They pushed Cho into the room in a wheelchair despite the terse expression on his face that clearly said he had argued about it. An IV hanger rolled along behind him, the line trailing to his wrist. The nurse pushed him to the second bed and locked the wheels.
The evident next step was to transfer him from the chair to the bed, but Cho had no intention of complying. He'd barely complied to the wheelchair policy. 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?"
Ronnie and Jane shared a look that simultaneously agreed, "fat chance."
"I'm not getting into the bed." Cho returned flatly.
"Oh boy," the voice came from the doorway, where Penelope stood, wringing her hands. "What is it with male agents being difficult patients?"
Hotch shot her a scathing look, but Ronnie caught the amused smile that underlined it.
The nurse glanced at Ronnie, then at Hotch 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, 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.
Hotch didn't say anything, but the moment the nurse glanced at him as though for confirmation, she ducked her head and shuffled quickly out of the room.
His presence as an authority figure was imposing, even to the hospital staff.
Lisbon kicked the locks open on Cho's wheelchair and pulled him back 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?"
Ronnie nodded acquiescently, thoughts of Rigsby towering over her bed and making stupid jokes while Grace gut-shots him with her elbow actually lowered her blood pressure.
Chattering as they went, everyone but Cho cleared the room.
The moment they were gone, he pulled himself to his feet and focused on keeping his hospital gown closed. His eyes closed in a wince, swaying ever so slightly with a wave of weakness before finally grounding himself.
He still hadn't looked at her, but she was getting an eyeful of him. A deep purple bruise colored the right side of his jaw, and angry red inflammation peeked out from under the collar of his gown. The bags under his eyes were thick and heavy.
Ronnie couldn't stand the fact that he'd been beaten because of her. "Kimball, I am so sorry."
His eyebrows lowered but he still didn't look up. "Don't call me that."
What an odd thing to say. "It's your name."
"You only call me that when you're scared."
Was that true? Surely it wasn't true. Surely there had been times when she had tried to make him laugh that she'd used his given name. Or was it always Cho?
He was Cho. He just was.
Ronnie reached out and grasped his free hand and immediately felt his fingers close around hers. "Cho, I'm so sorry you got dragged into that."
Her partner heaved a sigh. His eyes closed again and he squeezed her hand for a long second before a change fell over his whole body. He scooted his wheelchair closer and sat back down, and finally lifted his eyes to hers. "How are you feeling?"
She took stock of herself. "I feel some pain, but not much. It's a wonderful drug, morphine." The burns and the cuts were just nagging sensations in the background to the weight pressing down on her head. "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."
Her sheepish smile stirred up one of his own. "This hospital bed ain't doing it for you, huh?"
"I would be more comfortable sleeping on the floor than on this thing with all of these needles in my arms." Ronnie couldn't believe she'd gotten him to smile, especially with his jaw so damaged. "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—"
"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. "Masters."
She stopped talking.
"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 then she was in Cho's car wearing a hospital gift shop sweat set and a paper bracelet.
The bruise on his jaw had gone from purple to yellow and was beginning to fade.
Minelli had put them both on a three month leave. No cases, no paperwork, no badges, no guns.
Cho 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. 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.
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 and looked through the bag of belongings that had her name on them. The pretty clothes that she'd been so confident in were 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."
"Exactly how many times have you been in my room without me?" She demanded, buckling her seatbelt. Even his car smelled the same—like sun heated leather and cheap air fresheners.
As he settled in beside her, she noticed a suspicious stiffness around his shoulders at her question. "Just the once."
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. "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."
Ronnie's jaw dropped. "I'm sorry?"
"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."
"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."
THREE MONTHS LATER
"Blow out the candles and make a wish!" Grace said, clapping her hands excitedly. Everyone was clapping. There were finally things to clap about.
The team sat around the conference table in the CBI bullpen on Cho and Ronnie's first day back from leave, celebrating Lisbon's birthday. Jane leaned forward as though enraptured by the dancing flames (or perhaps the woman they were illuminating) on the cake while the others leaned back comfortably in their chairs, watching cheerfully as Lisbon bashfully extinguished the flames.
