AN: Okay, so this turned out longer and angstier than I anticipated. But bear with me, it gets happier later on, I swear.

Chapter 2

They were all watching her. They had been for days. Heidi could feel it, and it was driving her crazy. She'd actually found herself hoping that some dodo would get themselves stuck in a drain or thrown off a cliff, simply so they'd have something to do other than eye her covertly when they thought she wasn't paying attention. They'd all been glancing at her out of the corner of their eyes since The Thing, but none of them had spoken about it. To her, anyway. Heidi was sure that Dean'd had a "what the hell was that?" talk with Lara – which was more than she'd managed yet – but so far the icy glare and the firm "I don't want to talk about it" she'd given them at the scene seemed, surprisingly, to be working. And although they'd undoubtedly heard about it by now, both her bosses hadn't said anything, either. Michelle seemed content to stay out of it unless it started interfering with her work, and Vince had pulled on his I-don't-deal-with-personal-crap hat, which suited her fine.

While Heidi was grateful for the reprieve, she knew it wouldn't last much longer. She was actually mildly surprised that Jordan and Chase had lasted the three days since it'd happened without saying anything to her, and she was sure that sooner or later, one of them was going to explode with curiosity.

Dean, on the other hand, was a different story. Heidi was under no illusions that her intimidation had worked on him, and the fact that he hadn't mentioned it to her led her to think that he'd got all the answers he needed from Lara. That was hardly surprising, since they both had the sibling-like ability to push each other's buttons, but it also meant that Dean now knew far more about the situation than Heidi herself. She hadn't actually spoken to her blond colleague since that day, and she knew that was something she needed to do, preferably before Lara came back to work. But she'd been putting it off, mostly because she still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about the whole thing.

Heidi was 99% sure she wasn't gay. That one, drunken time at university notwithstanding, she'd never kissed another woman. She'd never wanted to, until now. But for an allegedly straight woman, she was having a hell of a lot of trouble forgetting a probably-drug-fuelled kiss with a female teammate. That in itself brought up the other question she was struggling with: why had Lara kissed her? Heidi didn't remember much about the beginning of the kiss, she'd been too distracted by the surprise to take in much else, but she did clearly remember that contact had been initiated by the blond woman. She was guessing that morphine probably had a fair bit to do with it, but she also knew enough about the side effects to know that it wouldn't make someone do something they didn't already want to do on some level. Which meant that on some level, Lara had wanted to kiss her.

If you had asked Heidi this time last week if she thought Lara was anything other than straight, her answer would have been a unequivocal no, and she was usually pretty good at spotting things like that. But she hadn't seen this coming. And maybe she was over-thinking it, and it was just a result of Lara's susceptibility to morphine highs. But what if it wasn't? Heidi mentally shied away from the warm rush of…something that shot through her at that thought. Lara was engaged. Heidi absolutely could not be happy about wanting to kiss her again. She should be feeling guilty as hell. But she wasn't.

.

Heidi was jolted out of her contemplation by a call out to an MVA. It'd taken Jordan three attempts to get her attention, and it was with great reluctance that she followed him down to the trucks, knowing that he'd probably take advantage of the privacy to start interrogating her.

Surprisingly, he didn't. The drive was silent, apart from the brief description of the accident that Vince gave them over the radio, and they arrived to one of the most bizarre scenes Heidi had ever been to. Somehow, the driver had rolled the car in such a way that it was now resting on its back bumper, with the front bumper wedged under the gutter of the house he'd just managed to avoid ploughing through. Neither driver nor passenger were seriously injured – unless you counted the ridiculously high BAC – and it was a fairly easy extraction, but Heidi felt sorry for the crash investigators who now had to figure out exactly how the driver had managed to manoeuvre the car into that position.

…

It was on the way back to HQ that Jordan finally gave in to his curiosity.

"So…" he started, after a few minutes silence. "Lara's back tomorrow. How long d'you reckon she'll be on light duties?"

"Not long enough, knowing her."

"So what's the deal with you two?"

"Nice segue." Heidi answered, hoping that her avoidance of the question would deter him.

It didn't. He gazed steadily at her, face set in his annoying I'm-gonna-keep-asking look. Heidi tightened her grip on the steering wheel and kept her gaze fixed on the road until that irritating look became insufferable and she snapped.

"It was nothing." I think. "I don't wanna talk about it."

Jordan allowed himself a small grin of triumph. "Jeez, if that was nothing then I'd like to see a kiss that isn't nothing with you."

"Jordan…"

"What? I'm just sayin' a forty-two second kiss doesn't seem like nothing to me." At her questioning glance, he explained. "Chase timed it."

Heidi rolled her eyes and focused back on the road. "Yeah, well, it was nothing."

"You're blushing a lot over 'nothing'. You know she's getting married in…" he checked his watch. "four days, right?"

Heidi knew. She'd been constantly reminding herself that in the hope that it would make the weird feeling in her chest disappear. "She started it. Are you gonna give her the third-degree about this?"

"Lara was high, what's your excuse?" His tone lost its bantering quality and became more serious as he asked.

That was a good question. A snarky 'Have you seen her?' was Heidi's first thought, but she didn't voice it, opting instead to glare at Jordan in the hope he'd get the message and drop it.

He didn't. "Well? C'mon, Heidi, that seriously came outta nowhere. What's going on?"

"I don't know, alright!" She finally snapped as she guided the truck into the HQ garage behind Dean. "I don't know why she kissed me and I don't know why I let her. I'm as confused as the rest of you. Now, if you're finished with the interrogation, I've got work to do."

With that, she pulled the handbrake on far harder than necessary and got out, slamming the door behind her and leaving a puzzled Jordan to check the equipment.

"What was that about?" Chase asked him as he got out of the second truck. Jordan just shrugged.

"I've got no idea, mate."

…

Their confusion was further heightened when, ten minutes later, Heidi stormed past where Jordan and Chase were restocking the medipacks and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Jordan called after her, not really expecting an answer.

"Out." She called back, to his surprise. "Cover for me."

Jordan glanced at Chase, who just shrugged.

AN: Lemme know what you think. It felt slight OOC to me, but I couldn't put my finger on why so I just went with it.