Episode tag to 1.5 "The Signing," in which Sue and Jack go for a walk after work post-episode and Jack tries to casually ask if Sue is interested in Troy. (Spoiler alert: he fails at the "casually" part of that.)

AN: 2 considerations to remember here and moving forward—1, as many of you may already know, Deaf refers to cultural Deafness, while deaf refers to an inability to hear without regard to cultural tendencies. If this is the first you know of this and that doesn't make sense to you, consider this: Troy is culturally Deaf, everything about how he interacts with the world being dictated by his Deafness. His signing, his sentence structure, everything about how he interacts with the world is based on Deaf culture, as surely as everything about how a person from another country interacting with our characters varies based on the culture they were raised in. Lucy, of course, is hearing, even though she becomes fluent in ASL throughout the series. Sue is in a complicated place, one in which many hard-of-hearing, late-deaf, or speaking/lip-reading deaf people find themselves—she is physically deaf and fluent in ASL, but was raised culturally hearing. She says several times throughout the series that sometimes neither Deaf nor hearing people know what to make of her. In a way she fits into both worlds. In another way she doesn't quite fit into either.

All that is to say, the typical written way to indicate that you can be referencing physical deafness and cultural Deafness at the same time is to write d/Deaf, BUT in spoken word that doesn't come out that way. You can specify "big-D deaf" or "little-d deaf" but especially when people are in conversation, I find it a little awkward sometimes to figure out how to write out how they would say it. In this story, I chose to use d/Deaf at least once, and several others probably will as well. In general, I try hard to apply "deaf" or "Deaf" specifically when there is such specificity given the context. But if ever I use the wrong one, I offer here my sincerest apologies to the members of the Deaf community as well as to those of the hearing community who take it upon themselves to be their protectors. As a raised-hearing but now moderately hard-of-hearing woman who has been involved in the Deaf community to varying degrees off and on my entire life, it is very important to me, but it is also a sticky area when trying to also keep the dialogue flowing correctly.

Anyway! #2, and far less controversial or culturally poignant: I occasionally (including in this story) reference how long Sue has been there. I base this on the dates of the episode releases, even though I realize that technically they would be longer than that. For one thing, Sue is away at Quantico more than one week so more time passes from the Pilot to the 2nd episode anyway, but besides that, they never really specify how much time passes from one episode to the next anyway. Rather than try to guess or figure it out each time, I just went by episode dates even though I know that's not really logical for the show. Feel free to assume the time frame is different however you see fit.

Thanks, and enjoy!

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"So," Jack said, as he and Sue slowly walked along the sidewalk that evening after work, something that was becoming more and more habitual for them. "All that worrying everyone did and . . . there was never really anything to worry about?"

"Well, not regarding me," she confirmed. "It was Myles we all should have been worrying about."

"Right," he said with a barely-suppressed smirk, "so nothing to worry about."

"Jack!" she admonished, lightly tapping his arm with the back of her hand. "You would miss him and you know it."

He shrugged, slowing his pace to turn and look into her face more directly. "Eh, maybe. But if it came to keeping him or you, I'd choose you. Always."

She smiled, and they stood there a moment lost in one another once again, before he cleared his throat and turned, indicating they should resume walking.

"So, uh, Troy got into art school, huh?"

"Yeah, he's really good," she said.

"Yeah, I know," he responded. "I saw those pictures he drew of you. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was a bit . . . smitten." He was trying his best to look casual, which was particularly difficult to achieve when speaking to someone who only had visual cues to go on. He was trying to keep his mouth toward her but his eyes ahead, and yet to also watch her response out of the corner of his eye. Surprisingly, rather than flattered, she only looked confused.

"No, I don't think so. He draws a lot of different people and a lot of different things. I mean, unless you think he's also smitten with Levi, some trees in the park, and a few dozen cars," she teased.

"Eh, maybe the cars," he joked back. He hesitated a moment, still striving for a casual tone, and said, "Uh . . . what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you . . . interested in him?"

Despite every attempt he'd made to try to seem like this was just a regular casual conversation between friends, she wasn't fooled. "Why? Are you jealous?" she asked in a teasing voice, as she turned from the sidewalk into a park.

"No," he said a little too quickly and a little too emphatically. "I just . . . was . . . curious . . . if the fact that he's Deaf and all . . . if that was something more . . . appealing . . . to you . . . in a relationship. In general. I mean, someone who could understand what you experience, someone who could be part of that side of your world that I—we—the rest of us . . . we aren't part of."

She smiled a little at his clumsy explanation, clearly not fooled, but playing along. "No, I would be happy to be with a man who was d/Deaf or hearing, as long as he was the man I loved. I mean, I would marry a blind man if that was who I fell in love with, though that would be a lot more complicated for both of us. But I don't think that'll happen."