Her resulting smile as she finally blew out the last candle was one that proved that, while she was at work and sitting at a table with her subordinates, she was in the company of her closest friends.
"At last, the presents." Grace exclaimed, and pushed a wrapped cylindrical gift across the table towards the boss.
Lisbon grasped it excitedly. "Is it a vase?—oh, wait, Jane's gonna guess."
Jane clapped his hands over his eyes and turned to face Ronnie, exemplifying that he could not see what Lisbon was unwrapping. "Okay." His face scrunched up as Ronnie tickled his nose with the end of her braid, and he batted her hand away before returning to his masked position. "I'm ready."
The gift wrap peeled away to reveal a brand new yoga mat that was the same shade of blue as Lisbon's eyes. Her expression lit up with delight and she mouthed a grateful "thank you" to Grace.
Her reaction to the gift had given Grace life. She beamed from ear to ear. "Okay, Jane."
"Yoga mat?" Jane burst out, blowing raspberries as Ronnie's hair continued to tickle his lips.
The team members gave various exclamations of impressed agreement as Lisbon informed him that he was correct.
Ronnie felt her chair roll backwards, closer to Cho. He snatched her braid out of her hand and gave it a light tug before dropping it without a word. Her mouth turned downward in a pout at being punished for enjoying herself, but she didn't fight it.
"We talked about that ashtanga class, I just thought—" Grace was still grinning.
"It's great, thanks." Lisbon returned before she could continue to justify her gift.
"Yes, and we're signing up for next week's class." Ronnie added, pointing first to Grace, and then to Lisbon. "You'll love it, Boss, Grace and I have been all over it since we found it."
The female members of the team conspired excitedly while the males glanced at each other with unbridled disgust. None of them had been invited to the yoga classes, and they all seemed pleased with that arrangement.
Rigsby broke up the girl talk, waving a birthday themed envelope in the air. "Ten bucks says you don't get this one." With a toothy grin, he passed it to the boss.
Jane snapped his fingers and spun his chair. "You're on. Ten bucks."
Teresa Lisbon accepted the envelope with a grin and then gave Jane a chiding look. "Cover your eyes. Don't cheat."
"No cheating." Jane agreed, and blindly reached out a foot to kick Ronnie's chair.
She kicked back. "I didn't do anything."
Lisbon ripped open the envelope and made a relieved face at Rigsby. "Thank you."
"We clear?"
"Okay, Jane." Grace told him.
"Okay, Rigsby...it's a gift certificate...for a spa treatment."
Rigsby's face fell. "Damn."
"Correct again!" Lisbon was excited about that particular gift, and Ronnie didn't blame her. She'd kill for a massage now that she was getting back into the gym and working up sore muscles all over again.
Jane took the praise pseudo-humbly. "Bingo. Ten dollars?"
Rigsby sighed. "Yeah, I owe you."
"Me now." Ronnie plucked up the strings of the little gift bag she had sitting in front of her with blue tissue paper peeking out of the top and passed it in front of Jane to sit in front of the boss. "Can't wait to see you guess this one."
Jane popped his eyebrows at her cheerfully and then placed his palms over his eyes. "Ready."
Lisbon delicately tugged the tissue paper out of the bag and peered down into it, mouth falling open in disbelief. Her eyes snapped back up to Ronnie's, a grateful thanks on her lips.
Beaming excitedly back, Ronnie smacked Jane's shoulder. "Hit it, pops."
He smacked blindly back in protest of the title and only managed to strike her elbow, which she gleefully ignored.
"It's a bottle..." Jane began, so far correct. "Yves Saint Laurent...Libre Eau de Parfum."
Ronnie gaped at him. "You saw me buy it."
He scoffed and dropped his hands proudly. "From the bookstore? That'd be a trick."
