Author's Notes: I couldn't stop myself. This takes place about a few weeks after "Reservations".

Summary: Terry's been expecting Don to take his revenge for manipulating him for weeks, but never in so diabolical a fashion.

Disclaimer: If I actually owned them, I wouldn't be trying to scrounge up enough money to pay for college... So, suing me really wouldn't help anyway. I don't them. Drat it.

Strategy

Terry knew something was wrong the instant she entered her apartment. It was too quiet. Odd, she knew, since she lived alone, but there it was: her apartment was too quiet, and that fact made her nervous. She very gently laid her groceries on the floor and pulled her gun from her hip holster then tiptoed through the rooms in her stocking feet. What she found in her bedroom caused an abrupt mental review of every curse word she'd ever learned.

How had he gotten in? She'd only given him one key and that had been easy enough to lift during the next working dinner following hers and Charlie's strategy to get Don out of the office for a few hours; so again, how in God's name had Don Eppes gotten into her apartment without a key?

Mind, she had been expecting retaliation in some form for a few weeks, but this was positively demonic.

Her partner slept peacefully on her bed, fully dressed, on top of her covers. He'd rolled over onto his stomach and had his arms curled around and his face buried in one of her pillows.

As absolutely delicious as he looked, and as much as she wanted to shed her clothes (and his!) and wake him up in a particular manner, the thoroughly annoying man had a lot to answer for.

Terry tiptoed back into her living room and picked up a small Nerf football, the perfect ammunition. After returning to the bedroom she stood in the doorway and took careful aim; she didn't want to have to retrieve it and get so close to him if she missed – she didn't trust her own body where he was concerned most times. She fired her foam ammo and it hit her target, thankfully. Don woke and rocketed up so that his weight was supported on his palms and twisted back to look at her, fully awake. Getting caught flat-footed and groggy by a squad of bad guys during a stakeout was never a good way to start the day.

However, Don must have just crashed and a small part of her felt guilty for waking him up when he obviously needed the sleep because he simply blinked at her for a second before relaxing back into her pillows. "Hey, Terry," he murmured, sliding his hands back around the pillow he'd been snuggling and closing his eyes.

Terry had fantasized many times about how he'd look, all sleep-rumpled and relaxed in her bed, and had steeled herself for that very occurrence, but fantasy paled in comparison to reality. She allowed herself a boneless slump against the doorframe while she fought to get the pure and utter want coursing through her veins to subside. Oh, God, I am in so much trouble…

Terry inhaled and exhaled slowly and when she felt her emotions were under enough control she took a few steps forward so she was standing at the end of her bed and wrapped her finger around his ankle (she didn't trust herself to touch any other part of him) and shook it. "Up," she ordered, taking on the tone she used with belligerent suspects.

Tired as he was, Don knew better than to mess with that particular tone and obediently climbed out of her bed. He saw something flash in her eyes before it vanished again and wondered at it. "In there," she continued, gesturing jerkily towards her living room. Don collapsed on her cushy couch, turned on his side, put his head on the armrest, and closed his eyes. "Don." He knew that tone all too well, too, but he was just so tired, and if she would only leave him be for a minute…

Terry allowed herself an affectionate smile as she heard his breathing deepen into full sleep and knew she wasn't going to be getting an explanation out of him anytime soon. With a sigh that wasn't nearly as reluctant as she liked to think, Terry gathered a spare blanket and pillow, lifted his head enough so that she could stuff the pillow under it and then spread the blanket over him. As an afterthought, Terry swept the blanket back to make sure he wasn't still wearing his belt. She knew him well enough to know that his tie would probably be found either with his suit jacket or on her bedroom floor, but figured that he might had forgotten to loosen that other accessory of his.

After discovering that she had been right about the belt and he had forgotten to take it off, she briefly considered what it would take to slip it off, but since Don was no light-weight and she didn't really want to disturb him again, she just left it loose and opened his pants button upon further deliberation.

With her impromptu guest taken care of, Terry put away her forgotten groceries and retreated into her bedroom for the rest of the night. But her whole bed smelled of him.

Terry didn't fall asleep for a while.

When she woke up, Terry discovered that she was unaccountably warm and her pillow seemed to be thumping or something. Far too relaxed to worry too much about it, she slowly opened her eyes and discovered that her pillow was white, but all the rest of her sheets and pillowcases were blue. Further examination revealed that her white covered pillow was, in fact, Don's chest, and his arms were wrapped around her, and even though she had practically draped herself all over him, she was perfectly content. Obviously, he had joined her sometime during the night, but he had also stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers.

