triumvirate - chapter six - come here when you sleepwalk
One week later, the brace releases its lock around her knee. Sam sighs with relief at being able to bend her knee again, though frowns when she realizes that the thing still won’t come off. Janet merely shrugs and tells her that her knee isn’t quite healed enough to warrant taking it off yet anyway and reminds her that if they were using their own technology, she’d still be hopping around, unable to bend the joint. Sam rolls her eyes and reminds Janet that if they were using their own technology, she’d be able to at least take it off every so often and, more importantly, wear pants without everything looking all bulky or wearing a size too big.
“Oh, like Daniel minds you hopping around in shorts?” Janet teases, stealing a fry from Sam’s plate.
Sam blushes, which deflates her pout somewhat. “I do not hop,” she argues, even though that’s exactly what she did for two weeks. “And, no. He doesn’t really mind it.” She doesn’t think Jack minds too much either, but Janet doesn’t know about him and she’s not about to tell her. She figures that the under the influence of aliens argument Jack floated by them one night after a little too much beer and an ill-advised JAG marathon would cover one, maybe three, isolated incidents. Not two months. “What?”
“You have that look.”
“What look?” She really hopes that there isn’t a facial expression for by the way, I’m also fucking my CO.
“Sam, you’re still injured. I know I can’t really tell you not to have sex, but…”
Sam folds her arms on the table and rests her forehead against them. “God, Janet.” She lifts her head. “I still need help getting out of bed in the morning. There’s no way.” She feels her cheeks flush when Janet lifts a mocking eyebrow at her. “How’s Cassie?” She quickly changes the subject and pokes at what little of her french fries Janet hasn’t stolen while her friend groans about the drama of high school, boys and winter formals.
The brace finally releases completely ten days later.
It takes three more days for Sam to finally lose her patience with Daniel and Jack and their tendency to treat her like she’ll break if they touch her too much.
She pushes Daniel up against the refrigerator and kisses him hard, thrusting her tongue into his mouth the moment she feels him relax against her. Jack comes up behind her, dish duty forgotten, and slides his hands under her shirt to cup her breasts. He sucks at a spot behind her ear that makes her knees go weak.
Daniel settles his hands on her hips and spins her around, catching the hem of her shirt to lift it over her head before her lips connect with Jack’s. He unclasps her bra and slides the straps down over her shoulders, tossing it aside to land with her shirt somewhere near the sink. When he trails his fingers up her arms and over to her breasts, he finds Jack’s hands already there so he moves downward, deftly unbuttoning her jeans and sliding the zipper down.
Sam gasps against Jack’s mouth and tries to push her breasts further into his hands while rubbing herself against Daniel’s fingers. Her head rolls back onto Daniel’s shoulder as his thumb rubs circles over her clit in time with his fingers sliding into her. Jack grins and sucks one of her nipples into his mouth, trailing his hand down to meet Daniel’s.
Sam comes in what she thinks is record time, unsure whose name is dragged out of her mouth as she grabs onto Jack’s shoulder for support. “Bedroom,” she breathes.
“So,” Sam starts, awkwardly, drawing unbalanced equations on Jack’s chest as Daniel’s hands map patterns over her side. She realizes she doesn’t actually know where she wants to go with her thoughts. “Nevermind,” she says. She’s not sure she’s quite ready to talk about it, but it was all she could think about today while she was home alone, finally writing up her mission report. She figures if she doesn’t tell them now, something will slip out.
Daniel and Jack share a look across Sam and she hears them wondering what she’d started to say. And then their thoughts go silent, settling on the same conclusion. Daniel’s hand stills on her hip.
“Sam,” Jack says quietly.
There’s so much said with just her name; concern, a warning, hurt, fear. Sam shakes her head. She knows she could tell them that she’s not ready and that would be the end of it, but something tugs at her insides and threatens to break if she doesn’t speak. “I wasn’t raped,” she says emphatically. “But it was close,” she whispers, remembering Driva’s fingers harsh against her skin as he ripped off her pants. “You saw how close,” she says even quieter, barely even a breath. She realizes she doesn’t know exactly what they saw - the urge to shoot was probably instinct - but the memory is at the forefront of her mind before she can do anything about it. Even if they hadn’t seen everything before, they have now.
