Seeing

Episode tag for 4:13, Glimpse

Chapter 1

As he was making his way out of Café Diem, Jack Carter paused to cast a worried glance back over his shoulder at his friend Jo Lupo. Jo was sitting in the far corner of the restaurant, near the door to the kitchen, waiting for her carry out order. She was hunched over the counter, drumming her fingers against her arms and glaring at the wall in front of her. She was also dramatically, ostentatiously even, not looking at the man with the bandage on his forehead sitting further along the curving counter.

The man, Zane Donovan, was casting apprehensive glances at Jo while playing with his coffee mug. Jack thought he looked like a man screwing up his courage to throw down for a fight he wasn't sure of winning.

Jack wished he had even the slightest idea of how to help them out of their obvious distress. Jo was probably one of the best friends he'd ever had in his life, been there for his lowest lows and had his back always, even when she was the one who pulled the trigger. She'd been walking around with a swing in her step and a gleam in her eye for the last month or more. He'd been enormously relieved that she'd finally made her peace with all that had changed since everything else, well, changed. So he hated seeing her shoulders creep back up to her ears as her back knotted with tension. Especially because he finally understood what, or rather who, had been making her smile. He'd thought it was her commendation from Mansfield, and that probably was part of it. But most of it was Zane. Zane was making her smile. In the most old-fashioned of ways.

As for Zane, the man with the bandage, he had fallen in love with Jo. Jack was positive about this. There was no other explanation for the look on the poor guy's face. And after today's near disaster? Jack also believed that Jo loved Zane. Not the old version of Zane, who was a good guy but also an unbelievably arrogant little shit who took her far too much for granted, a new Nathan Stark in the making, but this one. New Zane. In all his much more screwed up, banged up glory. Not that either of them appeared remotely ready to even acknowledge their feelings, much less deal with them.

Romantic complications were not in Jack's ballpark. His best call was to suggest to Jo that she just let things be for a while. Don't make any decisions that couldn't be walked back. He hoped she'd been listening, but Jo wasn't very good at patience. Or uncertainty. Jack sighed and turned for the door. He had done all he could. It had been another catastrophe-barely-averted, Eureka sort of day and now he was going home. A broad smile stole across his face. He didn't actually skip, but he felt it on the inside. Allison and the kids were waiting for him.

Jo stared at the wall, knowing she had to turn around and deal with Zane. Only, she had no idea would happen when she did. What she wanted to do right now and what she knew she ought to do right now were so different that she felt like she was being ripped apart at the cellular level. She wasn't exactly sure what that would feel like, of course, but it always sounded horrible when Henry said it. She surely felt horrible right now.

What she wanted was easy. She wanted to twist her fist into Zane's shirt and drag him into the nearest, most secluded place she could find and fuck him until neither one of them could walk without staggering on rubbery legs. Reassuring herself with her hands and her mouth and her body that he was safe and alive and whole and not blown to bits along with the rest of Main Street.

She had nearly lost him, again, today. It had terrified her, left her almost unable to think, to work, or to give her entire attention to averting the crisis at hand. She'd gotten a grip on herself, of course, and the day was saved. But the waves of panic had only receded when she planted herself at his side. Today, that worked out fine. It turned out that was exactly where she needed to be. But there was no guarantee things would always work out like that.

Which was a huge fricking problem. If she couldn't do her job properly because of her feelings for him, then she had to choose. Him or the job.

The job was what she had. Everything she had in this timeline. She'd turned out to be damn good at it, and she was getting even better, every day. It gave her opportunities to grow and shine in ways her old deputy job never could, stuck forever as Jack's second. Her last quarterly evaluation since the time travelling had even earned her a formal commendation from Mansfield himself.

Zane, well, he liked her. He liked having sex with her. A lot, she smirked briefly to herself. He liked having sex with her a whole lot. But he hadn't by look or word or deed offered even the smallest hint that he wanted anything more than a lot of really, really great sex. Which meant she didn't have him. Not really. Not like before. And continuing to sleep with him was just confusing matters. So. The job. Her job. It had to come first.

All she had to do was stick to her guns, she told herself. The sexual part of their relationship had to end. This time. Finally. For real. Before things got any more out of hand. Before she was truly incapable of doing the one good thing she had left. No matter that it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do. It was what she had to do, for her sanity and his.

Surely the friendship they'd been developing would survive that? And if it didn't, if the only thing he'd wanted from her was heaping amounts of No-Strings-Attached sex after all, well, then fuck him. He wasn't worth her job.

Zane was almost as tense as Jo. He could not remember ever in his life being this nervous about his near-term prospects with a woman. Normally he would have cut and run weeks ago. Only, he liked his days, and his nights, filled with Jo Lupo. A lot. He didn't want that to change. He wanted, in fact, for it to get easier. But before it could get easier, he had to get her to agree. The challenge, at this moment, was she wasn't even looking at him.

Today had been a hell of a day. It began, as all good days began lately, in bed with Jo. She'd been a little peeved that it happened to be her bed, in her room at Jack's house, but not so peeved as to throw him out. Jo had needs, she did, and Zane, he was an excellent provider.

Once he got to GD, his latest project started out its beta run brilliantly, performing beyond even his most ambitious projections. Which was about when Jo had arrived to announce, again, that last night, or rather, this morning, was the last time. No more sex for them. It was all out of her system. Thanks and so long.

He hadn't believed her any more than any of the other times she'd announced this. Rather less, in fact, and after almost two months he was getting a bit tired of the charade. He had understood why she was trying so hard to keep everything casual. Why she didn't want their relationship – whatever it was – to be community knowledge. At least at first. Between their tangled pasts and their current present, it seemed the smart move for them to figure out what they wanted from each other before they went public.

Sneaking around, like they were crazy high school kids rather than grown ass adults, had even been sort of fun. He'd skipped high school and so missed out on that particular adventure when he was fifteen. But the novelty had worn thin. He wanted to just date her, like a mostly normal guy with a mostly normal sort of life. Which was maybe why he had accidentally on purpose run into Jack and Allison on his way out of SARAH this morning. Trying to force Jo's hand, without getting into a fight about it.

Then Fargo did something stupid. GD had to be evacuated. Civilians rushed to the shelters. The town saved with less than five seconds to spare. Not par for the course, exactly, but well within the range of possibilities for Eureka. Exciting, if you were into that sort of thing. Which, he was discovering, he kind of was.

Only, in the middle of everything, he and Jo did have a fight. It was about her withholding crucial information relating to the crisis of the moment. She had substituted her judgment for his about what he needed to know. About his own damn program. That…couldn't happen again. Not if he was going to be continuing to expand the scope of his responsibilities at GD. Which he fully expected to be doing. He wouldn't second-guess her or the way she did her job, but she could not manage him so much he couldn't do his. That put too many other people at risk.

Before they could deal with that, though, they had to actually be talking. Not staring hopelessly in opposite directions. God, did dating suck. Which is why he'd spent his entire life avoiding it. Too bad he had no intention of avoiding Lupo. Or letting her avoid him.

'Give me a sign,' Zane thought hard at her back. 'Just one sign. Then I'll know how to begin.'