Fic: Five Ways Jack Tells Sam He Loves Her
Title: Five Ways Jack Tells Sam He Loves Her
Genre: Romance
Rating: T
Spoilers: None that I can think of off the top of my head.
Disclaimer: Mine? No? Damn.
One
Jack has three weeks notice that she’s coming. They’ve planned carefully, juggled their workloads and, barring any unforeseen galactic catastrophes, arranged their hectic lives to give themselves two whole weeks together. They’re finally going to give a real relationship a go, and neither is content to let their future together rest on a measly few days that they both expect to start out awkwardly.
They’ve been rigidly professional towards one another for so long that neither expects the transition into something more to be seamless.
They’re trying to be realistic and manage their expectations.
Since he’s known she’s coming for three weeks, Sam isn’t surprised to find his apartment a little tidier than he normally keeps it. She’s not surprised he’s made an effort to clean up from the takeout he lives off of, or that he’s bought a bottle of red wine and one of white in addition to the usual cases of Guinness he keeps stacked in one corner of the kitchen.
What does surprise Sam surprises her on day two, when Jack finally allows her to get up to refill her own wine glass. When she opens the fridge, she discovers a big tub of yogurt on the top shelf. Abandoning her empty glass on the counter, Sam instead picks up the plastic tub and wanders back out to the living room.
She presents her discovery with both hands. “Since when do you eat yogurt?”
Jack glances over at her and takes a pull from his bottle of Guinness before answering. “I don’t.”
She knows that. Anyone who’d been in the commissary when someone in line near Jack adds yogurt to his or her tray knows that. Jack’s loathing of yogurt is the stuff of legend at the SGC, even now. After one particularly vehement diatribe against the “bacteria laden goop,” Sam had lost her appetite for not just yogurt but cheese as well for three whole months.
That’s why, when she realizes she’s the reason there’s yogurt in his fridge, something in her chest tightens and her eyes burn a little with the threat of tears.
Sam crosses to the couch and plants a kiss on him that soon breeches the ground rules they’ve set out for themselves.
Take it slow? Let the relationship develop at its own pace?
Ha.
When she pulls back long minutes later, Jack regards her with a puzzled frown for a split second. The frown quickly morphs into a shit-eating grin.
“What was that for?”
“Buying me yogurt.”
Jack’s grin gets wider. “Remind me to call the grocery store later. I’m going to need them to stock up.”
Then he pulls her down on to the couch with him, where they proceed to make out like teenagers, forgetting about the yogurt altogether.
Rules, Sam decides a long time later, are extremely overrated.
Two
It had been a long day well before Sam made it back to her quarters for the night.
Her crew is young and inexperienced, but they’re bright and eager to learn, so she’s been busy drilling them night and day for the past week. The rigid training schedule hasn’t left her much downtime, which Sam hasn’t minded much until today.
It’s been a year to the day since she and Jack got together. She’s not fifteen anymore. She thinks its silly to make a big deal about an arbitrary day that they just so happened to schedule their first date on, especially considering their history. But this year the anniversary of their first official date coincides with their weekly video chat, and Sam has been looking forward to talking to him.
Their schedules just haven’t synced up though, and Sam can’t help but be disappointed that it will be another week before the chance to talk to him in private will present itself again. She’s looking forward to stretching out on her lumpy, thin mattress and sulking for a while, but that plan is derailed when she flicks on the light in her quarters.
Resting on the centre of her bed is a huge stainless steel serving tray. Someone - no need to guess whom - has taken great pains to arrange carefully shaped pieces of blue Jell-O into petals around a yellow Smartie centre. A trail of green gummi bears - her favourite - lead away from the flower, forming a stem.
There’s no card, but there doesn’t have to be. Sam’s not the hearts and flowers type, and Jack knows it. She is, however, a woman who appreciates good Jell-O, a sweet treat every now and again, and knowing that the man she loves is thinking about her.
The fact that he’s sent her a forget-me-not only makes the gesture that much sweeter.
Three
She understands the rationale in keeping her Earthside until the cast comes off. As commander of the Hammond, she has to be able to move about her ship quickly and she can’t to that with the hulking piece of plaster on her leg. But it’s embarrassing to be pulled from duty for six weeks just because she tripped over her own hairbrush in the middle of the night, racing to respond to an emergency that turned out to be nothing more than a routine drill she scheduled in the first place.
