Not a Shambles, Not a Work of Art 1/2
Author: Regency
Title: Not a Shambles, Not a Work of Art
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Rating: PG
Warnings: angst, sappiness, vague mentions of character death.
Spoilers: the entire series with passing reference to Atlantis and SGU; set post-series
Word count: 6,387
Summary: Once upon a time, they could have had it all together, but they let it slip away. Now, Sam’s pretty happy with what they’ve got, even if it isn’t the life she dreamed about.
Author’s Notes: Always trying to improve, so bring on the constructive criticism.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
~!~
He was already in her kitchen by the time she woke up. It was a nice kitchen, roomier than the one she’d had when she lived in the Springs so many years ago, but still small enough to be cozy. That was the sort of the thing she was attracted to nowadays, things and places that felt immediately like home without her having to put up any effort.
She was starting to think that trend had started with him.
He leaned against the counter with a steaming mug of coffee in hand as he flipped through some tabloid that he claimed to abhor but secretly loved. His eyebrows rose in proportion to the absurdity of the latest claim; especially, if there were little green-Gray!, he’d grouse-men involved. He wasn’t necessarily petty but he was easily annoyed. A few years in Washington had done that to him, tempering his quick tongue but severely limiting his tolerance for idiots.
It was no wonder that he was never in any rush when it came to her then-his words.
She stepped onto the tile floor on socked feet and gratefully accepted the coffee he offered, previously concealed out of sight because he liked her to think he’d forgotten their routine, that somewhere in all his self-involvement she’d gotten left out. She smiled into the first sip, half at the welcome rush of caffeine to her bloodstream, half at him. He never left her out.
“Any good Thor sightings lately,” she asked as she hopped onto a stool at the counter in the center of the room.
“Nothing original, no,” he sighed melodramatically before shutting the Enquirer and tossing it a middle distance. He always lost interest in it when she came in the room, but she knew it’d be nowhere to be found when it came time for recycling. She had the odd little theory that he kept a scrapbook of these sorts of things, though she’d never tell him that.
“Could be a good thing,” she replied, having finally dropped the sir after years of ending and beginning every sentence with it.
“Yeah, I guess,” he murmured, giving his coffee his full attention. She didn’t miss the slight sadness in his voice as he spoke. Some losses never heal, she thought, knowing there was still a small, largely-ignored part of him that hoped that somehow a few of the Asgard had survived. At least, one in particular.
No one ever would have expected the diminutive gray alien to become the extraterrestrial equivalent of bosom buddies with Jack O’Neill, but he’d managed. For want of an excitable bone in his body and a quirky sense of timing, Thor had become the former colonel’s favorite non-humanoid. Sam had never quite understood their relationship, but she had recognized that what had begun as a mutual curiosity had grown into so much more. By the end of his life, there were few beings of any consequence that Jack regarded higher than the Supreme Command of the Asgard Fleet. Perhaps, she thought, it was because the regard had been mutual that Jack mourned him still.
“So,” she began in the hopes of breaking the silence, “what’s on the agenda for today?”
He leaned back against the counter across from her and gave an uninformative shrug. “I don’t know. Got anything in mind?”
“We could go for a run,” she offered with an equally blasé shrug.
He quirked an eyebrow and she didn’t miss the tell-tale smirk that tipped his lips. Sure, we could, that smirk said, but will we? She didn’t need to read his expression to know the answer to that. While both were far from lazy, they hadn’t seen combat in years and field readiness wasn’t exactly a priority, so they weren’t field ready. For Jack’s part, she knew it was harder for him to get up some mornings and the cold ones were the worst. She was always just glad when he made it from his house to her kitchen for coffee.
For Sam’s part, she was just tired. She’d worked her body hard and harder for over a decade and a half in pursuit of intergalactic peace. She considered her non-field status to be a reward for all her body had given in that pursuit, for all it had suffered and she along with it. Mostly, she just wanted to avoid listening to it creak as she took off down the porch steps and jogged up the back ones. Sometime between brilliance and accomplishment, she had gotten old.
“So, the run’s out,” he said, echoing her thoughts in the succinct way he always had. “A movie, then?” She could tell from the way he bounced a bit on the balls of his feet that a movie was exactly what he had in mind. She’d always been a sucker for his eagerness, so she conceded.
