Chapter Eight
A/N: Merccy don't worry, your not strange. Your right the chapter titles are from the song "Everybody's Stalking" by The Badly Drawn Boys.
Danny's POV
We always knew that there was the risk that one of us would die in the filed. We would be going about our daily life's and then it would hit us. That unmistakable feeling that something wasn't right, and we would be aware. But then there are those times that we don't think that anything is going to happen, you are either walking along the street, going out to diner, food shopping, or even driving to work and then something happens. Now you are never really ready for that feeling when you know that everything has changed, and that nothing is ever going to be the same again.
When I met Samantha, we hit it off right away. We had this friendship that was like a brother and sister. We were so ready to change the world, we believed that we could change everyone. Anyone that we met could be changed, even if others had given up on hope for them.
Now Samantha and I both had our pasts. It took awhile for us to be comfortable to talk about them, but when we did if felt as if there was this huge weight being lifted from our shoulders. I told her about my mother and father, and what had happened, about my drinking. And she told me about how her father left her and her mother when she was still young, how she felt trapped in that small town, where everyone knew everyone, she shared with me her young failed marriage, and when the time came Jack.
Sam joined the unit not to long before I did. I guess that is one of the reasons that we got along so well in the beginning. We covered for each other, we made the other one more comfortable at times, we evened each other out at times. If I could see one thing, and she looked at it differently then we were able to be twice as well in the loop then if we were only seeing it from one side.
When I started out, I will admit that I was afraid. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pull my weight. But then I saw how Samantha, Jack, and Vivian all were and how they had learned to lean on each other when they needed that extra little boost of something, of hope.
I think that was when I started to notice the looks between Sam and Jack. At first if you weren't looking for it you wouldn't see it. It wasn't something that you looked for when you just start out on the job, your to busy covering your ass and trying not to screw up. But as I started to adjust I noticed that Jack and Sam had more then a boss co-worker relationship, more then a friendship. It went deeper for them.
At first I wasn't sure what to make of it. I wasn't really sure of a lot of things, but then I saw how Jack took certain cases, and how Sam would find little ways to let him know that he was helping, and to let him know that it wasn't his fault that they had hit another dead end in a cold case. She always let him know that what he did mattered, and vice versa.
Over the years the attitudes between them changed. You could always tell when they had been together. They would come into work differently that day after. There smiles would be bigger, Jack would be happier, and when they would look at each other they would glow, they wouldn't go out on every lead together. They tried to stay apart, but always, like magnets, were pulled back to the other. They were always more protective of the other one the night after.
But things weren't always that way. After awhile the looks, the smiles, the touches just seemed to fade. I don't really remember when it all began, but the impact that it had on everyone was amazing. It wasn't to long before Sam came to me crying one night. It was right after we found that missing boy, who was adopted and tried to contact his birth father. After that they just seemed to drift. She told me that Jack had left Marie, and that she was tired of trying to keep up with him, and what there relationship wasn't.
That night I held her when she cried, and in the morning when she woke up, she asked me if I wouldn't talk about this, I knew how much she hated to show weakness, and she asked me not to talk or say anything to Jack about this. I promised her I wouldn't. But that didn't make me want to hit him any less. But I promised Samantha, and I intended to keep it.
But eventually the affair started up again, I guess, because Samantha and Jack were back to there old selves. I tried to warn Sam, but she wouldn't listen. She told me that she wouldn't let it effect her, and she wouldn't get hurt. But I could tell. I knew that Jack had to go back to his family at sometime. I knew that Jack didn't want to hurt her, I could tell that he loved her, but he had a wife, a family.
When Farrell came I knew that he was going ask about the affair. At this point I don't think that Jack and Sam had been together for a while. Things were normal around work, but either they had ended it on their own terms or they were just getting better at hiding it. But I knew that Farrell was after Jack, and he would stop at nothing to get him out of the Bearu.
When Samantha came storming out of his temporary office I knew that he had said something, and I went to follow her so that we could talk, but she turned into Jack's office and sat down to wait for him. He came back about 10 minutes later, and shut the door. I couldn't hear anything, but a when he came out and went storming for Farrell, and I am sure that if they hadn't been in the office or where anyone could see them, Jack would have knocked out all of his teeth right there. I had never seen him that angry, in all the years that we had worked together, I have never seen Jack Malone lose his temper like that. I was about to step in when Vivian got up and walked to the door, knowing what she had to do. Seeing that Jack was all taken care of I went to find Samantha.
