Not a Shambles, Not a Work of Art 2/2
Author: Regency
Title: Not a Shambles, Not a Work of Art
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Rating: PG
Warnings: angst, sappiness, vague mentions of character death.
Spoilers: the entire series with passing reference to Atlantis and SGU; set post-series
Word count: 6,387
Summary: Once upon a time, they could have had it all together, but they let it slip away. Now, Sam’s pretty happy with what they’ve got, even if it isn’t the life she dreamed about.
Author’s Notes: Always trying to improve, so bring on the constructive criticism.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
~!~
Once they made it back to her place, they fell into their old roles. He locked up for the night, she set up the movie. He popped the popcorn and she poured the drinks. They found themselves sitting down at the same time on opposite ends of the couch. He propped his feet up on the coffee table and she curled hers up at her side.
They both complained aloud at the more outrageous aspects of the premise and at the boo-worthy execution of the special effects. Sam was pretty proud of the fact that she’d created a better geyser using a roll of Mentos and a half-empty liter of diet Coke than had the people producing this film-and she said as much.
Jack grinned and laid a hand on her knee. “You did better than that. You blew up a sun. Monroe’s got nothin’ on you.”
She beamed because she couldn’t help it and touched back because she couldn’t not. Their fingers laced together seamlessly and he didn’t seem to mind, eyes back on the screen as quickly as it took for one foe to fall and another to rise. She didn’t miss his wistful sigh as he watched his parodied self in action, both of their counterparts actually. It was all cheap imitation but it was their life, the one they had shared with each other and the people they had come to love as more than family. The reminder would always outweigh the insult to their pride. Even if it was a reminder of how long it had been.
Three years had gone by since he’d been recalled from retirement, yet again, and she’d been reassigned from Area 51 back to the SGC. Times were a-changin’ and they’d needed some heroic faces up top at Cheyenne Mountain, per the President’s orders. Somebody had to convince the newbies that all the suffering was worthwhile. And just like that, the flagship command team was back. With them came the frat regs and all the things Sam had thought they’d left behind; not the least of which was loss.
In the Pegasus Galaxy, Daniel had finally encountered a death he couldn’t overcome. On Dakara, Teal’c had at last met an enemy he couldn’t defeat. And, right here on Earth, General Hammond had simply suffered one more exertion than his heart could stand. Of the old guard, Sam and Jack were all that remained.
But, on days like today, Sam didn’t feel equal to the task. There were new enemies jockeying for position on the horizon, enemies she knew she wouldn’t live to see the end of. They had to prepare a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears kids for the battle of their lives and there just wasn’t enough time left to do it all. She’d spent ten years battling through the ‘gate, as well as one on Atlantis, and four on the command deck of the Hammond. She felt the loss of time as keenly as the lost of her friends and of what might have been. She’d given it all up so that they could have a brighter future; now, it was her job to make them give it back. She didn’t know how to tell those kids that in saving the world, they’d have to let it slip away until it was merely a shadow of the place where they used to live, where they used to belong. The secrets they’d have to keep would eat away at them, but no one had taught her how to tell them that.
‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ she quoted. And sometimes devours them completely, she thought. They would have to decide that something was greater than themselves without truly being allowed to experience what made it great. She didn’t know if they could understand anymore, if she had it in her to make them understand. She was so tired of teaching dead men walking.
She shuddered as her mind flashed through a lifetime of beautiful and grotesque corpses: family, enemies, friends, and would-be lovers; would-be happy endings. The remembered realizations that there would be no miracle those times washed over her with faded faces and regret. They were really never coming home. And that bubble that constituted her world grew irrevocably smaller until she could fit just this couch inside along with the girl-now woman-who they’d all loved. Sam wondered if she’d ever be able to breathe again for fear that the bubble would burst.
The rough fingers in hers gave a tight squeeze and pulled her through. Eyes on the movie, always on the movie, but a hand he could give. She clung to the lifeline he offered-it was all she had. And when the movie was over and the popcorn had gone cold, uneaten, and the drinks flat, undrunk, she had the rest of him. The back of his hand brushed her cheek and his eyes had captured hers; at that moment, he was everything in her world.
