A/N: I'm glad at least a few people feel about this show how I felt. Thanks so much for reading.

"I'm afraid of people really knowing me." - Lieutenant Beth Davis, Stalker

Previously...

"I have issues, Jack. Enough for the whole team at T.A.U. and then some."

"We all have issues. Or have you forgotten my ex and the little bout of stalking I engaged in when I first arrived in L.A.?"

"That's different. You had a son. You wanted to know him, to protect him."

"So you're complicated," he conceded for argument's sake. "Not like I didn't know that when I came over here tonight."

Beth allowed herself a wry little grunt of a laugh. One thing she'd learned about Jack Larsen was that he could make her smile, even at the bleakest of moments.

Chapter 2

Beth sighed and then she reached over the little hypoallergenic wall she'd constructed between them using her pillow and she rubbed Jack's arm.

"I'm pretty whole now, Jack. What you see is what you get. I'm not hiding anything from you, I promise."

He looked up from studying her long, fine-boned fingers, which were currently toying with the dark hairs on his arm, sifting through them like the wind passing through blades of meadow grass. He had a doubtful expression on his face. "Is that true?"

Beth nodded. "You have my word. You've seen my messy past. A little too up close and personal."

"And you've seen mine."

Beth swatted his arm and laughed. "I've met Amanda. That's all of your past I've seen. And she's pretty kick-ass, Jack."

"Tell me about it," he grumbled, remembering Amanda's inflexible attitude towards him when he arrived in town a few months ago.

"Hey, she gave you your marching orders and then she still let you stay in L.A.. That's pretty awesome. What's more awesome is that you get to spend time with your son. Believe me, not many women would be willing to give up that much control unless they trust a guy. Amanda came round pretty fast."

Jack shrugged, but then he brightened, his face breaking into a smile so bright it was like the moon sailing out from behind a cloud. "Ethan is pretty amazing."

Beth couldn't help but smile back at him. "Of course he is. Dad like you, how could he not be?" she teased, poking his bare thigh with her toes. "Maybe one day I'll get to meet him." She smiled shyly as she said this, almost fishing for an invite while not wanting to push.

"I have him this weekend," Jack immediately informed her, his expression oh so eager. "Too soon?" he asked, eyebrows shooting skywards to accompany the spur of the moment suggestion.

Beth ducked her head shyly, smiling to herself at his enthusiasm, and then she slowly raised her eyes to look at him. "Why don't you check with Amanda? She might not want Ethan to get confused…or something," Beth frowned, breaking into nervous laughter along with Jack.

"We're really new at this," Jack grinned, reaching out to tuck a long swathe of jet-black hair behind Beth's ear. The gesture was uncommonly tender for the fledgling relationship they'd developed up to this point, the weighting of history still favoring that of boss-colleague, despite them having slept together once already tonight.

"Yes. That we are," she agreed, her eyes sparkling with mirth, her cheeks stained a little pink by a sudden bout of bashfulness.

"So…" Jack cleared his throat, attempting to break the awkwardness of the moment.

Beth looked eager to accept any lifeline he might be offering. "Yeah?"

"I have more questions."

"I see." She instantly sounded wary, a little guarded once more.

"If that's okay with you?"

"Might depend on the questions."

"Okay, how about if I toss them out there and you answer or pass depending."

"Depending on what?"

"On whether or not you want to answer."

Beth paused and thought for a moment, weighing her options. "Okaaayyyy, shoot," she decided to trust him.

Jack took a deep breath. "Do you want me to go home now?"

Beth lowered her hands from where she had them clasped over her nose and mouth in anticipation of his inquisitive onslaught and she burst out laughing. "That's your first question? Should you leave?"

"What? I was being courteous," Jack insisted, grinning at Beth's sudden bout of amusement at his expense.

"You do realize you might shut down this entire interrogation of yours in one move if I say yes? Rookie mistake, Jack," she chided playfully, slowly shaking her head at him.

"Oh…oh, right." Jack rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort. "I didn't think of that. Can I ask another one first?"

"Just tell me the next question," Beth smiled indulgently, quietly adding, "And, no, I don't want you to go home tonight."

Jack looked openly surprised to hear this. He never expected to get to stay over the first time. Truth be told, he actually only came here to talk tonight, maybe make out a little if he was really lucky. Ending up in Beth's bed at all seemed like a miracle, staying there overnight went above and beyond.

