Appropriate disclaimers apply. Taking a break from my regular fic. Inconsequential but amusing character study. Enjoy.
"Were you ever hit as a child?" Jane asked, apropos of nothing the agents seated near him could discern. In his own head, a logical question, thinking of the young boy, months before, beaten to death by his father for trying to protect his younger brother from a similar beating. Model citizens, those parents, by all appearances, but behind perfectly coordinated white curtains, something closer to monstrous. But then, they did see a lot of monsters.
"Hit? As punishment?" Rigsby, predictably, the first to answer. Such an affable fellow, really, incapable of refusing many people very much. Lisbon heard his voice, came to stand in the doorway of her office. Her momentary gaze cast some warning at Jane he would dissect in later moments, once he'd already jumped headlong into whatever she was warning him against.
"Yes. Were you ever beaten as a child?" For now, he answered Rigsby and felt Lisbon still watching him overtop of the coffee she was sugaring.
"Once or twice. Well, not beaten. My dad spanked me a few times, not hard, just with his hand, s'pose I deserved it." A faint smile quirked once corner of Rigsby's mouth. "I was probably a handful."
"How about you, Cho? You get hit as a kid?"
"Yes." A man of few words, Cho, and abrupt ones. A man who saw little point to lying and even less point to elaborating on what were to him simple truths. Who called Jane? I did. How'd you do that? He blew on it. Were you ever in the military? Yes. Can I go now? No. We're charging you with murder. Simple truths, but not a simple man, because it is only those with the luxury of having never made hard decisions who see things in quagmire shades of grey.
"I was never hit," Van Pelt sounded slightly scandalized.
"Never." Cho swiveled in his chair, fixed her with his black gimlet stare. His monotone question indicated he didn't believe her.
"No! My parents never struck me. I was sent to my room a lot, to think about what I'd done," Grace admitted, as if this were a dark secret. Rigsby smirked, Cho narrowed his eyes. Hard to say if she was mocking them, but no, she wore her usual expression of pleasant naïveté. In a moment she'd be up on her soapbox about parents who used physical discipline on their children.
Jane was pleased with this glimpse into the early lives of his colleagues. It always helped in reading a person to know the circumstances they had come from. His eyes flicked up to where their boss still watched. They called her that, too, always boss, something begun years ago, probably by Cho, because ma'am and sir reeked of superficial classifications and only interfered with seeing someone as a more crucial collection of skills and weaknesses.
Over the other agents' heads, Lisbon's expression half-begged and half-ordered Jane not to toss the same question her way. He had the answer already anyway, she knew, it was no secret to those she worked closely with that her father hadn't been above tossing a careless backhand her way.
While he hesitated the door to her office shut with the rattle of window blinds on glass, though she knew their pet mentalist would be in shortly to invade her personal history in regards to childhood beatings, and she'd have to break out the big guns and invade his right back, because he had the look of a boy who'd been switched a time or two himself, and it would unglue him, though never for long enough, that she knew that.
Jane's work was done anyway – three CBI agents were squabbling about the merits of corporal punishment and comparing battle wounds, rather than completing paperwork. He'd go try to unhinge Lisbon a little later, but for now, there was just enough background noise for a nap.