A Valentine offering...:)
DISCLAIMER: Yeah, the SG-1 guys are all property of MGM, World Gekko Corp and Double Secret productions. This is all in fun, no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. All other characters, ideas, etc., herein are copyrighted to the author.
CATEGORIES: Sam/Jack, romance, a bit of angst and hurt/comfort
Major speed beta thanks to HelenHighwater7!
TAUR'I WHISPERS
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2011
He likes that she fits against him with a natural alignment. That her curves meet his in perfect opposite, that she can nestle against him and leave no open spaces for secrets to escape.
She's not as skinny as she was when they met. He likes her this way. She's still in shape. She's beautiful. But her stomach isn't as flat as a supermodel's, her upper arms aren't hard as rocks. She's Sam and she's softness and femininity and her presence is heady and intoxicating and he is still hit by the power of her when she moves in close.
Hundreds of missions, shared locker rooms, infirmary visits, sleeping under the stars, and clawing their way back to life in shards of clothing left to them in prison camps. She should have become commonplace to him long ago.
Sam Carter will never be common anything.
He likes her throaty laugh. He likes that her voice has dropped and softened in the years he's known her. She was young and bright and brimming with life when they met. He was drawn to her energy, her light. But now...now she is wisdom and strength and experience and a little bit of weariness. And he doesn't have to admire from afar. He can step right in and understand. Be her other half.
He's not sure how an old man like him got so lucky. But here she is, with her arm around his waist as they take their time strolling back from the late movie, watching the distant boats glimmer on the Potomac. And she is with him. He feels it.
She goes quiet some nights. She didn't make it through more than a decade of the SGC unscathed. None of them did. He understands that, too. Understands she's okay, even if some of the nightmares will never fade.
And the strange thing is...he believes he's enough. Because she sinks into him when she doesn't want the rest of the world. She comes to him when she won't answer anyone else with anything but "I'm fine." And sometimes she doesn't tell him any more in words than she tells anyone else. But she stands closer and closer, or on the worst of the nights she crawls into his lap and hides in his shoulder.
He found out she cries a lot more than he ever guessed when he was her Colonel and she was his bright-eyed and ambitious Major. Things hurt her more deeply than he ever knew. She is not weak, not soft. Her strength is every inch as profound as he always believed. She just...feels more. Admits to more. He didn't realize she was hiding so much from him. Perhaps even more from him than the rest of SG-1. Which is oddly flattering and injuring all at once.
But he tries to let that go. Now that she fits beside him so comfortably, and he can trace the lines of her curves in the dark.
He nestles his face impulsively into her neck as they walk and she smells of vanilla and coconut. And a bit of the popcorn he accidentally flipped all over her during the movie. She's all girl tonight, in a floral sundress and a thin cardigan slipping off her shoulders. Her heeled sandals bring her almost to his height.
She chuckles indulgently, and rubs her hand up and down his side.
The easy affection is natural and new all at once. She's motherly and sexy and open to listen when he wants to talk. It's hard to remember, sometimes, that she was tortured on a replicator ship and blew up a sun and killed a Goa'uld with a cruel thought and a ribbon device.
"Did you like the movie?" he says into her neck.
She tilts her head, as if giving the question due consideration. "It wasn't bad."
He lifts his head from her shoulder, stays close. "What didn't you like?"
She shrugs and the movement brushes her bare shoulder against his jawbone. "The ending was too easy, I guess."
"Not a fan of happily ever after, Carter?" He's aware of the irony, such words falling from his own lips. He lost all notions of happily ever after before he and Carter ever met. And then...thought about them again. When she came back from Pegasus and plunked herself down on his sofa. "Pretty much all those old musicals you keep making me watch have happy endings," he prompts.
"No, it's not that, I don't...I mean... Happy endings can be good, it's just... I guess it was that it seemed like we were supposed to think that just because they were happy together...that everything was okay now. Even after all they had been through. All they'd lost."
She is watching the water more than him, which isn't like Carter. Carter is all about eye contact, to the extent that he sometimes hears less of her words than he sees, answers her eyes before her lips.
He sorts his thoughts while they walk, then says softly, "Is that how it is with us?"
She turns at that, really looks at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean..." He plays with her hair. It's mostly down tonight, just a little bit of it caught up in a fastener, so it drapes and curls and it's just...really pretty. "Do I make you feel like...like everything should be okay now? Because we're together?"
