Author's Note: As promised, dropped B-plot! (Which is to say that I'm aware of it, and I'm embracing it.)

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Chapter 3

In the Astraeus Lab, Allison and Henry explained the problem to Jo. She got the gist of it. Something about electromagnets, really hot plasma, and sabotage. When they described it again to Carter twenty minutes later, she was able to glean even more. There was a momentary disruption in the electromagnetic field that usually contains the VASIMR's waste heat and keeps the hot plasma from destroying the ship. The safeguards used to prevent that from happening had been tampered with. If they had just said that, it would have saved a lot of time.

Carter and Jo talked to Dr. Kemp, the engineer in charge of building the VASIMR. Kemp felt the need to overload them with more unnecessary information about the system, but she also pointed them to Dr. Schwartz, who worked specifically on the safeguards that had malfunctioned. By 3 p.m., Jo knew as much about electromagnatism as she was ever going to.

She spent the next few hours reviewing security records for an anomalies between the first test run and the second, but she found nothing noteworthy. As she was about to call it a day, she realized that she had forgotten all about her Danny problem. She wanted to get this done today, and she did not want to have to do it at Danny's home or in any other kind of social situation, so time was running out. She walked briskly to Danny's office, hoping he would still be there.

Fortunately, he was. Of course, as soon as Jo saw him sitting at his desk, she realized that she had no idea what she was going to say. Luckily, Danny got the ball rolling by saying, "So, Zane Donovan?"

He had a little bit of a smirk, and she did not like that. But she put that aside, because things were about to get worse for her anyway, and she needed to get this over with. "Yeah, about that . . ."

Danny did not let her say whatever she had been about to say, which she was still not sure of anyway. "I just have one question and then I'll let it go. Did Senator Wen know that you were dating him when you convinced her to pardon his felony convictions?"

There was so much judgment in that, and only a small part of it was directed at Zane. The truth wouldn't even make it much better, but Jo was no longer so concerned with making sure Danny knew the truth. "You know, I'm not sure that came up. But it's not really relevant because Wen based her decision on the recommendations of Dr. Blake, Dr. Fargo, Dr. Marten, Dr. Parrish, Sheriff Carter . . ." She tried to think of anyone else Wen might have consulted, but she could not come up with more at that moment. "And she based it on her own assessment that Zane would be an asset to the mission and should be allowed to continue his candidacy. So my personal feelings didn't really factor into it."

"Okay," Danny said as though he was conceding the point. For a second, Jo thought he was really going to let it go, but that smirk still hadn't quite left his face. Instead, it spread into a full grin. "The guy's a criminal, Lupo. We're talking convictions, plural."

"He had to plead guilty on all counts as a condition of being paroled here." Jo had no doubt that Zane did every single thing he was accused of and more, but she did not have to say that. "Technically, he was never convicted."

That did not really make a difference to Danny. "He stole three million dollars from the United States government, which was never recovered by the way. And forget about just the things that got him sent here. Did you know he was expelled from M.I.T. for 'misappropriation of university property?' Whatever that means."

Jo should have known Danny would do his research. She could have told him that, as Zane's girlfriend, she knew everything about Zane, but it was easier to keep defending him than to get into that relationship. This was a digression, and she almost welcomed it. "I know they didn't press charges, and that Yale, knowing exactly what happened at M.I.T., immediately recruited him into their graduate physics program."

"And then kicked him out two years later."

Even knowing what he was going to say next, she continued. "At which point Cornell picked him up."

"And subsequently expelled him," Danny said with a smile.

"Not until after he won a prestigious award for his work in super—"

He cut her off, probably because he already knew all of this. "You don't have to recite his resume, Lupo. I'm sure the guy's a brilliant physicist. I get why he's here. I even kind of understand why Wen wanted him on Astraeus. What I don't get is what you see in the guy."

Jo did not know what she was supposed to say to that. "Because you don't know him. All that stuff from before, that's not who he is. He was young, and he acted out. We all did stupid things when we were young." She had not intended that as a reference to the stupid choices she made regarding Danny, but if he chose to take it that way, so much the better. "Since he's been here, he's changed. He doesn't do that kind of stuff anymore."

"Really? I have three years of disciplinary reports that suggest otherwise." He paused. "Or actually, not quite three years. In fact, I'm pretty sure I can pinpoint the exact moment you started sleeping with him."

That was it. She was just so sick of Danny that she did not give herself time to think. "You want to know what I see in Zane? He's not a lying, cheating bastard. I'll take the fraud convictions over that any day."

That finally wiped the stupid smile off his face. "I know we never really got the chance to talk after what happened in Georgia, but—"

She knew where this was going, and she did not want to rehash all the ugly details. She needed to make it clear that she had not been pining away for him all these years. "I don't need to talk about it. I'm fine; I'm with Zane now. You're the one who seems to be having a problem here." That was a good ending note, and she wanted to get out of there before he took back control of the conversation. "So, you should work on that," she added, and then she walked out.

It was not until she was outside the office that she realized what she had said. It would be very counterproductive to go back and tell him that technically she wasn't exactly with Zane. It was probably too late to ever tell him that. That left her with only one option.

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Zane was not surprised when Jo showed up at his door that evening. He had been expecting her.