She closes her eyes against the memory, but only sees Driva standing in front of her, pushing his own pants to the ground, his hands rough in her hair as his feet kicked her legs apart. She opens her eyes again and watches Jack scoot as close as he can and clasp the hand that she’d been using to draw on him. She rests her head on his chest and laces her fingers with his as he rubs her palm with his thumb. Daniel curls around her and drapes his arm across her stomach, holding her tight. She catches Daniel’s hand, squeezing his and Jack’s simultaneously.
Holding onto them suddenly seems very important.
Daniel brushes a kiss against her shoulder. He’s known that she’s been keeping something hidden, but hasn’t pushed her on it. But now that she’s told them, it’s like she can’t stop the images from coming. Mixed in with flashes of Driva trying to force her mouth open are fists flying at her and a knife glinting against her skin. Daniel catches Jack’s eye and sees barely-contained rage on his face. If they run into the Venkati again, they’ll both be out for blood.
Sam opens her mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a choked sob.
Daniel blinks. He can count the number of times he’s seen her cry on one hand, but she’s never held back the tears when they need to come. She shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut and Daniel makes out a protested Jack through the chaotic mess of her mind. He looks over her shoulder at the other man who nods, clearly understanding something Daniel isn’t.
Jack hooks his finger under Sam’s chin and gently lifts her head. He waits for her to open her eyes and then smiles softly and kisses her forehead, wiping away the single tear she can’t hold back. “You’ll be okay,” he promises before sliding out of the bed. He tugs the blanket up around their waists. Picking up his scattered clothing, he quickly makes his way out of the room and shuts the door behind him. As he pulls on his pants - his boxers, he realizes, are somewhere still in the bedroom - the sheer amount of emotion washing over him almost makes him turn around, climb back into bed and wrap his arms around Sam.
But he doesn’t.
Jack pauses with his hand on the front door, starting to hear sniffles from the bedroom and it takes everything he has to open the door and lock it behind him. He’ll call in the morning.
Sam waits to hear the front door shut before turning in Daniel’s embrace. She hides her face in his shoulder, unable to hold back her tears any longer. His arms automatically come up around her, one warm hand splayed out across her back, the other tangled in her hair, holding her to him. She clutches at his shoulders, holding on as she sobs.
Daniel holds her tightly, stroking her back and hair. He gasps, everything flowing into him at once. Feelings, images, words, memories. Fear, danger, force-shields and electrocution, hulking shadows with fists the size of bricks, death, struggling to breathe under a thick hood. Pulling a threadbare blanket closer, freezing, exploding pain, wishing for Daniel (he tightens his arms at that), loneliness, terror, throat hoarse from screaming. Finally left alone, arguments about her worth, pants, still cold, arms jerked upward and tied to bars. One last cry for help.
“Oh God, Sam,” he whispers. He almost understands why she wanted Jack to leave. “You’re safe,” he breathes, feeling her start to panic.
She slowly calms down and eventually only her ragged breathing gives her away. She wiggles until Daniel gets the point and lets go. She rolls off his chest and sits up, grabbing the box of tissues from the nightstand. “Thanks,” she says after blowing her nose a couple of times and throwing the tissue into the basket, missing.
Daniel smiles, sitting up next to her. “You’re welcome.” He rests his arm loosely around her back. “You okay?” It’s a stupid question and he knows it.
Sam leans into him and stares off into space. She sniffles and looks back at Daniel. “I will be.” Her voice is thick and she coughs, trying to clear her throat.
Daniel tilts his head. “If there’s anything I can do.”
Nodding, Sam wipes at her cheeks, brushing away a few new tears. Don’t let me go. She doesn’t trust her voice. Daniel opens his arms and, with a watery smile, she scoots over to sit between his legs, her back pressed against his chest. She shivers and Daniel reaches over to pick up a discarded afghan, usually just decoration at the foot of the bed. He wraps it around his back and offers Sam the edges to clutch. Her shivering isn’t entirely because they’re naked and it’s almost winter.