It also sucks to be stuck in DC at the height of a hot, humid summer with said cast consuming the lower half of her left leg. The itching is driving her crazy, and the heat isn’t helping.
There are benefits to being here though. It’s great to have the time with Jack. Two weeks into her medical leave, they’ve settled into a routine and it’s actually starting to feel like they’re a normal couple. There’s something to be said for talking across the dinner table instead of across the galaxy.
It’s also good to have a break. Sam hadn’t realized how badly she needed it until it was forced upon her. She’s been sleeping right through Jack getting ready for work in the morning and napping a lot during the afternoons, before he gets home. It makes her feel lazy, but as Jack likes to remind her, she’s finally making up for a lifetime worth of all nighters. She’s more than earned some lazy days.
It’s not until day sixteen of her leave that Sam finally manages to wake up while Jack is still snoring beside her. She’s content to watch him sleep. It’s like stepping back in time to when they routinely camped on a different planet every week, and seeing each other everyday was the norm.
The first rays of morning sun have crept across the room, slipping gradually up the length of the bed, when suddenly the mattress starts to vibrate. Sam lies still, trying to figure out what’s causing the effect. Jack, on the other hand, groans quietly, shoves off the sheet bunched up around his waist, and sits up, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed.
Given Jack’s tendency to sleep in boxers in the middle of a Colorado winter and the fact that the air conditioner has been working overtime to keep the apartment comfortable, Sam’s surprised to see he wore sweatpants to bed last night.
Oblivious to the scrutiny, Jack reaches into his pocket, pulls out his cell phone and makes the little machine go still.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks quietly.
It’s not often that someone startles Jack, but she manages it. He jumps slightly and twists around to face her. “Getting up for work. Go back to sleep,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“Not tired,” she replies. “Have you been using your phone as an alarm so you don’t wake me in the mornings?”
Jack leans over and kisses her on the forehead. “You need the sleep.”
Sam can’t argue with that, so she doesn’t even bother trying. “Aren’t you hot in those?” she asks, changing the subject. One hand gestures vaguely at his well-worn but still thick grey sweatpants.
Jack shrugs as he gets out of bed. “They have pockets.”
“We have furniture,” Sam points out.
“And you still have the ability to wake from a dead sleep at the drop of a hat. There’s no way you would have slept through this thing rattling around on the night table.”
He pushes to his feet, shuffles to the bathroom - it seems his knee is acting up again - and disappears. A firm “go back to sleep” trails behind him.
Even though she said she isn’t tired anymore, Sam does as she’s told, drifting off with a smile on her face. There’s something adorably thoughtful about her fiancé willing to sweat through the better part of the summer just to avoid waking her.
Four
Sam has been on Jack’s case about his cholesterol for years. Back when they were still on SG-1, Janet had warned him his numbers were beginning to creep up. Considering that Jack routinely ate the majority of his meals far from Janet’s clutches, Sam has taken it upon herself to hound him about his eating habits, ranks and the chain of command be damned.
Occasionally he’d thrown her a bone and eaten a serving of vegetables or a piece of fruit, but more often than not, he’d glared and continued to eat like a college student.
So Sam is surprised when a thorough search of his kitchen fails to turn up even one lousy box of Froot Loops. She can’t believe her eyes. Jack’s cupboards are bursting with whole grain, low fat, artificial-flavour-and-colour-free, honest to goodness food.
She opens his fridge and is even more shocked to discover that it’s packed with fresh fruit and veggies, dairy products on the right side of their expiry dates, and only half as much Guinness as usual.
Jack chooses that moment to saunter into the kitchen. Sam rounds on him, the report from the doctor who’d conducted his last physical still scrunched up in her hand.
“Where are they?” she demands. Obviously he’s taken to hiding the unhealthy stuff, but she’s determined to get rid of it once and for all.
“Where are what?” Jack plucks a bunch of grapes from the bowl on the counter and pops one in his mouth.
“Your Froot Loops,” Sam says firmly. She’s not playing around anymore. His cholesterol has concerned her since the first time Janet mentioned it, but his latest numbers have her downright scared.
Through a mouthful of grapes, Jack mumbles, “I threw them out.”
Sam pins him with a skeptical look. “You threw them out,” she parrots, disbelieving.
Jack shrugs. “The doc said I need to start eating better.”
“And you actually decided to listen this time?”