“You shouldn’t be lonely, not because of me.” Dragging his thumb gently along her jaw, just glancing the seam of her lip, he said, “I’ve held you back for years and that was something I never had a right to do.” He dropped his hand and began to move away. “I won’t do that anymore.”
It was her turn to be faster than even she might have expected. She took back her lifeline, willfully. “You have always had more power over me than you should have and I’ve let you have it.”
He frowned in confusion and shook his head. “But why?”
She ducked her head, suddenly ashamed after years spent coming to terms with how she felt. “Because doing anything else meant losing you and I never wanted to lose you.”
“Doesn’t answer my question, Sam.” Her name rolled from his lips as though it was normal, typical for them. He never said her given name and she’d stopped expecting him to long ago, around the same time she’d realized that they’d never have their someday.
“I just came to the conclusion that we’d be the only two left standing and I’d rather we were standing together than apart.” It wasn’t a lie; it was even mostly the truth.
“That was the only option.” He turned over her hand and began to draw lazy circles into her palm. “I’m not going anywhere and I’m not leaving you behind if I do.”
Sam leaned against the back of the couch and reveled in his touch for just a little while longer. “That’s good to know. I was worried about that.”
“Indeed,” he said, then tugged her toward him gently. It was a signal, one she was trying hard not to misread. He kept pulling and she kept coming toward him until he’d pulled her into his arms and tucked her into his chest. She reflexively curled up as small as she could against him in the hopes that every part of her could touch him and mold to him. She felt safer with him this close, like one reactive atom covalently bonding to another. It was stable, secure; it was for good.
“You know,” he began with a ragged breath, “we’ve known each other for around twenty years now.”
“Yeah,” she replied, curious about where this was going, but just as content to never know.
“And I think, after all that time and all we’ve been through together, that a little honesty goes a long way.”
She nodded against his shoulder, listening, yes, yet taking him in at the same time-a breath at a time.
“There was a time…Sam, when I was in love with you.” He paused, seeming to gather his wits as she had to gather her courage to keep from running away. She was enjoying him, she didn’t need to know all the ways he didn’t love her anymore. He stroked his hand down her spine and she knew she couldn’t run. “It was a long, long time. That feeling was constant through a lot of hard stuff and some great stuff, too. It held on for so long that I thought it would never end.”
“But it did,” she concluded, haltingly.
“Yeah,” he replied, lacing his fingers through her hair to draw nonsensical shapes at the nape of her neck. “It changed into something else. Still strong, but not the same.” His fingers stopped their dance and she prayed they’d begin again. “I would still never leave you.”
She clutched at the fabric of his warm shirt and the skin underneath it. She didn’t really want to hear. “But you could never love me either.”
The silence stretched between as tangibly as a Goa’uld force field and she was reminded harshly of when this all began.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t love you or that I don’t love you. I just said that my feelings had changed.” He moved his finger to tangle languidly in her gold-but-silvering hair. If she was anything less than his fool, she would have learned not to shiver at his touch long ago; his short, blunt nails scraped her scalp and she whimpered instead. It was only when he pressed his lips to her temple that she trembled.
She shook herself and attempted to wrest back control of her senses. She was a Brigadier General of the United States Air Force. She was stronger than the touch of his hand or his lips. She pulled herself away and made to pick up the debris of their evening together. If she didn’t have to look at him, this could be easy. He could go home and she could go back to her safe, nurturing fantasies. Tomorrow morning, they’d have coffee and maybe they’d actually go for that run they’d been planning for the last three months. It would be fine. I’ll be fine, she told herself firmly.
Her self-help pep talk didn’t last for a moment longer than it took for her to reach the sink. She broke one of the heavy glasses in the basin; it had slipped and her grip had failed her. There were no tears; and, while she didn’t weep, she did begin to shake. It didn’t abate when he appeared behind her, folding himself around her form and caressing sensitive, bare skin wherever he found it. She only shook harder once his lips found the tender junction of her shoulder and neck. He wouldn’t stop touching her, liberally kneading his fingertips into the yearning planes of her hips and her stomach, the back of her thighs flush with the front of his.
