AN: Sorry for being MIA but I am back and hopefully will be posting more regularly now. Today is Collide and tomorrow is the 12 Days of Christmas.


Joss walked by Fusco's side as they climbed up the stairs of his apartment building after a long tedious day at work. "So what do you think wonder-boy did today while we chased down Hector's mistress? Those ladies had not been too pleased to learn they were being played," Lionel wondered aloud.

"No, they weren't! But now that Monica retracted her alibi, getting a search warrant is going to be easy. I already sent in the formal request and we should have it sometime tomorrow. Now knowing Alvarez has a warehouse in Queens where he goes when he is expecting a shipment and has one tomorrow, we'll know where he is when we get our arrest warrant. And as for John, I think he was probably bored out of his mind," she muttered while Lionel unlocked the door.

"And missing you," Fusco glibly added.

Joss shrugged. "Maybe," she said trying to not sound happy at the thought.

"But it doesn't matter to you."

"Nope," she agreed, trying hard to believe it. A professional as herself that didn't get emotionally involved with a man who could be god knows who, wouldn't be happy at the thought of him missing her.

Fusco didn't call her a liar instead he pushed his door open and froze as his laptop was on with porn blaring. John was pacing and looked at them and relief flooded his face. "I tried to turn it off," he commented sheepishly, which definitely had not been the first words she figured John would say to her when she came to pick him up. She had been figuring he'd be sitting on the couch and say he was happy to see her, and not be pacing while a woman was going down on some guy playing on the computer behind him.

"Why is it even on?" Lionel growled angrily as he stormed over to the laptop and instantly hit the little red x and the site went away.

John frowned. "How did you do that?" he demanded.

"Never mind that, how the hell did you get on my computer anyway? I have a password!" Lionel bellowed, ripe with embarrassment.

Joss rolled her eyes. "C'mon Fusco; you can't call your pathetic '1, 2, 3, 4, 5' a password. A two year old could crack that by randomly pressing keys," she retorted, eyes on the file and not on her mortified friend. She inwardly sighed because the file with everything she gathered so far on John Reese sat in the same place where she put it yesterday. So much for hoping he'd look at it while everyone was gone.

"I wanted to use the internet to find out where we were. But I pressed a button and I didn't know how to get off of it and I saw a title that read…"

"She doesn't need to know what it read," Lionel interrupted.

"And it took me to that site and I didn't know how to stop it." John mumbled. John felt his cheeks heat. He had watched it and the moment he thought of him and Joss doing the same things as the men and women on the screen were was when he got aroused to the point of having an aching hard on. So with no outlet he had taken a cold shower and reminded himself of his mission to cool himself off.

Joss couldn't help but love the fact that John blushed. It was so endearing to find a sexy virile man as John that could blush. "So I take it you don't know much on how to work a computer or the internet."

"No, I don't think I ever used a computer or the internet," John responded with as close to the truth as possible.

Joss was pretty impressed for a man who didn't know what he was doing and actually searched the web. Not that hacking Fusco's password was all that hard but for a man not knowing what he was doing to actually get on the web and self-teach himself enough to get on, took intelligence. Her interest in him notched up a bit, not that it was low to begin with. John was sexy, vulnerable, smart, and attached to her which made for intoxicating albeit dangerous situation now that they were going to be essentially living together for the next foreseeable future.

Detach, detach, detach, was her word of the day as she shelfed those thoughts forcefully and looked at John. "Ready to go?—maybe after we eat dinner, I'll show you how to work a computer so when I'm at work you can surf the web," she suggested.

Joss felt like someone slugged her in the gut stealing all the oxygen in her lungs when John gave her a small smile. "I'd like that, Joss."

"Hang on a sec; I need to get wonder-boy a little something before you go," Lionel called out, looking still half embarrassed and half annoyed as he disappeared out of the room.

Joss was left to inwardly groan at how her name sounded rolling off his sensual lips. She didn't think he said her name since the first night at the hospital and it still sounded so hot. The quicker she solved the mystery that was John the better off she was.

"But no porno sites," she stipulated. Joss read her erotica, preferring to be transported inside the action rather than merely watching it. "I think you had more than enough of that."

John frowned. "You won't let me forget this, will you?" he asked with a narrowed gaze.

Joss smirked as she said; "Not on your life."

Lionel reappeared into the room carrying a bag. "It's not much since I'm not made of money, but I have an extra bottle of shampoo and shaving cream as well as an extra pack of disposable shavers so you can take these. I assume you don't want to smell girly like Carter. This should get you by until Carter takes you someplace to get stuff you like." He leaned over to tell him something else was in the bag that he didn't want Joss to know about, condoms. If those two were going to keep eyeballing each other like that then he'd at least wanted to make sure they had safe sex when they took the plunge. Judging from the fact that Carter's last date was like a millennium ago he'd say she didn't have any at her place.

