Eight days later, Jack stood on his deck, closed his eyes, and breathed in the crisp, cool mountain air. The smell of the outdoors was more than welcome after over a week of being stuck underground in that damned fishbowl of an isolation room. And while Argos had been nice, in an abstract kind of way, he hadn't exactly been in a mood to enjoy himself. And now here he was, home at last, nothing to do over the weekend but watch ESPN and hang out on the couch with popcorn and a beer. If it weren't so late in the year he'd drag out the grill, but late September was a little too cold to do stuff like that in Colorado Springs. Then Monday, he'd be back to work at the mountain as usual. He hoped the nightmares would be gone by then. He didn't get them often, but the whole thing on Argos, and then the first conversation with Sam, had brought them back with a vengeance.
The sound of a car pulling in to his driveway brought his attention back to the present. Curious, he followed his deck around to where he could see it; it was Sam's volvo. He frowned. They were supposed to meet at O'Malley's tomorrow night, but had no plans for this evening, and her hints about being ready to listen if he was ready to talk had made their upcoming date lose a lot of its anticipation on his part. He hadn't even known she knew where his house was, though he supposed she could have asked Daniel easily enough. The archaeologist had only moved out a couple of weeks ago; it had taken a while to get his finances and things straightened out after being dead for a year, but the archaeologist had turned out to be a packrat of the most amazing order. It turned out that while Daniel had been living out of a suitcase and a backpack when he'd been originally hired, he'd had a storage unit of stuff back in Chicago. It was mostly books and a collection of old stuff he could have probably sold for a bundle if he'd been willing to part with any of it. Jack shook his head in remembered bemusement at the archaeologist's priorities, then went inside to greet Sam at the front door.
He reached the front door as the doorbell rang. Instead of opening it, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, reminding himself that even if Sam wanted to talk about things better left in the past where they belonged, she was the mother of his child and he had to play nicely with her. More than that, he had to keep her happy enough that she wanted to spend time with him and keep him fully involved. He blew out the breath he'd been holding and opened the door.
He raised his eyebrows. "Wow." He stepped aside to let her come in. "You look great. Can I take your coat?"
"Sure," she said, coming in and shrugging it off. He closed the door behind her and took it. She wasn't wearing anything sexy, just jeans and a sweater, but her curves had filled out a little in ways that BDUs just didn't do credit to. He blinked and hung the coat up in the closet. "Can I get you anything?" he asked. "I haven't had time to go shopping since I got back, and I'm kinda afraid to see what might be growing in my fridge, but I'm pretty sure I could manage water or juice or something."
"No, I'm fine," she said with a tense smile. That didn't look good. "So, can I get the nickel tour?"
"Sure," Jack said.
Half an hour later they sat on the couch in the living room. Sam had a glass of orange juice while Jack nursed a beer.
"So, what brings you out to my neck of the woods?" Jack asked, as casually as he could make it sound. He liked the silence—it was better than what they could have been talking about—but Sam seemed uncomfortable.
Sam shrugged, looking down at her drink. "Just wanted to see how you were," she said, in a performance that was so not worthy of an Oscar. Brilliant astrophysicist she might be, but she was no actress.
"Ah." Jack let it hang there to see if she wanted to start the conversation; she was much better at small talk than he was. No such luck. "Is that so?" he asked, proving that he wasn't going to win any awards for conversation, either, tonight.
"No," she admitted with a sigh. She grimaced. "Well, it is, at least partly," she said, partially turning to face him. "When you were unconscious, and then after you were on Argos, I was so worried for you. And then after you got back, you were in isolation and I couldn't touch you, but I could still go into the observation room and see you. And then you went home today, and I guess I kind of needed to come see you and make sure you were still okay. I mean, I know you're fine, and Janet cleared you, and everything, but I needed the reassurance of actually seeing you. I was just ..." Her words trailed off, and she looked to the side, blinking back tears.
Jack studied her for a few seconds. He put his beer down on the coffee table. "C'mere," he said, reaching out and drawing her against his shoulder. She sighed, snuggling in, and he sat back against the back of the couch. She toed off her shoes and curled up against him. He rubbed her back slowly, luxuriating in the feel of her against him. At twenty, he would never have believed how great just holding a woman could be, no sex involved, just solid human contact. Twenty year olds were idiots.
"Thank you, Jack." Sam adjusted herself into a more comfortable position. "This is exactly what I needed, right now."
"All part of the service." And if she'd rather be held than talk about … what he thought she wanted to talk about, he was all for that.
After about twenty minutes, she stirred. "Jack?" she said.
"Yeah?" He tensed slightly, dreading what might be coming.
It didn't go unnoticed. She began rubbing his chest slightly. "I know you've had a hard life, a hard career. With that long in special operations, you've probably seen a lot of horrible stuff, done some of it to others and had it done to you. Whether or not you tell me about it, and how much you tell me, is up to you. But if you keep me in the dark, I'm always going to wonder. I know a lot of it is classified, but you know my security clearances are very high. I'm not going to drown you in sympathy or anything, I just want to know. I need to know."
Jack gave a light nod, staring off at the wall across from him. God, this was one conversation he did not want to have. If he told her what she wanted to know, he would open up a whole can of worms in their relationship. On the other hand, his slip the day he'd been brought back had already opened it up, at least partly. If he wanted to keep her happy, he had to tell her something. And he had no doubt that her fertile scientist brain had come up with worst-case scenarios way worse than anything that had actually happened to him. In the end, it came down to one question: did he trust her enough to reveal that much of himself? He'd only known her for a few months, after all. Granted, they'd been an intense few months, but he'd known Sara for years and had never told her what Carter wanted to know. And look where it had gotten him. He leaned forward to grab his beer again. For this conversation, he thought he'd need it. "Okay."