Note: trust me, read the whole thing.
The nurse who pushed Cho's wheelchair into Ronnie's room had a face flushed with anger. It was the usual response given to the man who detested hospitals and hospital staff more than he hated the injuries that got him there.
Kimball Cho hated doctors. He hated nurses even more. He hated being infantilized by wheelchair policies and patronized by jello cups. He was admitted by force and required to undergo treatment out of necessity, and yet all of the doctors treated him like he was accountable to them.
How dare he get himself punched in the face? Didn't he know that was bad for his health?
He had a mind to take a few swings at the medical professionals himself, which was, he assumed, why Rigsby had been ordered to accompany him any time a doctor or nurse entered his room.
Because why not add one more babysitter to the pile?
Cho's jaw clenched harder as the sullen nurse rolled him over the threshold, his grip on his IV hanger tightening to account for the rattle of wheels over the rubber strip on the floor.
"Good morning, everybody," the nurse nodded mildly to the cluster of agents standing around Ronnie, and brought Cho up to the bed on the other side of the curtain partition.
The evident next step was to transfer the surly detective from the chair to the bed, but Cho had no intention of complying. He'd barely complied to the wheelchair policy. Penelope Garcia's urging to have him moved while Ronnie was still awake had been his only motivation to allow the flagrant dismissal of his fully functioning legs.
When he just looked at her, the nurse gestured to the bed. "Are you able to move into the bed, Agent Cho?"
"I'm not getting into the bed." Cho returned flatly. His partner was on the other side of the room, awake for the first time in almost thirty-six hours, and he'd be damned if he was going to crawl into a hospital bed and be satisfied with merely sharing a room.
His twenty-five-year-old partner was laying, torn to pieces, just feet away from him, and the nurse was wasting his time.
"Oh boy," the voice came from the doorway, where Penelope stood, wringing her bejeweled hands. "What is it with male agents being difficult patients?"
Cho ignored her, craning his neck to look at Patrick Jane despite the painful torquing of his spine. Jane cared about Ronnie as much as he did, dubious though his affections sometimes appeared. He would understand.
The older blonde man straightened, knowing exactly what Cho wanted. He leaned away from Ronnie for a moment to speak to the nurse. "Actually, Agent Cho hasn't seen his partner since they were both rescued from captivity, and he won't be taking anything easy until he sees her for himself."
The nurse glanced at Ronnie, then at Agents Hotchner and Lisbon, and then back to Cho. "Sir, we really want you to rest today as much as possible—" when he gave no indication of responding, and his piercing stare turned even sharper, the nurse's shoulders dropped. "You're not getting in the bed, are you?"
"We'll help him into the bed when he's ready." Lisbon spoke up gently. "You won't get anywhere going head to head with him." Her bemused expression was aimed at Cho, which he ignored completely.
"I told you, I'm fine. I don't need any of this." He grumbled at the nurse. His legs worked perfectly fine, his arms were uninjured, and he had barely needed surgery to set the fractures he'd gotten.
With a frustrated sigh and an intimidated slump of her shoulders, the nurse hurried to the door and slipped past Penelope, disappearing into the hallway.
Of course, she insisted on him being an invalid, but hadn't wheeled him over to Ronnie's bed before she left. That would have been too helpful.
Cho's patience was wearing thin.
Forget the damn wheelchair.
He kicked up the footrests and made to stand up, but was stopped short by Teresa Lisbon's hand on his shoulder. "Give it a rest for a minute, Cho." She uttered softly. "If you pass out I can't catch you, anyway."
Already sensing his mounting distress, Lisbon kicked the locks open on his wheelchair and pulled him over to Ronnie's bed. "If either of you try to escape or otherwise complicate my life I will have you placed in protective custody at the office. Separately and indefinitely. We are going to update the teams. Are you up for more visitors?"
Cho saw Ronnie's face relax at the question, the tautness around her eyebrows going slack. She nodded eagerly, her hand clutching Jane's, and managed the tiniest smile.
He was glad she was up for it. The whole team had been a wreck while she was gone, and they would continue to be until they laid their own eyes on her. Wayne Rigsby and Grace Van Pelt would want to see her.
Lisbon smiled. "Good. I'll send them in when we're done. I charged up your phone and left it on your bedside table. Just text if you need anything, alright?" She reached a hand down and playfully squeezed one of Ronnie's blanketed feet before beckoning to Jane.
Hotchner and Garcia bid their farewells and stepped out into the hallway while Jane pressed a tender kiss to the back of Ronnie's hand. "I'll see you," he whispered, brushing her tangled blonde hair away from her face.
