Title: Alas, I Cannot Swim

Genre: Television

Series: Zoo

Characters: Jamie Campbell, Dr. Mitch Morgan

Spoilers: S1

Rating: Mature

Disclosure: Not mine.

Summary: It'd taken too long to get back to her, but he never wanted to let her go again.

He didn't know how to speak to women, it was a wonder he ever got married, though no wonder that he got divorced. Looking at Jamie standing there, small smile and red hair and big eyes only for him, he could probably find more than a few words to tell her. Words about how he'd missed her with an ache in his bones that had made him feel his age, old and alone with a new gray hair everyday. He wanted to tell her that he'd googled her name and saved her picture to his phone because after just a few weeks he'd felt like he was forgetting the way her cheek curved and the exact way the small lines bracketed her mouth when she smiled.

"Hello, totally awesome scientist."

"Hello, plucky journalist," Mitch sassed back, the words barely out of his mouth before his arms were full of her. She was squeezing just a bit too tight, he couldn't quite catch his breath, but he didn't ask her to let go. "You've lost weight."

She nodded, leaning back so she could look him in the face. "I was in and out for a few months, I had an infection from the shrapnel in my leg. I'm still kinda limping, but the guy who rescued me, he did the best he could. I'm okay," she reassured him, "though, I won't be dancing anytime soon."

"I'll make note, first date, no dancing."

"If you two could stop flirting, we need to grab the leopard and get out of here," Jackson interrupted, pointing to the growing number of wild homicidal animals on the other side of the chain link fence. "I think our arrival has agitated the natives."

"No! Not yet!" Jamie announced, "I have to show you something."

She leads them around the cabin, to a small patch of bare earth with a small wooden cross to note it's significance. "I'm not one hundred percent sure of exactly what happened, the guy who rescued me doesn't speak English so we mainly just pantomimed or drew pictures, but...sometime in the past few months, his sister was bitten by an infected animal. At first I thought he was trying to say she died from an infection like I had, but that wasn't it. He drew a picture of her walking among the mutated animals. They didn't attack her. She's the one who put the fence up, because they didn't attack her."

"If they didn't attack, what happened to her?" Abe asked, glancing back to where her unnamed savior stood in the doorway of the cabin.

"I don't think he knows. He woke up one day and she was...gone," she explained.

"What are you trying to say, Jamie?" Chloe asked, crossing her arms and sharing a concerned look with Jackson as the implications sunk in.

"We thought Hartley was a fluke, but what if he was just the first? What if the mutation can affect humans? Aren't we just bigger animals? Mitch?"

"Of course it's possible, viruses cross the species barrier all the time, but it's never good when it happens. This...even worse."

"We need to go," Chloe decided. "Let's retrieve the leopard and return to the boat. I need to call Amelia and start researching whether it's happened again. This could be..." She didn't need to say it, they all already knew what it would mean if the mutation spread to humans.

Less than an hour later they were back in the water and Jamie was waving goodbye to her rescuer, who despite Chloe's best attempts, they could not convince to leave. "Are we safe in the water?" Jamie asked Abe, who kept her company on the deck while the others went below to plan.

"As safe as we are anywhere," he replied, though it was no consolation. "Most creatures here that will do harm to us we can see coming, so that is to our advantage."

"How bad is it? What did I miss while I was...here?"

"We live in cages of our making now."

She nodded and knew that she really didn't want to know what was happening, not yet. There was an edge of hopelessness to her friends that she'd never seen before and she didn't like.

After the sun sank and there was only unending darkness to surround the boat as it glided through open ocean, when she'd talked herself into a wall with Jackson and Chloe, laughed with Abe, and sat just an inch too close to Mitch during dinner, when everyone returned to their cabins and she was left alone, fighting her own tiredness because she'd spent so many weeks in a bed not even aware of what was going on, only then did she give in to the one thing that'd been on her mind all day.

She knocked softly, if he was asleep she didn't want to wake him, but he opened the door within a few seconds. "You said we were going to have a first date."

"I...uh...yeah, I did," Mitch admitted, scratching just behind his ear as she continued to stare at him with a coy smile.

"Let's skip it," Jamie decided, cupping his face in her hands and pulling him down to her level, waiting until his breath hitched before brushing his lips with hers. It was just like that moment on the airplane, before everything went crazy, but this time when her feet left the ground it was because Mitch had lifted her, his arms thin but wiry with strength moving her easily.

He pressed her to the door, slamming it behind them as the heat between them grew. She whimpered quietly, arching her neck as kissed his way to her ear. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't," she assured, clenching his shirt between shaking fingers. "I don't want to wait. There's no.."

"No time," he finished, nodding his agreement. "I-" It was too early for those three words, but that didn't stop them from being on the tip of his tongue. He'd grieved for her like they'd shared more than just a hasty kiss in an airplane galley, drowned his sorrows in liquor, and dreamt of what their future could've been if she'd lived. He'd put himself on a path of self destruction for a woman who'd confounded him, antagonized him, inspired him to try and save the world, only to have to watch as she'd slammed into the roof of the plane with a sickening crunch before sliding helplessly out the torn fuselage and into the water. He never wanted to have to watch her slip out of his fingers again.

"I missed you," he settled for, brushing his nose against hers in a slow stroke of affection, laughing when she stretched up and nipped at his bottom lip. They kissed again, slow and deep, their clothes suddenly confining and removed under hasty fingers. "Bed?"

"Later," she answered, her hand slipping into his boxers and wrapping around him before stroking back and forth, grinning when he swore under his breath. Together they strip off their undergarments, until they're both bare. Mitch ran his fingers along the scar on her thigh, his finger trembling for a few seconds as he imagined the agony she must've went through. She kissed the skin just under his ear, sighing softly into his ear, and pulled him closer.

He wrapped his hands around her thighs, lifting her until he could feel her open and slick just above him, waiting until her eyes met his before joining their bodies, groaning at the feel of her around him, wincing as her nails dug into his shoulders. "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah," she moaned, before undulating her hips in a way that made him almost black out from pleasure.

"Jesus, do that again." So she did...again...and then once more...and then they were moving back and forth in a rhythm that mirrored their hearts, thundering and racing and speeding up until he had no idea whether he was going to cum or have a heart attack. He was breathing hard enough that he was seeing spots and light headed, but he could feel how she clenched around him, her moans echoing in the small cabin and knew that she was close.

His hand slipped between them, sliding down her sweat slick stomach until he could feel the soft auburn curls that covered the small button he stimulated with every rough grind of his hips. He slid those fingers further, captured her clitoris between two fingers and squeezed, letting out a grunt of satisfaction when she froze in his arms before keening so softly he could barely hear it even as closely entangled as they were. She shook in his arms for a few seconds, her muscles as tight as steel around him, before melting back into the soft warm woman he was more than a little in love with.

He could feel her as she came, so deep inside of her that he could feel her pulse through her skin and it drew him to his own end, a loud groan escaping until he had no breath left and all he could do was sink to his knees and try to find it again.

She laughed at she came down, running her fingers through his hair before sliding down next to him, her head resting on his shoulder.

"I'm too old for wild sex against a wall. I think I pulled something," he confessed, finally getting enough strength to stand up again, pulling her up with him.

"You're only as old as you feel," she quoted, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "Can I stay tonight?"

"You can stay as long as you want. I'm even thinking of never letting you leave my sight. You have a penchant for trouble." They curled up on the bunk, her leg thrown over his, both of them too hot yet for the coverlet.

"I think I'll take you up on that," she agreed, lacing their fingers together where their hands rested on his chest. "I missed you, too."