Daniel was willing to try on clothes if they spaced the stints in the dressing rooms with long conversations over cappuccinos, crowd watching, and an occasional movie. At the end of three leisurely days, he had a more than adequate wardrobe, heavy on blue. Sam kept it to herself but she loved how the color looked with his expressive eyes.
Their conversations, covering a wide range of scientific and philosophical topics, were profoundly satisfying for both of them. Sam had forgotten how much fun these sorts of discussions could be with someone who was able to keep up with her. Daniel loved to see her eyes light up with the excitement of an idea and hoped it would keep thoughts of the divorce at bay. They did veer off the intellectual and into the personal one day in a food court when Sam couldn't hold it in any longer and said, "Who was Danny's mother? I keep waiting for you to bring it up but you never have."
Daniel looked down at the table and started to fiddle with the packets of sweetener. "When I first came back, I laid it all out for the Air Force. The memories were so clear. There was only one woman on that planet with whom there was a, shall we say, opportunity for parenthood. It was very romantic actually. Her name was Kari. She was blonde, blue eyed, about your height and build. I can see her face really clearly and she looked enough like you to be your sister. She found me, took me back to her village, and hid me. We only had a little more than a week together but it was wonderful. She was brilliant. She peppered me with questions, hard ones, and we talked for hours. I felt like I had known her for years."
Sam touched his hand and asked, "Why wouldn't you want to talk about her now?"
"Because it clearly didn't happen," he said sadly.
"What? Why do you think that?" she asked, astounded.
"Do you remember the time that creature had me captive and had planted a false memory of my death in all of your minds so you wouldn't come looking for me?" She nodded. "You told me that even though the memory was very clear, it just didn't feel right and the feeling of not rightness got stronger with time?"
Sam picked up immediately on his point and said, "So you think this is a false, implanted memory? You feel something like what we described?"
Daniel agreed, "That, yeah, but also, think about the coincidence. I go to another planet and essentially find you? I think they pulled out your memory as the woman most on my mind and started with that. Maybe distinguishing friend from lover was too sophisticated for whatever technique they were using."
"Or maybe," Sam thought hopefully, "you didn't know your own mind."
Daniel's analysis of his memories started so many paths of conjecture in Sam's head she had trouble concentrating for awhile. She almost talked him into a hideous kiwi colored Izod shirt before she came to her senses and got on task, remerging that the mall is no place to loose focus. Fashion disaster lurks behind every rack like boa constrictors in the Amazon.
A more unpleasant mall experience happened later the same afternoon. They were strolling through a Belk's when three teenagers started following them. Daniel and Sam stopped to look at men's cologne, Daniel telling Sam adamantly that he couldn't wear the stuff because of its effect on his allergies. Sam reassured him that she was just curious. Jack wore a little at times and she wanted to see how much it cost. She was aghast at the price per ounce. How long had she been married to the man and yet maybe she never really knew him?
The three young men came up on either side of them at the counter. One of them started to fiddle with Sam's purse strap. She jerked it away from him and he laughed. Another knocked Daniel's wallet, which he had temporarily taken out of his pocket and laid down to extricate a list, off the counter onto the floor. "Oops," he snickered.
Sam and Daniel had both been geeky, mercilessly teased adolescents. They each flashed back to those days and were so grateful for what had changed. They had but one thought, "You have no idea what you're messing with here."
Daniel just let the wallet lie for now. He said pleasantly with something extremely deadly in his eyes, "I suggest you back off."
The ringleader said, "Really, huh? Say you know Danny Jackson by any chance because, man, you are exactly as ugly as he is?"
Suddenly, a beefy, overweight, but still impressive, mall security guard was standing behind the boy. "Pick up the man's wallet for him, Duarte," he said, obviously acquainted with the boy.
The boy sneered, hesitated a moment, but then bent over to pick up the wallet. He took advantage of the opportunity to scope out Daniel's id. Daniel saw his eyes widen as he took in the name. He now had confirmation through the identical names for the amazing physical resemblance. He handed it to Daniel accompanied by a thoroughly evil smile. Later when they were getting in the car, Daniel saw them off across the parking lot. At first he thought they were following them when Sam pulled out but he persuaded himself he was being paranoid.
It proved to be easier to get him a car than to renew the driver's license that would let him operate it. The renewal took three trips to the DMV before they managed to have all the right documentation and get there before the dedicated civil servants in charge had decided they had already given out enough tests for the day. Ten tests out at noon for a closing time of 5:00 seemed to be about their comfort level.
