Title: Never Really Moved On
By: TriplePirouette
Category: angst, UST
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: They're not mine- I'm a poor and having fun... take pity...
Distribution: my anywhere else please ask first :)
Summary: Inspired by Hinder's "Lips of an Angel." What if in "Threads" Jack stayed with Kerry and Sam stayed with Pete? Set a few years after the events of season 8.
Author's notes: I absolutely love this song, and I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Put it on loop and listen while you read… Let me know what you think.
Feedback PLEASE at: I love anything constructive! Blatant flames, however, will be disregarded and used to roast s'mores...
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Jack could see from his study straight through the open bedroom door, could see the shadows the miniscule light from his desk lamp was casting though the hallway to Kerry's hair reflecting in the moonlight through the window. He looked back down at his vibrating cell phone, at the number that wasn't identified by being part of his contact list, but that he knew by heart anyway. He watched it vibrate across his blotter for another pulse then looked back to the sleeping form of his girlfriend before flipping the phone open.
It wasn't that he didn't want to answer it. He couldn't seem to stop himself from answering anytime she called.
"Hey," He whispered, hand automatically wiping over his brow, the nervousness he felt in the pit of his stomach already manifesting. He looked over at the clock in the corner of his desk. It was already nearly one am here, must be near 11 there, and he would only talk for fifteen minutes. That was all. That's what he told himself.
"Hey." Her voice was almost too quiet, to resigned, and was enough to make him sit up straight. He heard her take a deep, steadying breath, and then she stammered. "I… I really shouldn't have called."
"What's wrong?" Something was wrong. She didn't call him often. It meant something was wrong.
"Nothing. Really. I'm sorry. You're whispering, I called too late… It's a bad time, I'll just go…" Samantha Carter's voice wavered, and made his chest ache with worry and confusion.
"No!" His whisper was sharp, designed to keep her on the line, and it worked. "She's just asleep already. I was up."
"General things?"
"Oh yeah." He smiled a bit, and hoped that she was smiling, too, though it was painfully apparent now that she was also crying. "Don't make me order you to talk to me…" Though he'd tried to be humorous, there wasn't much he could do to make the situation funny. Not when a simple tip of his head brought his live-in-lover into sharp focus. Not when every time he heard Sam's voice he remembered their agreement to keep their feelings to themselves, to try to move on and not deny each other happiness. Especially not when he was a little too tired or a little too drunk and he imagined, hallucinated, prayed, and even saw Sam's face in place of Kerry's.
No, there was nothing funny about how they'd tried to move on, and failed so miserably.
"I just… God, it's so silly."
"Is it ever silly when I need to talk to you?" He picked up the frame across from him that held a computer printed, blurry photo of the original SG-1 team. Holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, he traced the lines of Sam's face. She'd be older now, married to Pete, and have a few more wrinkles with a one year old running around the house, and maybe would have kept on some of the baby weight, but he was sure she probably smiled more now…
Her voice brought him back. "No, but that's not…"
"It is the same." He put the photo back and looked into his bedroom; imagined blonde faded to red as Kerry shifted in her sleep. "We're here for each other, always. It was what we decided."
"Why did we decide this?" Her voice was so quiet, so defeated.
"Should I pull out my Bogart impression again?" He laughed out quietly. "Something about problems not amounting to beans in this crazy world. A few notions that we're kinda important to the world, maybe the galaxy." He sighed, heavy. "Tell me, Sam."
He could almost see the tears fall down her face. He never said her name anymore, not if he could help it. At lest not out loud, and never at home. "I had a dream." He waited, listened to her compose herself. "I dreamed we were back in Antarctica, the first time when the gate spit the two of us out in that godforsaken glacier."
Jack's stomach clenched at the memory, but he chose humor to avoid dwelling. "That was tons of fun. I believe after that I demanded that they add heavy painkillers to the vest med-kits."
The smile on his face was short lived. Her tone was so dry, so matter of fact, that he could feel her fear. "I dreamed that you'd died, and I was left there, alone. The SGC never came for me. And you'd died."
"I didn't die."
"I know. I just… I needed to hear your voice. I needed to know that… that you're ok."
Though it wasn't a question, he truly considered answering. He wanted to scream out, yell over the phone, cry and beg and plead that he wasn't ok knowing that she had married another man and had his child. He wasn't ok living, existing, with a woman who was either too blind to see that he was still in love with someone else or else was so desperate that she wouldn't confront it. He wasn't ok reading reports about the work she was doing at the SGC from a stuffy, red tape filled office in DC. He wanted to say these things out loud, make them real, but he didn't. Instead he gave her the only truth he had that wouldn't ruin the illusions they'd carefully built their lives on: "I'm alive."
They were silent for so long that he began to think that maybe she'd hung up, but her voice rang out clear in a tone that left no question about her intention. "Jack…"
She brought it up, every time. He didn't want to hear the words again. "Don't…"
"Do you regret it?"
He cringed. He knew she couldn't help it. It was almost a ritual now, and he couldn't help but answer. As honest, and right as his answer was, it still somehow felt like blasphemy. "Every day." A deep breath. "Would you leave him?"
"I can't…"
He scratched his head as silence fell again. They always seemed to end up here. Before they'd been trapped by rules and regulations and now they'd trapped themselves within the confines of their own honor. Irritation suddenly took over. "Where is Pete? Why isn't he-"
"Comforting me?"
"Yeah."
"He took the night shift so someone's always home with Molly now. He couldn't help me anyway. I needed to hear your voice. It's good to hear your voice, Jack."
"It's good to hear yours, too." Confession was on the tip of his tongue. Every molecule in his body was begging him to pack a bag and fly to her tonight, to sweep her away through the Stargate or up on an Asgard ship, to find some little place for just the two of them to exist without the rest of the world, the galaxy, inserting its rules and needs and opinions. He wanted to ferry her away to area 51, break out the gate ship and time travel them back to the day they decided to hide themselves behind regulations and change it all.
"I uh, I have to go now." He could hear the whimpers through the phone line. "Molly's waking up…"
He couldn't let her go yet. He so rarely let himself wallow in this. They barely related aside from official memos anymore, and her call had reopened the wound in him that her loss had caused. "I miss you, Sam."
The whimpers turned to cries, and were louder now. "I miss you too, Jack. Thank you for tonight."
"Always,"
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
The call ended so simply, the numbers on his phone stopped counting and the screen went dark as he stared at the small device, hoping to divine the answer that had somehow eluded them for nearly a decade.
"Come to bed." He closed his eyes, knowing that his overtired mind was playing tricks on him. That had been Kerry's voice, not Carter's. He looked up to see her, half asleep, and alluring in her own right. It wasn't her fault she wasn't another woman. "It's late, and I don't think anything you have there can't wait until morning."
He shrugged. He didn't know how long she'd been standing there or what she heard. She didn't seem to want to say anything about it, though, so neither would he. Ten years had given him a lot of practice at ignoring huge emotional elephants in the room. "You're right."
He stood, snapping his phone shut and leaving it on his desk. With a flick of his wrist the lamp was dark, and he took her hand, following the moonlight to their bed. He stripped to his boxers and crawled in on his side, so lost in thought that he didn't notice that Kerry snuggled into him like she normally did. His arms wound around her automatically, as his mind wandered.
He wondered if Daniel and Teal'c had any idea how miserable the two of them were, if they knew that while he and Sam were so successful at their careers, they were utter failures when it came to finding personal happiness. He wondered what they would think if they knew.
Jack looked down at the woman in his arms, and wondered what he thought of himself.