Disclaimer: I do not own Stephanie Plum or any of the characters in Janet Evanovich's series. They are the sole property of her and are being used without permission, but also without any financial gain. Please do not sue—I'm a poor librarian still living at home with my parents.

Summary: In the weeks after being shot, Joe helps Stephanie recover emotionally, and she wonders if they should take it further. Takes place directly after "One For the Money", but may not be compatible with later books in the series. A mix of hurt/comfort and fluff. Steph/Joe. Rated a mild T for minor language/mature themes.

"Steph? Don't you have any more dishes?"

I rolled over on my bed, then immediately regretted it as shots of pain emitted from my butt. I'd just gotten the stitches removed two days ago, but it was still pretty sore whenever I made sudden movements or tried to sit down for too long without the rubber donut.

Glancing at the digital clock, I realized that it was only 6:30AM. Too early to get up. Yeah, I'd been up that early when I worked full time at the lingerie store, but one nice aspect of being a bounty hunter was being able to choose my own hours. My injury also gave me an excuse to take it easy. There were other cases I could look through, but I wanted to wait until I was a little steadier on my feet before starting any major ones.

A day after Joe brought me the pizza from Pinos and we'd agreed to become friends (whatever that meant—I think he had in mind something closer to friends with benefits), he'd pretty much moved into my apartment. He'd said it was because I was injured and needed protection until I was totally myself again.

Also, I think my night terrors kind of freaked him out.

We'd been sitting on my couch—one of the only pieces of furniture I'd manage to avoid selling—on the day he'd brought over the pizza. The game was on, but I was pretty tired from the food, the beer, and the emotions the past several days had caused. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remembered, I was running away from Ramirez who had apparently placed me in handcuffs and was shooting at me. Naturally, since this kind of thing tends to happen in dreams, Alpha was running towards me with a gun and shooting wildly. I guess the Alpha in my dream didn't have a great shot, but he'd managed to hit me a few times in the chest before I woke up, screaming like a maniac and throwing a few punches in Joe's general direction.

He must have been pretty absorbed in the game, because he jumped out of the seat and practically ran towards my locked front door. While it only took him a few seconds to realize I'd been having a nightmare and I hadn't gone all out crazy, it took me a little longer to stop yelling and thrashing around like I'd actually been shot. To his credit, once Joe realized I wasn't trying to kill him, he returned to the couch and started trying to calm me down by pulling me back on the couch with an arm on my shoulder and telling me, in a voice I'd later come to realize as his "Stephanie's lost it so I've got to calm her down" voice, that everything was okay and I was safe.

Frankly, the details are still kind of fuzzy because all I remember vividly is my arms wrapped around my knees, still trying to figure out where the dream ended and the reality began.

Breathe, Steph. It's okay, you're safe, I told myself, over and over.

The details became a little clearer then. I remember Joe keeping his arm around my back and my leaning against him.

"You okay?" he asked, now gentle, starting to rub my shoulders with the other hand.

I nodded, shutting my eyes as though that would block out the images from my dreams and from real life.

"Really?"

It was obvious that he wasn't convinced. Still, I nodded again, then shook my head as tears threatened to spill out. I began cursing myself mentally for letting Joe strip away my defenses, and even more for letting Ramirez get to me when he was locked up in jail.

He continued to rub my back for a few minutes. I could hear him taking breaths and then letting those out, like he wanted to say something but kept holding himself back at the last minute. Finally, Joe asked, "You get those a lot?"

"Define 'a lot'," was my bitter response.

I couldn't see him, but I would have sworn on Rex's life that Morelli was rolling his eyes.

His answer came pretty fast, as though he'd anticipated my response. Maybe he had. Joe'd been a cop—still was a cop. He'd seen victims before, interrogated criminals. I guessed. I didn't know a whole lot about his daily life in the police force. Perhaps he just knew what kind of responses I'd give to his questions.

"More than twice a week."

Twice a night was more like it. I wasn't sure if I'd had a solid, uninterrupted eight hours since before Alpha's attack. I was usually a pretty sound sleeper, but even with the door locked twice, I seemed to jump at any small movement.

