Captivating State (syn.) 1. To take a side. 2. To capture territory. 3. To be overcome by the state.

This is a little head piece that fits into the reality I've created in "100 Days of Night" and its sequel "I Walk The Line". It can be read by itself, hence I'm posting it as a one-shot, but I'll be slipping it into IWTL at some point in the near future.

Enjoy...

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He slept on the left side of the bed.

She had discovered that handling a serious Simpson's addict was not as easy as it sounded. That being with a man who was more like a boy was not always endearing or fun or even remotely cute. That he liked to just leave the plates to pile in the sink, despite the fact they had a perfectly good working dishwasher, and she didn't know why, but she found herself cleaning up after him and she hated it because, God damn it, she was not, nor ever proclaimed to be, Betty freaking Crocker.

And some days she couldn't think straight because he'd be playing paper-ball-and-rubber-band hockey, or trying to make sculptures out of pencils in her lab while she was working, or deliberately flicking something against the metallic bench just to get a sound and a reaction. He was a serious pain in the ass.

But he slept on the left side of the bed.

Sam was having some doubts about the idea of the wedding. Granted, nothing had really been decided or even seriously discussed, and she knew with every fibre in her being that she loved Jack more than she even knew it was possible to love someone that way. But how do you live with someone who you both love and want to strangle? She was finding the delicate balancing act tiring in a way it never was in the field, though it was the same restraint as when he blatantly mocked higher ranking men than him- right to their face. And despite the fact she- for some ungodly reason- truly found his jokes funny and loved that secretly he did know how to cook a steak to perfection (but don't tell anyone), she was seriously doubting whether she could listen to those jokes for the rest of her life without telling him every damn day to grow up, build a bridge or just plain play nice with the other children.

And yet, despite all that- despite the fact his snoring woke her every second night, and his sudden and often violent mood swings could give her whiplash, and that she didn't feel comfortable even mentioning children in front of him because she couldn't even begin to understand the pain of that can of worms, she found she was infuriated with herself because she couldn't say 'no'.

Because he slept on the left side of the bed.

He was an annoying pain in the ass. He whined when she cooked him his veggies, and he complained that there was never enough beer in the fridge, and he never noticed when she did her hair different, but by God, if she tied her boots different there was hell to pay, and don't even get me started on changing her side-arm because, heaven forbid she prefer a Glock to a Beretta. Oh, and one more thing, why did he have to call her Carter, even sometimes at home, when she always seemed to make an effort to call him Jack under their roof, and really, weren't their names just another thing that reminded them when and where they were at any given time?

But, then, she couldn't always complain. Because he also brought her dinner at eleven thirty at night- on base- when he knew she was under a lot of pressure from the labs to get some fancy contraption up and running before so-and-so date. Even though he would have normally been in bed hours ago. And he'd stay until she all but pushed him out because, in his half-sleep, he was drooling all over her paperwork. And when she walked him to their shared quarters- because they were a week away from walking down the aisle and apparently they allowed things like that these days- he gave her a peck, smack bang on the lips, in the middle of the corridor, ignoring his own suggestion to keep PDA's to an absolute zero on base. And when she took his boots off for him as he very easily slipped into the Land of Nod on their queen bed, he still tried his best to mumble something that resembled 'love you'. Not to mention, two hours later, when she finally went back to said room, she saw he had moved over in his sleep to give her space on the bed, even though he'd been out to the world.

That's when she knew that for all the things she ever found wrong with their relationship, she'd always have at least one small sign that he loved her. He was funny, if only to make her smile. He was a slob, if only to keep her grounded firmly in the reality of 'the American dream' and not on P4X-901. He watched the Simpson's because, after all, wasn't this all about give and take, and he'd be damned if she was taking that. And he came to keep her company at night, dinner in hand, because he knew that this was one argument he would not win. And he'd kiss her in the corridor, gossip be damned, because for God's sake, she was his fiancée and he was allowed.

And he slept on the left side of the bed.

Because he knew the right side, away from the window, was her side.