(My thanks to demonchilde!)

IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

"Hey, Dad! You weren't at Sam's for long," Frances remarked, as he entered the house through the door to the side garage.

It was a small miracle Bailey had made home safe and sound. It had taken an enormous effort on his part to stay alert on the busy roads. One driver had even honked at him when the traffic light had changed to green and he hadn't noticed.

He'd had other things on his mind. He took a bottle of water from the fridge.

"I only needed to tell her one thing. And, Chloe had a bit of an accident, so Sam needed to tend to her."

Frances glanced up from her social studies book, concern etched on her face. "What kind of an accident? Is she okay?"

"She's okay. She fell back first from the edge of the sofa. She was just a little banged-up, that 's all." He drank greedily from the bottle.

Frances looked relieved at his reassurance, but she continued: "Maybe could I call them? Just to be sure?"

"Go ahead, sweetheart, if that's what you want to do." Frances' concern touched him. He loved that Frances had become an older sister of sorts to Chloe. He watched on as Frances reached for the cordless phone and pressed the speed dial button and two. She must have programmed the phone without telling him.

Frances' voice became drowned out when she greeted Sam on the other end of the line. Speaking of his friend... He sought solace in his room.

His mind worked fervently. A solution. This thing had to resolved, one way or another. They couldn't keep making out whenever the hell the mood struck them, nor could they begin to tread on eggshells around one another.

He paused for a while, to puzzle over what he'd dismissed as an impossible solution. Maybe they should just... see how far this pull would take them? It could be that acting out on their attraction might make it go away. Sometimes, you only want what you can't have. Right? So possibly a one night stand... No. He wasn't like that, and she wasn't like that. He hadn't engaged in casual sex, and he suspected that she hadn't, either.

That solution was out of the picture, then.

Perhaps they should get involved with other people. That might steer their friendship to its normal, solid ground. They'd have someone else to spend time with, to focus on. He tried to muster up any enthusiasm for the idea of putting himself out there, again. He failed, miserably. He had to be honest: his last tries at relationships hadn't panned out great. Ellen, Barbara... Who'd been there before that? It was before Sam had come out of retirement. Jennifer. What a mistake that had turned out to be. He'd once said to Sam that his track record since Janet wasn't great, and he hadn't been downplaying it.

He also wanted to focus on Frannie. Enjoy their time together before she left for college. That occasion was drawing ever closer. This was another thing he'd said to Sam before.

There was also a fleeting feeling that he chose to ignore. A feeling of raw agitation. His stomach turned when he tried to envision meeting some guy Sam was seeing. He wasn't up to dealing with his reaction, so he decided to give it its due some other time.

"Dad?" Frannie appeared at the doorway, disrupting his thinking. "Chloe's fine. The doctor just suggested that she be woken up a few times during the night to make sure she doesn't have a concussion."

He nodded, then sighed out loud: "Good."

"You want to watch a movie together?"

"Don't you have to study?"

"I'm finished for the night," Frances remarked proudly. She was finding social studies a bit of a bore, and so any accomplishment in that regard was to be celebrated.

"Movie sounds like a good idea." Bailey smiled as his daughter clapped her hands together and scurried to the tv to see what movies of his she hadn't seen yet. Bailey sent a silent thanks that he would have something else to focus on for a while. He wasn't any closer to a solution, and quite frankly, he needed a break.

Sam's night was one of fitful sleep. Then again, it was bound to be with her having to wake up Chloe to make sure her daughter was okay. But, she imagined that she wouldn't have gotten sleep, regardless of Chloe's accident. The kissing would have intruded on her slumber no matter what.

She'd pushed the issue to the background for the remainder of the evening. She had things and tasks to occupy herself with, and so she was able to pretend that her evening had been normal. She'd emptied and filled the dishwasher, had prepared Chloe's lunch, had changed Denzel's water every twenty minutes and had even cleaned the fridge.

Angel had taken pity on her friend, and so she didn't ask what had brought about this need of Sam's to keep busy. She'd come up with a pretty good guess early on.

But when Sam looked herself in the bathroom mirror as she was brushing her teeth, she got a first inkling of her upcoming night. She looked into her own eyes, and out of nowhere, felt Bailey's lips press into the spot between her hairline and ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin. The memory, the feel of it, was vivid. He might as well have been standing behind her and repeated the act. She shuddered and closed her left hand forcefully, willing herself to stay in the present.