“A movie it is. What’s out?” She slouched on the stool, curling over her cooling liquid breakfast like eighteen years hadn’t passed since Antarctica-the first time-and it was all she could rely on for body heat.
“Oh, I don’t know, just a couple of biopics, some cheesy adventure flick, and a godawful dozen chick flicks and children’s movies.”
She smirked as he grumbled at the state of cinema today. He hated CGI-except Nemo, he loved Nemo-and he would only sit through romantic comedies with the promise that she’d make him breakfast the morning after. Otherwise, he claimed, he’d feel cheap afterwards. She always rolled her eyes at his antics and gone along with it, knowing he loved the intellectual fluff more than he’d ever admit.
“Something tells me that if I pick anything other than the cheesy adventure flick, you’ll complain for two hours and I’ll have to buy some poor patron’s movie tickets to make up for it.”
He wrinkled his brow in a show of guileless confusion. “You say that as though I’m a bother to the other moviegoers. I’m just a member of the audience trying to enjoy the flick. Is it so wrong that I happen to enjoy a more interactive experience?”
She quirked a brow at him in disbelief. Well, not disbelief anymore; they were a cool decade beyond disbelief. “In public? Yes.”
“Aww, but annoying folks is half the fun.”
She snorted. “Then, maybe we should rent something.”
“Then, I’d just be annoying you,” he answered with a boyish grin. His eyes twinkled in good fun and she had to shake her head at him. Deep down, there was a part of him that would never age. Secretly, she loved that.
Still, she put down her ceramic mug once it was empty and sent him a level stare. “It’ll cost me less and I might actually be able to go back to the rental place afterwards-unlike those times we got thrown out of and banned from two different movie theaters.”
He nodded slowly as he took in her logic. “I guess…that makes more sense. I don’t think they’ll have the movie I want to see though.”
She leaned sideways to rest her head on her hand. She was still a bit tired from the SGC’s latest crisis, yet she was trying not to show it. “What movie is that,” she asked, hoping to get to the heart of things so they could begin the first day of their beloved downtime.
“The Wormhole Extreme movie, The Big Bad Boat of Truth.”
She nearly started banging her head on the countertop. “Tell me you’re not still stuck on that show. I thought that after you watched the entire series box set in a week you’d have it out of your system.”
He shrugged with a look of tangible discomfort. “It’s crap but it’s entertaining crap. Come on, Carter, you know how much entertaining crap…” He waved his hand around in search of the proper phrase.
“-Entertains you?” she offered.
He grinned again, maybe even wider this time. “Yeahsureyoubetcha.”
She sighed and scrubbed a hand across her face. “Luckily for you-and possibly the world-that movie was a straight-to-DVD release. We’ll pick it up at noon and I’m sure you’ll have watched it by nightfall.”
He began fidgeting almost immediately and Sam seriously considered giving herself the concussion she’d narrowly foregone a few moments before. At least it’ll mean no more Colonel Danning after this. I’ll die if I have to hear him rhapsodizing any harder about the casual nobility of his cause. She couldn’t stand any of the characters, but it was the lead that rubbed her in the worst way. She was aware that he was theoretically supposed to be a facsimile of the former colonel, but she couldn’t see it. His arrogance was too plain, his mindset too singular and unyielding to be true career military. Danning wasn’t written to bend, but, as any officer knew, sometimes one had to bend to survive. Sam still bent remarkably well and Jack had been damned flexible in his day. The man did a disservice to the very idea of service and to the man whom he sought to emulate.
On a shallower note, she’d simply never found the actor attractive enough. For an average grunt, he was all right. For a man as singularly attractive as Jack O’Neill, the casting director had aimed low and gotten exactly what he was shooting for. His features weren’t angular enough, his bone structure was too weak, and his eyes weren’t deep enough. He didn’t exude sex and commanding in the way that Jack O’Neill had the day she met him and every day after. So he began with everything against him and never caught up.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t watch the movie. She always watched the movies, no matter how terrible, just because it meant she got to spend time with her best friend. Jack had done it, and continued to do it, enough for her that it would have been hypocritical to do otherwise. Besides, despite the fact that she’d never had an interest in the original, the show’s Daniel, Dr James Lavant, was quite a dish. She’d watch his scenes and fantasize the rest.
She suddenly heard the impatient jingling of keys behind her and was shaken out of her resigned introspection. “Is this your way of telling me to hurry the hell up?”