Lisbon pulled the correctly guessed bottle of perfume from the little gift bag and showcased it. "I can't believe you—"
Ronnie didn't let her finish. "You said it was your favorite. I'm a terrible gift giver, though, so you can just keep expecting that every year."
The boss grinned. "Done deal. Thank you."
"Okay, three for three." Cho got up, another gift wrapped cylindrical object in hand. He moved around the table to hand it to Lisbon. "How about mine?"
"You did a really great job wrapping that." Grace commented with surprise, clearly knowing how difficult it could be to neatly wrap something of that shape.
"I wrapped it." Ronnie rolled her eyes, but refrained from informing the table that Cho had wanted to present his gift merely in the box it came in with a bow slapped on top.
Lisbon took it eagerly. "That's sweet, thank you." She flashed her senior agent a smile, which he returned fondly.
As the gift was revealed and Lisbon's well-performed facial expressions did all her thanking for her, Jane wiggled excitedly in his chair.
"Okay, what is it?"
"It's...a mid- to high-end bottle of...wine..."
Lisbon's mouth dropped open in excited disbelief as the guess fell just barely short of the mark.
Cho pumped a fist in triumph.
Jane stopped himself. "Uh, no, no, no...champagne."
Cho dropped his elbows on the table defeatedly.
"Yes." Lisbon laughed glibly with the others while Ronnie reached back and rubbed a comforting hand over Cho's shoulder. "So close."
Jane leaned back conspiratorially, still laughing with the table. "Regift?"
Cho shrugged. "It's a really good bottle. I don't drink it."
"Let's have some cake!" Jane pulled himself closer to Lisbon again.
Grace turned to him curiously. "What about your gift?"
The table went quiet, but Jane didn't seem concerned. "It's on it's way."
"Oh," Rigsby chortled, cackling at the mentalist's apparent lack of gift.
Ronnie joined him. "Who hasn't used that one before?"
"Typical," Lisbon sing-songed, already slicing herself a piece of cake.
Somebody's phone started ringing, but Jane was too offended to care. "You really think I would forget your birthday present?"
Lisbon nodded smugly, and then scoffed when he defensively informed her that it was on its way.
"Little grumpy because Daddy didn't buy you a pony?" Jane shot back.
"Woah." Ronnie smacked him again, but Lisbon only met his gaze head-on.
Behind them, Grace was hanging up her phone. "Boss, we got a call."
the MENTALIST
The body lay sprawled in a nest-like mess of vines and branches between the trunks of three trees, under a main highway bridge. He'd been found that morning by a couple of hikers, but he appeared to have been out there for a couple of days. A gunshot wound marked his forehead, but no visible blood marked his skin around it. His ID wasn't on him when the forensic team looked him over. All they'd found on him was a kind of straw and a medal of some sort.
Rigsby thought it might have been religious.
Grace thought maybe it was a good luck charm.
Cho didn't think it worked too well, if it was a good luck charm.
Ronnie guessed cursed object.
No one listened to Ronnie.
Jane took one good look at the corpse and the items that he'd been found with and said, "Our victim worked at a video arcade in the next big town to the north."
Rigsby stared blankly at him.
Fed up already—and on her birthday, too—Lisbon rolled her eyes towards Jane. "How do you get that?"
"There was a big storm here last week, wasn't there?"
Ronnie remembered it first hand, and glanced at Cho. Her partner nodded and gestured to the hills. "Yeah. Lot of rain. Snow up in the mountains." His eyes flashed down to hers, and then refocused on the case before them.
Rigsby and Jane were watching them both silently, with matching suspicious expressions.
"When the river rises, this must be underwater." Grace put in, interrupting the guys' prying looks.
"So, he must have been brought down here from somewhere upriver and got caught in the tree." Cho surmised. He had one foot propped up on a boulder, fully suited up and standing in a dry riverbed like some kind of procedural cop show detective.
Ronnie's phone buzzed and she checked it, hearing Lisbon ask again about how Jane knew about the arcade.
