Denial - Quantum Leap [1955], Sam x Al
"Billie Jean was in full labor when you leaped in, Sam," Al explained to the pacing woman in front of him. "It took every doctor on the staff to stop her. Not to mention the shock she went into when she caught a glimpse of your reflection in those OR lamps."
Sam frowned at his light tone as she rubbed her back. "Al, what if she has her baby in the future?" Giving up the battle of fighting her unusually sore body, she lowered herself onto the couch.
Al grew appropriately serious. "Well, Ziggy's very worried about that," he replied, pulling the handlink out of his pocket. "He says there's an eighty-six percent chance that when you leap out and Billie Jean leaps back, the baby could stay in the future."
Sam looked up at Al, concern touching her face as the implications hit a little too close to home. "She loses her baby?"
"Well, she loses it anyway," Al explained. "In the original history, Billie Jean put her baby up for adoption. Then she regretted it, and spent the rest of her life trying to find her."
"So I'm here to change that?" Sam deduced.
"Apparently so," Al confirmed.
"How long until she has her baby?" Sam asked.
"Uh… According to Ziggy, about thirty-six hours-" Al paused briefly, looking at the handlink incredulously. "Un... unless..."
"Unless?" Sam prompted.
"Unless... you have it first?" Al read slowly.
Sam couldn’t help but laugh at the mere idea. "What? What are you talking about? I ca..."
All laughed too, but Sam could see and hear how forced it was. Finally, Al dropped the façade and gave Sam an almost puzzled look. She hauled herself vertical and started pacing the small span of floor available to her. The actions earned her nothing more than a stitch in her side. "I ca… I can't have a baby," she insisted.
"I know that," Al answered, watching her pacing. "But Ziggy's not so sure."
"I'm sure!" Sam replied shortly. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life-there's no way that I could possibly have a baby!"
"Okay, okay," Al said, tying to smooth Sam's frayed nerves.
His efforts went unnoticed. "How could I carry-"
"Okay, okay-calm down!" Al cut off. "You're gonna find yourself going back into labor."
"I wasn't in labor!" Sam snapped.
"Well, Billie Jean was," Al reminded.
Sam didn’t reply, but groaned and kneaded the stitch in her side. "And Ziggy says that your brain waves are linked into her emotions," Al went on, reading off of the data on the handlink, "and they're cross channeling into the baby."
"The baby's not here," Sam reminded, chuckling without humor.
"Well, never mind, 'the baby's not here,'" Al replied, a little irritated with the stubborn Sam was taking. "The baby is connecting with your mood swings. Ziggy says you're bonding."
"'Bonding?'" Sam parroted in disbelief as she carefully got down on her knees and picked up something that had fallen off the coffee table. Considering how slender she was, she certainly felt heavily pregnant. Not that she had a frame of reference, mind, she noted bitterly
"Yes, bonding," Al confirmed, "and that's a good thing in case you deliver before Billie Jean leaps back."
Sam tossed a loose spool of thread onto the coffee table and looked up at Al, thoroughly irritated. "Al, my uterus has been shot since the day I was born-it can't support a baby. I cannot have a baby!" Her diatribe was cut short by a groan and a grimace.
"You don’t look so good, Sam," Al commented, starting to sound truly concerned.
"Just feeling a little nauseous," she answered, the words clipped as she pulled herself to her feet.
"Yeah, you look a little green around the nostrils there," he noted, frowning a little deeper.
By this point, Sam was ignoring him completely in favor of making a beeline to a small bathroom off the side of the room. She stepped inside, but didn't close the door all the way, and the sounds of her vomiting followed.
Without thinking, Al hurried across the room, pausing outside the door. Propriety, awkwardness-something kept him from going in, forcing him to listen uncomfortably. "I told you not to upset yourself," he said, a barely noticeable trace of pity in his voice.
"I'm not upset," Sam called back, though her tone of voice said different. "I'm just sick."
"I can hear that," Al noted, thinking for a moment. "Ah, oh-you've got the stomach flu! Everybody's got it, it's going around."
In the bathroom there was a cough and a sputter, then the sound of the toilet flushing and tap water being run. After a moment, Sam emerged, looking worn out and with a damp towel loosely clutched in her hand. "I don't have the flu," she told Al pointedly. "Listen… You're sure that there's no way…" She paused for a breath. "No way that Ziggy could be right about this, right?"
