Descension Back To Normalcy
Grabbing two beers from the fridge, Jack removed the bottle caps with practiced ease and tossed them on the counter. Casting a glance out the window over the sink, his eyes landed on his 2IC, hunched over her knees out on his back deck. With a deep breath, Jack decided to bite the bullet and go talk to her now. Daniel and Teal'c would only be gone for another two hours or so, and Jack figured that the more one-on-one time they for this particular discussion, the better.
His mind made up, he walked over to the sliding glass door and joined her out in the backyard, blinking several times as his eyes adjusted to the harsh mid-afternoon sunshine before padding across the warm wood in his bare feet.
Sam didn't look up as he approached, so he pressed one of the cold glass bottles to the back of her neck, unable to resist the temptation of teasing the patch of bare skin. She started, jerking away from the bottle with a not quite suppressed yelp. Tossing a playful glare over her shoulder, she held out an expectant hand and wrapped her fingers around the proffered bottle. She would rather have forced him into a complete disarmament, but she'd take what she could get.
Settling himself beside her on the top step leading down to the yard, Jack pressed his shoulder against hers, biting back a ghost of a smile when she pressed back lightly. He took a long pull from his beer before speaking. "We need to talk."
"Yes, sir, we do," Sam agreed, running a finger around the mouth of the bottle she was precariously balancing on one knee.
"Actually, Colonel O'Neill's not here right now," Jack stated. When she looked up at him in confusion, he continued, "But Jack would really like the chance to talk to Sam."
"Okay," she nodded in understanding. By removing their respective ranks from the situation, he was putting them on equal footing and granting her free-reign to speak her mind, which she appreciated.
"I think you've got some questions you'd like to ask me?" he prompted, trying to get the ball rolling.
"Why did you…" she began hesitantly. Changing her mind partway through, she snapped her mouth shut and fell silent.
"Ask me," he urged quietly. "We need to clear the air before we can even think about going back out in the field together."
"How could you standby and let the NID destroy my house?" she asked, finally giving voice to the question that had been plaguing her since she'd seen the total devastation that had been wrought on her home.
"Wait, you seriously think I was there for that?" Jack asked, turning his disbelief filled eyes on her.
"You weren't?"
"No!" he stated emphatically. "Within ten seconds of seeing the mini-gate in your basement, I was out the door and on my way back to the SGC. I was hoping I would beat Simmons back to the base and sort everything out with Hammond before he poked his nose into it. Unfortunately, it took you longer than I'd hoped to get back, and by the time you came through, Simmons was already railing away at Hammond and the President."
"Oh," she said quietly, processing this new information. Her fingers began picking at her beer's label for lack of anything else to fiddle with and her attention turned out towards the yard, rather than the man sitting beside her.
"Yeah," Jack agreed quietly, taking another sip of his beer and shifting uncomfortably.
The pair lapsed into silence for a few minutes, each lost in thought. They didn't look at one another; in fact, they were focusing most of their attention on not meeting one another's gaze. Jack could have almost convinced himself that they were simply two people enjoying the late August afternoon, if it weren't for the tension that rippled between them. More than anything, he wanted to crack a joke and break the strained silence, but he knew that Sam was gathering her thoughts and he was loathe to interrupt her. Instead, he settled for studiously examining the birds that flitted from tree to tree through his yard and tried hard not to count each second that went by without a word passing between them.
"I still can't get over the fact that you didn't believe me," Sam finally murmured, breaking the silence. "I've been trying to put myself in your shoes and see where you were coming from, and I know I said I understood, but… I'm still struggling with why it was so hard to believe that an invisible friend followed us back home. It's not exactly the first time it's happened," she reminded, alluding to the Reetu as much as she could without compromising SGC security.
Heaving a sigh, Jack drummed his fingers on the side of his beer bottle and tried to answer the question that had been weighing on both of their minds for days. He could have named any of a dozen reasons, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that they could all be traced back to one simple fact.
"I was waiting for the proof," he finally replied, watching his restless fingers beat their tattoo against the smooth glass.
"Proof," she said flatly, clearly disappointed that he had no better explanation to offer.
"Yeah, I mean, you're the scientist, Carter," he elaborated. "You've always got proof; scans and test results and laws of physics, even when you do have to rewrite them yourself. Even if it's just a series of long, complicated equations that only you understand, there's always proof to back up what you tell me. This time, there wasn't."
"I guess that's fair," she murmured. That a lack of evidence to support her claims was his main reason for not believing her was reassuring somehow. It showed that he had trusted her all along; it was the fact that she hadn't been acting like her logical, scientifically minded self that had led to his skepticism, not any doubt he had in her.
