A/N: Many, many thanks to those of you who have reviewed. I promise you, I would not be writing this story without you. Your words keep me going. Consider this chapter a reward (at least for the shippers among you!)
The Contact of Two Chemical Substances
The control room was remarkably hushed. Various techs still rushed around, checking incoming data, but the rocket was less than an hour away and no one had come up with a way to lower the oxygen level in the air. Intent conversations were taking place in every corner, at every screen, but voices were low and tense.
Jo was standing next to Alison and Kevin, watching the trail of the rocket on the huge monitor. She was still shocked at Alison's behavior – stealing Dr. Ramsey's TAP fluid? The ethics committee was not going to be happy. But she was glad that Kevin had come to GD: it was obvious that getting his forgiveness had meant a lot to Alison.
Kevin's phone rang. "Yo, Zane," he answered. "No go here."
Jo glanced in his direction. Donovan was calling Kevin? What was that about?
"Yeah, it's like forty-five minutes, I think. You finished with the hydrogen yet?"
"Hydrogen?" Alison's eyes had also been on the screen, but she turned toward Kevin at the sound of his words. Jo frowned. What was Donovan up to?
"Yeah, okay," said Kevin, ignoring his mom. "You want me to call you back at about five minutes? Okay, man. Um, and…well, try not to die."
All right, that didn't sound good. As Kevin hung up the phone, Alison said, "Kevin? What was that about?"
Kevin shrugged. "It's kind of a last resort, Mom. Zane's gonna combine the oxygen with hydrogen. It'll neutralize the problem." He seemed calm about the idea, but it sounded almost too simple to Jo. There had to be something wrong with it.
"Well, in theory," Alison said. "But the reality is that that reaction will be very explosive, especially in these conditions." Ah. That would be what was wrong with it.
"Yeah," Kevin sighed. "I wanted to go with him, but he wouldn't let me. He said if we survived, you'd kill him anyway, for letting me take the chance."
"Damn right I would! Where is he?" Alison demanded.
"He's on the bridge leading to the launch site. Low enough that the explosion might not reach him."
"Might not?" Alison burst out. "Did he bring anything with him? A fire shelter?"
"Um, no." For the first time, Kevin looked a little less confident. "We didn't have one."
Alison's eyes met Jo's. She looked torn, almost desperate. "Jo, he won't survive. Not without shelter."
"I'll go," Jo said briefly. Alison nodded in grateful relief, and as Jo hurried away, she wondered yet again, what exactly was the relationship between Alison and Donovan?
He grinned at her. The idiot grinned, his teeth white against the stubble on his cheeks, blue eyes bright.
"Donovan, are you insane?" she snapped at him, a little out of breath from running up the road, the metallic fire shelter bundled under her arm.
"It's just simple chemistry, Jo," he said, releasing balloons with clicks of a controller and watching them float into the sky.
"The whole town will ignite!" He was still smiling. He looked almost happy, she realized. The man was crazy, that was the only possible explanation.
He shook his head. "H20, babe. It'll put out the flames before they reach the town."
"What about before they reach us?" she demanded, ignoring the endearment.
He sobered slightly. "Not us, Jo. You need to get out of here. We don't have a lot of time."
"I'm not leaving you here." She wasn't sure why she felt so strongly. She'd brought him the fire shelter; she could drop it at his feet and turn and leave. Would she feel as if she'd done the best she could if she did? And would he use the shelter?
"I've got to detonate the hydrogen gas once the balloons get high enough." His attention was on the sky again, and then he looked back at her. "Seriously, Jo, scoot."
"Scoot? I'm not a stray cat, and I'm not leaving you here." Damn, but he was infuriating.
"We don't have time for this. That's rocket's going to be here any minute." His phone rang and he fumbled for it in his pocket, trying to pull it out and flip it open one-handed, the other on the balloon controller.
"Give me that," Jo snapped, pulling his phone away from him as he got it out. "Yes?" she answered it.
"It's time," Kevin's voice said. "If you want to beat the rocket, that is."
"All right," Jo sighed. She looked at Donovan. "Ever used one of these?" she asked, shaking out the fire shelter.
"No. But take it and go!" He was scowling, brows drawn, smile gone.
"Me neither. The instructions say stay down, lie flat on the ground, keep as much air around you as possible while holding down the edges. We'll need to stay close."
"Damn it, Jo, you should get out of here."
She shook her head. "Not enough time," she answered shortly.
"How close are we?"
"It's now or never." With her decision made, she smiled at him. Her heart was pounding, her breath a little too quick, but she waited with the shelter at the ready.
"You shouldn't be here," he muttered grumpily, but then he sighed and looked up at the sky. Jo followed suit. It was a beautiful day: the sky a serene blue dotted with white balloons and the occasional cloud, the trees a backdrop of green. "Here goes," he said, his grin returning.
He pressed the button, the controller beeping, and as they stared upward, the balloons lit up the sky, first in isolated bursts and then in a flash that blew outward, turning the clear blue into a golden blanket of light and flame. The heat hit first, a blast of warmth, followed by the sound, a crash of thunder, and then the air almost seemed to light up as the flames raced toward them.
