Jo walked, she didn't run. She walked from the Sheriff's office. Okay, she walked fast, but that was still walking. She was in control, and everything was fine. So what if she could still smell Zane, still taste Zane, still feel Zane's tongue... Oh, God. She slid into the driver's seat of her car and rested her head on the wheel, momentarily wishing she could give in to the desire to curl into a ball a sob. Then her phone rang and she jumped, hitting her knee off the console and cursing herself for the lapse into weakness and self-pity. She reached for the phone while taking a quick look to check no one had seen it. The slumping or the jumping. It looked as though she'd gotten away with it, so she turned her attention to the phone, and a smile instantly spread across her face.

"Dad! You have no idea how happy I am you called. How are you?"

"I'm fine, honey. It's good to hear your voice too, but I have some bad news. It's about Nick."

Zane knocked on the office door. This wasn't something he'd usually do, but given how well ambushing her hadn't gone lately, he thought maybe a new tactic was called for.

He wasn't expecting the distinctly masculine "Enter," that answered his knock.

Opening the door, he saw Ericson, Jo's second-in-command, at the desk, which answered the who, but not the why.

"Oh, um, hi. I was looking for Lupo."

"Ms. Lupo isn't here today. Is there something I can help you with, Dr. Donovan?" asked Ericson, somehow managing to imply that helping Zane was around the level of root-canal surgery on the list of things he'd like to experience.

"No, that's okay. I'll come back later."

"Much later," replied Ericson, with what looked like a smirk.

"Excuse me?" asked Zane, not bothering to hide his growing annoyance. Then he thought better of it, remembering that Ericson was even fonder of tasing him than Jo was, and that pissing him off on a day when he was in charge was probably not the smartest move. "I'm sorry, what did you mean?" he asked, in a more reasonable tone.

"Ms. Lupo will be away for some time. I will be in charge of security in the meantime. I prefer not to receive non-work-related visits from scientists, so I'm sure I won't be seeing much of you, will I, Dr. Donovan?"

"Hey there, sleepyhead," Jo smiled. "How are you feeling?"

"Groggy," Nick replied, croakily. "What are you doing here, sis? And where is here, anyway?"

"Here is an Army medical facility in Germany. And I'm here because my littlest brother got himself blown up." She stood up and started plumping his pillows, tucking his blankets in, pouring him some ice chips. Anything to keep her hands busy and stop her bursting into tears with relief.

"Jose, sit still a minute," Nick tried to grab for her hands to still them, and winced.

"Yeah, you're going to want to lay off the sudden movements for a while. The Doctors'll be in soon to tell you all about it, but I need to ask you something first."

"Of course. Anything."

"How high is your security clearance?"

Another day, another door. Zane braced himself before knocking. He'd planned this out meticulously; he knew exactly what he was going to say. He didn't know what would come next, of course, not exactly - but he'd narrowed Jo's likely response down to five possibilities and planned a different strategy for each. He'd started out with sixteen, but in the six weeks he'd waited for her to show up again, he'd managed to rule out eleven of them as being too unlikely to be worth planning for. It was a shame; one of them involved her throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. He'd been sorry to let that one go. He felt himself smiling at the thought as he knocked on the door.

When the door eventually opened, he felt the smile slide off his face as he realised he'd never planned for anyone but Jo to answer her door. Even if he had, he would never have pictured the man he saw in front of him – a full-leg cast on his right leg, a walking cast on his left, strapping visible at the neckline of his t-shirt, no hair on the right side of his head, two faded black eyes, and what looked like a slightly melted ear.

His mind went blank. All those carefully rehearsed words disappeared, and nothing else was taking their place. Zane stared at the man in front of him for far longer than could ever be considered polite and tried to think of something to say.

The man chuckled. "Yeah, I knew I shouldn't have answered the door. She warned me not to scare the locals."

"I … sorry, I didn't mean to stare. I just … you're not who I expected to see. I was looking for Jo Lupo."

"Well, yeah. I guessed that much. She went to her office a couple of hours ago, you could catch her there."

"Uh, no. That's ok. It's not a work..." Zane scrambled for some explicable (to anyone but him and Jo) reason why he would be visiting her house. "I just wanted to welcome her home."

"Oh, you're a friend of hers? Well, she should be back soon, just come in and wait." He hopped back from the door and waved Zane inside.

Zane's mind was whirling. He was pretty sure Jo wouldn't like him waiting for her in her house. He was pretty sure she'd take this as another attempt to ambush her. He'd already opened his mouth to refuse when he was cut off.

"Seriously man, I can't stand up for much longer. I need to sit down now, and I'm bored out of my mind here by myself. Come in and we can trade Jose stories."

"Jose?" Zane asked as he followed the man into the living room.

"Aw crap," he chuckled again. "She's going to get me for that. It's a family nickname – when she was really little we all called her Josie, but when she got bigger she decided it was too much of a girl's name. She wanted us to call her Jo, but we never got the hang of it, so she got stuck with Jose."

