact that even though Jane was wearing relatively normal clothes -black jeans, a Batman shirt, and the cape- he still managed to look different. And ridiculously good. No one had any business looking that cute in a Batman costume.
They parked in a separate lot from the one connected to the school, and the rest of the team was there to go over positions. Van Pelt attached a wire to each of them and connected it to the radios they were using to communicate.
Before long, Lisbon and Jane were standing in the gym, surrounded by a few hundred dancing students. Lisbon had forgotten how loud the music always was at school dances, and was regretting coming. Jane, on the other hand, was loving every bit of it. Lisbon surmised that because he hadn’t had a high school experience, he would absorb as much of this as he could. Lights swirled in bright colors around the walls and floors, and Lisbon felt almost dizzy.
“Lisbon, you look ridiculous right now. You stick out like a sore thumb, at least pretend to dance or you’ll blow our cover,” Jane hissed in her ear.
“Fine.” She moved closer to the wall, swaying her body in time with the music. “What are we looking for?”
“We’re looking for whoever took the bait. I told our suspects that Connor had left some of his drugs in the gym somewhere, so whoever comes looking for it is our killer.”
“How are we supposed to find them in this crowd?”
“Superpowers, Lisbon,” Jane replied, tapping a finger against his temple.
Just then, Lisbon’s earpiece crackled to life.
“Boss, we just spotted the victim’s girlfriend sneaking through a side entrance to the building. Be on the lookout for her,” Cho said.
Jane nodded and beckoned Lisbon over to one of the doors. They hid behind a set of lockers as the girlfriend, Audrey Yates, dug through the gym bags and equipment bins.
“Stop where you are! Put your hands where I can see them!” Lisbon yelled, drawing her gun and pointing it towards Audrey.
The girl raised her hands and sighed in defeat. Rigsby and Cho burst through the door and cuffed her. The music on the dance floor had stopped, and everyone was rushing over to see what the commotion was all about.
Jane stepped up to the DJ’s booth, grabbed the microphone, and said, “Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Jane and this is my partner, Teresa Lisbon. We have caught Connor Radford’s killer, so there’s no need for alarm. I want to thank you for a lovely dance, I’ve had a great time!”
Jane stepped out of the booth to rejoin Lisbon. Together, they walked out to Jane’s car so that he could drop her off at her apartment.
“You know, you make a good Batman,” Lisbon said.
“And you make a great Robin. You’re a natural.”
“It wasn’t that bad in the end,” she admitted.
“I knew it wouldn’t be. I was thinking, maybe I should suggest to Bertram that we replace the company fundraising events with costume parties.”
“That’s a terrible idea. There’s nothing worse than a bunch of cops wearing corny Halloween costumes.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Jane relented, as he walked her to the door. “That being said, I did quite enjoy going to a Halloween party with you, even if it was for work.”
“I did too,” Lisbon confessed. “It’s been nice to spend more time with you lately.”
“Agreed.” He looked uncomfortable, so different from the suave, charming person he usually was. “Um, I was wondering, do you want to make this official? I love you, and I’m ready to take this step, but only if you’re comfortable with it.”
“Yes,” Lisbon answered. “Jane, I love you.”
“Well, in that case…”
He stepped forward and closed the distance between them. She raised her face to meet him, and their lips met in a passionate embrace. He wrapped his arms around her waist and deepened the kiss. When they pulled away, they were slightly out of breath, and Jane had to clear his throat to regain the ability to speak.
“I should go,” Lisbon said apologetically. “We still have to work tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” he echoed. “You’re right.”
“Goodnight, Super-Jane,” she said teasingly, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Goodnight, my sidekick,” he replied quickly. “We make a good team.”
He walked back to his car, shaking his head. After all this time, he had finally made it official with Lisbon. They had been dancing around it for a while now, and he fully intended on being the best, most fun boyfriend he could be. After all, the Great Patrick Jane still had a few tricks up his sleeve.