With a broad smile and a bit of a flourish, Sam opened the door to Daniel's downtown loft. "Home sweet home." In the two weeks that passed following the shooting he only continued to improve. After a week, Janet upheld up her promise to reconsider allowing Daniel to move to on base quarters as long as he was monitored closely. Since he was strong enough to be mobile at that point, and needed to begin rebuilding his strength, she consented to allow it. She also knew Sam would not be far from his side, so she needn't worry the trouble he'd get himself into.
Once Daniel's body, more specifically his heart and lungs, were strong enough to allow movement beyond traveling just from the bed to the bathroom, he was tasked with walking - a few minutes, several times a day. At first he became quickly winded and easily tired, but as the days passed his body grew accustomed to the exertion. As yet another week passed with no sign of infection or cardiac distress, Janet agreed that Daniel could leave the Mountain. That only opened another can of worms.
Sam smiled as she recalled the fight that ensued. Daniel wanted to go home to the loft, O'Neill wanted him to go home with him. It was incredibly amusing to her that neither of them sought her opinion. In the end, Daniel won, with logic and reasoning that only frustrated the Colonel and had him grumbling that he would be checking up on Daniel very soon, and quite often.
"Why don't you go in and get comfortable," Sam said and gathered up the bags she carried. One contained his myriad of prescriptions. Antibiotics, pain medication, and another she couldn't easily recall the name of that would regulate his heart rate while the muscle continued to heal. Luckily it would only be necessary in these first critical weeks of healing. He was already doing physical therapy, nothing strenuous, but it was rebuilding his lung and heart capacity while ensuring his strength returned. The second bag contained the clothing she gathered for him over the two weeks he spent at the SGC, while the third contained leg pumps. Sam didn't anticipate Daniel using the pumps much now that he was home, but the devices were encased in cloth which wrapped around his legs, like small blankets. They connected to a machine and were meant to be worn while he was stationary. They would contract lightly every few minutes to keep blood circulating in his legs, so that clots would not form.
Sam carried all of it inside and set it near the sofa. Just that morning she had come by to do a bit of cleaning, air the place a bit so it wouldn't seem as though it had been closed up for so long. She had even started dinner to cooking in the crock pot, and the aroma wafted through the loft.
Daniel did not go directly to change clothes and get comfortable as Sam suggested. First, he prowled all the rooms on the main level of the loft as if marking his territory again. The spiral staircase to the upper level that served as a library and housed the entrance to the roof, he did not attempt. After the thorough prowl, he headed for his bedroom to change into sweats and a thin shirt. By the time that was completed, Daniel felt a thousand years old, and figured he looked it too as he picked up a ratty old sweater to pull on over the t-shirt. He stopped and blinked as he realized several bags that did not belong to him lay on the bed. Curiously, he opened one only to have the scent of pure Sam waft out making his grin. It looked like she was totally ignoring his mandate that everyone return to life as normal...the one that predated him being a virtual invalid.
Truth was, Daniel was finding this whole heart surgery healing thing a tad rougher than he was accustomed to. Jack had gleefully pointed out that Daniel was no longer thirty years old. His days of bouncing back overnight from traumatic injury was long gone. It seemed he was right. Just the trip home had worn Daniel out and it took all his remaining energy to get him back to the living and ensconced on the sofa. He still planned on discussing Sam's plans to stay and play nursemaid with her. Not that he did not want the woman he loved with him twenty-four/seven, but he felt he needed to get self-sufficient again. Daniel had noticed an alarming tendency in himself to depend on the others more than usual over the last two or three weeks.
Leaving the bedroom, he settled on the sofa, stretching his long legs out on the matching ottoman and sniffed the air appreciatively, "Something smells really good...but you must have been up at the crack of dawn to do all this and still come get me."
"Not quite." Sam smiled and stored his things before joining him on the sofa. "Pot roast. Dad's recipe. It was the only thing he was actually able to cook." She settled beside him and drew her legs up beneath her. "Glad to be home," she reached out and brushed her fingers through his hair. The truth was she had come by early. To start dinner, and to bring by some things of her own. She wasn't planning on leaving him alone anytime soon, even if it meant staying in the guest room.