He lifted his mouth from her skin without relinquishing his hold on her. “When I said that my feelings had changed, I meant that they’d aged with me.” He rested his forehead against her crown and she felt his breath warm the back of her neck. “I’m not young anymore, Sam. Sometimes, I’m not even sure I’m still alive, but my feelings for you are absolute. The desire that used to drive me to distraction just isn’t what it used to be. That burn that rushed through my veins every time you’d so much as brush against me is just…a tingle, now.” He rubbed a hand down her arm until he could pry her fingers from the sink’s edge. She let him since, for her, it had never dulled to less than a roar.
“Maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to being able to touch you whenever I wanted. Maybe I’m just an old man who’s finally realized that beautiful woman in you could never want that damned soldier in me. I don’t know, but I stopped hoping for someday with you, Sam, and it made all the difference.”
“So, you gave up on us and fell out of love with me?” His shrug was as good as a deep breath with him so close. She couldn’t begin to refute the things he’d said. She’d never noticed him growing older. In her mind, he was still the tall, lanky colonel who liked women but had a thing against scientists. He remained, to her, the alpha male she had tried so valiantly to mate with while infected by the Touched virus. His eyes were still the eyes that had lied to the za’tarc detector to protect the connection they couldn’t acknowledge. As far as Sam was concerned, Jack had always been Jack, even when he’d been the colonel, even when he’d become the general. She was achingly nonplussed and said as much.
“You’ve never been less than the sexiest man in the room to me, regardless of anyone else. I didn’t care how old you were when I met you. I found you attractive, then, and I admit I was wary of you, but you showed me that you were an honorable man and that I didn’t have to worry. You didn’t chase every subordinate skirt that happened by and you were damned respectful when it was called for. You didn’t doubt my abilities, sir, and I’ve always been grateful for that. Maybe that was when I really started falling hard for you.” She shook her head and couldn’t believe she was still trying to salvage something out of the nothing he had decided on almost a decade ago.
She heard him give an indignant hum. “Sir, Carter? After I’ve seen you pretty much naked a dozen times and watched you eat an ‘enchanted’ cake or two, I think we’re beyond ‘sir’ now.”
She was officially back at the stage where drumming her head on the countertop was not an unacceptable proposition. “Is that all you noticed? That I slipped and called you ‘sir’ for the first time in years? Nothing about the fact that today, right now, I would take you to my couch and screw you speechless if I didn’t think it’d kill your back? That every night, I wake up screaming your name and they’re not nightmares anymore. That you’ve ruined me for every other man who might even try to look and touch.” She shook off his proximity and shoved a hand through her hand in frustration and exhaustion. “You may not want me, Jack,” she hissed, “but don’t belittle how much I’ve always wanted you.”
His deep, measured breathing filled her ears for lack of any louder sound to drown it out. “For a long time, Carter, it didn’t feel like you wanted me at all anymore,” he started. “I accepted that. I even accepted that he was younger and stronger than me.” She noted that he failed to ignore her own indignant hum and that he still remembered who he was long after she’d ceased to care. “Okay, maybe not stronger, but he had more time left to give you than I did. He could give you a great home, cute kids, grow old with you. He could give you the full life I couldn’t.” She turned slightly to see him spreading his hands in passive surrender. “Let’s face it, I’m no Pete Shanahan.”
To which all she could say was, “Thank god for that.” His eyebrows flicked upward in surprised and he tipped his head slightly, reminiscent of a surprised but pleasantly curious puppy. She couldn’t stop the smile that touched her lips just then. “I didn’t marry him, because I didn’t want him. I didn’t marry him, because he wasn’t you. He wasn’t even a satisfying facsimile of you. And don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what the word ‘facsimile’ means.”
Disregarding his fruitless declarations of ignorance, she came to him and laid her hand over his heart. It was the strongest one she knew and she noted its tempo rising at her touch. “I had hoped that maybe you’d see me as worth the effort and risk it all to tell me that you wanted me. It was within weeks of the wedding that I realized that the honor I loved in you would never let you stand between me and what you thought I wanted. So, I got out of my own way-and, I thought, yours, too.”
He laid his hand over hers. “I was never all that good at reading the signs you left for me.”
She pursed her lips, somewhat in humor, mostly at everything they’d lost. “I noticed that.”