When Cho looked at his partner again, she was grinning down at her phone. He cleared his throat, brushing past her deliberately. Ronnie jumped and shoved her phone back in her pocket, clueing back into the conversation while Jane explained himself.
The medal was a video game token, and the straw was a Peruvian finger cuff, commonly given away as cheap prizes. Ronnie recognized it when he said it, and instantly got the memory of her fingers going red and swollen as she tried to free them from one of those stupid toys. She'd had dozens of them as a child.
Jane decided that the body was too old to hang out at a video game arcade for innocent reasons unless he worked there. Confident that the man didn't look to be the nefarious sort, Jane was certain he worked there. "We find the arcade, we find the information."
"What's the next big town upriver?" Rigsby wondered.
"Sierra Vista." Cho's and Ronnie's voices overlapped, catching Jane and Rigsby's attention once again.
"Okay, it's a theory." Lisbon allowed, and turned on her heel to leave the body behind.
Jane hustled to catch up with her, tucking his hands neatly into his pockets. "Do I detect a slight residue of grumpiness in your demeanor?"
Ronnie met Cho's eyes.
He just shook his head, touched her elbow, and caught up with the others.
She followed resignedly.
"I swear to you, Lisbon," Jane was saying. "Your gift is on its way."
"I'm not grumpy, and I don't give a damn about your supposed gift."
Jane fell back and walked with Rigsby. "She's still grumpy with me, isn't she?"
"Not touching that."
the MENTALIST
Wandering around the House of Games, the only arcade in Sierra Vista, the team took stock of their surroundings.
Or, rather, most of them did. Jane leaned into Cho and quietly asked for a dollar, and then scampered away to buy tokens. As the machine dispensed the coins, he plucked one out and held it up. "Ah! Bingo." The coin identically matched the religious-good-luck-cursed-object medal that the dead man had had on his person.
Lisbon gave a bemused nod. "Wow, okay. You're right."
Jane grinned and dumped the handful of coins into Cho's palm. "Here's your dollar back."
Unimpressed, Cho blinked at him, and then shoved the entire cache into the hands of the closest child. "Here you go. Have fun."
Jane snatched a dollar from the kid, passed it to Cho, and the two walked away without a care.
Mortified at the socially abysmal behavior of her coworkers, Ronnie grimaced at the stunned child. "Sorry. They're really nice, I swear."
the MENTALIST
Jane and Lisbon left to speak to the owner of the arcade and left the rest of the agents to continue wandering the arcade. It smelled like grease and sweat and old pizza, and yet Ronnie still felt the hunger start to creep in.
"Who wants pizza after this?"
Rigsby's hand shot in the air while Cho turned to her in disgust. "I'm not eating here."
She sneered back. "I'm not either. Who suggested that?"
Rigsby stopped and leaned against the wall, sliding his hands into his pockets. His eyes glanced over the two shorter agents and then went back to scanning the room. "So—your first day back after three months off. How do you feel?"
He was the first to ask so far. The entire morning had been busy with celebrations of Lisbon's birthday, which Ronnie much preferred to being awkwardly barraged by well-meaning questions. She shrugged one shoulder and leaned against the wall with him. "I'm glad to be back, for sure. I was going crazy by the end of it."
"She finished all five seasons of Grey's Anatomy." Cho deadpanned.
"Oh my god." Rigsby stared at her.
Shameless, she threw her hands up. "He wouldn't let me work out, and there's only so much History Channel I can take."
"You didn't work out for three months?"
"Well...no." Ronnie laughed sheepishly.
"She would do it secretly until she started making herself sick and I caught on." Cho muttered looking her over once as though to make sure she hadn't started bleeding through her shirt. "The doctors only cleared it last week."
Rigsby didn't really know what to say. "Why couldn't...I mean—how did—"
"The cuts and burns reached muscle fiber." She explained simply. "Once those were healed up, I was good to go. It just took some time to get there."
Cho glared at her.
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