“Think you can sleep?” Daniel asks, once he’s watched the digital clock on her nightstand cycle through a full hour. She’s still healing, physically as well as mentally, and Janet’s given him more than a few earfuls about making sure Sam actually sleeps at night.
Sam releases the corners of the afghan and catches Daniel’s hands instead. “No,” she says honestly, too drained to conjure up a lie he’d see right through. “Drawer.”
Daniel slides one hand out from under hers and twists backwards to open the drawer. “You sure?” He digs around until he finds the bottle. He drops a pill into her open hand.
“Yeah,” she tosses the pill into her mouth and dry swallows it. She tucks her feet under the blankets and, taking hold of Daniel’s arm to make sure he comes with her, slides her way underneath the covers. She laces her fingers with his and lets him set a pillow on his arm before she lies down. Daniel spoons around her, holding her just tight enough, and she closes her eyes, feeling his skin against hers.
“Sleep well, Sam,” he whispers, brushing a goodnight kiss against her cheek.
Jack shifts his weight from foot to foot, awkwardly standing in the doorway to Sam’s lab. He hasn’t seen or spoken to her since he left that night and he’s worried. He had called to check in on her, but Daniel had answered her phone in hushed tones and said that she was sleeping and he’d pass on that Jack had called and they’d see him at work on Monday. She looks a little fragile, but she fiddles with the device in front of her with absolute certainty and it’s a real smile she cracks when the thing beeps and opens up.
“Colonel?” She asks, looking up from the device. She’d heard him loitering, and had wanted to give him ample time to figure out if he was going to come in of his own accord but quickly realized that it might be a while if she left him on his own.
He takes a few steps into her lab and pushes the door shut behind him; he catches it before it closes completely, leaving it partly ajar so as to not invite suspicion, but still give them privacy. “How are you?”
She blinks. “Are we Sam and Jack? Or sir and Carter?”
“Depends,” he says, sitting across from her and leaning his elbows on the table, “are they two different answers?”
Sam sighs and sets the blinking device aside. “You know they are, sir.”
“Carter,” he starts, really wishing that he could somehow address both of them at the same time; he can’t, so he settles for the one that he’s sure will be the shorter conversation. “I don’t want you to think you have to hide things from me. In fact, you hiding things from me makes my job harder.”
“I don’t want you to think I can’t do the job, sir.”
He smiles at her. “I have no doubt that you can do the job. But,” he drops the smile and speaks quieter, “I know that it can take time to heal and be…zen with what happened. And that sometimes you don’t know what will set you off until it sets you off. So until you’re zen with it, I need you to tell me if you’re about to go off the deep end or if anything I ask you to do will make you uncomfortable.”
Sam quirks an eyebrow. “Zen, sir?”
“Carter, I’m serious.”
She nods. “Yes, sir. I will.”
“Thank you. Now, Sam. How are you?”
Sam looks away, tears blurring the blinking lights of the machines that line the walls of her lab. She closes her eyes; she’d thought she was done with the tears after a quiet weekend spent in Daniel’s arms without pressure to talk or pretend to be okay. Apparently she was wrong.
Jack reaches across the table and hooks his finger under her chin, gently guiding her back to look at him. “Sam?”
“What took you so long?” she whispers, barely audible in the whirring and beeping that makes up the background noise of her lab and the mountain. She’d been gone a little over three weeks before they found her. He drops his hand from her chin, obviously confused. “To come find me. What the hell took you so long?”
He doesn’t have a good answer to that. He’s not even sure she’s really looking for an answer. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, his voice full of honest regret. “I’m sorry we didn’t get there sooner, Sam.”
She bites her lip and looks away again.
This time, Jack stands up. He walks around the table, stopping in front of her. He waits for her to open her eyes before he takes the final step toward her and wraps his arms around her shoulders. “I’m Jack, you’re Sam,” he whispers into her hair, feeling her still holding back.
