A/N: Much :wub: to M for being the Best. Beta. Ever. This story would not exist if not for you. Thanks to Mystery for the advice, and to Maple Street for being the best forum I've ever been a part of, WaT or otherwise. You all rock!
Continued from Chapter Nine.
Chapter Ten:
Cool air hit her face as she pushed open the door to Jack's apartment, the temperature in sharp contrast to the humid weather outside. Dropping her keys on the credenza near the door, she flipped on the light.
No Jack.
He hadn't expected her this early, she reasoned. He wasn't one to spend a lot of time at home in any circumstance, and there had been no way to anticipate that she would have gotten that call and fled her dinner with Danny and Martin. On instinct, she had started to drive toward the office before turning around and heading back toward his apartment. Work had always been a haven for her, a place to escape outside problems--with her family, with the men in her life.
Now, the problem was with work, and she found herself desperate to find a safe place where previously there had only been conflict or a release. Her relationships.
Kicking off her shoes by the door, she made her way through his living room to the bedroom. The apartment was surprisingly well furnished for someone who spent so little time away from the office, and she wondered if maybe the furniture was rented. There was a large TV with a DVD player sitting adjacent to it, but she could see no sign of DVDs. A nice dining set was to her left, but judging from the tray on the coffee table she doubted it had been used frequently.
A bin of video games sat to the left of the entertainment center, and she wondered for the first time how often Jack got to see his girls. It was the one part of his life she felt she couldn't share. Any mention of them would bring a quick change of subject and an even more sudden change of mood. She rarely persisted. At first it had hurt; she had seen it as a way to keep their relationship on a separate plane from something that might be construed as more permanent. And maybe in some ways it was, but more likely it was a way of protecting both of his lives-- not letting his kids see him as the reason he no longer shared a roof with them, and not making her constantly aware of the destruction the affair had left in its wake.
For as much as their relationship had been built on all the traditional elements-- attraction, shared interests, even love, a court document and societal ethics had invalidated it to what some might generously call a fling. It was hard to tell a child that daddy had been seeing someone other than mommy, and that's why he only got to play with them on the weekends. Even harder to tell them that they don't understand, that daddy really loves this other woman and that's why every weekend he wasn't with them, he was hundreds of miles away with her. Children didn't understand moral equivalencies or that the marriage had ended emotionally months before she and Jack had gone to the first hotel.
There were pictures on his dresser, mainly of the girls. An old photograph of a man in uniform that was probably his father, likely making the woman at his side his mother. She realized with a start that she didn't even know if they were alive; he had never mentioned them in anything but a referential context. Only one picture included Marie; the whole family standing in front of a rock formation that could have been a mountain or could have been a cave. Kate was still a toddler and Jack stood with his arm around Marie; Samantha didn't need his profiling skills to tell that he was happy.
She was reaching for her bag when she saw the picture of her.
It wasn't one she recognized, and she could tell by her hair that it wasn't recent. She had stopped wearing her hair that long shortly after she had joined the bureau. She remembered telling Jack that it got in her way and she hated pulling it up whenever they were out in the field. 'So, cut it,' he had grumbled, distracted and irritated by the busy morning traffic. She was hardly sure he had heard her, and more than certain he couldn't care less.
The next day she came in, hair four inches shorter, and spent no short amount of time second-guessing her decision. She told herself it was irrational, that as a FBI agent she had more practical concerns than her hair, but as someone who had always used her looks as a weapon instead of the hindrance it normally could be in a male-dominated profession, she felt every bit of those missing inches.
Apparently no one else did. Both relieved that the change wasn't jarring, and disappointed that a unit of trained investigators couldn't notice a major change to their colleague's appearance, she went through the day as she normally did. Stopping by Jack's office to let him know she was leaving, she was on her way out the door when he called her back.
"Samantha?"
She turned back toward him.
"I'm glad you cut your hair. It suits you."