Cho sucked in a terse breath as he watched.
Patrick Jane touched a hand to his shoulder as he passed, waving to both of them on his way out the door.
The moment they were gone, Cho pulled himself to his feet and focused on keeping his hospital gown closed. His eyes cringed shut in a wince, swaying ever so slightly with a wave of weakness before finally grounding himself. The nightmare was almost over. As soon as he could be back in his own bed, wearing his own clothes, he would breathe easy.
He still hadn't looked at her, but he felt her eyes on him, and he knew what he looked like. Face bruised, throat bruised, chest and shoulders busted up and swollen, hair knotted like a rat's nest and eyes bloodshot from anesthesia—he felt as bad as he looked.
She looked better than he did, but he knew it was only because her injuries were under her hospital gown.
Her voice reached his ears in a broken whisper. "Kimball, I am so sorry."
Kimball. She introduced him to strangers as Kimball. She pleaded with him using that name. It was all wrong. He was waking up from the nightmare, but it was still wrong. "Don't call me that."
A moment of puzzled silence ticked by. His downcast gaze caught sight of her hands, pale and trembling, resting on the blankets at her side.
They both needed sleep.
Not hospital sleep—real sleep. In real beds with thick blankets and firm pillows. He'd kill for his buckwheat pillow.
Hadn't she just been there? It seemed so recently that he had carried her into the hospital in his arms after she collapsed outside the gym.
It felt like only yesterday that the bomb went off in her face and she ended up in that very hospital, crying with a concussion.
She couldn't seem to catch a break.
"It's your name."
"You only call me that when you're scared."
Ronnie didn't say anything for a good minute. He heard the beeping of her machines, listened to the faint hum of conversation from the hallway.
She'd survived.
The worst week of his life had passed, the FBI had gotten her back, and she had survived.
He didn't realize how much he'd actually entertained the thought of losing his partner until she was sitting there in a plastic bed in front of him, alive and breathing.
Her wavering hand lifted and found his, and he latched on tight. Her skin was warm, pulsing with life, very real in his hands.
"Cho, I'm so sorry you got dragged into that."
He let out a breath. She was sorry. As though he hadn't been relieved when he'd woken up in that stall. As though he hadn't felt the most hope he ever had when he woke up in those handcuffs and knew that he was closer than ever to finding her.
She never had to be sorry for that.
Pausing to pull his wheelchair closer to her side, he sat back down and got comfortable, still gripping her hand. "How are you feeling?"
She'd been burned, beaten, cut, and raped at the hands of a man who had had his way with her before, in the vulnerable years of her adolescence. He didn't ask her if she was okay.
He wanted to know how her pain management was, if he needed to get another nurse back in the room. He wanted to know if she was feeling sick or needed to close her eyes.
There was nothing he could do about what happened, but he'd give her anything she needed in that moment.
"I feel some pain, but not much. It's a wonderful drug, morphine." A wry smile tugged at her lips, and he couldn't believe that she even had the spirit left to muster that much. "I'm exhausted, mostly. I can't think of a more luxurious thing in the world than to crawl between the cold sheets of my fifty dollar hotel room bed and sleep for a whole day."
Cho couldn't help the smile that settled on his face as she chuckled at herself. "This hospital bed ain't doing it for you, huh?" He shared her desire for the safety and comforts of home, but that hotel room was not home, and it certainly wasn't safe.
"I would be more comfortable sleeping on the floor than on this thing with all of these needles in my arms." She gave his hand a little squeeze. "I want to sleep on my side, all day long. When I wake up, I want good food and a hot drink and to lay in bed and watch Mur—"
He already knew. "Murder, She Wrote."
"—Don't interrupt me. I want to watch Murder, She Wrote in bed and then sleep for another whole day."
Cho rolled his eyes and leaned his elbows on her bed, her hand still grasped in his. He couldn't let the matter rest without just spitting it out. She wasn't safe in that hotel. She'd been living there for months, spending Christmas and Thanksgiving there as though it was just another apartment. "Masters."
He was surprised when she actually stopped talking. She never listened to him.
"I want you to move into my apartment."
ONE WEEK LATER
The hospital finally discharged Ronnie when her open wounds began to close. All signs of infection disappeared at last, and her weight reached a good baseline again. The stress and dehydration had put a lock on her system, and the doctors had been worried that she wasn't metabolizing her nutrients properly.
