Fic: Years Five and Six
Title: Years Five and Six
Author:
petite_stars
Rating: Series has a NC17 rating but this part is probably just an M
Spoilers: Seasons five and six
Summary: Both feelings and fantasies change over the years…
Disclaimer: Stargate SG1 is the property of MGM et al., I own nothing and no infringement was intended.
Authors notes: Big thanks to wanderingsmith for the beta :) Sorry about the lag in posting parts... but the muse writes what it wants!
Years One to Four
***
In year five she ignores him.
It takes every ounce of self-control she has, but she does it. On the surface, everything seems perfect, the team is in fine working order. She can’t ignore him at work, he is her commanding officer after all, but she cuts all off-base contact with him. Is professional and courteous and the perfect soldier. A comrade. A friend. Nothing more.
She doesn’t ever bring up the events which transpired on the mountain that fateful night with the armbands. Neither does he. They leave it locked with everything else in that damn room and move on.
Or so she tells herself.
The sudden cessation of off-base contact doesn’t just affect her relationship with the colonel. It’s months before she realises her friendship with Daniel seems to be a distant memory rather than the comfortable closeness of previous years. Before she can do much more than make the first few tentative steps towards repairing the friendship that seemed to be broken, or maybe just lost, Daniel gets a lethal dose of radiation and, rather than wither and die, he ascends into a ball of glowing energy. Sam is faced with grieving alone, for someone that isn’t even dead, but nevertheless isn’t amongst the living anymore either. She’s confused and angry and the colonel ignores her pain and she feels abandoned by the team she loves so much.
Teal’c disappears inside himself. Usually a quiet and reserved Jaffa, he becomes even more withdrawn and unreachable, and his entire presence seems to scream ‘leave me alone’. So she does. But with the colonel throwing himself into work and the SGC filled with painful memories, Sam finds herself at a complete loss with how to handle anything. Rather than stay on base, where Teal’c is distant and the colonel stalks the corridors with a stony face, Sam escapes to her home.
The pain is no better at home than it is on the base. Her house is quiet and she is restless and has no idea what to do to keep her mind and body busy. Her bedroom gets rearranged, her kitchen cupboards are reorganised and she cleans out her linen closet. By the time it gets to Friday night, she can’t fight the tears any longer. She crawls into her bed and sobs, letting the emotion that has been hovering on the edge of her consciousness overwhelm her. She cries herself into a restless sleep.
At just past 2am Sam woke to find someone else climbing into bed beside her. The gun she keeps in her bedside drawer is in her hand in seconds. Her body is tensed and ready for a fight but a rough hand covers her own on the gun and pushes it away with expert care before she can take aim. The familiarity of Jack’s touch and the smell of his skin break through the sudden need to attack and Sam allows him to pull the gun from her hand and ease her down onto her back on the bed. She watches in the darkness as he settles himself beside her, dressed in a cotton shirt and sweat pants, barely a few inches between them, not touching but still so close.
“What are you doing?” she can’t stand the silence. Anger and bitterness flood through her. He all but pushes her to the side all week and then suddenly appears in her bed wanting what exactly?
She can see the outline of his chest as it rises when he takes a long slow breath, “I don’t know.”
The pain in his voice isn’t enough to take away the sharpness of her anger for his actions that left her grieving alone, “If you’ve come here for a pity fuck then get the hell out of my house.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth she wants to take them back. It’s obvious to her the second he hears her words that he hasn’t come here out of physical need. But on some level she wants him to seduce her, wants to feel his hands on her damp skin as he drives into her. She wants to feel something other than pain and anger and grief.
She begins to hate herself the second the thought of fucking Jack O’Neill to forget the pain of losing Daniel passes through her mind. How could a quick passionate tumble take away the awfulness of losing a friend. She felt dirty and wrong for even entertaining the thought and even thinking about using him in that way.
“You know I wouldn’t,” Jack spoke quietly and she feels even worse. Of course he wouldn’t. He’s kept his distance as much as she has ignored him, this past year to protect her career. He wouldn’t overstep the boundaries in that way.
Sam rolled away from him so he couldn’t read the truth of her thoughts in her eyes, “I’m angry with you,” Sam said, but she knew there was little emotion behind her voice. It was all she could think of to say. She wanted to bring back the anger and the bitterness so that all the other stray thoughts would flee from her mind.
“You should be,” Jack said, his voice accepting. He was still lying on his back on her bed, still inches away from touching her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body beside her.
