A/N: Yes, it's back! Apologies for the delay at the end. Set directly after Part Three. Enjoy!
Part Four: Challenge Accepted
"That's all your having, Jules? Can't run with the big dogs?"
He hates Ed. Okay maybe he doesn't hate him but Sam is not pulling any punches the next time they spar. Fists ball uselessly at his sides as the gauntlet is thrown down.
She is a light weight. Ed knows that. Everyone knows that. She gets one beer and she sits nursing it so long that she almost always leaves a third of it in the bottle by the time they leave. She might as well just start ordering a virgin Cuba Libre with Sarge or water like Wordy. But lay a challenge in front of her and she can't back down. Won't.
Ed knows that. Everyone knows that.
Jules Callaghan- super woman. Can't back down, can't admit defeat, can't ask for help. Lord knows she can't need anyone. Sam knows that song by heart. Could sing a few notes to Ed since he has obviously forgotten the chorus.
It's not fair, it's really not. It's exploiting her one weakness, it's like picking on the chubby kid. You just don't do it. Sure, they play around at HQ. Place the bait out there and wait for her to bite. Races from the roof, challenges at the range, and timed events in the gun cage but this is different.
She is a goddamn light weight and Ed fucking knows it.
"Is that a challenge?"
No, just no. Tell her it's not. It's just a joke. Ed practically has a hundred pounds on her. On a mat she could still probably take him; she took down Raf last week during sparring. Sam got to hear him complain about his back for two days. She could take Ed. Just not in a bar.
"You think you're up for it?"
It finally dawns on Sam how much it must rankle Ed that she got selected over him. He is probably overdue, years of exemplary service and yet it's Jules who gets a gala in her honor.
"I'm game if you are." Of course she is. Never met a challenge she could walk away from.
Well, almost never. Turn out their relationship while re-earning a spot on the team was the one challenge too great to tackle.
Sam shakes his head. If he starts thinking about the coffee shop he isn't going to be able to keep sitting here. He needs to be here. Not for Sarge, not for appearances, but because she needs someone that has her back. Just because she never calls for backup, doesn't means she doesn't need it.
Sam tries to ignore the first one. Suggests she slows down on the second one. Maybe stop to eat something on her third. Something with bread to soak up all that Blue Moon and orange slices sloshing in her stomach. It's clear that his words are falling on deaf ears. Not that he can blame her. It's been a hell of a day and she has no earthly reason to listen to him. None at all.
Still he stays on guard. His own beer sits neglected, instead focusing on how her words seems to slow and how she seems to be peeling at the corners. Protecting her is akin to breathing, instinctual. In and out with every breath. He will not fail her, not again. Never again.
She is determined to match Ed drink for drink and while they avoid the hard stuff it is pretty clear that she woefully out of her depth. They are throwing out questions at them, drop rates, shots in a clip, procedures. SRU always likes their games.
"Priority of Life," Spike tosses out. The words reverberate in Sam's head; a hollow drum with the voice of Dr. Toth tossing questions about, sharp ones banging against the edges.
"Civilians, officers, subjects," Ed ticks them off on thick fingers. He is four drinks in and is a stone. "Can you at least try to give me something that a rookie might not know?"
"You didn't let me finish," Spike interjects. "Under the code what would you rescue first? A large pizza, that satanic cat, or a properly fitting toupee for this mess." His finger moves in a circle above Ed's hairless head.
"Easy." He folds his arms, reclining back in his seat, the front legs tipping off the sticky floor. "The pizza because I am pretty sure something tragic happened to that cat. Ain't that right Constable Wordsworth?"
Wordy laughs and salutes Ed with the tip of his water bottle. "I am not admitting anything but let's just say I doubt we will be seeing him again."
The gang hoots and hollers at this. It's a story Sam never really understood, before his time. Her voice is missing from the ruckus.
Instead, she is trying to sip down number five. Her face scrunching at the taste. Why she always gets beer Sam doesn't know. Her face always pales slightly at the taste, and then she is always nibbling on something immediately after like she would scrub her tongue on a Brillo pad to remove the taste.
She has a bottle of red at her house. He asked her about it once. And she told him she was saving it for something special. It's been there for awhile now. The thought makes him sad.
Ed's voice is unusually loud, rebounding across the room. "As for the toupee? Don't need it. Wanna know why?" He waits a beat, making sure he has everyone's attention. "Because I make this look good... unlike some people."
