A/N: This is my first, and possibly only, story for Stalker. As you'll see if you look at my profile, I usually write fanfiction for the ABC show Castle. But I really fell in love with Stalker and was so disappointed to see it end before more character development could take place and interpersonal relationships could be given time to flourish. I admired each case of the week for the fear factor the writers and director managed to inject into each episode and for how realistically sinister they managed to make them. It was like a mini-movie every week, and I'm sure there was much more storytelling mileage to be had from this real life subject matter. If SVU can manage 17 seasons and counting, CBS could have given us at least one more of Stalker.

Anyway, as a result of the show's, in my view, premature cancellation, I felt the need to write a little "closure" for myself. I hope maybe it can help some other loyal viewers of the show too. Liv

Jack: "I felt like I was talking advantage of the moment or something, and I wanted to apologize if I crossed the line. Did I cross the line?"

Beth: "I kissed you too, Jack. It goes both ways."

Stalker: Ep.1x20 "Love Kills"

Aftermath

Chapter 1

Beth rolled over in bed to lie on her side. It was dark outside but she needed to see him by what little ambient light remained, to see that high brow, prominent, strong nose, the dusky shadow of his beard beginning to come in all along his jawline, a thick head of dark hair, now messy with her own finger tracks, providing a sharp contrast against her creamy-beige pillows.

"What are you thinking, Jack?" she asked, just looking at him for a few interconnected moments enough time to tell her that he wasn't asleep as he might appear to the untrained eye.

His eyes popped open and he turned to look at her, squinting a little when the light from a lamp burning out in her hallway cut a laser like swathe across his face. "Hmm?" he hummed, pillowing his massive arms behind his head, biceps bunching appealingly within Beth's line of sight.

"I said what are you thinking?" she repeated, despite knowing that he had heard her the first time and was merely stalling for an answer.

"Thinking," he mused, rubbing his chin in the exaggerated manner of a pondering professor, driving her a little crazy in the process with his deliberate refusal to give up his thoughts.

Beth poked his side, right in the middle of his exposed ribcage, making him laugh in surprised delight and then squirm away from her marauding finger. "Come on. I know you. What's going on in that head of yours?" she asked, adding, "Penny for them?" with a jab of her finely pointed chin in his direction.

Everything about Beth Davis was fine: from the top of her head to the tip of her red painted toes her body was birdlike, belying a strength Jack Larsen had come to appreciate firsthand over the short time he had known her, ever since he'd moved to L.A. to join the Threat Assessment Unit a mere few months ago, following his ex and the son he didn't yet know clear across the country from New York, fleeing his own dented past. Her long black hair added a feminine softness that complimented the delicate, Vietnamese-American exoticism of her features. Her limbs were so slender, her frame almost painfully slight, and yet she could take down a man many times her size with devastating efficiency, control and relative ease. She was a powerhouse who could pass herself off as fragile and graceful as a geisha should she need to – a true chameleon.

And she had fascinated Jack Larsen from the first day he had laid eyes on her.

"Honestly?" he asked, rolling over onto his side to face her.

"I usually find that's best," Beth replied with trademark dryness, smirky amusement playing at her lips and dancing in her eyes.

"I was wondering what happens now?"

Beth smiled, slowly, her body still tingling with the aftershocks of their lovemaking. "You mean...now-now?" she asked, letting her hair fall forward over half her face as she leaned in to brush her smiling lips over his, her fingers settling on his naked hip and squeezing the jut of bone she found there. "Like...right now?" she whispered playfully around a second delicate kiss.

Jack kissed her back, a shock of something good and giddy shooting through him at finding himself in his boss's bed. He had expressed his hope to be a part of her uncertain future a couple of nights ago, he had kissed her...and then he had run away, as Beth herself had teased him the very next day. In the intervening hours, try as he might, they had been unable to find the right time to talk about how things might go from there, what would happen next, if she wanted to kill him for kissing her in the first place.

But Beth had surprised him again. "I kissed you too, Jack," she had reminded him at work with more flirtatious charm than he had ever seen her display before. In the couple of days since he'd taken a chance and opened himself up in her kitchen, over a bottle of beer, to a rebuff at the very least, maybe a broken arm or, at worst, getting himself fired from T.A.U. - this was his boss he was pursuing after all - she had surprised him with her calm, much more open demeanor, and by her willingness to talk instead of brushing their one moment off as just a moment.

God knows she had enough reasons to avoid men right now, especially any man who wanted inside her carefully controlled and monitored private life. After Perry and Ray, who could blame her for running a mile from any kind of relationship that involved trusting the opposite sex ever again. But surprise him she had with her willingness to try and a need that seemed to match his own.

