Author's Note: Research for this story began on May 19, 2010. That, folks, is how long a story like this – for me – takes to come to fruition. Now we've begun the last section of this story and I find myself getting nostalgic for all the things I could have done with it. I'm wishing I'd written it differently. I'm wishing it were longer.

That said, I'm so glad I've written it the way I have and that it *isn't* longer because I'm pretty sure some of you would have hunted me down for that – especially during those early, really rough chapters when many of you were ready to pull your hair out over the slow evolution of Sam's recovery.

Mostly, though, I'm thankful I've left so much creative room in this Universe for supplemental stories because I'm getting quite sad to think of leaving this behind. So please, continue to indulge me for four more chapters of this (increasingly fluffy) tale. After that we'll come back around to things that deserved more detail and consideration. Because really, at this point, I just can't not write more.

Part VII: Love

"I think it's time to talk about what's going to come next."

"Sure," Natalie says easily. "In what way?"

"It's…Jack and I are engaged. I need to know how to get over my hang-ups so I don't have to keep shutting him down."

"Is he putting pressure on you?"

"No!"

"But you feel like you keep 'shutting him down'?"

"Well, I mean…he hasn't exactly asked for anything…"

"So what's brought this up?"

"It just seems like sex is the next logical step."

"From where, Sam?"

"We're…kissing," and all of a sudden Sam feels like a teenager. She groans and buries her face in her hands. "Why do I feel like I've never done this before?"

"Firstly, sex is not the next logical step from kissing. There are lots of available steps between what you're doing and where you want to be. And I'd encourage you to stop at all of them. Not just because they're healthy," Natalie says as she reaches out and puts an encouraging hand on Sam's forearm and waits until she makes eye contact, "but because they're damn fun, too.

"Take your time, Sam. You've got plenty of it. And Jack doesn't strike me as the guy that's going to rush you."

"He's not," she concedes. "He's wonderful. Which is why I feel so bad putting him off."

"You guys are around 7 or 8 on the Stages of Intimacy scale. From here, things progress pretty seriously, pretty fast. I'm going to give you a book. I want you to look through it. You can decide which stage you're on and if you skipped anything important you might want to go back to. But take your time. Explore those remaining stages when they feel right. And you're going to be fine. But talk to him along the way. Tell him what you're feeling. Trust him to help you. That's all he wants to do, Sam, is help you."

"I'm definitely not ready yet."

"But you want to be ready. And Sam, that's really something."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A commercial comes on and she stares mindlessly at an ad for a laundry detergent she says doesn't work – at least, that's what she said the last time he brought it home. "Hey," he says and jostles her feet with the hand that had only been offering warm pressure before.

She looks at him and smiles lazily. "What?"

"What if I wanted something but wasn't sure how to ask you?"

She tenses a little under his hand and he strokes her soothingly. "What is it?" she asks.

"Well, see, that's the thing. I don't know if I should ask you because I don't know how you'll react."

She seems to consider him carefully – the way he's seen her look at a broken crystal in a DHD – and then decides. "I think I'd want to know what you want to know."

He nods. "Okay. Well, let me start by saying it's okay if you want to say no. I won't be mad or upset."

"This is sounding pretty ominous."

"Not ominous. Just…important."

"Okay," she drags the word out with her confusion.

He strokes his hand up her shin, carful to not wrap his hands around her ankle the way he did one time that made her instantly pull back and away from him with apologies and hurried words about shackles. "I offered you my bed when I'm not in it, to maybe help you sleep when I'm away."

She nods, eyes wide.

"I want to offer you the same, when I'm in it, too."

She exhales loudly. "You mean, sleep together?"

"Yeah. What do you think about that?"

She's quiet for a long moment.

"I don't mean tonight, Sam. I mean think about it. Think about how you'd feel about it."

She relaxes under him. "I will. I'll think about it." She offers him a tentative smile.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A week later she ends a kiss almost as soon as it begins and he realizes she's been doing that for a few days, at least. "Everything okay?"

"Sure," she says flippantly. "Why?"

He decides to try out his powers of clairvoyance and hope for the best. "I meant it when I said you can say no. But I also meant sleep together. You're not ready for," he pauses for just a moment and curses his discomfort, "sex."

