This is a series of One Shots. None of the stories are connected and can be read apart from the other. But they all are about the same thing - other people's perception of the relationship between Jason and Sam. The fun part will be guessing who the speaker of each story is before it's revealed :-)
Title - On the Outside Looking In: In the Blink of an Eye
Rating - PG
Summary - Story 1 in a series of one shots about the evolution of JaSam, seen from the outside.
Spoilers - This takes place before the 9/20/2004 episode when Jason gives Sam the 'papers' that Sonny wants her to sign.
Disclaimer - Characters not mine. Just borrowing them. Please don't sue.
Written: May 7, 2005
On the Outside Looking In
Part I
by Nicky
"In the Blink of an Eye"
It's funny how things seem to happen in the blink of an eye. One minute, your kids are babies. The next, they're running around like real, independent little people. One minute you see yourself as young and invincible. The next, more gray hairs greet you each time you look at yourself in the mirror. It isn't any different with love. One minute, you think you know what love is. The next, it's gone before you even realize things were going wrong.
Standing on the outside is never a place I saw myself. I was the mover. The shaker. The man that made things happen. I was the man that women wanted. The man they'd do anything for. I guess I should have realized that one of these days, one of those women would figure out I was getting far more than I gave. I never thought in a million years that woman would be Sam McCall.
What Sam and I had was fun. It was a relationship forged out of a mutual need to break with reality. When Carly woke from her coma, I wasn't as clueless as everyone thought. I sensed that our connection wasn't there. I saw how she couldn't resist Lorenzo Alcazar. Yet, I persisted, hoping she'd remember our love and come back to me. The love may not have been perfect, but it was ours. We had built it up together. And it meant everything to me. So when Alcazar stole that very love that Carly and I worked so hard to create, anger doesn't even begin to describe how I felt.
Yes I was angry at Alcazar. But if I'm honest, the person I was most upset with was Carly. She left me emotionally long before I saw her in that man's arms. As much as I tried to deny it, I knew it was only a matter of time before I saw what I walked in on. I saw red. But strangely enough, I didn't try to kill the parasite. I turned and ran and found the first available pair of arms. I needed comfort, so I ran to the one place I knew I would get it.
To this day, I still don't know why Sam ever took me in her bed. I was emotionally barren. I had nothing to give her, yet she loved me anyway. I felt so guilty when I found out she was pregnant, that I tried to care about her. I tried to pretend I could fall in love with her. But my heart belonged completely to my wife. And when we reconciled, I realized I hadn't done anything but string poor Sam along. I felt even worse that Jason was now stuck with a problem I created.
Jason is good that way. He's good at cleaning up the messes that I make. And that baby Sam's carrying is one of the biggest messes ever. But he takes it like a trooper. Everyday, he lives with the woman in love with me. The woman who's carrying my child. The woman who's . . . looking at him like he's the only man in the room. Hmm. That's new. I never saw her look at me that way.
I watch them for a few minutes, Sam animatedly telling some story that is obviously amusing Jason because he's doing something I rarely see him do – he's smiling. It never occurred to me that he was even capable of smiling. But I have the proof right in front of me. It actually makes me wish I had one of those camera phones so that I can document this moment for posterity's sake. But something tells me this isn't that uncommon an occasion for the two of them. It looks like something that happens all the time.
Sam and I shared a lot of laughs. We had a lot of fun. But it seemed different with us than it does with her and Jason. It takes me a second, but looking closer at them, I can see what that difference is. Joy. They have it. Sam and I didn't. Too bad. Because that sparkle in her eyes and the way her face is lighting up just being in his presence makes her look really beautiful. She was always attractive to me, but never this luminescent. Maybe it's the baby. They say pregnant women have a special glow.
They start to get up and I worry about them spotting me as I spy on them. But that won't be a problem. She just has to use the bathroom. That must be a private joke between them because Jason outright laughs at her and she playfully swats him on the arm before waddling away. Wow. There are two words I never thought I'd associate with Jason Morgan. Laughing and playful. But it's true. Something happens to him when he's with Sam. She can seemingly transform him into a different man without even trying.