Cho had been discharged two days before, but returned to the hospital to take her back to the apartment when she finally got released. His bruises had begun to yellow and the swelling was going down considerably, so the doctors stopped fighting him to stay.
It was just him and Ronnie and mandatory rest and recuperation for the foreseeable future.
Minelli had put them both on a three month leave. No cases, no paperwork, no badges, no guns. The cabin fever would be consuming them both in a matter of weeks, but Cho hasn't begun to complain about it yet.
He picked her up from the hospital wearing jeans and a t-shirt (a black t-shirt) that had her resentfully thinking about the story she'd made up. Cho wearing black t-shirts was a phenomenon that turned her brain and stomach into pudding, and yet, this time the butterflies were at war with the bitter bite of nostalgia. Her subconscious had invented a romance between herself and her partner to protect her from trauma, and she couldn't seem to forget it.
Every time she remembered little scenes from the story, she had to remember the stall. The cold table she'd been strapped to, the air touching her bare skin. One by one, the protective details of her story turned sour. Cho's voice covered the slice of a knife, his touch covered the burn of a poker, and the assault upon her body. Looking at him in those jeans and black t-shirt didn't just leave her wanting to run her hands over his chest and tuck herself into his arms like it always did (it's not personal, she reasons, it's just instinctual. Sometimes Rigsby wears a black t-shirt and she has to remind herself that he's the biggest buffoon to ever walk the earth), it also made her nauseous and miserable.
Each ache of her wounds came with a mental image of her best friend.
What a load of crap. He wasn't the one who held the knife, or any of the other things. He hadn't been there. It wasn't real. Flirting with him didn't bring torture along with it. His hand holding hers wasn't disguising searing pain.
The romance had been fiction.
Cho showed up to the hospital in a t-shirt and jeans, threw a bundle of clothes at her, and left to sign the discharge papers.
There was nothing romantic about it.
By the time she'd sorted through the clothes and discovered they were pink—a pink hoodie and pink sweatpants, both embroidered with the hospital name and a spray of white flowers, both costing forty dollars—he had come back to tell her he was going to pull the car around.
He was going to pull the car around and take her back to his apartment where they both would be living.
There was nothing romantic about it. His actions weren't masking abuse.
This Cho was real. The hospital was real. They'd been rescued.
She changed into the clothes (he hadn't brought her underwear. She was going commando in gift shop sweats and hoping she didn't contract anything) and looked through the bag of belongings that had her name on them. The pretty suit that she'd been so confident in was shredded and soaked in blood, wadded up in the plastic bag.
She dumped the whole thing in the trash.
Maybe she'd use her three month leave to go shopping. It was a paid leave, after all.
Cho returned moments later and pushed her wheelchair out to the car. "I know you had your heart set on your fifty dollar hotel bed, but I've already checked you out and transferred your things to the apartment."
She crossed her arms over her chest to squish down her breasts. Ronnie didn't get to casually go braless with her figure. The hope that she would one day be able to, given the common case that boobs were the first thing to go during vigorous exercise programs, had been sadly dismissed when she realized that her quandary was genetic.
Cho had already seen too much of her, he didn't need to see the sloppy way she filled out the new pink sweatshirt.
When she was appropriately situated, her brain caught up to the cavalier way he'd informed her that he'd gone into her room and stolen all of her stuff. "Exactly how many times have you been in my room without me?" She demanded. She'd given him that key, of course, but she hadn't expected him to use it.
As he settled in beside her, she noticed a suspicious stiffness around his shoulders at her question. "Just the once."
"Uh huh."
"Don't worry, I grabbed your buff guy magazines."
"Those are strictly educational."
"Sure they are."
"Aw, Cho, you know I've got my own buff guy right here, I don't need those magazines." She crooned, playfully tickling a finger along the curve of his bicep.
He shouldered her hand away. "Get off me, you vulture."
He dropped the topic of her magazines.
the MENTALIST
Cho had set her up in his own bedroom.
When they walked in and she'd seen the stack of pillows and blankets on the couch, she'd thought that her new home sweet home was the three scratchy couch cushions that she'd slept on once before, but he kept walking and called her into his bedroom.
Her overnight kit was on the counter in his bathroom, her clothes hanging in his closet next to his own. The sheets were new, dark blue and still creased, and a bright red stuffed lobster sat on the pillow. It had a face. A smiley, cartoony face. "What is that?"
Cho scooped it up off the pillow and chucked it at her. As she caught the weighty object in her hands, feeling the sliding shift of grains of rice or beads or whatever move around within, he flashed her a grin. "It's a menstruation crustacean. You asked for it, remember?"
