"A Second Opinion"
Title: A Second Opinion
Fandom: Eureka.
Characters: Zane, Jack, Nathan, Taggart, Fargo, Allison, Jo, Henry, Zoë, Lucas, S.A.R.A.H. (a.k.a. lots)
Word Count: 6558
Rating: 15
Summary: Romance is always so much easier when viewed through the eyes of others. Jack/Nathan.
Notes: It’s set in an alternate season three, because this is fanfic and sometimes canon is just lacking. It’s my very first Eureka fic, so concrit is pleaded for. Also? I so need a Eureka icon. And the Coroner is a cool guy. And I'm not medical in any way, so medical people... Please suspend disbelief.
ETA: Eureka icon! *dances*
A Second Opinion
__zane__
He’s not at GD today, so he figures that he’ll drop by the station and ask if Jo has plans for lunch. He’s got it all planned out - thumbs shoved in pockets, hair mussed to just the right angle (how she likes it), and the smallest salacious grin. Hopefully, irresistible. Right now, their relationship is in a good place - she’s not pissed at him (for once), and he’s not bemused by her (the first time), so they’re honeymooning. Sort of. Maybe. Well, whatever it is, he plans to capitalise on it. Hence the lunch date.
Zane knocks perfunctorily on the station’s door, but no one answers, which was the response he was expecting, so he just walks straight in. Pausing to wipe his shoes on the doormat (Eureka seems to be having problems with a dysfunctional sewer system right outside his house), he hears noises coming from the main office, and freezes. Or, not so much noises, as voices. And voices he recognises.
Stark? he thinks bemusedly, because as far he knows Nathan Stark hates Jack Carter, and would never ever ever voluntarily set foot inside this building. He takes a tentative step closer to the office, careful to keep himself out of sight, and listens.
“No,” the Sheriff says sharply, and Zane wonders why he sounds so choked up. “You want an answer? There you have it. No.”
“Carter…” Stark sounds tired and angry, and Zane thinks again about his plan to walk in, interrupting what sounds like a distinctly heated argument, and inquire after Jo. “You haven’t even-”
“Fuck off, Stark,” Carter snaps, and Zane feels his heart thud in an irregular pattern for a moment. He presses his hand to his chest. “I have work to do, and you’re wasting police time.”
“So it’s ‘Stark’ now?” the scientist asks tightly. “Not ‘Nathan’? Because you were pretty keen on calling me that when I fucked you just now-”
Anything else he might be about to say is cut off as Zane’s brain abruptly goes into overdrive and explodes. What?! several voices scream at him, and imaginary klaxons go off, blaring and wailing. He winces and rubs at his ear.
Common sense tell him that he should get out of there right now, because if Carter catches him eavesdropping on this particular conversation, he’s going to be spending the rest of his life in a jail cell, and he’s never going to end up in bed with Jo Lupo again. He whimpers to himself at the latter prospect. However, the thought of winning one of Vincent’s most prosperous pools (inventively titled “Carter and Stark Caught in the Sack”) is very very alluring. Zane has money riding on it, and Jo likes sparkly things.
Quickly making peace with whichever god watches over him, Zane refocuses on the conversation. Unfortunately, he’s at a disadvantage, because all he can recall from previously is “fucking”.
“… because I won’t be your sex toy,” Carter blazes, “and I’m not just a rebound guy because Allison shot you down.”
“You think that’s all I want from you?” Stark asks, and Zane is distinctly worried by the softer tone the imposing man’s voice has taken. “Sex, and nothing else?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah.” Carter pauses, but Stark doesn’t seem to want to take the opportunity to dive straight in and argue. Zane’s heard this sort of conversation before, and this is usually the part where the intelligence-related insults come into play. But it’s Carter who continues, eventually, saying, “You hate me, and you’ve said as much. I’m just a quick fuck in between changing the world.”
Will they stop saying “fuck”?! Zane’s brain protests hysterically, but he shushes it.
Stark is quiet for a moment longer. When he speaks, his voice is carefully controlled, and Zane thinks he can hear a hint of heartbreak behind the measured tones. “For the record,” he begins levelly, “my relationship with Allison was over long before she turned my proposal down-” He proposed to her? Zane’s brain interrupts. “-and you are not, and never will be, a ‘quick fuck’, even if that’s a notion your minute mind has problems accepting. I want you, Jack-” He called him Jack? Wait ‘til Vincent hears this! “-and not just because I’m hurting, or you’re good in bed, or whatever else your mind wants to decide. I want to be with you.”
Carter laughs shortly. “And Nathan Stark always gets what he wants,” he needles, and there is such pain behind his voice. “Well here’s a newsflash for you, Stark. I don’t want you. So get the hell out of my office.”
Even Zane’s brain is silent, and the sound of a pen scratching across paper is loud in the quiet.
“Jack-”
“Don’t you have a Fargo to be yelling at?” comes the emotionless answer.
The pen scrapes across the paper, and then the paper is shoved into a folder. A desk drawer is dragged out and then slammed shut again.
Zane doesn’t have time to move before Stark rounds the corner and comes face to face with him. Apprehension floods through the younger man, and all he can do is stare into Stark’s blank features like a deer in headlights. Please Lord, the back of his mind babbles, I will repent and be a wonderful servant…
Stark sighs. “Doesn’t matter now,” he mutters, seemingly to himself, and brushes past Zane.
The door swings shut behind him.
Zane doesn’t want to think about what he’s just heard, and not just because of the confusing sensations the image of Carter and Stark in bed arouses. He’s always told himself he doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body, but the wrongness of this just makes him feel queasy - not Carter and Stark together, but Carter and Stark apart.
He steps out of the station, and decides that he really wants to see Jo.
__taggart__
“What made you think that creating a werewolf could possibly be a good idea?” Carter asks bluntly.
Taggart shuffles his feet. “I didn’t know that lupine haemovariform meant werewolf,” he protests. “I was just seeing if-”
“Lupine harlequin?” Carter questions, looking blank.
The Australian tries not to roll his eyes. “Lupine haemovariform,” he repeats, slowly and clearly. When Carter still looks confused, he proudly explains: “I found it on the Internet.”
Carter rubs at his temples. “I hate this town,” he mutters.
“It hates you, Sheriff,” Stark says, and Taggart thinks there’s more venom in that barb than there is normally. Interesting, he notes. Even more interestingly, the Sheriff doesn’t take the opportunity for the two of them to indulge in one of their courtship-rituals-disguised-as-cutting-banter routines. Taggart is somewhat disappointed by this. He’d been hoping to conduct an investigation into the pair of them, comparing their bickerings to the complex mating rituals of the Bavarian spineless lizard. He’s observed that there are many parallels to be drawn. Insults; rivalry. Hopefully not the eventual mutual decapitation.
“So, we need to catch Fargo before the moon is full, right?” Carter queries, bringing Taggart back from his contemplation of the Bavarian spineless lizard’s messy nuptials. “When’s that: like a week?” He seems to have relaxed.
“Ah,” Taggart contradicts warily, “not exactly.”
Carter’s face falls so quickly that it’s vaguely comical. “What d’you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“Tests show than any moonlight will spark the change,” Taggart explains ruefully. “There was a slight glitch in the formula I downloaded, so it’s not the specific wavelength of light that is emitted by the full moon that will-”
“Night bad,” Carter paraphrases. “Moonlight bad.”
Taggart shrugs. “Fair enough.”
“What’s the plan then, Sheriff?” Stark questions sharply, hands clasped lightly behind his back. “You up for a night running around the woods? Or will it be thermal scans and going in all guns blazing?”
The back of Taggart’s neck prickles, and that’s never a good sign. The room seems to whirl into razor-sharp clarity, and that’s when he realises that for the entire time the three of them have been in the same space together, Carter has never once looked back at Stark. All is not well, he thinks, and then he spots the briefest flash of hurt cross Carter’s expressive features.
“I’m waiting,” Stark says flatly.
The Sheriff’s back straightens, and Taggart remembers not to flinch when he spots the whitened knuckles. “This is a police matter, Doctor Stark,” he answers coolly, “so myself and Deputy Lupo will handle it. It would be appreciated if you would let us get on with our work.”
Stark’s nostrils flare, and Taggart waits for the explosion. “Your investigation is the result of an industrial accident,” he counters, “so it’s not wholly under your jurisdiction. I’m here to make sure nothing potentially hazardous gets out into the population of Eureka.” The scientist smiles, but it’s a dark and furious smile. “Hate to burst your bubble, Sheriff, but you’re stuck with me.”