John took the bag and looked at Lionel. "Thank you," he murmured, blushing again. Lionel shrugged. He liked the big guy even if he did raid his computer for his porn stash.

"Thanks Fusco for letting him bunk here," Joss called out as she swiped the folder off the sofa chair and moved to the door as John grabbed his limited clothes before following her.

"You can thank me by forgetting what you saw here today," Lionel called out.

John and Joss walked to the door together but she paused with her hand hovering over the knob to look over her shoulder at Lionel to say "Saw what?"

Lionel grinned and waved at them as they slowly exited.


"Lionel's right; you are wonder-boy!" Joss stated crossly as she got to her feet from the floor. Although she'd say wonder-man was more of an apt name than boy because there was nothing boyish at all about John.

After she had taken him back to her place and gave him the grand tour; they had eaten Chinese takeout and told him about her case and that she was waiting for a search warrant. John had seemed to stiffen a bit but relaxed when she reassured him that no one unsavory came up to her.

But after they split the fortune cookie and read the generic fortune of 'You will soon gain something you always wanted.' which seemed to distract John; she had decided to try her hand at beating him at a card game, her favorite: WAR. Joss had been sure there was no way he'd beat her as she shuffled the cards and explained the game before divvying out the deck. But no, he wiped the floor with her.

He chuckled as he stood too, towering over her even more with her being barefoot, and she grinned, liking how he was loosening up which is why she suggested the game in the first place. Well that and it would distract her from the fact that they were alone together. But John had seemed so uptight and stoic. She knew it was probably lingering pain from the accident as he was mostly healed and the fact that he couldn't remember anything, but she was glad she could see laugh lines, and see his beautiful smile. It made his blue eyes glitter and sparkle in a different way.

She selfishly wanted to keep it that way for a little while longer before she tried to nudge the file onto him.

"I could let you win next time," he offered.

Joss scoffed. "Oh, you'll let me win next time?" she demanded, as she set the cards down on the coffee table beside the file. His eyes glinted with mischief as he nodded. "It's on now. When you least expect it that's when I'm taking you down!" she guaranteed.

He laughed softly and Joss felt a funny little quiver in her stomach at the sound. His laughter was like the rest of him: quiet, but it shouldn't induce such a response from her. And yet she was fighting with herself to keep from teasing him to hear it more to feel this feeling some more. It made no sense this thing between them; there from the start, and growing at an exponential rate.

John bent and picked up their wine glasses for them, handing her hers before taking a subtle sip from his. Joss smirked as she never figured John to be a lightweight but he was. Yesterday after the second beer he was having a buzz going and promptly stopped drinking. She noticed tonight he was drinking the alcohol much slower. She sat down on the couch drawing her knees to her chest. She dipped towards him as he sat down next to her. From being so close to him she felt every nerve ending in her body crackle and sizzle in response. Joss was stuck between wanting to shift away or move closer. Never in her life had she felt such an immediate physical response to a man. It was unlike anything she ever experienced before. Not that she had much experience as she'd only had two meaningful relationships; Dirk from high-school, who she lost her virginity too, and Paul who she had married and fathered her boy. But neither man induced such reactions or sensations in her like John did.

She set the wineglass down and got to her feet. "Stay put," she called out as she made a beeline for the desk in the corner where her laptop sat.

When she sat back down beside him he hadn't moved. She flipped the top open and pointed out the ON button. "This is the 'on' button," she said and chuckled at John's roll of the eyes. "Of course, you know that by now but if I'm giving you a lesson; I'm giving you a lesson."

"Yes ma'am," he muttered.

John leaned in close to watch what she was doing and that damn electric energy between her and John jolted her. The unseen current flowed through her body as her heart began to race. She plopped the laptop on his lap and hopped to her feet. He looked up in confusion.

Joss stepped behind the couch and stood behind him. "It will be better if you are the one doing it as I instruct you," she said a little breathy, hating the fact that not only did her brain take a holiday but she had to relearn the fine art of breathing normally around John. Once the computer loaded up and the sign in screen appeared he looked up. "What; can't figure mine out?" she teased.

"Is it your son's name?" he asked quietly.

She frowned. "How the hell did you know that?"

"Just a lucky guess; with how you speak about him, I know you love him very much," he replied softly.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. John eyed her questioningly. "I must talk about my son too much if you figured that much out."

