AN: I'm so sorry about the massive delay. Schoolwork's killing me. Anyway, many thanks to feedbackers from before. Hopefully this chapter will be okay. Don't own the characters. Lyrics by Dashboard Confessional.
This Brilliant Dance
(And the picture frames are facing down
and the ringing from this empty sound
is deafening and keeping you from sleep.
And breathing is a foreign task
and thinking's just too much to ask
and you're measuring your minutes by a clock that's blinking eights.)
The next morning she wakes up and thinks, Oh, shit. Oh, holy shit.
She's lying in bed wearing the same shirt and pants as the day before, her head feels as if it's about to crack open, and she can hear someone rustling around in the next room. Also, her mouth tastes like dead cat, not that she's ever tasted dead cat but it's how she'd imagine one to taste, and whoa, too much thinking makes hungover Sam an unhappy girl.
"Uhh," she moans faintly, staring at the ceiling. Too much light; she's forced to close her eyes again.
"Morning, sunshine," says a revoltingly cheery voice from the doorway.
"Fuck off, Taylor," she groans, right before she feels a weight on her bed just next to her feet.
"Yeah," he says, "I figured you might be a little hungover."
"Not hungover. Dying," she corrects him. "And what's up with you? Why are you so happy?" Sam decides through a haze of pain that she hates happy people. Especially happy Danny.
"I'm always happy," he tells her.
"No, you're not," she argues.
"True," he agrees. "However, I have painkillers."
Her eyes fly open and she begins to sit up just before a wave of nausea breaks over her. She lies back down again with a whine of pain. "Feed them to me," she commands.
Danny sets a glass of water onto her bedside table and presses two tablets into her hand. "They're not miracle-workers but they'll do," he tells her.
"Thanks," she says, before swallowing the tablets dry and then taking a draught of water. "Why'd you get me so drunk last night?"
He snorts with laughter and holds his hands up as if she's pointing her gun at him. "Don't look at me. It was all your own work."
"I know." She makes a face and slowly levers her legs out of bed. "You put me to bed, Taylor?"
"It was a close call," he tells her. "After you barfed on my shoes in the elevator I figured I might just leave you on your doorstop."
She cringes slightly. "I threw up over you?"
"Over my shoes," he corrects her. "And I didn't like them much anyway."
"Good." She makes an attempt to stand up, feels her head spin, and sits heavily back down again.
Danny eyes her warily. "Will you be okay to go into work today?"
"Second to last day. I have to."
"I guess." He chews the inside of his cheek for a second. "You don't mind that I slept on your couch, right?"
"Why should I? You didn't take off my shirt. Definite advantage to going out with gay guys," she says, with a half smile. She figures that if Rob had taken her home, he probably would have taken off her shirt in the pretence of getting her in a suitable state to sleep. Hell, even Martin probably would have, although he definitely wouldn't have done it in a sick sort of way.
She wonders if Jack would have. Somehow, she doesn't think so.
One way or another, she manages to get into work with Danny by half past nine, her stomach churning unpleasantly with the revolting-looking but surprisingly good-tasting fried breakfast he forced down her. She's wearing a shirt and pants that don't match in any way, shape or form, and he's wearing the same, now rather wrinkled, suit as yesterday, with slightly stained shoes.
Viv raises an eyebrow at Sam questioningly as they walk in.
She tries to maintain a blank expression, partly because her head is still pounding and actually doing anything would probably make her pass out, but mostly because she can see Jack sitting in his office and glaring out at her with steely dark eyes and she's afraid she's about to trip over something, such as her own feet.
Sam sits down at her desk and turns on her computer. The bright white screen's too light, making her head hurt even more. For a moment, she considers slipping her sunglasses on but she doesn't, because she hates being a cliché, and she's seen a whole bunch of movies where agents walk around wearing dark glasses even in the wintertime.
She is so not a cliché.
Although, as she gazes at Jack's thin-lipped profile, she thinks that maybe she's been a cliché all along, except everyone was too well meaning to tell her.
She wishes they had. God, she wishes they had.
For some reason, Jack pairs himself with her that day (sadism, obviously), and they go to visit the missing guy's wife together. It's over in Queens, and the drive takes thirty-five minutes on the way out. Jack taps his fingers irritatedly on the steering wheel, and Sam hates that she can't take her eyes off him. She still feels an occasional residual flicker of guilt at the thought of leaving his apartment first thing yesterday morning, but tries to shake it off.