Sam misses Greg's response, too busy mentally tallying up the number of drinks. This bill is going to kill her. He knows she is already underwater with her mortgage and her home improvement projects seems to take what little she has left over. And he know her. She would rather resort to a steady Ramen diet than to give up her sandpaper and paint rollers.
"Jules, you're up," Ed challenges with a nod to the half empty drink in her hand.
"Guys, maybe we better call it a night." Raf is quickly becoming Sam's favorite person, a lone voice of reason.
Jules is wobbly in her chair as she struggles to empty the glass that Sam wants to smash from her weaving hand. Sitting slightly hunched over the table and favoring her one side the way she used to for so many months after she was shot. Sam tries to think if she had done anything that could aggravate it as if she were in danger of ripping stitches instead of it being a years old wound with only a scar left that stays white even when the rest of her darkens in the summer sun. She claims not to even notice it anymore.
Sam isn't so lucky. His souvenir of that day is a nightmare that still causes him to wake sodden with sweat and calling her name.
Spike, who always wants five more minutes, one more drink, one more game of pool, just one last round of darts, doesn't even protest when Wordy seconds the idea. Just starts to gather his jacket. It's a sign of how far gone she is that all Jules can manage is a feeble glare in response to Ed's triumphant smile.
Sam offers to help Jules settle up and discretely switches the tab from her card to his. She will give him hell about it later but at least it's something he can do now to help her.
All he wants to do is help her. Have her.
Jules is just shy of completely wasted when they pile back into Wordy's minivan. She has passed tipsy and that annoying giggling I-can't-walk-in-my-heels phase that seemed to be the only consistent trait of all the girls Sam used to take home and is sadly silent. Doesn't even say a word when Spike squeezes past her into the passenger seat. Just resignedly sits in the second row. She is slow to move and cracks that are normally plastered over with false bravado are beginning to show. Sam swears he will kill someone if she starts crying in front of the team. She works too hard to keep up that tough as nails exterior, a few drinks and it crumbles like day old bread.
She is leaning forward in her seat, shoulders slumped and Sam can see that she is watching the lights blur and move out her window. Her face so very close to the glass that her breath fogs it. When he was a kid Sam would do that on purpose. Blowing hot and heavy breaths to create his own canvas. Quickly drawing smiley faces in the condensation before they disappeared, leaving smudges of greased finger prints that only The General's sharp eyes could see.
Sam wishes he could draw her a smile. Make it last.
"Jules, you okay back there?" Wordy's reflection in the rear-view mirror catches Sam's gaze.
An alarm bell sounds. The hairs raising on the back of his neck, that tightening in his gut. It's the roof again. Her fingers are playing against the plastic of the door handle, dancing back and forth, back and forth. It's never a grip and the automatic locks are engaged but it makes Sam's stomach lurch. He never asked about her mom but he knows. No details but he knows enough. Five kids at home and severe untreated depression, it didn't mix well. It was a litany of sin her whiskey soaked father confessed at his feet one night when they were both camped out besides in Jules' hospital room.
"She looks so much like her mother." Least reassuring words ever. They still make him queasy when they dance around his head on days when she refuses to answer his calls or is unusually quiet, receding to shores he can't reach.
He already knew that. Jules keeps her photo in the drawer of her nightstand. He came across it one night during a frantic hunt for protection. He could see it right away. Same slant of the lips, same jutting chin, same big doe eyes but as far as he is concerned that is where the resemblance ends. He doesn't pretend to understand depression but he thinks suicide is a coward's way out. Jules is anything but a coward. In fact, if pressed, he thinks her mom was selfish and stupid. How anyone could willing leave Jules is beyond him.
"Hey, Jules." His own voice sounds foreign and artificial, a florescent bulb over linoleum floors. "Slide this way. You look like you are going to be sick." He moves a hand around her shoulders and leans her into him. She smells of oranges and beer and sour air. It's not right. His Jules smells of vanilla laden lotion and strawberry shampoo. He would know, somehow everything in his room smells of her. It lulls him to sleep on nights when she is gone.
"I'm fine," she insists but it's dull, no fight left within her. Flame under glass, stifled and smothered, not enough oxygen. The day has been too long, too much. He should have pulled Sarge aside and told him The Goose was a bad idea, he should have stepped in when Ed and Spike started to rag her instead of joining in, stopped her before she even ordered that second drink.
He is suppose to keep her safe, keep her happy. That way he can just keep her.
