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Patrick Jane laid on his couch, pretending to be asleep. People relaxed around him when they thought he wasn’t paying attention to them and he made frequent use of that. He used the time to listen to his surroundings, piecing together details most people overlooked as unimportant.
The hurried steps of agent Lisbon pulled him out of his reverie and he prepared himself for another tedious case as had been the rule as of late.
“Jane, get up!” Even her voice sounded hurried, strangled in the way it only got on serious cases. Intrigued, he looked at her, head tilted upwards to take in her appearance. Mouth drawn tight, shoulders tensed up and fingers twitching towards her hip. Gun? No, wrong hand. Her personal cellphone? Interesting.
In one fluid motion the former psychic and current consultant got off the couch and followed her out of the office, throwing a furtive look towards Cho to gauge his mood. It was something he found himself doing frequently. A habit he couldn’t quit no matter how hard he tried. The stoic man was often the centre of his attention, whether he meant him to be or not. Looking back he wasn’t sure how or when it had started. He’d like to say he also didn’t know why he was doing it, but he didn’t make a habit of lying to himself. Patrick was in love with Kimball Cho, had been for months.
There was just something about the agent that drew him like a moth to a flame and it was starting to distract him from his work.
“Lisbon, I would like to work less with Cho.” There, no preamble no double meaning he just straight up requested the one thing that might let him keep his sanity. Lisbon nearly stumbled on her way across the parking lot, staring over her shoulder incredulously.
“What has gotten into you? I thought you liked Cho?”
Great. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked. Now she was curious and as reluctant he might be to admit it, she was a good detective and would be able to tell when he was lying. Only one thing to do.
“Just a joke, let me drive?”
“Absolutely not! You are not driving my car anymore and you know perfectly well why! If you want to drive so badly, take the second car with Cho. Then you can tell him all about your plans to avoid him.”
That went well. Now he had to drive the second car with the object of his reluctant affection. Two hours alone with the one man that wasn’t impressed, distracted or charmed by his usual spiel.
“Jane’s driving? I’m riding with you, boss!” “Yes, me too!”
“Et tu, Brute?” Patrick put on a wounded expression as he turned to the newly arrived agents Van Pelt and Rigsby. They both stared at him with freakishly similar deadpans until he raised his hands with an easy laugh and got into the driver seat of their second car.
Cho, arriving last, took in his three fellow agents cramped into one car pointedly ignoring the other car with a grinning Patrick sitting in the driver’s seat. He huffed slightly, but his expression didn’t change. Once he got into the passenger seat and buckled himself in with more force than strictly necessary, Patrick couldn’t help but ask “Do you have RUF?”
“What?”
“Resting unimpressed face.”
“Are you five?”
The mentalist chose to leave that question unanswered and pulled out onto the main road with screeching tires.
“Could you at least try not to get us into a car accident the first time you’re allowed to drive one of these cars in three months?”
“Obviously I can try.” The slight hitch of the other’s breath brought a delighted grin to his face.
Making people angry to draw them out of their reserve was a tool he used frequently and with great delight. Sue him, he loved riling people up. The one thing he didn’t love was when he misjudged the lengths somebody would go to and ended up with a fist to his face. Like now.
Stumbling back he pressed a hand to his bleeding nose. The other was quickly raised in the universal sign for please calm down. “Wait! I know you're unhappy I pointed out that you were cheating on her, but really, with her sister?”
The victim’s husband let out an incoherent scream at that and lunged forwards again. Patrick flinched, bracing for an impact that didn’t come.
Cho stood in front of him protectively, one hand clasped around the offending arm, the other raised in front of his face to strike out if necessary.
“Sir, you will calm down. You just assaulted a member of the CBI.” His voice was colder than usual, making the butterflies in his stomach flutter erratically.
Cho let the other man go when he grumbled out an apology. Once he'd stormed off – certainly to get a stiff drink of whiskey – the agent turned towards him, expression slightly sterner than usual.
“Could you at least wait for me to be in reach before you start shit? You'll get yourself seriously hurt one of these days and I won't be there to save you.”
Deflect, deflect. He can't know how you feel.
“My oh my, agent Cho, worried about me?” His voice dropped into a seductive purr he'd perfected over the years and he smiled coyly. Sometimes the best defence was offence.
What he expected Cho to do was back away slightly, look at him stoically and tell him to focus on the case. But that wasn't what happened. Cho’s eyes darkened slightly and he stepped forward instead of backwards. Patrick blinked, for once thrown off.
The agent’s hand reached for his cheek, cupping it lightly. Almost teasingly. He froze completely, uncertain what was happening. There would have been signs if Cho was interested in him as well. He would have noticed before now. How did he not notice?
“You seriously think I don’t worry about you? Aren't you supposed to be the genius psychic?”
His voice was smooth and deep, deeper than usual. Patrick could see it now, no longer blinded by his own thoughts. The way Cho had been watching him just as much as he was watching him. The fondness that crept into their interactions, mostly contained behind that stoicism but sometimes breaking through. His worry, his fondness, dare he say his devotion?
This wasn't just a one-sided crush anymore. Had never been one. His breath hitched and his expression must have projected his thoughts to the man who knew him better than he sometimes knew himself.
“Ah, there it is. I was wondering why you didn't make a move. Whether you might not want me the same way after all, but that wasn't it, was it? You just didn’t realise I liked you.”
