AN: Sometimes chapter titles are like hunting down a mystical creature that only one person has ever seen and sometimes they just fall in your lap. Sometimes I get excited about chapter titles and let them derail the chapter. Final chapter of this little fix-it fic, I got other episodes to fix and a scientist to put in a WW2 uniform.;)

The Ex-Files

Chapter 2

I Want To Believe

They arrived at the bunker a few hours later thanks to several delays. The first stop for dinner held them up for almost forty-five minutes. Nathan was surprised at how excited Vincent was to see him and the man promptly promised to make his favorite dishes, which of course took time. The few Eureka residents in Cafe Diem also were also delighted to see him, as they now had evidence of the rumors of his return to be true and had quickly progressed to asking for specifics about it. That took more time. Fargo arrived and declared he was going to lobby to get him his job back as Director of GD, while also handing him a box of his GD gym clothes that had been encased in a time capsule in the Nathan Stark Memorial Hallway. That awkward moment was ended by the arrival of Dr. Drechmeyer who wisely chose to sulk back out after Nathan blocked his view of Jack with his body and shot him a warning glare.

When he thought he was finally in the clear, Jack drove them to the supermarket and parked the Jeep. Apparently he was going to buy him what he needed, necessity wise, and wouldn't take no for an answer. After Jack made a comment about using his own cheap-ass shampoo or Zoe's produce scented stuff, Nathan felt it was a good move. So another hour wasted as he bought hair care, underwear, soap, brush, shaving cream and razor and a toothbrush to get him restarted on life. He wondered if this was the service the US Marshalls provided for recently released prisoners or if Jack was really that precept when he wanted to be.

So Nathan was absolutely exhausted when they got to the bunker which was why it took him longer than it should to comprehend what was happening when they walked inside. Sarah's lights flickered and the closet door opened to reveal Jack's AI Deputy. "That never stops being creepy."

Jack snorted, amused he was using his line from earlier that day. "And you're the one who likes robots."

"Not like this."

"Welcome home Sheriff!" S.A.R.A.H. chirped as if she hadn't been caught with her firewalls down.

"Hi Boss!" Deputy Andy said with his eerily happy grin plastered to his face. "You must be Dr. Stark! It's a real pleasure to meet you sir. Your advancements in AI and robotics are the the reason I'm alive."

"Oh, so it's your fault he's pleasuring my house." Jack whispered and unfastened his gun belt and started to walk to the kitchen.

Nathan couldn't help but be fascinated with the Deputy as he really was a product of his own research, except it was research that the DoD took from his house after he had been declared legally dead. There was a lot he was going to have to wade through when he got his life back. "I'd be very interested in taking a look at your systems, Andy."

"Now who's playing doctor with the robot?" Jack yelled as he unbuttoned his shirt on the way to getting himself a beer.

"I don't play doctor, Carter."

"Now we're back to Carter, huh? I was getting used to hearing you call me Jack. Seemed like you couldn't get enough of saying it back at the office."

Nathan found his interest in Andy fade as Jack's playful voice lured him into the kitchen. "My last word was your name. I occurred to me how much I liked the sound of it rolling off my tongue a little too late."

Jack had to clear his throat as he turned and found Nathan standing right there. He handed him his beer, as if that was going to hide the tinge of red flushing his cheeks.

"Great men are defined by their last words, if you think I hadn't planned to say something earth-shattering on my deathbed, you're wrong." Nathan said and his eyes locked on to Jack's as he accepted the offered beer. "I might have surprised myself when the moment came, but it certainly wasn't a disappointment."

"Hey, Boss?" Andy asked, ruining the moment. "S.A.R.A.H. and I..."

"Go back in the closet Andy!" Jack snapped. "S.A.R.A.H. Take the night off, OK? For both our sakes."

Nathan smirked. "It's funny that this house is actually the future I dreamed of. AI integrated systems, so integrated they're a part of your family. Andy's based on the research I did that created Callister."

"Probably should have taken the hint you put some kink in there when I found out Jo was dating Callister at some point." Jack mumbled and then froze, checking to see if he had crossed a line. Callister was always a sensitive topic.

"Not exactly the Father-son talks we had." Nathan admitted. "That was his AI learning and Jo doing the teaching."

"Good to know Andy wasn't a sex robot right out of the box and my house was the one who corrupted him." Jack snorted.

"You have that effect on people." Nathan said and gave him an exaggerated look over.

Jack couldn't hide the blush now. "Okay, the day's already weird enough without you reminding me that I..."

