A/N: Some boundaries are being stretched whilst others are simply vanishing…

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Flack stared at the markings on her body for a long time. He'd been on the job and around CSIs long enough to know what to look for when investigating, and he'd have to treat this no different. There were faint bruises all over her collar bone, so faint it could only mean they were recent, and he felt his blood boil; someone had grabbed Jenn by the shoulders, hard, in the last couple of hours. All the possible scenarios for them were running haphazardly inside his head, driving him crazy with thoughts of revenge and jealousy: Nico had, undoubtedly, hurt her, gripping her shoulders tightly, perhaps shaken her… or perhaps pushing her down to her knees…

He analyzed the scars on her breasts next. These were older; judging by the way the skin had healed, they were older than his own, but definitively not a childhood trauma. There was a fine, razor thin reddish mark connecting one breast to the other, but no telltale marks of sutures, so that one had healed without stitches. Most of the voluptuous area of the breast was unscathed, meaning she could get away with showing some cleavage without actually showing too much. The nipple area, however…"slashed" came to mind, and Flack shuddered thinking what kind of accident could have taken place to leave such damage and wondered why she had not undergone reconstructive surgery.

There was something about the scars that bothered him… something that made him think he'd seen them before, somewhere. And he was sure he'd remember seeing Jenn nude before today…

His musings were interrupted by the faint change in her breathing pattern. She was awake, and probably aware of the fact that he was openly staring at her naked chest, and he knew he had but seconds to make his next move and try to avoid uncomfortable explanations.

He gently placed his hand on her belly.

"Jenn..?"

Bad choice. As soon as he touched her she bolted out of the bed and was standing as far away from him as possible, her back to him, shoulders heaving, her top sliding down her left arm, barely noticed.

It was then that he saw the marking on her shoulder blade. From the distance, it looked like a tattoo of a smiley, except it had been done in dark red instead of black ink.

And then it hit him.

Where he'd seen it before. Four times, four corpses. One survivor.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the enormity of what he'd just learned was too overwhelming.

"Jergens…" his voice was merely a hoarse whisper.

She pulled the jacket back in place, wrapping it tightly around her and kept staring out of the window.

"Now you know why I hate Vice…"

Six years before a serial rapist/killer had given Vice one helluva nightmare. Joe Jergens picked his victims off the street, branded them with a smiley face, raped them and then proceeded to remove their nipples and vaginas with a scalpel before slicing their throats. After a month of fruitless investigation, they had sent a newbie cop as a decoy. All the girl was supposed to do was stall him until backup came to arrest him. But something had gone horribly wrong, and by the time they had reached her, it had been too late. Jergens was arrested "in flagrante delicto" and the female officer rushed to the hospital where she underwent a couple of surgeries and stayed for almost a month. What happened to her after that had been some sort of a mystery, but everyone assumed (Flack among them) that she had simply quit the Force, and that had been that.

Except that she was now standing in his bedroom.

Too many questions, but some would have to be left for later.

"Does Cap know…?"

She shook her head. "No. The Jergens case was expunged from my file. I didn't want to keep it on my back forever…"

"Why the fuck did you take the case then?"

"Nico likes his girls scarred on the side…"

"Wait a second… how did Vice know about…?"

"Not Vice. Just Silva."

"Silva?" Jealousy crept in and made his voice one octave higher.

"He was there that night… he rode with me on the bus to the hospital. When Maya told him about Nico's fetish he called me and asked me if I'd take the case before bringing my name up to Agnetti…"

Emotions erupted inside of him. In three strides he was by her side, holding her by her upper arms, forcing her to face him. He could barely restrain himself from shaking her and making his point across.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?? What the hell are you trying to prove, Jennifer?? You barely escaped Jergens alive and now you willingly go face an even worse psychopath?? Dammit, Angell, you got a death wish or something? Survivor's guilt? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

She merely stared at him while he yelled at her out of frustration.

"If you had to go into a building to save someone, would you do it even if you knew there was a bomb waiting to go off any minute?"

Shit. She had him there. He knew the answer to that one and she knew it as well. They were who they were and there was nothing left to say about it. His anger diffused almost as quickly as it had exploded.

"Did he go for it?"

"Huh?"

"Nico. Did he enjoy the show?"

"I don't know…"

"What you mean you don't know?"

"I wasn't exactly looking at his face to gauge his reaction…" Having a barrel poking the back of your head had a way of making you obey when they tell you to keep your eyes closed… but she wasn't about to share that kind of information with him.

"Aww come on, Jenn… you women seem to know every time we've been had…"

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm not exactly at the top of my game right now…"

He opened his mouth to come up with a witty comment but thought better about it. This whole thing with Nico had left her quite shaken… and the whole scarring thing… his personal experience told him that it was hard to trust someone with the knowledge… he himself had chosen to either leave the wife beater on or the lights out. The only time he had felt comfortable enough to show his torso naked, his companion had not felt the same, and he had quickly gotten dressed and walked out of her place.