"But you are," she says. "And it's not fair to you."

"I also meant it when I said I didn't care about the sex."

She raises an eyebrow and he really wishes Teal'c hadn't taught everybody to communicate that way.

"I'm serious Sam. I like sex. I love you. No matter what, I'm marrying you – you're not getting out of that." He pauses to smile at her. "There's more than one way to skin a cat and if I've got to spend the next thirty years getting myself off then that's the way it is."

"But it's not fair," she says strongly as if he doesn't understand.

"I think I'm the best judge of what I find fair."

"Eventually you'll resent me."

"Says who?"

"Says common sense," she fires at him.

"Okay," he relents. "Clearly we're not ready to have this conversation."

"And I'm not ready to get in your bed."

He raises his hands in supplication. "Fine. But it's an open invitation. And in the meantime, I miss you."

She steps into him. "I've missed you, too." She presses her mouth against his and kisses him languidly, the pressure he'd apparently applied gone for the moment.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Later she lies in an otherwise empty bed and thinks about the look on his face when he told her he loved her. So guileless was he, so sure and unapologetic, so open and so very forthright, she wasn't quite sure what to do. She did nothing; he didn't seem to mind. They'd kissed, slowly, deeply, made up for the time she'd been denying them all week. He didn't push her. Or rush her. He didn't pressure or cajole her. He seemed to be, as he'd promised, neither mad nor upset. He truly meant not to influence her decision.

And so maybe she can feel the way his pulse thrums when they touch. And maybe he gets aroused when they kiss for a long time. But his arousal isn't insistent; it is, simply, a part of him he seems willing to appreciate yet mostly ignore.

She considers it all quite carefully, actually.

Minutes later, when she slips into bed next to him, he merely puts his book on the bedside table, threads his fingers through hers and turns out the light.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He wakes with her next to him. Face down on the bed, turned towards the other wall, still her hand is flat on his chest over his heart. He covers it for a moment, then slips out of bed without disturbing her.

When he's done in the bathroom, he can't help but stand in the doorway and watch her laid out across the bed as she is. Her hair, finally in something resembling the style she'd had when they met, in a tangled golden halo around her head. She sleeps in a tank top and he can see the muscles of her arms and shoulders, clearly defined. She looks healthy. Strong. She looks exactly like the woman he's pictured in his bed for longer than he'd care to admit to.

He realizes everything he's told her is true. He wants her. He does. It's a strong and yearning ache inside him, the need to share with her everything about the way he loves her. But if this is it – if this is all she can give him – it's still more than he ever thought he'd get and he's fine.

He sits down on the bed next to her, in the bend of her waist, and trails his fingertips down the indentation of her spine. She stretches like a cat underneath his hand and curves her body around his hip. "Good morning," she purrs.

He trails his fingers from her newly exposed arm from shoulder to wrist. "I like touching you in the mornings. You're all warm and soft."

"Jack O'Neill," she says with a smirk, "that was an incredibly sappy thing to say."

He grimaces at her. "Here I am trying to be nice and you're giving me hell."

She curves around him further and presses a kiss to his leg close to his knee. "You're right. It was very nice."

"We're going off world today to retrieve SG-19. I'm going to be late coming home. I don't want to startle you when I come to bed."

"It's been a week," she says with a yawn. "I'm used to you moving around."

"Okay." He leans down and kisses her hairline, now fully aware that she won't kiss him until she's brushed her teeth. "I'm getting in the shower."

"I'll make coffee," she says but closes her eyes and snuggles deeper into the warm bed.

He smiles and leaves her be, perfectly content to leave Samantha Carter in his bed for a few more precious moments.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She hates to admit it but she really does sleep better in his bed – even when he's off world. His retrieval mission turned into an overnight when Daniel noticed some interesting MALP readings that led them off on a seven-klick hike during which Mctierney sprained his ankle. She only heard the story second hand through Janet but she hears Daniel has digital photos of the young Captain being carried by Teal'c.

She rolls over into the cool space on Jack's side of the bed and pries her eyes open. It's early morning she can tell by the way the shafts of light hit the place where the ceiling and walls meet. She looks over at the clock on his bedside table – set ten minutes faster than hers that is set correctly – because even though he knows it's fast, the jolt forces him to spring out of bed. Not that he's springing out of bed so much these days she thinks with a sly grin. No, these days he's much more likely to find her and pull her into him, fitting their bodies together like puzzle pieces. He doesn't push her, but he likes to stroke her skin and let his fingers play across the places that are creased from the sheets.