He swallows as he closes the gap between them and takes hold of her shoulders. A slight dip of his head brings them eye-to-eye. “I’ve got a lot to look forward to now, and I want to make sure I’m around to enjoy all of it.”
Smiling, Sam wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him tight. In return, Jack winds his arms around her and squeezes hard, putting all the things he doesn’t have the words to say into the hug.
It makes it easier to forgive him for all the years he’s spent ignoring her constant nagging.
Five
Daniel likes to grumble about how long the can’t-keep-their-hands-off-one-another phase of their marriage is lasting, but Sam’s not complaining. Considering their ages and the fact that they’ve been married for three years now, she and Jack still have a rather active appreciation of one another, but the way Sam sees it, they’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.
So when she wakes up and rolls over to find Jack watching her intently, she’s surprised she’s been left to wake up on her own. Usually the first one of them up in the morning gets impatient and wakes the other quite enthusiastically.
Not that she’s complaining about that either.
“Hey,” Sam greets sleepily.
Jack smiles warmly at her. It’s one of those broad, genuine smiles that she used to see so rarely. They're becoming more and more frequent now, which makes her smile too. “Hey.”
“Everything okay?” she asks. Usually they’re on each other as soon as their eyes open, if they even wait that long. The fact that he’s still on his side of the bed is an anomaly.
“Perfect,” he replies.
Sam rolls on to her side and props her head up with one hand. He’s still watching her, looking but not touching. The world outside is still, not yet waking up to greet the day. It’s a perfect accompaniment to the quiet inside their apartment.
She’s content with the silence, content to stretch out the stillness for as long as possible before the inevitable moment when they both have to get up and head to work, going at least nine hours - probably longer, given their jobs - without laying eyes on one another.
Besides, Jack motionless is still new enough to be wondrous. He used to be perpetually in motion, always on the move, always fidgeting. It took a long time for her to realize his behavior reflected an inner restlessness that he didn’t know how else to channel. He’s mellowed over the years, especially since they’ve gotten together. Sam hopes it’s a sign that she brings him the same sense of peace he gives her.
Long minutes pass and they’re still watching each other. Eventually Jack reaches out a hand and traces one long, tanned finger along the contour of her cheek. The gentle touch makes her smile.
Jack’s actions have always spoken louder than words.
Genre: Romance
Rating: T
Spoilers: None that I can think of off the top of my head.
Disclaimer: Mine? No? Damn.
One
Jack has three weeks notice that she’s coming. They’ve planned carefully, juggled their workloads and, barring any unforeseen galactic catastrophes, arranged their hectic lives to give themselves two whole weeks together. They’re finally going to give a real relationship a go, and neither is content to let their future together rest on a measly few days that they both expect to start out awkwardly.
They’ve been rigidly professional towards one another for so long that neither expects the transition into something more to be seamless.
They’re trying to be realistic and manage their expectations.
Since he’s known she’s coming for three weeks, Sam isn’t surprised to find his apartment a little tidier than he normally keeps it. She’s not surprised he’s made an effort to clean up from the takeout he lives off of, or that he’s bought a bottle of red wine and one of white in addition to the usual cases of Guinness he keeps stacked in one corner of the kitchen.
What does surprise Sam surprises her on day two, when Jack finally allows her to get up to refill her own wine glass. When she opens the fridge, she discovers a big tub of yogurt on the top shelf. Abandoning her empty glass on the counter, Sam instead picks up the plastic tub and wanders back out to the living room.
She presents her discovery with both hands. “Since when do you eat yogurt?”
Jack glances over at her and takes a pull from his bottle of Guinness before answering. “I don’t.”
She knows that. Anyone who’d been in the commissary when someone in line near Jack adds yogurt to his or her tray knows that. Jack’s loathing of yogurt is the stuff of legend at the SGC, even now. After one particularly vehement diatribe against the “bacteria laden goop,” Sam had lost her appetite for not just yogurt but cheese as well for three whole months.
That’s why, when she realizes she’s the reason there’s yogurt in his fridge, something in her chest tightens and her eyes burn a little with the threat of tears.
Sam crosses to the couch and plants a kiss on him that soon breeches the ground rules they’ve set out for themselves.
Take it slow? Let the relationship develop at its own pace?
Ha.
When she pulls back long minutes later, Jack regards her with a puzzled frown for a split second. The frown quickly morphs into a shit-eating grin.
“What was that for?”