“We’re on base,” she whispers shakily, barely holding herself together as she slides off the chair.
“Your security camera hasn’t worked in years,” he says, “no one will know but us.”
She can’t help but smile at that and turns her head into his neck, allowing him to enfold her into a hug. “Thank you.”
Once MacKenzie gives Sam the all-clear, Hammond relents and lets them go offworld. It’s a babysitting mission, all four of them know that, but Hammond can’t afford to have his flagship team down any longer and making sure a mining operation is still running smoothly is as good a place as any to start. If they can handle this, he’ll bump them up to supervising the setup of an archaeological dig and see how it goes from there.
Jack gets bored thirty seconds into Sam’s explanation of how the trinium mine actually works (“Not so much a mine as a processing facility…” she starts and as soon as she mentions purity rates and quantities, he tunes out; she notices, sticks her tongue out at him when he isn’t looking, and shuts up). He leans back against a tree and looks up at the blue, cloudless sky.
Daniel sits down next to him; it’s Sam’s and Teal’c’s turn to walk the perimeter, though the only threats are some squirrel-like creatures and the occasional butterfly. “She’s doing better,” he says.
Jack nods. “I think so.” The days after her meltdown had been rough. The two of them had put a halt to sex once her nightmares had gotten worse, kicking and screaming, sobbing once of them had finally woken her up. Jack had taken her aside and told her, under no uncertain terms and in the voice he usually reserves for giving orders to reluctant lieutenants, that she was to tell them if she didn’t think she was up for it; they’d had trouble reading her true feelings through the tangle of emotions right on the surface. She’d started getting a lot better after that.
“I want to kill them,” Daniel says after a few minutes, sensing Sam far enough away that she won’t be able to hear.
Jack blinks, torn out of his pebble-throwing reverie. “We did,” he reminds Daniel. They may not have killed everyone who hurt Sam, but the three dead guards and the very dead man (Driva, he recalls Sam’s memory; she’s never directly spoken about him to them) ought to have put a dent in the number.
“Not all of them.”
Looking over at Daniel through his sunglasses, Jack’s eyebrows furrow. “Take it easy, Daniel.” He supposes that they are used to getting their way in that manner, always leaving a trail of dead bodies behind when they finally break out of someplace unfortunate, making sure to put a bullet in the brain of someone who caused any of them bodily harm. He wouldn’t mind going back to Hokari Prime and firebombing the building they carried Sam out of, but he’s sure that the Venkati have long vacated that particular corner of hell.
They fall into silence. Jack returns to throwing pebbles and seeing if he can hit a tree twenty feet away. After a few minutes of being annoyed, Daniel puts his book down and joins in.
Sam and Teal’c find them like that an hour later, the unofficial score 12 (Jack) to 8 (Daniel). Sam and Teal’c look at each other, bemused, and proceed to silently pick up rocks and put both scores to shame.
“Dinner?” Jack suggests, ignoring the smug smiles on both their faces.
They eat with the staff of the mine (processing facility, Sam reminds Jack), who Jack finds to be dreadfully dull people. Geologists, mostly, with one engineer whose chief job appears to be giving things a good thwack when they stop working. There are barracks, but not enough beds (and Jack wants to be away anyway, partly because Sam still has nightmares but also because the processing facility runs all night and is loud and the barracks are right next to it) so they pitch their tents far enough away to be able to ignore the noise but close enough to hear anything go wrong and sprint. Someone turns off the spotlight, a courtesy for those who are sleeping by whoever’s on duty to make sure the thing runs smoothly, and they’re cast into firelight.
Sam leans into Daniel and he drapes his arm around her shoulders, tugging her closer.
Jack looks sideways at Teal’c, checking for a reaction but finding none. He shrugs and intends to ask him about it later. Given the choice between touching one of them and not touching one of them, Sam’s lately leaned towards touching one of them. Despite being cleared, she’s still a little unsteady, seeing shadows and people out of the corner of her eye, waking up expecting to be someplace else, someplace much worse. They help ground her. It concerns him; he knows that one day Daniel might not be right there and she’ll lean on him and it’ll all look too comfortable and familiar and someone will start asking questions. But she’s been trying to wean herself off of them, learn to ground herself, and as long as that day when Daniel isn’t right there is very far in the future, they’ll be okay.