"Why not?"

She shrugged. "I guess what I look for in a relationship . . . doesn't preclude blindness or deafness . . . I just don't . . . picture him that way . . . at least not that I can see right now."

He swallowed. The way she said that sounded like she already had someone specific in mind. If not Troy, then he could only hope it was . . . but that seemed unlikely.

So instead he asked, "So, um, what—out of curiosity—do you picture?"

She twisted her lips in contemplation for a moment, then said, "Well . . . I think he would be someone I could laugh with. Someone I could joke with. Someone who didn't get upset when I made jokes at his expense."

He laughed. "Right now that sounds like everyone you've ever met. I'm not sure you could ever truly upset anyone."

She arched an eyebrow. "You'd be surprised. But don't interrupt, I'm not done."

He raised a hand in surrender. "Sorry, continue."

"He would be . . . someone I consider one of my very best friends. Someone I could tell things to that I might not even always tell Lucy. He would have to love Levi almost as much as he loved me, of course. And I think he would be both intelligent and handsome, even though if pressed to stroke his ego I would of course tease him that I couldn't think of any such redeeming qualities."

"Of course."

"He would be . . . taller than me, but not by a lot. Maybe just a couple inches. That way if I wore low heels I wouldn't be taller than him, but it would be easy to switch between reading his lips and looking into his eyes." As she said this, she glanced at his lips, then his eyes, and he cleared his throat again.

"Y-yeah. I can see how that could be . . . effective."

"He would probably be . . . from a small town like I am," she continued. "We would share a lot of similar interests, but also have some different ones that we could introduce each other to."

"Like ASL," he suggested.

"Or sushi," she suggested lightly, and he nearly choked on nothing from hearing her name the very first food he introduced her to—and one that, in fact, she hadn't even enjoyed. "Or ice hockey," she continued just as casually, and he swallowed hard again. "After all, I grew up ice skating and playing field hockey but I hear combining them isn't as easy as it sounds. I'd like to try that sometime."

"Would you?" he asked, and mentally thanked God that she couldn't hear the squeak in his voice, although she had this uncanny way of knowing when such things happened by some visual cues hearing people often weren't aware existed. He'd been trained in surveillance from several different schools of perspective and still couldn't see all that she saw just from how she lived life every day.

She smiled a little, but continued instead of responding. "We would have an easy camaraderie between us from the moment we met, like we'd known each other for years, but somehow we'd also have little . . . sparks of electricity between us. Little moments where we both knew we took each other's breath away."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." They stopped while Levi took care of business, and then she pulled out a DoggiDoo disposable bag to clean it up with. Before she could, Jack took it from her, bent to use it, tied it shut, and tossed it in a nearby trash can. She pulled out a small bottle of hand sanitizer, which he gratefully accepted.

"And," she said, not walking again, just standing and gazing at him, "he would find excuses to go for walks with me. He would do little things for me so I wouldn't have to do them, just because he wanted to take care of me. He would show his care for me a thousand times in a million ways and think I didn't notice, but I did."

He stared into her eyes, questioning if he was really understanding her, this entire conversation, correctly. "You did?"

She nodded. "I always did. And even if we've only known each other a little over a month . . . I would already be pretty sure that I never wanted another relationship again. And pretty sure that he felt the same way. Even if we weren't technically dating."

He swallowed again. "And . . . if he did feel that same way . . . if he felt all that and more . . . from the very day that he met a beautiful, enigmatic, brilliant woman . . . what would you propose he do about it?"

"Well . . . if he were smart, and we were out on a walk under a moonlit sky . . . he might kiss me," she suggested.

He nodded, unable to think of any other words, and reached his hand up to cup her cheek, slowly guiding their faces together until their lips touched. Somehow, he had never imagined their first kiss being under a slightly fritzing street lamp in a park with his hands smelling sharply of hand sanitizer, but as it turned out, none of that mattered. It couldn't have been any more perfect.

For a moment they stood there, lips pressed together, tentative, still, until she moved her jaw ever so slightly to change the pressure, and they both suddenly lost all restraint. They opened their mouths to one another, pressed their bodies together, roamed hands over the frustratingly unrevealing layers of their coats as well as on the warm, soft skin of one another's faces and through their hair.

For all either of them knew, they might have stayed there forever, lost in one another, if Levi hadn't started nosing his way between them, seconds or minutes or hours later—there was no telling, really. They broke apart as little as they could manage, breathing hard through their foolishly happy grins.

"So," Jack said after a moment. "What now?"

"Now?" she asked. "Well . . . you could walk me home."

"And then?"

"And then . . . you could come in for a while . . . if you wanted."

He smiled. "Nothing would make me happier."

Hand in hand, they resumed their walk, totally forgetting that both their cars were still parked back in the Hoover Building parking garage.