By contrast, the car purchase only took an afternoon. Daniel wasn't at all one of those men who has part of his identity tied up in his car. He didn't care what color it was or what make and the stereo system or lack thereof was a matter of complete indifference. He just wanted high dependability and reasonable cargo space so that basically he could do whatever he wanted without having to think about the car at all. A single day was all the patience he had for that drill and fortunately they found one quickly and drove it off the lot after paying cash. Daniel was disappointed to find he had two flat tires the next morning. He had thought the salesman had seemed more principled but, other than that, he remained satisfied.
That was when the real challenge started -- trying to find Daniel a place to live. They lost track of how many houses they saw. Their real estate agent became increasingly disgusted with their pickiness and actually fired them after the fourth day. The day Sam's divorce became final, Daniel suggested they take a breather and do something she would think was fun. She surprised him by saying, "Do you know what would be fun? Looking at houses for me. I'm going to have to move out of that condo soon since I just sublet it for 6 months when I left Jack. I never really liked it but it was all I could find at the time. And I am even more disenchanted with it after someone egged the house last night and that snake got into the kitchen the day before that. I'd like to look at wildly inappropriate houses that I wouldn't be able to afford or wouldn't be practical and just day dream."
They found a new agent, a petite, extremely bubbly woman named Corky. Even though Corky talked so much you thought she would need to be pulling an oxygen tank around with her, there was something oddly endearing about her. Corky asked Sam a handful of questions that didn't seem heavily correlated to the house, nodded decisively, and started immediately to the first candidate. She was magical. Every house she came up with was one Sam would have loved to live in although there wasn't a one she could have persuaded herself was a responsible decision.
Corky had gotten the impression that they were a couple. It was so hard to get a word in edgewise they gave up and let her keep her assumptions intact. As she took them to the last house for the day, she said, "This is a bit of a fixer upper but think how wonderful it will be shaping the house together into something that's a little of both of yours, almost like having a baby." Sam smiled remembering how, even though her parents loved each other dearly, they absolutely could not work on a home improvement project together. Corky's comment was one of those wonderfully romantic statements that would only resonate with someone who had never actually been in the situation. She shuddered remembering the one time she and Jack had taken on such a project. It had been closer to "Rosemary's Baby" than any loving joint creation.
The last house was in an older neighborhood on an oddly shaped lot. Even though it was surrounded by other homes, a high, handsome wood fence on one side, the slope of the land and the way the trees had grown up, put it in a little world of its own. They were falling in love with it even before they had gone through the front door. As they did the walkthrough they went from first date status with the house to a lot of heavy breathing and thoughts of a future together. Sam pulled Daniel aside, out of ear shot of the agent, and said, "I can't believe how much I want this house."
"I don't blame you," he said. "This place is absolutely perfect, isn't it? So, buy it."
"Daniel, did you see the price? Jack and I still haven't arrived at a property settlement yet. He'll have to buy my half of the Bleaker Street house first to have all of the down payment. And the monthly mortgage payments would be a little steep. Then I don't that I would have the energy by myself to do all the fixing up that needs to be done."
Daniel put his arms around her and said, gently, "You haven't had anything the way you wanted it for a really long time and neither have I. We'll buy it together and we'll both have a dream place to live in."
She was staring at him utterly shocked by his offer. All sorts of arguments crowded her head. "But, won't that cramp you? I mean, what will that do to your dating life?"
Daniel exploded in laughter. "My dating life? It's been years but surely you remember that I didn't have what you would call a dating life. But maybe you're thinking about your dating life?"
Sam said, "At this point, I can't imagine wanting to go through all that crap again. I've been married and I think nuns have it easier."
Daniel responded, serious again, "That will change, Sam. You are so beautiful and so special; you'll have so much attention I'll have to become your bodyguard. If someone does seem promising, you can make sure they know we are just housemates. Maybe hint that I'm gay. There seem to be a fair number of people willing to believe that."
"You are really good for a middle-aged woman's self-esteem, Daniel Jackson," she said huskily. How she wanted to kiss him but she knew that was a really bad idea.
Not only was the house perfect but it belonged to a motivated seller. The owner's wife had left him for a divorce lawyer who was in the process of taking him to the cleaners. They were moved in within a month. Sam kept meaning to talk to Jack about the change of address and her housemate but things were very hectic between the move and the fact that she had to go out of town in the middle of it all for about a week for some consulting work.
