2007
"Are you happy, Sam?" Jack asked again. The question sparked by little Mitch's impassioned plea earlier in the day hung in the air.
Okay, Sam, she told herself. It's time to stop suppressing your feelings because he doesn't want to talk about them. "Not completely.""
He pulled back and looked her in the face. "You want to get married. That's it, isn't it?"
Sam thought, once again, Jack, you prove that nine-tenths of the time you are oblivious by choice. For a moment before she answered him, she thought about the kiss she and Daniel had just shared. It seemed more and more unreal. She couldn't possibly be feeling that way when she had never once looked at him sexually over all these years except for the brief moment when she met him and before she found out he was married. It must have just been the stress and the emotional confusion of her feelings for the little boy that was theirs, but not really. After all, she had spent a lot of time lately imaginging what it would have been like if she and Daniel had been together like Mandy and Dan. The children made the thought impossible to ignore. She was just confused. It would be way too complicated if there was anything more to it.
"Sam?" he said impatiently.
At last she answered, "You know I do."
"I've got this death sentence hanging over me. I can't saddle you with what that would mean."
"Jack, you've been tap dancing around getting married since well before you were diagnosed a couple of months ago. You have very early onset Parkinson's. Very early. It was sort of a fluke that it was even noticed or diagnosed at this point. People frequently go eight years or more from where you are before the symptoms are even particularly noticeable. Look at Michael J. Fox. It works as a reason for not wanting to have kids with me-at my age we'd probably have to adopt anyway-but it's just an excuse as far as marriage goes."
He released her and went to the refrigerator and got another beer. Sam couldn't believe it. "You're terminating the conversation just like that?"
"Ya betcha," he said.
She walked over and blocked his path. She just couldn't do it any more. "Either we get married or it's over. I'm tired of playing house."
"I don't like ultimatums, Carter," Jack said, slipping into general mode.
"And I don't like being treated like I was under your command instead of your partner."
He looked aside for a long moment. Still not looking at her, he said, "Sam, I can't face this thing alone. Please don't leave me."
She knew the cost that request would have been to him, but he still hadn't agreed to give her what she needed. "You want me to stay, but you're not willing to give an inch for me to do it."
He didn't say anything. "I don't know Jack. I'll always be here as your friend, but to keep going as a couple… I just don't know."
He turned and walked out of the room. As he was going through the door, he said, not even looking at her, "All right. You win. We get married."
Sam was left standing alone and empty. Not once when she had thought about her future and day dreamed about being with Jack had she ever imagined that his marriage proposal would be tossed off as he went out the door.
Evidently Jack had decided to drink his dinner because he said nothing about food. Sam didn't feel like cooking and she certainly didn't feel like celebrating. She actually thought for a moment of going to Daniel, but, then, she remembered that everything had changed with Daniel. He wasn't the best friend any more to whom she could pour out her heart, not about another man anyway. Finally she called in a pick up order, grabbed her coat and her keys, and paused in the doorway of the living room. "I'm going to go out and get us some dinner. I should be right back."
Jack looked up at her and, for just a moment, she thought he'd been sitting in there crying. That was clearly impossible, but something had been going on. She noticed that the beer he had carried in with him was sitting on the coffee table, still full. Jack said, "Sammy, it's snowing pretty heavily now. Let me be the one to brave the roads." Anticipating a feminist reaction to that statement, he said, "I know you could do it. You can do just about anything I can do except piss standing up. I'd just like to do something for you."
It was a sort of vague apology, Jack style, and she agreed and gave him the details of the order. He was gone a long time and she began to worry about the roads. If he was really upset, maybe his lack of concentration caused him to have an accident. She was sitting in front of the television when she heard the door open. Sam didn't even look up when he came into the room a few minutes later. She wasn't sure how she felt about him at the moment. All of the sudden, a huge bouquet of roses appeared in front of her. Jack said, "These don't begin to be as beautiful as you are."
