Episode tag to 3.8 "Did She or Didn't She," in which Sue asks Jack if she's hurt him with her teasing that sometimes can take on a sharper quality.
TW: Like the episode, this deals with discussions of abuse. Unlike the episode, this will go into more kinds of abuse, including sexual abuse. Please proceed with wisdom and consideration for your personal mental health needs. If you need to skip this chapter, please do so rather than place yourself in a bad mental space.
AN: Canonically in the series, everything up to the Pilot is fairly accurate to the real Sue Thomas's life, except set 30 years later than when it really happened and with a few minor changes for the sake of the visual medium, time constraints, etc., while everything from the Pilot on is only based on the very loose concept of her being a deaf woman who reads lips and speaks, in the FBI in surveillance, and most everything else is fiction. In keeping with this, I am drawing on the real Sue's backstory as told in her autobiography Silent Night. In other words, the present-day elements of this are the character from the show, the backstory elements are true life experiences of the real woman, as described in Silent Night, with consideration to how those experiences may have affected the show's character. And, much like the show, I did add some details to the backstory stuff for narrative purposes, mostly just because it was stuff she hadn't specified in the book, but I've kept it as true as I could.
Also, it's more probable than just possible that I'm projecting some of my experience as a neurodivergent individual onto her experiences as a deaf individual. From things that she says in the book and that were written into the show, I don't think my supposition about things that would have been difficult to grasp re: teasing and social understandings are outlandish for the d/Deaf experience, but I am also very well aware that my depiction of them here are heavily colored by my own neurodivergent experiences.
~0~
When they left Carol's hospital room, Jack asked Sue if she wanted lunch. She nodded vaguely, seeming more to acquiesce than to actually care, her mind apparently far away. When he asked where, she only shrugged and muttered that he could choose.
He would typically tease her about not being able to decide, or offer suggestions he knew she wouldn't prefer just to get a reaction, but today that was clearly not what she needed. Instead, he drove them to a nearby diner that they both liked, someplace comfortable and familiar and quiet enough to feel a bit private without being too intimate.
When it came time to order, he asked what she wanted but she just shrugged again. "Are you okay?" he asked, concerned.
"Yeah," she said softly, "I guess I'm just not very hungry."
"Do—do you want me to order something for you, or, um . . . ?"
She nodded, so he glanced over the menu, found something he knew she'd ordered before and had liked, and ordered one for each of them.
When the food arrived, she pushed it around her plate far more than she actually ate any. Carefully reaching toward her lest he startle her, he touched her hand to draw her eyes to him and asked, "Do you need to talk?"
For the third time, she shrugged.
"Sue . . . I won't push if you don't want to talk, but . . . you're concerning me."
She pulled both lips in between her teeth for a moment, then blew air out slowly, drew in a deep new breath, and said softly, "Have I—have I ever made you feel . . . like how Ted treated Carol?"
"What?" Jack so thoroughly had not expected that question that he didn't even have the ability to be surprised, he was just trying to process what it even meant. "How—how could you ever—what are you talking about?"
"I . . . I know I can be . . . sarcastic. I tease a lot but sometimes I worry that it might seem . . . meaner. Have I ever, um . . . ." She drew another deep breath, then said, "I might need to explain a few things for this to make sense."
He nodded. "Whatever you need, but the short answer is that no, you have never ever made me feel anything like that."
She nodded, but didn't look entirely convinced. "Okay. Well . . . one of the things that a lot of people don't think about with not being able to hear is that I can't . . . I can't always grasp what it's like when people tease each other. There are a lot of different parts to that. For one thing, I can't hear the difference in their tone of voice. I had to have a lot of speech therapy just to learn how to convey my tone of voice but I don't ever really know which way people are saying things, I'm only guessing by their facial expressions, body language, context clues—everything I can piece together. So when you combine that with . . . well, with having a couple big brothers who liked to pick on me and play pranks on me growing up, and then being the outcast because I was 'that deaf girl' at school, but I didn't have any d/Deaf friends either, not until college, so . . . I just never really . . . I didn't naturally learn how friends tease and joke with each other. I had to study it and consciously try to learn it, which as I gather, is very different from when people grow up just doing it because it's how everyone is talking with each other."
Jack nodded. "I can imagine it would be. I'm sorry I never thought about that."
"Don't be. It would be weird if everyone did, really. That's the whole point, people don't have to. Most people. But, um . . . because of that, sometimes I can think of really great comebacks to things but I'm not sure if it's something someone would say only meanly or if it's something that would be teasing between friends. I mean it as teasing between friends. And I just don't ever want you to feel like I ever really mean it when I tease you."
