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Jane’s uncanny ability to see past every lie, and speak truths others would rather keep for themselves, caused a lot of trouble. Mostly for criminals, though, so Lisbon gave him some slack in the form of false punishments and mock-stern glares. Slowly but surely, the Bureau was getting used to their consultant’s magic tricks. They may not like it, but they reaped the benefits.
Some days, Cho wished his own appreciation of Jane was just as boring and one-dimensional.
“See you tomorrow, Cho!”
That was Rigsby, overly cheerful as he left the office for the day. Cho just waved in his general direction, and pretended not to notice Van Pelt’s endearing but obvious fidgeting as she made a point to wait five minutes before calling it a day. Cho didn’t need to follow her to know that she’d meet with Rigsby a couple of blocks away from the precinct, and ride together until... Well, Cho didn’t need to know the details of their not-so-secret secret relationship. As long as they were happy and not too distracted at work, he would keep his mouth shut.
The prickling sensation at the back of his neck caused him to type an extra ‘e’, which he promptly erased from his report. This was his only reaction, despite the thrill deep down in his gut - half fear, half excitement. He glanced at the clock, the long minute hand brushing past the shorter hour hand directly across the nine. He knew how good his poker face was, in and out of a poker game. He had faith in his own masks after decades of practice. Maybe, just maybe, Jane couldn’t see the truth Cho had been nurturing over the past few months.
Maybe, Cho mused as the second hand hurried past the other two, he still had time.
He kept on typing, careful to avoid any typo. This was a game they often played: Jane would pretend not to be watching Cho from his favorite spot on the worn sofa, and Cho would pretend to be completely absorbed by his work. Cho knew he should keep following the unspoken rules of this little game. Keep on working, keep on pretending. As much as he was tempted to say out loud what he'd been thinking for a while, he dreaded that the past may very well have an unbreakable hold on Jane.
And so he kept his mouth shut, and played the game of pretending.
“Shouldn’t you get some sleep?” Jane called from the couch.
Cho blinked at the clock. It was almost eleven. His back was stiff from hours spent in the same position, and the ache in his belly reminded him that the last thing he’d eaten was lunch, a hurried affair.
“Probably,” he said, and stood. Biting back an invitation to grab dinner - together. Biting back all kinds of offers that would expose his jugular as surely as tilting his head back and closing his eyes would. “Good night, Jane.”
“Good night, Cho.”
As he lay in bed a little after one o’clock, the spices of chow mein lingering on his tongue, Cho wondered how Jane tasted. How he kissed, with all that rage bottled up under the veneer of charm and sarcasm. Cho pressed a thumb to his lower lip and dug, just enough to feel like a fool. Did Jane suspect why Cho wasn’t taking work home anymore, and chose to stay late at the office instead?
He wondered if far away from the house where it had all happened, away from the bloodied smile and the curse of Red John, on the office couch, Jane slept without nightmare - or dreamed of revenge.
*
In most cases, Jane was reckless in a way that gave Cho nightmares. Jane had been punched, drugged, or shoved to the ground so often that Cho had lost count. The fact that Cho could count on the fingers of one hand the times that Jane had been shot and/or kidnapped wasn’t as much of a relief as it should have been.
On the upside, they’d been kidnapped together, for once.
On the downside, this case was Red John-related, which meant that Jane’s reckless streak was worse than usual.
It took all of Cho’s training in the military and an odd assortment of dirty tricks he’d learned on the streets to get them both out of the van in one piece. He’d built a resistance to certain drugs over the years, but some people hadn’t, and Cho had to fight for them both while the van swirled around, going off tracks in a cornfield.
“There!” Jane exclaimed.
Drugged as he was, he still managed to throw himself out of the moving vehicle, and Cho swore as he landed one last punch in the driver's face before following suit.
“Stay down,” he snarled at Jane, but of course, the fool was already squirming away from him and getting back on his feet, running - or trying to, anyway - in the direction of the house they’d been trying to locate for weeks.
Cho didn’t scream at him to wait. Another van had materialized on the road, an additional complication that Cho really didn't need. Much too soon bullets were flying around, prompting Cho into action once more. He ran as fast as he could, trampling on bloodied corn. Ahead, he heard Jane scream, a sound full of ire and frustration that pumped more adrenaline into his veins.
