Disclaimer: I don't own CBS's "Zoo". Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: I was watching 1x11 "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" and noticed that before the leopards killed Ray, Mitch and Jamie were actually sharing the tent. So, obviously, here we are. This is my first "Zoo" fic.

Warnings: pre-established relationship, adult language, missing scene fic, spoilers up to 1x11, a fic where Jamie can't sleep and watches Mitch sleep in a slightly creepy way – and with a whole lot of envy - because her life is currently a giant pile of suck and he is kind of the only real good thing in it right now.

Hibernation

"Would you want to be stuck in a tent with moody teenage Mitch?"

While the idea getting stuck in a tent with a moody teenage Mitch was not her idea of a good time, as it turned out, sharing a tent with moody, acerbic adult Mitch in the literal ass crack of the world was surprisingly okay.

There was less than four inches of space between her bed roll and his and she was for some reason very aware of that. But so far, things were...fine.

She didn't want to say good.

Just in case she jinxed it and Mitch started snoring or someone else ended up dead.

But yeah- in spite of everything, things were almost there.

If she could fucking sleep, that is.

They were keeping watch in shifts. So of course, all she was doing was mentally counting all the minutes of sleep she could be having if she could magically fall asleep in the next ten seconds. Contemplating the current disaster that was her life and vainly trying to ignore the continuous buzz of sound coming from the disgruntled jungle around them.

She frowned at the ceiling. Hating her life, leopards and the animal kingdom in general as Abraham's solid weight scritch-scratched across the vinyl every time he breathed. Shape still looming, even when lying down, at the mouth of the tent. Becoming a fugitive from the law hadn't exactly been in her life plan. If it had she would have probably had an emergency fund or better clothes. You know- 007 perks or something. Not sweating through her last - and only - change of clothes and trying to figure out imaginative ways to make her dirty underwear last until they got back to civilization.

It was Mitch's soft, steady breathing that made her still though.

It pressed pause on the frantic animal that was her brain and leeched comfort into places that hadn't seen much of it lately. In all fairness, probably long before she'd gotten fired and Reiden Global became more than just her personal obsession but a legitimate platform for them to tank one of most evil corporations in the world today.

Anyway, the point was, she might be having trouble with the whole sleeping thing, but Mitch sure wasn't.

He'd set his glasses off to the side after she'd crawled into the roll opposite. Letting go of a sigh that traveled the entire length of his body as he stretched himself out. She'd caught it out of the corner of her eye as she'd fussed with her sleeping bag. Watching in awe as a dozen different muscles slackened, then relaxed. Eyes fluttering closed - once, twice. Then, just like that, he was gone. He was asleep in less than two minutes and she was torn between watching his chest rise and fall and flicking something at him. Just because she could.

She was still trying to convince herself she wasn't that petty when her brain hazed back through her memories of the last few months. Settling on the observation that Mitch had the uncanny ability to sleep almost anywhere. Practically on cue. It was like he would give everything one hundred and ten percent until his batteries were empty and then bam- you'd find him passed out somewhere, dead to the world. He slept right through most of their plane rides and their longer stretches stuck in the car. She'd even caught him half-asleep, pressed up against a microscope looking at samples more than once. And she was absolutely certain he'd been walk-napping that time in Paris when Jackson and Abraham were trying to decide where to go for lunch.

She resisted the urge to wake him up and ask him to spill all his sleep-related secrets. Knowing full well he'd be grouchy for hours and she'd hate the answer considering it'd probably be something along the lines of: "I got all three of my degrees in less time than it takes most people to complete one. Sleep is precious. You learn to horde it while you can. Sleep is good. You don't have to talk to people when you sleep. Wait- didn't you go to college?!"'

Ugh.

It wasn't fair.

There was a part of her that never wanted to stop poking at him though. A very real and growingly loud part that honestly wanted nothing more than to dig deep. Maybe even settle in to stay for a while. A part that liked that sardonic edge to his voice just as much as the soft one he was starting to use every so often. Just for her. Or, at least she liked to think so.

Anyway-

She managed not to look at him for about twelve seconds before she gave it up as a lost cause and let her eyes roam. Sleep did something to his face, she decided. It smoothed him out somehow. Turned him not vulnerable- but...normal. Like there was more rattling around in there than just formulas, science and snark. All things she knew, obviously, but knowing and seeing were two very different things and this was like having a front row seat to the most private – and maybe even priceless – show on earth.

Or maybe she was just overtired.

Maybe she was imagining it.

Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

An overactive imagination.

Maybe it was-

She hadn't decided yet. Everything was happening so fast and so much it was hard to keep her feet on solid ground. Literally actually, she hadn't flown so much in her entire life than she had over the past few months. The world right now was confusing and hard and honestly- it made her head hurt. But that was basically the snippet definition of their new normal these days. She just felt like she was the only one still clinging to the coat-tails of her old life. Apparently change didn't happen in half measures. It had to be full throttle.

Go figure.

So, to sum things up, her life was a mess and all she really felt like doing was mouthing at the ceases of her pillow as Mitch shifted beside her. The same hand that had flopped out somewhere between her Mitch-watching and wallowing in self-pity. Reaching out, open palmed and lightly calloused, across the scritchy, dirt-flecked floor like he was about to-

"Hey...wake up," Jackson rasped suddenly, close and tapping on the flaps as she jumped, hard racing. Shadow warped across the front of the tent as the small fire popped and shifted into the feathers of its own ash.

"What is it?" Abraham murmured as she peered out of the tent. Brushing shoulders with Mitch as he levered himself up with a soft sound. The arms of his glasses making an angry, strained plastic sound as he fumbled in the dark. Only just catching sight of Ray, sunk down on his haunches, and peering into the treeline with the tranquilizer gun.

"Something's out there."

She gripped the edges of her bedroll with bloodless knuckles.

This day just kept getting better and better.

A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.