"Oh, there's no way Ziggy could be right about this!" Al replied. "I mean, there's no way that-" and this was going to be a test of how tactful he could be with her-"you could carry a baby in there, right?"
"Right!" Sam agreed. Al breathed a small sigh of relief that his meaning didn’t get lost in translation. "So then-we're just saying that Billie Jean's back in the Waiting Room…"
"Yeah," Al confirmed, thinking back to the terrified sixteen-year-old girl.
"And I'm here in 1955, right?" Sam went on.
"Yeah, right-she's there, you're here, yeah."
"And it's just the illusion of her physical aura that everybody's seeing." Sam was on a roll now.
"That's right," Al answered. "They see the illusion of her physical aura."
"Not her body," she prompted.
"No, not her body."
"Okay." Sam nodded, then realized the gaping hole in her argument. "So why do I feel so nauseous?" Feeling more worn out than a woman in her physical state should, she sat back down on the couch, groaning again.
Al was scrabbling for an explanation-any explanation besides Sammy actual being pregnant-by the point. "Oh...uh...oh it could be psychosomatic! Yeah. A lot of fathers have that."
"Who is the father, Al?" Sam asked, laying down and drawing her legs up on the couch.
"We don't know," Al admitted, watching Sam lie down. His next words were soft, concerned. "You feeling a little better?"
"Yeah," she replied, closing her eyes. "Yeah, I'm just a little bit...tired."
"Tired?" Al latched onto the word. "Well, that means you got the flu! That's just like I said- you've got the flu."
Sam opened her eyes and lifted her head "I...I don't have the flu!" she insisted, brushing a few loose strands of hair out of her eyes.
"Yeah, well you're not pregnant either!" Al's patience was wearing thin by now-not through any fault of Sam's, but the feeling that this wasn't going to end well beginning to grate on his nerves. Once bitten and all. "Because when you're pregnant, the nausea and the pukies and the fatigue come in the first three months, and Billie Jean is...is full term." He paused, a strange, thoughtful expression on his face-now that was a phrase he never thought he'd hear himself use in connection with Sammy, not after the first, last and only time she'd been pregnant and how that had turned out.
"I'm just gonna rest here a little bit, Al," Sam said, fatigued, "and then I'll get up and figure out how to patch up things with her...and her family."
"That's a good idea, Sam," Al noted. "You could talk to her mother-" Al pressed few buttons on the handlink, then frowned at the results. "That's a bad idea, Sam. Her mother's dead, died when she was twelve, and her father even refuses to see her."
"Who?" Sam asked, not opening her eyes.
"Her...Billie Jean's father." Al skimmed through the data. "Bob Crockett is his name. He's a foreman at Kip Petroleum. Lives at 243 Prairie Lane Drive in Claremore." He considered the handlink thoughtfully.
Sam mumbled the address back, almost asleep. "Two four three Fairy Lane Dr…"
Under normal circumstances, Sam's malapropism would have been endearing. "No, not Fairy-Prairie," Al corrected, "with a P-" He sounded out the letter, a sort of reminder (to say nothing of a testament to how exhausted Sam probably was)-"Drive…"
When Al looked down at her again, he blinked. She was asleep, the towel clutched loosely in her hand, as though she hadn't been asleep in months. "Something tells me we're in big trouble here," he said to no one particular, sighing as he looked at Sam once more. "Big."
-.-.-.-
Title: Denial
Author: TheCrazyAlaskan
Fandom / Setting: Quantum Leap - Coda for "8 ½ Months"
Characters / Pairings: Sam Beckett x Al Calavicci
Genre: General
Rating: T
Word Count: 1463
Warnings / Notes: Genderswap.
I love this episode. Wonderful Sam x Al interactions, a great story-and who can resist a little canon mpreg? 8D
I've wanted to genderswap this scene-strike that, this entire episode-from the start. Of course, it ends up being super sad because my mind canon for female Sam is that she lost the baby she conceived with Al. Denial was something I couldn’t cut out for this scene, so I had to add another layer to it with her not being able to carry a baby to term to begin with. :c
I have one other scene I want to work with, and maybe if I play my cards right, I can pick something a little happier. (I'm sorely tempted to do the scene where Sam is in labor with Billie Jean's baby. It's times like this that I wish Al wasn't a hologram on Sam's leaps because holy Jesus, the visual of Sam grabbing Al's shirtsleeve and practically begging, "Get it out, Al! Get it out!" is too powerful for me to resist.)
