AN: Jack and Sam are on their way to their first Christmas party as a couple, but there's a bit of a snag… I guess this is chapter… um… 10.5.5? of Fate set during chapter 3 of Celebrate which I guess makes it chapter 3.5 of Celebrate too...
A Rising Tide
Something wasn't quite right. Sam couldn't put her finger on it though. During the past few weeks, there had been a couple damp spots on the basement floor which she'd sopped up with the rug washer. She figured that old freezer of Jack's was finally giving up the ghost and was planning on ordering a new one after the first of the year. But Jack had wanted one of his suits they had stored downstairs out of the way as their bedroom closet was admittedly small and, for someone who wasn't very girly, Sam seemed to have acquired several dresses over the years somehow. Of course, the fact that so very few of them currently fit wasn't lost on her, she thought, as she rubbed her back absently while she went through the metal clothing rack where Jack's suits and some of her less worn clothing was also stored.
She padded across the cold concrete in her stockings and her toes encountered the sensation she disliked the most. Cold and wet stocking. Stupid freezer.
"Jack, that freezer is…. Uh oh."
That is definitely not the freezer, Sam thought, as water burbled up from the drain in the floor when Jack turned on the shower upstairs.
"JACK!" She grabbed a wrench and banged on the thick pipe against the wall that led from the shower drain to the wastewater pipe running under the house. "JACK!"
The water mercifully shut off. The burbling however… did not abate.
"JACK!"
"What?!" Finally, Jack, in nothing but a haphazardly tied towel, reached the bottom of the stairs only to skid to a stop barefoot and stepped in a substance that was most definitely not just soapy water. "Ew!"
"The drain is backing up." Sam supplied as she edged away from the fetid smell rising with the water.
"We need to get this out of here fast." Jack said and jogged up the stairs only to come back with a toilet plunger.
"I'm not sure that will—" Sam stopped when Jack gave her an exasperated look. "Well, let's give it a shot." She said with a shrug. It wouldn't make things worse… probably.
At first, it almost seemed Jack was on to something. Sam got the shop-vac and hosed up the water while Jack forced air into the drain to unstop whatever it was clogging it up. Thinking he was getting somewhere, he put his hand out and made a 'give' motion with his fingers. When Sam handed him the hose, he shoved it in the drain and sucked up what the hose would reach then went back to plunging the drain.
The water stopped and Jack wiped the fresh sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist while making a quick grab for the towel that started to slip loose from its knot.
Sam giggled at Jack's near miss with nudity.
"All right. That's that." Jack said with a huff. "Did you find my dark brown suit?"
"I never got that… uh oh." The water was rising again. Not too quickly, but it had breached the lip of the drain, left open since Jack had hastily tugged the screen off when he pushed the plunger in deep enough to make a good suction.
"Right." Was all he said and with determined resignation, he got back to work plunging and vacuuming the contents of the drain until it seemed to stop rising.
Jack let out a pent up sigh, now sweaty and smelling vaguely of raw sewage. They stared at the drain for several moments while nothing happened in particular.
"Is it done?" Sam wondered out loud.
"Well, I now need another shower so let's find out." He said and tugged his towel off his hips and flung it over his shoulder as he walked to the staircase utterly nude. Whistling.
Sam snorted in amusement rolled her eyes then started giggling helplessly.
"Keep an eye on that, would yah?" Jack called back as he climbed the stairs to the upstairs.
"Right." Sam huffed. "Like I'm going to do anything else."
Three minutes later, she was banging on the pipe again as hard as she could. "Jack! Turn it off! Turn it off now!" She yelled at him through the cold air return, hoping he'd hear her over the running water.
Whether it was the banging or the yelling, the water shut off and Jack returned shortly to find his very pregnant wife desperately suctioning out the drain, in an attempt to get the water to stop rising.
"Shit." Jack huffed and took over again. "I'm going to go dump this thing outside, no use pouring it down the laundry tub drain, it's just going to come back to us." He grunted and carried the nearly full shop-vac tank up the stairs. Fortunately, the basement stairwell came out at the side door and Sam hurried past to unlock the door and hold it for him while he released the hasp on the vacuum and dumped it over into the arborvitae by the door.
"You're going to kill it." Sam said of the evergreen.
"Nah. These stupid things love shit." Jack said with a grim chuckle. "The rabbits that nest under it in the spring might not be fans though."
Sam shook her head.
"Come on, let's see how bad it's gotten while we did this part." Jack said as he dragged the tank back inside and latched the inside but not the screen door, figuring rightly he'd need to do this step again.
They headed back downstairs and gave each other depressed looks when they saw the water was rising again.
"New plan. You keep sucking, your stockings are ruined anyway. I'm going to try to find a plumber."
"Jack, it's five at night on Christmas Eve."
He sighed. "Yah but we can't leave it this way and just go to Hammond's party. I'll call him first and let him know we will be late." He looked at Sam whose nylons were now ruined but her pale sea blue dress was still all right. "Want to get out of that before it gets wet?"