"No, Sue, I've never thought that."
She nodded, a hint of relief on her face but still overshadowed with concern. "Good. Good." She frowned at her still uneaten food for a moment before returning her eyes to his face and saying, "There's . . . there's one other thing."
"Yes? Anything you need, Sue."
"I . . . ." She swallowed hard. "It's also hard sometimes to know what's okay to say or not say because . . . I haven't always been . . . in the best circumstances myself. I've never . . . um, never been in a situation like Carol's, but . . . I'm not a stranger to abuse."
Jack drew in a sharp breath, involuntarily reaching for her hand at the same time, almost to prove to himself that she was still really in front of him, as though by this admission her past abuser could retroactively take her from him.
She was still talking though. "And abuse has this way of . . . kind of messing with your mind, making it hard to know what 'normal' should really look like. Especially when nobody told you that some people do the thing that you keep dreading having happen again, and you don't know exactly what this thing is that's happening or why, and . . . it just all seems wrong but you don't even really know if it's wrong or you are."
He squeezed her hand lightly, trying to will comfort and support from himself into her. "Sue, what . . . don't tell me anything you don't want to, but anything you need to talk about or—anything at all, I'm here."
She nodded. "Um . . . I don't think you need details but . . . my parents had these friends . . . we called them aunt and uncle even though they weren't really. When I was about 12 or so . . . Uncle Keith started, um, forcing . . . certain attentions on me. It started with when we were kissing them hello and he forced his tongue in my mouth when nobody else saw. I barely even knew what had just happened. And I . . . I didn't . . . ."
She hesitated, then stopped speaking and switched to signing, her face crumpling a little as tears sprang to her eyes. I was afraid to tell my parents. I thought my parents needed their friends more than I needed to be safe.
Jack moved out of his side of the booth and around to slide in next to her, leaving her space but offering his arms if she would find comfort in them. She didn't even hesitate, just folded herself into his side and cried against his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, wanting to shield her from all the hurt and pain, from all the reminders, from her own past itself, from anyone who could ever bring harm to this beautiful light in the world. The people who bullied her. This man that abused her. The people who didn't know she was the most amazing person in the world, or maybe they did and wanted to puff themselves up, so they made her feel inferior when she was their superior in every way.
When she finally had cried herself out enough to lift her head and speak again, she whispered, "Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"Hey," he said, handing her a napkin to use as a tissue, "hey, hey, no, no apologies. I told you, whatever you need, I'm here. If you need an ear to listen to you, a shoulder to cry on, a hug, a friend to sit with you but not touch or listen or say anything at all. I mean it, Sue. Anything."
She nodded slowly, almost looking like it was hard to process the meaning of this. Like her mind was trying to supply the exceptions.
"No buts, Sue," he added. "I don't mean, 'anything but something-or-other,' I mean anything."
She nodded a little more certainly this time and said, "He um . . . he never did anything . . . I mean he never . . . inside . . . um, he just . . . kissing and touching me and stuff. He showed up next to my bed naked once and I hid under the covers and he went away at some point, but since I couldn't hear him I didn't know he'd left. But he never . . . ."
Jack nodded. "Is . . . um, do you ever have to see him anymore?"
She shook her head. "The last time I saw him, he was lying in a casket at his funeral." She set her jaw, glaring at the middle distance beyond him. "My mom told me I didn't have to go to the funeral if I didn't want to. She thought I insisted because I would miss him so much. I insisted because I had to see for myself that he really was dead and couldn't hurt me anymore."
"Good," Jack said. Sue looked up at him in surprise. He arched an eyebrow unapologetically. "Because if he wasn't dead, I would've found him and killed him myself."
"Jack," she said warningly, "you couldn't do that and you know it."
He shook his head. "Maybe not. If we could find a way to get him in prison I would have settled for that. But don't underestimate the lengths I would go to to protect you, Sue. Even if it's protecting you from your own past."
Her face crumpled again, but this time it was clearly because she was touched by his words. "Jack . . . why?"
"Because . . . you called me brilliant."
"Huh?"
He smiled, adjusting his arm around her shoulders to snuggle her a little closer while still maintaining a distance where she could read his lips. "You tease me with those zingers if I say something asking you to stroke my ego or anything, or if I'm getting too full of myself. But then when I say, 'How did I know you were going to suggest that?' you say, 'Because you're brilliant.'"
