Title: "Ticks."

Fandom: Lake Placid

Pairing: Jack/Kelly

Genre: humor/romance

((A/N: takes place early morning during the second day of camping.))

"I'm here,
I'm staying…
......Unless there are ticks…!", she had said to him the previous night.

These words repeated a few times in his mind as he looked down at the box he held in his hands. He was low to the ground, far from the camp. Of course, he would not walk right near the lake alone. He knew that there was something in there. He was not sure if it was a crocodile, but whatever it was had tipped over a canoe yesterday, so it must have been dangerous.

"There's one...", he reached over and let a small wood tick crawl on his finger and then sighed as he flicked it into the metal box that contained about 14 other of the small insects. He had been up since five this morning, looking closely at the ground for these.

After crawling around and in a quick spark of luck, finding 2 more on his legs, he stood up and started walking quietly back towards camp. He glanced at his watch and read '6:10' on the front, and ran a hand through his dark brown hair. At least he knew he was close by.

As he heard a few voices, he realized that he was within sight of the camp and layed low, hidden behind a few large bushes, (the ones that Hector had been sneaking around in the night beforehand.) and looked from the ticks to the tents, and seen a few of the deputies wandering around the camp, awakening some of the others. 'It's now or never.', he thought and was about to inconspicuously throw the bucket of ticks free onto the campsite, when he heard a voice near him,"…What are you doing?..."

Jack widened his eyes and turned around to see Hector, who was oddly holding what had looked to be some kind of metal-detector, though knowing him, it was probably something to do with Crocodiles being on land...

"Uhm. Nothing…",he lied, still in front of the bucket of insects.

Hector looked from Jack to the bugs, and back again. He looked to the camp and then stifled a smile. He knew that those two had some kind of thing between them, but he chose not to say anything about that just yet. He pointed at the bucket, "Then what are those for? I doubt very much you'd want those for fishing, neh?",he asked.

The fish and game warden wiped his hands off on his pants, "No- I am not. I was just---"

"Kelly has a thing about ticks, huh?",he asked, grinning and glancing to her tent. Jack could have sworn that he felt himself slightly getting red. "w-Wha? I did not-"

Hector held a hand up, "Say no more, my friend! I know what you were trying to do, and you know…",he snickered,"..you know that you don't really want her to leave anyway…",he leaned against a tree, and raised an eyebrow suggestively. "I'm guessing even if I didn't show up here, you wouldn't have done it anyway. You know, you prolly' would've been like 'she doesn't belong here anyway.' Then you would have had second thoughts about the whole tick thing, and then you'd go into this whole argument in your mind about how she really bad wanted to help, but how she could get hurt, and then finally conclude that you didn't want to do it.." Hector took a big breathe after that long sentence, and smiled hopefully at the flabbergasted warden.

Then there was the awkward silence…

"Ok, uh, I'm gonna go back and get the things well need to go scuba diving…",he nodded at the camp and gave him a weird look before quickly getting out and (after skillfully evading one of the traps set up yesterday), quickly walking away, leaving the upright bucket in the bushes.

Hector snorted and having no fear for bugs of any sort, quickly grabbed a hold of it and threw the bucket in the opposite direction of the campground, hitting the ground after a fairly satisfying distance. He wiped his hands off and went back into camp as well.

((A/N: hahaha, yes I know it's a bit of a crack!fic, but when it was in my head it wasn't. I just couldn't get it out onto paper right..lol (LAKE PLACID FTW!) ))