He brushed his thumb over her frown and it nearly faded on contact. “I’m not enough for you, Sam.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. This had to be a dream, a crappy, crappy dream. “I’m nearly fifty years-old. Fifty,” she reminded him sternly. “I think I know what and who is enough for me. You are. You always have been.” She looked up into his eyes. “You’ve trusted my judgment before. Please, keep trusting it. I don’t know what else I can say. I want you and I have for so long that I’ve refused any offer that meant I couldn’t be near you. The Hammond was enough space-faring adventure for me. I’ve done everything I wanted to do, except for the plans I had that included you.”
Jack continued to touch her face, tracing the growing lines that denoted her years with a deft stroke. “I had plans for us, too,” he confessed, sounding slightly choked. “Some of them can’t happen now.”
She smiled sadly. “I have a feeling we’re thinking the same thing.” She touched his face, recording the dimples that denoted his smile on her mind for posterity. There’d come a time when she’d have to live without him and she wanted this sensation for the loneliest of her days. “Even though I’ll never get to hold a little boy with your eyes,” she touched the crinkling skin at their sides, “or see a little girl give me your smile, I’ll never regret a single day I spend with you.” She dropped her hand from the face she loved so much. “If you let me spend the rest of mine with you.”
Her lifeline, his hands, wrapped around hers, and tugged her close again. “I guess this is the part where I come to my senses.”
It was her turn to tip her head. “I hope so, because I’m all out of courage here. I still want you. Tell me you want me.”
He nodded and whispered, “I want you.” He backed her against the counter, seeking the same flushed and waiting skin.
“Show me,” she commanded, though she’d given up the idea of ever outranking him long ago. Three stars was ambitious, even for her.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with all the enthusiasm of a young airmen with a pretty girl in his arms.
“That’s what I like to hear,” she quipped and forgot everything else under the weight of his kiss. It was funny how insignificant the frat regs seemed this time around. After all the world-saving, the dying, and the almost-dying, Sam just couldn’t be bothered to care. She’d given up everything she’d ever dreamed of to be a hero; she wasn’t giving up anything else to be a retired one.
She didn’t have another twenty years to wait for the rest of her life to start.
Part 1/2
Stealing Art, the sequel
Title: Not a Shambles, Not a Work of Art
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Rating: PG
Warnings: angst, sappiness, vague mentions of character death.
Spoilers: the entire series with passing reference to Atlantis and SGU; set post-series
Word count: 6,387
Summary: Once upon a time, they could have had it all together, but they let it slip away. Now, Sam’s pretty happy with what they’ve got, even if it isn’t the life she dreamed about.
Author’s Notes: Always trying to improve, so bring on the constructive criticism.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
~!~
Once they made it back to her place, they fell into their old roles. He locked up for the night, she set up the movie. He popped the popcorn and she poured the drinks. They found themselves sitting down at the same time on opposite ends of the couch. He propped his feet up on the coffee table and she curled hers up at her side.
They both complained aloud at the more outrageous aspects of the premise and at the boo-worthy execution of the special effects. Sam was pretty proud of the fact that she’d created a better geyser using a roll of Mentos and a half-empty liter of diet Coke than had the people producing this film-and she said as much.
Jack grinned and laid a hand on her knee. “You did better than that. You blew up a sun. Monroe’s got nothin’ on you.”
She beamed because she couldn’t help it and touched back because she couldn’t not. Their fingers laced together seamlessly and he didn’t seem to mind, eyes back on the screen as quickly as it took for one foe to fall and another to rise. She didn’t miss his wistful sigh as he watched his parodied self in action, both of their counterparts actually. It was all cheap imitation but it was their life, the one they had shared with each other and the people they had come to love as more than family. The reminder would always outweigh the insult to their pride. Even if it was a reminder of how long it had been.
Three years had gone by since he’d been recalled from retirement, yet again, and she’d been reassigned from Area 51 back to the SGC. Times were a-changin’ and they’d needed some heroic faces up top at Cheyenne Mountain, per the President’s orders. Somebody had to convince the newbies that all the suffering was worthwhile. And just like that, the flagship command team was back. With them came the frat regs and all the things Sam had thought they’d left behind; not the least of which was loss.