Carter’s eyes have darkened, and Taggart thinks: This ain’t good. “Sorry,” the Sheriff commiserates, “but that’s not your call. Have to get Allison’s approval for a GD representative to tag along on a potentially hazardous operation.”
“I’ll give her a call then,” Stark answers, going for the silver phone in the breast pocket of his suit.
In the blink of an eye, Carter has wheeled around and smacked the cell from Stark’s hand. “You’re not coming, Nathan,” he bites off. “So just sit down and wait, and try not to let GD blow up while I’m not here to fix your messes for you. Got it?”
Stark’s jaw tightens. He takes a single step towards Carter, and his eyes are fever-bright. “You have no idea how hard it is for me not to just break your neck right now,” he states tightly, and Taggart begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He eyes the smashed remainders of Stark’s cell, in a heap of circuitry in the corner, and begins to sidle towards the door. He’s heard Zane’s recounting of what he’d heard in the Sheriff’s office (no doubt elaborated on and expanded - Zane is like that), and thinks: I shouldn’t be here.
“Then do it,” Carter answers aggressively, “so I can arrest you for assaulting an officer of the law.”
Taggart really wants to get out of there. The two men face off, nearly nose to nose, and they seem to have forgotten that he’s in the room, so he figures it won’t be that hard. It’s not like he’s interested in their bickering. They bicker all the time - it’s normal. There’s nothing abnormal about today.
Or, at least, it’s normal right up to the point that Stark grabs Carter and forces him into a bruising kiss.
Taggart runs for the door.
Much later, after he’s caught the absent Fargo and stripped the werewolf DNA from his own, with the help of Jo and Henry, Taggart meets Stark again in the corridors of GD. There’s an empty expression in the other man’s eyes, and a rapidly purpling bruise on his left cheek. Stark walks past him as if he doesn’t see him. Taggart puzzles over this for a while, but it’s only when he makes a quick trip to Café Diem to visit Vincent and his big book of bets and happens to stumble across Sheriff Carter that he realises what happens. He spots Carter’s bandaged knuckles, and promptly puts two and two together.
He can’t resist a quick jibe. “Never hit a man with a closed fist, hey Sheriff?” he jokes.
Carter transfers his gaze to the Australian, and his eyes are flat and broken. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answers softly, before walking out of the café. Taggart’s gaze follows him out, and he wishes that he’d never said anything.
__fargo__
The windows into Stark’s lab are blacked out, but that doesn’t faze Fargo as he knocks on the door. The windows are almost always blackened, unless Stark is in the world-domineering mood and wishes to simply glare at everyone who walks past - or, more precisely, Fargo. So he knocks on the door, and tries not to feel irritated at Doctor Blake for dragging him away from his important, life-altering research to run and fetch ‘Nathan’.
Fargo pulls a face as he mouths the scientist’s name.
After a moment, he notices that Stark hasn’t answered, so he raps again, juggling the request for entry with the data tablet he currently has balanced on his left arm. There’s a long equation dancing on the screen that he just can’t get to grips with, and he wants to have a good crack at it before he has to submit to the humiliation of asking Stark for help.
He hates asking Stark for help.
Speaking of which, Stark still hasn’t answered.
Fargo rolls his eyes and tries the door. It’s one of the older labs which was assigned to Stark while they were trying to figure out where to put him permanently, but he liked it, so he kept it. It’s so old it even has a door handle, and Fargo’s pleasantly surprised when said door handle gives, and the door swings open a crack. He expected it to be locked, bolted, and electrified.
He pokes his head into the lab, and the prepared spiel of: “Doctor Stark, Doctor Blake needs you” dies on his lips.
Stark’s in there alright, but it’s what he’s doing that has Fargo speechless. Stark’s head lolls back against the headrest of his chair, and his eyes are shut as sweat beads on his forehead. One hand grasps the armrest in a white-knuckled grip. His fly is unzipped, and, although anything more graphic is hidden behind the desk, the muscles in the larger man’s arm tense and bulge as his hand jerks in repetitive strokes. Fargo can hear soft grunts as Stark’s hips jerk rhythmically forward. There are wet tracks down his cheeks, and, as Fargo watches, a lone tear rolls down one well-worn path to drip onto his collar.
Holy shit, Fargo thinks, his mouth hanging open.
He closes the door softly, and as it clicks shut he swears he hears Stark grunt out Sheriff Carter’s name.
Maybe Taggart was right.
When he’s made his way through Global and re-entered Doctor Blake’s office, she looks up expectantly. “Well?” she asks.
Fargo clears his throat hesitantly. He reasons that blurting out, He’s masturbating in his lab, would be a monumentally bad idea, especially since he thinks he can see the face of one of the Joint Chiefs on the screen behind the head of GD, so he goes for the safe option. “Doctor Stark is… indisposed,” he says neutrally, before fleeing back to his research.
He doesn’t miss the confused look that Doctor Blake shoots him, and he wonders how long he’ll have to potter in his lab before she comes after him to make him explain.
But in the mean time, he tries desperately not to think about Stark’s face, screwed up in ecstasy with pained tears dripping down his cheeks.
__jo__
It’s not the sort of thing he’d usually do, and she knows that, but he runs too fast for her to stop him. The door slides shut with a decisive hiss, and she slams up against it. “Carter!” she yells, smacking her fist against the glass.
He glances back at her, and offers her a soft smile. He keys his radio. “Stand back, Deputy,” he orders.
“But-”
“Jo.” His eyes are warm. “It’s okay.”
She hears the clatter of feet rushing towards her, and Allison, Fargo and Stark come around the corner. Just in time, she thinks ironically. “Deputy?” Allison asks, just before she notices Carter, locked in the lab behind them. “Carter?”
As Jo turns back to the glass and the Sheriff, she half-sees a flash of panic cross Stark’s stoic features. It’s so fast that she wonders if she even saw it at all.
Allison snatches the radio from Jo’s hand. “Carter!” she calls. “What are you doing?”
Carter doesn’t answer. Doctor Guthrie is lying prone on the lab’s floor, and the Sheriff bends beside him. He checks for a pulse, and then regret flickers in his features. Jo understands that look. She’s seen it before. Dead.
Fargo checks a panel bolted to the wall beside the door. “Radiation levels are climbing fast,” he states, and there’s worry in his voice.
The head of GD rounds on Jo. “What’s he doing in there?” she demands.
Jo straightens. “Guthrie’s experimental generator’s about to overload,” she answers softly. “He didn’t think we had time to get anyone with a scientific background in there before the doors sealed automatically, so he went in himself.” Sacrificed himself, is the phrase that dances on her lips, but she refuses to voice it.
“Fargo-”
“I’m on it,” Fargo answers, delving into Global Dynamics’ internal systems in an attempt to override the automatic security lockout.
Allison herself is occupied with her phone - she’s calling commands down the line, and Jo catches her end of the conversation. “Get a medical team to Section Three immediately, with hazmat suits and medication for radiation sickness… It’s Sheriff Carter… Yes, alert the infirmary…”
Jo glances into the lab once more, and wishes she hadn’t. Carter has abandoned the dead scientist and is leaning against a flashing, whirring device. Things that flash and whir are rarely good, her inner Carter dictates, and she feels trepidation curl her stomach. Carter himself looks up, and his gaze goes to Stark. He takes hold of his radio. “Tell me what to do.”
Stark nods, and takes Jo’s radio from Allison’s grasp. “There should be panel on the left end of the machine,” he says levelly, and Jo is amazed that he can remain so calm. Zane’s lunchtime ramblings of last week seem so far off the mark she might laugh. “Pull it off.”
Said panel is removed and dropped to the floor with a clatter, and Jo can see that Carter’s hands are shaking. It’s not from nerves-the man has lived too long in Eureka to be nervous-and she has the horrible feeling that he’s more affected by the climbing levels of radiation in the lab than he puts across. He grips the edge of the table, and looks back to Stark. A mess of wiring spills out onto the table top in front of him. “What next?”
Jo sees Stark readjust his grip on her radio. His palms are sweaty, and his voice hitches just as he begins to speak. Maybe he’s not so calm after all, she wonders. So maybe… “Pull the red wire out of its socket.”
Even laced with radiation, Carter finds time to joke. “The red one, Stark? You trying to blow me up?”
Stark’s lips twitch upwards slightly, but there’s more pain than humour behind the tiny movement. Jo’s heart goes out to the brooding scientist, and it’s never done that before. “You wish,” he answers. “You’re not that important for us to destroy significant research to get rid of you.”
Carter smiles, and coughs once into his hand. He wipes his palm on the side of his trousers immediately, but Jo doesn’t miss the crimson that briefly coated his fingers. He yanks an equally-crimson wire out of the machine housing and drops it to the floor. “Done,” he reports, and rubs at his throat.