To have him so close, to have him within her reach when she needed him more than anything at that moment was enough to push her further into the black hole of grief that she had been hovering over the edge of. Daniel was gone and she didn’t know how to deal with it, she didn’t know how to make the pain go away.
“I need you to…” Sam swallowed against the press of tears in her throat, “I can’t do this on my own anymore.”
With her back to him, Sam curled into her pillow. She could feel his eyes on her and she fought to keep her shoulders from shaking with grief and tears. She was so tired of losing people. So damn tired of being alone.
Jack’s hand pressed against her shoulder, then swept in a soft caress down her arm. The bed shifted as he rolled towards her and his arms pulled her into the warmth of his body. Sam was starting to lose the battle against the tears, she shook and tried half-heartedly to pull away, not even sure why she was resisting. But then she felt Jack’s face press against the back of her neck, the lightest touch of his lips pressed to her nape and the dam of emotion broke free. She clutched at his arms around her and cried, letting everything she’d been holding onto out into the open. Letting the mess of grief and anger and loneliness and pain wash through her until she had nothing left inside her.
Exhausted, she finally turned in his arms so her face was pressed into his chest. She rubbed her face across the softness of his shirt, feeling his fingers massage slowly through her hair, making her feel drowsy. The grief was still present and close, but it seemed less sharp and she no longer felt the mess of tangled emotion that had felt like a heavy weight in her chest. She shifted so she could look at Jack, his own face was dry, his eyes still somewhat closed off, but something seemed different about him. The tenseness in his muscles had eased and rather than avoiding her gaze he met it firmly. She could only hope that he had found at least a small measure of comfort or whatever it was he had been seeking when he slipped into her bed.
He guided her head down to rest against his chest and his fingers smoothed her hair and stroked slowly down her body, relaxing her until she felt her eyes begin to slide closed.
Just before she drifted off, a cool breeze shifted through the room; Jack pulled her even closer and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, even as they both shivered in the cold.
It wasn't okay. It never would be. But she still had Jack.
In the fifth year.
***
Sam watches Jack break apart in the sixth year.
Three days after the colonel returns from the hell he went through with Ba’al and Janet lets him go home. Jack is fine physically, not a scratch on him, but beneath his eyes, Sam can read a blankness that scares her. If Daniel were around, he would help the colonel, draw him out of the abyss and bring him back to the joking, warm commander that he was. But Daniel wasn’t here.
The first night Jack spends at home, Sam lays awake in bed, thinking about every little detail she has learned about his stay in Ba’al’s prison. The slave girl Jack had dragged with him through the gate had filled-in the massive blanks that the colonel had left in his report. She thinks of acid and knives and pain; Jack’s face blends in with horrific images and she barely sleeps a few hours before she gives up and heads to the base.
The next night Sam finds herself at Jack’s door. Standing frozen on the stoop. She’s dressed in civvies, her favourite green skirt with a cream-coloured singlet. It’s warm outside and Sam’s attire is fitting for the weather; the fact that the outfit exposes a lot of skin is completely besides the point.
Jack opens the door on her third knock. It’s pulled open sharply, gruffly, and the colonel barks out an annoyed hello before he recognizes her standing awkwardly on the stoop and his face registers surprise, “Carter?”
“Sir?” Sam stutters. She’d rehearsed what she’d been going to say for at least three hours prior to leaving her house and now her mind was horribly blank, “I…”
Jack pulled her inside and she gasped in shock as the door shut behind her and he suddenly slammed her against it. There was a look in his eyes that sent both the hot flood of desire in her belly and a tingle of fear down her spine. Strong hands hold her against the door and Sam could feel his tension through them as they both stare at each other silently, only the sound of heavy breathing filling the air.
Then suddenly something seemed to snap inside Jack and the restraint he’d been struggling against suddenly gave way in a rush of pent-up emotion and need. His lips are on hers, greedily pressing against her mouth as his hands roughly palmed down her body and slipped underneath her singlet. His hands are cold against her heated skin and he grasps at her breast through the soft silk of her bra. His kisses grew heavy and Sam gets caught up in the need to feel his skin against her own. Her trembling fingers undid his shirt as his own slid the singlet up her belly. His mouth continues to plunder hers before his hot lips make a wet trail down her throat.
His pulls at her bra the second her top hits the floor and he pulls the cups down roughly to expose her nipples. He sucks them into his mouth and Sam gasps as his tongue and teeth tease her flesh. Her hands fall away from his clothes to grip his hair and her belly tightens and her panties dampen as his mouth continues to play with her breasts.
