A/N: lyrics are to Maria Mena's Homeless - which was great inspiration for this story.
What is in this wine?
The more I drink, the more I wander off into a stranger's eyes
I like the way that they reflect my thoughts
Dinner. That's it. Carter and Sir. Old friends reunited for one night after seven years and galaxies of separation.
She's moved on, or so she thought. It's what she told Jack to do via communications eighteen months into her stay in Atlantis. Don't wait for me; move on; who knows how long this will last? Days and months and lightyears were too much strain for any relationship. They'd always tiptoed around each other, always begged the other to lead, always ached for a sign to point them down the right path. This time, she's taken the lead—to his benefit, she hopes; she, after all, has nothing to gain for it.
Dinner. A good dinner, at his insistence. He'll buy. No, no he won't; this isn't a date. But he wants to buy.
"I mean, you lived there for seven years. Saying goodbye…"
She hasn't been paying attention. Instead, she's been gazing into her wine glass. When she meets his gaze, he's staring at her, brows furrowed.
"You okay?"
He's trying.
"Yeah. Sorry."
"Sure. Bittersweet, huh?"
Bittersweet. There's a whole level of meaning, she thinks, under the word. He seems to think so too.
"Yeah."
And what is in this air?
It feels like feathery dust everywhere
And as I breathe it in, I breathe the masculine scent of his skin
There's a softness hidden deep under his gaze, but it's been so long, she wonders if what she sees is a trick of her eyes, or her mind, or her heart. The heart is a powerful thing though: it lurches toward him despite the storm of denial flooding through her, sending blood crashing through her veins, heightening her senses—or so she thinks. She sees past his eyes, into his synapses, reads his thoughts before they occur, hears his pulse, feels the pounding of his heart, smells familiar aftershave, soap, flesh.
But she cannot read his thoughts or feel his breath, much less his pulse, and his smell, she thinks, is surely a memory—one that falls on her so suddenly, he begins to look like a different person.
A person she knows. Jack. Not Sir. Not this man she hasn't seen in what feels like centuries.
You're watching me rebel, believing stories only hearts can tell
And I feel homeless
She wants to study him, to commit a stranger's face to memory, to analyze and replace something lost in all that distance, but Jack is the braver one. He studies her throughout dinner, eyes following her every move. She eats with her face and eyes angled down, and the time passes quietly. The clinking of tableware on tableware rattles her senses, and each time her eyes rise to his face, she quickly drops her gaze again, because he's always looking at her already. She can't meet his eyes now; he's too familiar and too much a stranger, too close and too far away.
She wants to take it back: the years on Atlantis and the suggestion that they should move on—the suggestion that he should move on. In that way, she had no place to move to. For Sam, it meant freeing Jack. Losing Jack.
She excuses herself quietly when they have finished, the tab no longer a concern in her mind. It's his: she can't breathe in this room. Outside, she waits for him, arms crossed in front of her as if her arms could keep her heart still.
He doesn't expect her to wait, and stops outside the door. She feels rather than sees his eyes on her. "Sam?" He's forgotten that she's not Sam anymore; she's Carter.
And I remember us now, but I've forgotten what we felt like
Somewhere along the way
Her eyes meet his, and suddenly, he's open. She hugs herself a little tighter, watches him from those few short meters away, and it occurs to her that she wants him far more now than she ever did five, ten, fifteen years ago.
"Hi," she half-chokes, but she can't escape his gaze this time.
"Hi."
They stand there staring at each other in the wake of two careful syllables, and then they are two magnets freed to the pull of the other: slow, faster, and the sweetest collision of arms and mouths and bodies, and in an instant, she remembers everything with such startling, beautiful clarity. He doesn't feel more than half a decade different: he feels like yesterday. He smells like yesterday. She breathes his cologne and remembers how, in the back of her mind, she missed being held, although she told herself she didn't just like she'd always told herself she wasn't in love with him. His arms are the same though; she's certain she knows this feeling. He's the Jack who retired from the SGC and shared her bed until she left for Atlantis. She hasn't missed more than half a decade, because he is yesterday.
But yesterday is a thousand years past, and the old, unreasonable, stubborn tears spark in her eyes as she seeks shelter against his chest, in the crook of his neck. Everything else has changed: can he still be hers?
"Jack?"
"Yeah."
"Please tell me there isn't anybody else."
"Do I look like there's anybody else, Sam?"
"You look like there could be a hundred other somebody elses," she breathes into his breast.
She's weak; shouldn't have come to him until she knew. But he's kissing her softly, fingers and lips buried in her hair. "Just you, Sam," he promises, moving both arms around her shoulders and crushing her into him. "For a long time now."
"I shouldn't have left."
"You did what was right."
"You think so?"
"Yeah."
"Should I drive?" he asks after a span.
"No. I'll follow you."
I remember us now
Yesterday fills her when she kisses him, when their bodies align, when they ride on the same breath at the brink of exhaustion. It's the fatigue that cruelly reminds her again that they aren't yesterday, despite the clarity with which she remembers the shape of his shoulders, the texture of his skin, and the paths of each callused fingertip against her shoulders, breasts, hips, thighs. This disjointed sense of distance, miles against breaths, is bound to drive her to madness; she needs the present for company. Resolution seems the most sensible answer.
"Jack," she whispers while he breathes into her neck.
"Sam."
"Don't ever let me go, okay? Not like that. Not ever again."
He draws her closer, all the closer, until there's not a breath between them, and whether a day or a year or ten years have passed doesn't seem to matter as much. "Wasn't planning on it. But what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. Work in D.C. with you; go back to research."
"Now after all those years off-world, a desk job doesn't seem to suit you."
"It isn't. I'll figure it out."
"You should go back to Area 51."
"That's halfway across the country."
"Better than halfway across the universe, isn't it?"
"I love you."
"Been a long time since I've heard those words."
"Me too."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"I love you too."
"Good."