Quickly, they scrambled under the shelter. Jo was murmuring the rules under her breath, "Flat on the ground, hold it down, keep air around you." It was dark under the shelter, which made sense, of course, but was still unexpected. As she positioned herself, hand above her head, holding down one edge, foot holding down another, she couldn't quite figure out what to do with her other hand, so she pushed up on the shelter, trying to keep as much air as possible around them. She could feel Donovan next to her, a warm presence in the dark, even as the heat started to build.
Damn, it was hot. She tried to push herself farther into the ground, still cool underneath her, and closer to Donovan, away from the blanket.
"You okay?" His voice was right next to her ear, his breath brushing her skin, and she realized that they were lying face-to-face. She couldn't see him, but she could smell him, a mix of healthy guy and – was it eucalyptus? No, it was tea tree and mint. She smiled a little, amused that they shared taste in shampoo, but it was getting less and less pleasant in the shelter as the temperature rose, and the feel of the bare skin of her hand against the shelter was becoming almost unbearable.
"Hot," she said. "I can't – damn." She let her hand drop, pulling it toward her and tucking it between them, as the shelter started to settle down on them. She turned her head, trying to get her face against the ground, away from the scorching blanket. Her lips brushed his cheek, and she felt the scratch of his whiskers against her lips.
"Sorry," she muttered, breath coming in short and shallow gasps as the air heated up. "I was holding it up, but it's too hot, I can't do it anymore."
"I'll get it," he said, his voice husky. "I can use my sleeve." He was still wearing his leather jacket so Jo just nodded, as she felt his arm moving around her and a little welcome relief as the shelter surface lifted again.
She sighed with gratitude, and turned her head again. "Thank you," she whispered.
She was so close to him, but in the dark she couldn't see him, and it wasn't until he murmured, "Anytime," a hint of wry humor in his voice, that she realized that their lips were almost touching.
Almost.
And then their lips were touching, and his were strong and searching against hers, their movement stirring an immediate ache in her belly, a rush in her legs. Her heart was pounding as she opened her mouth to him, letting his tongue trace its way along her soft inner skin. Almost as if it wasn't hers, her hand slid up and along his chest and then over his shoulder, curving around his neck and pulling him to her, fingers reaching into his hair. It was tingling because it was burned, she thought fuzzily, not because touching him was igniting her nerve endings. But that only explained her hand, not the rest of her, not why all of her skin felt flushed and shivery and hotter than hell but with an inner heat, not just an outer. And then thinking stopped and she was kissing him back, wanting to take it harder, deeper, wanting more.
There wasn't enough air, not nearly enough air, and she finally broke away, gasping, as she realized that the heat was passing and the shelter was being pounded with rain. She rolled away from him, pushing up the edges of the shelter to see the water pouring down from the sky.
"Two hydrogen, one oxygen," Zane said.
She didn't want to look at him. She knew, just knew, that he'd be smirking at her. Damn him. She should have guessed that he'd take advantage of the situation but what had she been thinking? Why the hell had she kissed him back?
But then he stood, pulling the shelter up with him and said, "Come on, we should get back to GD. You should get that hand looked at."
That was it? Really? That was all he was going to say?
She looked up at him as she rose to her feet. He wasn't smirking, but she couldn't read his expression.
"Just your basic chemical reaction," he continued and his voice almost sounded – was it sad?
Jo was sitting on the cot in jail cell, staring out through the bars. A notebook in her lap contained a list: every incident that she could remember from the past few weeks that seemed off or wrong. And the first had been here.
They'd been sitting in semi-silence – she'd been pissed at him, even more than usual, because she was stuck on duty while half her team chased down Fairchild's monkeys. Normally that wouldn't have been a big deal, but she'd been supposed to meet up with an old Army buddy in Portland for dinner, a fact that Donovan had known. She'd half suspected that he'd timed his monkey trick on purpose to mess up her scant personal life.
But being pissed at him wasn't unusual. It was when he called her Jo – that was the strange event. But what could have happened? Could Donovan have seen something? Whatever it was, it must have been quick.
"Don't tell me Andy arrested you?" Carter was leaning on the half wall that separated the entryway from the office, and the sound of his voice broke Jo from her reverie.
"Andy's terrific," she sighed. "No, Larry's rocket went boom. It blew up my house. I'd figured I'd just hang out here. It used to be practically a second home, after all."
Carter strolled toward her, and Jo closed the notebook in her lap. There wasn't a lot about Carter in it, not really. The times he'd called Donovan by his first name and his friendly relationship with that new guy, Grant, were about it. But she didn't want him to see what she had written, especially not the parts about Alison and Donovan. Carter didn't talk about it, but she knew he had feelings for Alison. If he knew that Alison and Donovan had been involved or maybe still were involved – well, she'd rather he didn't find that out from her speculations, that was all.
"Come on," he said, scooping up her bag. "Let's grab your stuff. With Zoe gone, S.A.R.A.H. could use the company. And so could I."
Jo smiled up at him. "I suppose I could tolerate you."
"Don't get excited, it's not permanent."
As they walked together out of the cell, Carter rested his hand on her shoulder, a comforting, friendly touch. Jo looked back at him and for a moment, she was tempted to tell him everything, all of her questions, all of her doubts. But then she thought of how ridiculous her suspicions would sound and how embarrassing it would be to admit that kiss, and she just said, "Thanks, Carter."
He shook his head and smiled warmly. "Let's go home."
-"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
— Carl Gustav Jung
