Inspiration struck, and I had to get this plot bunny out of my head.
Disclaimer: If I owned Sue Thomas, then the show wouldn't be over, and Sue and Jack would have been together a LONG time ago.
"Wait, hold the elevator!" Jack heard a very familiar voice calling from down the hall. The blond co-worker was practically running, her golden retriever matching her stride for stride.
"Thank you," Sue said and signed as she stepped into the elevator.
"You're welcome. Rough morning?" Jack asked, seeing her windblown hair and the cup of coffee she clutched desperately.
"You could say that. Lucy took forever in the shower, we were out of milk, and then my car wouldn't start," Sue explained, sipping her quickly cooling coffee.
Jack gave her a sympathetic smile. "It's just one of those days."
Sue nodded, and Levi gave a bark of agreement. Suddenly, the steadily climbing elevator gave a mighty lurch and stopped.
"What's going on?" Sue asked. Jack shook his head. The lights flickered for a second, then the elevator went black.
"Jack? What happened? What…" Sue became very scared. With the lights out, she couldn't see a thing. She felt something brush across her hand, and then grab it.
"Jack?" she asked, though she knew he was the only one in the elevator besides her. He squeezed her hand in reassurance, and she began to calm down.
After a moment standing in the dark, Jack's hand clutched tightly in her own, the lights came back on.
"Thank goodness that's over. Hopefully the elevator will start up soon as well," Jack voiced his thoughts. He moved to the emergency phone in the panel of the wall, but didn't find anything inside.
"Great, just when you need it, they decide to take the phone out," Jack laughed at the irony.
"How long to you think it will take for them to fix it?"
"Anywhere from fifteen minutes to a couple of hours, I would guess," Jack explained, drawing on his only knowledge of being stuck in an elevator, movies.
"Well, we might be here for a while," Sue said, sinking to the floor and giving Levi a good rub.
"Yeah, we could," Jack agreed.
At the Bullpen
"Has anyone seen Jack or Sue this morning? Or Tara? It's not like them to come late," D asked the team, noticing the empty desks.
"Sue said that she was leaving right after me. Unless she got caught in traffic, she should definitely be here by now," Lucy explained.
Bobby piqued in. "Jack called me just after he entered the building and said he was on his way up, but that was at least fifteen minutes ago. I don't know what could have happened."
Tara ran in just at that moment. "Sorry I'm late," she exhaled. "The elevator is stuck, and I had to take the stairs. There are a lot more stairs than you think there would be."
The team took in this new information. "If Sue and Jack don't show up soon, we can assume they're in the stuck elevator. And if they're alone…" D didn't need to finish his sentence, everyone knew what was on his mind.
"This may just be the thing to bring them together," Lucy said, with her wide matchmaking grin.
In the elevator
Sue looked at her watch once again. It had now been 30 minutes since the elevator had originally broken down. Jack had not said anything about hearing workers, so she assumed that it would still be a while. She and Jack had sat in silence for a good portion of the time, not knowing what kind of conversation to have when you're stuck in an elevator, especially if you happen to like the other person.
No, that's not why he's not talking, Sue thought. As much as she wanted it to be true, there was little evidence in her mind that Jack reciprocated her feelings for him.
Levi broke the silence with a whine. He did not like being stuck any more than Sue or Jack.
"I know buddy, this sucks." Jack replied to the dog. Sue smiled at him, then racked her brain for some topic to discuss, to get their minds off of their predicament. They had run out of small talk a long time ago, so she couldn't even try to strike up a conversation by talking about the weather, or what he had done that weekend.
"I hope they fix this elevator soon," Sue commented.
"Yeah," Jack agreed lamely, not knowing what else to say. He was also shuffling through his mind to think of a conversation to have with Sue.
"Do you remember anything before you lost your hearing?" Jack asked, not knowing why that question came to his mind. He couldn't help but ask it. He knew that Sue was not offended by it, because they had been able to talk about her deafness openly and honestly before, and because she looked lost in thought about the question rather than angry or nervous.