“Jane!”
By the time he caught up with him, a man was already dead.
“Jane,” he said again, voice tight with tension.
The dark-haired man on the ground had been shot at point range through the chest, from something big enough to leave a hole where the heart would have been. There wasn’t a red smiley face in the vicinity, but Cho knew this was Red John’s work, because Jane was kneeling there with more emotion in his expression than he’d shown in a long time, one hand clutched to his own chest as though he was the one with a missing piece of it. His eyes, however, were full of life, and they promised death.
“They always die before I can get answers,” he said, voice soft and airy, at odds with the fierce glance he shot over his shoulder at their pursuers.
Cho packed him by the shoulder. “Come on.” He jerked his chin towards the house. “We need a plan.”
“Why bother?”
Cho almost slapped him right here and there. Instead, he cupped Jane’s chin, thumb digging into the other man’s jaw. It was daring of him, and Cho might have blushed if he wasn’t in full survival mode. Jane’s eyes seemed to darken a little more, and between one blink and the next, his cheerful mask was back on.
“Yes, we need a plan.”
*
They didn’t have time to formulate a plan - not even the outline of one - before Cho got hit in the shoulder. The bullet went right through, which was a relief, but only because Jane was being his usual foolish self and not staying behind as Cho had ordered him to.
“You really hate doing what you’re told, don’t you?” Cho gritted through his teeth.
“Only when it’s unreasonable. It’s hardly my fault how often that happens.”
Cho bit back a heated retort and listened to their attackers as they set explosives on the heavy metal door Cho and Jane had managed to lock behind them. He hadn’t had time to study the layout of the house before they got kidnapped, but this panic room had been easy to find.
“You could have gotten shot,” he said, still pissed off that Jane’s reaction to ‘get down!’ was to try and stand between Cho and an enemy gun.
“But I didn’t, did I?”
In the semi-darkness, Jane’s eyes were piercing like a cat’s. Cho shivered, and twisted around to check the exit wound for fragments. It looked clean, but his hand came around bloodied enough that he started tearing at the hem of his shirt to make a tourniquet. At least he was the one bleeding. Despite the pain, it was much more bearable than if Jane had been wounded.
“Let me help.”
Jane always did what Jane wanted, and this was no different. And Cho, like always, allowed it. Jane’s touch was firm, certain, and the calm strength emanating from him, layered with rage as it may be, comforted him. The door shook as the first explosives went off, and a little dust came down the ceiling. Jane didn’t even startle, and finished wrapping strips of Cho’s shirt around the wound.
“A shield of flesh and bones,” he said, and Cho had the impression he was quoting something, but for the life of him, he couldn’t say what. He only knew that it wasn’t Shakespeare. “Do you think they will be able to blast through the door?”
“Maybe.”
For all their games of pretending, they’d never lied to each other. At least, not about such things as life and death.
*
The door didn’t last.
After that, it wasn’t long before Cho got even more blood on his hands. Some of it was his own, dry smears from the hole in his shoulder, or clear and viscous from the stab wound on his side. The rest - most of it - was from the three men on the ground, all in various states of agony. The reason Cho wasn’t lying down as well was standing at his side, fighting without much skill but with plenty of enthusiasm.
Cho lunged to stop the blade coming for Jane’s shoulder and let out a gasp of pain as another knife plunged in his back.
“Cho!”
Jane’s voice, full of rage. Cho felt warm inside, and barely sensed the jolt as his knees hit the ground. The blade was lodged near his spine, and he was lucky it hadn’t hit anything vital. He yanked it free with a groan and gripped it as best he could before slashing the air in front of him, sending another one of their opponents to the floor. He tried to stand, but Jane was right there, pushing him down behind him, and his words from earlier flared like flames in Cho’s mind.
A shield of flesh and bones.
“No,” he croaked.
“Stay down,” Jane snapped, and picked the knife from Cho’s numb fingers.
If Cho hadn’t been seconds away from passing out, he might have laughed.
*
When he came to, Cho knew where he was before opening his eyes.
“Hospital,” was the first thing out of his mouth. And then, when the human shape nearby coalesced into the silhouette of Lisbon. “Jane?”