It was true she talked about Taylor a lot to him since he came down to Earth; both Lionel and Joss told him about their respective sons when it was clear they were trying to keep conversation going and they knew he had nothing to offer. But he had known Taylor since the boy was born; hell, he was the one to offer his light to protect him, risking the consequences of that action.

"Well it's all lowercase," she muttered still a tad flustered that John had seen into her soul. It was those damn eyes of his, she decided.

For the next half hour she spent helping him learn how to use the internet and ignoring the heat between them. After she shut down the laptop and set it back where she got it from, Joss sat down beside him on the couch leaning her cheek on her fist as she angled her body towards him. She let her eyes roam over him; there was something in his eyes, something she wished to know what it was but didn't dare ask.

Instead Joss leaned over to grab the file and set it on his lap. "Can you please look at this for me?" she asked quietly.

He didn't open it but rather continued to watch her. "Why?"

"I just really need you too," she answered vaguely.

"Do you want me to be this man?"

Joss exhaled. "I want the truth but maybe you don't. Don't you want your memories back, John?"

"Maybe I don't want to remember the man I was before I met you," he murmured. It was the god's honest truth. He didn't want to remember the empty man that had been before her. He never belonged anywhere…until he died and found her. Joss was his everything. He would die again to protect her. He'd do anything for her.

She smiled softly. "Well I'd like to get to know the man before I ran him over," she responded. Joss wanted to know who was stirring this kind of emotional connection and sexual response she was having. She wanted to know who was making her use every single ounce of her willpower to distance herself from him. It defied logic and she wanted answers for herself but for him too. If he was John Reese and disappeared for sixteen years; she wanted to know why and why he had ended up naked as the day he was born on the night she hit him. It screamed that something bad had happened to him and she wanted to get the SOBs that did it to him. "Please, will you look at it, even for a minute?"

John averted his gaze, wishing he could refuse her. But he couldn't. He opened the manila folder as if this was the first time and it didn't jar him so much seeing his picture again. He proceeded to leaf through the file again and read about himself and felt her gaze watching him. Maybe looking it over that time in Lionel's apartment had been a blessing because he didn't physically react to what he read this time.

Joss studied him. His expression for the most part remained unaffected but when he got to the page depicting how he died, he flinched a bit. She wasn't sure if it was because of the gruesome mental image it painted or because he remembered Bosnia.

"Does anything ring familiar?" she asked hopeful.

He looked up at her. Joss looked so hopeful that he felt compelled to tell the truth or at least partial of the truth. "It kind of sounds familiar but…"

"It does?" she murmured optimistically. She moved closer to him, galvanized by the fact that something rang familiar to him, leaning over him to eye the file's contents herself.

John swallowed hard as his entire body reacted as her breasts were being pressed against the back of his arm and her hand rested on his as he held the file open. All of his senses went on full alert and uncomfortably all the blood was flowing south warming up his genitals as he felt a stirring in his groin. She was so soft and utterly female. He closed his eyes; memorizing the feel of her, praying this small touch of her hand on his would be enough while trying to keep his body from betraying him as he tried to shift his focus onto his mission and not on the woman beside him.

Joss looked at him and he stared into her large doe eyes that reminded him of chocolate and he recalled chocolate was addictive, but then so was this beautiful woman. As they were sitting so close that her tantalizing lips were mere inches away. They sat locked in eye contact and John was stuck between wanting to pull away and to kiss her. It had been so long since he kissed a woman, he was dead after all. Now that his memories of who he had been were slowly being revived; he could remember that he didn't have all that much experience with the opposite sex.

But he shouldn't kiss Joss because he'd want more than just one. But he couldn't leave her side and go back up to where he belonged without it either.

She watched him inch closer to her. It wasn't until his lips were nearly upon hers that the realization that this shouldn't happen shrilled in her befuddled mind. Joss lifted a hand to press it on his shoulder. "John," she whispered and he stopped but didn't pull his head back as his gaze met hers. She was sitting with bare inches between her lips and his she could feel his breath wash across her lips in a sensual caress. It was taking everything inside her to not close the gap, putting them both out of their misery.

"This isn't a really good idea," she said instead. John drew back and she saw a shadow cross his face as he sat back. "John, it's okay," she reassured.

No, it wasn't because he had almost kissed her. John needed to remember why he was down here and kissing Joss, no matter how he wanted too, was not it.

She watched in quiet dismay as he snapped the file closed and climbed to his feet. "John…"

"No, Joss, this was a mistake. I'm sorry. This is why you didn't want to be alone with me isn't it?—because you were worried I wouldn't keep my hands to myself," he said lowly as he began pacing. Joss noticed when he was agitated or upset he would pace like an animal stuck in a cage, wanting escape but couldn't go anywhere.