In the Pegasus Galaxy, Daniel had finally encountered a death he couldn’t overcome. On Dakara, Teal’c had at last met an enemy he couldn’t defeat. And, right here on Earth, General Hammond had simply suffered one more exertion than his heart could stand. Of the old guard, Sam and Jack were all that remained.
But, on days like today, Sam didn’t feel equal to the task. There were new enemies jockeying for position on the horizon, enemies she knew she wouldn’t live to see the end of. They had to prepare a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears kids for the battle of their lives and there just wasn’t enough time left to do it all. She’d spent ten years battling through the ‘gate, as well as one on Atlantis, and four on the command deck of the Hammond. She felt the loss of time as keenly as the lost of her friends and of what might have been. She’d given it all up so that they could have a brighter future; now, it was her job to make them give it back. She didn’t know how to tell those kids that in saving the world, they’d have to let it slip away until it was merely a shadow of the place where they used to live, where they used to belong. The secrets they’d have to keep would eat away at them, but no one had taught her how to tell them that.
‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ she quoted. And sometimes devours them completely, she thought. They would have to decide that something was greater than themselves without truly being allowed to experience what made it great. She didn’t know if they could understand anymore, if she had it in her to make them understand. She was so tired of teaching dead men walking.
She shuddered as her mind flashed through a lifetime of beautiful and grotesque corpses: family, enemies, friends, and would-be lovers; would-be happy endings. The remembered realizations that there would be no miracle those times washed over her with faded faces and regret. They were really never coming home. And that bubble that constituted her world grew irrevocably smaller until she could fit just this couch inside along with the girl-now woman-who they’d all loved. Sam wondered if she’d ever be able to breathe again for fear that the bubble would burst.
The rough fingers in hers gave a tight squeeze and pulled her through. Eyes on the movie, always on the movie, but a hand he could give. She clung to the lifeline he offered-it was all she had. And when the movie was over and the popcorn had gone cold, uneaten, and the drinks flat, undrunk, she had the rest of him. The back of his hand brushed her cheek and his eyes had captured hers; at that moment, he was everything in her world.
“You shouldn’t be lonely, not because of me.” Dragging his thumb gently along her jaw, just glancing the seam of her lip, he said, “I’ve held you back for years and that was something I never had a right to do.” He dropped his hand and began to move away. “I won’t do that anymore.”
It was her turn to be faster than even she might have expected. She took back her lifeline, willfully. “You have always had more power over me than you should have and I’ve let you have it.”
He frowned in confusion and shook his head. “But why?”
She ducked her head, suddenly ashamed after years spent coming to terms with how she felt. “Because doing anything else meant losing you and I never wanted to lose you.”
“Doesn’t answer my question, Sam.” Her name rolled from his lips as though it was normal, typical for them. He never said her given name and she’d stopped expecting him to long ago, around the same time she’d realized that they’d never have their someday.
“I just came to the conclusion that we’d be the only two left standing and I’d rather we were standing together than apart.” It wasn’t a lie; it was even mostly the truth.
“That was the only option.” He turned over her hand and began to draw lazy circles into her palm. “I’m not going anywhere and I’m not leaving you behind if I do.”
Sam leaned against the back of the couch and reveled in his touch for just a little while longer. “That’s good to know. I was worried about that.”
“Indeed,” he said, then tugged her toward him gently. It was a signal, one she was trying hard not to misread. He kept pulling and she kept coming toward him until he’d pulled her into his arms and tucked her into his chest. She reflexively curled up as small as she could against him in the hopes that every part of her could touch him and mold to him. She felt safer with him this close, like one reactive atom covalently bonding to another. It was stable, secure; it was for good.
“You know,” he began with a ragged breath, “we’ve known each other for around twenty years now.”
“Yeah,” she replied, curious about where this was going, but just as content to never know.
“And I think, after all that time and all we’ve been through together, that a little honesty goes a long way.”
She nodded against his shoulder, listening, yes, yet taking him in at the same time-a breath at a time.
“There was a time…Sam, when I was in love with you.” He paused, seeming to gather his wits as she had to gather her courage to keep from running away. She was enjoying him, she didn’t need to know all the ways he didn’t love her anymore. He stroked his hand down her spine and she knew she couldn’t run. “It was a long, long time. That feeling was constant through a lot of hard stuff and some great stuff, too. It held on for so long that I thought it would never end.”
