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It's two days after her father leaves before Sam feels like leaving the infirmary, and another day before Janet will actually clear her to leave. Sam argues, a little, but doesn't push it too far because she's bone-tired and aching. Surviving the blast, staying on the run, staying awake and watchful for that many days had taken its toll on her and she needs to recharge.
She hates that she needs this, though. Sam likes it when her life is busy, when her mind and body are working and productive; she doesn't like it that her leg throbs and aches enough that she uncomplainingly takes the painkillers Janet's prescribed for her, medication that leaves her mind slow and foggy. It's a nasty wound and there's some muscle damage, so she doesn't have much choice other than to rest and let it heal.
"Just because I'm discharging you doesn't mean I'm clearing you to drive," Janet says, peering at her clipboard. "Someone else will need to drive you home, and preferably, stay with you for a couple of days so you can stay off that leg."
"I'll call Pete," Sam says, and that seems to satisfy Janet. She goes off on her rounds and Sam gets dressed and sits on the edge of the bed to pull the phone over from the bedside table so she can call him. Instead of picking up the receiver and dialing his number, though, she just sits there and looks at the phone for a minute. The idea of explaining everything--the weapon, the supersoldier, the days in the woods--and answering the questions she knows Pete will have is exhausting. And she can't even tell him everything.
"You know, people generally talk on those, not stare at them," Jack says, and she jumps a little because she didn't realize he was there.
"Yeah, well," she says, and fiddles with the buttons. She still hasn't made the call.
"Fraiser gonna let you out of here?" he asks.
She nods. "Yes, sir. Finally."
"Need a ride home?"
Sam looks at the phone and then puts it back on the table. "I was going to call Pete," she says, looking up at Jack. His face is unreadable, like usual, the kind of blank, neutral expression he always gets when she mentions Pete around him.
"But now you're not," he says carefully.
"No."
Jack shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs a little. "So," he says. "Need a ride home?"
It seems settled, then. "Thank you, sir," she says.
"You bet, Carter," he says.
It takes her a minute to sort out her crutches and her bag and Jack waits a minute, watching, before he just takes her bag so she has her hands free. The crutches slow her down and the whole process of just getting from the infirmary to the elevator is awkward and time-consuming, but he slows his stride to match hers and doesn't comment when she leans against the wall of the elevator, winded.
"We'll take my truck," he says as the elevator makes its ascent. "If you want, Daniel and I can come pick your car up in the morning."
Sam nods tiredly and agrees, and maybe she dozes a little on the way up because it seems like there's no time at all before they're topside and making their way to the parking lot. It's cold and gloomy and it rained earlier that day, leaving puddles in the gravel lot. She takes her time navigating through them. Jack walks beside her, rambling on about how the Tok'ra (except for your dad, Carter, he's a great guy) and the Jaffa are both enormous pains in the ass and it's probably better they're not at the Alpha site anymore anyway because all they did was bitch at each other over nothing. Sam knows he doesn't really expect a response. He's just talking so she doesn't feel like she has to say anything.
The truck is a problem. Sam briefly considers asking him to drive her little silver car instead because his big green truck is higher than she realized, and then she remembers that she's parked on the other side of the lot and she's just not going to navigate it. Jack waits by the door, almost but not quite hovering. Sam realizes he's waiting for her to decide how much she's willing to allow him to help her. She's both grateful that he doesn't just jump in and take over, and irritated that she has to make conscious decisions about anything when she feels like crap.
She puts her weight on her good leg and hands him her crutches and he briefly considers putting them in the back, but the truck bed is wet so he wedges them behind the seat instead. While he does that, she tries to figure a way to get enough leverage to get herself up and into the seat; she manages it, but her leg aches and burns and she could swear she feels every single individual suture that holds the wound together, and she grits her teeth against the pain.
"Carter," he says, concerned, but she shakes her head. He frowns and the little lines around his eyes deepen, but he doesn't say anything else; he closes the door and she leans back against the seat and closes her eyes.
