Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, I just play in other people's imaginations.
Jigsaw by Moonlight
jigsaw: (verb) to arrange or place in an intricate or interlocking way
Cam was flipping through the channels for the third time when the panel by his door buzzed. Leaving the tv on The Weather Channel, because sometimes he actually did manage to fall asleep to that, he got up from the couch to answer what he assumed was going to be elderly Mrs. Harrigan again having forgotten her key at her husband's nursing home. "Forgot your key, Mrs. Harrigan?" he asked, holding the button down.
"Not Mrs. Harrigan, Cam," a familiar female voice said. "Sorry I didn't call first but I'm not sure I meant to come here. Do you have alcohol?"
"Carolyn?" He pressed the other button to let her into the building, then leaned against his open door to wait for her.
"You never answered," she said as she reached the top of the stairs on his floor. "Do you have alcohol? I hope I didn't walk all the way up here and you don't."
She seemed steady enough on her feet that he was pretty sure she hadn't already been drinking. But there were still some confusing things. "It's the second floor, Carolyn," he pointed out. "'All the way up here' seems like an exaggeration. Also, why the sudden, deep need for alcohol?"
She blinked at him. "I just went on a date with my parents. They are now at my house. They were holding hands and drinking wine in my kitchen when I left. Please don't make me go drink alone in a bar, Cameron."
He stepped back and waved her in, shivering at the recent memory of having been home to Kansas for his parents' wedding anniversary and finding himself entirely too close to parental romance for comfort. "Mi cerveza es tu cerveza."
Carolyn took her shoes off just inside the door and looked curiously around his apartment, finding it surprisingly tidy for a bachelor pad. There were a stack of fiction library books on the coffee table, a PlayStation and a shelf of games and DVDs under the television, antique maps in frames on the walls, photographs on a bookshelf in between what appeared to be mostly upper level military strategy and aeronautical textbooks, and a jigsaw puzzle spread on hardwood floor beneath the large, main window. "You could've just said 'my beer is your beer,'" she said as she followed him around the breakfast bar and into the kitchen.
"Where's the fun in that?" he said, ducking behind the fridge door and emerging with two bottles of Heineken.
"Talk to me in Spanish and then give me Dutch beer. I suppose that's fun." She paused before accepting the bottle opener. "Was I interrupting something? I should ask that first."
Cam gestured vaguely at the gray plaid pajama pants he was wearing and then toward the television where Locals on the 8s was explaining that there were thunderstorms predicted for Colorado Springs for the next twenty-four hours. "Yep. I was very busy, can't you tell?" He reached over and pried the cap off her bottle since she wasn't taking the opener. "Cheers, Carolyn."
She touched the neck of her bottle to his. "Cheers, Cameron." Swallowing a mouthful and taking a step back, she looked at the colorful artwork attached by magnet to his fridge. "Do you have kids I don't know about?"
"Two nieces," he chuckled, setting his beer on the breakfast bar. "Brenna and Mila. They're seven and five. I don't see them often but we… send each other mail twice a month."
"So you're penpals with your nieces? That's adorable."
He offered a sheepish grin and leaned against the sink. "Are you hungry? I have frozen pizza or we could order Chinese or something."
"Frozen pizza sounds perfect," she said over the growl her stomach gave. She'd technically been at dinner with her parents but it was hard to have an appetite when you long-divorced parents were staring at each other like lovesick teenagers. She was standing closer to the fridge and got the pizza out, pulling the perforated strip that tore as it always did. "I am sorry that I just showed up and started demanding things. It's not my finest moment and I kind of feel like I should just go."
"You can if you want, but I wish you wouldn't." He set the oven to preheat.
Her stomach fluttered like it belonged to a nervous teenager. "Okay."
Cam smiled at that, trying to hide it by taking another drink. "If you're staying, do you want something less… formal to wear?"
Carolyn had almost forgotten she was wearing a herringbone pattern fitted dress. It wasn't particularly comfortable, especially for relaxing, and she hadn't thought about grabbing other clothes "I don't want to keep demanding things."
"I offered," he said over his shoulder, already on the way to his bedroom. He returned a minute later with a small stack of clothes and a hanger on the top. "Wear whichever you want, and I thought you might want to hang up your dress so it doesn't get wrinkled or something." He pointed out the bathroom door and said she could use the bedroom if she'd rather do that.
She went to the bathroom, because she needed it anyway and because she wasn't ready to see his bedroom. He'd given her blue pajama pants, gray shorts, a gray t-shirt, and a blue Air Force sweatshirt. She left the shorts folded on a shelf in the bathroom, and her dress hanging from the shelf, and carried the sweatshirt while she wore the t-shirt and pants. "Are all your clothes blue and gray?" she asked as she got back to the kitchen.
"Ha ha," he laughed dryly, "and no. Most of my workout stuff is, though, because it's Air Force issue."
"Of course," she said, with a teasing roll of her eyes.
He made a face back at her. "Anyway those were the first two pants that had ties so… you're welcome. Can I make an odd request?"
"Odder than me turning up at your door and demanding alcohol?"
"Possibly?" he said with a shrug. He was taking a risk, he knew, of Dr. Lam taking something from the request that Carolyn might not but he couldn't see a way around it. "Do you mind if I sit on the floor while we eat?"
She opened her mouth then closed it, squinting at him in confusion. "No? I don't mind. Are you okay?"
Leaning on the counter, he picked at the edge of the label on his bottle to avoid looking at her. "Yeah. My back and hip are… kind of spasm-y and it helps to sit on the floor."