“But it did,” she concluded, haltingly.
“Yeah,” he replied, lacing his fingers through her hair to draw nonsensical shapes at the nape of her neck. “It changed into something else. Still strong, but not the same.” His fingers stopped their dance and she prayed they’d begin again. “I would still never leave you.”
She clutched at the fabric of his warm shirt and the skin underneath it. She didn’t really want to hear. “But you could never love me either.”
The silence stretched between as tangibly as a Goa’uld force field and she was reminded harshly of when this all began.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t love you or that I don’t love you. I just said that my feelings had changed.” He moved his finger to tangle languidly in her gold-but-silvering hair. If she was anything less than his fool, she would have learned not to shiver at his touch long ago; his short, blunt nails scraped her scalp and she whimpered instead. It was only when he pressed his lips to her temple that she trembled.
She shook herself and attempted to wrest back control of her senses. She was a Brigadier General of the United States Air Force. She was stronger than the touch of his hand or his lips. She pulled herself away and made to pick up the debris of their evening together. If she didn’t have to look at him, this could be easy. He could go home and she could go back to her safe, nurturing fantasies. Tomorrow morning, they’d have coffee and maybe they’d actually go for that run they’d been planning for the last three months. It would be fine. I’ll be fine, she told herself firmly.
Her self-help pep talk didn’t last for a moment longer than it took for her to reach the sink. She broke one of the heavy glasses in the basin; it had slipped and her grip had failed her. There were no tears; and, while she didn’t weep, she did begin to shake. It didn’t abate when he appeared behind her, folding himself around her form and caressing sensitive, bare skin wherever he found it. She only shook harder once his lips found the tender junction of her shoulder and neck. He wouldn’t stop touching her, liberally kneading his fingertips into the yearning planes of her hips and her stomach, the back of her thighs flush with the front of his.
He lifted his mouth from her skin without relinquishing his hold on her. “When I said that my feelings had changed, I meant that they’d aged with me.” He rested his forehead against her crown and she felt his breath warm the back of her neck. “I’m not young anymore, Sam. Sometimes, I’m not even sure I’m still alive, but my feelings for you are absolute. The desire that used to drive me to distraction just isn’t what it used to be. That burn that rushed through my veins every time you’d so much as brush against me is just…a tingle, now.” He rubbed a hand down her arm until he could pry her fingers from the sink’s edge. She let him since, for her, it had never dulled to less than a roar.
“Maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to being able to touch you whenever I wanted. Maybe I’m just an old man who’s finally realized that beautiful woman in you could never want that damned soldier in me. I don’t know, but I stopped hoping for someday with you, Sam, and it made all the difference.”
“So, you gave up on us and fell out of love with me?” His shrug was as good as a deep breath with him so close. She couldn’t begin to refute the things he’d said. She’d never noticed him growing older. In her mind, he was still the tall, lanky colonel who liked women but had a thing against scientists. He remained, to her, the alpha male she had tried so valiantly to mate with while infected by the Touched virus. His eyes were still the eyes that had lied to the za’tarc detector to protect the connection they couldn’t acknowledge. As far as Sam was concerned, Jack had always been Jack, even when he’d been the colonel, even when he’d become the general. She was achingly nonplussed and said as much.
“You’ve never been less than the sexiest man in the room to me, regardless of anyone else. I didn’t care how old you were when I met you. I found you attractive, then, and I admit I was wary of you, but you showed me that you were an honorable man and that I didn’t have to worry. You didn’t chase every subordinate skirt that happened by and you were damned respectful when it was called for. You didn’t doubt my abilities, sir, and I’ve always been grateful for that. Maybe that was when I really started falling hard for you.” She shook her head and couldn’t believe she was still trying to salvage something out of the nothing he had decided on almost a decade ago.
She heard him give an indignant hum. “Sir, Carter? After I’ve seen you pretty much naked a dozen times and watched you eat an ‘enchanted’ cake or two, I think we’re beyond ‘sir’ now.”