Joss climbed to her feet too. "Honestly, yes, this is exactly why I wanted you to stay at Lionel's," she answered. But she did feel bad that if she hadn't corrected him that she was more worried about her being unable to keep her hands to herself but not enough to admit to that. It wasn't technically a lie but rather just an omission of the truth. So far her resolve to keep her distance from this man had folded quicker than a house of cards in a hurricane. Maybe she would try again tomorrow. "But it is okay, John, nothing happened," she murmured.

He looked at her with a scowl residing on his handsome face. "And it never will." he agreed.


Margaret paced the kitchen of her farm house, not even her tea seemed to be calming her today. She couldn't stop thinking about the conversation she had with the detective from New York from the other day. If she was honest with herself she had been obsessing about it.

"I'm calling because last night a man that matches your son's finger prints fell in front of my car as I was driving."

It just couldn't be Johnny. She buried her son's remains. She got his ceremonial flag. She mourned. She cried. She hated. And then nothing. She felt nothing except an emptiness that could never be filled until she was reunited with her son and husband. That detective, Joss was her name, had to be wrong. She just had to be. It took her nearly twenty years just to come to terms with her son's death and now here was a woman that claimed her son was alive. But even as Margaret tried to convince herself that her son was dead the desire to head to New York to see this man with her own eyes grew. Because what if Johnny had somehow survived; what if the Army made some sort of mistake? What if her son was really alive all these years and something had happened to him? Could she live with herself without checking it out? No. He was her baby. He was her heart, her life and soul.

Margaret glanced at the kitchen door as it opened and her longtime friend Edna entered. Her friend took one look at her and sighed. "You're still obsessing about that conversation with that detective about Johnny aren't you?"

"I can't help it Edna; it's my son we are talking about. Johnny could be out there and needs me," Margaret admitted as she worried her lip.

"Oh honey, Johnny is dead."

"But what if something happened; what if that detective found my son alive?" Margaret demanded as she resumed her pacing.

Edna was quiet for a moment. "You won't be able to rest until you know for sure, Mar,…go to New York and find out for sure," Edna suggested.

Margaret stopped her restless pacing and eyed her friend. "I can't. I can't leave you to run the farm all by yourself…"

"You won't be. My husband and I will run your family farm while you go check out this lead about your son. You and your sister Beverly were gracious enough to allow us to live and work here when we lost our home to the recession. You have been good to us. We can hold down the fort while you go to New York so you can finally put this to rest."

"Are you sure, Edna?—you and Bob are older than me and taking care of the farm by yourselves..."

"Of course, if Johnny is alive and that's a big if…he's going to need his mother. If he lost his memories maybe you are the key at getting them back and we can find out where he has been for these last sixteen years," Edna replied as she drew Margaret into a hug.

Margaret returned the embrace as tears welled up. "I don't care where he's been these last sixteen years. If he's alive then all my prayers have been answered," she whispered.

Edna pulled back and wiped away the tears from her eyes. "Go, get a plane ticket to New York and meet up with this detective. Go find out if that man is your son."

"Thank you Edna,"

"You never have to thank me. You might not be my sister by blood but you are my sister in my heart," Edna said, getting sentimental.

Margaret smiled through her tears. "Blood doesn't matter. I love you as much as I loved Bev. I have to go get a plane ticket and need to pack…"

Edna patted her cheek. "I'll call your travel agent and book you a flight. Does it matter what time?"

Margaret shook her head before whirling around and headed out of the kitchen. She rushed to the back bedroom that was hers. The farm home was renovated six years ago to add more space for Bob and Edna, her, and her older sister. They had also added a large building to house two farm hands for when they didn't want to travel home after a long day on the farm. Margaret moved her things to the bedroom in the back because it had been her son's old room when they moved here after Connor died. Bev, god love her, had immediately opened her home up to them, and allowed her to work on the farm with her sister for income to support her and Johnny. Bev had passed on three years ago.

She entered her bedroom and made a beeline for her suitcase in her closet. Margaret paused in her haste to get ready for the impromptu trip as her eyes caught sight of the framed photo of her and Johnny at his last birthday they ever celebrated together. He had just turned twenty-five and had gone out to dinner where she insisted on taking a photo. Thank god, she insisted because it was less than four months later he died or supposedly died. Margaret swallowed hard as she ran a loving hand over his face.

"I really hope you are out there, Johnny, because I miss you so much."

Margaret lifted the photo up to her lips kissing Johnny's face as she always did every day before setting it back down and rushed to her closet.


AN: Mama Reese is on the way...