It's a short ride to her house, but she dozes off anyway and it's only when Jack opens his door and the cold, fresh air from outside curls through the truck's cab that she realizes they are there. He opens her door and she shifts herself to the edge of the seat and eases out of the truck. It takes forever and she's impatient--impatient that she isn't healing faster, impatient that everything hurts, impatient that she's so slow, impatient that Jack's just standing there with dark eyes waiting for her to decide what she wants him to do--and she jams the crutches into place, straightening.
"Careful, Carter," he says. "It's slick." The temperature has dropped enough that the earlier rain is starting to freeze over, crusting the sidewalk and walkway to the door with bits of ice. Her crutches crunch on it as she hobbles her way up to the porch. She fishes her keys from her coat pocket and hands them to Jack so he can open the door. He holds it open for her and then moves inside, flicking a couple of lamps on so they aren't stumbling around in the dark.
Sam stands there in the middle of the room for a minute, trying to decide what she wants. She wants to sleep, but she's hungry and feels gross and she isn't sure what order she wants to solve these problems in or if she has the energy to do anything about any of it. And she has pills to take sometime soon. She digs the bottles out of the inside pocket of her coat and puts them on the granite countertop by the phone.
"Hey," Jack says, and Sam realizes she's zoned out for a minute. "Tell me what I can do."
She looks at him and those lines around his eyes deepen with concern he's not allowed to express and she's not allowed to acknowledge. She wonders if she should have called Pete after all, but she knows that he would be peppering her with questions and trying his best to fix everything and while it would be with the best of intentions, she doesn't have the energy for it. Jack isn't asking questions, and he isn't trying to fix anything. He's just there.
She feels selfish.
"I'm going to go get cleaned up," she says finally. It isn't really an answer.
"I'll be here," he says. "Yell if you get dizzy or something."
She has so many bandages and stitches and scrapes that a real shower or bath is out of the question for another few days, but she does the best she can. She leans on the counter and washes her hair in the sink and it helps her feel a little more human even if her leg throbs and burns by the time she's done. She takes care of the rest a little bit at a time, cleaning everything that isn't covered with the gauze and tape that feels like it's the only thing holding her together. It helps, a little.
When she emerges from the bathroom in a sweatshirt and her loosest pair of pajama pants, she smells food. Jack is in her kitchen, cooking.
"I thought you might want to eat," he says, and nods at her bottles of pills on the counter. "I don't think you're supposed to take that stuff on an empty stomach." He tips a frying pan over a plate and slides a fluffy yellow omelet onto it. "I don't have my secret ingredient," he adds, "but it's good anyway. Or it should be."
Sam's stomach grumbles. The last thing she had was a cup of blue jello in the infirmary and that was hours ago. "Thank you, sir," she says, and eases herself onto a stool at the counter. There's toast and juice and she eats slowly because her jaw aches and the long scrape on the side of her face hurts when she chews. Jack makes an omelet for himself and sits down beside her and it should be weird that she's eating breakfast in her kitchen with her CO at nine at night, but it isn't. It should be weird that they don't have a whole lot to say, but it isn't.
Jack finishes eating before she does, because she's so slow, but he sits at the counter with her and fiddles with the salt and pepper shakers while he waits for her to finish. Eventually Sam decides she can't eat it all and puts her fork on her plate, pushing it away a little.
"You okay?" Jack asks.
She nods. "Yes," she says. "I'm just tired." She reaches for the juice and pours herself another half a glass so she can take her pills. A painkiller, some antibiotics. Her wounds were deep and dirty and alien planets mean an abundance of exotic bacteria. There's a muscle relaxer too, but she skips it. She doesn't like how it makes her loopy. Maybe she'll take it when it's time to sleep, but as tired as she is, she isn't actually sleepy now.
Jack gathers up the plates and she stands at the sink to rinse them off before they go in the dishwasher. "I got this, Carter," he says, but she shakes her head.
