Jo took a last look around her living room, checking that everything Nick might need was in easy reach. She looked at his bedroom door and sighed. She wasn't sure about leaving him, even for the morning, but Fargo's thinly-veiled desperation yesterday had made it clear that he needed her back at her post. He'd been understanding about her need to take leave, and he'd been more than accommodating about the amount of leave, but it was time to get back to work.

Duty called.

Nick would be fine.

If she told herself that enough times, maybe she'd start to believe it.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she grabbed her keys and opened the front door.

"Vincepresso?" asked Zane, who was standing on her doorstep. Standing on her doorstep, holding out a cup of coffee, at eight in the morning. And smiling at her. God, she'd missed that smile. Her stomach seemed to have dropped to about the level of her knees, and she chided herself, not for the first time, for not preparing herself for seeing him.

"Thanks," she managed a small, tight smile back, and gestured for him to follow her into the house. "What are you doing here, Zane?" she asked, as she led him into the kitchen.

"I told you I was coming by." He sounded puzzled, "I promised Nick I'd kick his ass at Yahtzee. See?" He held up a box of, yes, Yahtzee.

She sighed. She hadn't really believed he would come, and he wasn't going to make this easy. "Yes, I know that, but why? Why are you here? Why are you here? Why would you want to spend your day playing a kids' game with my convalescent brother? We're not friends. You barely know me, and you don't know him at all."

"Don't do that, Jo!" he interrupted, all trace of that smile gone now, replaced by a somewhat forbidding scowl. "You're not ready to talk about it, that's fine, but do not pretend to me that we don't both know this," he paused and waved his hand vaguely between them, "is more complicated than that."

She stared at him, trying, if she were honest, to stare him down. His scowl didn't slip. She laughed a little then. It sounded choked even to her. "You're right. You always did hate it when I was passive-aggressive."

His brows lowered even further at that, but then he seemed to decide to let it slide, and turned to look out the window. She sagged slightly with relief. She really hadn't meant to say that, any of it. Dammit, why couldn't she just keep her mouth shut? She took a too-big gulp of coffee, scalded her tongue, and was almost glad.

"This is a really nice house," he was still looking out the window, like he was giving her time to pull herself together, or like he didn't want to look at her. She wasn't sure which would be worse.

"Yeah. I'd give you a guided tour, but I really do need to get to work." She forced herself into her habitual efficiency, "Nick's awake, but it takes the painkillers a while to kick in. The nurse will be here at 9:30 to get him showered and dressed, and change his dressings. Nick has a really low boredom threshold, though, so it's good you're here."

Zane looked round at that, his eyes instantly locking with hers, but their expression was unreadable. God, she hated that. She hated not knowing what he was thinking, but she'd never had that knack. Carter had it, the ability to read people – it was what made him such a good sheriff. Zane had it too. And that just made it worse – what was he seeing in her face right now?

She looked away, and started for the door. "He can't have any more painkillers for another six hours, and I'll be back by then. If he's in a lot of discomfort before then, he can have some ibuprofen, but make sure he eats something first. He won't ask for them, but he'll take them if you put them in front of him. You'll know if he needs them – he'll get quiet. Nick's never quiet, and he gets this look on his face."

"Jo?" She turned. "Have a good day," he said. He smiled a little, and she thought he looked a little sad, but hey, what did she know?

Zane pulled out his laptop, intending to do some work while he waited for Nick to surface. Two minutes of staring at his desktop later, he realized that wasn't going to happen. Jo's question had thrown him – he'd spent so long racing to catch up in this … whatever the hell this was, that he hadn't expected to have to spin his wheels and wait for her.

Of course he was here. Where else would he be?

They were connected, he knew that. He'd known that since he'd kissed her – more specifically since she'd kissed him back. The Jo Lupo he'd thought he'd known for 2 years would've knocked him on his ass. Instead she'd kissed him back like it came naturally. She'd stroked his face, and pulled away, and looked at him like he'd punched her in the gut.