My mom had been nagging at me to move back home, but I'd been resisting it. Healing would come, it just wouldn't come overnight.

I thought the conversation with Morelli was over, since he didn't say anything else but continued to massage my back. Which, I admit, was really relaxing and helped take my mind off of my continuing nightmares. But about ten minutes later, Joe announced, while still rubbing my back, that he was going to stay with me until I felt better.

His exact words were, "You need my protection. Luckily for you, I'm willing to give it since you're so sexy."

I'm not sure why that made me so angry, since I'd sort of been hoping that he'd make a similar offer. Not to move in with me, but maybe to call or stop by every so often to make sure I was okay. I mean, I was past 30—it's not like I needed my mom or someone to hold my hand every time things got tough at my job.

It wasn't just because it was Morelli making the offer. I'd probably have turned down the same help had it come from Ranger. I like to be independent.

Well, I yelled back something about not wanting or needing his protection, and added something about not wanting help from perverts who broke into my apartment and chained my naked to my own shower.

Not my best moment, but what can I say? I was angry. I did not need Joe's protection, and if he thought so little of me that he'd say it, I definitely didn't even want it.

I stood up and stalked off to my bedroom, ignoring the huge spasms of pain from my butt, and slammed the door. Locked it, for good measure. A few minutes later, I was feeling more embarrassed than angry, but still fairly ticked off. I was certain that Joe had left, because I unlocked my door but didn't bother to open it and then lay on my bed, sulking and butt throbbing.

In true Joe Morelli fashion, he opened the door (which I heard rather than saw, because of the aforesaid sulking) and sat down next to me on the edge of my bed. He didn't say anything for awhile, but finally one of us broke the silence and we had a genuine heart to heart conversation. Involving him explaining that he wanted to be there for me while I got better, and me insisting that I didn't need his help, but if he'd shut up about it, then fine, I'd take it.

Then we went back to my living room to finish off the remaining three slices of pizza and beer.

We needed to set up some ground rules. Like my condition that if Morelli wanted to move into my apartment, however temporarily, he'd be sleeping on the couch. As though to counter that, he insisted that I sleep with my door unlocked. If someone tried to break in through it, he wanted to be able to get there immediately. We argued about that, but in the end, I agreed, on the condition that I could sleep with the door shut and he wouldn't go in unless I seemed like I was having a nightmare or was in actual physical danger.

To his credit, he was always on the couch when I woke up. Or, more often, up and about, getting ready for his long day of work being a cop.

Another condition was that I shower with the door locked. Joe wasn't too happy about this, kept pointing out the possibility of my slipping on the floor or drowning in the bathtub. I retorted that I had lived on my own for several years without managing to injure myself while showering, brushing my teeth, or doing my hair/makeup. That he'd already proven himself untrustworthy when he'd broken into my apartment and, oh yeah, handcuffed me to the shower rod.

I practically yelled the last part. I have to say, it did shut him up.

There were other conditions too, like my giving him a spare key which I'd take back at the end of his stay. He swore he wouldn't have any other copies made of it, something I hadn't even considered until he brought it up, which was enough to make me say no to that altogether. But then Joe pointed out that it would look weird if he locked himself out, raise questions among the other tenants and the supervisor. That if I misplaced my keys, he'd be able to let me in. Stuff like that. So finally, more to shut him up than anything else, I agreed.

We ended up establishing a good system for "living together". I kept telling myself it wasn't really living together because 1) he was staying on the couch, 2) there were absolutely no romantic implications, and 3) we both understood that it would be temporary.

Two weeks later, even with my butt stitches out and my nightmares down to a few times a week, he was still there. If I had to be honest with myself, I'd say it was actually pretty nice having someone else around. I'd always considered myself as kind of a loner as far as not wanting to live with other people more than necessary. Part of the reason I hadn't moved back home after I'd been let go from my other job. But there were definite perks. My fridge always had food in it, and Joe always made us breakfast and dinner. Joe would wait until I ate before leaving for work, even if it meant hanging around my apartment for an extra hour before I was able to force myself awake long enough to feel hungry.