She had smiled her thanks and walked away, wondering why five minutes ago his opinion mattered and realizing, for some reason, that it was the only one that did.
It was that day that she wondered if she might be in love with Jack Malone. She didn't make the fortunate mistake of sleeping with him until two years later.
Turning the frame in her hand, and slid the photo out the back. No indication of where and why it was taken, but it was labeled and dated in his black scrawl. "Samantha, February 00."
She set it back down, knowing that it had never been displayed at his old house, but touched that he had apparently kept a photograph of his mistress for the better part of three years. The feeling in the pit of her stomach returned, and she reached for her bag at the foot of the bed. That was forgotten as she heard the front door open.
"You here?" she heard him call, and for some reason her feet didn't want to move.
"I'm in here."
He entered the bedroom and crossed the floor in several strides, his hands immediately going to her waist as he bent slightly for a soft kiss. He spoke into her mouth. "Hey."
"Hey." She laced her fingers around his neck. "Did you have a good day at work?"
"It was okay." Bringing up a hand, he toyed with her necklace. "Did you find the place all right?"
"542."
"Good work." He planted a kiss on the side of her mouth, and headed for the bathroom, loosening his tie. "How was your dinner?"
She heard him turn the faucet on. "It was nice."
It was nice until the call that had her suddenly wanting to go back to Washington on the first available flight. Standing there, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she suddenly felt manic. "We had an appetizer and some drinks. Martin didn't like the calamari, and we just talked about work, really." Leaving out the discussion of the relationship, she sat on the edge of the bed.
He returned to the room, this time shirtless. "I would have thought Martin was the calamari type."
"There's a type?"
He shrugged and nearly tripped as he walked to the dresser. "Is this your stuff?"
"Sorry, I didn't know where to put it." Reaching forward to move it aside, his hand caught her wrist. Keeping hold of her hand, he used his right to slide open a drawer.
Her eyes caught his. "Really?"
"I gave you a key to my apartment. I think this would actually be a step down on the intimacy scale, Sam."
Whether it was the light tone of his voice or the gesture itself, Samantha felt some kind of emotional wall closing in. She felt the telltale pinpricks behind her eyes and her voice felt thick. "Thanks."
He looked concerned now. "What's wrong?"
"I have to talk to you about something. I meant to do it when I first got here this morning, but you were in a hurry and everyone was around; it just wasn't a good time." She was rambling and she tried harder to measure her words. "It's nothing serious, but it indirectly involves you."
Sitting on the bed, he sat as close as he could without touching her. She knew he was adept at reading her body language, and she could only imagine what it was saying right now.
"What is it?" His voice was guarded.
"I was offered another job today. A promotion."
"Already?"
"Apparently we've made a lot of progress where I am right now and they thought that it might be advantageous for the unit to spread out." Samantha mentally counted to three.
"To where?"
"New Orleans."
The room turned quiet, and he looked away. She watched his line of vision move from the wall, to the window, back to the wall. Anywhere but toward her. "I'd say that directly involves me."
She didn't offer a response.
"Are you going to take it?"
She tried for confidence that she didn't have. "Another pay grade, the opportunity for field work, an ASAC role. By most reports I'd be stupid not to take it."
"Then I wish you the best of luck." His tone was clipped, professional, and she winced as he stood and walked to the other end of the room, his back to her.
"I haven't taken it yet."
"Sounds like a good opportunity for you, Samantha. I think I'd advise it."
She pressed her palms into the mattress and tried to keep her voice even. "Thanks, boss."
"I'll be happy to fax down a recommendation."
"Dammit, Jack. I don't know if I'm going to even take the job. Will you please look at me?" she asked, exasperated.
He obeyed, but his face remained inscrutable. "Why haven't you made your decision?"
She didn't know if it was the confrontation, or the stress of the last three days, but she felt a tear emerge from her eye and make its way down her cheek. "I don't know."
He stared a moment before crossing the room to kneel in front of her. Placing his hands on her knees, he made eye contact. "I'm sorry. This just took me by surprise."