Terry sighed and gently caressed his ribcage, something she never would have allowed herself to do if he'd been conscious. But, he wasn't, and despite how little she wanted to wallow in her feelings for him she knew she might never get another opportunity like this, so she intended to take full and complete advantage of it. But not advantage of him. Damn it.

With a soft kiss to the part of his chest her cheek was resting against, Terry forced herself up and into the washroom for a very cold shower.

Don yawned and stretched slowly. He could never remember feeling so rested or relaxed, but he credited his patently obvious idea to steal Terry's sheets (even though he couldn't remember plotting to do such a thing recently; in the past, sure, but not lately) as a resounding success. Blinking, Don peered around and was very startled to discover that he was not in his own bed in his own apartment and concluded that his apparent sheet-stealing plan had failed – miserably. He could still smell Terry all around him so that left him with one option: that he was in Terry's room.

Whoops.

Memory floated back to him in bits and pieces and he groaned and flung an arm over his eyes when he recalled crashing in her bed. The intervening time was a blur, but presumably she had come home and discovered him there, and forced him out onto the couch. He vaguely recalled getting up to use the bathroom, stripping out of his suit, and then collapsing into bed where he'd passed out with a comforting presence nearby.

Oh, he was so dead.

Don levered himself out of the bed, found his wrinkled-beyond-belief shirt and pants and donned them, before heading into her kitchen to make them both a pot of coffee. He was going to have to do some very fast talking to get out of this one with all his body parts intact.

Terry tiptoed out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel into her damp hair, and prepared to sneak into her own bedroom to get all the clothes she was going to need as she'd forgotten to grab them on her way out. The moment she got the door open wide enough to peek in, however, she nearly slammed it again with the sheer frustration that flooded her. That damned man. He had to nerve to break in, crash on her bed, cozy up to her in the middle of the night, and then vanish again before they said more than three words to each other? She wasn't going to hit him; she was going to kill him! Slowly and painfully, too.

The sound of clinking dishware brought her out of her reverie and she wandered out in her bathrobe to investigate.

There stood Don, looking so completely at home and so totally domestic in her kitchen that she just wanted to jump on him, work rules be damned. He turned and took in her attire, or lack thereof, and watched, absolutely fascinated, as a bolt of pure lust shot through his eyes. "Morning," he offered, and held out a gently steaming mug. Terry padded over to take it from him and was mildly surprised to find it doctored exactly the way she liked it.

"Morning," she replied.

"Listen, Terry, I…"

She held up a hand to stave off any excuses and flashed a self-conscious smile. "Maybe we should wait until I have more clothes on to have this talk."

There it was again, mixed with curiosity and speculation, but it was definitely lust. "Maybe that would be a good idea." His voice had lowered, gotten more husky, and her knees practically quavered in response.

The cheerful ringing of her cell phone interrupted their impromptu staring contest, and Terry dove into her bedroom to answer it. "Hello?"

"Hey, Terry, you wouldn't happen to know where Don is, would you? He's not answering his phone at home and I think his cell's dead." Charlie, dear, sweet, oh, so dead, Charlie asked worriedly.

"Hi, Charlie. Yeah, he's here, just a second." She turned around to deliver the phone to the man in question and instead found him lounging in the doorway, eyeing her bathrobe speculatively. She handed him the device and shoved him back into the apartment proper with a, "It's Charlie, talk to him and leave me alone for a few minutes."

The last thing she saw before the door closed in his face was the thoroughly wicked smirk that took up residence on his face as he asked, "Want some help?"

Terry leaned back against the closed door with a sigh and willed her blood to stop singing.

Twenty minutes later Terry left her room dressed for work and ready to take on her evil partner. To her surprise, he was waiting for her, with her briefcase packed, her purse ready, and her keys dangling from his fingers, not to mention the extra-tall travel mug full of coffee. When she took in his suddenly neatly-pressed appearance with a raised eyebrow he explained that, "I keep a change of clothes in my car just in case I crash somewhere nowhere near my or my dad's closet." He passed over her things as he spoke and turned to open the door.

She could well imagine how many times he'd had to work in a wrinkled suit before he'd figured out the strategy. Probably about as many times as she had, in the beginning.

"I'll see you at the office," he said, and leaned down to brush a kiss across her cheek. He'd made it all the way back upright and was almost out the door when he'd realized just how domestic that had been, but stupid pride forbade him from turning around to see how she'd taken it.

If he had, he'd have found her standing stock-still in the middle of her foyer with her hand pressed to the spot he'd kissed and lustful stars in her eyes.

Nevertheless, Don couldn't help but feel a supreme sense of self-satisfaction as he strode towards his SUV and grinned the entire way through Los Angeles' horrendous rush-hour traffic.

And if that wasn't a dead give-away as to how pleased with himself he was, he didn't know what was.

FIN.