He took a step back. "Show me"

She looked at him, puzzled. It wasn't a request. It was an order. But he had just seen her naked, why on earth would he want to see her again?

"Why?"

"If we're gonna get Nico, we need to start seeing things the way he does. I wanna know what he thought when he saw you…"

Too tired and confused to argue, Angell undid the sash of the coat and let it slid open, keeping her hands by her sides and her eyes downcast. If Flack noticed the attitude, he extended her the courtesy of not mentioning it.

He got himself immersed in her instead. He had already analyzed her from the objective and impassionate point of view of a cop. Now, however, it was the man who was looking at her… and the man wanted to do so much more than simply look. So he did. He cupped each breast in each one of his hands, and took a moment to enjoy their shape and weight… perfect. That's the only word that came to mind. And such perfection had nothing to do with the media standard, but rather with the way they felt in his hands. Perfect.

Soon holding wasn't enough, either. His thumbs started to gently move in circles, first around her nipples, then directly on them. Softly, then harder, trying to find the right amount of pressure to make her feel good, for he was certain that underneath all the damage there was still sensitivity and he was desperate to reach it, to liberate it. And he must have been doing something right, for now she was clutching her fists at her sides and biting down on her lower lip and her breathing pattern had changed…

And soon touching wasn't enough, either. He needed to taste, and his need took precedent over everything else. He went as far as moving in closer, deciding between lowering his head or simply kneeling down when reality hit him. He couldn't taste. Not then, not there, perhaps not ever. With a sigh of desperation and a sound of profound disgust, he spun around, his back to her, his hands running through his hair in despair, his breathing loud. It took him a moment to realize how his actions might be interpreted, but it was a moment too late. By the time he turned back to her, she was looking out of the window again, her arms firmly wrapped around her, as if trying to protect herself…

"Jenn…"

"Shhhh… it's okay. I understand."

"No, Jenn, you don't…"

"Don't worry Don. I know how you feel..."

He gently turned her to face him. "I'm sure you have no idea of what I'm feeling right now…"

"It's okay, Don. Really. Even I have a hard time dealing with… them."

Uncertain as to how to proceed, he simply removed the t-shirt he was wearing, and stood silently in front of her. She looked at his scars, which she hadn't seen in a while, not since they had healed. The first thing that came to her mind was that it was worse than she remembered… poor Flack had keloid scarring, and his whole left side looked like a series of reddish welts, lumps and ridges running from just below his nipple to his hips. He took her hand and placed it on top of it. She took the permission given and gently moved her fingers over the whole area, following contours, highs and lows, forming haphazard shapes over his skin.

He shivered and she quickly withdrew her hand.

"Am I hurting you?"

"No… it's just… I had forgotten how good it felt to be touched there…"

"Your fans don't give their hero the amount of loving he needs?"

"Fans are less than you think and not all of them interested in actually seeing what made me a "hero"…"

"Sorry. I know what you mean…"

"You do?"

"I think I've shown my scars more in the last three hours than what I've done in the last three years…"

"Really?" Eyebrows moving upwards in surprise.

"They're not exactly fantasy material. Nice lingerie makes up for it somehow… at least gives me a legit excuse for not wanting to bare it all…"

His hands went back to cupping her breasts.

"Don... you don't have to…"

"I want to…"

This time around he didn't deny himself. Dropping to one knee, he allowed his tongue to move in circles around the scars, then traced them back and forth and when he couldn't restrain himself any longer, he took it in his mouth and sucked gently on it. She sighed, then moaned and then had to hold on to the wall at her back when her knees started to grow weak. How long had it been since she had last felt like this?

And just as suddenly as it had started, it ended.

"I'm sorry Jen… I'm sorry…" Words mumbled against her stomach, as he buried his head there.

"It's okay, Don, at least you tried…" Words sounding fake to her own ears, as it wasn't okay but it wasn't his fault.

"Jenn… it's not what you think… it's just…"

"I know how you feel…"

"You do?"

"Yes…"

"No. You don't. You have no clue as to how I feel."

"But Don, I…"

Words cut short by him standing up, grabbing her hand and placing it once more over his body, but this time over the unmistakable bulge of his erection. She looked down, as if needing visual confirmation of what her hand was feeling, then looking up searching his face for some rational explanation.

"THAT is what you're making me feel. I stopped, not because I didn't want it, but because I want more, much more. God Jenn, if I could… I'd be making love to you right now instead of just telling you how bad I want to do it!"

Foreheads together, labored breathing, bodies aching to touch and be touched.

"Why can't you?" she softly whispered, her fingers once more playing with the folds of his marred skin.

Their eyes met… and the rest of the world ceased to exist.

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A/N: Impromptu confessions leading to… chapter 9, soon, I hope!