Stark nods. “At the other end there’s a keypad.”
Carter’s movements are jerky now, and he wipes his hand across his forehead. Jo feels useless. She turns to Fargo, intending to pour out some of her frustration by berating him for taking so long, but she sees that his hands are flying frantically across the makeshift keyboard and there are tears in his eyes. She presses her hand to her heart to calm its frenzied beating, and looks back through to her boss. “Got it.”
“There’s a deactivation sequence that’s written into all GD machinery,” Stark explains. “An eight-digit code. Ready?”
Carter nods, but that affirmation is negated by the fact that at that instant his legs give way and he collapses, fingertips still clinging to the edge of the table. Jo surges forward, but then remembers that there’s a glass barrier in the way. By her side, Allison gasps, and Fargo’s fingers start to smash the keyboard. He swears, under his breath. Stark, however, is a little more obvious in his concern. “Carter!” he bellows into the radio, eyes wide. Jo’s only ever heard of Stark being this emotional a few times - once over Callister; more than once over Allison and Kevin. Always over those he calls family.
Oh my God, Jo realises. He loves him.
Carter hauls himself back up, forearms resting on the table. “Code, Nathan.” It seems to be all he can get out, and his head dips down to rest on his hands.
Stark lets out a shaky breath. “Seven, four, theta, gamma,” he recites, and they watch as Carter’s trembling fingers skitter over the touchscreen keypad. “Six, zero, sigma, nine.”
The whirring begins to slow, and the faintest smile lights up Carter’s face. “Looks like it worked,” he transmits through.
“You doubted me?” Stark protests, but there’s still worry in his voice. As Carter wavers inside the lab, Stark steps closer to Fargo, leaving the radio off. “Radiation?” he asks quietly.
Fargo’s head shakes minutely. “Levels are falling,” he answers, “but I don’t think we were quick enough. He’s definitely been exposed.”
“Fatally?” Stark queries, voice no more than a murmur, and Jo’s stomach does a backflip.
“No way to tell.”
“Jo?”
Jo jerks at Carter’s voice, and, after a moment’s reluctance, Stark hands the radio back to her. “Here,” she answers.
His blue eyes are clouded, but his expression is serene. “Please, Jo,” he says quietly, almost inaudible over the frantic clicking of Fargo’s fingertips. “Keep Zoë safe.” He offers her one last smile, and then crumples backwards, his lean body in a heap on the floor.
“No!” The panic in Stark’s voice is horrifyingly clear. Jo relinquishes the radio to his grasping fingers, and just stands frozen, listening . “Jack!” Stark calls, and there’s such desperation in his voice that Jo feels her heart break. “Please, Jack. Just hold on.”
But there’s only silence on the radio, and Carter doesn’t move.
__henry__
He’d received the call at one thirty-two, asking him to go to the high school, pull Zoë Carter out of class and take her to Global Dynamics. It had been Jo on the other end of the line, and the shakiness of her voice told him without her saying anything just how bad the situation was. His knuckles had clenched white, just for a second, and then he’d been on the road, breaking the speed limit and several laws. He barely remembered the next half an hour, until his arrival at GD with Zoë in tow.
The infirmary had been dead silent when they arrived at one fifty-six, and everyone had just been waiting - for news, good or bad.
Now, Henry sits with Nathan Stark, and they watch numbly as Zoë cries into Jo’s shoulder.
“I don’t understand,” Nathan says softly, his hands wound tightly together. “How could he be stupid enough to do that?”
Henry shifts in his chair, and glances over towards the isolation room. He can just see the outline of Jack’s limp body, surrounded by doctors and nurses and radiation meters. “What he did probably saved Section Three, Nathan. It was risky, not stupid.”
“He saved Section Three at the cost of his own life.”
“He’s not dead yet,” Henry gently points out. He thinks he knows why Nathan is taking this so badly, but it’s not something he wants to consider for the moment. He’s close to both Nathan and Jack, and he doesn’t want to see either of them hurt - and he has the faintest idea that any relationship, romantic or otherwise, between the two is not going to run smoothly. Zane has already cryptically said that he’s seen proof of that, but just when he’d mentioned that titbit the experiment the two of them were running had gone haywire and Henry hadn’t had a chance to bring it up again.
Nathan laughs flatly. “You’ve seen radiation exposure this bad before,” he counters. “He has maybe a four percent chance of survival. If he’s lucky.” He shakes his head. “Son of a bitch had to go and ruin everything.”
The last is said in a voice barely above a whisper, and Henry thinks that he probably wasn’t supposed to hear it. He understands, though, or at least he thinks he did. Ah, Romeo, he thinks, although he somehow doubts Jack would appreciate being Juliet. “Don’t lose hope,” he says, his hand gripping Nathan’s shoulder.
Nathan’s head shakes once more. “Henry,” he says heavily, “you don’t understand.”
“I lost Kim,” Henry says sharply. “Of course I understand.” He turns into himself for a moment, and he can see her - laughing and smiling in another world, another time. Memories of that which cannot be, he thinks, and his heart hurts.
Nathan straightens, and Henry ignores the way his eyes are far too bright. “It’s not the same,” he counters, and Henry knows that his friend is far gone into grief and self-pity now, because he’s forgotten how much Kim’s death still means. Or maybe he just doesn’t care any more.
“Because Jack’s a man?” he asks acidly.
Nathan studies his hands. “Because he doesn’t want me,” he answers.
“Bullshit.”
“Henry-”
“Nathan, stop wallowing in self-pity for a minute and listen,” Henry snaps. “Jack is in love with you, no matter what he says. You know him: just think about it. Why else would he intentionally get himself locked in a radiation-flooded lab, when he knows that GD is full of brilliant minds and hazmat suits? He’s depressed, and being as fatuous and selfish as you are.” Nathan hasn’t looked up, but Henry can see his anger and unwilling acknowledgement in the tension of his shoulders. “Do something about it before Eureka loses a Sheriff, and Zoë loses her father.”
“And why should I listen to a word you say?”
“Because I’m older, wiser, and unbiased,” Henry answers. “And because you’re the most emotionally stunted man I’ve ever met.”
Nathan just stands up and walks out.
Henry watches him go, and doesn’t stop him. Nathan needs time to think, for his big brain to consider all the possibilities and for his timid heart to finally manage to overrule them all. Henry sighs and scrubs his hands through his hair. He glances over at Jack, a pale, still form in the middle of a sea of activity, and settles in for the night.
__zoë__
She sits in the infirmary with only the soft lighting and her unconscious father for company, and wonders what time it is. She left her bag at school in Henry’s terrifying hurry, and she can’t spot a clock - although she hasn’t exactly been looking very hard. She’s preoccupied and distracted.
Her dad’s breathing is ragged, and she tries not to cry at the sound.
She thinks that it must be something like three in the morning by now - Jo was sent home by Allison hours ago, and Zane had left with her, his arm around her shoulders. Allison had left shortly after, mumbling something about Kevin through worry-laden tones. Henry stayed, but he’s currently fetching two extra-strong Vinspressos, Jack’s veto be damned. Zoë needs it right now - she doesn’t want to think, just to stay awake.
She squeezes his hand, and waits for him to squeeze back.
She’s still waiting when she hears the soft click of footsteps behind her, and she glances back over her shoulder. She tries to force a smile, but gets the feeling that it comes out as more of a grimace. “Doctor Stark,” she greets, wiping tears from her face. She hadn’t even realised that they’d been falling.
His expression is unusually open, but she decides not to take advantage of the vulnerability. “Do you mind if I stay?” he asks.
Zoë shakes her head, and Stark takes the seat across from her. She smiles, and it’s faintly genuine this time. “I didn’t think you cared,” she remarks, her thumb rubbing rhythmic patterns on the back of her father’s hand.
Stark’s lips quirk upwards, just slightly. “Neither did I,” he admits. Zoë pulls her attention away from Jack just in time to see affection flicker through the scientist’s eyes, and she doesn’t miss the fact that his hand lies on the bed just next to her father’s.
She laughs quietly to herself. “Jo was right.”
Stark looks at her briefly. “About what?”
Zoë shrugs. “You and Dad.”
He doesn’t seem surprised. “She knew?”
“She figured it out today,” Zoë corrects. “I thought…” She catches sight of her father’s slack features once more, and the thought flees from her mind. “I don’t know what I thought.” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand again. Wordlessly, Stark removes a neatly-ironed handkerchief from his breast pocket and hands it to her. She accepts it, and glances up at him. “He’s always liked you, you know.” Zoë doesn’t quite know why she’s sharing so much - maybe she just needs to take her mind off… other things. “Ever since he first met you.”
