Setting: During Season 8, just after 'Citizen Joe' (8.15) but before 'Reckoning' (8.16).
Summary: Jack isn't coping too well with the idea of Pete and Sam getting married. Sam/Jack angst.
A/N: Hey, guys, look! I wrote angst! Actual angst! I'm so proud of me. This was written while listening to Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event late last night, and for once it doesn't actually have a fluffy ending. Enjoy!
The party was dying down now, the crowd of well-wishers engulfing the happy couple dwindling as more and more people staggered out the door into waiting taxis – the women in high-heeled shoes they probably never got much chance to wear, the men relishing the opportunity of being allowed to escort them out, arms round their bare shoulders excusable on this occasion as they stepped into the cool night air full of champagne and celebration. Excusable for them, anyway.
With a frown, Jack turned away from watching the weary revellers trickle out. Most of them needed to be back on base by 5 am, which left them... how long exactly? He checked his watch. Midnight. Or as good as, anyway. Well, they were Air Force; they'd survive. Focusing (with some difficulty) on the bartender, Jack motioned for the man to bring him another beer, downing the last few inches of his current one before setting it down unsteadily.
There'd been champagne, earlier, too, but he'd left his second glass on a table somewhere, after the initial toast. The damn stuff had gone straight to his head, unlike the beer he'd had to get rid of the awful taste of cheap champagne. And then he'd had another beer, to wash his food down, and one more to escape another glass of champagne passed round on a tray when they'd toasted again at the cake-cutting. He couldn't remember if that was his second or third since then, but it didn't matter – he'd been hazy since that damn champagne anyway, so one more beer couldn't hurt, right?
With a swig of fresh beer, he spun on his bar stool to search for Daniel in the crowd. He knew where Teal'c was; he'd positioned himself by the buffet the second he'd finished delivering his congratulations.
Yep, there was T, finishing another paper plate full of food. Using the bar to steady himself, Jack rotated a little further, scanning the dance-floor for Daniel. The archaeologist didn't handle his drink nearly as well as Jack did, so the team tried to keep an eye on him when they all went out together. Except Carter was a bit preoccupied – Jack could see the cluster of people still huddled around her table from the corner of his eye, and turned away. For no reason, of course. Teal'c looked pretty absorbed in a chicken wing, as well, so it was up to Jack to do the 'commanding officer' thing and assess whether Daniel needed to be taken home.
When Daniel was nowhere to be seen on the dance-floor, however, Jack glanced over to the veranda. Maybe Danny-boy had gone for some fresh air by those unusually bright, twinkling lights that blurred Jack's vision too much to see past them.
Jack stood – or intended to – but that damn champagne made his legs give way beneath him, and then the flimsy bar stool came crashing down with him when he tried to use it to steady himself, so he ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor, bottle still intact but its contents now all down his shirt and jeans.
Gripping the bar firmly, he scrambled to his feet, still clutching the empty bottle, as he avoided meeting the bartender's gaze, glancing instead around him at a sea of concerned and amused faces in the silence of a break in the band's set.
"Just this damn knee of mine. Don't worry about it." he slurred at somebody nearby who had rushed to help him up. Siler, maybe. He wasn't really paying attention to whoever it was as he scanned the room, then stopped.
The crowd had parted at last to let her through and she stood looking at him, across the room but still close enough for him to see the mix of expressions on her face – concerned, then quizzical, then, as his eyes met hers, almost afraid.
She bolted, vanishing back to her table in a whirl of white fabric and blonde hair. The band at last resumed playing, starting some song about 'forgetting yourself for a while', and Jack managed to stumble over to the sliding doors out onto the veranda (which were, mercifully, already open) as the piano kicked in. All thoughts of finding Daniel were gone, consumed by his desperate need to get away from those blue eyes, wide as she turned to esacpe the sight of him. To go back to him.
The wood of the railings he now leant on was rough against his shaking hands, and in severe need of a fresh coat of paint. Flakes of brown, glossy, pigment caught on his sleeve as he shifted into a more comfortable leaning position, fluttering onto the decking. The view past the railings was at least a comfortingly familiar one, though.
At least Shanahan had gotten the venue right, he thought. This whole event smacked of the cop's own interpretation of Sam, rather than the kind of thing his Sam – no, the Sam he knew, not his Sam, never his Sam – would like. Jack doubted she'd had much say in it at all.