"Is it worse than usual?"
"No. Wait. How do you know there's a usual?" He realized he might have given away more than he wanted and refocused his attention on the Heineken label, hoping it looked like nonchalance.
"I'm a doctor, Cam, and I know how the human body works. It's a funny thing about doctors, you know. We absolutely know that our patients will lie to us but we can see the truth in scans, x-rays, and other tests." She crossed the small space and stood beside him, leaning against the counter while he leaned on it. "But if it's not different than usual and it's not getting in the way of doing your usual things, it's not a problem, is it?"
"So you're not going to make me go on desk duty until I get a physical or something?"
She looked down at him. "Do you need to go on desk duty until you get a physical?"
"No." He said it a little more emphatically than he'd meant to, and murmured an apology.
"I trust you not to put your team in danger because of pride, to be the judge of when a thing might be a problem and when it might not. So how about we agree that if you want to try and figure something out, or it gets worse, you come to the infirmary but for tonight, we eat pizza on the floor."
"It's a deal," he said with relief, pushing off the counter to get plates. "You can sit on furniture if you want, though."
Carolyn wandered into the living room and turned down the offer, spotting a small, low table beside the puzzle spread on the floor and considering setting up there. "I don't mean to be rude but… the floor is kind of an odd place for a puzzle."
He came up beside her and set his beer and a pair of napkins on the low table. "When I can't sleep, I make puzzles. If I turn on a light or stand to do it, I wake up too much. So I use moonlight."
"And does it help?"
He shrugged and stepped around the bottom of the box that held all but the frame pieces. "Sometimes I go back to bed and sleep. Sometimes I don't, but I still feel… rested. Teal'c was here and I explained it to him, he said maybe it's like kel-no-reem or meditation."
"That makes sense," she said, wondering about the things that kept him from sleep that weren't in his medical files. When she came to Stargate Command, she'd tried to read and learn only what was relevant to the health and safety of the teams and staff under her supervision, leaving personal histories and issues from their pre-stargate lives private unless an issue came up. All their histories were there, collected and cataloged, but in the close, unique work of the base, she wanted them to have their secrets as much as they could. "You don't mind if we sit here?"
"Nope. You can even put pieces together if you want."
Cam couldn't help but notice the way the moonlight made Carolyn's hair seem to shimmer as she leaned to see if a piece fit into progress they'd made on the waterfall section of the puzzle. He wasn't sure why she'd come to him in her flight from her parents, but he wasn't sorry she had. Inability to settle on something to watch, his back and hip spasms, and general anxiousness since he got home earlier that morning had all signaled that it would be a sleepless night. And it was better because she was there.
He tried to stop thinking about her shimmering hair and got to his feet. "I'm getting water… and cookies, do you want some?"
"I didn't want to ask if you had anything for dessert," she laughed, "so yes, please. To both."
He returned a minute later with a plate of cookies and two glasses of ice water.
Carolyn picked up a cookie and examined it, then took a bite. It was soft, chewy, and so chocolate-y that she sighed happily before she could stop herself. "What kind of cookies are these and where did you buy them?"
"Triple chocolate chunk and I made them," he said, sitting down across from her and reaching for one of for himself.
Vaguely concerned her eyes were comically wide, she tried not to gape at him. "You made these? You bake cookies?"
Cam bit his lip and hoped she couldn't see his blush in the low light of the room. "I did. I do. Are you surprised?"
She shook her head, unable to answer right away because her mouth was full of chocolate-y goodness. "No," she said finally. "Well, maybe yes. I know you make macaroons but I thought that was, like, it. Or something."
"That's all my grandmother taught me to make. I know more than that." He felt silly sometimes, with the things he did to relax because they felt so out of character for the other part of his life that seemed to define him more. Only Teal'c knew about the puzzles and he let everyone assume macaroons were it. He was nervous about Carolyn knowing both, until he looked up from the piece he was turning in his fingers and saw her smiling at him. "What? Do I have something on my face?"
"No." She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. There was anxiety in his eyes, she thought, and she wanted to say the words to make it go away. "No, I just… I still feel like I should apologize for busting in on your personal life."
"Please don't. I'm…" He didn't want to say it was lonely in his personal life sometimes. "I like that you came here."
Carolyn smiled and reached for another cookie, swearing under her breath when her phone buzzed where she'd left it with her bag on the table by the door. She took her cookie with her to check it.
"Parents?" Cam asked.
"Mm-hmm. They've apparently noticed I left and are worried they made me leave."
He chuckled and drummed his fingers on the windowsill. "You can use me as an alibi. Tell them you'd had plans with a friend and just put them off to have dinner with them."
She swallowed and cleared her throat. "Really?"
"Yes, really. Wouldn't have offered if I didn't mean it."
She texted her mother back to say just that. Then she read her mother's response aloud. "But how long will you be?"
Cam stretched his legs out and bit the inside of his lip. "You can stay as long as you like, Carolyn," he murmured.
More bold than she'd felt in a long time, and a little unnerved by the idea that it might be influenced by her parents' apparently renewed romance, she told her mother she might spend the night with her friend because they were in the middle of something and still wanted to watch a movie. "I'm safe, Mom. I promise. Love you," she said in a final text before she set her phone down. "So where were we, Cam?"
Note: Thanks for reading! If you've made it this far, I hope you'll let me know your thoughts & if you've made it this far and are thinking you might like more... there are more chapters to come!