But the memories bombarded her relentlessly. She could sense his hands in her hair when she tied her locks into a ponytail. She could feel his fingertips ghosting along her shoulder when she released her hair and the ends brushed her skin. She could have sworn his hands were still twined around her waist when she pulled her shirt over her head. As she did so, she thought she could smell his scent on her shirt. She lifted the garment to her nose, and inhaled. Faint scents of cigars, Old spice and soap. Bailey.

"Damn it." She threw the shirt into the washing basket, then glared at it.

She almost wished they had liquor in the house, since the burning sensation of the stuff hitting her throat could perhaps snap her out of her wandering thoughts.

She ambled to her bed and snuck in carefully, lest she disturb Chloe's sleep. She would need to be woken up in a few hours. The little girl was breathing evenly and sleeping on her side. Sam watched her baby girl for a moment. She was curled up with Mr Mustard. In fact, she'd hardly let go of her toy since Bailey had comforted her with it.

At the thought of her friend, she turned to lie on her back and stare at the ceiling.

What would she do about Bailey?

Or maybe the question was: what would they do? In a way, Bailey had started the kissing this time around. Oh wait, she'd kissed him before that. On the side of his mouth, granted, but she had to acknowledge that. Damn, she needed to get a hold of herself.

He'd asked her why she'd given him that innocent kiss. She hadn't answered because she hadn't known the answer. It wasn't something that could be put into words so easily. She'd just felt this... swell of affection towards him. She suspected that she couldn't have refrained from kissing him, even if she'd tried.

She'd often wondered how he'd become the man he was, and she believed she'd glimpsed the beginnings of it in his story. She was sure there were many more things that had shaped him. Good, bad and ugly things. He was a very layered man.

She loved that he'd shared that with her. That he'd wanted to share it.

But she was digressing. What would they do now? What could they do?

Brush it off? Swear again that it had been a one-time thing?

Try to talk it out?

She tossed and turned most of the night, trying to come up with a viable course of action.

It was a bad night.

Bailey heard a gentle rap on his office door. He looked up to see Sam standing there. She shifted on her feet and asked in a soft voice: "This a bad time?"

It was just getting to eight am, so no, it wasn't a bad time. As it was an unusually early time for her to be at work, he surmised that she wanted to have a talk before the task force would be buzzing with activity.

"No, come on in," he sighed a little and gestured for her to proceed. She closed the door behind her for privacy.

Sam saw Bailey tug at his dress shirt, and that little gesture let her know that he was as nervous as she was.

"How's Chloe?" He started off with a safe question, to ease them into the conversation they were about to have. He looked at her for a moment, then averted his gaze.

"I woke her up four times during the night. She's fine, apart from the bump on her head." Her gaze drifted to the few agents milling outside.

"That's a relief." They shared a tiny smile, looking at one another, and then Sam broke the contact and gulped. She eyed the outside warily, as if afraid that someone might intrude upon their moment.

Just as she cleared her throat, he beat her to the punch. "You want to talk about last night?"

She took a sharp intake of breath and nodded.

He started things off. "I don't know what got into me. I'm sorry."

For some reason, his apology aggravated her. "Don't apologise. I'm not sorry," she blurted out. When he shifted his eyes at her, she looked taken aback by her words. She bit her lip and rattled off: "I mean, I'm not sorry, but I'm not happy, either." She looked stunned by her own admission. "Does that make sense?" She hazarded a look at him, needing to see what he might be thinking.

His expression was plaintive. "It does. What a mess, huh?" he sighed. He hated this. This awkwardness.

She shook her head, in disbelief. "You can say that again. Given this mess we're in..." her voice trailed off, prompting him to observe her for a beat. "Are you okay with us just sucking it up and trying to move past this?" She gave him a fleeting gaze before explaining: "I don't see how talking about it could solve this mess."

"So just give it time?" He sounded a little unsure.

"Yes," she bit her lower lip, unconscious of her action.

The truth was, he hadn't come up with a brilliant plan of his own, although he'd missed a lot of sleep last night in search of one. Maybe Sam was onto something. She was the shrink, right?

"Okay," he said soberly.

She gave a tiny nod. "Okay." She shifted on her feet again. She hadn't sut down at all. She took a step toward the door. "Talk to you in a while."

"Yeah." He watched her retreating form, but averted his gaze once she'd cleared the door.

Neither of them felt relieved by their conversation. They both sensed that this was by no means the way out of their predicament.