"Are a flirty and hot piece of ass that half of GD won't admit they fantasize about being arrested by?" Nathan asked as he took a sip of beer. His first taste of anything since he had been back and his senses were on overload as he savored the fermented yeast drink. He never thought he's be so thrilled to taste the mass produced generic beer Jack seemed to enjoy, but as the carbonation tingled on is tongue he felt himself relax a little. He felt alive, because nothing this mediocre could have such an array of delightful flavors unless he had truly been without food and drink for a year.

"I'm going to go take a shower." Jack said and his smile wouldn't go away, but his blush deepened. "Unless you want to first?"

"You go first." Nathan said. "I'm going to be in there a while."

"Hair care or hand care?" Jack asked, trying to keep things light as Nathan studied his amber glass of beer like it was a treasured experiment.

"I've been floating in space-time for a year, I'm really going to enjoy remembering what a hot shower feels like." Nathan smirked. "If you can wait til I'm done, I wouldn't mind remembering what a hot body feels like either."

"Are you sure you want to just jump right in..." Jack was cut off by a tender kiss. Soft, sensual and Stark. Finally a taste of the man he'd been thinking about for years, he wasn't expecting it to taste like his beer though. No complaints, but he felt bad that he didn't have a real drink to offer the guy if only to help convince himself this was real.

"I've had nothing but time." Nathan assured him. "So please go take a shower before I drag you in there myself and forget about being clean."

That voice almost made him melt, the words almost made him beg him to follow through on his threat. He knew what he wanted and he wasn't afraid to say it, if he said he expected any less from Nathan he would be lying. "Well if you want to eat, feel free. I'm sure you didn't get anything to eat at GD."

"I'm fine." Nathan admitted. "I'd appreciate you talking to me though, it's going to be hard to hear you and have you out of sight and not start questioning my existence. I spent the last year following you around and your home is familiar, almost too familiar for comfort right now."

"Yeah." Jack nodded. He could definitely understand that. Then he replayed the events of the last year and narrowed his eyes at Stark. "How much did you...watch?"

"Well I tried giving you privacy when you and Tess were dating, but if you didn't have boundaries or regard for the many many surfaces in this bunker you should not have had sex on, why should I?" Nathan shrugged.

"Great."

"You live in an AI house who has cameras everywhere and has established that she records everything." Nathan said dryly. "Who do you think S.A.R.A.H learned her tricks from, Jack?"

"Oh my God." Jack said and looked over at the closet then to the ceiling. Then he purposely added for S.A.R.A.H.'s benefit, "Thank God she's turned off for the rest of the night."

"More like getting off." Nathan said and grinned.

"OK, I'm taking a shower."

Nathan watched him disappear and tried to still the panic he felt as Jack became no more than a shadow behind the bathroom door. Instead of taking a seat on the couch he walked into the hall, leaned against the wall and slid to the floor to sit outside the bathroom like a needy house pet. He had kept it together all afternoon and most of the evening, but it was surreal being real here in the confines of Jack's home. He had no reference for this prior to his dematerialization, other than that B.R.A.D situation, so he found it hard to ground himself. "I'm sorry I intruded on your privacy. At the time, it was focused on not losing my one connection to the world even if you were unaware of my presence."

"Nathan.." Jack said as he turned on the water and looked over his shoulder at the door, his voice was so close he knew he had to be hovering outside. "I'm not upset. It's not like you haven't seen me naked, a lot, outside the walls of this house."

"It has, however, afforded me the opportunity to get to know you pretty well. Your habits, your intimate details, your inability to turn your mind off at night." Nathan sat, back to the wall, and stretched out his long legs across the floor of the hallway. "You don't hide yourself the way I do. That puts you at a disadvantage because I'm invested in starting over with you and you don't really know me. Even though you've dealt with two versions of me and still managed to overlook my less than desirable traits and fall in love with me."

Jack stepped into the shower and let the hot water roll over him as he found himself being quite content with a heartfelt discussion with Nathan Stark. That was something he never thought he'd have. He didn't keep his thoughts to himself, knowing Nathan had to have discussion to put him at ease and keep his mind happy. "I have to admit, I never expected you to be this open and honest. When I considered what a relationship would be with you, I knew you'd be closed off most of the time. I knew you had it in you, I saw it with Callister, but I watched those walls go back up the next day."

"Funny thing about being nothing more than thoughts and watching yourself be remembered as nothing more than that facade you hid behind, it makes you want to live. Makes you want to share a little more, makes you want to be more than a name carved in granite." Nathan said simply as words just spilled from his mouth that he had not voiced. He had used the same words to keep himself sane when he thought to himself in the space-time void, but it was different when he said them . "I said your name as my last words and I knew from the effect it had on both of us that I had taken so much for granted. I watched for a year as you refused to forget me and wrongly thought it was because you were comparing yourself to me in order to win over Ally."

"You haunted me." Jack admitted then added. "And no, don't get snarky about that being an obvious assessment of the situation."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Because a ghost can't dream?"