It wasn't right, it would never have worked. There was never even a chance of it, not really. Not when she's leaving- holy shit, she's leaving tomorrow - and he's so much older than her, and when every time he touches her she aches for him to touch her again. It's easier to just break away, she tries to reason with herself.
Yet for some reason, she really doesn't want to.
She frowns out of the window until they arrive at the house. The interview that they carry out is brief and terse, with her and Jack asking alternate questions almost as if they're conducting separate conversations, and she figures that maybe they are.
In the car on the way back, they get caught in traffic; Jack slams the heel of his hand on the horn exasperatedly, and this is one thing his FBI badge can't get him out of. It's strange; every time she looks at him, she can't help but remember other times, years ago, nights ago, and it's making her feel sad, and quiet, and slightly ill with grief for something that died, and that she never even knew was there to begin with.
They get caught in a huge hold-up, and Jack sinks back into his seat with a low growl of frustration; after a couple of minutes, he glances over at her once, twice, and then finally says, "So what was with yesterday morning?"
She's caught, doesn't know what to say, and settles for shrugging. "I'm sorry, I guess," and her voice sounds rusty.
"Uh huh." He accepts her apology with a slight bow of the head, and manoeuvres the car expertly into the next lane. "All right." And his tone's slightly sceptical.
She finds herself hissing with exasperation. "I amsorry," she insists, feeling her cheeks burn dark red.
"All right." A slight hint of irritation edging into his voice.
"Jack, for God's sake, don't make a big deal out of this," she says, too loud, full of a sad kind of desperation.
"Not make a big deal." His voice is flat, eyes staring forwards, and she can tell with a sinking feeling that he's definitely going to make a big deal. "Not make a goddamn big deal. Jesus Christ, Sam, how can I not make a big deal out of this?"
She cringes back slightly. "Jack, I'm leaving tomorrow. This isn't… it can't be… It isn't permanent," she settles for.
"No," he agrees. "It's not permanent, we said that. But we had three days and you threw one away, three goddamn precious days and I wanted those days. And now we only have two."
"Yes," she says softly, cutting him off. "And two days aren't very much."
"Why can't we just goddamn make the most of them," Jack says through gritted teeth. "Why can't we just—"
He breaks off in the middle of a sentence, and falls silent. "Jesus, what's the goddamn use," he says, sounding slightly desperate and forlorn, still staring forwards into the road as if he can't bring himself to look at her. "What's the goddamn use when you're going and there'll be nothing left in New York for me."
She sighs, says, "That's being sort of melodramatic."
He smiles, a twist of thin lips. "I wish it wasn't the truth."
She stays silent. Her throat's constricting painfully; she doesn't think she can say anything else. She doesn't think there's anything else that can be said.
When they get back into the office her head's pounding again, probably as a result of the enforced silence in the car, and the bitterness radiating off Jack's skin as he smouldered next to her. She wishes in a way that she hadn't left his apartment, but knows that it was the only thing that, realistically, she could have done. She figures that it's easiest to cut ties now, before she does something she might regret and gets really reattached to him.
(Not that she isn't remembering the way his lips moved across her skin and how his body felt on top of hers, because she is, and usually at the most inopportune times.)
"You okay?" Danny's voice shocks her slightly, and she shakes herself.
"Yeah, I'm good," she tells him belatedly.
He smirks, which is really no surprise. She's beginning to think his face is frozen that way. "Head still hurting?"
"Naturally it is," she says wearily. "You didn't clean your shoes properly. They still have puke on them."
"I didn't get time, because someone was demanding painkillers," he says lightly. "You and Jack okay?"
"No," she says bluntly.
"Ah." He looks uncomfortable, shifts from foot to foot. "I gotta go out right now, I have to bring a hooker in, but you guys, you need to—"
"I know," she says.
"I didn't finish —"
"I know," she repeats firmly. "Go get your hooker. I'll talk to him."
He narrows his eyes at her. "Sam, if you mess this up, it's gonna be me that hears about it for the next god-knows-how-long."
"I know that as well," she says, even though if she's completely honest she totally hasn't even begun to consider that.
"All right." Danny sighs, and for a moment he looks very, very tired. Then he slaps a smirk back onto his face. "Call Martin tonight for me, okay?"
"You need your fix?" And it's getting back onto a comfortable level, where she isn't worried that he's going to blow up at her or she's going to say something wrong and ultimately very hurtful.
"Worse than cocaine. Not that I'd know," and he raises his eyebrows at her before disappearing out of the door.