"Sam," he leaned close, loving the feel of her fingers brushing his slightly longer than usual hair, "I love you for doing all this...but you do not have to stay and take care of me. I've got to get back on my feet."
"Which is exactly what you're going to do." She leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. "That doesn't mean you have to do it alone. You're not alone anymore." Sam gave him an impish little smile. "Besides, we lived together on Raahe. I miss it, that part of it, I mean." The simple companionship of having the one you love nearby. "Not that I'm advocating I move in," she was quick to add. "I'm just not ready for you to be here alone yet or... well, me to go home alone."
Daniel reached out to gently pull Sam to his chest...carefully as he was still very sore. "My darling Sam-I-Am, I want you here. I want you to live here. I don't want to spend another minute without you...but I don't want us to start out by you having to babysit me." He reached up to very gently caress the lines of her face. "I love you so much. I am ready to start our real lives together...just never imagined I'd be creeping around like a two-hundred year old man when it started."
"You're not," she said adamantly and reached up to cup his face. "Daniel, you're healing. I don't mind helping you, and I'm certainly not here to play babysitter. I'm here because I want to be with you. I love you. I almost lost you before we could even begin to explore everything that this means for us. I'm not willing to waste a single day. If that means taking care of you, so be it. You're not a burden to me, Daniel Jackson."
"Yeah...let's see if you say that after you see how much help I still need...it's embarrassing," Daniel joked. "I'm thinking I've already lost the argument on sending you home." Daniel settled into the corner of the sofa with Sam tucked into his side.
"Don't worry," Sam laughed quietly, "I promise to let you win the next argument." She lay her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes while a contented little sigh passed her lips. "I wouldn't worry about being embarrassed either. Nurse Dragon gave me sponge bath lessons..."
Daniel's chest tightened and his body responded more than appropriately to the images Sam's mention of sponge baths brought to mind. Still mindful of the sore bits, he pulled Sam into his embrace and into a long, passionate kiss. He felt her adjust her position to make sure she was not putting pressure on his surgical injuries and deepened the kiss. As always, with Sam in his arms, his mind stalled out leaving him to go with the moment and not start analyzing all the complications their new found relationship might present once he returned to the SGC and active duty.
Instinct took over as Daniel slipped one shoulder of Sam's blouse off her shoulder and trailed kisses down the graceful length of her throat and across the gentle swell of one breast. Returning his attention to her lips, Daniel captured hers with his again, exploring the sweet depths of her mouth as if trying to taste her soul. It was his own limitations that made him break off the kiss. Pressing his lips into her hair, "I love you...I need you," he sighed. The anthropologist in him knew that he was experiencing the simple male need to reaffirm his manly abilities in the face of a debilitating injury or illness. Although Daniel also knew that that was only one aspect of the feelings he was experiencing now. Having Sam in his home, taking care of him as any mate would their injured partner, brought forth the memories from when Sabyl had tended Darius after his beating at the hands of the CTU on Raahe.
She needed him. The feel of his arms wrapped around her. It was too long since the last time she felt that, and all too soon since the fear that she might never feel it again encompassed her. Sam was mindful of his injuries, but she could feel his soul crying out to hers. She could feel his need and her body responded to it with a keen ache of wanting. "Daniel," with his name a sigh on her lips she turned her face into his neck and trailed soft, gentle kisses upward to the curve of his jaw. "We shouldn't." That was the rational side of her brain speaking, which set the rest of her brain to protesting loudly in an attempt to smother it. "I could hurt you." Obviously her mind wasn't protesting loudly enough, so the volume increased, her heart joining the cause. "But I need you," she murmured between kisses.
Two weeks since Raahe. Two weeks since the shooting and the surgery. It was more than sex. She needed to feel him wrapped around her. His strength, his warmth. Her body needed to feel the life in him so that her heart could stop fearing that he would leave her. More than that she loved him. It filled her near to bursting and only fueled her need.