She can almost feel her skin tingle in memory of the fingers that aren't there to stroke her.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He hadn't counted on the way sharing a bed with her would affect the intensity of his feelings for her. Something about the vulnerability, maybe, of sleeping next to someone, he supposes. His desire to be with her – to touch her – is like a living thing inside him. It reminds him a little of those early days when he'd just moved himself into her house and her life, when she was still fragile, and he'd been detained off world when some stupid scientist couldn't figure out how to properly use a compass. He remembers the very real feeling of being ready to climb out of his skin to get back to her.

This time it's been a low-grade hum inside him since he stepped through the gate at the beginning of the mission. A little tingle of awareness that he was leaving something behind for the first time in too long. A crackle in his blood that didn't dissipate until he returned through the gate and saw her standing there in the control room, her blonde hair like fire around her face. The nervous energy that had propelled him forward for the last two days seemed to finally level out. He was home and they were both okay.

In bed that night he holds her to him, slides his hands down all the warm planes of her skin, breathes her in, kisses her shoulder because he likes the way it makes her tremble in his arms. When he feels his body start to fill and swell in the places she's not ready to deal with yet, he pulls his hips back away from her and presses her into his chest. He enjoys the ache in a way that makes a younger version of him want to laugh with derision.

He feels when she drifts off to sleep, the way her breaths deepen and make the hairs on his arm flutter. She hums in the back of her throat and tucks herself back into him fully, fitting her hips snugly against his. And he figures maybe they're going to be all right.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He cusses at the lawnmower he insists on fixing even though she could probably do it in half the time with a quarter of the swearing. It's the last mow of the season and he'd be damned if he was going to be bested by a Toro, or so he'd said. So instead she stands at the kitchen window and laughs every time one of his creative curses filters into the house. After forty-five minutes she takes him a cold beer and wraps herself around him, soaking herself in the smell of gasoline, motor oil and Jack. Somehow they end up in too-tall grass, a pile of people not giving a tinker's damn about the lawn mower.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She feels a pull nearly all the time. If she's not touching him, there's a pressure in her chest she's hard pressed to accurately describe. It's not the same feeling she remembers as desire but it's something near it. She remembers what she used to feel like when being close to him made her want to claw out of herself with wanting him. She remembers what it felt like to grow aroused. This isn't that. But it's better in some ways, worse in others. Worse in the ways that make her wonder if she's ever going to touch him and want him inside her – in the physical sense. Not in the way he's already inside her.

Already he's inescapable he's so far inside her head and her heart that she's not sure how she lived without him before. She's not sure she'll know how to live without him if it comes to it. And knowing that living without him is a very real possibility scares her. It scares her into forcing herself to forge physical connections she's not quite ready for.

"It's okay to fake it," Natalie says again and again.

"I'm not faking anything," Sam points out. "We're not sleeping together. Well, not sleeping together," she clarifies vaguely.

"I'm not talking about orgasms, Sam," she says once with a kind smile. "I'm talking about confidence. If there's anyone you can safely practice on, it's Jack."

"He deserves the real thing."

"Yeah," Natalie says, "he does. But you're not deceiving him. You're trying."

"I want to want him."

"Good."

"So why can't I let him touch me like I want him to? Like he wants to?"

"It'll take time, Sam."

"It's been a year," she says, frustrated. "How much longer to I have to fucking wait?"

"You'll be ready when you're ready," Natalie says cryptically. "The block is inside you. We just need to figure out where it is and why."

"Well, find it already!"

"I can't find it without you. You've finally got a reason to find it. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, you keep faking it. One day you'll look up and realize you're not faking it anymore."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He's surprised when she corners him in the kitchen when she gets home from her session with Natalie. Daniel, Teal'c, Janet and Mctierney are in the dining room and have dealt him out of a round of poker that they'd decided to play when instead of just Daniel the entirety of their group of friends had showed up one by one on his doorstep that evening.

