He has the most wonderful smile. Such small things, like two lips moving, muscles tightening and releasing somehow amalgamate to create a smile worth seeing. It isn't fair how that smile affects her so. It feels like a shot of adrenaline into her over-sensitised body, almost like her morning coffee. She finds herself craving it, both the smile and the feeling it gives her as time drags on.
His professional smiles aren't the same, though they could appear to be. Because despite not being a super observant once pretend psychic, she can tell when it isn't real. It doesn't feel the same, and it certainly doesn't give her the warmth his true smiles do.
Those moments when she catches him doing something she told him not to. She knows she should be angry, and she most definitely is, but when he smiles at her. the smile of a boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar an hour before dinner, it's very hard to maintain that anger.
Does he know the effect of his smiles on her?
She can't see how he wouldn't. he's very good at manipulating people, and the only way to do that is to notice how they react to certain stimuli. and that makes her paranoid. What if he knows about her silly infatuation with him?
About this terrible need she's harbouring in her heart to just touch him. to feel his skin beneath her fingertips, his mouth against her own, that silver tongue duelling and dancing within her mouth. To hear that delightful voice whisper wicked things in her ear.
But it wasn't just a carnal need. No. if it was she could deal with it, could relieve it in some other way. She wouldn't be hurt by the things he did or didn't do. she wouldn't feel this stupid elation when he truly smiled at her or complimented her, as if she'd done something worth praising.
He sits across from her, in his usual place of comfort. His fingers delicately gripping the blue and white china cup full of tea and holding it above the matching mini plate. His focus, was not on her, but rather on Rigsby as they bantered back and forth. There was a devilish gleam in his eyes, a mischievous tilt to his mouth as he inexorably outwitted the young agent.
She is grateful for this moment to just observe him in action without him noticing her presence. It gives her a second to just think about him.
He is a constant pain in her ass, makes her life almost endlessly difficult. She'd certainly have it easier without him, without his ability to turn ordinary situations into volatile ones. But she can't even be angry about it. Why?
And that's when the realisation occurs.
That's when her breath catches almost inaudibly and her heart gives such a painful twist. She almost puts a hand against her chest to check it's still beating, that it hasn't been torn out. Her traitorous eyes sting and fill with water and it's all she can do to stumble out of the room towards the elevator. She couldn't go to her office, not if they'd noticed her break. They'd bother her or pester her with questions. And Jane would read her.
It's a hot and humiliated ache that spreads out from her breastbone, enveloping her in this kind of emotional agony. She can only hope that she can hold it together long enough to make it to her car. It's times like these she's thankful she has sunglasses.
She makes it, no one seeming the wiser. And once she's locked the doors she gives herself a moment. a moment to let the tears fall. To just be weak.
Because she loves him. and he doesn't love her back.
Authors note: See, a little less time than last time :) not much mind you, but still less ;)