Stark’s gaze rests on her father’s face. “How so?”
“He argues with people he likes.”
“He doesn’t argue with Henry,” Stark observes dryly.
She laughs, and she thinks that she was meant to. “He’s not attracted to Henry,” she clarifies. “He’s attracted to you.”
Stark smiles at that, and they sit in silence for a while, just watching for any change. The medical machines bleep and flash softly, and the stool she sits on creaks when she shifts her weight. Absently, she recognises that she’s hungry, and that she has school tomorrow and an unfinished assignment, but she can’t quite care.
Dad, please, she begs. Don’t go.
She wipes at her eyes with Stark’s handkerchief, and sniffs loudly.
He looks up at her. “Are you okay?” he asks, and she wonders if the concern she can hear in his voice is genuine.
“Yeah.” She sniffs again, and laughs bitterly. “No.” Her free hand scrunches the handkerchief in her lap, and a lone tear runs down her pale cheek. She doesn’t bother to wipe it away. “I heard you talking to Henry, by the way,” she comments softly, not looking at Stark. “I think he’s right.” She wipes her eyes again. “About why Dad was stupid enough to lock himself in a room full of radiation.”
Stark’s shoulders stiffen. “Do you blame me?” he asks, and there’s something of a little lost boy in his voice.
She shrugs. “A little.”
His head dips, and he is silent.
Zoë slips off her stool and stands up. She leans across the bed and gently takes Stark’s hand, guiding it to her father’s loosely-curled fingers. Stark doesn’t need any more prompting: he takes Jack’s hand and grips as if he’ll never let go. But he does look up at Zoë, and there is a question in his eyes. She smiles back. “I think he needs both of us to get through this,” she explains, and returns to her seat.
They sit there in silence, holding on to the man who means so much to them both, and nothing else needs to be said.
__allison__
She doesn’t expect to find Nathan in Café Diem. To be honest, she wouldn’t even have spotted him if Vincent’s gaze hadn’t kept slipping back over her shoulder to study someone seated in one of the back booths - but Vincent had, and, several curious gazes following her, she’d moved over to join her ex-husband.
She lightly touches his shoulder before sliding into the booth opposite him. “Nathan.”
He offers a weak smile. “Allison.”
Just for a moment, she misses when he used to call her ‘Allie’. “I thought you’d be with Carter,” she opens tentatively, and knows she’s hit the mark when his knuckles pale with pressure. “He’s being released from GD’s infirmary today.”
“I know,” Nathan answers, but he doesn’t offer anything more than that.
Allison reaches across the table and lightly touches his wrist. “Talk to me, Nathan,” she pleads. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”
A little sardonic half-smile traces his lips. “Like what?” he asks, and there’s a challenge in his voice.
She pauses, and then answers, “Heartbroken.”
He laughs to himself, and she didn’t expect that. “Heartbroken,” he repeats, and there’s a twinge of defensive sarcasm in his voice. “You’re thinking a lot of yourself if you think-”
“Stop being deliberately stupid, Nathan,” Allison snaps. “You know full well who I’m talking about.”
The muscles in his shoulders tense under the pale fabric of his shirt. “There’s nothing going on between us,” he answers coolly, and she’s worryingly aware that he refuses to look at her. She can feel his coolness. You broke your relationship by turning him down, her mind accuses her, but that’s not a question for now.
“Nathan-” she tries.
“There isn’t,” he interrupts, “and there never can be. You know that. The DoD would throw a fit if I was involved with Carter.”
It’s the first time he’s even said Jack’s name, and that’s an improvement. She files that away, decides not to bring up the utter absurdity of that statement, and carries on. “That doesn’t seem to have been stopping you recently,” she fires back acerbically. “The grapevine in Eureka works fast, and you having sex with Carter in Taggart’s lab certainly got around quickly.”
Allison thinks she sees him wince. She knows that he hates his indiscretions to be made public knowledge, and that is something that she therefore intends to take full advantage of.
“And then a very loud, very private conversation in his office in the middle of the day.”
“Allison-” he begins.
“And then,” she interrupts, “doing something I don’t even want to think about on GD time!” His head jerks up at that, but she doesn’t notice. She’s angry now, and not just because of his dazed state at work recently. She’s angry at him for not listening, for forcing her to resort to this catalogue of his errors, for him for messing things up with Carter. “Damnit, Nathan. You’ve fired people for less.”
They sit in tense silence, just for a moment.
Allison runs a hand through her hair. “I may not want to be your wife, Nathan,” she says softly, “but I do want to be your friend. Please, listen to me, just this once.”
But Nathan just returns his gaze to his hands, and she can’t help but feel like she’s accomplished nothing at all.
__jack and nathan__
Jack’s half-asleep on the couch, one hand sprawled across his eyes and the other clutching the neck of a beer bottle, when he hears the hiss of the door opening. He figures that he should probably fire off a quick, “Hey, Zoë,” before she comes over to check that he hasn’t collapsed again, but he’s too comfortable. Sleep beckons. His daughter will just have to fuss. He finds it sweet, anyway, although he’d never tell her that.
“Jack?”
He sits bolt upright, slopping beer over his hand in the process. He barely notices. “Stark?” he asks, confused.
There’s something in Nathan’s face which seems to close off when he says that. “Just came to check how you were doing,” he says flatly, and the raw emotion that Jack thinks he heard in the first utterance of his name is hidden.
To calm his buzzing nerves, Jack wipes the beer methodically off his hand and sets the bottle down on the coffee table before answering, “Good, considering.” He smiles ruefully. “Henry told me I had about a four percent chance of survival. I guess that means lucky me.” He glances down, because Nathan’s gaze is getting a little too piercing. “Stupid, really.” He’s just babbled a lot of pointless information, he knows, but it makes him feel a little better.
There is quiet for a moment, and then he feels the couch dip next to him. “You saved the entirety of Section Three,” Nathan answers, leaning forward with his clasped hands between his knees. “It was risky, not stupid.”
Jack snorts, and looks pointedly at Nathan.
The scientist smiles. “Yeah, okay. It was stupid too.”
Jack smiles, and then picks absently at his thumbnail. He knows that Nathan didn’t just come all the way to the bunker to check up on a sick colleague, but he doesn’t quite know how to put that sentiment into words. They don’t tend to talk much, anyway - their meetings seem to just disintegrate into wordless, wonderful sex: when Jack found Nathan in the bathroom at Global, despondent after Allison turned him down; when Nathan came to visit Jack in the Sheriff’s office, just before their blazing row; and, regrettably, in Taggart’s lab, when they just hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each, despite the fury and the hurt. Jack doesn’t know if he can remember what a real relationship feels like.
But, then again, he thinks, this one feels more real than all the others put together.
“I was scared.” It’s Nathan who breaks the silence, even if his gaze remains firmly glued to his hands. “When I saw you locked in Guthrie’s lab. I didn’t want you to die.”
I didn’t want to, either, Jack quips in his mind, but forces his brain to veto the words. He just lets Nathan speak.
The scientist’s fingers don’t seem to want to remain still. They pluck at the dark fabric of his trousers. “And it hurt,” he admits, “when you said no. It hurt a lot.”
Jack knows what Nathan’s trying to say, even if it’s too early for either of them to admit it. I want you. I need you. I love you. Reaching out, he turns Nathan to face him. “Stay with me,” he says softly. “Not for sex, not for shouting. Just stay here, with me.”
Slowly, clumsily, they lay down together on the couch, Jack’s back pressed flush to Nathan’s chest. It’s awkward, at first, and Nathan’s beard irritates the back of Jack’s neck, but he doesn’t move. He won’t. He can’t.
I want you. I need you. I love you.
Jack closes his eyes, and feels himself smile.
__ever after__
The house is silent when Zoë returns, Lucas’s hand warm around hers. S.A.R.A.H. doesn’t greet her as normal, so she frowns, but she thinks she might know why. She stops in the doorway, blocking Lucas out, and peers round until she can see the couch. Her father and Doctor Stark lie there, wrapped around each other, and a smile bubbles to her lips.
She turns around and lightly pushes Lucas backwards. He looks hurt, until she steps outside with him. “Zoë?” he asks, confused. “I thought I was staying until your dad threw me out.”
S.A.R.A.H. closes the door behind them with a quite hum of goodbye. “We’re going to your place,” Zoë answers, readjusting the strap of her schoolbag over her shoulder.
Lucas’s forehead wrinkles. “What’s going on?” he queries.
Zoë thinks for a moment, and then smiles, and kisses him lightly on the lips. “Honeymooning,” she answers, and pulls him away up the steps.