"I want to do something," she says, and he doesn't argue. She leans on one crutch and rinses the dishes and loads them in the dishwasher, and when she's done her leg hurts more but she feels slightly less useless.
"You going to be okay?" he asks. "I mean, later. Tonight. After I leave."
Sam closes the dishwasher. "Yes, sir," she answers. She grips the edge of the counter and steadies herself; leaning down to close the dishwasher made her dizzy. "I'll be fine."
"Maybe you should call Pete," he says quietly. "You're on a lot of meds right now, maybe it's not a good idea for you to be here by yourself."
"I'm fine," she says again. "I'll just sleep it off, it'll be okay."
He stands there for a minute, watching her. "You want to tell me why you don't want to call him?" he asks quietly.
Sam turns and looks at him. "I just don't want to." She doesn't want to explain to Pete what happened at the Alpha site, and she doesn't want to explain to Jack why she doesn't want to explain.
Jack shrugs. "Good enough reason."
She lets go of the counter and gets her crutches under her again and shifts away from the counter, but Jack's stepped closer to her and she stops. "Do you want me to go?" he asks.
Sam knows what he's really asking, what he's not allowed to ask, is Do you want me to stay?
And she's not really allowed to answer.
"Sir..."
"Carter," he says, sounding a little frustrated. "Just, come here."
He slides his arms around her and she eases her crutches away and leans against him. Some of the tension she's been carrying around with her eases, the tension of holding herself carefully and moving slowly so she doesn't pull anything she shouldn't, and she lets out a slow, shaky breath.
"Thank you," she whispers.
"You bet," he says. She feels his lips against her hair when he speaks and something inside her just aches. It hurts her more than she will ever admit that there are only a few moments here and there that they can even hint at how they really feel, and she thinks that one day it will not be enough.
Maybe it isn't enough now.
Sam slides her arms around his neck and leans into him a little more, both to take some weight off her aching leg and to be closer to him. Jack is wearing a flannel shirt, worn and faded from repeated washing, and it's soft against her bruised cheek when she rests her head against his shoulder.
"Sam," he says quietly, his voice low, like he wants to ask her again if she's okay, if she's sure about what she's doing. She's known him long enough that although she's never heard his voice sound quite like this, she knows exactly what he's trying to say. He breathes softly against her neck, nuzzling a little, a tentative test of just how far they're willing to take this.
It's a rush that makes Sam dizzier than anything that's been pumped through her veins this week.
She tightens her arms around him a little and slides her fingers into his hair and he sighs against her neck. He's rubbing her back lightly, barely touching her, but his fingers bump an injured place on her shoulderblade and she winces.
"Sorry," he murmurs. "Didn't mean to do that."
"It's okay," she says. "But I think I need to sit down."
Sam reaches for her crutches, but Jack stops her and shakes his head. "Let me," he says, and shifts her arm around his shoulders and his arm around her waist so he can better support her. "Where do you want to go?"
The couch would probably be the smartest choice, and yet she says, "My room," because she'll end up there eventually and it means one less getting-up-and-navigating-around she'll have to do. Jack doesn't ask her to explain, though he does hesitate for a moment. When he realizes she means it, he nods, and carefully helps her down the hall.
It's slow going, and probably would have been faster with the crutches, but she lets him help her instead because selfishly, she wants the contact that comes from leaning against him, his arm around her. Her uninjured leg cramps from holding her weight for so long, and she grunts a little when she sits down less-than-elegantly on the edge of the bed.
"You okay?" Jack asks.
"Just a cramp," she replies, rubbing at her thigh and willing the cramp to subside.
He sits down beside her on the edge of the bed. "Here," he says, and gently nudges her hands out of the way, working his fingers against the tight muscle. He's careful, cautious, not knowing what hidden injuries she has, but it works. The material of her pants is thin and soft and she can feel the warmth of his hands through the fabric. It helps the muscle relax and the cramp fade, and she nods a little.