“Buying me yogurt.”
Jack’s grin gets wider. “Remind me to call the grocery store later. I’m going to need them to stock up.”
Then he pulls her down on to the couch with him, where they proceed to make out like teenagers, forgetting about the yogurt altogether.
Rules, Sam decides a long time later, are extremely overrated.
Two
It had been a long day well before Sam made it back to her quarters for the night.
Her crew is young and inexperienced, but they’re bright and eager to learn, so she’s been busy drilling them night and day for the past week. The rigid training schedule hasn’t left her much downtime, which Sam hasn’t minded much until today.
It’s been a year to the day since she and Jack got together. She’s not fifteen anymore. She thinks its silly to make a big deal about an arbitrary day that they just so happened to schedule their first date on, especially considering their history. But this year the anniversary of their first official date coincides with their weekly video chat, and Sam has been looking forward to talking to him.
Their schedules just haven’t synced up though, and Sam can’t help but be disappointed that it will be another week before the chance to talk to him in private will present itself again. She’s looking forward to stretching out on her lumpy, thin mattress and sulking for a while, but that plan is derailed when she flicks on the light in her quarters.
Resting on the centre of her bed is a huge stainless steel serving tray. Someone - no need to guess whom - has taken great pains to arrange carefully shaped pieces of blue Jell-O into petals around a yellow Smartie centre. A trail of green gummi bears - her favourite - lead away from the flower, forming a stem.
There’s no card, but there doesn’t have to be. Sam’s not the hearts and flowers type, and Jack knows it. She is, however, a woman who appreciates good Jell-O, a sweet treat every now and again, and knowing that the man she loves is thinking about her.
The fact that he’s sent her a forget-me-not only makes the gesture that much sweeter.
Three
She understands the rationale in keeping her Earthside until the cast comes off. As commander of the Hammond, she has to be able to move about her ship quickly and she can’t to that with the hulking piece of plaster on her leg. But it’s embarrassing to be pulled from duty for six weeks just because she tripped over her own hairbrush in the middle of the night, racing to respond to an emergency that turned out to be nothing more than a routine drill she scheduled in the first place.
It also sucks to be stuck in DC at the height of a hot, humid summer with said cast consuming the lower half of her left leg. The itching is driving her crazy, and the heat isn’t helping.
There are benefits to being here though. It’s great to have the time with Jack. Two weeks into her medical leave, they’ve settled into a routine and it’s actually starting to feel like they’re a normal couple. There’s something to be said for talking across the dinner table instead of across the galaxy.
It’s also good to have a break. Sam hadn’t realized how badly she needed it until it was forced upon her. She’s been sleeping right through Jack getting ready for work in the morning and napping a lot during the afternoons, before he gets home. It makes her feel lazy, but as Jack likes to remind her, she’s finally making up for a lifetime worth of all nighters. She’s more than earned some lazy days.
It’s not until day sixteen of her leave that Sam finally manages to wake up while Jack is still snoring beside her. She’s content to watch him sleep. It’s like stepping back in time to when they routinely camped on a different planet every week, and seeing each other everyday was the norm.
The first rays of morning sun have crept across the room, slipping gradually up the length of the bed, when suddenly the mattress starts to vibrate. Sam lies still, trying to figure out what’s causing the effect. Jack, on the other hand, groans quietly, shoves off the sheet bunched up around his waist, and sits up, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed.
Given Jack’s tendency to sleep in boxers in the middle of a Colorado winter and the fact that the air conditioner has been working overtime to keep the apartment comfortable, Sam’s surprised to see he wore sweatpants to bed last night.
Oblivious to the scrutiny, Jack reaches into his pocket, pulls out his cell phone and makes the little machine go still.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks quietly.
It’s not often that someone startles Jack, but she manages it. He jumps slightly and twists around to face her. “Getting up for work. Go back to sleep,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“Not tired,” she replies. “Have you been using your phone as an alarm so you don’t wake me in the mornings?”
Jack leans over and kisses her on the forehead. “You need the sleep.”
Sam can’t argue with that, so she doesn’t even bother trying. “Aren’t you hot in those?” she asks, changing the subject. One hand gestures vaguely at his well-worn but still thick grey sweatpants.
Jack shrugs as he gets out of bed. “They have pockets.”
“We have furniture,” Sam points out.