"Can I ask you something?" Jack ventured. A slight turn of his head allowed him to spot her answering nod out of his peripheral vision. "When you did have proof, why didn't you come to me?"
"What…"
"He gave you proof after we took down the cameras," he pointed out. "We would have had to confirm that it was authentic, but you had to know that emerald he made would have been pretty convincing evidence."
"Maybe," she conceded. The words she didn't say hung in the air between them: she had been afraid of coming to him with hard evidence only to be rebuffed again.
"Or when he… descended, I guess," Jack pressed. "The way I understand it, he couldn't have re-ascended afterwards, so he couldn't have made himself invisible again. You could have brought him into the SGC at any point after that."
"If I'd done that, he would have just pretended to be a regular guy from Earth," Sam argued. "And you would have sent me to MacKenzie to be re-assessed." Seeing aliens around every corner was not a good sign, even at the SGC. Given that her sanity had already been in question, she hadn't given much thought to presenting the fully corporeal Orlin to the SGC, where he would have simply denied her claims and probably been on his merry way before she was finished with her next psych eval.
"Good point."
"Are we going to be okay? I mean, really okay?" Sam asked hesitantly after a few heartbeats of silence, afraid of what his answer might be.
"As far as I'm concerned, we already are," he assured, finally turning his head to look at her properly.
His eyes locked with hers and he watched her war with herself, torn between giving up on the last of the hurt and anger that had been lurking beneath her calm, collected exterior for the better part of the last few days or hanging on to that tumult of emotion for a while longer. When her eyes became glassy and she sucked in a shaky breath, Jack knew which side had won.
"C'mere," he instructed gently, removing the beer from her hand and setting the bottles on his other side. Turning his upper body to face hers, he opened his arms to her.
Sam twisted herself sideways on the step and leaned forward, gratefully accepting the hug he offered. Resting her forehead in the crook of his neck, she reached around behind him and laid her hands flat on his back, sliding her palms up until she could press his shoulders closer to her. Closing her eyes, she relaxed into him, letting the arm wrapped tightly around her waist and the thumb that rubbed soothingly over the base of her neck finally convince her that they had moved beyond the rough patch SG-1 had hit in the last few weeks.
Squeezing her tightly, Jack pressed his cheek against the side of her head and breathed deeply, letting the last of the tension that had built up over the last few days dissipate. He'd worried that the harsh words spoken at Janet's house two days ago would come back to haunt him, yet all it had taken was a few brief explanations and he'd earned her forgiveness without any mention of the horrible things he'd said that night. Turning his head, he pressed a gentle kiss into her hair and yet again thanked his lucky stars that she was so forgiving of his frequently short temper and sharp tongue.
"I wish we'd done this days ago," Sam confessed quietly.
"Yes, well," Jack replied lightly. "Let's not dwell."
Sam chuckled and slowly pulled out of his arms, leaving him no choice but to release her. She planted her hands on the stair beneath her and pushed herself to her feet, blinking rapidly to clear the handful of relieved tears that were still threatening to fall.
"Where are you going?" Jack demanded, not quite pouting at her. Colonels did not pout, but sometimes, when they really wanted to get their own way, they came pretty close.
"Just getting comfortable," she informed him with a smile, moving down two steps and sitting on the one below his feet. Stretching her long legs out in front of her and letting the lush grass tickle the bottoms of her bare feet, she leaned back and rested her back against his legs.
"Well then, by all means, please, get comfortable," he replied, a matching smile playing on his lips.
Tilting her head back to rest against Jack's bent knees, Sam closed her eyes and basked in the late summer sunshine, the light breeze occasionally ruffling through her hair. Jack took advantage of the opportunity to study her and was pleased to see that the faint lines of tension that had been etched around her eyes since returning from Velona had finally disappeared. Jack carefully eased himself backwards, moving slowly so as not to disturb Sam, and lay his upper body down on the sun-warmed wood of the deck. His squinted eyes roved the sky as he lounged, taking in the wisps of white that slowly drifted overhead, carried on the gentle breeze that danced across his skin every once in a while.
For the first time in weeks, Jack truly believed that things were good between him and Sam. They had finally had the heart-to-heart they had so desperately needed; the tension that had lingered after each previous conversation touching on recent events was absent now. They'd managed to resolve their issues with a few days to go before they returned to active duty, leaving them free to enjoy their remaining downtime with Daniel and Teal'c, as well as each other.
A/N: All right people, we're almost there! There's just one more chapter to go. Once again, a huge thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story and cookies for everyone who has reviewed!! : )