"It's good," she says.
"Okay?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"Good." His hand rests on her knee, lightly, just touching, and she doesn't want him to move it. It's dim in her room and they're just sitting there, close, and she wants every second of that closeness they can allow themselves. She feels worn down, pushed to the edge. She'll bounce back soon, she always does, but it hasn't happened yet and everything is raw. It's hard to hold onto the agreement to leave it in the room.
"Need anything?" Jack asks. His hand is still light on her knee.
Sam sucks in a breath, stopping herself from saying something reckless. "No," she whispers.
It's a mark of how well they know each other that he sighs a little and rubs his thumb against her thigh and says, "I know, Carter."
"I'm tired," she says, and she doesn't just mean physically. Her heart is tired. She's tired of pretending she doesn't care, that he's just her friend and her CO and a member of her team but nothing beyond that, she's tired of pretending he doesn't make her feel things that make her heart skip. She's just tired.
"I know," he says, and she hears some of that tiredness in his voice too. His hand leaves her knee and he puts his arm around her shoulders, and she leans against him. It's not enough, really, but it has to be.
She wakes up a little while later with her head on her pillow. The quilt that's usually folded at the bottom of her bed has been pulled over her and there's a small pillow under her injured leg. Her pill bottles are on the nightstand with a glass of water. Jack, she thinks, because she doesn't remember doing any of it. Slowly, she turns onto her side, shifting the pillow beneath her leg. He's asleep beside her, hands folded on his stomach the way he does when they're camped out off-world. The quilt only covers her; there's a little space between them on the bed. Small enough to be close, but enough space to remind them where the line should be.
She wonders at the physics of someone being both too close and too far away at the same time.
He opens his eyes and looks over at her. "Hey, Carter," he says quietly. "You okay?"
She nods.
"Go back to sleep," he says. "You need the rest."
"Aren't you cold?" she asks.
"Nah, I'm good," he says easily. "Don't worry about it."
She slides her hand from under the quilt and brushes the backs of her fingers against his sleeve. "Thanks," she says. "For being here."
"You bet," he says.
Her fingers keep up their light motion against his arm. He looks down at her hand and then shifts onto his side, facing her. The movement bumps her hand away, but she presses it against his chest instead.
"Carter," he says quietly. It's a little like a warning, a little like concern.
Sam thinks about how good it felt when he held her in the kitchen, when his breath was warm against her neck and he smelled like soft flannel and leather jacket and soap. Her fingers curl against his shirt. It's not allowed, but she wants to. "Can we just..."
Jack touches her jaw, an uninjured spot below her bruised cheek, and she can't read his expression. She almost never can, because he never gives anything away. She's not sure what she's asking for and thinks that if she makes it too specific, it'll slip away, so it's best to keep it vague. Maybe he wants to remind her that it isn't a good idea, or that they'd agreed to keep it in the room, or tell her that she's on enough meds to cloud her judgement and she'll feel differently in the morning, and if he did those would all be very sensible and responsible things--but she doesn't want him to say any of them. Sam just wants him to be there, and give her some little thing to get her through this, something to remind her what else there is besides saving the world on a daily basis. She doesn't want to be reasonable.
Surprisingly, he nods a little, just enough that she can see it, and leans in a little closer. She meets him halfway in a kiss that's not much more than lips touching, just sharing the same breath, and it feels so good to be so close to him that for a little bit her aches and bruises feel like they belong to someone else. They hold it just there for a bit, just testing their resolve, how much they're willing to bend; she nuzzles his face and feels the stubble that wasn't there a few hours ago rasp against her lips. She wants more than that. The little bit of contact has made her greedy, and when she opens her mouth to him he's there, too, and the kiss is warm and tender and careful, all the things they aren't allowed.