Sam was still recovering from the shock of Jack bringing her flowers-this was only the second time she'd ever gotten anything of the kind from him-when he knelt in front of her and took her hands in his, still cold from the outside. "Sam, that was a piss poor excuse for a proposal, even for me."
She tried to make some sound, tried to stop him. Jack was so proud and had so much trouble talking about his feelings. She didn't want him to go down a path he would regret later. "Let me talk," he said. "I love you. You're more than just a security blanket because I'm afraid of facing this stuff alone. I love you. Will you marry me?"
She nodded, afraid to trust her voice. There was so much emotion rolling through her that she couldn't process it. The one thing she noticed was that she wasn't overcome by joy, what she would have expected all those years she waited for this.
The next morning, she was sitting in her office, with papers spread out in front of her and a screen full of data on her computer. She had given up pretending that she was able to focus on anything she was looking at. Sam wished she had a ring because everything seemed completely unreal. They were going to go pick out a ring the next weekend when Jack was back again from DC. If she could look at her hand and see a stone, she could believe that it had happened. She couldn't kid herself though that this was the reason she wasn't positively giddy. She hadn't been giddy last night either.
There was a knock on her door and Daniel stuck his head in. Suddenly, she was very glad she didn't have a ring yet. How was she going to tell him what she had done? He looked at her questioningly and she said, "Hey. Come on in. I was just woolgathering big time."
He bit his lip, looked at her for a moment, and then closed the door behind him and locked it. She raised an eyebrow. "Sam, this is probably not the place to talk about… well, Sunday and maybe I'm forcing things, but I've been sitting in my office for two solid hours and I have made zero progress. The thing I'm working on could be really important…" His voice trailed off and he sighed. He started to make a circuit of the room, looking at the various things she had framed and hanging on the wall, all things he had seen before. With his back to her, he said, "I can't think about anything but you. I need to know where you're coming from."
Sam felt ill. She'd kissed him yesterday and gotten engaged to a man that had been a very close friend of his for a long time just hours later. She could not tell him about this to his back. She got out of her chair and crossed the room to him. He still had his back to her. She put a hand on his shoulder and he turned. Suddenly they were just inches apart. She started to take a step back but he reached out and took hold of her arms. She met his eyes. He wasn't wearing glasses. Somehow that irrelevant detail seemed very important. He hadn't been wearing them yesterday either or Friday in her office. She tried to focus on puzzling that out to keep the other thoughts that were flooding her mind at bay. It was a losing battle. His eyes are so beautiful, she thought. Why haven't I noticed that before? She was staring at him transfixed, like a deer in the headlights. Her eyes fell slightly to his mouth. She unconsciously dragged her teeth across her lower lip. He made a strangled sound and raised one hand to cup her face. "You're going to have to quit doing that with your mouth," he said in a husky voice.
The word mouth sent shivers through her. Her reaction must have showed in her eyes because he suddenly took possession of her mouth. The kiss was instantly very intimate. His arm tightened around her and his fingers burrowed into the hair at the back of her head and held her head to him. She grabbed a handful of his shirt and her other hand slipped around his waist and then lower, pulling them even closer together. It was a long kiss. It only ended when someone knocked at the door. Sam looked into his eyes. There was no way she was going to answer that knock.
He went to kiss her again and she shook her head slightly. "We have to stop." She didn't know where she got the self-discipline to say those words and she hadn't stopped holding him.
He nodded. "You are right. We should understand what we are doing before we do anything." He drew her into a hug, kissed her hair, and let her go. She felt bereft. It was crystal clear that she had told herself a huge lie yesterday. It had been so much easier to keep things uncomplicated, to stay the course she had set years before, the Sam and Jack course. She hadn't wanted to believe what she was feeling. Now, she couldn't deny it. Despite the impossible nature of the situation, she wanted Daniel more than she had ever wanted anyone in her life.
Daniel sat in her guest chair and she slowly retook her position behind the desk. "Here's the thing Sam. We've had everything a couple would want in every respect except the physical dimension for years. It hasn't been as good lately because other people, my children and Jack, have gotten in the way, but the fact remains we are extremely compatible. There just wasn't a mutual spark." He leaned forward across her desk and took her hands and kissed one palm. "There sure as hell is now."