He was pretty sure he hadn’t said ‘water’, but that was what Lisbon brought him, pressing a straw between his lips and scowling at him. Probably. Cho couldn’t see quite that well just yet, but he could sense an aura of fond disapproval/concern, which was something Lisbon usually reserved for Jane.
“Jane,” he rasped again. He was polite, so he added: “Thanks for… the water.”
“Jane’s fine,” Lisbon told him as he sat on the chair near the bed. Her small hand brushed his on top of the covers. “You, on the other hand, are going to stay in bed for a while.
“Feel… fine.”
“That would be the drugs talking.”
Drugs would explain why there was no pain. Cho blinked several times as he tried to clear his vision. By the time he made out Lisbon’s red-rimmed eyes and her sad little smile, the door opened on Jane.
“Cho."
The way he said his name was different, more… intense, somehow.
Cho smiled. Lisbon’s eyes widened. Cho couldn’t stop smiling. Later, he would be embarrassed as hell, but for now, he was just really glad that Jane was (mostly) fine. There was an impressive bruise on the man’s left cheek, and his careful gait hinted at several more bruises, but he wasn’t bed-ridden, at least.
“Don’t tire him out,” Lisbon warned Jane as she stood. “You’ve got five minutes before I drag you out of here.”
“Yes, m’am.”
The door closed.
“You look like hell,” Jane said, a hint of his usual cheerfulness lacing the words.
He ignored the chair and sat directly on the bed. If Cho didn’t know better, he’d say that Jane was fretting. But why would he?
“You okay?”
“I should be the one asking that question.”
“I’ll live.”
Jane covered Cho’s hand with his own, warm and smooth and just heavy enough.
“You almost died-”
“Not the first time-”
“- protecting me.”
Was Jane leaning closer, or was Cho dreaming? He’d had that dream before, except that the bed was usually his own, and the room didn’t reek like disinfectant.
“That’s what I do.”
“We both know that’s not what this is about.”
Despite the drugs loosening his tongue and slowing down his thought process, Cho was aware enough to recognize the moment for what it was. The heartbeat monitor betrayed him, but Jane’s eyes didn’t move away from Cho’s face. He was definitely closer than he’d been before. Cho could smell his Cologne, and the urge to pull Jane close enough to bury his face in the man’s neck almost overwhelmed him.
“This is,” Jane whispered.
Cho’s eyelids fluttered as Jane’s hand framed one half of his face. His thumb brushed the fragile skin under Cho’s eye.
“You so seldom shed your masks.”
“You’re one to talk,” Cho retorted, and meant to sound severe. He probably failed.
“We make quite a pair, don’t we?”
It wasn’t the words, but the smile that got to Cho. Jane always smiled, but it seldom meant anything more than games. It was an inherent part of his masks, another way to pretend.
But this smile was different. It lit his eyes, made the green pop out. Cho choked on his saliva.
“I…”
“So do I,” Jane said.
Cho couldn’t say for sure who initiated the kiss, but suddenly he knew exactly how Jane tasted, how he conveyed what he felt without words. He arched off the bed with a groan, both hands fisted in the jacket of Jane’s suit, and tasted blood. Maybe his own. Maybe Jane’s. The kiss became heated, and Cho started to feel more awake in certain ways that weren’t very convenient (or appropriate) in a hospital.
He didn’t try to stop Jane, though. When Jane was not busy getting shot or otherwise harmed, Cho was more than happy to follow his lead.
“I should let you rest, before Lisbon barges in here,” Jane said, hot breath mingling with Cho’s. Still smiling. “But I’ll be back.”
Cho squeezed Jane’s hand, heart too full for words. He trusted Jane. He knew that one day, Jane may kill Red John. He knew that in the meantime, and possibly afterwards, too, the ghost of the man who’d murdered his wife and child would stand between them. But obstacles had never deterred Cho. And the tingling sensation on his lips, and the light still brilliant in Jane’s eyes, told him that in time, the past may stay where it belonged.
“I’ll see you later,” Jane promised.
Cho smiled.
He was still smiling when Lisbon came back.
“Jane’s gone already?” She sounded surprised, but mostly suspicious. “You look… happy. Did he promise to behave, or something?”
“Or something,” Cho said.
When he fell asleep, the smile was still there.