"Five two," Sam laughed triumphantly as she and Jack made their way to the locker room.
"Don't sound so happy about it Carter, you lost remember," Jack insisted.
"You're kidding right," Sam admonished. "I kicked your ass."
"Oh dream on," Jack stressed. "That was so not gonna happen."
"Surly you remember losing the first game, the second game and the last game," Sam reminded him.
"Yes, but that's only three," Jack continued, convinced that he'd proved a point.
"But if you lost three games how could you possibly have won five two?" Sam exclaimed gleefully, stripping off her kit and stepping into a shower cubicle.
"I must have won four three then," Jack decided, stepping into a cubicle of his own.
"You can't go changing the whole score to suit you," Sam berated him. "You're such a bad loser."
"Except for the fact that I won," Jack grinned.
Sam and Jack stepped out of the showers at the same time, both wearing fluffy white towels.
"You lost pitifully sir," Sam forced the issue. "Deal with it."
Sam sat down with her back to Jack and began towelling herself dry.
"So where are you taking me for dinner?" Sam continued.
"Loser buys remember Carter," Jack smirked, enjoying the carefree banter. "Where are you taking me?"
Sam stayed silent, lifting a long, smooth leg up and stretching it out as she dried it, knowing that it would be just about in Jack's line of view.
"Maybe we should just call it even and forget dinner," she suggested, repeating the action with the other leg.
"Ok," Jack sighed. "Where do you wanna go?"
"Surprise me," Sam smiled, quickly finishing drying and dressing herself while still covered by the towel.
"Tease," Jack muttered to himself, careful that Sam didn't hear.
"Maybe if you worked more on accuracy instead of speed," Sam suggested. "It makes no difference how fast it's going if it doesn't hit the target."
"We are still talking about badminton right?" Jack asked carefully.
"Yes," Sam snorted. "Where the hell did your mind go? On second thoughts, I don't wanna know."
The live band started playing some sort of alternative rock in the corner of the room.
"What made you pick this place anyway?" Sam asked curiously.
"I thought we could dance after dinner," Jack suggested, a little more quietly than the rest on the conversation they had had.
"Sounds like fun," Sam smiled across at him. "We should do this more often."
"What? You mean break Daniel and Teal'c so that just the two of us can go out?" He joked.
"Obviously that's exactly what I meant," Sam grinned wickedly. "Because breaking them is so much fun."
They finished eating their meals and moved to sit at the bar. Jack left Sam to get some drinks while he disappeared off to the men's room.
"Hi, can I get you a drink?" A friendly face asked from beside Sam.
"No thank you," Sam declined. "I'm set."
"Go on," he smiled at her again. "I'm celebrating a promotion, let me splash out. I'm Kevin"
"Hi, I'm Sam. That's very kind of you but really." she broke off in a small squeal as someone came up behind her and clamped a hand over her mouth.
Kevin was on his feet in a second, quickly landing a punch on Sam's assailant, one punch followed by a few more before the man dropped to his knees.
"Oh god," Sam groaned, waving her hand in front of the fallen man's face. "Sir are you ok?" He didn't respond. "Jack, can you hear me?" She tried again.
"You know him?" Kevin asked, half in surprise and half in embarrassment.
"Yes, he's a friend of mine," Sam explained, helping Jack sit up as he shook off the daze.
"I'm so sorry mate," Kevin held out his hand to help Jack up. "I thought you were attacking her or something."
"I'd have to be pretty stupid to attack someone in a place this crowded with someone like you sitting right there," Jack pointed out, touching his nose to make sure it wasn't bleeding.
"What do you mean 'someone like me'?" Kevin question, ignoring the 'stupid' part of the statement.
"You're special ops rights?" Jack stated more than asked.
"How'd you know?" Kevin couldn't help but grin a little.
"Because not a lot of people can kick my ass quite that easily and I recognised your technique," Jack explained.
"Well I'm really sorry," Kevin said again. "I guess I jumped to conclusion."
"I guess you did," Jack agreed, smiling despite himself, finding it impossible not to like the man.
"Now you have to let me buy you both a drink," Kevin insisted. "By way of an apology."
"Thanks," Jack nodded.
"No problem," Kevin bought them both a beer at their insistence that they wouldn't rather drink something else. "Enjoy the rest of your night," Kevin nodded politely as he headed back to his party.
"Congratulations," Sam called after him. He turned briefly, smiled and inclined his head.