She was officially back at the stage where drumming her head on the countertop was not an unacceptable proposition. “Is that all you noticed? That I slipped and called you ‘sir’ for the first time in years? Nothing about the fact that today, right now, I would take you to my couch and screw you speechless if I didn’t think it’d kill your back? That every night, I wake up screaming your name and they’re not nightmares anymore. That you’ve ruined me for every other man who might even try to look and touch.” She shook off his proximity and shoved a hand through her hand in frustration and exhaustion. “You may not want me, Jack,” she hissed, “but don’t belittle how much I’ve always wanted you.”
His deep, measured breathing filled her ears for lack of any louder sound to drown it out. “For a long time, Carter, it didn’t feel like you wanted me at all anymore,” he started. “I accepted that. I even accepted that he was younger and stronger than me.” She noted that he failed to ignore her own indignant hum and that he still remembered who he was long after she’d ceased to care. “Okay, maybe not stronger, but he had more time left to give you than I did. He could give you a great home, cute kids, grow old with you. He could give you the full life I couldn’t.” She turned slightly to see him spreading his hands in passive surrender. “Let’s face it, I’m no Pete Shanahan.”
To which all she could say was, “Thank god for that.” His eyebrows flicked upward in surprised and he tipped his head slightly, reminiscent of a surprised but pleasantly curious puppy. She couldn’t stop the smile that touched her lips just then. “I didn’t marry him, because I didn’t want him. I didn’t marry him, because he wasn’t you. He wasn’t even a satisfying facsimile of you. And don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what the word ‘facsimile’ means.”
Disregarding his fruitless declarations of ignorance, she came to him and laid her hand over his heart. It was the strongest one she knew and she noted its tempo rising at her touch. “I had hoped that maybe you’d see me as worth the effort and risk it all to tell me that you wanted me. It was within weeks of the wedding that I realized that the honor I loved in you would never let you stand between me and what you thought I wanted. So, I got out of my own way-and, I thought, yours, too.”
He laid his hand over hers. “I was never all that good at reading the signs you left for me.”
She pursed her lips, somewhat in humor, mostly at everything they’d lost. “I noticed that.”
He brushed his thumb over her frown and it nearly faded on contact. “I’m not enough for you, Sam.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. This had to be a dream, a crappy, crappy dream. “I’m nearly fifty years-old. Fifty,” she reminded him sternly. “I think I know what and who is enough for me. You are. You always have been.” She looked up into his eyes. “You’ve trusted my judgment before. Please, keep trusting it. I don’t know what else I can say. I want you and I have for so long that I’ve refused any offer that meant I couldn’t be near you. The Hammond was enough space-faring adventure for me. I’ve done everything I wanted to do, except for the plans I had that included you.”
Jack continued to touch her face, tracing the growing lines that denoted her years with a deft stroke. “I had plans for us, too,” he confessed, sounding slightly choked. “Some of them can’t happen now.”
She smiled sadly. “I have a feeling we’re thinking the same thing.” She touched his face, recording the dimples that denoted his smile on her mind for posterity. There’d come a time when she’d have to live without him and she wanted this sensation for the loneliest of her days. “Even though I’ll never get to hold a little boy with your eyes,” she touched the crinkling skin at their sides, “or see a little girl give me your smile, I’ll never regret a single day I spend with you.” She dropped her hand from the face she loved so much. “If you let me spend the rest of mine with you.”
Her lifeline, his hands, wrapped around hers, and tugged her close again. “I guess this is the part where I come to my senses.”
It was her turn to tip her head. “I hope so, because I’m all out of courage here. I still want you. Tell me you want me.”
He nodded and whispered, “I want you.” He backed her against the counter, seeking the same flushed and waiting skin.
“Show me,” she commanded, though she’d given up the idea of ever outranking him long ago. Three stars was ambitious, even for her.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with all the enthusiasm of a young airmen with a pretty girl in his arms.
“That’s what I like to hear,” she quipped and forgot everything else under the weight of his kiss. It was funny how insignificant the frat regs seemed this time around. After all the world-saving, the dying, and the almost-dying, Sam just couldn’t be bothered to care. She’d given up everything she’d ever dreamed of to be a hero; she wasn’t giving up anything else to be a retired one.
She didn’t have another twenty years to wait for the rest of her life to start.
Part 1/2
Stealing Art, the sequel