Since he's alone now, I walk into Kelly's, expecting him to see me and see if there's anything I need. That's what Jason usually does. But oddly enough, he doesn't even notice me. His eyes have been glued to the restroom area where Sam has disappeared. Moments later she returns and I catch an awestruck look on his face when he sees her. But he quickly hides it when she looks up at him. He rises and takes her hand, helping her lower her bulky form back into her seat before taking his own seat again.
They spend the next few minutes in silence, their hunger getting the better of them. As they eat their lunch, they occasionally look up and give each other a shy smile. Pretty soon, Sam's the only one eating and I notice Jason just staring at her, almost as if he's unable to take his eyes off of her.
"What?" I hear her say from my seat not to far away from them. "Why are you just looking at me like that?"
"You," he stops and laughs, reaching down for a napkin and raising it up to her face. "You've got ketchup on your chin."
"That's so embarrassing," she moans, trying to take the napkin from him. But he doesn't let her get it. Instead, he gently cups her face with one hand while wiping away the stain with the other.
"All done," he says so quietly that I almost don't hear him.
At this point, I expect him to take his hands from her face. But he doesn't. They just sit there, staring at each other, his hand still on her cheek. He finally drops the napkin to the table and I think he's finally going to let her get back to eating. But he does the last thing I expect. He sweeps her hair from off of her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. And she lets him, the look on her face telling me it's something he does all the time.
Then it finally starts to sink into my thick skull what's going on. I don't know why I didn't see it before. The looks. The touches. The laughing. The playing. It's so obvious to me now. They have fallen for each other. I don't think they know it yet, though. Because when he looks at her, I can see his struggle to hide his feelings. And when she talks to him, I can see her efforts to make it all seem like a big joke.
But it's so visible in other ways. For one thing, Jason is constantly watching her to make sure she's okay. Even though he tries to hide his feelings, he just can't manage to take his eyes off of her whenever she's in the room with him. And when she isn't, I think he actually misses her. For another thing, he talks about her all the time. In our meetings, he's been reporting to me more and more about Sam than he has on the baby. I don't know why I didn't realize this before.
Sam is another story. Instead of adoring me, she's been yelling at me lately. Instead of trying to spend time with me, she's been doing her best to avoid me. I chalked it up to hormones or to her struggling to deal with me reconciling with my wife. But I see now that it's something else entirely. She doesn't yell at me because she loves me and it hurts her not to be with me. She's not avoiding me to keep herself from wanting to kiss me. She simply has fallen out of love with me. And now she's in love with Jason.
This is something I didn't anticipate. Jason swore he'd never fall in love again after Courtney. But somehow, Sam snuck in under his radar. Looking at the woman she's become, it's easy to see how he could have fallen for her. She's funny and radiant and beautiful when she's with him. I feel a sharp pang in my chest when I realize that she was never any of those things with me. She was shameful. Forbidden. Naughty. She was my little whore. And that's just how I treated her. I just used her up and tossed her away when I was done with her.
So I should feel happy that my best friend can treat her like the prize she is. I should feel happy that she's finally getting the love and respect she deserves. So why don't I? Why do I feel as betrayed by Sam and Jason as I did by Carly and Alcazar? Why do I feel as if Jason has stolen what was rightfully mine? Better yet, what am I going to do to stop this?
Penny, that cute waitress who works here, comes by to offer me some coffee, but I wave her off. She just nods and walks over to Sam and Jason's table, giving me the perfect cover to leave unnoticed. When I get outside, I take out my phone and dial my lawyer. Jason may have gotten my girl, but he won't get it all. He won't get my child.
"Yeah, I need some papers drawn up," I tell him. "I need to make it very plain to Sam McCall that the baby she's carrying belongs to me. The baby will have my name so that there will be no mistaking who its father is."
All the other details, he can take care of. This is what I pay him for. So long as it's made clear that I'm the father of Sam's baby, I don't care what else the papers say.
Jason and Sam won't always be so clueless about their feelings. One day, they're going to finally admit to what I realized this afternoon. They're in love. And they're going to try to squeeze me out of my child's life. I'm not going to let that happen. I just need her to sign those papers.
A wicked thought comes to mind and it almost frightens me how brilliant I am. I'll get Jason to make her sign them. He works for me. He'll do what I say. She'll see then what's really important in his life. And she'll see that it's not her.
So let them have each other for now. It won't last. Sam will regret the day she chose my best friend over me.
The end.