Jack stuck his head back into the kitchen from the living room. “Of course not. This my way of telling you: Hurry the hell up, Carter!”
Notably, she slowed down instead, taking languishing steps to the sink to rinse out her mug and positively strolling back to her bedroom to make herself presentable to the outside world. Jack knew she hated to be rushed and he’d done it anyway, which meant he could suffer the consequences of his actions.
He was on the couch sulking by the time she returned, fully dressed and more alert than she had been. She passed him with a roll of her eyes and playful ruffling of his silvering hair. It was whiter now than it had been when they left the SGC the first time, but she didn’t love it any less. He was, as far as she knew, just glad to still have it. Cropped short and combed forward, it veiled his rising hairline well. He might never be bald, but, as he liked to say, he had a lot more eyebrow room than he remembered having at twenty-or forty.
“Let’s get this movie of yours, so we can actually do something worthwhile afterwards.”
He huffed, “Like what?” but got up regardless.
“I don’t know, Jack, what do attractive people our age do with their free time nowadays?” she asked as she pulled the front door shut behind them.
“Have sleepy, boring sex and watch BBC America until 3 in the morning?”
Sam couldn’t stop both her eyebrows from rising at that. “There’s nothing wrong with BBC America.”
He shrugged as he folded himself into the passenger seat of her new old Volvo. “Didn’t say there was. I’m just saying that I think there’s a disturbing correlation between increasing age and the increasing amount of BBC television one watches.”
Sam huffed herself and drove, refusing to pursue the subject further. She couldn’t help it if there was always an episode of Absolutely Fabulous on when he dropped by. She liked that show and liked to think of its constant presence as a good omen. It helped her unwind and reminded her how to laugh when some days she couldn’t remember how.
“You know, Carter, I’m more worried about that fact that it was the BBC crack that offended you instead of the one about sex.”
“I’m not having any, so there’s no reason for cracks about it to offend me.” She briefly considered radio but decided against it just as quickly. She wasn’t in the mood for the goods on the latest celebrity breakdown to fill her car. What did fill the space was the sound of her good friend chuckling in a disbelieving fashion. She spared him a quick look, just long enough to spy the curve of his mouth and maybe the glint of his teeth in the mid-morning glimmer.
“My lack of a sex life is the funniest joke you’ve heard all morning, I take it?” She could have been offended, should have been, if only she hadn’t grown out of letting his tactlessness get to her, if only Washington hadn’t broken him of most of it.
“Only if it’s a joke on the universe.” She felt more than saw him shift around to look at her dead-on. “You have no business leading a sexless life, Carter. Come on.”
“Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I don’t really have time for sex, Jack,” she reminded him, using the name she thought often if rarely spoke, even after all these years.
He seemed to shrug away her excuse. “You have time for coffee with me every morning. You have time to sit through crappy movies on a regular basis. Hell, you have time for lunch with me every weekday and whole days on weekends. If you wanted, you could make time for a little recreational copulation.” He sounded damned proud of himself for his little spiel and Sam had to give him some credit: he’d used copulation correctly.
“Would you believe that no one’s interested,” she tossed out as they turned onto the street where the movie rental was located. While it wasn’t strictly necessary anymore to physically pick up movies, both she and Jack had gotten into the habit of stopping by, just for the experience. It was tradition and habit, something they both held on to in a world that was advancing perhaps faster than it should.
“No, I would not,” he said and he was just warming up. “You are one of-no, the most beautiful woman I have ever known. You are brilliant and sexy-unbelievably sexy-and fast and tough. They don’t build ‘em like you, Carter, and maybe they never did. Anybody, male or female, would be glad to pull you into the nearest service elevator and show you just how interested they are.”
“So why don’t they?” she inquired once they were fully parked. She didn’t look at him, because he’d see the flush that worked its way up her neck when he told her what he thought of her. She couldn’t make eye contact with him when he got like this; he had that quiet gleam like he wanted to make her whole, to plan out her life in some meticulous, impossible fashion and see her off. Funny thing was that he always tried to see her off with everyone but him.
“Chances are they’re idiots. Chances are just as good they don’t think you’ll look at them twice.”
“They think right,” she said before getting out of the car. He was only a few steps behind-she could feel him-but he should have been farther. Damn long legs.