"I know."
Neither of them spoke for several moments, until Jack noticed rough material of her pantyhose under his fingers. "Why don't you change, and then we can discuss this."
She felt oddly detached from her surroundings as she stood and stripped down to her bra and underwear, dropping her dress into a small pile by her feet. Suddenly not wanting or caring to put her new drawer to use, she crawled onto the bed and slid under the covers. She felt the mattress sink as he joined her. One hand went to the back of her neck, the other to her left hip, and for the first time that night she didn't feel like running.
"Are you going to do it?" His voice was soft, and she could feel his breath on her eyelids.
"It depends."
"On?"
"Us."
"We've discussed us." He almost sounded defensive, but his thumbs didn't stop the small circles they were making on her hip and collarbone.
"I just need to know what we're doing here. You're in New York. I'm in D.C. Even if I wasn't offered this job that's no way to build a relationship."
"Are you sure you want to uproot yourself again so soon anyway?"
Was he being evasive? "All things being equal, I think I'd prefer this new position over my current one, yes."
"You should do whatever makes you happiest."
"Don't put this all on me."
He sighed. "What do you want me to say, Sam?"
"I want you to be honest."
His hand moved from her hip to her ribcage, and she could feel him searching for a response. "I don't want you to go."
"I don't want to go." She said, simply, resting her hands between them.
"Good. Problem solved." Sliding his hand slightly forward, he stopped short of its destination. "It's not solved, is it?"
She laughed in spite of her mood. After the affair had just started, she would sit in a briefing and remember this Jack, the one who could let down his professional barriers and let her in. It was a side the rest of the team didn't get to see, and while some could argue that it might lessen her respect for him as a leader, she found it also gave her greater insight into his motivations and mood. She knew when to confront him, and when to back off. She could read him better than anyone on the team, and if that made her a liability, then she was willing to take the risk. "I just need to know where we're going with this."
And there, Samantha Spade, confirmed other woman with widely known issues with men, had just asked for a commitment.
"I can't ask you to turn down a better job."
"We can't telecommute on a relationship anymore. New Orleans is a lot farther away than Washington, and to be honest I'm not sure I want to keep going like this."
"You're not happy in Washington."
"You're not going to leave New York." It was a statement, not a question. His job, his kids. It simply wasn't an option.
"I can't."
She nodded, and drew her knees up so that they rested against his thighs. "God, Jack. I don't even think this matters."
"Why?"
"Because no matter what we do, or where we do it, there's no way it can work. I'm playing the career equivalent of musical chairs, and you're not even divorced. I have no connection to your life outside weekend trips that still raise eyebrows. I was standing here today when I realized I know nothing about you, about your family…"
He was no longer touching her. "What do you want to know? Ask me anything."
"That's not the point."
"What is your point?" He was losing patience with the conversation, and Samantha could only hope it would get them out of this mental rut.
"We're still having an affair. You aren't living with your wife, but you weren't last time either. You come down to visit, but you leave before I get up in order to catch the shuttle. At least when I was here I could see you every day."
There was silence, and several seconds passed before she felt his hand running through her hair, a rhythmic, soothing motion. She bit her lip to keep her tears at bay. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay." His other hand caressed her back. "What are you saying?"
"I don't think we should do this anymore."
She didn't know if she expected a protest, or anger, but she did know she desperately wanted him to do anything but keep touching her, keep comforting her like she hadn't just been the one to end the relationship that five minutes ago she wanted more than anything to preserve. Finding her voice, she tried to ignore how unsteady it was. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
"I love you."
It was the first time he had said those words, and she wondered if it would be the last. In the dark, that night, they were both a strange kind of comfort.
Either way she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his for several seconds before pressing even more tightly against him. Listening to his heartbeat, she realized that she should have seen this coming. In all the movies, in all the books, the young, blonde, stereotypically pretty subordinate never wins.
TBC