"No, I mean what happens with you? Will you remain Beth Davis from now on? And if you do, what happens to Michelle Webber?"

Beth let her hand slide off Jack's hip and then she sat up in bed, pulling the sheet with her to cover her bare chest. She tucked it around her, more for warmth than modesty, as she drew up her knees, tenting them beneath the covers, unconsciously curling up small.

"What makes you ask that?" she frowned, her tone suddenly a little defensive, a little off.

"I guess it's been on my mind for a while now. Hearing Ray call you Michelle out in those woods, it made me wonder what-"

"Ray is dead, Jack."

Silence descended between them like a heavy curtain.

Jack took a moment, and then battled on, sweeping any barriers aside as he went. "I know he is. I was there," he reminded her gruffly, the memories of that night - of finding her in the woods, cowering and terrified, of the armed stand-off with her crazed, psychopathic ex-boyfriend, of the fire - all still too fresh and too real.

"Michelle is dead too."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked, aching to touch her, to reassure her that he meant no harm by asking these questions, that he only wanted to help.

"Why all the questions? And what do you want with Michelle? You only know me as Beth."

"You talk about Michelle like she's this whole other person."

"Because she was, Jack. And now she's gone."

"Did...did you really change that much? I...I mean...would people who knew you back then still recognize you?"

"I was fresh out of college when I left my old life...after-"

"After the fire?" Jack prompted.

Beth nodded and dropped her head to look down at her hands which were twisting in the sheets. "Yeah. But we all change at that age, start to discover our potential...who we might become."

"Yes, but you changed everything. Your name, where you lived...you had no family, Beth, and I'm guessing you left friends behind too. You joined the L.A.P.D.. That's big, that's-"

"I lived this, Jack. I don't need reminders of what I went through...the lengths, the changes...the loss."

She eased herself out from under the covers and turned her back on him, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, grounding her feet on the floor. But she didn't run any further, which was the main thing, for both of them.

Jack reached out to touch her this time, laying his hand flat in the middle of her back, fingers splayed right between her narrow shoulder blades. He brushed his thumb over the vertebrae of her spine, her skin so smooth, strumming her body into relaxing. "Hey, I'm sorry. Look, I didn't mean to upset you."

Beth let out a slow breath, twisting to look back over her shoulder at him. "Then why are you pushing this...digging so hard? And now...of all times?" she pointed out, waving her hand listlessly towards the unmade bed and the two naked individuals within.

Jack slid his hand from her back up and over her shoulder and then he gently tugged to get her to turn round. To his surprise she came willingly, curling her knees to one side on the mattress beside him and positioning herself so she could see him once more. She grabbed a pillow and hauled it across her lap and chest, hugging it to her. It was another defensive move, but a forgivable one given how new this thing was between them and how open she was being so far while he probed her painful past for God knows what reason.

"I want to know you," Jack explained quietly, earnestly. "I want to know who you were back then. Good bits you hid away or let go, Beth, because you felt you had to. The tiny pieces of yourself you left behind. And I want you to be able to be whole again, now the threat hanging over you these last twelve years is gone."

Beth blinked at him, gnawing on her lip before she answered. "You want to know me?" she challenged, her voice rising, her chest heaving a little with the effort of suppressing a sudden rush of anger and anxiety at what he was asking of her - to let her old life back in, to let her defences down, to open herself up to the world of painful memories she had boxed up twelve years ago and hidden away on a high shelf at the back of her closet.

"Do you know how long it's been since I let anyone in, Jack? Do you? Into my home...my bed?" she finished quietly, spent like a match from the effort of confronting him like this. A man she trusted, who she instinctively knew cared for her already.

"I'm guessing a while," he finally replied, dragging his gaze up from the comforter to look her in the eye. "And I'm honored, believe me."

"Don't be. I'm not worth it," she snapped, almost bitterly, recoiling.

Jack immediately reached out for her wrist, wrapping his fingers around it to get her attention and hold her near. "What? How can you say that?"

"I have issues, Jack. Enough for the whole team at T.A.U. and then some."

"We all have issues. Or have you forgotten my ex and the little bout of stalking I engaged in when I first arrived in L.A.?"

"That's different. You had a son. You wanted to know him, to protect him."

"So you're complicated," he conceded for argument's sake. "Not like I didn't know that when I came over here tonight."

Beth allowed herself a wry little grunt of a laugh. One thing she'd learned about Jack Larsen was that he could make her smile, even at the bleakest of moments.

TBC...

A/N: Love to hear your thoughts and if you'd like to see this continue. I'm kind of enjoying writing someone new for a change, so I might just carry on for my own amusement regardless. And if you're reading "Make Me Care" or "Risking It All", I've not given up on either story, don't worry. Life is just very busy right now. Liv xx