Ronnie's jaw dropped, mortified laughter bursting up her throat. She'd asked for a microwaveable heating pad, not a smiley little creature. "I'm sorry?"
How was she supposed to put a smiling lobster in the microwave? Was she a monster?
"That lobster is one thermidor away from being your best friend." Cho shot back cheekily, and then gestured around. "My stuff is still here, obviously, so don't get too comfortable with locking the door, but feel free to use this as your personal space whenever you need it."
Still gripping the absurd heating pad, Ronnie pauses awkwardly by the door. "Cho, I cannot kick you out of your own room."
"You're not." He deadpanned. "It's my room. It's my bed. It's my apartment. But while you're here, you won't be abducted by any son of a bitch Russians or batshit crazy human traffickers and not one sick bastard will lay a single finger on you."
"Cho." He still hadn't been sleeping properly. The last thing he needed was to try to get comfortable on a couch instead of his own bed.
"You're not kicking me out of my room. You're giving me peace of mind so I don't have a freakin coronary." Cho turned to leave the room but stopped and turned back. "There's Gatorade and tea in the kitchen if you're thirsty."
The MENTALIST
Her energy wasn't high enough to really explore the apartment, but she did check out the overnight bag that he'd placed on the bathroom counter. Her toothbrush was the first thing she saw when she unzipped the plastic top, and she promptly snatched it out and doused it under the faucet.
As she brushed her teeth, she poked through the rest of the bag. He'd grabbed all of her skincare products, and all of her makeup products, and dumped them unceremoniously in any corner that they would fit.
She didn't care, she was just glad to have them in her hands again.
He'd also thrown her shampoo and body wash from her shower in there, so she dug them out and searched for a bath towel.
They would have to come up with a new arrangement. Sleeping in Cho's bed and forcing him to the couch was a terrible way to go about her recovery. He loved his bed. He loved his pillows. He was a very private person, and her invasion of his bedroom would not bring him peace of mind forever.
Ronnie turned on the shower faucet and finished brushing her teeth as the water heated.
And she, on the other hand, loved long showers. Used to living alone, using as much hot water as she wanted without concern for another person had become her form of therapy.
His shower didn't even have a holster suction gripped to the wall.
She rushed through a shower as quickly as she could while being as thorough as possible and being delicate about her injuries. Within moments she was comfortably swathed in her own sweats, a towel turban in her hair, a stack of bandages clutched in her arms.
Ronnie opened the bathroom door to let some of the steam out and defog the mirror. There was only so much of her wounds she could wrap without seeing them, and none of them were easy to get to. Long strips of bandage she wrapped around her waist to cover the ones on her front and back. They stung enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she couldn't just leave them open.
The hospital had sent home some antibiotics, ointment, and painkillers along with the bandages, but they hadn't warned her how much it would hurt just to wrap and unwrap them.
As the pain flooded her head and threatened to black her out, Ronnie leaned on the counter and lowered her forehead to the cool surface.
Breathe, Masters.
You'll pass out if you keep holding your breath.
Breathe.
The dizziness subsided a little, but when she lifted her head it came down on her all over again. She tried to move faster, to wrap her burns and cuts before she had a chance to pass out, to just get it over with, but the rolling dizziness had gotten into her nerves.
Her hands shook and her arms bumped around, knocking into her own stomach, sides, and back like they were drunk, sending shooting flares of pain through her all over again.
Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes.
I can hang there and get sliced like deli chicken but I can't put a bandaid on them?
Her palm slammed down on the counter, the bandages falling to the floor.
Throat tightening with rage, frustration, and embarrassment, Ronnie hit the sink again, one last act of defiance, before giving up and asking for help.
He answered her shout as quickly as if he'd been waiting outside. Cho approached the bathroom cautiously, peering through the steam to see her leaning on the counter in fresh clothes, towel turban half fallen out of her hair, eyes red. He paused by the door. "You okay?"
His eyes caught the unwound bandages on the floor and he started to put together the pieces.
Ronnie sniffled, cheeks reddening. "I need help." She muttered. "I can't rewrap them on my own."
Cho blinked, and watched the violent tremble of her hands as she tried to fix her towel turban but gave up almost immediately. The reflexive hunch of her spine told him that reaching above her head to twist up her hair was pulling at the cuts, and he understood. "Right."
Bending over to pick up the fallen bandages and shaking them out, just in case, he considered their height difference for a second. "Can you sit on the counter?"