The speed bumps at the HQ parking lot cause her to shudder against him, the back of her hand pressing tightly to her mouth. He knows that move, seen it once over a bad order of sushi that left her miserable and camped out in her bathroom overnight. He couldn't even get her to leave it. Instead he just brought her a pillow and blanket and stayed with her. Not exactly a shining moment but one of the few where she would allow herself to be taken care of.
That's all he wants. Take care of her. Keep her. Be with her.
He is not exactly asking for the stars; so why does it feel so out of reach?
The car rolls to a graceful stop and he can tell Wordy is doing his best to keep from jostling her too much. The doors open and there is a rush of fresh air. He is just about to help Jules out when Wordy stops him. "It's probably not a good idea for her to drive."
Sam is slipping again. He had no intention of her driving anywhere. He was going to drive her home and tuck her into bed with a bottle of water. He is forgetting to keep up appearances.
"Yeah." His voice is low. He is sick of this- the sneaking, the hiding, The fact that he doesn't even have a goddamn photo of them together.
"I am going to take you home, Jules. Okay?" There is something about the warmth in Wordy's voice and the fact that he is addressing Jules directly that lessens the tensions in Sam's shoulders. She sits, a twisted pretzel of a person in the seat and nods, eyes clenched shut. "Someone will give her a ride to pick up her jeep tomorrow?"
"I will." It's too rushed, Sam knows that. He can't help it. The day is wearing his nerves raw and exposed, a live fray wire left to badly burn whoever comes too close. Someone else from SRU knocking on her door tomorrow would be more than he could handle. Today is more than he can handle.
He makes his way into his car with hands that move of their own volition, cranking the engine but he we doesn't put it into gear until after Wordy's minivan disappears from the gates. He wants to punch something but he settles for an open handed thump against his steering wheel. The horn wincing in pain, a loud blare that he hopes goes unnoticed.
He keeps failing her. Today shouldn't have happened like that.
He was going to take her for breakfast.
He has a lifetime of plans with her he somehow doubts he will ever get to fulfill.
He doesn't go directly to her place. Wordy is a more cautious driver, always obeys the speed limits, always comes to a complete stop. Never broke a rule in his life. And look at him, tremors only kept at bay by medication, a stopgap that will eventually rob him of so much. It is so unfuckingfair that Sam's chest feels heavy, a phantom Kevlar vest weighing down. Sam breaks rules. He had all but demolished the speed limit on his way to the hospital that fateful day. SIU had robbed him of enough time, he wasn't paying any more of it. He had followed enough rules. As it is Sam can make it from HQ to her place in eight minutes flat. Wordy will be lucky to make it in twenty.
Sam doesn't want to go home. Natalie will be there and her endless noise, questions and chatter and concern. He doesn't want any of it. Not tonight. He is tempted to just circle Jules' block a few times. Wait for Wordy to deposit her safely home and then swoop in but it's not the most discrete plan. She had told him that he was getting sloppy last week. Turns out she was right.
He settles on heading to a nearby 24 hour pharmacy. She doesn't even keep Advil at her place which is insane if you ask him. SRU is a job that comes with a certain amount of soreness, muscles that cramp from potions held too long, ankles that ache after a roll on a double drop. He takes four at a time most nights. She just powers through without it, like he can't see that subtle wince as she lowers herself to her sofa or like he doesn't notice how much slower her trek up the stairs is after a hot call.
It's nuts. It's just them. It's not the team. Just them. Sam and Jules. Jules and Sam. But she still won't.
At first he thought it was him, didn't want to admit she was in pain in front of him. Now he thinks it goes deeper. She pulled the same shit at the hospital. Refused meds the first chance she could. He knows there is a story there but he can't ask. He won't because it will only end in another fight. The ones where she tells him to leave and for a split second he thinks she really means it.
And it's not like she will tell him. He can count the number of stories she has told him on three fingers- her dad being a cop, Jason teaching her to shoot, and the time she got busted shoplifting. That's what he knows about her past. That's all. Three stories he can condense down to a sentence.
He makes up for it in other ways. He knows her favorite flower, how she takes her eggs, that she always brushes her teeth before she gets into the shower. He knows that at least one of her brothers will call her almost everyday and she will normally pick up, for her dad she mostly lets it go to voicemail. She says her favorite song is Everybody Hurts by R.E.M but it's actually In My Life by the Beatles. She hums it to herself when she thinks he isn't listening. Puzzle pieces carefully extracted, slowly unraveling the mystery that is Jules.
