A/N - I quite appreciate that we are all playing with other people's toys here, but some folk, and you know who you are, are, shall we say, borrowing fairly liberally from me. There's an etiquette - either ask or credit, okay? I'd extend the same courtesy. Thanks.

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The Tiger Sniffs The Rose...

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A different exhaustion this morning, a deep, delicious ache in him, a feeling he'd almost forgotten. Fascinated to think that that tough little woman had been in his arms scant hours ago, wrapped around him...He might be able to discipline his mind, but his body is quite simply enslaved. He wants her again, soon and often.

He'd been prepared to take things slowly, to try and curb his reckless desire, aware that she could run. He might have remembered that his Lisbon was neither patient nor fearful once she had decided her way.

"You can look as tough as you like this morning, woman, but I know you better..." he growls softly in her ear.

"Get in the damn car, Jane."

"Oh, road trip."

"I'm not necking in a pull-out with you." Takes a deep breath. "You'll just have to control yourself until we're off-duty."

He grins, wide and wicked, and she bites back her own smile.

"Can I come over this evening?"

"Since when do you ask?" Little flutter in her belly.

"Since I intend to be staying over." He says calmly, eyes dark. She feels her breath hitch, gives him a cool look.

"I'd better get a good dinner first."

"You are going to drive me insane."

"It's a short journey." She grins at him. He makes a little growling noise.

The strangest thing is how little difference it does make to their working lives. She still calls him by his surname, can't quite think of him as Patrick, and he can make her surname come out as a lazy, dirty purr that is far sexier than any pet-name she has ever had. She has one rule – whilst she's wearing the badge, he can't touch. It drives him crazy, but secretly, he likes the thrill of it.

They can't not touch completely, though - light fingertip touches in conversation, arm and shoulder. His hand hovers above her back as he escorts her through doors. They stand in each other's personal space without discomfort, body language like a dance. But this has always been their way, and only a select few will have any suspicion that things are now exactly what certain gossip has long held to be true.

They still fight. He is insubordinate, irreverent, provokes conflict and ignores any semblance of procedure. She still tries to reign him in, strike the balance between her professional duty and the benefit from the undeniable talent he has for producing results. She realizes that Jane expects her to fight back, stop him if need be, complements her strengths with his own, even if they disagree as to who is in charge...

"Every magician needs a beautiful assistant."

"Hah! You're reading this all wrong. Every crime-fighting heroine needs a wise-cracking sidekick."

His face brightens, wicked delight.

"I'll happily be a sidekick, if you'll wear an outfit...oooh, like Catwoman?"

She slaps him...

But now, they have a whole new world outside of work, too...

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They are both private people, and see no need to share what they have with the rest of the world. He wouldn't deny it if confronted, would admit proudly to the relationship. But he is selfish, too – she is his, and he resents having to share her with anyone, wants to keep her kisses, her caresses, her laughter, all his alone. Regards it as his duty, his right, to make sure that it is only his name she ever cries, only his touch she ever remembers. Only him, in her thoughts, and in her bed.

His own memories, folded away now, a past that no longer destroys him. The shift in him continues, a growing urge and conviction, no longer pure vengeance now, but also a visceral need to protect, the two forces in him ceasing their conflict, merging, all his reasons with one goal. Instead of diverting him, he realizes that this just makes him stronger. She is his woman, now, his new reason for being, inheritor of all the passion and devotion that belonged to others before, and that now he lays at her feet.

He cannot give his woman the love, the life she deserves, until the threat is no longer with them.

There are still nights when the bad dreams overwhelm, rising up out of the dark. Then, there is nothing to do but to put her arms around him, gently lead him back into the waking world, hold him until he stops shaking. Sometimes, their tears mingle. Sometimes, they make love.

She's growing used to waking with the weight of a warm arm snaked about her. He leaves his arrogance outside the door, a giver, not a taker. This is the place he could lie most easily to her, and yet, she thinks this is the most honest she has known him.

There's a spare toothbrush in the bathroom, now, and he has 'his' side of the bed. When she finds herself putting both teabags and condoms into her grocery basket as a regular thing, she knows that the rot has set in.

Impossible to put a label on him. Boyfriend, lover, colleague, friend...he's just himself, Patrick Jane, sweet and funny and obnoxious by turns, capable of anything, her wicked, loving showman. She knows what his wife saw in him now, that giddy, dizzy sensation of being at the centre of his whole world, how intoxicating that is.

But because she loves him, because she knows what he is capable of, she keeps one wary eye open.

It terrifies her, how vulnerable he is. Of course, she's been lonely in her life. But her early years had been happy, and she and her brothers were still close. She had always had friends at school, college, work. She's never been alone, the way he is. Worry in her, for the older damage at work. She has a few of the pieces now, little shards of the man, to fit into the pattern. His life has shifted so far, so fast, every few years a completely different world, slipping from one to the the next with nothing to hold him.

And now she must find out if she is a strong enough anchor. Iron settles in her. She will have to be.

It still hurts her that there are moments when she fears that his desire for vengeance is stronger than his desire for her – she fights to keep him, worries that he will go somewhere too dark for her to follow. They both have ghosts. But she has made her peace with them, a silent vow in the darkness of one night, when she had held him through a nightmare, through his murmurs of love and promises of safety – he is her charge now, and she will not let him become something less than he is, for any of them.