She looks over at Jack's office and accidentally meets his eyes. Quickly, she looks away, feeling herself heat up and go red, and then she berates herself because really, this isn't goddamn gradeschool. She's a grown woman and independent, like that stupid Destiny's Child song, and she never liked Beyonce anyway. She figures that maybe it's okay to blush sometimes. She's sick of being independent, all of a sudden, and a white picket fence with a golden retriever looks all too appealing.
She meets Jack's eyes again; he pointedly looks away from her, and she never liked dogs anyway.
"Martin Fitzgerald."
"It's me," she sighs.
"Samantha! Hey, how're you doing?" He sounds cheerful and upbeat, and she has to repress a shudder.
"I'm doing okay," she says slowly, because I don't want to leave anymore and I might be pregnant with Jack's baby seems sort of too fatalistic.
"Glad to hear it!"
"You're… using a lot of exclamation marks," she says suspiciously. "Did you talk to Danny?"
A pause. "How did you know that?"
"I'm psychic," she says mystically, and really, this is managing to cheer her up more than she was expecting.
"Whatever," he sniggers, and then says, "Danny told me about you and Jack," in what used to be his normal voice, but which now sounds uncharacteristically serious.
"Great," Sam says flatly, feeling something in her chest sink. "Danny didn't say he was going to call you. He told me to. What an ass."
"You're changing the subject," he warns her lightly. "You and Jack. Don't mess it up, Sam."
"Danny told me the same thing."
"Ever heard of mind-sharing? Yeah, it's fun…"
"Either that or he told you what to say."
"That, too," Martin confesses. "But from me, as well, Sam, don't mess stuff up. You're leaving tomorrow. Make it good before you go."
She can't find any words, and settles for allowing a quiet sob to slip from between her lips.
"Do that, okay, Sam? I didn't do that and I was always really pissed at myself about it."
"I'll make it good," she promises him, very quietly. "Okay. If you make it good with Danny," she adds, trying to regain a little control of the situation, at least.
There's a pause before Martin says, reflectively, "I think I already did."
She isn't sure exactly what time it is, but she figures it must be pretty late that she knocks on Jack's door. It swings open before she has a chance to run away, and she smiles apologetically at Jack as he gapes at her.
"You're here," he says, somewhat stupidly.
"You're such a great agent," she says teasingly, and takes a step towards him. "So perceptive."
"What're you doing here?" His voice a slight groan, and he moves away from her.
She stops, slightly hurt. "I just came by, I guess…"
He gazes at her for a moment, and finally drags his eyes away. "Oh God. You better come in."
"Enthusiastic," she remarks as she steps delicately past him towards the couch, halting just before she gets there.
"You can hardly blame me," he says grouchily. "We have such a great history."
"That's why I'm here."
"What, to end things once and for all?" His arms coming up to fold over his chest, strangely defensive as he cocks an eyebrow at her.
She feels her lips curl in a smile. "No. Well, I don't know. Maybe?"
"Get on with it, then." Looking past her head as if it's too hard to stare into her eyes.
"But they told me not to mess it up," she murmurs, taking another step towards him.
"Who?"
"Danny and Martin."
He smiles, despite himself. "Always thought they were good guys."
"Don't let me mess it up, Jack," she tells him suddenly, intensely, because she's burning up inside now. "Seriously. I'm leaving tomorrow, tomorrow, and there's so much left."
"I know," he agrees, taking hold of one of her hands, and this is security. "Would it be messing it up if you stayed the night?"
"I don't think so," she says shakily. "No. No."
"Thank god for that," he mutters as he clears those awful couple of metres between them, and there's this moment, this heartstopping moment when his lips are millimetres away from hers and they're staring at each other, and every nerve in her body is on fire as she feels his breath hot on her lips. Finally he kisses her and she can feel herself opening up, spreading herself open for him and she doesn't care about anything else suddenly. Thinks that maybe she is a cliché, a stupid, blind, stubborn cliché, and she's so glad.
His lips so tender on hers, his hands warm on her back, fingers spread wide and she loves feeling small next to him, as if he can take care of her, and she doesn't thinks she could ever trust anyone else this much.
"I love you. All along, I loved you," he whispers as they pull away from each other, and she nods.
"I know," she says, voice almost breaking. "I think I always did."
She doesn't know if she's lying or not but it doesn't matter anymore. Because she'd give up so much for this one guy, and it's stupid, really, but she doesn't care. Doesn't care about much, anymore, it seems, and that's fine, perfectly fine, because she's drowning. And his arms are around her, holding her close, and screw her career and reputation because this is all she ever wanted.
TBC.