Then he pulls away suddenly, his hands going to where Sam’s pull at his short hair and forcing them away from his head so they are pinned to the door above her, arms spread out. His mouth returns to her lips and Sam whimpers at the feel of his hardness pressing into her belly. His kisses are getting rougher, the passion escalating, and while it's almost too quick for Sam, she lets him take the lead. Lets him do whatever he wants. She needs to do this for him. Needs to do her penance for causing him so much pain. Needs to take it away any way she can.
She can’t help but gasp out when he presses his thigh between her legs and grinds against her clit, his eyes locked on hers, dark with passion and pent up need.
“Sir…”
He stops suddenly at the sound of her voice. His leg pulling away and his hands letting go of the tight grip of her wrists. He presses his palms against the door and she’s still trapped between him and the door but they no longer touch as Jack closes his eyes and breathes heavily.
“I won’t use you like this,” his voice is strained with the effort of holding back, “I won’t,” he repeated.
“I don’t care,” Sam whispered, really not caring that she was half-exposed to his gaze, “I want to help you. Let me help you.”
“Not like this.” Jack dropped his hands from the door and stepped back. He turned his back to her as he took several long shuddering breaths, “I… not you.”
Sam flinched, “I’m sorry.” Her hands hurriedly begin to right her clothes, the cold air on her exposed skin was too much. He didn’t want her; he must hate her for what she did to him. She was kidding herself if she thought he would forgive her.
Jack spun around at the pain in her voice, his face confused, “For what? I was the one who...”
“For the symbiote,” Sam said brokenly as she pulled her top back on in jerky movements, “I asked you; I knew you wouldn’t say no. And because you took the… Ba’al. If I’d just let you go you wouldn’t be in so much pain.”
Jack stared at her in disbelief, “Carter, I wasn’t ready to die.” He grasped her sweaty palm with his own, “I don’t blame you for any of it.”
“You should,” Sam said sadly, then she shook herself, “What can I do to help you?”
“Stop blaming yourself,” Jack’s voice is slightly sharper than he intends and he takes another deep, calming breath, “I can’t help you when I can barely keep my own damn head above water.”
Sam swallowed, feeling the guilt sway through her once again. Here she was blaming herself, dumping her own pain on him, when he had more than enough to carry on his own. She pushed the feelings aside, “Let me help you.” She said quietly. Holding out one hand, she used the other to slide the straps of her newly righted singlet down.
Jack shook his head and gently slid the straps back up her shoulders, “Not like that.”
Sam looked down, shame burning in her cheeks, “I…”
“I meant,” Jack took a steadying breath and his soft voice brought her eyes back to his face, “I need you to just…” He trailed off, unsure how to put his need into words without having to let down the barriers he had built up over years of closing himself off.
Sam understood his inability to say it aloud and she closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts before she spoke, changing the heavy atmosphere to something more bearable for both of them, “I made sure your TIVO recorded The Simpsons while you were gone.”
“The Simpsons,” Jack’s face eased a little, “We could do that.”
Sam took the lead and walked passed him, down the corridor to his den where his television sat. She'd just picked up the remote when Jack appeared at the door and cleared his throat. She looked up at him and he motioned to the bathroom.
“I’m just going to…” He looked embarrassed and Sam’s face flushed when she realised that their earlier activities had left him hanging on the edge. He disappeared, Sam heard the shower turn and she focused her attention on the television while she waited. He came back barely five minutes later, looking calmer and fully dressed, holding a large sweatshirt in his hand.
“Do me a favour Carter, and put this on would you?” Jack muttered, a gentle smile on his lips.
Sam took the sweatshirt with a rueful grin and pulled it on. They settled down onto the couch and Sam turned his television on. At first, the harsh brightness of the cartoon and the irreverence of the show grated at Sam’s still-tense nerves, but as time passed, she focused less on the show and more on Jack, watching him out of the corner of her eyes.
Memorising the lines on his face, the dark smudges beneath his eyes and the tight grip he had of the beer bottle in his hands. Eventually he relaxes, laughs at Homer; his lips move as he mouths the words along with his beloved character. Then his eyes began to slide closed and he slowly he drifted off to sleep, his head falling naturally to rest on her shoulder. She could feel the soft puff of his warm breath against her cheek, the stubble on his chin was rough against her skin but she liked the feeling of him so close to her.
Sam doesn’t move. She sits there the whole night. Stays awake and watches him. She could do it for eternity and not get tired of seeing his peaceful face.