She kisses him in a way she's never quite allowed. Her hands are doing interesting things sliding across his chest and abdomen and he can feel the way she presses her breasts against him in a wanton way he's always dreamed about. He grows hard against her and she doesn't pull her hips away from his and he can't pull away from her since she's literally got him against the wall. Her tongue slides against his and he finally shakes off his shock to give as good as he gets. She sucks on his tongue when he gets it into her mouth and she swallows his groan.

An amused, "Oh," in a soft, feminine voice forces his eyes open and over Sam's shoulder he sees Janet smirk and back out of the kitchen. But Sam's ardor doesn't cool. Hell, she doesn't even miss a beat.

They've done a lot of kissing in the past several months but never once have they done anything like this. The way she's touching him isn't doing anything for his resolve. After another deep kiss he can feel all the way to the soles of his feet, she pulls far enough away to pant into his ear. "I really want to want you, you know that, right?"

He can't help but smile against the shell of her ear then kiss her there. "I'm glad. Because I really want you to want me, too." He takes a chance and presses his hips into hers. "But until then, you need to go play my hand because I'm going to need a minute."

She chuckles and presses a sweet kiss to his lips. "Take your time."

"Don't worry," he says.

When she leaves the kitchen her step is lighter than he's seen it in a long time. Maybe this is the start of something new.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He stops hiding how much he wants her. He never apologized for it, but he'd pull away for fear of scaring her with it. But now, when he wants her he makes sure she knows. She's bolder, too, in the ways she kisses him, the ways she touches him. It feels sometimes like she's just going through the motions but he lets her. Practice does, after all, make perfect and he really likes practicing with her.

She doesn't hide from him anymore, either. He wants to groan with irritation when she decides to, for the first time, change into her pajamas right there in their bedroom while he's awake in the bed. With her back to him, she shrugs out of the button up shirt she's wearing and its descent from her shoulders to the floor pulls his gaze up from his book. He's presented with acres of pale, alternatively smooth and scarred skin interrupted by deep wine colored bra straps. The color does really amazing things for the pink tones in her skin and he finds he's so focused on her skin that he's almost missed her fingers reaching for the clasp of her bra. Until, that is, she unhooks it and shrugs her shoulders once more to dislodge the garment. And while he's seeing less of her than he's seen before he find that the intimacy of the act of watching her dress for bed is rocking him to the core.

She slips her tank top over her head and wiggles out of her pants. He grins at her ass since she can't see him and he likes the way the deep red lace that matches her discarded bra allows hints of her pale skin to show through.

"You know," he says as conversationally as he can muster, "you look really good in those underwear."

She throws a casual look over her shoulder. "Yeah?"

"Oh, you know you look good," he says.

She grins but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I wish I didn't have the scars."

"Me too," he says and beckons her over, surprised when she doesn't hesitate and don the flannel pants she's holding, "but I don't care that you've got 'em. You know that, right?"

She turns around and he's momentarily sidelined by the strip of skin that shows between the hem of her top and the top of her underwear. But then he's eye to thigh with her and realizes she's standing next to his side of the bed. He slides over a bit and pats the space he's created. She sits next to him. "Are your scars keeping you from wanting to…" he gestures between them.

She smiles gently. "No, Jack. I believe you when you say you don't care. Yeah, I was prettier before I had them, but I can't change them."

"You have never been more beautiful to me than you are now."

"Well, thank you," she says, "but you sort of have to say that."

He starts to object but catches the impish glint in her eyes. "I'm serious," he says.

"So am I. Yes, the scars bother me but not that much. In a way," she says and reaches for his hand, threading their fingers together, "those scars are the reason we get to be together. So I can't hate them completely."

He tugs her down to kiss her and a few moments later they're curled up together in the bed. Her flannel pajama pants lay forgotten on the floor.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next morning when he glides his hand down her ribcage, over her lace-clad hip and to her bare thigh she feels a lightning strike deep inside her that sends tingles out to her fingers and toes and ends with a an ache low in her belly. She gasps and his eyes fly up to hers. His eyes are warm and gentle but she knows without a shadow of a doubt hers are anything but gentle and have crossed from warm to smoldering.

She watches realization dawn in his eyes and he whispers just before he breaks her rule and kisses her. "God, Sam, I want you, too."