He'd been pissed, impatient, and frustrated – a night and a day in a jail cell would do that, but he winced at the memory of the tone he'd used.

"Then why didn't that feel like a first kiss?"

Because it wasn't.

Her face would have told him that, even if every cell in his body hadn't already been screaming it.

It made no sense, of course, but at the same time it was the only thing that did make sense. Then Zoe came in, Jo ran out, and he hadn't seen her again for six weeks. Six long weeks of wondering if Jo was ever going to come back, trying to keep out of Ericson's way, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

He liked puzzles, always had, and this was like a jigsaw. When he'd kissed her, he'd gotten a glimpse of the picture, but then Jo had run away and taken half the pieces with her. And there were few things more frustrating than a jigsaw with no picture and pieces missing. He'd filled in a lot of the spaces while she'd been gone, but he'd been ready to ask, plead, cajole, demand, or threaten to get answers from Jo, and then Nick had answered the door, and the jigsaw, this all-consuming puzzle, suddenly didn't seem that important any more. Jo had had other things to think about, and when she saw him she had that look again. That look like he'd punched her in the gut, and like she was scared – scared of him and scared of what he was going to say. In that moment, he'd realized that whatever else he did, he wanted to keep that look off her face.

He wasn't sure when that had happened – when he'd gone from wanting to understand their past, to wanting to have a present. It had happened though, but it looked like Jo was going to take some convincing.

Jo sat at her desk, trying to remember what it was she was supposed to be doing. Intellectually, she knew that always happened when you came back from leave – there was a period of re-adjustment as your brain settled back into its old routines. Yeah, who was she kidding? Her brain wasn't settling into anything. It was back at her house with Nick. With Zane.

Maybe it would help. Maybe Zane would help. She'd been worried about leaving Nick alone, now he wasn't. She'd always been sure they'd get along, there'd just never been a chance to introduce them before. By the time she and Zane had been serious enough to think about meeting each other's families, Nick and the rest of hers had been stationed overseas, and the one time since then that Nick had been Stateside on leave, Zane had been in the Arctic.

Except this Zane hadn't been in the Arctic. She hadn't been serious with this Zane. She'd never talked to her brothers about this Zane. And yet, there he'd been on her doorstep this morning, leap-frogging over all the getting-to-know-you crap and jumping straight into her life like he thought she wouldn't notice. Like he thought the whole town wouldn't notice. She couldn't afford for the town to notice, none of them could – any behavior too out of the ordinary would draw attention, and attention could only increase the chances of letting something slip.

Zane must have figured out the whole story by now. He was a smart guy, and he'd had six weeks, but he hadn't said anything. She wanted to trust him, God, how she wanted to trust him, but it wasn't just her life on the line. She had to think about the others, and she had to think about Nick. However welcome the sight of Zane had been this morning, however reassuring it was to have someone with Nick today, letting him in had been a risk, and one she knew she hadn't calculated.

Realizing she'd read the same sentence in Ericson's report at least five times, and still didn't know what it said, Jo gave up. She'd do the rounds of the labs, checking in with people, checking out their experiments, kick-starting her brain. If there were anything vital in the report, Ericson would have told her. It could wait.

Author's Note

Firstly, because I forgot to say it last time. I don't own Eureka, but you all know that.

Secondly, thank you, thank you, thank you to all the people who've posted to say they like the story so far. You're all lovely.

Thirdly, I'm so sorry this update's taken so long. I had a horrible attack of real life that included (but wasn't limited to) being laid up for a couple of weeks with a slipped disc. Then Zane wouldn't shut up, Jo wouldn't say anything, and the weeks I had before season 4.5 vanished into the ether. Seriously though, Zane is mad at me because he thinks it's time I got to the fun bit of the story – he keeps calling me the exposition fairy – but after I re-read the first chapter, I realized that although Zane and I knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it, Jo didn't have a clue.

Next update: guaranteed to arrive sooner than this one did, and to have some actual, y'know, plot and stuff.