In the sixth year.
***
Author:
petite_stars
Rating: Series has a NC17 rating but this part is probably just an M
Spoilers: Seasons five and six
Summary: Both feelings and fantasies change over the years…
Disclaimer: Stargate SG1 is the property of MGM et al., I own nothing and no infringement was intended.
Authors notes: Big thanks to wanderingsmith for the beta :) Sorry about the lag in posting parts... but the muse writes what it wants!
Years One to Four
***
In year five she ignores him.
It takes every ounce of self-control she has, but she does it. On the surface, everything seems perfect, the team is in fine working order. She can’t ignore him at work, he is her commanding officer after all, but she cuts all off-base contact with him. Is professional and courteous and the perfect soldier. A comrade. A friend. Nothing more.
She doesn’t ever bring up the events which transpired on the mountain that fateful night with the armbands. Neither does he. They leave it locked with everything else in that damn room and move on.
Or so she tells herself.
The sudden cessation of off-base contact doesn’t just affect her relationship with the colonel. It’s months before she realises her friendship with Daniel seems to be a distant memory rather than the comfortable closeness of previous years. Before she can do much more than make the first few tentative steps towards repairing the friendship that seemed to be broken, or maybe just lost, Daniel gets a lethal dose of radiation and, rather than wither and die, he ascends into a ball of glowing energy. Sam is faced with grieving alone, for someone that isn’t even dead, but nevertheless isn’t amongst the living anymore either. She’s confused and angry and the colonel ignores her pain and she feels abandoned by the team she loves so much.
Teal’c disappears inside himself. Usually a quiet and reserved Jaffa, he becomes even more withdrawn and unreachable, and his entire presence seems to scream ‘leave me alone’. So she does. But with the colonel throwing himself into work and the SGC filled with painful memories, Sam finds herself at a complete loss with how to handle anything. Rather than stay on base, where Teal’c is distant and the colonel stalks the corridors with a stony face, Sam escapes to her home.
The pain is no better at home than it is on the base. Her house is quiet and she is restless and has no idea what to do to keep her mind and body busy. Her bedroom gets rearranged, her kitchen cupboards are reorganised and she cleans out her linen closet. By the time it gets to Friday night, she can’t fight the tears any longer. She crawls into her bed and sobs, letting the emotion that has been hovering on the edge of her consciousness overwhelm her. She cries herself into a restless sleep.
At just past 2am Sam woke to find someone else climbing into bed beside her. The gun she keeps in her bedside drawer is in her hand in seconds. Her body is tensed and ready for a fight but a rough hand covers her own on the gun and pushes it away with expert care before she can take aim. The familiarity of Jack’s touch and the smell of his skin break through the sudden need to attack and Sam allows him to pull the gun from her hand and ease her down onto her back on the bed. She watches in the darkness as he settles himself beside her, dressed in a cotton shirt and sweat pants, barely a few inches between them, not touching but still so close.
“What are you doing?” she can’t stand the silence. Anger and bitterness flood through her. He all but pushes her to the side all week and then suddenly appears in her bed wanting what exactly?
She can see the outline of his chest as it rises when he takes a long slow breath, “I don’t know.”
The pain in his voice isn’t enough to take away the sharpness of her anger for his actions that left her grieving alone, “If you’ve come here for a pity fuck then get the hell out of my house.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth she wants to take them back. It’s obvious to her the second he hears her words that he hasn’t come here out of physical need. But on some level she wants him to seduce her, wants to feel his hands on her damp skin as he drives into her. She wants to feel something other than pain and anger and grief.
She begins to hate herself the second the thought of fucking Jack O’Neill to forget the pain of losing Daniel passes through her mind. How could a quick passionate tumble take away the awfulness of losing a friend. She felt dirty and wrong for even entertaining the thought and even thinking about using him in that way.
“You know I wouldn’t,” Jack spoke quietly and she feels even worse. Of course he wouldn’t. He’s kept his distance as much as she has ignored him, this past year to protect her career. He wouldn’t overstep the boundaries in that way.
Sam rolled away from him so he couldn’t read the truth of her thoughts in her eyes, “I’m angry with you,” Sam said, but she knew there was little emotion behind her voice. It was all she could think of to say. She wanted to bring back the anger and the bitterness so that all the other stray thoughts would flee from her mind.
“You should be,” Jack said, his voice accepting. He was still lying on his back on her bed, still inches away from touching her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body beside her.