“Then, I guess there’s no reason to complain about sex when you don’t seem to miss it much.”
Sam stopped just within the lobby of the store. It was a small 5 x 4 anteroom at most, but it was big enough for her to turn ‘round in. She stared at him for a full thirty seconds, everything wrong with that statement on the tip of her tongue. The things she could tell him about loneliness and longing and aching for someone so intensely that her fantasies made her cry filled her to capacity. She nearly did tell him, but for the jarring jingle of a bell and a family of three hustling out of the exit past them. All the things she wanted had been in his hands, in the fists he’d kept clinched for what felt like forever now. Now, he worried for her.
She laughed out loud and went inside, feeling him, still feeling him, hot on her heels. He hadn’t said a word to her silence and he didn’t need to. He radiated a quiet something, too familiar to acknowledge or fully ignore. They’d gone full circle. From the forbidden, to the rejected, to the forbidden again. He hadn’t wanted her when he could have her; it felt as though nothing had changed.
She managed to instinctively steer them to the new releases section where she snagged the last copy of the wretched film he had his heart set on. They didn’t speak again until they were back inside the car, the snacks and DVD secure in his lap. When she moved to turn on the radio-even if she hated the bullshit, it was something she could stand-his hand shot out with speed that would have impressed many a young recruit to stop her.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing he said to her. His callused fingers were soft around her own softer ones and he didn’t let go. “I was a jackass and, frankly, I deserve for you to drop me off at home, change the locks, and never talk to me again. I’m sorry. Okay?”
Not okay, she wanted to say, but she knew she wouldn’t. She bought his earnest act and believed the concern in his voice. He could fake a lot, but his affection had never been false, even if it had never been what she wanted it to be.
“Yeah, okay.” She was aware that she put on a terrible show; she also knew he’d never call her on it. Not while he could still obfuscate and dodge would he call her on all the avoidance tactics he’d taught her. He’d taught her so well that she went the entire drive home ignoring the fact that he hadn’t let her fingers go. They were still wrapped in his, squeezed between his, stroked by his. He was reaching out in an attempt to heal what he’d hurt and all she wanted was more.
As it always was when it came to Jack, she ended up feeling like the guilty one.
Part 2/2
Title: Not a Shambles, Not a Work of Art
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Rating: PG
Warnings: angst, sappiness, vague mentions of character death.
Spoilers: the entire series with passing reference to Atlantis and SGU; set post-series
Word count: 6,387
Summary: Once upon a time, they could have had it all together, but they let it slip away. Now, Sam’s pretty happy with what they’ve got, even if it isn’t the life she dreamed about.
Author’s Notes: Always trying to improve, so bring on the constructive criticism.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
~!~
He was already in her kitchen by the time she woke up. It was a nice kitchen, roomier than the one she’d had when she lived in the Springs so many years ago, but still small enough to be cozy. That was the sort of the thing she was attracted to nowadays, things and places that felt immediately like home without her having to put up any effort.
She was starting to think that trend had started with him.
He leaned against the counter with a steaming mug of coffee in hand as he flipped through some tabloid that he claimed to abhor but secretly loved. His eyebrows rose in proportion to the absurdity of the latest claim; especially, if there were little green-Gray!, he’d grouse-men involved. He wasn’t necessarily petty but he was easily annoyed. A few years in Washington had done that to him, tempering his quick tongue but severely limiting his tolerance for idiots.
It was no wonder that he was never in any rush when it came to her then-his words.
She stepped onto the tile floor on socked feet and gratefully accepted the coffee he offered, previously concealed out of sight because he liked her to think he’d forgotten their routine, that somewhere in all his self-involvement she’d gotten left out. She smiled into the first sip, half at the welcome rush of caffeine to her bloodstream, half at him. He never left her out.
“Any good Thor sightings lately,” she asked as she hopped onto a stool at the counter in the center of the room.
“Nothing original, no,” he sighed melodramatically before shutting the Enquirer and tossing it a middle distance. He always lost interest in it when she came in the room, but she knew it’d be nowhere to be found when it came time for recycling. She had the odd little theory that he kept a scrapbook of these sorts of things, though she’d never tell him that.
“Could be a good thing,” she replied, having finally dropped the sir after years of ending and beginning every sentence with it.