~*end*~
Fandom: Eureka.
Characters: Zane, Jack, Nathan, Taggart, Fargo, Allison, Jo, Henry, Zoë, Lucas, S.A.R.A.H. (a.k.a. lots)
Word Count: 6558
Rating: 15
Summary: Romance is always so much easier when viewed through the eyes of others. Jack/Nathan.
Notes: It’s set in an alternate season three, because this is fanfic and sometimes canon is just lacking. It’s my very first Eureka fic, so concrit is pleaded for. Also? I so need a Eureka icon. And the Coroner is a cool guy. And I'm not medical in any way, so medical people... Please suspend disbelief.
ETA: Eureka icon! *dances*
A Second Opinion
__zane__
He’s not at GD today, so he figures that he’ll drop by the station and ask if Jo has plans for lunch. He’s got it all planned out - thumbs shoved in pockets, hair mussed to just the right angle (how she likes it), and the smallest salacious grin. Hopefully, irresistible. Right now, their relationship is in a good place - she’s not pissed at him (for once), and he’s not bemused by her (the first time), so they’re honeymooning. Sort of. Maybe. Well, whatever it is, he plans to capitalise on it. Hence the lunch date.
Zane knocks perfunctorily on the station’s door, but no one answers, which was the response he was expecting, so he just walks straight in. Pausing to wipe his shoes on the doormat (Eureka seems to be having problems with a dysfunctional sewer system right outside his house), he hears noises coming from the main office, and freezes. Or, not so much noises, as voices. And voices he recognises.
Stark? he thinks bemusedly, because as far he knows Nathan Stark hates Jack Carter, and would never ever ever voluntarily set foot inside this building. He takes a tentative step closer to the office, careful to keep himself out of sight, and listens.
“No,” the Sheriff says sharply, and Zane wonders why he sounds so choked up. “You want an answer? There you have it. No.”
“Carter…” Stark sounds tired and angry, and Zane thinks again about his plan to walk in, interrupting what sounds like a distinctly heated argument, and inquire after Jo. “You haven’t even-”
“Fuck off, Stark,” Carter snaps, and Zane feels his heart thud in an irregular pattern for a moment. He presses his hand to his chest. “I have work to do, and you’re wasting police time.”
“So it’s ‘Stark’ now?” the scientist asks tightly. “Not ‘Nathan’? Because you were pretty keen on calling me that when I fucked you just now-”
Anything else he might be about to say is cut off as Zane’s brain abruptly goes into overdrive and explodes. What?! several voices scream at him, and imaginary klaxons go off, blaring and wailing. He winces and rubs at his ear.
Common sense tell him that he should get out of there right now, because if Carter catches him eavesdropping on this particular conversation, he’s going to be spending the rest of his life in a jail cell, and he’s never going to end up in bed with Jo Lupo again. He whimpers to himself at the latter prospect. However, the thought of winning one of Vincent’s most prosperous pools (inventively titled “Carter and Stark Caught in the Sack”) is very very alluring. Zane has money riding on it, and Jo likes sparkly things.
Quickly making peace with whichever god watches over him, Zane refocuses on the conversation. Unfortunately, he’s at a disadvantage, because all he can recall from previously is “fucking”.
“… because I won’t be your sex toy,” Carter blazes, “and I’m not just a rebound guy because Allison shot you down.”
“You think that’s all I want from you?” Stark asks, and Zane is distinctly worried by the softer tone the imposing man’s voice has taken. “Sex, and nothing else?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah.” Carter pauses, but Stark doesn’t seem to want to take the opportunity to dive straight in and argue. Zane’s heard this sort of conversation before, and this is usually the part where the intelligence-related insults come into play. But it’s Carter who continues, eventually, saying, “You hate me, and you’ve said as much. I’m just a quick fuck in between changing the world.”
Will they stop saying “fuck”?! Zane’s brain protests hysterically, but he shushes it.
Stark is quiet for a moment longer. When he speaks, his voice is carefully controlled, and Zane thinks he can hear a hint of heartbreak behind the measured tones. “For the record,” he begins levelly, “my relationship with Allison was over long before she turned my proposal down-” He proposed to her? Zane’s brain interrupts. “-and you are not, and never will be, a ‘quick fuck’, even if that’s a notion your minute mind has problems accepting. I want you, Jack-” He called him Jack? Wait ‘til Vincent hears this! “-and not just because I’m hurting, or you’re good in bed, or whatever else your mind wants to decide. I want to be with you.”
Carter laughs shortly. “And Nathan Stark always gets what he wants,” he needles, and there is such pain behind his voice. “Well here’s a newsflash for you, Stark. I don’t want you. So get the hell out of my office.”
Even Zane’s brain is silent, and the sound of a pen scratching across paper is loud in the quiet.
“Jack-”
“Don’t you have a Fargo to be yelling at?” comes the emotionless answer.
The pen scrapes across the paper, and then the paper is shoved into a folder. A desk drawer is dragged out and then slammed shut again.
Zane doesn’t have time to move before Stark rounds the corner and comes face to face with him. Apprehension floods through the younger man, and all he can do is stare into Stark’s blank features like a deer in headlights. Please Lord, the back of his mind babbles, I will repent and be a wonderful servant…
Stark sighs. “Doesn’t matter now,” he mutters, seemingly to himself, and brushes past Zane.
The door swings shut behind him.
Zane doesn’t want to think about what he’s just heard, and not just because of the confusing sensations the image of Carter and Stark in bed arouses. He’s always told himself he doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body, but the wrongness of this just makes him feel queasy - not Carter and Stark together, but Carter and Stark apart.
He steps out of the station, and decides that he really wants to see Jo.
__taggart__
“What made you think that creating a werewolf could possibly be a good idea?” Carter asks bluntly.
Taggart shuffles his feet. “I didn’t know that lupine haemovariform meant werewolf,” he protests. “I was just seeing if-”
“Lupine harlequin?” Carter questions, looking blank.
The Australian tries not to roll his eyes. “Lupine haemovariform,” he repeats, slowly and clearly. When Carter still looks confused, he proudly explains: “I found it on the Internet.”
Carter rubs at his temples. “I hate this town,” he mutters.
“It hates you, Sheriff,” Stark says, and Taggart thinks there’s more venom in that barb than there is normally. Interesting, he notes. Even more interestingly, the Sheriff doesn’t take the opportunity for the two of them to indulge in one of their courtship-rituals-disguised-as-cutting-banter routines. Taggart is somewhat disappointed by this. He’d been hoping to conduct an investigation into the pair of them, comparing their bickerings to the complex mating rituals of the Bavarian spineless lizard. He’s observed that there are many parallels to be drawn. Insults; rivalry. Hopefully not the eventual mutual decapitation.
“So, we need to catch Fargo before the moon is full, right?” Carter queries, bringing Taggart back from his contemplation of the Bavarian spineless lizard’s messy nuptials. “When’s that: like a week?” He seems to have relaxed.
“Ah,” Taggart contradicts warily, “not exactly.”
Carter’s face falls so quickly that it’s vaguely comical. “What d’you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“Tests show than any moonlight will spark the change,” Taggart explains ruefully. “There was a slight glitch in the formula I downloaded, so it’s not the specific wavelength of light that is emitted by the full moon that will-”
“Night bad,” Carter paraphrases. “Moonlight bad.”
Taggart shrugs. “Fair enough.”
“What’s the plan then, Sheriff?” Stark questions sharply, hands clasped lightly behind his back. “You up for a night running around the woods? Or will it be thermal scans and going in all guns blazing?”
The back of Taggart’s neck prickles, and that’s never a good sign. The room seems to whirl into razor-sharp clarity, and that’s when he realises that for the entire time the three of them have been in the same space together, Carter has never once looked back at Stark. All is not well, he thinks, and then he spots the briefest flash of hurt cross Carter’s expressive features.
“I’m waiting,” Stark says flatly.
The Sheriff’s back straightens, and Taggart remembers not to flinch when he spots the whitened knuckles. “This is a police matter, Doctor Stark,” he answers coolly, “so myself and Deputy Lupo will handle it. It would be appreciated if you would let us get on with our work.”
Stark’s nostrils flare, and Taggart waits for the explosion. “Your investigation is the result of an industrial accident,” he counters, “so it’s not wholly under your jurisdiction. I’m here to make sure nothing potentially hazardous gets out into the population of Eureka.” The scientist smiles, but it’s a dark and furious smile. “Hate to burst your bubble, Sheriff, but you’re stuck with me.”
Carter’s eyes have darkened, and Taggart thinks: This ain’t good. “Sorry,” the Sheriff commiserates, “but that’s not your call. Have to get Allison’s approval for a GD representative to tag along on a potentially hazardous operation.”
