Sue was just about to climb into bed when Levi suddenly jumped up on her, then ran to the door, turning back to her in clear agitation.
"Levi? What is it?" Sue asked, as though the dog would suddenly be able to tell her . . . and she'd suddenly be able to read dog lips. She had a habit of speaking to him as though he'd be able to answer her, though. It was a comfort to her, if nothing else.
Slowly, cautiously, she opened the door, and watched as Levi darted out and down the hall to the next bedroom—Jack's room.
Sue inhaled sharply, wondering the best course of action. If she went in and he was . . . in a state of undress . . . that would be beyond embarrassing. If she called out asking if he was okay and there was an intruder in his room, she'd be alerting them. With visions of the Prince of Terror beating Jack bloody, she overcame her concerns and was reaching for the door when it swung open. Sue emitted a small shriek of both surprise and fear before realizing it was Jack himself coming out.
"Sue!" he said, equally surprised. "Uh, did you need something?"
"Uh—Levi was just worried about you. He seemed to think something was wrong? Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah, I just, uh, stubbed my toe, no big deal." He tried to brush it off casually, but Sue glanced down and without even having to lean closer, could already see that his left big toe was swollen and turning purple.
"Oh, Jack! That looks terrible! You should really have that checked, it might be broken!"
"Oh, no, no, it's fine," he quickly assured her. "I just need to put some ice on it."
"Well, let me help you," she said. Without either agreeing or disagreeing with her offer, he started limping toward the stairs, but she immediately stepped in front of him to stop him. "No sir! You aren't going up and down stairs right now, you go sit down!"
So he started back toward his room, only for her to add firmly, "In my room for now. We don't need you breaking more in the dark!"
She didn't wait for him to follow her instructions, but headed downstairs for first aid supplies, leaving him alone with the clear assumption that he would follow her instructions. When she returned a few minutes later, trying not to be too distracted by how very comfortable he looked lying back on her bed and how seeing him there made her heart skip a beat or two, she had a whole tray loaded with supplies. "Whoa, Sue," Jack said, sitting forward and reaching to help. "It's just a toe, you brought enough stuff to patch up a whole broken body!"
Sue twisted to hold the tray away from his outstretched hands and stared him down until he sat back onto the bed, resigning himself to her commanding care. Once he had settled back again, she slid the tray onto the bedside table while explaining, "It's not as much as it looks like, really, but you do need to take care of that toe." She turned and handed him a bag of frozen peas. "I know it's just a toe, but you don't want it to end up somehow messed up so that it affects your balance and you can't chase bad guys as well!"
He laughed with her at that line of reasoning, but added, "I really do appreciate your concern. It's just, a stubbed toe doesn't seem worth so much hassle." He glanced down at the peas he had on his foot and then back to her, asking, "What is it with you putting peas on injuries, anyway? You got peas to put on Howie's face back when you first flipped him and got him to be an informant."
She shrugged, handing him a cracker that she had just spread peanut butter on. "Ice cubes sit weird around most parts of the body, and feel kind of poky. Ice packs are usually hard and don't conform to the wound at all, unless you spend extra money specifically for the gel kind. Plus we don't have any at work that I've ever seen, and we don't have any here either since it's just a temporary house and only needs to look lived in, not be fully up to all our creature comforts."
"I don't know if I'd call an ice pack a creature comfort," he muttered around peanut butter and crumbs.
"Your toe begs to differ." She handed him another cracker. "Anyway, peas are relatively inexpensive and when they're frozen they're basically little balls of ice that won't poke like the corners of ice cubes and that, as a unit, can curve to conform to the injured body part. My mom used to keep four bags of peas in the freezer that were labeled 'INJURY ONLY' and after we used them, she would put them back in the freezer. Sometimes after thawing and refreezing so many times, they became ice blocks inside the bag, and then she would throw them on the floor a few times to break them up again before putting it on an injury."
"She kept four of them in the freezer? I can't imagine you were getting injured that often!"