Danny, of course, knew about the move, having seen the boxes and other moving preparations on his weekends with his mother but they hadn't found a way to tell him what Daniel's role was in all this. When Danny was there for the weekend, Daniel would typically go into work or take himself off somewhere else and try to stay out of the house as much as possible. Still some time together as a threesome was unavoidable. Danny was always on the edge of rudeness and had developed a real knack for asking questions that either Daniel couldn't really answer or were designed to somehow make him look inadequate. Oddly enough, though, he never asked about his mother.
Danny's only voluntary contact with his father during that time had been to invite him to a soccer game. Daniel had dutifully gone and briefly spoken to Danny after the game. Since he knew little more about soccer than any other sport, he felt completely out of his league and told Sam he thought maybe Danny had wanted it that way. There was a message there and it wasn't a friendly one.
The night they moved in, Sam was amazed at how much trouble she was having sleeping. She had gone to sleep in unfamiliar places all over the galaxy. She had slept in situations where there was real danger only a few feet away. She had slept in captivity when they had no idea how much longer they would be alive. She thought it was ridiculous that she got so spooked the first night by some really strange noises outside and unfamiliar creaking and shifting inside the house but she was. Finally she got up off the mattress she was sleeping on in the floor in her room and went to Daniel's room. The door was partly ajar, and she thought she saw some light spilling out. She called out softly, "Daniel, Daniel, are you awake?"
There was no answer and finally she pushed the door open gently to find Daniel propped up on his mattress against the wall, asleep. Sam went softly to his side, took off his glasses, slipped the book from his hands, and turned off the little lamp sitting on the floor next to him. She pushed him over so that he was lying on his side. For just a moment, she lay down on the bed next to him and looked at his handsome face, so guileless and young. How would her life have been different if she hadn't been so blinded by her feelings for Jack that she hadn't seen the man right in front of her? As things deteriorated with Jack, she had found herself thinking more and more about Daniel but he absolutely could never know that.
Two days later, when Sam pulled into the garage, she noticed Daniel's car was already there. The surprising part was that the front end was crumpled up to where it was almost undriveable. Very worried about what might have happened to him, she hurried inside and found him sitting on the couch that sat temporarily in the middle of the living room in a sea of unpacked boxes. He had evidently found the box with the Scotch and was rolling a highball glass in his hands with little of the amber liquid left in it.
"Daniel, what happened? Are you all right? Do you have whiplash?" she asked zigzagging through the boxes to sit down next to him.
He looked down at the glass and took a minute to answer. "I rear ended a woman with a car full of kindergarteners." He looked up just long enough to reassure Sam, "Nobody was hurt in either car but her bumper and mine are a mess." He laughed humorlessly. "Those kindergarteners surely learned some new words. The woman had a mouth on her."
"Were you thinking about something to do with work? Your mind somewhere else?" Sam asked. She had certainly seen how Daniel could lose himself in an idea.
"You really want to know?" he said shooting her another quick look before looking back down at the oh so fascinating glass.
"Of course," Sam responded. Something was going on and she didn't like it.
"Well, I certainly was lost in a thought. The same kind of thought that has made my productivity go down to close to zero at Cheyenne Mountain and has generally reduced me to a zombie."
He stopped talking. This was beginning to drive Sam crazy. "And," she prompted with a trace of aggravation.
"I was thinking about you naked. I walk around thinking about you all the time, thinking about how much I want you, how much I love you."
Sam was frozen in place. He looked up at her finally, his face very serious. "I know that with the way Danny feels about me and you on the rebound from Jack, I probably don't have a chance. I didn't want to tell you either because I thought it could make it really awkward our living here together but it's making me crazy not only feeling it but having to hide it too."
"Forget Danny. That'll sort itself out. And forget Jack. That died years ago. It just took me forever to move on. But Daniel, I'm a very middle-aged woman. Thoughts of my naked body would have been pretty scary if they were accurate. At my age, things start to sag and wrinkle, no matter how much you work out. You, on the other hand, are an extremely handsome man in his prime. You'd resent me after awhile." She couldn't look at him any more and got up and walked to the window.
"The inability to handle age is a major part of what killed your marriage. Don't make Jack's mistake and let it destroy what we could have," Daniel pleaded.
She didn't turn around. She just stood blindly staring out at a tree, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. Then he was behind her, wrapping his arms around her, resting his cheek on her hair. He whispered, "You have to let me love you or think I may just curl up and die."