He goes in a fills a small basket with some essentials- a bottle of Advil, some lemon lime Gatorade, a box of saltine crackers. He still has time to kill so he roams the other aisles, noticing a bottle of hand soap she was low on this morning and adds it to the others. He peruses the cards, eyes catching on the section labeled 'Congratulations' but he doesn't actually pick one up. She wouldn't appreciate it and they can't have any evidence lying around. Somehow he thought with Sarge knowing it would change things, all it does is make it so he is not just potentially ruining Jules' career but Greg's as well. It's not like he can hang her photo in his locker or walk her to her Jeep at the end of the day. All he can offer her is some hangover remedies and some soap she is low on.
It's not fair.
It's not enough.
He pays a sleepy looking cashier and trudges outside, purchases sheathed in a plastic bag reminding him to recycle.
Her home is a one eyed jack-o-lantern. Light emanating from every window on the ground floor, a full toothed grin, and one light streaming from behind the blinds of her upstairs bedroom window, the other window a black patch of a hole. He expected maybe a single light from the living room and her softly snoring on her sofa, Wordy having safely deposited her inside. Instead he can see her home, a single beacon of light amidst slumbering brick giants, from four blocks away.
He pulls into a driveway two houses past hers. It belongs to Mrs. Haverdean, who is a firm believer in star-crossed love and having her walk shoveled every time it snows. Sam was able to iron out a bargain without even needing to use that smile that used to keep everyone wrapped around his little finger.
Sam knocks twice on Jules' ornate door and counts to fifty before producing a key and counts again before turning it in the lock. They have had that fight before and he is not about to rehash it. He had naturally assumed a key meant that he no longer had to knock, boy had he miss calculated.
"Jules." He allows his head access first, peering around the door, wary of phantom cookware being tossed at him. Finding the coast clear, he enters, locking the door behind him. "Jules, it's me. Just came to..." Take care of you, make sure you are okay, help you but he knows better than to say it. There are things that he has learned are best left alone. Her independence to a fault is one of them. Her stubbornness is a close second. They both come to the forefront when she is feeling weak.
He remembers to take off his shoes and tries not to notice how nicely his boots look next to her running shoes. He can picture a lifetime of shoes like that, side by side for the next fifty years. His scuffed and worn because he doesn't care and hers neat because she can't stand to have them any other way.
The third stair protests under his weight, with a groan. The morning seems like a lifetime ago, him sitting there, thinking his world was about to disappear. It didn't. That's all that matters.
He hears her before he sees her. The sound of her retching in her bathroom echoing in the hall. He doesn't say a word as she hunches over the toilet, her hair in a messy knot at the top of her head. Instead he wets a small cloth and drapes it over the back of her neck. The 'I told you so's can wait until the morning.
He will tease her and she will rage and he will wait until she apologizes and somehow in the end she will get him to admit it was all his fault. It's their dance and he knows the steps, loves them even. The way she gets so angry that her face will flush and her breath quicken, her responses beyond her sniper locked control. It's nice to know he gets under her skin. She drives him to insanity; payback should be in equal measure.
Sam doesn't try to rub her back. Instead he just sits there, hands resting on the glaring white tile. Neither of them were raised in that type of home. They didn't grow up with kisses on banged knees and warm arms to burrow into after nightmares. Where he has learned to crave that closeness, she hasn't yet admitted to wanting such things. At least not under the bright lights bouncing off her very white subway tile of her bathroom. Still, on nights where the wind causes her tree to scratch against the panes of her window, he wakes to find her wrapped around him.
He tells himself, it's something.
Tells himself, it's everything.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes over and over. It's not the first time he has heard her apologize but it's still jarring. Admitting fault is not something that comes easily to her. He doesn't ask what she is sorry for; he is not even sure she knows at this point and if she does he is not sure he wants to know the reason.
Honestly, he just wants to hold her. Pretend this day never happened.
Instead he just sits there, resisting the urge to place a reassuring hand on her hunched back. He is pretty sure at some point her whole stomach is inside out. She is still struggling fifteen minutes later against dry heaves that cause her body to strain and furl in a way he hasn't seen since the hospital. Pain wracked nightmares that she would struggle against. He feels almost as helpless now as he did then.
"It's okay," he murmurs after each apology pours from her lips.