"Precisely." Nathan rolled his eyes, recalling how much he loved doing that because of Jack. How that one exaggerated, dramatic motion could bring back a wave of emotions...made him curse himself for being so blind to the chemistry they had; To being blind to why they could ignite a reaction at every meeting. Or maybe it had been his own fear that refused to let him see it, fear of starting something with the town Sheriff only for him to ruin it like he did every relationship and the repercussions of that in the town. A town that loved Jack Carter more then they cared for him.

Jack shampooed his hair and as he was lathering up the soap and rubbing it around he continued, "That time chamber, that time-loop thing...it haunted me because it should have been me."

"You have a daughter." Nathan said, it sounded more heroic than 'Nobody missed me but everyone would have missed you'.

"So do you."

"One I am not allowed to touch." Nathan said and was surprised by his own lack of anger. He knew it would come but he just felt lost. He watched Jack be there for so much, knowing that he would have been absent anyway if he had been alive. That was just how fate played his hand where Ally was concerned, especially after Jack arrived in Eureka. "Had we switched places, it wouldn't have changed much. If I got remarried it would have ended fast, if it ever started. I would have thrown myself into working out a way to get you back and that was exactly what ended my marriage the first time."

"You had another Sheriff you were secretly in love with who sacrificed himself to a space-time loop device to save the world?"

"Yes, Jack. I have a type." Nathan smiled as he rolled his eyes again.

Jack laughed as he rinsed his hair out. He missed how Nathan could sound so exhausted by his stupid comments, of all the things you could say you missed about a guy you just confessed your love to this morning. "You could! This is a timeline I'm still figuring out. I mean if Fargo can be head of GD, I guess anything's possible."

"I really want to hear about your trip to 1947." Nathan said. "I was beside you when you came back in that uniform and I thought I was beginning to lose time as you changed from one uniform to another in front of my eyes. Not eyes...floating particles of consciousness."

"I could really use some insight into this timeline too." Jack said and ran over himself with the soap. "I guess being stuck in space time doesn't exempt you from the timeline change, huh?"

"Nope." Nathan said. "Just fucked up in two separate timelines, exactly the same way. I would have had to time travel with you and I didn't. Shame, I really would have looked good in uniform."

Jack turned off the water. Yeah, what he wouldn't give to have seen that show up at the dance. However this reminded him of his own predicament. "Ally and I kissed in 1947 and again in the hall at GD. It felt like something. I think...maybe if you didn't decide to come back home that she and I might have used this as a way move past our unresolved issues and made something of it."

"I don't doubt you would have been sleeping with her instead of me tonight." Nathan put his head back against the wall. "One thing she and I have in common is that we don't waste time going for something we determine we want."

That revelation almost took Jack's knees out from under him. Like he had just split the timeline again with his choice in sex partners.

"Disappointed?" Nathan asked, unsettled by the silence.

"Weirded out a little." Jack admitted. "I act to save people because it's who I am, I'm not used to having my personal decisions impact the future like this."

"You've done nothing but impact lives since the very first day you stepped in Eureka." Nathan said. "The world is better for it."

Jack came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and said, "I just screwed up the world by accidentally going back to 1947, kinda hard to not feel a little self conscious about it."

"Yet not self conscious about walking out all wet and wearing a towel?" Nathan grinned. "That's one way to bring me back to life."

"Oh shut up! You've been taking off your clothes all day." Jack fired back. "And I'm not quite over the fact that I chose the legally dead guy over the woman I've been pining after for 4 years. I'm not used to overthinking things."

"What's to think about?" Nathan asked. "You're a cop. You're more aware than anyone that a single, split second decision can change your life forever."

"Maybe I have forgotten about that." Jack said. The days of him praying before his shift were long gone, even though the probability of near death experiences had gone up. "Eureka may be hard on me physically, but we always manage to reverse the bad decisions."

"Speaking of reckless endangerment, Sheriff, " Nathan looked up at him and smiled. "Can you please put some clothes on before you kill me before I can even be declared undead?"

"Go take a shower." Jack said with a wave and the towel dropped over his hip a little, making Nathan grunt. He had to grin, it was a confidence boost to be able to make the man feel that way. He made his way upstairs and threw the towel on a chair as he slipped into his pajama pants and a T-shirt. He wanted to believe this was the new Nathan, but part of him remembered that cold shoulder after that night with Callister. He couldn't forget how that vulnerability only lasted so long, even if it softened the edges of their interactions. Somehow, making it clear it was Jack's choice tonight, was a little overwhelming. Of course he made choices, every damned day, but not like this. Not standing at a fork in the road determining which route he wanted to take for the rest of his life.