Or maybe she had. Who knew what this new Sam wanted? The new Sam who wore dresses, locked her bike permanently in her garage, and rewarded stalker cops by accepting their marriage proposals? Maybe that Sam wanted a big party with cake and and champagne and a band playing every hit and ballad from the 80s – as if it were their actual wedding, not just an engagement party.
Maybe Pete had changed her just that much.
Jack couldn't bear to think of the alternative: that this new Sam wasn't new at all, that she'd always been like this and he just hadn't noticed – hadn't known her well enough.
Except that was ridiculous, because Jack had known her over 7 years now, and surely he would have seen this side of her by now if it were really a part of her, right? And then that part of Jack's mind that was a total jackass started in - like it always did when he was alone and drunk and thinking of Sam – and reminded him that she might not have let him get that close since that time with the damn Tok'ra and their stupid Za'tarc detector.
Jack kicked the wooden beam in front of him in frustration and was rewarded with a kind of numb pressure in his toes, indicative of the fact that he'd probably find it indescribably painful walking tomorrow. A string of expletives escaped his lips, but there was nobody out here to offend. He was alone, as always, while the rest of his team was in there having fun and celebrating Carter's bad life choices.
With a sigh, Jack shifted his weight onto the other foot and stared out into the darkness. It didn't matter that he couldn't see more than a few feet away; he knew this park like the back of his hand. The swings Cassie had adored as a kid were over to his left, right by where the ice cream stand would open for summer vacation in a few months' time. To the right was the bench where, just last week, Jack had met with Joe Spencer and his wife after the poor guy had snapped and broken into Jack's house, disrupting what would have been a nice day of beer omelettes and The Simpsons.
With a pang in his gut that was probably due to the champagne, he remembered who he'd been on the phone to at the moment he'd realised there was a gun pointed at him.
"Dammit Carter!" he thought. Or he thought he thought it. Maybe he said it out loud. He didn't care. Damn Carter and her being in all his memories. All the good, recent ones, anyway.
"Sorry, Jack... I, uh, didn't meant to..."
Well, apparently he had said it aloud, and Carter was somehow here to hear it. He could hear the hurt in her voice as she faltered, unsure of what exactly she was apologising for. He wished the bottle in his hand wasn't empty, just so he could avoid speaking for a few seconds longer. But it was. He'd lost it when he made a total fool of himself by getting drunk and falling over at her engagement party. No wonder she'd turned away so quickly.
He heard the clack of her heels against the decking as she hesitantly moved closer.
"Jack?" God, he hated it when she called him Jack. He was always dying or, at the very least, pitiable in some way. Like now.
She spoke again, in the same unsure, concerned tone as before. Like she was afraid of him. Or what he might say. She stopped moving now, the clack of her heels gone, but she was just behind him, so close he could smell her perfume. Something floral, but not cloying. Maybe it was... earthy? Hell, he wasn't the kind of guy that knew about perfumes. It suited her, whatever it was... but he was glad she never wore it to work. That kind of thing made it very difficult to distinguish between Major – sorry, Colonel – Carter, his second-in-command, and Sam Carter, the woman with the sky-blue eyes and blonde hair and a pretty damn good figure. The woman he might love.
"I... I just came out to tell you they found Daniel passed out in the women's bathroom. Teal'c's driving him home."
He nodded slowly, still unable to speak despite the way both the crisp air tugging at his collar with icy tendrils, and her presence were sobering him up a fraction.
"Do you want me to call you a cab?"
No, that was not what he wanted. What he wanted her to do was tell him she wasn't really marrying Shanahan, because she didn't want to... because there was somebody else she loved.
And hey, he thought, while we're playing the 'impossible' game, how about a change in the frat regs and a honeymoon on Abydos, too?
He shook his head in lieu of expressing what he felt. That kind of thing usually worked; they'd push each other away until they actually thought there was nothing between them at all. And apparently that was true now.
This time, however, it looked like she was gonna push back.
"Jack." Soft, careful, calming. "What's the matter?" Like she didn't know.
Well, he was damned if he wasn't gonna push back even harder.
"I'm drrrr-unk, Carter." He couldn't call her Sam without dredging up a whole host of painful memories. He just couldn't. "Thought someone as smart as you'd have figured that out." He'd not meant to slur it quite so bitterly, and he felt her recoil, taking a step back from him.