“I’ll give her a call then,” Stark answers, going for the silver phone in the breast pocket of his suit.
In the blink of an eye, Carter has wheeled around and smacked the cell from Stark’s hand. “You’re not coming, Nathan,” he bites off. “So just sit down and wait, and try not to let GD blow up while I’m not here to fix your messes for you. Got it?”
Stark’s jaw tightens. He takes a single step towards Carter, and his eyes are fever-bright. “You have no idea how hard it is for me not to just break your neck right now,” he states tightly, and Taggart begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He eyes the smashed remainders of Stark’s cell, in a heap of circuitry in the corner, and begins to sidle towards the door. He’s heard Zane’s recounting of what he’d heard in the Sheriff’s office (no doubt elaborated on and expanded - Zane is like that), and thinks: I shouldn’t be here.
“Then do it,” Carter answers aggressively, “so I can arrest you for assaulting an officer of the law.”
Taggart really wants to get out of there. The two men face off, nearly nose to nose, and they seem to have forgotten that he’s in the room, so he figures it won’t be that hard. It’s not like he’s interested in their bickering. They bicker all the time - it’s normal. There’s nothing abnormal about today.
Or, at least, it’s normal right up to the point that Stark grabs Carter and forces him into a bruising kiss.
Taggart runs for the door.
Much later, after he’s caught the absent Fargo and stripped the werewolf DNA from his own, with the help of Jo and Henry, Taggart meets Stark again in the corridors of GD. There’s an empty expression in the other man’s eyes, and a rapidly purpling bruise on his left cheek. Stark walks past him as if he doesn’t see him. Taggart puzzles over this for a while, but it’s only when he makes a quick trip to Café Diem to visit Vincent and his big book of bets and happens to stumble across Sheriff Carter that he realises what happens. He spots Carter’s bandaged knuckles, and promptly puts two and two together.
He can’t resist a quick jibe. “Never hit a man with a closed fist, hey Sheriff?” he jokes.
Carter transfers his gaze to the Australian, and his eyes are flat and broken. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answers softly, before walking out of the café. Taggart’s gaze follows him out, and he wishes that he’d never said anything.
__fargo__
The windows into Stark’s lab are blacked out, but that doesn’t faze Fargo as he knocks on the door. The windows are almost always blackened, unless Stark is in the world-domineering mood and wishes to simply glare at everyone who walks past - or, more precisely, Fargo. So he knocks on the door, and tries not to feel irritated at Doctor Blake for dragging him away from his important, life-altering research to run and fetch ‘Nathan’.
Fargo pulls a face as he mouths the scientist’s name.
After a moment, he notices that Stark hasn’t answered, so he raps again, juggling the request for entry with the data tablet he currently has balanced on his left arm. There’s a long equation dancing on the screen that he just can’t get to grips with, and he wants to have a good crack at it before he has to submit to the humiliation of asking Stark for help.
He hates asking Stark for help.
Speaking of which, Stark still hasn’t answered.
Fargo rolls his eyes and tries the door. It’s one of the older labs which was assigned to Stark while they were trying to figure out where to put him permanently, but he liked it, so he kept it. It’s so old it even has a door handle, and Fargo’s pleasantly surprised when said door handle gives, and the door swings open a crack. He expected it to be locked, bolted, and electrified.
He pokes his head into the lab, and the prepared spiel of: “Doctor Stark, Doctor Blake needs you” dies on his lips.
Stark’s in there alright, but it’s what he’s doing that has Fargo speechless. Stark’s head lolls back against the headrest of his chair, and his eyes are shut as sweat beads on his forehead. One hand grasps the armrest in a white-knuckled grip. His fly is unzipped, and, although anything more graphic is hidden behind the desk, the muscles in the larger man’s arm tense and bulge as his hand jerks in repetitive strokes. Fargo can hear soft grunts as Stark’s hips jerk rhythmically forward. There are wet tracks down his cheeks, and, as Fargo watches, a lone tear rolls down one well-worn path to drip onto his collar.
Holy shit, Fargo thinks, his mouth hanging open.
He closes the door softly, and as it clicks shut he swears he hears Stark grunt out Sheriff Carter’s name.
Maybe Taggart was right.
When he’s made his way through Global and re-entered Doctor Blake’s office, she looks up expectantly. “Well?” she asks.
Fargo clears his throat hesitantly. He reasons that blurting out, He’s masturbating in his lab, would be a monumentally bad idea, especially since he thinks he can see the face of one of the Joint Chiefs on the screen behind the head of GD, so he goes for the safe option. “Doctor Stark is… indisposed,” he says neutrally, before fleeing back to his research.
He doesn’t miss the confused look that Doctor Blake shoots him, and he wonders how long he’ll have to potter in his lab before she comes after him to make him explain.
But in the mean time, he tries desperately not to think about Stark’s face, screwed up in ecstasy with pained tears dripping down his cheeks.
__jo__
It’s not the sort of thing he’d usually do, and she knows that, but he runs too fast for her to stop him. The door slides shut with a decisive hiss, and she slams up against it. “Carter!” she yells, smacking her fist against the glass.
He glances back at her, and offers her a soft smile. He keys his radio. “Stand back, Deputy,” he orders.
“But-”
“Jo.” His eyes are warm. “It’s okay.”
She hears the clatter of feet rushing towards her, and Allison, Fargo and Stark come around the corner. Just in time, she thinks ironically. “Deputy?” Allison asks, just before she notices Carter, locked in the lab behind them. “Carter?”
As Jo turns back to the glass and the Sheriff, she half-sees a flash of panic cross Stark’s stoic features. It’s so fast that she wonders if she even saw it at all.
Allison snatches the radio from Jo’s hand. “Carter!” she calls. “What are you doing?”
Carter doesn’t answer. Doctor Guthrie is lying prone on the lab’s floor, and the Sheriff bends beside him. He checks for a pulse, and then regret flickers in his features. Jo understands that look. She’s seen it before. Dead.
Fargo checks a panel bolted to the wall beside the door. “Radiation levels are climbing fast,” he states, and there’s worry in his voice.
The head of GD rounds on Jo. “What’s he doing in there?” she demands.
Jo straightens. “Guthrie’s experimental generator’s about to overload,” she answers softly. “He didn’t think we had time to get anyone with a scientific background in there before the doors sealed automatically, so he went in himself.” Sacrificed himself, is the phrase that dances on her lips, but she refuses to voice it.
“Fargo-”
“I’m on it,” Fargo answers, delving into Global Dynamics’ internal systems in an attempt to override the automatic security lockout.
Allison herself is occupied with her phone - she’s calling commands down the line, and Jo catches her end of the conversation. “Get a medical team to Section Three immediately, with hazmat suits and medication for radiation sickness… It’s Sheriff Carter… Yes, alert the infirmary…”
Jo glances into the lab once more, and wishes she hadn’t. Carter has abandoned the dead scientist and is leaning against a flashing, whirring device. Things that flash and whir are rarely good, her inner Carter dictates, and she feels trepidation curl her stomach. Carter himself looks up, and his gaze goes to Stark. He takes hold of his radio. “Tell me what to do.”
Stark nods, and takes Jo’s radio from Allison’s grasp. “There should be panel on the left end of the machine,” he says levelly, and Jo is amazed that he can remain so calm. Zane’s lunchtime ramblings of last week seem so far off the mark she might laugh. “Pull it off.”
Said panel is removed and dropped to the floor with a clatter, and Jo can see that Carter’s hands are shaking. It’s not from nerves-the man has lived too long in Eureka to be nervous-and she has the horrible feeling that he’s more affected by the climbing levels of radiation in the lab than he puts across. He grips the edge of the table, and looks back to Stark. A mess of wiring spills out onto the table top in front of him. “What next?”
Jo sees Stark readjust his grip on her radio. His palms are sweaty, and his voice hitches just as he begins to speak. Maybe he’s not so calm after all, she wonders. So maybe… “Pull the red wire out of its socket.”
Even laced with radiation, Carter finds time to joke. “The red one, Stark? You trying to blow me up?”
Stark’s lips twitch upwards slightly, but there’s more pain than humour behind the tiny movement. Jo’s heart goes out to the brooding scientist, and it’s never done that before. “You wish,” he answers. “You’re not that important for us to destroy significant research to get rid of you.”
Carter smiles, and coughs once into his hand. He wipes his palm on the side of his trousers immediately, but Jo doesn’t miss the crimson that briefly coated his fingers. He yanks an equally-crimson wire out of the machine housing and drops it to the floor. “Done,” he reports, and rubs at his throat.