"What? You didn't wanna stay?" she clarified, misreading the look of disbelief on his face for something else.

"No. No…I would love to stay. I just assumed you'd want space…or something."

"Maybe I like to cuddle. You ever think of that?" she teased, lifting one bare shoulder and tilting her head adorably as she smiled at him.

Jack was finding it harder and harder to tell when she was toying with him ever since the other night, since her barriers had come down around him and she'd become emboldened about what she wanted from life and from him in particular.

"Beth Davis, a cuddler? No way. I don't believe you."

She leaned over to kiss him, crushing the pillow between them. "Guess we'll find out," she whispered, drawing him into an even deeper embrace.

Jack moaned, and his list of questions was temporarily forgotten when his brain blanked out with the sweep of Beth's velvet soft tongue against his lips. He yanked the pillow out from between their bodies and tossed it across the bed causing them to fall into one another and roll across the bed. Beth laughed at his impatient drive to be rid of the barrier between them, and then she sighed a happy sigh when he touched her, so gently, suddenly groaning in delight when her limbs became tangled in her new lover's limbs and his heated skin slid over her own as he stretched out to his full height and pinned her beneath him.

"You are so worth it, just so you know," Jack confessed into the flushed skin of her neck as she arched under him when he parted her thighs with his knees and prepared to slide inside her.

Beth shivered in his arms, her body light as a feather as he held her against him, rocking slowly together, both gliding on that infinitesimally fine line of teetering arousal; the razor-thin boundary between heightened pleasure and shattering oblivion. He'd been on a high these past two days after discovering that she wasn't going to turn him down after he'd shown up at her door unexpectedly the other night, begged a beer and stolen a kiss. Beth Davis, who was so private, so walled off when he'd arrived at T.A.U. Beth who had been openly dismissive, verging on hostile, when he'd joined her team. And now? Now this. She was moving beneath him, working with him, opening herself up to him in ways he could only have dreamed of, and he had, never imagining that those dreams would ever come true, let alone so soon.

He watched, so fascinated by her, as a frown began to crease her smooth forehead. He felt her fingers scrabbling at the flexing muscles of his back, her short nails a little sharp suddenly, and he assumed she was close, since this was only their second time and they were still learning each other's tells. But then she raised her long, dark lashes to look up at him, her expression so open and trusting, her dark eyes bottomless whirlpools of emotion. "Talk to me?" she begged, a flicker of fear passing across her field of vision as she studied his face, that fear growing more insistent with each thundering heartbeat.

When her nails broke skin she had more than his full attention. Fear shot up his spine at the horrified look on her face, the terror in her eyes. It was as if Beth wasn't really with him anymore. He certainly didn't recognize the childlike, trembling woman beneath him. In fact, he began to wonder, with a creeping sense of awareness, if Beth had gone completely, only to be replaced by a traumatized Michelle.

"Hey," Jack murmured, urgency in his tone, slowing the erotic, rhythmic undulation of his hips to stroke her face, to brush his hand over the back of her head. "Hey, Beth, look at me," he cajoled, waiting until her eyes alighted on his own again and the fog of fear coalesced into something marginally calmer, a jolt of recognition, and then slowly began to dissipate. "It's me…Jack. You're safe. We can stop anytime you want. Any time," he murmured against her hair.

Later, as Beth lay curled on her side with her back to him, he sat upright in her bed, a pillow over his lap, unfulfilled arousal leaving his body jumpy as a livewire, though any frustration he felt was utterly swamped and superseded by his concern for the silent woman beside him.

"How did you know?" she asked in a broken whisper, finally turning her head to look up at him when he failed to answer her question immediately.

Her hair whispered across the pillow as she moved, and Jack shrugged and shook his head, trying to brush the incident off as nothing.

"Jack look at me. How did you know?" she pressed, wrapping the sheet around her thin frame and forcing herself upwards to lean back against the headboard beside him.

"I've seen this kind of thing before…"

"You've seen—"

"Well…encountered…read about it," he shrugged noncommittally, leaving her unsure if this was some kind of professional experience he spoke from or something more personal. "It's a dissociative behavior. Sometimes happens after trauma. You broke from reality for a moment, that's all. But you knew it was happening, Beth. That's why you asked me to talk to you. You needed to know it was me and not—"

Jack pulled up short without finishing his thought. So Beth finished it for him.