Later on, Bailey knocked on Sam's door, hating the carefulness, the uncertainty, that once again permeated their relationship.

"Yeah?" He entered at Sam's beckoning, to find her stationed on the sofa, engrossed in a psychology manual. She'd placed a coffee mug on the arm rest of the couch. Just as he debated internally whether or not the arm rest was the safest place to keep a mug, she proved him right. She glanced up to look at him, and her right hand flew to her neck (he wondered if she'd hit the spot where he'd kissed her last night, and God, he really needed to get that out of his head), in the process knocking over the mug to the ground. The coffee splashed all over.

"Shit!" she cursed, shooting up to inspect the damage.

Bailey stepped closer and drawled: "Well, that was a tragedy no one could have foreseen."

She shot him a wondering look before she caught on and mirth overtook her. Sam's body shook in her fit of laughter, and Bailey watched her for a while when she collapsed to sit on the sofa. She looked so free and contented. And beautiful. Get a grip, Malone. He snapped out of his musings and walked to her desk to retrieve the box of tissue paper. He sauntered to the sofa, knelt down and began wiping off the spilt coffee.

"Bail, you don't need to do that," Sam said, starting to sober up at the sight of her boss, her best friend, doing something for her, being so thoughtful, like it was second nature to him.

He just shook his head. "There, already mopped up. You're lucky the coffee missed the carpet."

"Don't I know it," she muttered, trying to dispel her flustered feelings. "Thanks," she said as he stood up and looked at her, fighting to appear normal. He was taciturn for a beat, and she felt the need to take control, to be alert. Not be lulled into a false sense of... Security? No, indulgence. So, she spoke up. "Was there something you wanted to tell me?"

"Yeah. Women's prison warden called. We can go interrogate Lesher at three pm on Thursday."

"Okay. Good to know."

There was a lull in the conversation. Both of them were at a loss for words or conversation topics. Finally, Bailey made his exit. "Better get back to work."

"Yeah, right," she offered him a feeble smile before picking up her case file again. Little did he know that as he walked out of her office, she was in fact watching him, feeling worried and a little forlorn.

On the second day after the kissing, Sam knew that she needed a distraction at work if she were to remain a rational, socially functioning person. She'd caught herself gazing too many times either at Bailey's office or at the man himself, if he happened to be in her line of vision.

Actually, she'd just caught herself taking a look around the premises for her friend. Thand goodness her office provided her with some modicum of restraint and protection.

She blew out a breath and observed John and Marcus discussing something at their desks. Marcus stood up all of a sudden and headed in the direction of the command center. His sudden movement had a domino effect on the files on his desk. They collapsed onto John's side, who looked chagrined as he arranged them into a neat pile and pushed them to a secure place on Marcus's side with a precise shove.

A little smile formed on Sam's lips. Serendipity had afforded her with a method of payback against John and Marcus for the fun they'd made of her months ago. She would mess with them a little. Nothing too serious, but it'd be enough to rile them up.

Her eyes happened upon her trophy. That would make the perfect game piece to start her little fun.

Bailey would appreciate her plan.

Damn it.

She had to get him out of her head.

The next day, Bailey was standing in the observation room of the women's penitentiary, looking in on Sam's interrogation of Lesher. The female inmate was getting pissed off at Sam's line of questioning.

"Again with the same questions. All you ever do is talk about Jack. Did you ever think that I might be more willing to talk about something else? Like someone else? Hm?" Lesher's sinister smile betrayed who she was referring to.

Bailey froze in apprehension, feeling Sam's dread ratchet up, even though he was in another room, watching everything unfold. Why wasn't he in there with her? Maybe he could have prevented this, or perhaps he might have lessened the blow to her by his mere presence.

Sam held her breath, fearing the worst. Lesher smiled crookedly, then opened her mouth as if to say something, but suddenly she thought the better of it and remained silent.

Sam snapped out of her dread, realizing that the woman had just seen that she couldn't risk implicating herself in the death of a federal agent. Sam had the upper hand, and she went in for the kill. "What, no follow-up to that? Nothing horrific to throw in my face?" Lesher's mouth twitched, but she didn't rise to the bait.

Sam filled the silence. "You have been careful not to implicate yourself in anything. You're good at this game. Too bad it won't do you any good."

"And why's that?" Lesher enquired, looking unimpressed.

"Because this is Jack's game. Jack is going to kill you, and the sooner, the better for him."

Lesher snorted derisively.

Sam kept her voice level. "You still don't think he's going to kill you?"

