June 2011
It's a much shorter trip this time, and Sam's back home six weeks and three days later. To her surprise, Jack meets her at the airport. She's unsure how she's supposed to greet him, so she's grateful when he takes the decision out of her hands, closing the distance between them and wrapping her in a bear hug.
He murmurs a warm "welcome home" into her shoulder and holds on tight.
She understands now why he made a point of meeting her here instead of waiting to greet her at the apartment after he got off work. Jack knows her well enough to know her brain has been racing at the speed of light for the last six weeks and three days, doubting the decision to continue living together and questioning whether they're simply delaying the inevitable and setting one another up for even greater hurt.
He's here to reassure her that they still know how to be friends. And maybe, just maybe, he's here to see to it that she actually makes it to the apartment.
Jack knows her well enough to guess that she's been freaking out since she boarded the flight to DC.
Sam decides to trust him. After all, in all the time they've known one another, he's never led her astray. She hugs him tightly, relaxes into his familiar hold and breathes in the smell of him that's meant "home" to her for a lot longer than she's allowed to admit.
He lets her go after a long while and transfers her bag from her shoulder to his. Sam lets him lead the way through the crowd, falling in step just slightly behind him, as she's done so many times before. The threat of slipping into awkwardness is just rearing its head when a frazzled looking couple with a gaggle of children in tow cut the two of them off. Jack is forced to slow his pace just enough that Sam pulls even with him.
She wars with herself for a moment, tempted to ease the tension but concerned about sending mixed signals. In the end, Sam decides to go for it. After all, he's already gone out of his way to ease her through the uncomfortable return to a home that feels even less like hers than it did the last time she was here. She snakes one arm around his waist and hooks a finger through his belt loop.
"Thanks for picking me up." She tightens her arm, doing her best to show Jack that he's not the only one making an effort.
The tension drains out of him. One arm slips around her shoulders and tucks her into his side while long, restless fingers trace idle patterns on her upper arm. "Any time."
Sam is under no illusions. Once they arrive at their apartment, the awkwardness will return. It will keep popping up at inopportune moments over the next few days, rearing its head whenever they tread too closely to intimacy or domesticity.
If this is going to work, they'll have to deal with the moments as they come, shoving them aside as best they can. They've done it before. When they first got together, even the smallest act of familiarity that would have been considered inappropriate for a commander and his subordinate had catapulted them deep into awkward territory. With time and practice, they'd learned to deal with it.
They have to trust that the same will hold true this time.
It's odd having her back in the apartment. Three days in, Jack is still trying to remember to put the toilet seat down and squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube and wear pants when he rolls out of bed at oh-dark-thirty to stumble into the kitchen in search of caffeine.
None of these are things he'd concerned himself with when they'd first moved in together. By the time they'd reached that stage in their relationship, she'd already known him so well he hadn't seen much point in being on his best behaviour. Now that they aren't a couple anymore, she has little reason to put up with bad habits developed over too many years of bachelorhood, so he's been trying to behave.
Because God help him, he's missed having her around even if it is just as a friend.
On the fourth day, Jack remembers to pull on a pair of beat up sweat pants before heading into the bathroom. He stops short when he sees the state the room is in. He knows with absolute certainty that he put the seat down – he checked three times before going to bed. He knows he put the cap back on the toothpaste he carefully squished from the bottom of the tube. He also knows he hung up his towel after his shower yesterday morning, and yet there it is, lying on the floor.
Distracted from his reasons for visiting the bathroom, Jack tidies up before shuffling off to the kitchen. If he's going to solve this mystery, he'll need coffee.
Sam is already there, sitting at the table nursing a gigantic mug. He grunts a greeting in her general direction, trusting that she won't take his surliness personally. Sam knows that these days he's hard pressed to be verbal before his first cup of coffee. She calls it The Washington Effect and enjoys teasing him about it just a little too much.
But today, despite being fully aware of how badly The Washington Effect has impeded his ability to communicate effectively first thing in the morning, Sam hits him with a very serious, "We need to talk."
Her tone encourages Jack to gulp the first half of his coffee much faster than is wise, given the steam rising from his mug.
"You can't keep leaving the bathroom like that, Jack."
"I swear I cleaned up last night," he groggily defends himself.
"That's what I'm talking about."
"But I didn't…"
She gets to her feet, plants her hands on her hips and gives him a look that he suspects she kept locked down tight while under his command. "Jack, you can't keep doing this whenever I come back."
Maybe the caffeine hasn't kicked in quite yet after all. "Doing what?"
"Acting like a boyfriend trying really, really hard to convince his girlfriend that he isn't a complete and total slob."
Jack blinks at her dumbly.
Sam rolls her eyes. "How long have we known each other? Do you really think I believe you pick your towels up off the bathroom floor? Or clean up the beer caps you insist on flicking into the far corner of the living room? Or wash all your dishes as soon as you finish with them?"
"Don't forget about the toothpaste."
"The toothpaste?"
"I've been squeezing from the bottom of the tube," he admits sheepishly. He's already busted. There's no point in downplaying how committed he's been to trying to behave like a civilized person.
"Exactly!" she says. "Even I don't squeeze from the bottom of the tube."
"You don't?" Squeezing from the bottom of the tube seems like exactly the sort of anal-retentive behaviour she would diligently engage in.
He doesn't say so out loud, of course, but judging from the expression on her face, Sam can guess where his train of thought has headed. She cocks her head to the side, annoyed, and pins him with the most insubordinate glare he's ever seen from anyone throughout his long and oft insubordinate career.
"How the hell did you keep that in check for all those years?"
"What?"
"Nothing."
Sam rolls her eyes but she's smiling so he can't be in too much trouble. "Look, if this is going to work, we can't spend every waking moment worrying about how we squeeze the toothpaste or whether we washed our coffee mugs before leaving for work or if you left the throw pillows on the floor instead of putting them back on the couch where they belong again."
"Or if you forgot to put the cream back in the fridge again," he adds helpfully. After all, he's not the only one who's less than perfect.
"Or if you left your shoes lying in the middle of the hall and your smelly socks outside my bedroom. Again."
"Or if you got mascara smudges all over the hand towels because you refuse to just buy make up remover like every other woman on the planet. Again."
There's a beat of silence following that final, terse word. Then she starts to giggle and he starts to chuckle and all bets are off.
"We really are terrible at communicating, aren't we?" Sam is grinning like a fool. It reassures him that there are no hard feelings.
"There's a reason we kept Daniel around for as long as we did."
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes again. "The point is we both have bad habits. We can't keep tiptoeing around them and pretending they don't exist, or we'll wind up resenting each other. If this is going to be home, we both have to feel comfortable here."
"You're right." Jack takes a sip of still steaming coffee, eyeing her over the rim of his mug. "I'll stop acting like you're a guest I'm trying to impress."
Her grin softens to a warm, appreciative smile. "Thank you."
"Does that mean…"
"Pants are not optional, Jack."
"Spoilsport."