“Alright, no need to be smug about it. Are you taking me home, agent?” He finished his overly honeyed question with a coquettish wink that drew an amused snort out of his… Cho.
“Work first. We’re here for a reason, or did you forget?”
To not loose more of his hard earned reputation, Patrick stepped away from this infuriating man and the warm calloused hand still resting on his cheek and turned towards their case again.
The dead woman was an acquaintance of Lisbon as he'd already suspected, explaining her vested interest. Unfortunately that didn't mean the case was any more interesting than their other recent ones had been. Since he'd ruled out the husband – cheater and a violent drunk yes, his wife’s killer no – that only left the lover she snubbed. He had been planning to draw this out dramatically, but he had a very nice incentive to get it wrapped up quickly now.
“I know who killed her. Just a heads up, I have to provoke the husband again.”
Cho only sighed, but followed after him dutifully.
Across a dark hall decorated with tacky flower lamps and even tackier pictures they found a warm living room with Lisbon standing in front of the slurring husband waving around a glass of whiskey.
“Seeing as we already established that you’re a cheater, we might as well talk about who your wife was cheating with, any ideas?”
“Jane!” Lisbon’s angry hiss was ignored in favour of the husband’s reaction. His body language practically screamed that he knew exactly who Patrick was referring to.
“How dare you?! I'm not a cheater and neither was my wife!”
“Calm down, I wasn't asking whether either of you cheated. I just need to know who your wife was cheating with.”
As the husband lunged for him once again, Cho was already there to block him easily. “Just answer his question.” Patrick had to focus to not drool over his commanding presence, but he managed as he always did.
“Jake Smyth, the gardener,” he finally grit out with obvious reluctance.
“Of course, it was him. This reminds me of a German song “Der Mörder ist immer der Gärtner”, or the murderer is always the gardener.”
Lisbon, looking entirely done with him, his shenanigans and the case in general quickly found out all they needed to know about the gardener and they drove over to his house.
Patrick didn’t even have to do anything approaching immoral to get the guy’s confession. The hedge trimmer he'd used to kill her was still slightly shiny with blood, the soles of his boots drenched in it and he folded like a wet paper towel once Cho and Lisbon stared him down for a bit.
The case was over before it really started.
“That might have been our quickest case yet. How did you suspect the lover so quickly? How did you even know there was a lover? Doesn’t it usually take you at least two days to solve something like this?”
“Yeah, that’s right! I felt useless today, how did you do that so quick?” Rigsby chimed in after Van Pelt had spoken, neither leaving him enough time to answer before asking more questions. He just secretively smiled into the after-case pizza and glanced at Cho sitting next to him.
The drive back to the office had been thick with tension between them, once more alone together in the car. The anticipation of what was to come was heavy, so they used the time to talk about their expectations and boundaries to make the time until they could both clock off go by quicker and save themselves that talk later on.
Thankfully, they were on the same page, both wanting to take it slow. Kimball because of past trauma and Patrick for the same reason, if a different trauma.
A slight nudge against his knee brought him back to reality and Cho’s question “I’ll go home now, want a ride Jane?”
Patrick nodded, careful not to look too eager and got up with the other man, saying his goodbyes on the way out. The drive over to Cho’s apartment passed in a blur and soon Patrick closed the door behind himself. Before he could even take a cursory look around, he was pressed against the wall by a warm body.
Their first kiss wasn't slow and romantic but frantic with need, tongues clashing and hands wandering everywhere. The wall at his back was cold and smooth, a nice contrast to the furnace of a man between his legs. He whined into the kiss and started pulling at the clothes separating him from his goal.
Kimball drew back from the kiss, hands still firm on Patrick’s hips and just looked at him for a moment, something almost reverent in his eyes. He felt like a teenager with his first crush again looking into these deep brown eyes and he couldn’t decide whether he loved or hated the feeling. It left him vulnerable which he hadn’t allowed himself to be since…
“Hey, it’s alright. We don’t have to go further than this.” Of course the other noticed the dark direction his thoughts had taken and carefully pulled him back to the present. This man was perfect.
His smile was brittle but real, voice mostly stable when he answered “Thank you. Maybe we could cuddle for a bit?”
“Sure, do you want some tea?”
“Do I want some tea? That you even have to ask is insulting Kimball!”
A soft huff was his only answer as he was pulled along the dimly lit entry way into a kitchen decorated entirely in tones of blue. He thought about teasing him about his décor choices, but even a blind man would have noticed that it was done by his sister whom he adored. So he just smiled gratefully when presented with a porcelain tea cup one would expect in a fancy teahouse in England and not the living quarters of a special agent.
“This is very good tea. How did you know I liked this blend?”
“You’re not the only one who pays attention.”
That simple acknowledgement got him hornier than it had any right to. Were he a lesser man, he would have jumped the agent then and there. But with age comes restraint. Sometimes.
He was led to a plush couch centred in a living room that fit Kimball’s personality a lot better than his kitchen did. He didn’t comment, there was no need. Instead he let himself sink into the cushions and patted the free space next to him.
After turning on an old record player in the corner, Kimball joined him and slung an arm around his shoulders. With a content huff, Patrick snuggled down and enjoyed his tea.
They sat there for hours, trading little anecdotes from their past and just enjoying the knowledge of finally having somebody to share this kind of intimacy with again.
Afterwards, Kimball pulled him along again into a simple bedroom and they went to sleep cuddling each other.