"I really don't. Sometimes, I think that I do, that something within me still hears the sound of my mother's voice, or my brothers, but I just think I'm trying to hear those things," Sue explained quietly. Jack nodded, understanding that this subject was still hard for her.
"Do you regret not being able to hear?" Jack asked.
Sue pondered the question for a while. "Sometimes I do. Every time Bobby says something Australian, I wish I could hear exactly how he says it. But I don't think that I can't do anything, just because I'm deaf."
Jack smiled at the last part. He remembered how upset Sue had been when he had first met her, and how angry she was that she was being pushed to the side because of her deafness.
"What's that smile for?" Sue had to know why Jack was grinning so big.
"I was just remembering the day we first met," Jack replied. Sue smiled at the explanation, and blushed slightly.
"I wasn't very nice, was I?"
Jack couldn't really give her a good answer. He understood how angry she had been with the FBI that day, and just shrugged off the experience.
"I forgive you," he replied with a big smile.
"Thank you," Sue answered with some sarcasm.
Again, the two fell into silence. The lapses that kept occurring only made it harder to strike up a new topic of conversation. Both were attempting to find something to talk about.
Finally, not able to think of anything, Jack let the first thing that came to his mind out of his mouth. "Sue, would you like to have dinner with me this Friday?" The minute the words left his mouth, Jack questioned his sanity, and silently begged that Sue would not reject his offer.
Sue was equally shocked and surprised by Jack's offer. It was so sudden, so out of the blue, that she didn't know how to reply to him.
"I, I'd love to," Sue finally answered. Jack turned to her with a look of surprise on his face, only masked by the happiness apparent because of Sue's answer.
Before Jack could say anything, he heard voices and banging on the walls of the elevator.
"Is anyone in there?" The voice of a maintenance worker could be heard.
"Yes, there are two people in here," Jack replied. Sue gave him a strange look.
"What are you talking about Jack?"
"There are some maintenance workers just outside. They asked if anyone was in here."
"Oh," Sue replied, understanding. Within the next few moments, the banging on the elevator walls increased. Finally, the doors opened, and an opening about three feet tall was created between the top of the elevator doors and the bottom of the doors to the hallway. Two men in grey jumpsuits were kneeling at the opening, and called for Jack and Sue to put their arms up to be lifted out of the elevator.
"Let's give them Levi first," Sue suggested, and she and Jack carefully lifted the Golden Retriever up to the maintenance workers. They exchanged an odd look, then shrugged and pulled the dog up.
After some pulling and tugging, Jack and Sue were finally out of the elevator, and standing in the hallway.
"I think we should probably take the stairs the rest of the way up, don't you?" Jack asked his coworker.
"I agree," Sue replied with a smile.
As they walked up the remaining three floors to the bullpen, Jack and Sue were silent, not talking about the recent development in their relationship. Just before they went into the offices, Jack pulled Sue to the side.
"Sue, I really would like to go to dinner with you. Will you still go?"
Sue again paused for a moment before she replied. "Jack, I would like nothing better than to spend an evening with you," she said with a smile.
"I'm glad." Jack returned the smile, and before he lost his nerve, he softly cupped Sue's cheek and brushed his lips against her own.
"Whoa, lover boy, do you want to find a room some where?" Bobby's distinct accent caused Jack and Sue to pull apart, a deep red staining their cheeks. Bobby's comment had brought the entire bullpen's attention on Sue and Jack as they entered the offices, the blush still very apparent on their faces.
Jack and Sue tried to play off what had just happened, but everyone knew that something had happened between their favorite couple during their time stuck in the elevator.
Benjamin Thomas Hudson smiled at the story as his mother finished. "And they lived happily ever after," he finished it for himself.
"Yes, they lived happily ever after," Sue agreed. She gave her son a kiss on the forehead, then tucked him into his covers.
"He really does love that story," Jack said as his wife returned to their room.
"It really is a great story, don't you think?"
"The perfect love story," Jack agreed and pulled Sue close to him.