Sam looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Let me know when you've got a plumber." She said and pulled the loose fitting wrap style dress over her head and placed it across his suits.
Jack looked his wife up and down. Now was not the time at all for the thoughts flitting through his head but, damn, pregnancy looked good on her. Shaking his head to clear it of his wayward lust, he turned and marched up the stairs phone held high. "Keep sucking."
"Aye aye, General!" Sam said with a salute and turned on the shop-vac and plunged the hose into the drain and watched in satisfaction as the water once again retreated.
Jack shook his head as he replied to whoever had answered George Hammond's personal line at home.
An hour later, Jack came downstairs with a fairly deep frown on his face.
"Did you get someone?"
He sighed and nodded.
"So?"
"I called over a dozen places before anyone even answered the phone. A guy is coming out in about an hour. It's going to run us twice what it normally would because it's Christmas Eve." He said in disgust.
"Well, we are ruining his or her night too."
"Yah." Jack agreed and turned off the vac so he could drag it back up the stairs.
A bit over an hour later and two more tankfuls of funky water, the plumber finally knocked on their door. Sam hurriedly pulled on a shirt of Jack's and a pair of his boxers, the only thing clean in the laundry basket on the dryer that fit her and wasn't utterly inappropriate for clearing a clogged sewer line.
"Hi folks. I hear you have a bit of a drain problem?"
"Yah." Jack told him and proceeded to describe the highlights of their night. He mercifully left out both of them bailing water mostly nude for past few hours.
An hour after arriving at the house, the plumber hadn't found any clogs under the house and was at the back wall of the basement, snaking the sewer line, as he searched for the draining issue.
"I think I found your problem, folks." The plumber said absently, pointing in the suction tank to a soggy wad of what looked like fabric.
"What the hell is that?" Jack wondered.
"Tampon. They say flushable but they really aren't. Ma'am, I suggest after your pregnancy you put them in the trash can in the future."
"I wasn't…" Sam was about to say she wasn't living there before she was pregnant because, well, she had not been. The weeks she'd been having her period, Jack had stayed at her place so she didn't have to drag a heating pad or anything else over to his place and they just cuddled on the couch while he rubbed her back trying to ease her cramps. He'd done that for so many years that half the time he just showed up assuming she'd want junk food and a back rub.
"Cassie," Jack said with a sigh.
And Sam, who blinked at Jack's logic, suddenly realized how this had happened. When she'd been dating Pete, Cassie had angrily moved in with Jack to finish school. It had only been a few months but it had apparently been long enough for the vintage Craftsman with antiquated plumbing.
"Daughter?" The plumber asked in mild interest.
"Sort of." Jack agreed.
"Well, tell her not to flush them anymore. Your house is too old for those things not to gum up the pipes." He continued working for a bit more then cleaned up what was left of the mess he'd made getting the access pipe open.
Jack wrote the man a check for the ridiculously high bill without sighing or frowning too much. It was now 2100 hours and they were unfashionably late.
"Still want to go?" He asked Sam as they waved goodbye to the plumber from the driveway.
"No, but it's Uncle George's last party in the house on the hill before he moves to DC. We kind of have to."
"Yah." Jack agreed with a sigh. "I'm not wearing my suit." He told her.
"Are you kidding me? I'm not wearing that dress again until it's been washed."
They chuckled and went into the house arms around each other.
Half an hour later, they arrived at Hammond's house that was festively decked out with so many lights and pine boughs it looked like a Home and Garden magazine spread. The party was still in full swing despite the late hour but they figured it would be, most parties at General Hammond's house went on well past 2400.
No one cared at all that they were dressed in comfortable slacks and everyday shirts as everyone had heard why they were so late in the first place.
"We still on for tomorrow?" Daniel asked Jack from where they stood by the fireplace.
"Yah, Cassie will be over first thing in the morning and the kids want to drop by, I hear." Jack said.
Daniel smiled. "Your family has gotten a lot bigger since I first met you, Jack."
"I suppose it has." Jack agreed.
"Merry Christmas, Jack."
"Merry Christmas, Danny." Jack said with a soft smile as he watched his wife talk to Siler's wife about something that had them both smiling.
AN2: I want to thank all my loyal readers throughout the year. I appreciate all your feedback, comments and suggestions. As for my work story... never never NEVER lose track of where your hands are while pulling a wheeled ladder through a store of any kind. All it takes is getting too close to one shelf that isn't set properly because it's gotten damaged through the years to smash the crap out of your hand because you were going at high speed too close to a fixture. Nothing is broken but I have a large purple bruise I'm coddling that spread over 1/4 of my right hand. CBD oil seems to be healing it faster than usual but it's still tender and puffy.
AN3: If you were wondering... yah... much like Motherly... this is based on my actual first Christmas married complete with being pregnant while I bail and MKH dumping the sewage water into the arborvitae. The trees DID love it. Suckers are huge now.