Sam Beckett, Al Calavicci, Quantum Leap © Donald Bellisario
Sam frowned at his light tone as she rubbed her back. "Al, what if she has her baby in the future?" Giving up the battle of fighting her unusually sore body, she lowered herself onto the couch.
Al grew appropriately serious. "Well, Ziggy's very worried about that," he replied, pulling the handlink out of his pocket. "He says there's an eighty-six percent chance that when you leap out and Billie Jean leaps back, the baby could stay in the future."
Sam looked up at Al, concern touching her face as the implications hit a little too close to home. "She loses her baby?"
"Well, she loses it anyway," Al explained. "In the original history, Billie Jean put her baby up for adoption. Then she regretted it, and spent the rest of her life trying to find her."
"So I'm here to change that?" Sam deduced.
"Apparently so," Al confirmed.
"How long until she has her baby?" Sam asked.
"Uh… According to Ziggy, about thirty-six hours-" Al paused briefly, looking at the handlink incredulously. "Un... unless..."
"Unless?" Sam prompted.
"Unless... you have it first?" Al read slowly.
Sam couldn’t help but laugh at the mere idea. "What? What are you talking about? I ca..."
All laughed too, but Sam could see and hear how forced it was. Finally, Al dropped the façade and gave Sam an almost puzzled look. She hauled herself vertical and started pacing the small span of floor available to her. The actions earned her nothing more than a stitch in her side. "I ca… I can't have a baby," she insisted.
"I know that," Al answered, watching her pacing. "But Ziggy's not so sure."
"I'm sure!" Sam replied shortly. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life-there's no way that I could possibly have a baby!"
"Okay, okay," Al said, tying to smooth Sam's frayed nerves.
His efforts went unnoticed. "How could I carry-"
"Okay, okay-calm down!" Al cut off. "You're gonna find yourself going back into labor."
"I wasn't in labor!" Sam snapped.
"Well, Billie Jean was," Al reminded.
Sam didn’t reply, but groaned and kneaded the stitch in her side. "And Ziggy says that your brain waves are linked into her emotions," Al went on, reading off of the data on the handlink, "and they're cross channeling into the baby."
"The baby's not here," Sam reminded, chuckling without humor.
"Well, never mind, 'the baby's not here,'" Al replied, a little irritated with the stubborn Sam was taking. "The baby is connecting with your mood swings. Ziggy says you're bonding."
"'Bonding?'" Sam parroted in disbelief as she carefully got down on her knees and picked up something that had fallen off the coffee table. Considering how slender she was, she certainly felt heavily pregnant. Not that she had a frame of reference, mind, she noted bitterly
"Yes, bonding," Al confirmed, "and that's a good thing in case you deliver before Billie Jean leaps back."
Sam tossed a loose spool of thread onto the coffee table and looked up at Al, thoroughly irritated. "Al, my uterus has been shot since the day I was born-it can't support a baby. I cannot have a baby!" Her diatribe was cut short by a groan and a grimace.
"You don’t look so good, Sam," Al commented, starting to sound truly concerned.
"Just feeling a little nauseous," she answered, the words clipped as she pulled herself to her feet.
"Yeah, you look a little green around the nostrils there," he noted, frowning a little deeper.
By this point, Sam was ignoring him completely in favor of making a beeline to a small bathroom off the side of the room. She stepped inside, but didn't close the door all the way, and the sounds of her vomiting followed.
Without thinking, Al hurried across the room, pausing outside the door. Propriety, awkwardness-something kept him from going in, forcing him to listen uncomfortably. "I told you not to upset yourself," he said, a barely noticeable trace of pity in his voice.
"I'm not upset," Sam called back, though her tone of voice said different. "I'm just sick."
"I can hear that," Al noted, thinking for a moment. "Ah, oh-you've got the stomach flu! Everybody's got it, it's going around."
In the bathroom there was a cough and a sputter, then the sound of the toilet flushing and tap water being run. After a moment, Sam emerged, looking worn out and with a damp towel loosely clutched in her hand. "I don't have the flu," she told Al pointedly. "Listen… You're sure that there's no way…" She paused for a breath. "No way that Ziggy could be right about this, right?"
"Oh, there's no way Ziggy could be right about this!" Al replied. "I mean, there's no way that-" and this was going to be a test of how tactful he could be with her-"you could carry a baby in there, right?"