"Nope." The blonde inmate grinned confidently.

"Then you're even more misguided than I believed. When the game is over and he realizes that nothing on this earth will make me his, he will kill me."

Bailey clenched his fists, Sam's words eliciting a reaction like a physical blow would. He almost felt like he'd been punched in the gut.

Lesher's confidence faltered for a moment. "That's what you think."

"I don't think it, I know it. It's my job to know," Sam pointed out. "The game is all he has, and what exactly is the game? It's him controlling how it ends. There's only one ending he is willing to accept. Anything else, and he'd rather see me dead and buried." Sam let that knowledge sink in before continuing.

"And, he's already tried to kill me. When we found his previous hide-out at an orphanage, he pumped the room full of acid. We had a very narrow escape."

Sam watched the younger woman digest this shocking news. Then, she pressed on.

"So, you tell me this. What makes you think he won't kill you, when he's ready to kill the woman he's been chasing and fantasizing about for six years? What kind of a chance do you stand?"

Lesher looked shaken for a moment. Then, her temper flared. "Guard! We're done here," Lesher spat out with hostility and glared at Sam as she waited for the guard to approach her. The prisoner and the guard left the room in silence.

In the observation room, Bailey untightened his fists, pushed the door open with force and strode into the interrogation room.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded harshly.

"What?" She turned around to face him, surprised by the tenor of his voice.

"You shouldn't have said those things," he uttered passionately. His features had a dark look about them. "About Jack killing you," he bit out.

Sam stared at him, startled and puzzled by his fervour. "Bailey, what's going on? What I told Lesher isn't news to you."

"Sam." An unspoken warning rang in his tone.

Her bemusement grew stronger. "You've known it all along, ever since Jack started fixating on me. Come on." Her rational words hung in the silence that spanned between them. She looked on as he heard what she was saying, took a breath and started to accept it.

"We will catch him. One way or another. Okay?" His features relaxed and he nodded silently.

"Sorry," he mumbled and looked away.

Sam considered her friend, wondering silently what had brought on this intense reaction in him. In a few weeks, it would be a year since the shooting and her kidnapping. Maybe that was weighing on his mind. She would have to keep a close eye on him. Out of friendly concern, of course.

"You alright?" she asked gently.

He blew out a soft breath. "Yeah." He remembered the reason they were there. "What do you think Lesher's feeling now?"

She shook her head, frustrated. "She's bewildered and angry. After she's had time to accept what I told her, she's probably going to get a lawyer. Start looking out for herself for a change."

"The question is, will it do us any good?"

"I don't know."

Agent Renick cursed under his breath as he strode out of the elevator into the fourteenth floor premises. Dixon had called him again and had sounded a little shaken as he asked for his presence. Renick caught glimpse of the man. "Dixon, what the hell's going on?"

Dixon looked away from the computer screen, his expression drawn and shifty. "I'm sorry to say it, but shit's hit the fan."

"What do you mean?" Renick deigned to ask curtly of Dixon and his two coworkers.

"We've been hit again," Melburn gulped visibly, fearing the wrath of the federal agent.

"Someone breached the database again? How is that possible?"

"The system wasn't breached again. The previous intruder left a Trojan horse inside, a time bomb, if you will. It went off today," Hollington explained.

"And?" Renick was fast approaching the end of his patience.

"It deleted a good portion of citations and outstanding warrants. We've been set back four months, at the very least," Dixon remarked.

"Why in God's name would anyone do that?"

"Beats us," Dixon shrugged his shoulders. He and his coworkers weren't police or FBI. It wasn't on them to figure out the motives of criminals.

"Do you have any leads on this?" The liaison agent asked tersely.

"Honestly, this type of hacking is above our skill set," Hollington said apologetically.

Renick sighed. "Fine. Who would be a match for this hacker?"

The three men looked at each other. It was clear to the agent that they'd discussed someone already. "Who is it? Time's a-wasting."

"George Fraley. I think he's working for the Bureau in Atlanta. He hacked his way into dozens of highly secure bank systems, then copped an immunity deal with the local pd," Dixon finished weakly, not sure of how his proposal would land now that it included a hacker who'd been caught.

"Fraley? Is he regular Bureau or VCTF?" Renick asked.

"We don't know," Melburn piped up.

"I may have an in with Fraley," Renick mused, remembering the visit by SAC Malone and Agent Waters. If Fraley was VCTF, he'd be in luck.

