Author's Note: I know they behaved a little stupidly in the last part, getting caught in the somewhat-open by the bad guy, but honestly their 'stealthy' in the canon never appears all that inconspicuous, and I kind of wanted to make fun of that (and also use it to my own end).

Anyway, onto what is probably my favorite scene in this fic… (although I honestly am loving writing every part of this one).

Merri's entire body tensed when she heard him make a pained noise and then release his breath in a slow hiss. The doctors apparently saw fit to release the banged up agent, but his injuries couldn't just be shrugged off. Massive contusions, bruised ribs, a dozen stitches in his arm... It wasn't like her at all, but she wanted to just pull him into a big -gentle- hug, stroke the back of his neck and soothe him the best she could. She'd successfully fought that urge as she watched him stiffly climb into the SUV, fight with the seatbelt, and practically fall out of the vehicle when they reached her place. She'd fed him takeout from his favorite restaurant, consisting of barbeque shrimp and cheese grits. He'd declined to use her shower, and she knew it was because he didn't think he had the energy to even bathe. And so she sat him on the edge of her bed, insisting that he would sleep there and she could take the sofa. After all, it had been her insistence that had him in her home and not his own, for the entirely selfish reason that she wouldn't sleep a wink worrying about him all night. As it was, every wheezing breath and low moan he made had her digging her nails into her palm to calm her anxiety.

"Are you alright?" she asked, not even trying to hide her alarm.

"Yeah," Chris said, a little breathless. "Jus' a back spasm. Feels like all my muscles are one big knot."

Merri could imagine that was precisely the case, considering the tissue had taken three blows with ? of force each. She might not be able to take the damaged ribs and stitched up arm away, or the pain of the bruised flesh, but she could do something about his seized muscles.

"Take off your shirt and lay flat on your stomach," she instructed, as she went to the bathroom to retrieve the menthol cream from the cupboard. Their job was rough enough on a person's body that she always kept some in stock to sooth strained muscles.

When she returned, she'd found he'd done precisely as instructed, and even when she mounted the bed and straddled his legs, he failed to crack a joke or make some charming innuendo, so she knew he was utterly exhausted. Running her hands from the nape of his neck down his back, she could feel the physical lumps of knotted muscle in various places, in addition to the overall taut state of his body. She'd have to tend to his entire back if she was going to get it to release at all, including the ever problematic (for bipedal human beings) complex of lower back muscles.

Hooking her fingers in the waistband of his sweats, she fought the blush of embarrassment as she tugged the garment down lower, exposing a couple of unexpected and adorable dimples just above the man's buttocks. She had the fleeting urge to tug them further down, to examine a fabled piece of ink with her own two eyes, but she squashed that desire quickly and left her poor abused partner covered. As for LaSalle, he didn't make any comment about the intimacy of nearly being scandalously exposed, but a pained noise escaped him again and the muscles twitched beneath the skin along the small of his back.

Applying a liberal amount of menthol cream to her hands, Merri began to rub her injured partner down, starting with the knots in his neck and shoulders and making her way slowly towards those distracting dimples. She avoided the large, vividly purple contusions where those awful bullets had struck his vest, but he still hissed and groaned when she worked at the more stubborn knots in his flesh.

By the time she was gently massaging his lower back, however, his breathing had changed, grown heavy and rhythmic, and Merri knew he'd fallen asleep. Thank god she'd insisted, and Cade had relented, to her taking Chris home with her, because she couldn't imagine performing such an intimate act as giving her partner a back rub with his brother just a room away. The noises he'd made beneath her hands... The fear that someone could walk in and catch her straddling his half-naked body... No, it was better that she could tend to Chris in complete privacy, her issues with intimacy forgotten without the prospect of being judged by others.

After thoroughly washing the menthol from her hands, now red from the therapeutic cream, Merri changed into a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top and giving in to the unwarranted desire, opted to forego the sofa and climbed into bed beside her blessedly sleeping, somewhat battered partner. She didn't think he would mind.

Merri awoke with a start to a sharp outcry and the sound of Chris LaSalle's panting breaths from the other side of the bed. Turning on the side table lamp, she sat up, finding her partner doubled over and gasping for air. Gingerly, she touched his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" Merri asked, trying and failing to keep her voice even. Had the hospital missed something? Had they only given him a chest x-ray, missing some internal damage that an MRI would've picked up?

"I'm fine," he said after a moment of strained breathing. "Jus' forgot 'bout my back an' rolled over in my sleep."

She sighed quietly in relief. It wasn't pleasant knowing that he was in pain, but knowing that it was only superficial, that he would recover to his full, annoyingly ebullient self calmed her nerves.

"Here," she said, tugging at the blankets beneath him. "Get under the covers."

LaSalle was by nature quite a compliant, easy-going sort of man, and while injured he seemed entirely partial to surrendering all decision making to her. He climbed in under the blankets and sheet, lying on his side, facing her.

"Come here." She told herself it was because her brain was half asleep (which was not at all true after the disturbing wake-up call of Chris' suffering) that she gave in to the urge she'd had since that afternoon to hold the injured man. Shimmying closer to him, she took his arm and coaxed him to lean towards her, draping it across her waist and settling him against her body so that he was lying partially on top of her, resting his head upon her shoulder. Carefully, she placed her hands on his back, delicately avoiding the bruised skin. "Better?"

"Mmm." He cuddled into her, his hand kneading her side. "You didn't have ta take me in, Merri."

"What?"

"I know ya been rather sick of me," he said. "But ya don't have any obligation jus' because I got ya out of the way of them bullets. Ya woulda done the same for me."

He really thought she was taking care of him, soothing his aches, holding him in her arms out of a sense of debt? Okay. Until that moment, she'd been excusing it as such herself. But the fact was she really did care about the man, that he was one of the closest friends she'd ever had.

"You're my friend and you're hurting, Chris," she said, caressing his head and neck. "I want to take care of you."

He was making contented noises in the back of his throat as she stroked his head, like a purring housecat. And when he spoke, she could tell he was drifting off to sleep once more.

"I promise I won't use your facewash agin..."

A/N: Just one more chapter, I think…