When she came in, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it. It took her a while before she finally said, "I talked to Danny."

"Hmm." Zane had a pretty good idea how that conversation had gone. But maybe he was wrong, maybe she had actually corrected the misconceptions. So he asked, "How did that go?"

"Not . . ." She sighed. "Not the way I wanted it to." She took a deep breath. "So now all I have to do is tell you why, um, why I want you to be my fake boyfriend, and you'll do it, right?"

He would do it either way. He did not like the idea of Jo's ex-boyfriend thinking she was single any more than she did, but he was not going to tell her that. After all these months of her holding back, he finally had to chance to make her be candid about what she was feeling, and he was not going to let that pass him by. "Yeah. You should make it good though."

The conversation had just started, and Jo was already annoyed with him. She crossed over to the couch, but she did not sit down. "Well, first of all, you are literally a genius. And Danny, he's very intelligent, in the real world. He's used to be being one of the smartest guys in any room, and I don't think he realizes yet how hard it's going to be to go from that to here, where he's below average. But eventually he is going to have to begrudgingly admit to himself that you are much, much smarter than him. Even if you don't have a Ph.D."

That last part seemed to come out of left field. "Did he say something about me not having a Ph.D.?"

"He called you Dr. Donovan," she said, as though he should have seen the slight in that.

Zane was pretty sure that had been an honest mistake, and Major Danny hadn't been the first one to make it. Still, he felt the need to set the record straight. "If I really cared about getting a Ph.D., I'd have one by now."

"I know," she said sincerely. "And soon, Danny will know that too."

"Okay. So I'm smarter than him. But as you pointed out, there's a lot of guys like that here. So what else?"

She cringed a little, like she was hoping he had forgotten the real purpose of this conversation. "Also . . ." She took a long pause before reluctantly saying, "You're very attractive. And not in a science professor, Nathan Stark kind of way, but—"

Even though he was enjoying where this was going, he felt the need to stop her there. "Wait, you thought Stark was attractive?"

She went on as though she had not heard him. "But in an athletic way, which is the kind of male attractiveness that someone like Danny would be able to recognize and ultimately feel threatened by.

"And then there's your criminal record," she continued. "Normally, that would be a huge negative, but I think the whole bad boy thing is really going to grate on someone as straight-laced and by the book as Danny. Because we did talk about that, and he has got to hate that I'm so blasé about you committing grand larceny. I'm not the kind of woman who would overlook that for just anyone."

Now they were getting somewhere. He did not need her to tell him that he was a genius, and it didn't really help to know that Major Danny would find him attractive. But this, overlooking his criminal past, that wasn't just about making her ex jealous. That was something she had really done, not just for their fake relationship. And not for "just anyone." Those were the kind of things he had been looking for out of this conversation, and he was ready to tell her that he would go along with her exaggerations—because, at the end of the day, that was all they were. However, she had one more thing to say.

"But really, and never underestimate the importance of this, the reason I described you when coming up with a fake boyfriend is because we are sleeping together. I did not think it out any further than that. It just works out that you're also. . ."

"Perfect?" he supplied for her.

She did not dignify that with a response. "So are we good here?" she asked, sinking down onto the couch.

Zane decided to try and push his luck. "Why did you withdraw from the Astraeus mission?"

She shook her head. "That wasn't part of the deal."

Zane did not know what Jo had told Callahan, but it was obvious that it was too late for her to go back on it now. She needed Zane to go along with this, and he could have used that to force her to tell him what he wanted to know. But it just did not seem as important as it had as recently as that morning. When she didn't tell him that she wanted him to stay in Eureka after he was pardoned and when she took her name out of consideration for the mission, it felt like she was pulling back. Going through the candidacy together, they had been on a path of sorts. Zane did not know where that path was leading, other than Titan, and he was content not to ask those questions. But when Jo withdrew, it was like she was opting off the path, opting to send him away for six months while she went back to her regularly programmed life. And they would still have to deal with those six months, but for the next three weeks until the launch, she was not going to be able to pull away from him.

Over the last several months, even when things were at their best between them, even after she stopped telling him every time that it would be their last time, he had felt her holding back something, some part of herself. There was just a weight hanging over them, the weight of her history with the Zane he could have been. And try as he might, Zane could never quite forget about the diamond ring that he had apparently given her in an alternate timeline, the diamond ring that he was nowhere near ready to give her in this timeline. He knew that she was in a different place, that she was years ahead of him, and he tried to be understanding, but it was getting exhausting. They were never going to get anywhere doing this dance of two steps forward, two steps back.

But now, there weren't going to be any steps back. He would get the chance to date her without any of the pressure of her history in a different world, because they would just be pretending. If she did not see how perfectly this worked out for Zane, then he was not going to enlighten her. "Okay. You got yourself a fake boyfriend. You want to spend the night?"

She glanced over at the kitchen. "Do you have anything for dinner?"

He revised his question. "Do you want to get food at Cafe Diem and then spend the night here?"

Jo only needed to think about it for a second. "Yeah," she said, standing up.

Zane hid a smile as he followed her out the door. Whether Jo realized it or not, nothing had actually changed between them that day except the way they referred to the relationship to one third party. Yet, he got to pretend like he was doing her a favor. So far, Zane was perfectly okay with this Major Danny development.

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