Stark nods. “At the other end there’s a keypad.”
Carter’s movements are jerky now, and he wipes his hand across his forehead. Jo feels useless. She turns to Fargo, intending to pour out some of her frustration by berating him for taking so long, but she sees that his hands are flying frantically across the makeshift keyboard and there are tears in his eyes. She presses her hand to her heart to calm its frenzied beating, and looks back through to her boss. “Got it.”
“There’s a deactivation sequence that’s written into all GD machinery,” Stark explains. “An eight-digit code. Ready?”
Carter nods, but that affirmation is negated by the fact that at that instant his legs give way and he collapses, fingertips still clinging to the edge of the table. Jo surges forward, but then remembers that there’s a glass barrier in the way. By her side, Allison gasps, and Fargo’s fingers start to smash the keyboard. He swears, under his breath. Stark, however, is a little more obvious in his concern. “Carter!” he bellows into the radio, eyes wide. Jo’s only ever heard of Stark being this emotional a few times - once over Callister; more than once over Allison and Kevin. Always over those he calls family.
Oh my God, Jo realises. He loves him.
Carter hauls himself back up, forearms resting on the table. “Code, Nathan.” It seems to be all he can get out, and his head dips down to rest on his hands.
Stark lets out a shaky breath. “Seven, four, theta, gamma,” he recites, and they watch as Carter’s trembling fingers skitter over the touchscreen keypad. “Six, zero, sigma, nine.”
The whirring begins to slow, and the faintest smile lights up Carter’s face. “Looks like it worked,” he transmits through.
“You doubted me?” Stark protests, but there’s still worry in his voice. As Carter wavers inside the lab, Stark steps closer to Fargo, leaving the radio off. “Radiation?” he asks quietly.
Fargo’s head shakes minutely. “Levels are falling,” he answers, “but I don’t think we were quick enough. He’s definitely been exposed.”
“Fatally?” Stark queries, voice no more than a murmur, and Jo’s stomach does a backflip.
“No way to tell.”
“Jo?”
Jo jerks at Carter’s voice, and, after a moment’s reluctance, Stark hands the radio back to her. “Here,” she answers.
His blue eyes are clouded, but his expression is serene. “Please, Jo,” he says quietly, almost inaudible over the frantic clicking of Fargo’s fingertips. “Keep Zoë safe.” He offers her one last smile, and then crumples backwards, his lean body in a heap on the floor.
“No!” The panic in Stark’s voice is horrifyingly clear. Jo relinquishes the radio to his grasping fingers, and just stands frozen, listening . “Jack!” Stark calls, and there’s such desperation in his voice that Jo feels her heart break. “Please, Jack. Just hold on.”
But there’s only silence on the radio, and Carter doesn’t move.
__henry__
He’d received the call at one thirty-two, asking him to go to the high school, pull Zoë Carter out of class and take her to Global Dynamics. It had been Jo on the other end of the line, and the shakiness of her voice told him without her saying anything just how bad the situation was. His knuckles had clenched white, just for a second, and then he’d been on the road, breaking the speed limit and several laws. He barely remembered the next half an hour, until his arrival at GD with Zoë in tow.
The infirmary had been dead silent when they arrived at one fifty-six, and everyone had just been waiting - for news, good or bad.
Now, Henry sits with Nathan Stark, and they watch numbly as Zoë cries into Jo’s shoulder.
“I don’t understand,” Nathan says softly, his hands wound tightly together. “How could he be stupid enough to do that?”
Henry shifts in his chair, and glances over towards the isolation room. He can just see the outline of Jack’s limp body, surrounded by doctors and nurses and radiation meters. “What he did probably saved Section Three, Nathan. It was risky, not stupid.”
“He saved Section Three at the cost of his own life.”
“He’s not dead yet,” Henry gently points out. He thinks he knows why Nathan is taking this so badly, but it’s not something he wants to consider for the moment. He’s close to both Nathan and Jack, and he doesn’t want to see either of them hurt - and he has the faintest idea that any relationship, romantic or otherwise, between the two is not going to run smoothly. Zane has already cryptically said that he’s seen proof of that, but just when he’d mentioned that titbit the experiment the two of them were running had gone haywire and Henry hadn’t had a chance to bring it up again.
Nathan laughs flatly. “You’ve seen radiation exposure this bad before,” he counters. “He has maybe a four percent chance of survival. If he’s lucky.” He shakes his head. “Son of a bitch had to go and ruin everything.”
The last is said in a voice barely above a whisper, and Henry thinks that he probably wasn’t supposed to hear it. He understands, though, or at least he thinks he did. Ah, Romeo, he thinks, although he somehow doubts Jack would appreciate being Juliet. “Don’t lose hope,” he says, his hand gripping Nathan’s shoulder.
Nathan’s head shakes once more. “Henry,” he says heavily, “you don’t understand.”
“I lost Kim,” Henry says sharply. “Of course I understand.” He turns into himself for a moment, and he can see her - laughing and smiling in another world, another time. Memories of that which cannot be, he thinks, and his heart hurts.
Nathan straightens, and Henry ignores the way his eyes are far too bright. “It’s not the same,” he counters, and Henry knows that his friend is far gone into grief and self-pity now, because he’s forgotten how much Kim’s death still means. Or maybe he just doesn’t care any more.
“Because Jack’s a man?” he asks acidly.
Nathan studies his hands. “Because he doesn’t want me,” he answers.
“Bullshit.”
“Henry-”
“Nathan, stop wallowing in self-pity for a minute and listen,” Henry snaps. “Jack is in love with you, no matter what he says. You know him: just think about it. Why else would he intentionally get himself locked in a radiation-flooded lab, when he knows that GD is full of brilliant minds and hazmat suits? He’s depressed, and being as fatuous and selfish as you are.” Nathan hasn’t looked up, but Henry can see his anger and unwilling acknowledgement in the tension of his shoulders. “Do something about it before Eureka loses a Sheriff, and Zoë loses her father.”
“And why should I listen to a word you say?”
“Because I’m older, wiser, and unbiased,” Henry answers. “And because you’re the most emotionally stunted man I’ve ever met.”
Nathan just stands up and walks out.
Henry watches him go, and doesn’t stop him. Nathan needs time to think, for his big brain to consider all the possibilities and for his timid heart to finally manage to overrule them all. Henry sighs and scrubs his hands through his hair. He glances over at Jack, a pale, still form in the middle of a sea of activity, and settles in for the night.
__zoë__
She sits in the infirmary with only the soft lighting and her unconscious father for company, and wonders what time it is. She left her bag at school in Henry’s terrifying hurry, and she can’t spot a clock - although she hasn’t exactly been looking very hard. She’s preoccupied and distracted.
Her dad’s breathing is ragged, and she tries not to cry at the sound.
She thinks that it must be something like three in the morning by now - Jo was sent home by Allison hours ago, and Zane had left with her, his arm around her shoulders. Allison had left shortly after, mumbling something about Kevin through worry-laden tones. Henry stayed, but he’s currently fetching two extra-strong Vinspressos, Jack’s veto be damned. Zoë needs it right now - she doesn’t want to think, just to stay awake.
She squeezes his hand, and waits for him to squeeze back.
She’s still waiting when she hears the soft click of footsteps behind her, and she glances back over her shoulder. She tries to force a smile, but gets the feeling that it comes out as more of a grimace. “Doctor Stark,” she greets, wiping tears from her face. She hadn’t even realised that they’d been falling.
His expression is unusually open, but she decides not to take advantage of the vulnerability. “Do you mind if I stay?” he asks.
Zoë shakes her head, and Stark takes the seat across from her. She smiles, and it’s faintly genuine this time. “I didn’t think you cared,” she remarks, her thumb rubbing rhythmic patterns on the back of her father’s hand.
Stark’s lips quirk upwards, just slightly. “Neither did I,” he admits. Zoë pulls her attention away from Jack just in time to see affection flicker through the scientist’s eyes, and she doesn’t miss the fact that his hand lies on the bed just next to her father’s.
She laughs quietly to herself. “Jo was right.”
Stark looks at her briefly. “About what?”
Zoë shrugs. “You and Dad.”
He doesn’t seem surprised. “She knew?”
“She figured it out today,” Zoë corrects. “I thought…” She catches sight of her father’s slack features once more, and the thought flees from her mind. “I don’t know what I thought.” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand again. Wordlessly, Stark removes a neatly-ironed handkerchief from his breast pocket and hands it to her. She accepts it, and glances up at him. “He’s always liked you, you know.” Zoë doesn’t quite know why she’s sharing so much - maybe she just needs to take her mind off… other things. “Ever since he first met you.”