"Right!" Sam agreed. Al breathed a small sigh of relief that his meaning didn’t get lost in translation. "So then-we're just saying that Billie Jean's back in the Waiting Room…"
"Yeah," Al confirmed, thinking back to the terrified sixteen-year-old girl.
"And I'm here in 1955, right?" Sam went on.
"Yeah, right-she's there, you're here, yeah."
"And it's just the illusion of her physical aura that everybody's seeing." Sam was on a roll now.
"That's right," Al answered. "They see the illusion of her physical aura."
"Not her body," she prompted.
"No, not her body."
"Okay." Sam nodded, then realized the gaping hole in her argument. "So why do I feel so nauseous?" Feeling more worn out than a woman in her physical state should, she sat back down on the couch, groaning again.
Al was scrabbling for an explanation-any explanation besides Sammy actual being pregnant-by the point. "Oh...uh...oh it could be psychosomatic! Yeah. A lot of fathers have that."
"Who is the father, Al?" Sam asked, laying down and drawing her legs up on the couch.
"We don't know," Al admitted, watching Sam lie down. His next words were soft, concerned. "You feeling a little better?"
"Yeah," she replied, closing her eyes. "Yeah, I'm just a little bit...tired."
"Tired?" Al latched onto the word. "Well, that means you got the flu! That's just like I said- you've got the flu."
Sam opened her eyes and lifted her head "I...I don't have the flu!" she insisted, brushing a few loose strands of hair out of her eyes.
"Yeah, well you're not pregnant either!" Al's patience was wearing thin by now-not through any fault of Sam's, but the feeling that this wasn't going to end well beginning to grate on his nerves. Once bitten and all. "Because when you're pregnant, the nausea and the pukies and the fatigue come in the first three months, and Billie Jean is...is full term." He paused, a strange, thoughtful expression on his face-now that was a phrase he never thought he'd hear himself use in connection with Sammy, not after the first, last and only time she'd been pregnant and how that had turned out.
"I'm just gonna rest here a little bit, Al," Sam said, fatigued, "and then I'll get up and figure out how to patch up things with her...and her family."
"That's a good idea, Sam," Al noted. "You could talk to her mother-" Al pressed few buttons on the handlink, then frowned at the results. "That's a bad idea, Sam. Her mother's dead, died when she was twelve, and her father even refuses to see her."
"Who?" Sam asked, not opening her eyes.
"Her...Billie Jean's father." Al skimmed through the data. "Bob Crockett is his name. He's a foreman at Kip Petroleum. Lives at 243 Prairie Lane Drive in Claremore." He considered the handlink thoughtfully.
Sam mumbled the address back, almost asleep. "Two four three Fairy Lane Dr…"
Under normal circumstances, Sam's malapropism would have been endearing. "No, not Fairy-Prairie," Al corrected, "with a P-" He sounded out the letter, a sort of reminder (to say nothing of a testament to how exhausted Sam probably was)-"Drive…"
When Al looked down at her again, he blinked. She was asleep, the towel clutched loosely in her hand, as though she hadn't been asleep in months. "Something tells me we're in big trouble here," he said to no one particular, sighing as he looked at Sam once more. "Big."
-.-.-.-
Title: Denial
Author: TheCrazyAlaskan
Fandom / Setting: Quantum Leap - Coda for "8 ½ Months"
Characters / Pairings: Sam Beckett x Al Calavicci
Genre: General
Rating: T
Word Count: 1463
Warnings / Notes: Genderswap.
I love this episode. Wonderful Sam x Al interactions, a great story-and who can resist a little canon mpreg? 8D
I've wanted to genderswap this scene-strike that, this entire episode-from the start. Of course, it ends up being super sad because my mind canon for female Sam is that she lost the baby she conceived with Al. Denial was something I couldn’t cut out for this scene, so I had to add another layer to it with her not being able to carry a baby to term to begin with. :c
I have one other scene I want to work with, and maybe if I play my cards right, I can pick something a little happier. (I'm sorely tempted to do the scene where Sam is in labor with Billie Jean's baby. It's times like this that I wish Al wasn't a hologram on Sam's leaps because holy Jesus, the visual of Sam grabbing Al's shirtsleeve and practically begging, "Get it out, Al! Get it out!" is too powerful for me to resist.)
Sam Beckett, Al Calavicci, Quantum Leap © Donald Bellisario