"Ray," she breathed, her forehead knitting itself into a frustrated frown as she looked away from him in shame.

"Look, it shouldn't last long. You will get over this, Beth. We will. I can help you."

"Oh, yeah, great. We have sex and the very first night I'm…I'm…what? Having nightmares in the middle of it? I couldn't just wait until we fell asleep, have you rescue me from a bad dream like a normal person? Oh, no, I have to dissociate or whatever right in the middle of—"

"It's not that bad. And you're no damsel in distress, Beth. You don't need rescuing. By me or by anyone else."

"Then what do I need, Jack? Because you sure as hell don't need…this!" she finished with a burst of frustration, waving her hand between them.

"Hey?" he said softly, reaching for her wrist when she tried to turn away from him, to hide her mortification at displaying this level of weakness. "What I want is you. What I need is for you to take a breath right now. Where do you keep your herbal tea?"

Beth shook her head in confusion. "Tea?"

"In the kitchen, I assume. But which cabinet? I'm making us some tea, and then we can talk. But only if you want to. No pressure."

Jack returned several minutes later with two mugs of chamomile tea dosed with honey and lemon. He found Beth curled up in bed wearing his black undershirt from earlier that day. She looked small and vulnerable, swamped by his t-shirt, and so adorable that he had to remind himself not to coddle her, not to parent her and definitely not to psychoanalyze her.

"Has that ever happened before?" he asked, after they were settled, the sweet citrusy scent of the herbal tea rising above them.

Beth kept her eyes trained on the rim of her mug. She felt self-conscious despite wholly trusting Jack not to hurt her. "You mean with someone else?"

"Yes. I'm not prying just…"

"There hasn't really been…anyone," she admitted quietly, reaching up to nervously toy with her hair. "Not in a long time," she added, her cheeks burning.

"How long were you with him?"

No one wanted to mention Ray's name, and by now neither of them needed to. Their understanding of the problem was clear and shared.

"A couple of years actually dating. We were kids…neighbors. Grew up together. Always in and out of each other's houses. He was my first and I was his."

"That explains a lot."

Beth turned to look at him. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing…I—"

"Come on, Jack. What did you mean?"

"I promised myself I wouldn't do this." His voice was low and rough, a sexiness to it Beth found both stirring and safe.

"Do what?"

"Perform some kind of psych eval on you. Use our training to figure you out, put you in some neat little box."

"You really think you can do that? Hmm? Better than I can do it for myself?" she challenged him, anger and indignation bubbling below the surface at the implied weakness which she herself knew to be there.

"I have more—"

"What?" she snapped, the old fear returning. The old fear that she was some kind of broken freak who ran away from her problems, hid under a new identity to escape a past she couldn't face. All the things she counselled stalking victims to avoid when she advised them to be strong, take back control of their lives, not to let the stalker win. That thought led naturally to the old fear that she was somehow inauthentic as well as broken, and that the fracture in her life at such a crucial, formative age would forever be her undoing, leaving her incapable of remaining a functional, trusting adult for very long.

"Distance. I have more distance. That's all," Jack assured her.

Beth threw him a sidelong glance. "I thought…I assumed we were close…closer," she amended right at the end, in case she sounded too desperate. Talk of distance had her careering back to her reluctance to start something with him in the first place, since she was, after all was said and done, still his boss.

In this one halting sentence Beth displayed more need for him than Jack felt he had any right to see at this point, and it made his heart swell with gratitude somehow given how protective he knew Beth was of her own heart.

"We are close," he reassured her. "I just mean you can't psychoanalyze yourself, Beth. No one can. Not objectively. Not even Freud managed that."

"So read me," she demanded, taking a harsh sip of her tea. "Give it your best shot, Jack. Show us both what you're made of."

"Stop!" He grasped her mug of tea and eased it out of her angry, clenched fingers before she scalded herself. "Just stop, Beth."

She sagged in defeat. "I'm such a freak," she sighed, tears filling her eyes as she bowed forward to rest her forehead against her knees.

Jack wrapped his arms around her, easing her back against him, pressed his lips to her hairline, as he promised, "You're not a freak. You're a little damaged is all. But you'll get past this and everything will be fine. I promise."

TBC...

Any thoughts?