"So I guess you're not up for dancing," Sam couldn't manage to smother her laughter completely.
Jack simply groaned in reply.
"Come on," Sam took his arm and led him out of the restaurant. "Let's go home."
"Do I have a shiner?" Jack asked when they were seated on his couch with a movie and more beer.
Sam gently touched the skin around his eye. "It doesn't look too bad," she assured him.
"Do you think he broke my nose?" Jack continued.
Sam checked the bone of Jack's nose. "No it's fine," she insisted.
"You know what," Jack didn't stop. "I think I hit my nuts on the bar stool."
Sam exploded in a brief burst of laughter. "I think I'll leave that one for you to judge," she chuckled.
"Well this isn't quite how I'd planned for tonight to turn out," Jack sighed.
"You made plans?" Sam inquired. "What happened to just going with the flow?"
"The flow got me," Jack touched his eyes again.
"What had you planned?" Sam pushed, wondering why tonight was so different from all the other nights they spent together.
"Well there was the dancing," Jack started. "I thought we'd start off slowly. Then I figured we break into the mountain and steal something really top secret, because after all if you're gonna break the rules you should do it properly."
Sam sniggered at the mental image of Jack sneaking off the base with Thor in tow.
"Of course before we leave with whatever we steal I thought we could drink to state of near comatose in your lab and then drive home," he continued, causing Sam to chuckle.
"Not forgetting a little indecent exposure along the way for good measure." Sam found that she couldn't meet his eyes without collapsing into giggles.
"What about when we got home?" She asked. "After hijacking a mother ship for a quick tour of the solar system."
"Well I figured we could set fire to your neighbour's house, arson is always a lot of fun."
"Obviously," Sam laughed.
"Then we were gonna pick a fight in the street," Jack decided. "Only I was gonna win of course."
Sam looked at his slightly red eye with a smirk.
"And when we were finished brawling I was going to bring you back here and seduce you."
"Oh really?" Sam grinned. "What if I'd seduced you first? Being so impressed with your brawling skills and all."
"That would have worked too," Jack shrugged. "Then tomorrow morning I thought we could go to the salon and get you some hair extensions."
"Ah," Sam nodded. "Really long ones."
"Yup," Jack agreed. "Then we'd come back here and burn the regulation manual."
"You know we could have done that the night before.throwing a page at a time onto the burning house," Sam suggested helpfully.
"That's good," Jack nodded. "We'll have to remember that one next time."
"Sounds like it would have been a lot of fun," Sam smiled softly.
"It would have," Jack agreed, rubbing his temples. "It's just a shame that we started with the brawl."
"Headache?" Sam asked kindly, noticing his discomfort.
"Yeah a little," Jack admitted, his face screwed up in pain.
"We should get some sleep," Sam decided. "The spare room is made up ready."
"Not yet," Jack disagreed. "It's early, we could probably still fit in some arson."
Sam laughed quietly. "I should probably warn the rest of my street before we do this again."
"We will do this again right?" Jack asked without hesitation, the alcohol they had consumed causing him to be more upfront than normal.
"Yeah," Sam smiled. "We will."
"Ok, maybe bed would be a good idea," Jack concluded, closing his eyes against the headache once more.
"Painkillers first?" Sam offered, making her way to the kitchen t deposit their glasses.
"Nah, I'm good," Jack declined, heading down the hall to Sam's spare room.
Sam switched out her lamp and placed the crime thriller she had been engrossed in on the nightstand.
She was just about to turn over and go to sleep when her cell phone let off a small beep.
Picking it up she looked at the illuminated screen in the darkened room.
"Tonight was fun, thanx. Sleep well, sweet dreams. I'll have a coffee with 2 in the morning ;) Nite nite, love Jack xxx"
Sam couldn't help but smile at his inebriated communication from three feet across the hall.
"Good night Jack," she whispered to the empty room. "Sweet dreams."
"Home sweet home," Sam announced, opening Jack's front door for him.
"I can't believe I'm this hung over," he complained. "I never get hung over."
"Maybe you're concussed," Sam grinned. "I probably shouldn't have let you sleep last night."
"Concussed?" Jack took a moment to work out what she meant. "Oh yeah, I lost the brawl didn't I?"
"I'm afraid so," Sam smiled. "Do you want anything?"
"About a week in bed," Jack groaned, flopping onto the couch.
"Why do you keep your basement locked?" Sam asked out of the blue as she walked past the door, following Jack into the living room.