She closes her eyes for a moment, but doesn't turn away. "No. No, you don't...I don't..." Her exhale speaks of frustration, and he knows she's fighting for words. Sam likes to explain the quarks and neutrinos, then pass the folder to Daniel. "I guess..." she gestures the words with her free hand, and sometimes he can read her hands and help her get the point across. "I guess I just don't want you to think it isn't."
Under stress, Sam has a way of omitting nouns. Important ones. Which might be why he stayed confused so long before he finally figured out she wanted this, too. Wanted them.
"Isn't...that it isn't..." he repeats, hoping she will realize there are more words required.
"I don't want you to think that you're...that we're...something less. If I'm not okay. One doesn't necessarily answer the other. No matter how...real...the one." She's still missing some words, but she's looking him in the eye, and he's starting to get the idea.
Taking the complex and making it simple is one of his fortes. Which he thinks both annoys and amuses her in concert. He offers to sum things up. "So...you're saying you don't want me to think it's my fault, if you're having a hard time with something? That it's not...something wrong with us?"
She scratches lightly as his side through his cotton shirt as she works over his summation in her brilliant head. "I think...yeah, I think that's it."
A hint of a smile pulls at one corner of his mouth and he tugs on her hair. She gives a trace of a matching grin, but she can't quite pull it off. He holds her gaze in the blue light for long moments. Their pace has dwindled, but they're still moving. Bodies shift around them. Close enough to keep the flow amongst the crowd, but not so close as to hear their words. He almost has his answer from the depths of her eyes before he speaks. He keeps his voice low and close. "What is it, Sam? What are you having a hard time with?"
She draws a long inhale, turns back toward the water. But there is no distance in her touch. Her hip is still pressed close by his, and she reaches up to catch his fingers where they rest on her shoulder. She tugs at his hand until his arm is tighter around her. She bites her lip. "Too complicated for movie night. I just...I just want to be here."
"Okay." He wishes he could hear it all. But Sam does things her own way, and he knows the words will tumble out in time. Plus or minus a few important nouns.
"You want ice cream?" he asks.
Her eyebrows rise. "Are they still open?"
He nods. "Another fifteen minutes. It's Saturday night."
She looks like she's about to tease him for his intimate knowledge of the local ice cream parlor, looks like she might just go for a sundae, then sags a bit. "I shouldn't."
"You shouldn't?"
"I really want to lose those five pounds. It's been months, and I can't-"
"I like those five pounds," he says, letting his hand slip down, caressing the curve of her hip, tracing the lines of her runner's muscles. Because he can. And she's hot.
"Yeah, well you won't like five more, so no ice cream."
He'll tell her again later how she's so damned beautiful she still takes his breath away. Or maybe he'll just kiss her until she believes him. He likes that plan. Some words might be good, too, though.
"Carter?" he says, and she turns his way, squinting a bit against a rising wind. He's seen that look on an awful lot of planets. "Carter..." He still calls her Carter, because that's who she's always been. And when he said "honey" once, it felt like something less than what she is to him. He sneaks in Baby once in a while, and she has yet to tell him no. "...we're both messed up. Like...ireally/i messed up, when you look at it from a normal person's point of view. One who hasn't spent his or her life in an intergalactic warzone. And lost a lot of people they loved in a lot of nasty ways. The point is...we work on it all together, right?"
"Right," she whispers.
They're nearing the end of the riverside walk and approaching the turn toward home or ice cream. She's looking at the water again, before they move on and lose the view. He stops their forward progress. "Come here." She responds without hesitation and suddenly his world is full of Carter. Hugs are kind of Carter's thing. He figured that one out a long time ago. A good solid (long) hug can work wonders with her, and he's never minded the job. She fits in all the right places.
She drinks in his offering, holds on tight and tucks her face into his neck. There's something to be said for being needed, again.
He doesn't let go first. But he does say, "There's that low fat sorbet thing."
And she actually laughs, a sweet low rumble through his chest and into his ear. "Okay," she whispers. But the shop is closing in less than fifteen minutes, and she doesn't let go.
He won't move for the world. He holds on tight, two Taur'i amid a sea of Earthlings.
With a fit so perfect, the secrets are safe between.
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