It's not okay. None of this is okay. This was suppose to be a good day. They were suppose to have breakfast together, maybe work on her banister a little- she has plans to sand and re-stain it. It was going to be a good day. It was not supposed to end with her curled up in the bathroom.
Eventually, when he think she has thrown up everything she has eaten for the past month, he passes her a toothbrush and helps her to stand on wobbly legs. He holds on to her the entire time she is at the sink. It's familiar in a way he had forgotten. Reminiscent of hospital visits with her struggling to not need his offered support before finally surrendering to the inevitable. He doesn't give her a chance to protest this time. Makes up his mind that he is not going to deal with it tonight and for once she doesn't battle him. Just leans ever so lightly into him, her left hand bracing herself against the counter.
"Thank you," she offers when he helps her to her room. Her bed is still a mess of sheets and pillows, never having got made after Sarge's impromptu visit. It's something that would normally upset her. She hates when he forgets to at least straighten the comforter but she doesn't say a word. Just sits on the edge as he hunts her down some sleepwear.
She is studying her hands when Sam comes back with a shirt that used to be his a few dozen sleeps ago. Now it's firmly hers and he is pretty sure that is the only possession she wouldn't return if they ever broke up. It's soft and thread bare from the number of washes and he loves her in it. He hold it out to her with a lopsided smile, a memory from a few nights ago dancing in his brain, but she doesn't take it.
"What are we going to do?" Her voice is a whisper of desperation.
Anything, anything she wants as long as she never sounds like that again. It makes his chest ache.
"Go to sleep, unless you have other plans." He seals the act with a smirk. He is not ready for this talk, not now. Not ever. "Come on, Jules." He waves the shirt in front of her. "It's late."
Jules' hand pushes the shirt away, instead her fingers close around his, pulling at him, forcing him to sit beside her. "I can't do this."
"What are you talking about?" His heart is hammering out a reel in his chest. Blood rushing to his ears, his life hanging on her words.
"The award, Sarge, everything."
He has lost the string. Part of him screams at him to just get her to sleep but the part of him that could never deal with not knowing forces the words from his throat. "What can't you do, Jules?"
"I can't lose you." Sam hears it, a clear bell of hope chiming in his heart before she dissolves into tears and apologies for some unknown sin. The rest of her words run together, a weave that makes no sense so he focuses instead on her hands, claiming them with his own.
She can't lose him. Something warm rises within him.
"Hey, hey, hey." He forces her to look at him. "We are okay. We are okay," he repeats as much for himself as for her. "Sarge knows and he trusts us."
She is shaking her head 'no'. "No, no. It's just a matter of time-"
"No," he cuts off that thought. That path is dangerous, he is not letting her go there. "Listen. We just keep doing our jobs. It's like you told Sarge. We just keep to the code. We keep it professional at work. It's gonna be okay, Jules. It is."
Sam knows he is selling it too hard, much too hard but he doesn't care. He just wants to curl up next to her tonight and for the rest of his life. To hell with the rest.
She sniffles slightly, it makes her seem suddenly so much younger. "Promise?" Her need for reassurance is unexpected and endearing and dangerous.
He tells himself it is never going to actually come to that. There will not be a moment where her life is in his hands and he will have to choose another. Fate isn't that cruel. They have already been through their trial by fire. He tells himself it will all be okay because he knows. He knows if he says anything else this is over.
There is only one answer.
"I promise."
To Be Continued...
A/N: So massive apologies for the delay in this chapter. Basically I am a terrible, terrible person. I have been out of the fandom loop for awhile and have so many people to PM with more groveling and apologies. Plus I have a book sized list of fics to catch up on. Yes, I suck. I promise not to do it again. Forgive me? Pretty please?
Hopefully the added length makes up for the time spent waiting because this chapter dwarfs all other chapters of Over by at least a thousand words. For those wondering, I am planning on finishing this. Slowly catching up with everything up to Slow Burn. Some moments will be like this, something that my brain has cooked up that clearly happened off screen but still fits within canon. Some moments will be a more detailed look at something actually shown onscreen.
During my hiatus this story was added to many more alert lists and for that I am truly grateful. It really inspired me to get back in the saddle so to speak.
Also as a side note to those who also hold a special place for Power Rangers. I will be finishing Pieces of Then but more importantly I am working on constructing a PR\FP crossover fic that allows both universes to exist as is. It's complicated and is really challenging but hopefully many of you will give it a try. It plays with many themes and I am very, very excited about it.
As always Reviews are Love, Readers are Powerful.
~Del