"I'll be in touch. And for Christ's sakes, earn your paychecks and keep hackers out from now on," he barked to the men.

Sam was waiting in Bailey's office. She wanted to go over Lesher's interrogation with him again. He was nowhere to be seen. She yawned, the stress of the day finally catching up to her. She settled herself on the sofa, lying on her back and her feet curled up, resting on one side. She drifted off.

Some time later, she was awoken by Bail, who'd touched her legs. She blinked, then smiled a sleepy grin at him."Come on, time to go home, Sam."

She shook her head playfully and closed her eyes again. She smiled to herself when she felt the edge of the sofa tip down. He'd sut down in the nook of her folded legs and her torso. "Sam?" She didn't respond, and he sighed resignedly. "Well, good night, then," he remarked. She could feel the weight lifting off the sofa cushions as he made to rise up, so she opened her eyes.

"Gimme a sec, will you?" she yawned and stretched her figure to awaken herself, straigthening her legs and bringing them to rest on the arm rest of the sofa. As she stretched, the silky material of her purple blouse slid up, exposing the smooth surface of her stomach. Which Bail most definitely noticed. He sat still, his eyes frozen on the exposed plane of skin.

His left hand moved to caress the skin on her side with his knuckles, ever so gently. She gasped and his eyes flew to his face, checking to see if the touch had been unwanted. She knew that her face mirrored his own apprehension and desire. He must have felt her relax, for he rested his right elbow on the back of the sofa, leaning his head against his right hand and effectively pinning her down, even though he wasn't even touching her.

Those hands of his. She wished that he'd touch her again. She got her wish.

Bail locked his eyes with hers and started teasing her, ghosting his fingertips over her skin, drawing lazy circles, fleeting touches on her side and stomach. His gaze heated up when he slipped his fingertips underneath the gathered-up fabric of her blouse, exploring new territory, carefully and slowly inching up the material.

She felt him run his fingers up and down her side, as if testing if she was ticklish. She opened her eyes that had fluttered shut at one point or another. She was seeing him in a haze, but her vision cleared when she felt him pinch her skin in between her side and her belly button. She shot him a glare, and he smiled in a pacifying manner and bent down to gently kiss the pinched skin. She barely held in her gasp.

Her gasp was audible when, after a few soft kisses, she felt his lips part in the kiss and his tongue came out to taste her skin.

Sam let out a small yelp when she shot up on the sofa. Her hand flew to her stomach and she tried to make sense of the situation. Bailey was hovering over her, standing beside the sofa. Oh God, had she just dreamt that in his presence? Had she made any sounds? Had he already guessed that he'd been the male lead in her fantasy?

"You okay?" He looked concerned.

"Uh... Yeah. Just forgot where I was for a moment," she explained, actually managing to both lie and tell the truth. She ran her fingers through her hair and quickly stood up. She had to get out of here.

"Did you need something?"

"Huh?" She really wasn't up to conversing anything.

He repeated his question, and she mumbled: "It can wait. I've gotta go." She could hear him calling her name, but she ignored it and blew out of there like a bat out of hell.

She had to make a quick exit, and therefore she opted to take the stairs. With any luck, she could catch her breath, come to her senses, in the stairwell.

She bolted a few levels up before she deemed it safe to pause for a moment.

What the hell was going on with her? Why had she dreamt that?

The recollection made her blush fiercely, and she started running up the stairs again.

Bailey gaped at Sam's back as she disappeared into the staircase. What the heck? Why had run she run out on him like he was chopped liver?

Did she feel uneasy to be alone with him because of the way he'd blown up at her at the prison?

No, she'd forgiven him right then and there.

She'd been napping on his sofa when he walked in. Had he startled her when he'd touched her side in an attempt to wake her up? She had bolted straight up. Had even yelped a little. Maybe he had startled her.

Or maybe she'd had a nightmare, one she didn't want to discuss.

Hell, the harder he looked for an answer, the more the answer evaded him.

That night, in the privacy of her own room, Sam owned up to something. Like Melinda had pointed out in their last session, she was defensive when it came to Bailey. And, she now knew why. Because she didn't know what she and Bail were nowadays. What they had been for quite some time. Not anymore. She was defensive, because she didn't know and she didn't want anyone to realize that she didn't know.

To top off her confusion, the feeling of missing something hadn't abated, either. It would consume her out of blue, catch her off guard. She tried to shake it off, but the feeling would return mercilessly.

She hoped to God that she would soon find out what she was waiting for.