When I did manage to find her, she was standing outside smoking. She looked like she had just seen a ghost. I went up to her, and took the offensive object out of her hand, and stomped it into the ground. She gave me a look of disbelief, and I challenged her back. I don't know how long we stood there before she started to talk to me, but I knew that she had to get it out. When she was done, I pulled her into a hug, told her that we would get through this together, and that I was would always be there to talk if she needed it .
After all the commotion died down, everything was back to normal. Farrell went home. Jack and Sam were back to acting the way that they always did, Martin was clueless, and Vivian was keeping busy trying not to say something about the encounter between Jack and Farrell.
The day that Sam got shot, I knew that something was going to be exposed. Something that was no one else's business was about to become FBI news. Nothing was going to be able to stop it, and I wasn't sure what to do. When I heard that Jack had gone it to get Samantha after she had been shot, and traded his life for her's I knew that the unit wouldn't be able to look away from them anymore. Now everyone knew that there was something there.
While Sam was gone Jack was dull, and gloomy. He was back with his wife, and I was the one who told her. I didn't really want to, but she when she asked me if he was okay, what could I have said? I wouldn't lie to her, I couldn't do that, I owed her to much. So I told her the truth. Jack went back to Marie. He didn't want to be the carrier of bad news but he knew that no matter how Sam found out she would be hurt either way. He figured that if Jack wasn't going to be man enough to tell her then he would do it himself. The least that he could do was offer to be there for her when she needed him the most.
When Sam came back to work, Jack seemed so happy. While Sam was in the hospital the office had been dark. If anyone wanted to get yelled at all they would have to do was say Sam's name in front of him and he would snap. He still felt that it was his fault that she was shot, and he felt responsible. Sam didn't blame him, she never had, probably never would. Jack had felt that he was to blame because he was the one who sent her into the bookstore, but he was also the one who was able to get her out. But he didn't look at it that way. He looked at it that he may have gotten her out, but he also looked at it as he had sent her in.
The day that Sam came back, the whole office seemed to glow with this light. Jack smiled the second he caught sight of her, and from that day on he was over protective. Not allowing her to go out on assignments alone, not allowing her to go out on her own at all. I don't think that he realized that all that he was trying to do was really hurting Sam more then it was helping her. She was already doubting herself, she didn't need to feel that people, Jack above all, were doubting that fact that she couldn't do her job.
She once told me that she felt that if she didn't have her job she wasn't sure about where she would be now. I told her that she would probably be in some upscale neighbor hood living it up, with a husband, kids, a dog, and a cat. She said that I was talking nonsense because she didn't want any of those things. She didn't want the picture perfect family. She said that she knew how hard life could be, and she didn't want some sugar coated truth, to what life was really like, and how things really were. She wanted people to know her for who she was, and not what she had, she wanted people to know the real Samantha Spade, and not some phony woman, who grew up to be hated by everyone including herself.
I knew that she would never be hated by anyone, and I knew that she would never really live life like that. She was to real for that. She liked the way that things were. She might not have always shared what she was thinking with me, or anyone else, but she was real. That is one of the biggest things that I loved about her. The fact that she wouldn't beat around the bush, and she wouldn't take any bullshit from anyone else. That made her who she really was. If she believed in something, or someone, enough then she would never give up on them. That was just who she was.
Soon things were back to before the shooting, before Jack went back to Marie. Everything seemed to be going great. But then Jack seemed to be falling behind. Staying late at work, not going home. I started to think that the affair had begun again. We all thought that Jack was trying to work it out with Marie.
One day I saw Sam coming out of his office from a meeting, looking like she had just seen a ghost. She walked straight past me, and when I called her name she just kept on going. Later that night she called me and asked me to meet her at a dinner that we used to go out together to unwind after a hard case. Twenty minutes later we were sitting in a booth in the back of the dinner, and she told me that Jack and Marie were officially over. Jack didn't want a relationship till after the divorce was over, and Sam didn't know what to think. She had always thought that she was going to be the other woman, but now with Jack not being married anymore, she wasn't sure what she wanted. She was finally getting over the shooting, and the realization that everything can change in a split second, and now Jack was free? That was to much for her. They sat there for the rest of the night talking until the owner finally told them to leave.
The next day when Sam came in she told me that she knew what she was going to do. She finally knew where she was going in her life, and she was happy that she finally made up her mind. She had decided to help Jack get over his marriage, she was going to stand by him, and when the time was right start the relationship that they both knew that they wanted.
I will admit that once their relationship started they were really good at hiding it. The only times that they slipped you wouldn't have noticed if you didn't know what to look for. Soon they announced their engagement and to say that I was happy for them but I also wondered what was going to happen. But when I saw the look of happiness on Samantha's face I knew that it was all going to be okay, no matter what happened.