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The bullet casings still rattle in Patrick Jane's pockets when they step into the Louvre's echoing halls—three weeks since Lisbon's funeral, two since Cho smuggled them out of Sacramento with the twins pressed between bulletproof vests in the backseat.
Charlotte's small hand tugs at Jane's sleeve near the Delacroix exhibit. "Papa, why's tha' lion eating the horse?" Her lisp turns 'eating' into 'easing,' the way Angie used to mimic her at bath time.
Jane opens his mouth—ready to spin a lie about beautiful violence—when Cho's elbow jabs his ribs. The detective's glare says what his tight lips won't: Don't traumatize them more. Instead, Jane watches his husband crouch to explain chiaroscuro lighting to their son. Marcus scrunches his nose the same way Cho does during interrogations. The gallery's golden lights catch the silver threading through Cho's regulation-short hair, the same strands Jane yanked while pinning him against a motel wall last night, whispering *tell me you still want this monster* into his sweat-slick neck.
Music swells in Jane's skull—not the absentminded Bach he hums during crime scenes, but the raw-throated jazz from their first undercover op in Vegas, when Cho's fingers brushed his during a weapons frisk, and Jane realized the man could dance. He moves now, pressing flush against Cho's back in the empty corridor between Rubens and Rembrandt. His taller frame cages Cho's compact muscles, hands sliding down to clasp at his abdomen.
"Jane." Cho's protest lacks heat.
"Shh. They're watching the lion." Jane sways them in slow half-circles, his socked feet avoiding the squeaky floorboard near the bench.
The scent of Cho's drugstore aftershave mixes with the twins' strawberry shampoo clinging to his collar. Charlotte giggles when Marcus attempts to roar like the painted beast. Jane's thumb finds the scar above Cho's hip—a souvenir from Red John's final safe house. He mouths the shape of it through cheap cotton: a jagged *J* they'll never libel by calling a love bite. Cho's shoulders relax incrementally. His calloused palm covers Jane's, guiding their joined hands higher until Jane can feel the stutter of his heartbeat.
Somewhere, a docent's radio crackles static. The twins argue about equine digestion. And for three stolen minutes, they dance—not to survive, but because the man who rebuilt himself from bloodstains still remembers how.