To have him so close, to have him within her reach when she needed him more than anything at that moment was enough to push her further into the black hole of grief that she had been hovering over the edge of. Daniel was gone and she didn’t know how to deal with it, she didn’t know how to make the pain go away.
“I need you to…” Sam swallowed against the press of tears in her throat, “I can’t do this on my own anymore.”
With her back to him, Sam curled into her pillow. She could feel his eyes on her and she fought to keep her shoulders from shaking with grief and tears. She was so tired of losing people. So damn tired of being alone.
Jack’s hand pressed against her shoulder, then swept in a soft caress down her arm. The bed shifted as he rolled towards her and his arms pulled her into the warmth of his body. Sam was starting to lose the battle against the tears, she shook and tried half-heartedly to pull away, not even sure why she was resisting. But then she felt Jack’s face press against the back of her neck, the lightest touch of his lips pressed to her nape and the dam of emotion broke free. She clutched at his arms around her and cried, letting everything she’d been holding onto out into the open. Letting the mess of grief and anger and loneliness and pain wash through her until she had nothing left inside her.
Exhausted, she finally turned in his arms so her face was pressed into his chest. She rubbed her face across the softness of his shirt, feeling his fingers massage slowly through her hair, making her feel drowsy. The grief was still present and close, but it seemed less sharp and she no longer felt the mess of tangled emotion that had felt like a heavy weight in her chest. She shifted so she could look at Jack, his own face was dry, his eyes still somewhat closed off, but something seemed different about him. The tenseness in his muscles had eased and rather than avoiding her gaze he met it firmly. She could only hope that he had found at least a small measure of comfort or whatever it was he had been seeking when he slipped into her bed.
He guided her head down to rest against his chest and his fingers smoothed her hair and stroked slowly down her body, relaxing her until she felt her eyes begin to slide closed.
Just before she drifted off, a cool breeze shifted through the room; Jack pulled her even closer and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, even as they both shivered in the cold.
It wasn't okay. It never would be. But she still had Jack.
In the fifth year.
***
Sam watches Jack break apart in the sixth year.
Three days after the colonel returns from the hell he went through with Ba’al and Janet lets him go home. Jack is fine physically, not a scratch on him, but beneath his eyes, Sam can read a blankness that scares her. If Daniel were around, he would help the colonel, draw him out of the abyss and bring him back to the joking, warm commander that he was. But Daniel wasn’t here.
The first night Jack spends at home, Sam lays awake in bed, thinking about every little detail she has learned about his stay in Ba’al’s prison. The slave girl Jack had dragged with him through the gate had filled-in the massive blanks that the colonel had left in his report. She thinks of acid and knives and pain; Jack’s face blends in with horrific images and she barely sleeps a few hours before she gives up and heads to the base.
The next night Sam finds herself at Jack’s door. Standing frozen on the stoop. She’s dressed in civvies, her favourite green skirt with a cream-coloured singlet. It’s warm outside and Sam’s attire is fitting for the weather; the fact that the outfit exposes a lot of skin is completely besides the point.
Jack opens the door on her third knock. It’s pulled open sharply, gruffly, and the colonel barks out an annoyed hello before he recognizes her standing awkwardly on the stoop and his face registers surprise, “Carter?”
“Sir?” Sam stutters. She’d rehearsed what she’d been going to say for at least three hours prior to leaving her house and now her mind was horribly blank, “I…”
Jack pulled her inside and she gasped in shock as the door shut behind her and he suddenly slammed her against it. There was a look in his eyes that sent both the hot flood of desire in her belly and a tingle of fear down her spine. Strong hands hold her against the door and Sam could feel his tension through them as they both stare at each other silently, only the sound of heavy breathing filling the air.
Then suddenly something seemed to snap inside Jack and the restraint he’d been struggling against suddenly gave way in a rush of pent-up emotion and need. His lips are on hers, greedily pressing against her mouth as his hands roughly palmed down her body and slipped underneath her singlet. His hands are cold against her heated skin and he grasps at her breast through the soft silk of her bra. His kisses grew heavy and Sam gets caught up in the need to feel his skin against her own. Her trembling fingers undid his shirt as his own slid the singlet up her belly. His mouth continues to plunder hers before his hot lips make a wet trail down her throat.
His pulls at her bra the second her top hits the floor and he pulls the cups down roughly to expose her nipples. He sucks them into his mouth and Sam gasps as his tongue and teeth tease her flesh. Her hands fall away from his clothes to grip his hair and her belly tightens and her panties dampen as his mouth continues to play with her breasts.