She gave him a wry smile as she handed him two pills and a glass of water. "I have three brothers, remember? In all my years figure skating and all the other activities my mother put me in, I never needed the peas as often as my brothers did in any one year. Sometimes in one month." She gave a small laugh. "The time that Tommy tried to build a bike ramp and didn't think through how he would be landing until he was already in the air, he had all four packs of peas on him at once, on different parts of his body."
Jack smiled. "Sounds like me and my brothers."
"What? But you still have all your own teeth!" she teased, harking back to a conversation from over a year earlier, back during their first case together. It wasn't the first time it had come up again, and it had become something of a running inside joke for the two of them.
He laughed, then winced slightly as he shifted, trying to find a comfortable position in which he could hold the peas on his toe without causing a kink in his back or figuring out how to become a contortionist. Sue grabbed several pillows (whomever from the Bureau had arranged the bedding for them clearly believed they would be safest from terrorist threats as long as they were fully supplied to build a child's dream pillow fort) and propped them against the headboard, then indicated for Jack to lean back against them. As he moved to comply, she reached over and grasped his left ankle, gently guiding him to bend his leg and place his foot flat on the bed. Finally, she settled the bag of peas on top of it and then settled herself on the edge of the bed, angled toward him.
While they were getting him arranged, Jack said, "Teeth, yes, but I can't swear to whether I still have all my own brain cells."
"Well, you don't need your own, that's what you married me for," she teased with a pat to his prone leg.
And with those light words and a simply friendly gesture, the air around and between them suddenly seemed very heavy. Their laughter turned to intensely gazing into one another's eyes as the full force of their present moment struck them both.
Bobby and Tara were still laughing as they pulled up in front of her house and he walked her to her door. "But it makes no sense!" he repeated for what must have been the fifth time.
"Sure it does!" she argued back, and then giggled again, thinking how such clever words as "no it doesn't!" "yes it does!" clearly showed them both to their best advantage as master debaters.
"'Hamsters in my heart'?!"
"What?"
"Look, fair enough, fair enough. I know you love your Mojo Gogo, but what kind of a lyric is 'I've got hamsters in my heart'?"
"It's a metaphor!"
"For?"
She stepped up onto her porch as she turned to answer him. "Foorrr something which . . . if I explained it, it would be far too deep for you to understand." He could barely even understand the last couple words as she dissolved into laughter again. He couldn't help but laugh along.
"You see? You don't understand it either!"
"Okay, okay," she relented, "it's a stupid lyric—"
"AHA!"
"BUT," she continued, practically shouting over his exclamation, "it's got a nice beat! You can dance to it! It's got a—" She stopped using actual English words and instead started humming some semblance of the song's tune while stomping out the beat as she spun in a circle. Completing her spin, she opened her arms and said, "Huh?" as if presenting him with her mini performance and asking if it met his requirements.
They continued to laugh another moment before each taking contented sighs. "So," Bobby said, but then he wasn't sure where to go from there.
"So . . . ?" Tara picked up. "I had a great time."
"Yeah, so did I." His eyes searched her face, almost like he was trying to find something that he hadn't previously known her face contained. "Yeah, maybe we should, uh, we should do this again sometime."
"Yeah," she replied, almost appearing to be surprised that she agreed with this. "Maybe we should."
"Hmm." And that happy, semi-committal hum ushered in the culmination of the night that neither of them had expected.
It was only a moment. Well, a short series of moments, really. One moment of staring into one another's eyes.
One moment of mutually leaning together.
One moment of their lips pressed together.
One moment that two dear friends, who had maybe each wondered about more but never thought there could ever really be more than a dream of the idea of more, accidentally changed everything between them. Whether for better or for worse was all that remained to be seen.
But it would not be seen that night.
"Uh, so . . . ." Tara now was the one to find herself at a loss for words, looking up at Bobby like maybe she could decipher him like she could a computer program.
Bobby looked no more certain than Tara, but managed to shake himself into both action and words, saying, "So, I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah." Tara turned and walked the short remaining distance to her door, then turned back to find Bobby staring after her. She gave him a small, rather awkward wave, then they each turned to head their own directions . . . and hopefully get at least some sleep that night, though neither would bet on that happening.