He still wasn't going to leave the guy alone when he asked for company, no matter how much he needed the time to think. So Jack hurried and went downstairs and reheated dinner before going back to the hall and sitting down on the floor where Nathan had been. "Alright, dinner's started."

"I freaked you out, didn't I?" Nathan asked from inside the bathroom.

"A little." Jack said and pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them and rested his chin on his hands. "I want to believe, Nathan. I really do. However I'm afraid that once your life is back together and you have it all back that you're going to want it all back."

"What do you want, Jack?"

"I want you." Jack said and words fell from his lips that he would have vehemently denied this morning before he went to work. Because it hurt too much to think of what was lost, what never could have been. Now, it was an undeniable truth. "I've been head over heels in love with you from the day we first met."

"Then let's put everything back on course, the way it should have been from the beginning." Nathan said as he closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling and smell of washing his hair. "I'm not saying it will be easy, I acknowledge I'm difficult, but you work with me better than anyone ever has. Do you want me to dumb down this science for you Jack? Fine. You and me, we work. We're a chemical reaction that sparks and combusts, but bonds strong."

"Do we?"

"You're the only one who's ever gone up against me and dished it right back at me. You made me admit I was wrong, the only one who showed me I wasn't the answer to everything." Nathan rinsed out the soap and stared up at the ceiling as it ran down his back. "And I loved every minute of it. It felt so damned good this morning to have that back, even if it was going to be for the last time."

Jack's eyes darted over to the door and he thought about that. Nathan was ready to give it all up, no...give it to him. That happy life of his, with the woman they both thought they loved. That was a changed man. "I can't help but feel a little shallow for just abandoning what I worked four years to cultivate with Allison. How fickle am I if I just drop it all for the first scientist who rematerializes from space time?"

Nathan was done with his shower and quickly toweled off before wrapping the towel around himself and walking over to the door. He would shave in the morning, right now he didn't want to hear uncertainty in Jack's voice. He opened it and dramatically leaned against the door frame to get the exact reaction he was hoping for from Jack. He could see Jack almost forget how to swallow as he looked him over. Good. He didn't work so damned hard to have this body, or get it back, to not be able to have that effect on someone. "Let's skip dinner for now. Allow me to get all those thoughts out of your head, because we both know I could talk all night but you're more convinced with action and not words."

Jack looked up as Nathan offered his hand, the other firmly gripped on the towel he had wrapped around his waist. He took his hand and let himself be pulled to his feet, right into Nathan's chest. If there was any doubt about him being real, that was enough to chase away the doubt. Touch and talk were one thing, being pulled to his feet by a ghost would certainly be more difficult. He felt Nathan's hand release his own, only to run up his side, over his chest and up his neck. He shivered and caught his breath at the touch, only to have his jaw cupped and lifted for another kiss. This time he didn't just stand there, he reached up and put his hand into Nathan's wet hair to stop him from pulling away, hungrily kissing him back with a mixture of desire and desperation. Desperation to hold him close and keep him from disappearing again.

"Jack?"

"Mmmm?"

"I've been touch starved and sensory deprived, I'm not quite sure how long I'm going to last..."

Jack kissed him again, knowing that was a painful admission for any man and certainly was far worse for this one. He didn't say anything, just pulled him by the hand to the stairs. He was glad there would be no egos or competition tonight, just raw emotion and honesty. He couldn't say that that would have been the case at any other juncture in their time co-existing in Eureka. By the time they made it to his bedroom, Nathan had already dropped his towel and was pushing Jack down on the bed. Jack found himself quickly undressed as Nathan tried to take charge of the situation to alleviate his fears about stamina. Jack flipped him over and pinned him down first chance he got, not wanting to rush this. "This, scientist, is where time should stand still. So let me welcome you back into your body..."

Nathan's breath hitched as he felt a light kiss to his neck.

"Back to life..."

Nathan felt his heart pound as Jack pressed another kiss to his Adam's apple, while rubbing their naked bodies together oh so subtly but not without a very intense reaction.

"And back to me." Jack said and kissed the other side of his neck, lingering his lips over the pulsating jugular while feeling Nathan's short excited breaths.

It was at that moment when Nathan finally felt like he had come back home. Not four years ago when he came back to Eureka. Not a year ago when he was convinced it would all come together when he remarried Ally. Not this afternoon when his body was finally put back together. Not ever, until now. Not until Jack Carter. "You keep saving my ass, Jack."

"It's a great ass." Jack grinned and released Nathan's arms so he could illustrate his point, then kissed him again because he couldn't resist that glow on his face. That glow that said he was finally basking in the warmth of love instead of trying to get the performance out of the way and prove himself. That glow that said he was indeed back amongst the living and ready to share that life with him.