Finally Zane felt like his brain was working again. "So you're her brother," he said, more a statement than a question.

"One of them. I'm Nick. I'd shake hands, but I'd fall over. And you are?"

"Zane." He watched as Nick carefully lowered himself from his crutches onto the couch, "do you need a hand?" he asked.

"No. Thank you. I found out pretty quickly that that only makes it hurt more. Like that thing over there," he gestured with his chin at a stressless recliner across to roon. "Jose thought it would be perfect for me, but it turns out that all those tiny movements you hardly know you're making, that are supposed to make those things so comfortable – they hurt like hell when half your body's in casts and the other half's bruised or burnt."

"What happened to you?" Zane blushed, appalled at himself. "I'm sorry, that's rude. It's none of my business."

"It's fine. Looking like this, I can't expect people not to wonder what happened. It was an I.E.D. I was in bad shape, but it could have been worse, and I'm getting better every day. Take a seat – you can have the torture chair."

"You were in bad shape?" Zane asked, sitting in the much-maligned chair. "No offence man, but you look like you're still in bad shape."

"Ha! You should have seen me six weeks ago. Actually," Nick looked thoughtful, "you probably shouldn't. I saw your face when I opened the door – you'd probably have hurled six weeks ago."

Zane grinned. He had a feeling he was going to like Nick.

"Nick! You awake?" Jo called, as she tossed her keys into the bowl by the door. "I thought, if you feel up to it, we could go out to eat tonight. There's a café in town where the chef makes the most amazing gnocchi..." her voice trailed off as she rounded the corner into her open-plan living room. "Zane, what are you doing here?"

"He's been keeping your sadly neglected brother company," Nick said. "What happened to 'I'll be gone half an hour, tops'? You've been gone for two hours."

"Sorry," she said, absently, "there was a minor problem while I was checking in with Ericson. He got called in to see the Director, and when Fargo found out I was back..."

"He wanted to see you. Understandable," Zane finished for her. They locked eyes.

Jo was glad that Nick was sitting with his back to her, so he couldn't see the look on her face. She was pretty sure it had been in the neighborhood of "stricken" since she'd seen Zane, and as the force of Zane's comment struck her, she could feel herself blushing.

She walked to the back of the couch, and dropped a quick kiss on Nick's left temple, one of the few unharmed and accessible parts of his body. "So, what do you think? Does gnocchi sound good?"

"Gnocchi does sound good, but honestly Jose, I think I'm too tired to go out. Do they deliver?"

"They don't," Zane replied as he pulled himself out of the chair. "But if Jo phones in the order, I can go pick it up and drop it off here on my way home."

"You could join us," Nick invited.

Zane shook his head, "Hey, if you're too tired to go out, you're too tired for company. I'll come by tomorrow, if you want. How are you at Yahtzee?"

"I guess you'll find out tomorrow. Thanks Zane, I'm glad you came by."

"Me too," smiled Zane, looking from brother to sister and walking to the door.

"Why did you come by?" Jo asked as she showed him out.

Zane shrugged. "I heard you were back, and I..."

"Wanted to see me. Understandable," she nodded, echoing his earlier words. It seemed important somehow, to do that – to let him know that she'd understood he wasn't just talking about Fargo. She stepped outside, and pulled the door to behind her. "Zane, I … can't do this right now. I know we need to talk, but I can't. Not right now."

He reached out, as if to touch her arm, and then seemed to think better of it. "I know. I understand. I didn't before. When I came here, I thought you'd taken off because of me, because of us, and I thought you'd come back because you'd thought about things and you were ready to talk to me. I didn't know about Nick. I can't imagine what the last six weeks have been like for you, but I can believe you haven't had time to think about me. So, I'm going to go get your food, bring it here, and then I'm going to go do some work so I can keep your brother company tomorrow while you're at GD."

"Thank you, Zane." she smiled as brightly as she could, but had a feeling she wasn't fooling him.

"You're welcome," he paused, "Jose." He grinned as he climbed onto his bike, and she knew he hadn't misinterpreted her expression this time – he knew exactly how much she hated that.

Author's Note

This story's a first for me in many ways. It's my first Eureka fic (or, at least, the first I've posted), it's the first thing I've ever posted without having it 100% finished, and it's the first multi-chapter fic I've written in … more years than I feel like admitting. It's also the first thing I've written in years that isn't a character study, and has an actual plot. Yes, that's right – it may not seem like it now, but this story is going somewhere. Or, I'm hoping it will now – I need the motivation of having part of it out there to make me finish writing it. Most of all, I need to get it out there now, because I cannot write AU, and I don't want to be stuck in the middle of this when the show comes back and proves me wrong.

Thank you for reading this far. Reviews make me happy, and they're good for your soul - I'm just sayin'.