“I’m going to bed,” Sam says once Jack’s organized the watch rotation. She wishes the three men goodnight and heads off toward some bushes so she can go to the bathroom before brushing her teeth.
Daniel crawls into the tent after Sam. He’d noticed her today. Though she’d outwardly hid it well, he could feel how jumpy she was, how grateful she was to be paired up with Teal’c instead of alone (something he suspects Jack arranged on purpose, much like giving her last watch so she wouldn’t have to worry about falling back asleep).
“I’m fine, Daniel,” she whispers, back turned to him. She grasps the hem of her shirt and lifts it over her head, turning it rightside-out again and folding it neatly by the head of her sleeping bag. It gets a little chilly at night here, but they’ve zipped their sleeping bags together and she appreciates the skin contact while sleeping. She unties her boots and stuffs her socks in a side pocket of her pack, producing a clean pair for tomorrow from another pocket. She shivers as she shimmies out of her pants and underwear; pajamas are a rare luxury offworld, but they’ve scouted and re-scouted this planet and determined that the largest threat it holds is an offshoot of mosquito and disaster will not fall on their heads if she sleeps in a stolen pair of her boyfriend’s boxer shorts.
Daniel reaches out and touches her shoulder before she can pull on her camisole, the scar still shiny and pink and new. “Didn’t say you weren’t.” He starts on his own bedtime routine, setting his boots next to Sam’s and checking his pants pockets for spare rocks before folding up the pants and stuffing them in a pillowcase. The fire outside provides just enough light for him to make out Sam, already tucked inside their sleeping bags. He strips off his shirt and slides it in with his pants and offers her the makeshift pillow.
She smiles and tucks it under her head while Daniel slides in next to her. They’ve always kept it strictly professional offworld before, but this is a simple mission and the only reason they’re there at all is protocol. His chest presses against her back and she sighs, relaxing. She clasps her fingers with his and closes her eyes.
Daniel nuzzles her neck and gently kisses her cheek, whispering for her to sleep well.
Jack waits for the thoughts of both of them to settle into sleep. “Did you know about that?” He asks Teal’c across the fire.
Teal’c raises an eyebrow and looks at the tent housing two of his friends. “Indeed.” They hadn’t told him and he’d never witnessed anything, but he had noticed.
“How come I didn’t know about that?” Jack asks, mostly rhetorically.
“I believe Major Carter and Daniel Jackson went to great lengths to keep their relationship discrete.” He had noticed only by virtue of the two of them leaving the base together and arriving simultaneously the next morning several times, and how much less time Major Carter spent on the base once Daniel Jackson had returned.
Jack’s fairly certain that the list of people who knew about Daniel and Sam ends with him, Teal’c and Janet. Like Sam had said at the beginning of this telepathy mess, with the amount of fighting SG-1 gets into, it’s entirely likely General Hammond would’ve split them up the moment he knew about it. It isn’t against the rules, but just barely.
He wonders, if Teal’c could figure out Daniel and Sam, if Teal’c has figured out him and Daniel and Sam. Predictably, the other man isn’t giving him any indication and Jack really, really doesn’t want to ask. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Their relationship showed no signs of interfering with our missions.”
Jack nods and trusts that Teal’c would hold the same logic if he knew about the three of them.
Sam wakes with the gentle purr of the zipper and shuffle as Daniel slides out of the tent to switch with Jack. She sits up and peers outside: Teal’c has gone to the other tent and Jack and Daniel whisper quietly as Daniel goes about making coffee. Certain that Jack will join her in a moment, she lies down again. They’re taking a risk, him sleeping with her instead of with Teal’c, but none of the mine staff will see it (and she suspects that none of them are savvy enough to know that it’s frowned upon) and she’s fairly certain Teal’c won’t mention it in the morning. If he does, they’ll brush it off as Sam having trouble sleeping alone. That, at least, is the truth.