"To stop people going down there," Jack offered unhelpfully.
"That's funny," Sam rolled her eyes, blatantly not impressed.
"I keep my memories down there." Jack was still being surprisingly more open than usual.
"Why keep them out of sight?" Sam pushed, sure that he'd brush her off.
"It's easier than having to explain things to people," he shrugged. "Strangers have a way of looking at things that takes the magic out of them."
"What about friends?" she continued, pushing for more, desperate to finally get a glimpse of who Jack O'Neill was.
"You wanna see what's in my basement?" Jack asked with a laugh.
"Yeah," Sam replied a little sheepishly.
"Ok," Jack agreed. "Come on."
"What did you mean about other people seeing things differently?" Sam asked once she had begun browsing the contents of the small basement.
"I meant that if I had a rock sitting on my coffee table then people would think it was a mistake or a cost cutting paperweight," Jack informed her. "If I keep it down here then it'll always be Charlie's first pet. It'll never become just a paperweight. I don't want them sucking away the past."
"Charlie had a pet rock?" Sam smiled. "That's so cute."
"You don't think it's nuts?" Jack queried, holding the small, grey, generally uninteresting rock out towards Sam.
"No I don't," she assured him. "I used to have one too actually."
"Tell me you didn't," Sam groaned upon discovering a recognisable item in the corner.
"I did," Jack answered guiltily.
"Didn't I ask you to throw this out the day SG6 brought it back from the Shavadi?"
"Did you?" Jack tried to feign ignorance.
"Yes," she insisted. "And you kept it why exactly?"
"I never found the time initially," Jack explained reasonably. "It just sat in the garage waiting for me to clear out."
"Didn't we clear out your garage a couple of years ago?" Sam recalled, trying to remember any sign of the dress.
"That's when I realised I still had it," Jack confirmed. "By then it wasn't just another work related annoyance." he trailed off, suddenly realising that he hadn't recovered from last night's bout of openness and getting a little uncomfortable.
"Forget it," Sam picked up on his discomfort. "I don't want you to have to recall all the little details of everything."
"It had become a memory of you," Jack gave in to what he was sure must have been some form of reverse psychology. "A part of you that I just couldn't let go of."
"It wasn't a very 'me' part of me," she pointed out, running the soft blue material through her fingers.
"It was just like Charlie and his rock," Jack smiled. "He never let anyone but his pet rock see the tender, caring side of him, not even Sara."
Sam nodded her understanding but Jack continued anyway.
"I think that the time you were wearing that," he indicated the dress. "Is the only time I've seen you strong and tender at the same time."
"I still hate it," Sam insisted, inserting some much-needed sarcasm in order to lighten the moment.
"Yeah me too," Jack agreed.
"So you'll put it out in the trash?" Sam insisted.
"You'll never have to see it again," Jack assured her, dodging the question.
Sam moved on to some white fabric that turned out to be a t-shirt printed with the phrase:
'A friend went to my home planet and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.'
"Didn't you get this for Jonas?" Sam asked with a chuckle.
"He forgot to take it when he left," Jack shrugged. "Thought I'd best look after it for when he comes back."
Sam turned away, wisely choosing to say nothing about the extra dimension to Jack's soul that he had shared with her.
"Come on," Jack decided that he'd shared enough for the time being. "Didn't you say you had a computer disk to drop off for Cassie?"
"Yeah," Sam quickly closed the lid of the wooden jewellery box she had been looking at.
Jack walked Sam to the door.
"So I was just thinking," he started quietly as Sam stepped outside. "Purely because it's good science to test theories as many times as possible."
"We should probably try out the master plan again tonight," Sam offered. "See if we can manage some of the things we missed yesterday."
"Right," Jack nodded with a grin.
"I'll pick you up at 7.30," Sam told him.
"Don't be late," he grinned, pushing the door carefully shut behind her.
The End
Story Notes: Author's note- I know that some of this is kind of out of character but I wrote it last July whilst sitting outside Tenerife North airport at four am, it was freezing cold, I'd been traveling all day and still had a 4 hour wait and 2-3 hour journey before I could sleep so I needed some fluff to warm me up. Seeing as I'd written it I figured I might as well type it up on the off chance that someone might enjoy it. It hasn't been betaed because I'm too far detached from the time I wrote it to effectively change anything.
Dedication- For Jack who read about half of it last year and I never got around to typing up the rest.
Dedication- For Jack who read about half of it last year and I never got around to typing up the rest.
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]