“Yeah, I guess,” he murmured, giving his coffee his full attention. She didn’t miss the slight sadness in his voice as he spoke. Some losses never heal, she thought, knowing there was still a small, largely-ignored part of him that hoped that somehow a few of the Asgard had survived. At least, one in particular.
No one ever would have expected the diminutive gray alien to become the extraterrestrial equivalent of bosom buddies with Jack O’Neill, but he’d managed. For want of an excitable bone in his body and a quirky sense of timing, Thor had become the former colonel’s favorite non-humanoid. Sam had never quite understood their relationship, but she had recognized that what had begun as a mutual curiosity had grown into so much more. By the end of his life, there were few beings of any consequence that Jack regarded higher than the Supreme Command of the Asgard Fleet. Perhaps, she thought, it was because the regard had been mutual that Jack mourned him still.
“So,” she began in the hopes of breaking the silence, “what’s on the agenda for today?”
He leaned back against the counter across from her and gave an uninformative shrug. “I don’t know. Got anything in mind?”
“We could go for a run,” she offered with an equally blasé shrug.
He quirked an eyebrow and she didn’t miss the tell-tale smirk that tipped his lips. Sure, we could, that smirk said, but will we? She didn’t need to read his expression to know the answer to that. While both were far from lazy, they hadn’t seen combat in years and field readiness wasn’t exactly a priority, so they weren’t field ready. For Jack’s part, she knew it was harder for him to get up some mornings and the cold ones were the worst. She was always just glad when he made it from his house to her kitchen for coffee.
For Sam’s part, she was just tired. She’d worked her body hard and harder for over a decade and a half in pursuit of intergalactic peace. She considered her non-field status to be a reward for all her body had given in that pursuit, for all it had suffered and she along with it. Mostly, she just wanted to avoid listening to it creak as she took off down the porch steps and jogged up the back ones. Sometime between brilliance and accomplishment, she had gotten old.
“So, the run’s out,” he said, echoing her thoughts in the succinct way he always had. “A movie, then?” She could tell from the way he bounced a bit on the balls of his feet that a movie was exactly what he had in mind. She’d always been a sucker for his eagerness, so she conceded.
“A movie it is. What’s out?” She slouched on the stool, curling over her cooling liquid breakfast like eighteen years hadn’t passed since Antarctica-the first time-and it was all she could rely on for body heat.
“Oh, I don’t know, just a couple of biopics, some cheesy adventure flick, and a godawful dozen chick flicks and children’s movies.”
She smirked as he grumbled at the state of cinema today. He hated CGI-except Nemo, he loved Nemo-and he would only sit through romantic comedies with the promise that she’d make him breakfast the morning after. Otherwise, he claimed, he’d feel cheap afterwards. She always rolled her eyes at his antics and gone along with it, knowing he loved the intellectual fluff more than he’d ever admit.
“Something tells me that if I pick anything other than the cheesy adventure flick, you’ll complain for two hours and I’ll have to buy some poor patron’s movie tickets to make up for it.”
He wrinkled his brow in a show of guileless confusion. “You say that as though I’m a bother to the other moviegoers. I’m just a member of the audience trying to enjoy the flick. Is it so wrong that I happen to enjoy a more interactive experience?”
She quirked a brow at him in disbelief. Well, not disbelief anymore; they were a cool decade beyond disbelief. “In public? Yes.”
“Aww, but annoying folks is half the fun.”
She snorted. “Then, maybe we should rent something.”
“Then, I’d just be annoying you,” he answered with a boyish grin. His eyes twinkled in good fun and she had to shake her head at him. Deep down, there was a part of him that would never age. Secretly, she loved that.
Still, she put down her ceramic mug once it was empty and sent him a level stare. “It’ll cost me less and I might actually be able to go back to the rental place afterwards-unlike those times we got thrown out of and banned from two different movie theaters.”
He nodded slowly as he took in her logic. “I guess…that makes more sense. I don’t think they’ll have the movie I want to see though.”
She leaned sideways to rest her head on her hand. She was still a bit tired from the SGC’s latest crisis, yet she was trying not to show it. “What movie is that,” she asked, hoping to get to the heart of things so they could begin the first day of their beloved downtime.
“The Wormhole Extreme movie, The Big Bad Boat of Truth.”
She nearly started banging her head on the countertop. “Tell me you’re not still stuck on that show. I thought that after you watched the entire series box set in a week you’d have it out of your system.”