She shook her head awkwardly, her pale fingers bunching in the hem of her sweatshirt. "I have cuts on the backs of my legs."
He knew that. Cho pursed his lips tightly. The heat of the residual steam was turning the bathroom into a sweat room, and he felt beads of sweat start on the back of his neck.
Next thing Ronnie knew, he was knelt on his knees in front of her, straightening out the long white bandages in his hands.
This is so stupid. I should be able to do this.
The angry tears kept falling, until her chin shook with the effort to keep herself under control.
He's my damn partner, not my nurse.
He looked up when she sniffled, eyes hard at the realization that her face wasn't wet from the shower. "Lift up your sweater."
At least this time she could keep her top and bottom covered. Ronnie pulled up her hem and held it under her chest.
Cho gave her marks a good look, eyes tracing between the new, fresh wounds and the old scars that littered the surface of her skin. He said nothing, arms going around her waste as he began to wrap.
The contact of the bandage to her marks shot pain into her head instantly, and she dropped one hand from her sweater to lean against the counter again.
They're just little cuts and burns. Stand the hell up.
Cho's hands were gentle as one wrapped and the other applied careful pressure to keep the bandages snug.
He was warm and kind and he didn't say anything when her tears fell on his arms.
When he was finished, he sat back on his heels and reached for the bottle of ointment. "Now your legs."
The thought of lowering her sweats and standing ass to face was too much. "Oh, no, I've got those. Thanks."
The stoic detective just gave her his signature deadpan stare. "Drop your damn pants, Masters."
The tears started again.
Ronnie pushed down her sweatpants, grateful for her propensity to wear boxer shorts, and turned around to give him access to the backs of her legs.
He swore under his breath. "How the hell are you walking?"
The cuts were deep enough to lacerate muscle, and the surgeons had done their best to help the tissues get a start on knitting back together, but they were still angry and bleeding before his eyes.
"You need to stay off your feet." He told her, dabbing ointment on the slashes. Her muscles twitched with every pass of his finger and he marveled at her ability to keep standing.
No wonder she'd asked for help.
After seeing her flayed hamstrings, he was surprised she hadn't asked for help in the shower.
Ronnie's entire body twinged at every touch of her legs, and by the time he was done, she was hunched over the countertop, leaning on her forearms, barely breathing.
Finished at last, Cho got to his feet behind her and cleaned up the mess of medical supplies before stopping by her side. "Ready to get into bed?"
The mention of bed flooded her with relief. Ronnie nodded, struggling to push herself upright.
Cho watched her hobble out of the bathroom and fall over on the bed, her towel turban finally giving up and hitting the floor with a wet thump.
The exhausted young woman did her best to crawl under the covers, but it was enough work for her weakened body that she had worked up a sweat and had to toss them off of her as soon as she got settled. "This sucks."
Cho picked up the towel and hung it on the rack in the bathroom, glancing over her carefully. Her wet hair bunched on the pillow under her head, her tear-streaked face drawn and pale, her arms shaking as they came to rest at her sides.
She sniffled and looked over at him, breathing heavily. "Thanks."
He gave a short nod, unable to reconcile how calmed he felt by knowing she wasn't off bleeding in a hotel bed, completely vulnerable to being abducted all over again. She was safe in his apartment, in his bedroom, and he'd seen to it personally that her wounds were properly treated.
Lisbon would be so proud of him.
Jane could suck it.
She scrubbed a trembling hand over her face. "You can take a shower. If you want to."
He did want to. It was nearly nine o'clock and he wanted to shower before falling asleep on his crappy couch. "I don't want to keep you from sleeping."
She scoffed, pulling the blankets over her finally and snuggling into his mattress.
He loved that mattress.
"Trust me, Cho, nothing will keep me from sleeping. Please, you won't bother me."
Seeing the exhaustion already taking hold, he relented with a nod. "Okay. Your gun is in the nightstand. TV remote's on top."
Ronnie blinked at him. "You brought my guns here?"
He rolled his eyes at the memory of exactly how many guns he'd found tucked around her hotel room. "Yeah, we'll talk about that tomorrow. Your sidearm is in there, just in case. I'll only be a minute."
She shrugged clearly and scooted down under the blankets. "Take your time." Slumber was calling her name, already tugging her into its warm embrace and wiping the residual traces of anger and embarrassment clear from her mind.
She was asleep before he closed the bathroom door, and never heard the water turn on. She didn't tell him that she was roused by him leaving the bathroom after his shower just enough to sleepily see him, shirtless and dripping with a towel around his waist, digging around in his closet before she passed out once more.