She hates it. When it was just her and Daniel, she enjoyed sharing her bed with him, curling up against his warm body and falling asleep to the sound of his quiet breathing. She found, on the nights that she had to, that she didn’t actually like sleeping alone but she could manage. And when Jack joined them, one or both was there when she fell asleep and she’d grown used to having them there. But she’d always believed that she’d at least be capable of sleeping without someone next to her.
She hasn’t slept alone, not through the whole night, since she was captured. And when she tried to lay down for a nap that first week home and found herself starting to panic, her mind taking her right back to the last time she slept alone (dirt floor, cold walls, men staring, women screaming, pain) no matter how tightly she’d pulled the blankets around her, she’d sat up and called for Daniel. Every time she tries to fall asleep - and Jack and Daniel have been incredibly supportive in her attempts - she ends up being unable to sleep until one of them joins her, or the blankets end up tangled around her as one or the other tries to wake her from her nightmare.
“Stop thinking,” Jack says, stepping into the tent.
Sam shivers at the gust of cold air he brings in with him. “Sorry.”
Jack silently strips down to his boxers and produces a compressed pillow from his pack. He shakes it until it fluffs out.
“Neat,” she says. “Can I have one?”
He smiles at her in the dark and offers it to her. “Requisition one when we get back.”
Sam waits for Jack to settle next to her before she lies down again, resting her head on the new pillow. His arms snake around her and she sighs.
“Sam,” he says quietly.
She opens her eyes again. “Yeah?”
“Nevermind.”
Sam braces herself against the ground and turns over, propping her elbow up and her head on her hand. “No, what?”
Jack looks away at the roof of the tent, a panel pulled back so they can see the stars through the netting. “Getting better is hard,” he says, finally. “But you will.”
Sam’s long suspected that more happened to him in Iraq than a parachuting accident and she thinks that they might not be talking about her anymore. She doesn’t push (isn’t sure she wants to know, actually), so she simply nods and tries not to listen to anything he’s thinking. “Yeah, I will.”
He tenderly kisses her forehead and she tucks her head under his chin, breathing him in as she slowly falls asleep.
They thought they did pretty well, considering that there wasn’t actually much to do on that particular mission.
The expression on General Hammond’s face tells them otherwise.
He scans the folder in front of him and looks upward to the four people standing in front of him. “Well?”
“I think it went fine, sir,” Jack says, speaking for all of them.
“I have a report here indicating that the three of you were absent-minded and often distracted.”
“General, please. It was a babysitting mission about a bunch of rocks.”
Hammond shakes his head. “Colonel, I’m used to hearing scientists complain that you aren’t paying attention. This,” he gestures to the report, “is not that.”
Sam’s shoulders drop, immediately seeing where this is going. “We’re getting better, sir,” she says quietly, trying not to sound too much like she’s begging. Daniel’s hand, shielded from General Hammond by a chair, brushes against hers and he squeezes her finger before letting go.
“I have no doubt about that, Major. However, I need you three back in the field now. And, unfortunately, I cannot send you out there together.”
Jack scrubs a hand over his face to give himself a second to mask the anger in his eyes. He clenches his jaw.
Hammond opens his mouth to finish what he started, but a heavy knock on the door interrupts him. He sighs. “Come.”
Sergeant Harriman pokes his head in through the door. “I’m sorry, sir. We have a radio transmission from a ship that’s just appeared in orbit. I think you’ll want to hear this.” He looks at the four other people in the office. “All of you.”
Looking upward, Hammond exhales and stands, gesturing for everyone else to file out.
Sam takes one look at the woman on the screen in the control room and tenses. She reaches behind her for Daniel, not caring if it looks untoward. He settles his hand on her lower back, giving her space to lean in if she needs to.
Breathe.
Sam nods and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply and exhaling a controlled breath.
“My name is K’Tara, captain of the Venkati salvage ship Bandhu. I hear you have a bit of a telepathy problem,” she smiles. “We can help you with that.”
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