As he gripped the rail for support, he turned to face her, dragging his gaze up from the ground where it had fallen and, in doing so, accidentally taking her in properly for the first time all evening. And boy, did it hurt. She looked stunning.
Her shoes weren't actually all that high compared to some of the other women's tonight – maybe an inch or so, in a pale blue that matched her eyes perfectly, with straps that criss-crossed up her feet and around her pale ankles. What he could see of her legs was pale too, although her arms, neck, and face had a light tan, and a dusting of freckles – a hazard of wearing BDU trousers and combat boots on hot planets.
Her dress started just below her knees, the hemline rippling in the slight breeze sweeping across the deck. It was just a plain white sundress, with a halterneck and a neckline he had to fight himself to look away from, but she'd covered it with a light blue denim jacket and, though he missed the days when she'd wear leather, not denim, he couldn't help but admit she looked good in it. Very good.
Short, manicured nails wrapped around the glass of tonic water in her left hand, clutching it like a crucifix or something. Was she still acting scared of him?
His eyes trailed up her neck then, and he was startled to find her looking hurt.
"Jack..." And there it was - that pleading tone she rarely used. And now she was using it to call him Jack again, not refusing to leave a doomed planet, or begging him to listen to the symbiote in her brain, or even asking him to leave her behind a goa'uld forcefield.
And it killed him. It really did.
But then, so did her marrying Pete. Okay, it shouldn't. But it did.
"Shouldn't you be getting back to your fiancé?"
The urge to look away from her wide blue eyes was dulled by the champagne – and, let's face it, an awful lot of beer – so he managed to steady himself, blurrily focusing on her as she blinked back tears and bit her lip. God, he wanted to kiss her right then. To make her smile and look up at him in that way she did that made him love her more and more each time...
And then, in an instant, her face hardened. He saw her jaw set, her lips purse, her frown form over darkened eyes. It was her 'scum of the universe' glare. He hated that look. It always made him want to shoot whoever had caused it. Only this time it had been him. She spoke before he could break her gaze, in a hard imitation of his own bitter tone.
"You know what, sir?" She spat his title and he flinched at the harshness of it. "I should be getting back to Pete. You can walk home for all I care." Giving him a final contemptuous glance, she turned on her heel to storm back inside.
"CARTER!" his yell – louder than he'd intended – stopped her for a second. It was probably just a reflexive thing born of 7 years under him – dammit, poor word choice there – as his second-in-command. "Carter, come back?" He really was sorry now, as the cold air finally managed to slap some sense into him.
She looked over a denim-clad shoulder, eyebrow raised but still with that venomous look in her eyes, like she couldn't wait to leave.
He blinked to regain the rest of his focus. She looked like she was about to start tapping her foot in annoyance. Not that he'd ever seen her do that, but that was the kind of thing women did, right? Sara used to do that when she was pissed at him. Before she stopped reacting to him altogether.
Finally, his words forced their way out.
"Why?"
Her anger was in no way diminished by his pitiful offering.
"Why what, sir?" Proper enunciation had never been so cutting as when she used it then. Dragging out more words, he tried again.
"Why... are you marrying him?"
Her eyes flash steely blue as she took a few quick steps towards him, her drink sloshing over the deck and her hand in her haste. He could see more tears forming in her angry eyes, barely heard her next words over his urge to wipe them away and embrace her.
"Because I can!" Okay, surely that wasn't the best reason she could give him, in that fierce whisper she'd now adopted, was it? "Because he loves me, and he cares enough to tell me!" Oh. "Because if this were our engagement party, he wouldn't get drunk and ruin everything with his idiotic self-pity!" Her voice had risen on the last part, but cracked into angry sobs on 'self-pity', as Jack stood there, blinking and confused.
She gave him one last angry glare, filled with other emotions Jack couldn't even identify, before she stormed off properly. He vaguely heard Pete asking what was wrong, her making up some lame excuse about twisting an ankle in her shoes, before Pete led her away with a firm arm around her shoulders.
That damn champagne.
A/N: Okay, maybe it was a little OOC and he's kind of an ass in this... but he was drunk, and she'd probably had a bit of champagne too, so it was bound to be a little OOC, right?