She still looked confused. "I don't understand how—"
"Because I can see the difference on your face and hear it in your voice, Sue. You don't say it the same way. You say you can't think of something you like about me in a voice that says, 'I just thought of this really great zinger, I have to throw it out there.' But you say, 'Because you're brilliant,' in a voice that says, 'I want to butter him up, but I also just believe this.' I mean, that's how I perceive it at least, maybe it's just wishful thinking but—"
"It's not," she said quickly. He stopped and she hesitated only a moment before moving ahead to reassure him. "It's not wishful thinking. You're right, that's exactly how I think of things like that. Because you are brilliant, and . . . and so many other things. But most of the time I find jokes to make instead because I'm not . . . um, not supposed to . . . ."
"Notice?" he asked, a slight tease only barely taking the edge off the heated look he gave her. She nodded, eyes captured by his.
"Me either," he admitted. "I'm not supposed to notice how brilliant and wonderful and gorgeous you are but . . . I can't help it. I'm a conscious human being, cognizant of my surroundings, and you're in those surroundings much of the time. Not as much as I would like," he admitted ruefully, "but still, much of the time. How could I help but notice?"
"But," she began, then paused.
"But what?"
"But you don't . . . you don't come back at me with the kinds of zingers I come back at you with."
"Are—are you saying you do that . . . at least partly . . . to try not to notice me?"
"No." She glanced away shyly for just a moment before returning her eyes to his. "It's like you said, I can't help but notice. I just . . . do that so I can keep a little distance. So maybe not doing anything about noticing won't hurt as much."
He squeezed her shoulders to emphasize their current proximity as he said, "I think we're failing at the distance thing right now."
She laughed a little, then turned her body a little more toward him, putting her nearer hand up to his chest and her further hand up to his face. "It . . . could be closer," she said softly, nervously, hopefully. "If . . . we were to fail at the not-doing-anything-about-noticing thing too."
His eyes said he understood her meaning, and was entirely willing as well, but he didn't move yet. First, he said, "Only—only ever—if you want."
She nodded. "I do. So much."
They leaned closer, lips touching, slowly and sweetly enjoying the feel of one another. When they broke apart, Sue rested her head against Jacks shoulder again, but this time instead of with tears it was with a sigh of contentment. He reached across the table and pulled his food nearer, and silently, wrapped in each other and both internally grateful that their meal was entirely finger foods, they ate their lunch.
When they were done, they walked hand-in-hand back to the car, settled Levi in the back, and then settled into the front. Before Jack began to drive, he turned to Sue and said, "If ever—ever—I touch you or say or do anything to you in any way that makes you uncomfortable, please, tell me. I don't—I never want to—"
"I know," she said. "I will, I promise. And if I ever say something that hurts your feelings, please tell me. I don't want to hurt you either. Not ever."
"I promise," he replied, squeezing her hand, leaning in for another quick kiss, and then preparing to drive.
As they set out she said, "And . . . that goes for other people too. If I'm teasing someone and you think maybe I've really hurt their feelings, or something I meant in a friendly way sounds mean, please tell me."
"Sue," he said with a smile, "I love that you care so much that you think about things like that, but I honestly don't know if you've ever hurt anyone's feelings in your life."
She shrugged. "I hurt you when I sided with Tony over you."
"And we talked about it and we worked through that and moved on. But you weren't teasing, that was a whole different thing."
"Still . . . will you?"
"If I ever think so, I promise to tell you, but I hope you know that those teasing things you say, even if they would be mean from someone else—you have such a sweet way about you, from you it's just endearing. One of the reasons everybody loves you even when they think they won't." He reached to take her hand again as he added, "One of the many things I love about you."
She squeezed his hand in response, unable to stop the smile that sprang to her face. "And I know you're always there. One of the many things I love about you."
They exchanged understanding smiles as they continued on their way back to the office.
~0~
That afternoon, Myles and Bobby returned from their rather harrowing trip to Arizona in which almost nothing had gone according to their plans, and Myles returned quite sunburned. They were so glad to be back that Myles actually asked to see the sneer that Sue had recently taught Levi, the one with which he'd startled Myles only a few days earlier.
Rather than give Levi the command, Sue just looked at Levi expectantly and then said to Myles, "I don't think he recognizes you. Or . . . he could be trying to figure out if the shade of red in your face clashes with the orange in your tie."
Myles chuckled a little. "Not you too, Thomas."
She signed the sneer command at Levi and returned to her desk with a smile on her face and a silent chuckle. She was in her chair and looked up just in time to see Myles say, "Ah, there's no place like home." Her smile widened to see how well he took the jest. Then she glanced over at Jack, wondering what her new (and as yet secret, though they would have to do something about that soon) boyfriend thought.
He smiled back at her and signed, Funny lady.
~0~
AN2: As an abuse survivor myself [primarily verbal/emotional] this subject is extremely important to me. If you are in such a situation, there is help. Please PM me if you need help finding resources in your area.