Sam wants so many things that it's hard to sort through them all. She's put them firmly away and locked up tight for so long that now that there's the tiniest crack in the dam it threatens to flood and drown them both. She wants him to touch her, to love her, to make her feel like a living, breathing human being again instead of something bruised and battered and held together with stitches and gauze, but she can't ask for what she wants. They can't discuss what they're doing, but Jack seems to know what she needs, even if she knows it's a terrible idea for him to give it to her. Not having it seems a thousand times worse. He tips her onto her back and pushes the quilt down around her hips as he kisses her, but he doesn't press his weight against her. His fingers skim under the hem of her sweatshirt, and he looks at her for permission to take it further.
She nods, giving her assent.
It isn't even the most sexual of touches, she realizes. It's almost like he's petting her, trying to calm her instead of arouse her. He palms her stomach, smoothes his fingers over her curves with the lightest of touches because her shirt is still on and he can't see what's bruised and what isn't. She relaxes, and her grip on his shirt loosens a little.
"I want you to be okay, Carter," Jack says. His voice is low in a way she hasn't heard before, and it makes her spine tingle.
She wants to press herself into his hands. "I will be," she says, and resists the urge to squirm. Sam isn't sure how far they'll actually take this and she wants to enjoy each moment they have before they draw the line. "I just want--"
"I know," he says, before she can finish. He keeps up the gentle motion of his hand over her skin. Her breasts are bare beneath her thick shirt as the pressure of her bra made her sore ribs ache. He touches them just as he has the rest of her skin, gentle and careful, and when he thumbs her nipple until it draws up hard and tight she sighs into his mouth. She wants more than he's giving, but she's afraid to push it because they might decide to stop altogether.
He takes his time with her to the point that she feels a little out of herself, warm and relaxed. When she reaches for him, he nudges her hands away and as much as she wants to touch him and feel his skin against hers, she's also content to just let him do what he's doing. The band of her thin pajama pants rests low on her hips and he traces the edge of it, again looking at her for the permission she silently gives. He doesn't push them down far, only enough to slide his hand beneath the fabric. She pushes against his hand, wanting more of his touch; her leg flares with pain, surprising her, and she can't bite back the whimper.
Jack pulls back a little, concerned, but she catches him before he can go too far. "Please," she whispers, and when he looks doubtful she catches his face in her hands and kisses him hard enough that her jaw aches.
"Easy, Carter," he whispers, gentling the kiss. She tries to relax again; her body's warned her what she can't handle, but it's hard not to press against his hand, hard not to slip her leg over his and tangle their bodies together. She isn't used to being so passive. He makes it a little easier, though, touching her lightly until she relaxes again, and when he slides his hand between her thighs he gives her enough pressure that she doesn't feel she has to push against his hand. The warmth builds and she welcomes it, needs it, wants it to make her fall apart so he can put her back together, and she finally falls apart just like that, over and over and he's there to catch her and hold her close like he never wants to let her go. "I've got you," he says, and she knows he always does.
For a few minutes, she doesn't hurt at all.
When she wakes up, she's alone in the bed and her crutches are right by her where she can reach them. She gets up slowly, because her pain meds have worn off and she aches all over again. When she hobbles out to the kitchen, Jack has made breakfast. There's coffee, too, and she's grateful for that.
"I'll pick up Daniel and we'll get your car from the base," he says, and sits close to her while she eats. "You gonna be okay?"
She nods and drinks her coffee. It's strong and wakes her up nicely. "I'm fine," she says.
"Good." He rubs her shoulder a little and it feels good. "Are you... otherwise okay?"
It's an oblique way to ask if she's okay with what happened last night, but it's Jack, and there's really no other way to ask without blowing things all to hell, so she's all right with it. "Yes," she says, and squeezes his arm to reassure him that she means it. He looks relieved.
Sam knows they probably won't mention it again, and the whole thing will go back in the room where it's supposed to be, and it's okay. It's okay because she knows it's there for both of them, for when they're done saving the world and playing by the rules.
And she can wait. It won't be forever.