“And you still have the ability to wake from a dead sleep at the drop of a hat. There’s no way you would have slept through this thing rattling around on the night table.”
He pushes to his feet, shuffles to the bathroom - it seems his knee is acting up again - and disappears. A firm “go back to sleep” trails behind him.
Even though she said she isn’t tired anymore, Sam does as she’s told, drifting off with a smile on her face. There’s something adorably thoughtful about her fiancé willing to sweat through the better part of the summer just to avoid waking her.
Four
Sam has been on Jack’s case about his cholesterol for years. Back when they were still on SG-1, Janet had warned him his numbers were beginning to creep up. Considering that Jack routinely ate the majority of his meals far from Janet’s clutches, Sam has taken it upon herself to hound him about his eating habits, ranks and the chain of command be damned.
Occasionally he’d thrown her a bone and eaten a serving of vegetables or a piece of fruit, but more often than not, he’d glared and continued to eat like a college student.
So Sam is surprised when a thorough search of his kitchen fails to turn up even one lousy box of Froot Loops. She can’t believe her eyes. Jack’s cupboards are bursting with whole grain, low fat, artificial-flavour-and-colour-free, honest to goodness food.
She opens his fridge and is even more shocked to discover that it’s packed with fresh fruit and veggies, dairy products on the right side of their expiry dates, and only half as much Guinness as usual.
Jack chooses that moment to saunter into the kitchen. Sam rounds on him, the report from the doctor who’d conducted his last physical still scrunched up in her hand.
“Where are they?” she demands. Obviously he’s taken to hiding the unhealthy stuff, but she’s determined to get rid of it once and for all.
“Where are what?” Jack plucks a bunch of grapes from the bowl on the counter and pops one in his mouth.
“Your Froot Loops,” Sam says firmly. She’s not playing around anymore. His cholesterol has concerned her since the first time Janet mentioned it, but his latest numbers have her downright scared.
Through a mouthful of grapes, Jack mumbles, “I threw them out.”
Sam pins him with a skeptical look. “You threw them out,” she parrots, disbelieving.
Jack shrugs. “The doc said I need to start eating better.”
“And you actually decided to listen this time?”
He swallows as he closes the gap between them and takes hold of her shoulders. A slight dip of his head brings them eye-to-eye. “I’ve got a lot to look forward to now, and I want to make sure I’m around to enjoy all of it.”
Smiling, Sam wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him tight. In return, Jack winds his arms around her and squeezes hard, putting all the things he doesn’t have the words to say into the hug.
It makes it easier to forgive him for all the years he’s spent ignoring her constant nagging.
Five
Daniel likes to grumble about how long the can’t-keep-their-hands-off-one-another phase of their marriage is lasting, but Sam’s not complaining. Considering their ages and the fact that they’ve been married for three years now, she and Jack still have a rather active appreciation of one another, but the way Sam sees it, they’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.
So when she wakes up and rolls over to find Jack watching her intently, she’s surprised she’s been left to wake up on her own. Usually the first one of them up in the morning gets impatient and wakes the other quite enthusiastically.
Not that she’s complaining about that either.
“Hey,” Sam greets sleepily.
Jack smiles warmly at her. It’s one of those broad, genuine smiles that she used to see so rarely. They're becoming more and more frequent now, which makes her smile too. “Hey.”
“Everything okay?” she asks. Usually they’re on each other as soon as their eyes open, if they even wait that long. The fact that he’s still on his side of the bed is an anomaly.
“Perfect,” he replies.
Sam rolls on to her side and props her head up with one hand. He’s still watching her, looking but not touching. The world outside is still, not yet waking up to greet the day. It’s a perfect accompaniment to the quiet inside their apartment.
She’s content with the silence, content to stretch out the stillness for as long as possible before the inevitable moment when they both have to get up and head to work, going at least nine hours - probably longer, given their jobs - without laying eyes on one another.
Besides, Jack motionless is still new enough to be wondrous. He used to be perpetually in motion, always on the move, always fidgeting. It took a long time for her to realize his behavior reflected an inner restlessness that he didn’t know how else to channel. He’s mellowed over the years, especially since they’ve gotten together. Sam hopes it’s a sign that she brings him the same sense of peace he gives her.
Long minutes pass and they’re still watching each other. Eventually Jack reaches out a hand and traces one long, tanned finger along the contour of her cheek. The gentle touch makes her smile.
Jack’s actions have always spoken louder than words.