"It's such a mess," Sam said.
"Really?" he said. There was hurt in his voice.
"Daniel, I'm with Jack. I'd have to end that before I can be with you. I'm not a cheat and neither are you."
He rubbed his face. "I know. That will be hard."
She noticed the use of "will". He had no doubt she was going to leave Jack for him. If only this had happened three months ago, before Jack got sick, before she accepted Jack's proposal. "Daniel, it's complicated." Jack had sworn her to secrecy repeatedly about his illness. He couldn't bear the thought of people knowing he was weak in any way.
"Complicated. That's a euphemism for something. What aren't you telling me?"
She looked aside. He stood, leaned over the desk, and captured her chin, forcing her head up. "I'm taking a huge risk here with my feelings, but I have to tell you. I'm in love with you. That's what I've been sitting in my office thinking about all morning."
She thought about lying to him. If she just told him she didn't feel the same way, he would be terribly hurt but he would go away. Looking into the beauty of those blue eyes, the internal beauty of Daniel's soul, she couldn't lie to him. "I never realized it before, but yes, I'm in love with you."
He leaned over and kissed her again. This wasn't passionate. It was tender and cherishing. He sat back down and beamed at her, but then his face changed when he realized that she didn't have a corresponding glow.
"Daniel, I don't know if I can leave Jack."
"What?"
"I can't talk about it. I promised. It's … this is hard… He asked me to marry him yesterday after you left and I accepted."
He groaned. "That makes it a bit harder, doesn't it?"
"Daniel, I love you." She noticed it was easier to say the second time. "I still love Jack, though. I've loved him for a long time. I can't hurt him, not now. This would be a very bad time right now."
Daniel narrowed his eyes and studied her. "What's so special about right now?"
Sam felt so helpless. "Daniel, I can't explain. If you love me, you have to trust me, right? I have to find a way out of this that won't leave Jack devastated."
"What the hell would that be?" He looked at her a little disgusted. "Sam, there is no easy way to lose someone you love. Believe me, I've had my share of loss and I know."
"I don't know, Daniel. I just know that I can't go to him right now and say 'it's over' particularly when it will be immediately obvious that it's over because I'm with you. He is SO jealous of you because we have the kids together, in some sense anyway."
"So what's your plan?" He crossed his arms across his chest. "You stay with him hoping that something magical will happen. Let me ask you this? Are you sleeping with him while you're staying with him?"
Sam felt a new wave of nausea assail her. How could she have sex with one man while thinking about another one? Hadn't she already done that last night? Hadn't she been thinking about Daniel while she was kissing Jack and comparing their kisses with the magic of the one kiss she and Daniel had had? She looked at Daniel, stricken. "Oh my God," she said without being able to stop herself. All the things the nuns had taught her came to her mind. The sense of wrongness she had been feeling about her affair with Jack magnified.
Daniel immediately became contrite looking at her white face. He got up, came around the desk, and pulled her up into his arms. He held her gently, rubbing her back, rocking her slightly. "I'm sorry, Sam. I do trust you and if you feel like there's some reason it's very hard to hurt Jack right now, I believe there must be a good one. I love Jack too. For a long time, he was like a combination older brother and best friend, something I never had before. Then he got increasingly distant and that hurt. The last two or three years I haven't felt that much of a connection with him, but he's never stopped being important to me."
She drew back and looked in his face, touched his cheek gently with her fingers. "Then you'll give me space, let me try to figure this out?"
He grimaced but then nodded. "We've got to avoid being alone like this. I don't know if I can keep my hands off you and, until you break it off with Jack, it would be wrong for us to do what every fiber of my body wants to do."
She laughed shakily. "I agree. I already feel guilty enough about whatwe've done so far."
He left and she resumed her position of fruitless endeavor from before. If Daniel had come to see her to help solve his inability to concentrate, the end result had been that neither of them were probably going to be worth a plugged nickel to the SGC for some time.