Then he pulls away suddenly, his hands going to where Sam’s pull at his short hair and forcing them away from his head so they are pinned to the door above her, arms spread out. His mouth returns to her lips and Sam whimpers at the feel of his hardness pressing into her belly. His kisses are getting rougher, the passion escalating, and while it's almost too quick for Sam, she lets him take the lead. Lets him do whatever he wants. She needs to do this for him. Needs to do her penance for causing him so much pain. Needs to take it away any way she can.
She can’t help but gasp out when he presses his thigh between her legs and grinds against her clit, his eyes locked on hers, dark with passion and pent up need.
“Sir…”
He stops suddenly at the sound of her voice. His leg pulling away and his hands letting go of the tight grip of her wrists. He presses his palms against the door and she’s still trapped between him and the door but they no longer touch as Jack closes his eyes and breathes heavily.
“I won’t use you like this,” his voice is strained with the effort of holding back, “I won’t,” he repeated.
“I don’t care,” Sam whispered, really not caring that she was half-exposed to his gaze, “I want to help you. Let me help you.”
“Not like this.” Jack dropped his hands from the door and stepped back. He turned his back to her as he took several long shuddering breaths, “I… not you.”
Sam flinched, “I’m sorry.” Her hands hurriedly begin to right her clothes, the cold air on her exposed skin was too much. He didn’t want her; he must hate her for what she did to him. She was kidding herself if she thought he would forgive her.
Jack spun around at the pain in her voice, his face confused, “For what? I was the one who...”
“For the symbiote,” Sam said brokenly as she pulled her top back on in jerky movements, “I asked you; I knew you wouldn’t say no. And because you took the… Ba’al. If I’d just let you go you wouldn’t be in so much pain.”
Jack stared at her in disbelief, “Carter, I wasn’t ready to die.” He grasped her sweaty palm with his own, “I don’t blame you for any of it.”
“You should,” Sam said sadly, then she shook herself, “What can I do to help you?”
“Stop blaming yourself,” Jack’s voice is slightly sharper than he intends and he takes another deep, calming breath, “I can’t help you when I can barely keep my own damn head above water.”
Sam swallowed, feeling the guilt sway through her once again. Here she was blaming herself, dumping her own pain on him, when he had more than enough to carry on his own. She pushed the feelings aside, “Let me help you.” She said quietly. Holding out one hand, she used the other to slide the straps of her newly righted singlet down.
Jack shook his head and gently slid the straps back up her shoulders, “Not like that.”
Sam looked down, shame burning in her cheeks, “I…”
“I meant,” Jack took a steadying breath and his soft voice brought her eyes back to his face, “I need you to just…” He trailed off, unsure how to put his need into words without having to let down the barriers he had built up over years of closing himself off.
Sam understood his inability to say it aloud and she closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts before she spoke, changing the heavy atmosphere to something more bearable for both of them, “I made sure your TIVO recorded The Simpsons while you were gone.”
“The Simpsons,” Jack’s face eased a little, “We could do that.”
Sam took the lead and walked passed him, down the corridor to his den where his television sat. She'd just picked up the remote when Jack appeared at the door and cleared his throat. She looked up at him and he motioned to the bathroom.
“I’m just going to…” He looked embarrassed and Sam’s face flushed when she realised that their earlier activities had left him hanging on the edge. He disappeared, Sam heard the shower turn and she focused her attention on the television while she waited. He came back barely five minutes later, looking calmer and fully dressed, holding a large sweatshirt in his hand.
“Do me a favour Carter, and put this on would you?” Jack muttered, a gentle smile on his lips.
Sam took the sweatshirt with a rueful grin and pulled it on. They settled down onto the couch and Sam turned his television on. At first, the harsh brightness of the cartoon and the irreverence of the show grated at Sam’s still-tense nerves, but as time passed, she focused less on the show and more on Jack, watching him out of the corner of her eyes.
Memorising the lines on his face, the dark smudges beneath his eyes and the tight grip he had of the beer bottle in his hands. Eventually he relaxes, laughs at Homer; his lips move as he mouths the words along with his beloved character. Then his eyes began to slide closed and he slowly he drifted off to sleep, his head falling naturally to rest on her shoulder. She could feel the soft puff of his warm breath against her cheek, the stubble on his chin was rough against her skin but she liked the feeling of him so close to her.
Sam doesn’t move. She sits there the whole night. Stays awake and watches him. She could do it for eternity and not get tired of seeing his peaceful face.
In the sixth year.
***