"Janet didn't say I couldn't," Daniel murmured into Sam's hair with a glint in his eyes and a smile full of mischief and longing. "I think we need more room though." The thought of taking Sam to his bed, his lair, brought a renewed surge of passion that caused a moan of need to escape him. Rolling to his feet and pulling Sam with him was a tad less graceful than normal, but he achieved his feet. Daniel would have liked nothing more than to scoop Sam into his arms and carry her to his room, but he knew that was beyond his abilities at the moment. He had to settle for backing slowly toward his room while raining kisses along her throat and lips.
There was a bit of the sense of giddy excitement, at knowing they were doing something they probably shouldn't. Something that could get both of them into trouble. "We'll just have to make sure she doesn't know," it might have been a purr, but it ended on a giggle. They were two grown, consenting adults, and here she was worried about being naughty. Sam slid her hands beneath his sweater and the t-shirt underneath. Her fingers skirted over his sides. When they crossed the threshold of his bedroom she caught his lips for a long, slow kiss, while her foot caught the door and pushed it firmly closed behind them.
The feel of Sam's fingers against his bare skin was almost more than Daniel could take. A shiver of pure pleasure rippled through his body as he continued backing toward his bed. Feeling the bed against the back of his legs, he turned just enough to sweep Sam's duffel and other bags to the floor before shrugging out of the sweater and t-shirt. He hesitated just a moment, acutely aware of the appearance of the still healing surgical scars.
There were three distinct scars which marked the damage done to him. Sam reached out and gently traced the thin line that bisected his chest. Her index finger barely touched it. Then she lay her hand over his strongly beating heart and bent her head. She left feather light kisses along the scar, moving steadily upward. "I love you," she said. Her eyes lifted to his beautifully, elegant face, a look conveying he needn't ever worry about hiding any part of him from her.
Daniel's breath caught in his throat as Sam's kisses trailed up his chest. They had made quick, fiery, passionate love as their memories returned on Raahe. They had needed that physical affirmation that their feelings for one another was not residual emotions left by their counter parts and they had made love numerous times prior to that as Darius and Sabyl. This was their first as themselves and without the rush of a pending crisis. It was not an optimum set of circumstances due to Daniel's physical state, but he was not going to let that stop them. Carefully, he reached up and started unfastening the buttons of her blouse, leaving a kiss after each button. About half way down, still aware that extreme motion was out of his league, Daniel sat on the edge of the bed where he could continue the process until finally his kisses were stopped by her jeans.
Her eyes were closed. Pleasure danced through her, keeping a rhythm with the stomach muscles dancing beneath his lips. When he stopped her eyes fluttered open and she gazed down at him, eyes dark with passion and need. Her hand rested at the back of his head, fingers tangled in his longer than usual hair. The beginnings of a playful, seductive smile curled at Sam's lips. She gave a single, simple shrug of her shoulders and her blouse slipped away to pool on the floor behind her. Cupping his cheek with her other hand she bent and pressed a kiss to his lips meant to curl his toes.
Daniel moaned against her lips and reached out to unfasten the waistband of her jeans and tug them off leaving her clad only in her bra and panties. Pausing in the kisses, Daniel simply stared at Sam drinking in her beauty. Reaching up, he gently traced a line from her collar bone down to the top of her lacy underpants and then back up to run his hands gently along her ribs. Sam was perfect. She was tall, with elegant, well-muscled long legs but despite rigorous working out to stay in shape for duty, she retained a very feminine, curvaceous figure. Daniel thought he would never get tired of tracing the lines and curves of her body or drowning in the depths of her passion darkened eyes.
"God, you're beautiful, Sam," Daniel said, his voice husky with his own passion.
It made her cheeks color with delight. She had been told before that she was beautiful, but always put more stock in the abilities of her mind than the way she looked. It made hearing it, especially from Daniel, that much more delightful. "So are you." It was more than body. More than the long, elegant fingers she twined with her own. It was spirit and mind, and everything that made him uniquely Daniel. "But you are incredibly overdressed Dr. Jackson." She placed a hand on his shoulder and carefully pushed him onto his back. She caught the waistband of his sweats and slid them down his legs before joining him to lay beside him on the massive bed.
Reaching out, Daniel entwined his fingers in her short, silken hair and gently tugged her closer, "Let's see if we can remember how this goes..."