Recently, he'd been making me oatmeal with raisons. Before that, it had been scrambled eggs. Once or twice, Joe had made pancakes with the eggs. He was definitely talented as a cook, and I'd told him more than once that he should have been a chef instead of a cop.

"There are plenty of ways to get at the jerks through the restaurant business," I'd joked once. "Spit in the food, accidentally use too much hot sauce…the possibilities are endless. And you can't go to jail for injuring someone."

Joe had just laughed and said he'd stick with what he knew he was good at. So, as far as I knew, I was the only one benefiting from his culinary skills.

We had an unspoken agreement that since he was doing the cooking, I'd do the dishes. For the most part, I'd kept to my word. But I'd been feeling especially sore after the stitches came out, and had let them pile up over the last day or so.

Not the best thing when your supply of bowls, plates, and utensils was in the lower end of the single digits.

Either he hadn't noticed this, or I'd been keeping up enough that Joe hadn't felt like he had to say anything. Until now, when the dishes from the last few days were still in the sink and, apparently, we were out.

I grabbed hold of the bed with one hand as I managed to sit up. Grabbing the terrycloth bathrobe from the door on my closet, I made my way into the kitchen, pausing to throw it on over my PJs.

Joe was sitting at the table, coffee mug in hand, reading the paper. The bowl of oatmeal sat in the space across from him, waiting to be consumed by me. A glass of orange juice sat next to it, as well as a plate of sliced apples.

It looked great, and I sat down suddenly, not remembering in time that my butt would complain, and tried to hide a grimace as that, oh too familiar, wave of pain passed through my lower region.

Morelli looked up from his coffee and smiled. "Those were the last clean ones. I knew you were living kind of…"

"…on the edge of poverty?" I joked, taking a sip of the orange juice.

He chuckled. "I didn't realize that you'd started selling off your silverware."

I hid a snort. "Silverware? You make it sound like I have ten sets of silver set tea wear."

"Tea wear?"

I shrugged. "You know what I mean."

"I'll bring over some of mine after work, Steph. It's probably a crime against your sex to have less than eight matching glasses." He turned back to the paper, or looked like he was. Really, he was examining my face, looking for my reaction.

"We're not living together, Morelli," I sighed, taking a large bite of oatmeal. It was really good, probably due to the extra raisons he added. I'd have to remember that for when he left.

Left. I felt a slight pang thinking of that. I mentally shook my head, telling myself it was just hunger pangs. As though to prove it, I shoveled in another spoonful of oatmeal.

"I just thought it would be easier than making you spend money on more kitchenware."

I took a deep breath. Was he suggesting making this permanent? I knew we were becoming closer—after all, he didn't try to kill me in my sleep, and I hadn't tried to injure him while I was awake, and we'd been able to have a few sincere talks even when I wasn't having night terrors—but I figured it would be temporary. I'd initially planned on it only lasting a few weeks, a month or two tops, until my butt and mind healed.

It wasn't that I didn't like having him around. I did. More than I'd care to admit. But I wasn't ready for more than now. Actually, I'd probably only felt comfortable with the way things were now because I knew it would be temporary. We were friends, and he was helping me out. We hadn't even really kissed.

Well, no more than twice.

Okay, three times, if you counted the time after my nightmare from four nights ago. Which I didn't. That one had been especially bad, and I wasn't even sure I remembered when the cuddling imposed from him comforting me after my nightmares turned into kissing…

Focus, Steph.

If I made too much of a deal out of it, Joe might leave right away. Or, possibly worse, take things the wrong way and figure that I did want a relationship, but was pretending I didn't. In order to trap him, or something.

On the other hand, letting him bring over his stuff could be taken as another way of saying, "Sure, let's move in together! And while we're at it, which side of the bed do you want?"

Unless Joe was just being considerate and his offer to bring over dishes really was just that. Maybe he knew where we stood and it was me over thinking things.

It was too early in the morning to be doing this kind of analyzing. I took another spoonful of oatmeal.

A/N: Thanks for reading this far! I'm not sure how many chapters this will end up being, but I don't intend for it to get too long. If you'd take a moment to write a review, that would be awesome.