Title: Blink
Author: Roguie/ SunSpecOps/ Danae Bowen
Fandom: Eureka
Pairing: Jo/Zane
Rating: G
Spoilers: Just Another Day
Summary: An hour with your hands on a hot woman can feel like a minute. A minute with your hands on a hot stove can feel like an hour. So much can happen in three seconds when all you can do is wait.
Disclaimer: Eureka obviously doesn't belong to me, I just like to borrow the characters and mutate their inner voices. Please don't sue, my house is small, my car is useless and my dogs are pains in the arse, but they're all I have.
A/N: I said no. I told my muse, this was it, finish your J/Z dungeon fic, finish Catching the Wave, and be done with Eureka; wallowing will just continue to cause pain, but would she listen? No. Of course not. Looks like Jo and Zane are going to stick around much like Connor and Abby have, no matter how much I keep telling them that they're dead, go away. Bloody muse. Hope y'all are happy at least. :)
~~~E~~~
The passing of time was one of those things that Jo Lupo wondered if even the biggest of brains at Global Dynamics could explain. The two years she'd spent in the arms of Zane Donovan before her world had shifted had gone by so quickly that even still she could feel the memory of those precious minutes slipping through her fingers like tiny grains of sand, fading away into the cosmos. The two years she'd spent since then, with him, without him, somewhere in between, had passed so slowly that she could imagine swimming through cold pea soup, waiting for the day she could look at him again and her universe would reset to where it was meant to be.
They'd both travelled time in a way, her through the past, him through a future that although didn't exist, was enough to open his eyes to what they'd been missing. They'd changed, grown, deconstructed themselves piece by piece until all that was left standing were their hearts, always beating in time with the other, even when their brains managed to get in the way.
Now, after knowing what it was like for two years to feel like a day or a decade, she rested on her knees, caramel eyes filled with terror as she waited, heart on the table, for him to react. The ball was in his court, this wasn't her way, she was open and vulnerable and every passing second as he gazed at that ring and slowly closed the box felt a year to itself. Slowly her heart began to lose time.
He'd never told her he loved her, not this Zane, not this time.
They'd never found a way to communicate, not with words, not with actions.
They danced their dance, long, slow and painful, and now, when the music ended, they waited in silence.
She questioned herself, questioned her choices, questioned him. Her heart beat frantically, her breath caught in her chest, she swallowed thickly and prayed silently that she could handle one final rejection with one last display of strength and grace.
Three seconds.
Such a little time to pass, such an eternity to wait.
~/~
His heart beat calmly. His choice was with pride and determination. Two years he'd lived in confusion, his world twisting and changing around him, his only constant a pair of caramel eyes that once glared at him in hatred only to plead with him now for mercy. Two years he'd struggled to find balance between the Jo he'd known and the Jo that writhed in his arms, craving his touch, his love. Two years he'd spent falling without landing, only now able to see the safety of solid ground just within reach.
She was his guiding star as he was her grounding beacon.
For him, she'd break the rules, for her, he'd toe the line.
Hurt, broken, in pieces on the floor, she understood exactly how he felt two years ago when words failed her and she let him walk out of her life.
Calm, certain, knowing that from the moment she'd pinned him with that Lupo gaze, full of trust and expectation, there would have been no ending other than this, and he began to rebuild the heart he held most dear.
"In any timeline."
Because for Zane, yes wouldn't have been enough. It couldn't have conveyed the hell that he would willingly live through if at the end of the day the lines would blend between their lives and they would be one. In this moment, this fleeting second that tore through the universe announcing the last wrong that was at last made right, he would eviscerate his own soul to hold her in his arms and never let her go.
"I love you, Jo."
~/~
She curled into his body, breathed in his scent, fingers tightly cutting into muscle as she held him to her desperately. When his confidence bled through to her, his calm a cool shower of water over her burning soul, she found her heart beat slowing, her overactive mind relaxing, she found that under it all, she'd always known exactly what she wanted.
With his arms around her, in that one fleeting second, she'd gone from terrified to absolute and time began rushing forward at an impossible speed.
"I love you."
No mistakes this time.
They only had seventy or so years to get it right.
Don't blink.
~~~Fin
***the a minute can feel like an hour quote was shamelessly stolen from LL Cool J's movie, Deep Blue Sea – the look on Jo's face nearly broke my heart last night, and this was the first thing to come to mind as I held my breath and counted the seconds between question and answer right along with her. Okay, and perhaps repeated that action about 50 times today as I set this scene on replay and drove my husband into the basement without mercy. :D