Stark’s gaze rests on her father’s face. “How so?”
“He argues with people he likes.”
“He doesn’t argue with Henry,” Stark observes dryly.
She laughs, and she thinks that she was meant to. “He’s not attracted to Henry,” she clarifies. “He’s attracted to you.”
Stark smiles at that, and they sit in silence for a while, just watching for any change. The medical machines bleep and flash softly, and the stool she sits on creaks when she shifts her weight. Absently, she recognises that she’s hungry, and that she has school tomorrow and an unfinished assignment, but she can’t quite care.
Dad, please, she begs. Don’t go.
She wipes at her eyes with Stark’s handkerchief, and sniffs loudly.
He looks up at her. “Are you okay?” he asks, and she wonders if the concern she can hear in his voice is genuine.
“Yeah.” She sniffs again, and laughs bitterly. “No.” Her free hand scrunches the handkerchief in her lap, and a lone tear runs down her pale cheek. She doesn’t bother to wipe it away. “I heard you talking to Henry, by the way,” she comments softly, not looking at Stark. “I think he’s right.” She wipes her eyes again. “About why Dad was stupid enough to lock himself in a room full of radiation.”
Stark’s shoulders stiffen. “Do you blame me?” he asks, and there’s something of a little lost boy in his voice.
She shrugs. “A little.”
His head dips, and he is silent.
Zoë slips off her stool and stands up. She leans across the bed and gently takes Stark’s hand, guiding it to her father’s loosely-curled fingers. Stark doesn’t need any more prompting: he takes Jack’s hand and grips as if he’ll never let go. But he does look up at Zoë, and there is a question in his eyes. She smiles back. “I think he needs both of us to get through this,” she explains, and returns to her seat.
They sit there in silence, holding on to the man who means so much to them both, and nothing else needs to be said.
__allison__
She doesn’t expect to find Nathan in Café Diem. To be honest, she wouldn’t even have spotted him if Vincent’s gaze hadn’t kept slipping back over her shoulder to study someone seated in one of the back booths - but Vincent had, and, several curious gazes following her, she’d moved over to join her ex-husband.
She lightly touches his shoulder before sliding into the booth opposite him. “Nathan.”
He offers a weak smile. “Allison.”
Just for a moment, she misses when he used to call her ‘Allie’. “I thought you’d be with Carter,” she opens tentatively, and knows she’s hit the mark when his knuckles pale with pressure. “He’s being released from GD’s infirmary today.”
“I know,” Nathan answers, but he doesn’t offer anything more than that.
Allison reaches across the table and lightly touches his wrist. “Talk to me, Nathan,” she pleads. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”
A little sardonic half-smile traces his lips. “Like what?” he asks, and there’s a challenge in his voice.
She pauses, and then answers, “Heartbroken.”
He laughs to himself, and she didn’t expect that. “Heartbroken,” he repeats, and there’s a twinge of defensive sarcasm in his voice. “You’re thinking a lot of yourself if you think-”
“Stop being deliberately stupid, Nathan,” Allison snaps. “You know full well who I’m talking about.”
The muscles in his shoulders tense under the pale fabric of his shirt. “There’s nothing going on between us,” he answers coolly, and she’s worryingly aware that he refuses to look at her. She can feel his coolness. You broke your relationship by turning him down, her mind accuses her, but that’s not a question for now.
“Nathan-” she tries.
“There isn’t,” he interrupts, “and there never can be. You know that. The DoD would throw a fit if I was involved with Carter.”
It’s the first time he’s even said Jack’s name, and that’s an improvement. She files that away, decides not to bring up the utter absurdity of that statement, and carries on. “That doesn’t seem to have been stopping you recently,” she fires back acerbically. “The grapevine in Eureka works fast, and you having sex with Carter in Taggart’s lab certainly got around quickly.”
Allison thinks she sees him wince. She knows that he hates his indiscretions to be made public knowledge, and that is something that she therefore intends to take full advantage of.
“And then a very loud, very private conversation in his office in the middle of the day.”
“Allison-” he begins.
“And then,” she interrupts, “doing something I don’t even want to think about on GD time!” His head jerks up at that, but she doesn’t notice. She’s angry now, and not just because of his dazed state at work recently. She’s angry at him for not listening, for forcing her to resort to this catalogue of his errors, for him for messing things up with Carter. “Damnit, Nathan. You’ve fired people for less.”
They sit in tense silence, just for a moment.
Allison runs a hand through her hair. “I may not want to be your wife, Nathan,” she says softly, “but I do want to be your friend. Please, listen to me, just this once.”
But Nathan just returns his gaze to his hands, and she can’t help but feel like she’s accomplished nothing at all.
__jack and nathan__
Jack’s half-asleep on the couch, one hand sprawled across his eyes and the other clutching the neck of a beer bottle, when he hears the hiss of the door opening. He figures that he should probably fire off a quick, “Hey, Zoë,” before she comes over to check that he hasn’t collapsed again, but he’s too comfortable. Sleep beckons. His daughter will just have to fuss. He finds it sweet, anyway, although he’d never tell her that.
“Jack?”
He sits bolt upright, slopping beer over his hand in the process. He barely notices. “Stark?” he asks, confused.
There’s something in Nathan’s face which seems to close off when he says that. “Just came to check how you were doing,” he says flatly, and the raw emotion that Jack thinks he heard in the first utterance of his name is hidden.
To calm his buzzing nerves, Jack wipes the beer methodically off his hand and sets the bottle down on the coffee table before answering, “Good, considering.” He smiles ruefully. “Henry told me I had about a four percent chance of survival. I guess that means lucky me.” He glances down, because Nathan’s gaze is getting a little too piercing. “Stupid, really.” He’s just babbled a lot of pointless information, he knows, but it makes him feel a little better.
There is quiet for a moment, and then he feels the couch dip next to him. “You saved the entirety of Section Three,” Nathan answers, leaning forward with his clasped hands between his knees. “It was risky, not stupid.”
Jack snorts, and looks pointedly at Nathan.
The scientist smiles. “Yeah, okay. It was stupid too.”
Jack smiles, and then picks absently at his thumbnail. He knows that Nathan didn’t just come all the way to the bunker to check up on a sick colleague, but he doesn’t quite know how to put that sentiment into words. They don’t tend to talk much, anyway - their meetings seem to just disintegrate into wordless, wonderful sex: when Jack found Nathan in the bathroom at Global, despondent after Allison turned him down; when Nathan came to visit Jack in the Sheriff’s office, just before their blazing row; and, regrettably, in Taggart’s lab, when they just hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each, despite the fury and the hurt. Jack doesn’t know if he can remember what a real relationship feels like.
But, then again, he thinks, this one feels more real than all the others put together.
“I was scared.” It’s Nathan who breaks the silence, even if his gaze remains firmly glued to his hands. “When I saw you locked in Guthrie’s lab. I didn’t want you to die.”
I didn’t want to, either, Jack quips in his mind, but forces his brain to veto the words. He just lets Nathan speak.
The scientist’s fingers don’t seem to want to remain still. They pluck at the dark fabric of his trousers. “And it hurt,” he admits, “when you said no. It hurt a lot.”
Jack knows what Nathan’s trying to say, even if it’s too early for either of them to admit it. I want you. I need you. I love you. Reaching out, he turns Nathan to face him. “Stay with me,” he says softly. “Not for sex, not for shouting. Just stay here, with me.”
Slowly, clumsily, they lay down together on the couch, Jack’s back pressed flush to Nathan’s chest. It’s awkward, at first, and Nathan’s beard irritates the back of Jack’s neck, but he doesn’t move. He won’t. He can’t.
I want you. I need you. I love you.
Jack closes his eyes, and feels himself smile.
__ever after__
The house is silent when Zoë returns, Lucas’s hand warm around hers. S.A.R.A.H. doesn’t greet her as normal, so she frowns, but she thinks she might know why. She stops in the doorway, blocking Lucas out, and peers round until she can see the couch. Her father and Doctor Stark lie there, wrapped around each other, and a smile bubbles to her lips.
She turns around and lightly pushes Lucas backwards. He looks hurt, until she steps outside with him. “Zoë?” he asks, confused. “I thought I was staying until your dad threw me out.”
S.A.R.A.H. closes the door behind them with a quite hum of goodbye. “We’re going to your place,” Zoë answers, readjusting the strap of her schoolbag over her shoulder.
Lucas’s forehead wrinkles. “What’s going on?” he queries.
Zoë thinks for a moment, and then smiles, and kisses him lightly on the lips. “Honeymooning,” she answers, and pulls him away up the steps.
~*end*~