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Patterson was a nerd and damn proud of it, thank you very much. One of the nerdy pursuits she was less vocal about—not out of any shame, but rather the fact that it rarely crossed her conscious mind—was her habit of collecting words. It didn’t matter the language, although most of them did happen to be English, which of course was basically a hodgepodge of other languages anyway. And one word, recently acquired, seemed disturbingly apt to the whole Jane… situation.
Venustraphobia: the fear of beautiful, alluring women.
Patterson was hardly afraid of Jane. On the contrary, she found Jane fascinating, as a person but also in a scientific, puzzling way that Patterson was constantly wary of; the last thing she ever wanted to do was treat Jane as some sort of specimen.
Sometimes, though, being near Jane felt dangerous. But not for Patterson, exactly. More like…
“She’s pretty. Like, so pretty. Gorgeous, actually, and I have a job to do and I can mostly do it but sometimes I freeze up and sometimes I feel like I want to just pin her to the wall and… Why are you laughing?”
This was far from the first time she’d drunkenly vented about her job to David (never any details, obviously; one doesn't simply forget one is in the fricking FBI), nor the first time she’d brought up Jane. But, shit, did she really just admit she wanted to kiss Jane? To her boyfriend??
Oh, god. I want to kiss Jane. I want to… to sleep with—
“You’re cute,” said David, kissing her.
“Love you too but, but I just!!”
“Are you in lesbians with her?” he asked, grinning.
“Shut up, no,” she said through laughter. “God, that meme was finally almost dead.”
“Okay, okay…” He drained his beer bottle and set it aside. “I want to be serious for just a minute. You don’t even have to answer in words, but I have some questions.”
She sighed and slumped into his lap. “You know I’m drunk, right?”
“And so am I, so this will go just fine.” Patting her head gently, he continued, “Do you like Jane? With, like, a capital L?”
A grumble. Didn’t I just tell you?
“Do you… think you have a crush on her?”
She whined. And then whined again out of embarrassment from the first whine.
“That sounds like a yes.”
“But Daviiiiiddd, I capital-L like you! And I like smooching you, and I don’t wanna hurt you by smooching someone else, and…” Another whine, and she curled into him like a baby, clinging to his sweater.
“I know, but what if it didn’t hurt me?”
“Then I’d say you’re a liar.” She blinked up at him, mouth suddenly dry. “But you don’t lie to me.”
He was smiling so softly at her. “And I wouldn’t lie about something this… big for our relationship. I promise. When you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“I’m not unhappy, though,” she mumbled. But she knew what he meant, what he was leading up to, and she had to push it away because this stuff just didn't happen in real life—
"You're even happier around Jane. I can tell by the way you talk about her. And I'd be willing to bet she's more interested in you than you think, I mean, who in their right mind wouldn't be? You're great. I should know."
"Okay," she sighed, nuzzling into his chest, "I can tell you're drunk now."
She felt his deep breath in and out as much as she heard it.
"So go ask her out. I hope she says yes, because you deserve it. And then, I don't know, maybe after whatever top-secret things you and the team have are sorted out, I can meet her. I'd like to meet her. If she's important to you then she's important to me."
"You're really the best boyfriend. In, really, like the whole history of boyfriends...!" Yeah, she was slurring pretty bad now, but she was also wanting to cry, so. Whatever. "You're not..." She honked into some tissues David magically acquired for her. "You don't wanna break up with me? I don't want to break up with you either," she added in a half-shout, narrowly avoiding cracking head with him as she sat up with feeling.
He just smiled. Again. And he was so pretty she had to kiss him for a while.
"Listen here, miss word nerd," he said, once he'd recovered enough to talk (inner Patterson was smug about that). "There's a word you should really know already..."
***
Polyamory. How eye-opening.
She did ask Jane out, the instant any conflict of interest or co-worker drama wasn't a problem... Or, well, was less of a problem; Patterson was impatient about this one thing.
She really, really liked Jane.
It turned out that Jane liked her right back.
("I have never in my life been wrong, ever," David proclaimed when she told him, spinning her around in his arms.
She decided to let him have that one.)
And David did meet Jane, eventually. And somehow they became friends. Sometimes they all went out, whether with Kurt and the others or just the three of them.
She thought she'd been over the moon when Jane returned her feelings, but this? It was almost too good to be true.
But David assured her it was true, no matter how often she doubted at him, and Jane did the same.
She chose to believe them.
***
Patterson is happy. Really, she is. Her happiness is fueled even more by David's and Jane's, a virtuous cycle. The thing about that, though...
The thing about that is a happy Patterson makes a daydreaming Patterson. Historically, this hasn't been a problem. Wait, no, it's still not a problem. It's just that... this particular daydream won't leave her alone, and she needs at least 200 more courage XP before she can even think about trying to make it a reality.
The problem, the thing, the daydream, is this: Patterson really wants her boyfriend to kiss her girlfriend.