He shrugged with a look of tangible discomfort. “It’s crap but it’s entertaining crap. Come on, Carter, you know how much entertaining crap…” He waved his hand around in search of the proper phrase.
“-Entertains you?” she offered.
He grinned again, maybe even wider this time. “Yeahsureyoubetcha.”
She sighed and scrubbed a hand across her face. “Luckily for you-and possibly the world-that movie was a straight-to-DVD release. We’ll pick it up at noon and I’m sure you’ll have watched it by nightfall.”
He began fidgeting almost immediately and Sam seriously considered giving herself the concussion she’d narrowly foregone a few moments before. At least it’ll mean no more Colonel Danning after this. I’ll die if I have to hear him rhapsodizing any harder about the casual nobility of his cause. She couldn’t stand any of the characters, but it was the lead that rubbed her in the worst way. She was aware that he was theoretically supposed to be a facsimile of the former colonel, but she couldn’t see it. His arrogance was too plain, his mindset too singular and unyielding to be true career military. Danning wasn’t written to bend, but, as any officer knew, sometimes one had to bend to survive. Sam still bent remarkably well and Jack had been damned flexible in his day. The man did a disservice to the very idea of service and to the man whom he sought to emulate.
On a shallower note, she’d simply never found the actor attractive enough. For an average grunt, he was all right. For a man as singularly attractive as Jack O’Neill, the casting director had aimed low and gotten exactly what he was shooting for. His features weren’t angular enough, his bone structure was too weak, and his eyes weren’t deep enough. He didn’t exude sex and commanding in the way that Jack O’Neill had the day she met him and every day after. So he began with everything against him and never caught up.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t watch the movie. She always watched the movies, no matter how terrible, just because it meant she got to spend time with her best friend. Jack had done it, and continued to do it, enough for her that it would have been hypocritical to do otherwise. Besides, despite the fact that she’d never had an interest in the original, the show’s Daniel, Dr James Lavant, was quite a dish. She’d watch his scenes and fantasize the rest.
She suddenly heard the impatient jingling of keys behind her and was shaken out of her resigned introspection. “Is this your way of telling me to hurry the hell up?”
Jack stuck his head back into the kitchen from the living room. “Of course not. This my way of telling you: Hurry the hell up, Carter!”
Notably, she slowed down instead, taking languishing steps to the sink to rinse out her mug and positively strolling back to her bedroom to make herself presentable to the outside world. Jack knew she hated to be rushed and he’d done it anyway, which meant he could suffer the consequences of his actions.
He was on the couch sulking by the time she returned, fully dressed and more alert than she had been. She passed him with a roll of her eyes and playful ruffling of his silvering hair. It was whiter now than it had been when they left the SGC the first time, but she didn’t love it any less. He was, as far as she knew, just glad to still have it. Cropped short and combed forward, it veiled his rising hairline well. He might never be bald, but, as he liked to say, he had a lot more eyebrow room than he remembered having at twenty-or forty.
“Let’s get this movie of yours, so we can actually do something worthwhile afterwards.”
He huffed, “Like what?” but got up regardless.
“I don’t know, Jack, what do attractive people our age do with their free time nowadays?” she asked as she pulled the front door shut behind them.
“Have sleepy, boring sex and watch BBC America until 3 in the morning?”
Sam couldn’t stop both her eyebrows from rising at that. “There’s nothing wrong with BBC America.”
He shrugged as he folded himself into the passenger seat of her new old Volvo. “Didn’t say there was. I’m just saying that I think there’s a disturbing correlation between increasing age and the increasing amount of BBC television one watches.”
Sam huffed herself and drove, refusing to pursue the subject further. She couldn’t help it if there was always an episode of Absolutely Fabulous on when he dropped by. She liked that show and liked to think of its constant presence as a good omen. It helped her unwind and reminded her how to laugh when some days she couldn’t remember how.
“You know, Carter, I’m more worried about that fact that it was the BBC crack that offended you instead of the one about sex.”
“I’m not having any, so there’s no reason for cracks about it to offend me.” She briefly considered radio but decided against it just as quickly. She wasn’t in the mood for the goods on the latest celebrity breakdown to fill her car. What did fill the space was the sound of her good friend chuckling in a disbelieving fashion. She spared him a quick look, just long enough to spy the curve of his mouth and maybe the glint of his teeth in the mid-morning glimmer.
“My lack of a sex life is the funniest joke you’ve heard all morning, I take it?” She could have been offended, should have been, if only she hadn’t grown out of letting his tactlessness get to her, if only Washington hadn’t broken him of most of it.
“Only if it’s a joke on the universe.” She felt more than saw him shift around to look at her dead-on. “You have no business leading a sexless life, Carter. Come on.”
“Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I don’t really have time for sex, Jack,” she reminded him, using the name she thought often if rarely spoke, even after all these years.
He seemed to shrug away her excuse. “You have time for coffee with me every morning. You have time to sit through crappy movies on a regular basis. Hell, you have time for lunch with me every weekday and whole days on weekends. If you wanted, you could make time for a little recreational copulation.” He sounded damned proud of himself for his little spiel and Sam had to give him some credit: he’d used copulation correctly.
“Would you believe that no one’s interested,” she tossed out as they turned onto the street where the movie rental was located. While it wasn’t strictly necessary anymore to physically pick up movies, both she and Jack had gotten into the habit of stopping by, just for the experience. It was tradition and habit, something they both held on to in a world that was advancing perhaps faster than it should.
“No, I would not,” he said and he was just warming up. “You are one of-no, the most beautiful woman I have ever known. You are brilliant and sexy-unbelievably sexy-and fast and tough. They don’t build ‘em like you, Carter, and maybe they never did. Anybody, male or female, would be glad to pull you into the nearest service elevator and show you just how interested they are.”
“So why don’t they?” she inquired once they were fully parked. She didn’t look at him, because he’d see the flush that worked its way up her neck when he told her what he thought of her. She couldn’t make eye contact with him when he got like this; he had that quiet gleam like he wanted to make her whole, to plan out her life in some meticulous, impossible fashion and see her off. Funny thing was that he always tried to see her off with everyone but him.
“Chances are they’re idiots. Chances are just as good they don’t think you’ll look at them twice.”
“They think right,” she said before getting out of the car. He was only a few steps behind-she could feel him-but he should have been farther. Damn long legs.
“Then, I guess there’s no reason to complain about sex when you don’t seem to miss it much.”
Sam stopped just within the lobby of the store. It was a small 5 x 4 anteroom at most, but it was big enough for her to turn ‘round in. She stared at him for a full thirty seconds, everything wrong with that statement on the tip of her tongue. The things she could tell him about loneliness and longing and aching for someone so intensely that her fantasies made her cry filled her to capacity. She nearly did tell him, but for the jarring jingle of a bell and a family of three hustling out of the exit past them. All the things she wanted had been in his hands, in the fists he’d kept clinched for what felt like forever now. Now, he worried for her.
She laughed out loud and went inside, feeling him, still feeling him, hot on her heels. He hadn’t said a word to her silence and he didn’t need to. He radiated a quiet something, too familiar to acknowledge or fully ignore. They’d gone full circle. From the forbidden, to the rejected, to the forbidden again. He hadn’t wanted her when he could have her; it felt as though nothing had changed.
She managed to instinctively steer them to the new releases section where she snagged the last copy of the wretched film he had his heart set on. They didn’t speak again until they were back inside the car, the snacks and DVD secure in his lap. When she moved to turn on the radio-even if she hated the bullshit, it was something she could stand-his hand shot out with speed that would have impressed many a young recruit to stop her.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing he said to her. His callused fingers were soft around her own softer ones and he didn’t let go. “I was a jackass and, frankly, I deserve for you to drop me off at home, change the locks, and never talk to me again. I’m sorry. Okay?”
Not okay, she wanted to say, but she knew she wouldn’t. She bought his earnest act and believed the concern in his voice. He could fake a lot, but his affection had never been false, even if it had never been what she wanted it to be.
“Yeah, okay.” She was aware that she put on a terrible show; she also knew he’d never call her on it. Not while he could still obfuscate and dodge would he call her on all the avoidance tactics he’d taught her. He’d taught her so well that she went the entire drive home ignoring the fact that he hadn’t let her fingers go. They were still wrapped in his, squeezed between his, stroked by his. He was reaching out in an attempt to heal what he’d hurt and all she wanted was more.
As it always was when it came to Jack, she ended up feeling like the guilty one.
Part 2/2