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TITLE: Addictions Oh yeah, and Sam had a house in Season Five…I'm assuming that after the NID and associated parties went through it in the S5 ep Ascension, she got the hell out of it. I put her in a nice apartment instead. Addictions He woke from a dream of knives and acid, gasping for air. Around him, the night was still and quiet. As he tried to force himself to relax, a hand slipped out of the darkness to touch his cheek with cool, dry fingers. "Bad dreams?" "Yeah." The touch was a comfort he wasn't sure he could afford right now. Jack slid from the bed and heard her sit up, the sound of cotton sheet over her pyjamas a comforting familiarity. Leaning back over the bed, he pushed gently at her shoulder, "Go back to sleep. I'm okay." "That's what you said the other night when you woke up screaming." She still had the bruises on her arms from that night. Lucky she had a few long-sleeved t-shirts in her wardrobe. Explaining how she'd gotten the bruises would have been…difficult. "This was different." "Do you expect me to believe that?" No, he didn't; but he could hope. "I'm okay." Perhaps if he repeated it often enough, he'd come to believe it himself. The silence was dubious, but after a moment, there was the sound of her lying back down in the bed. Then one hand brushed his arm lightly. "Try to get some sleep." And that was it. He made his way through the still-unfamiliar apartment to the kitchen and got himself a glass of water before sitting down on the couch. Thank God she understood that he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to seem needy. An ironic laugh rose within him. The fact that he came to her apartment every night without invitation was enough proof that he was 'needy'. He tried not to think of it as desperate - but it was. He simply couldn't sleep alone anymore. What began in the infirmary - a circle of nightmares and horror - had continued through his convalescence from mild sarcophagus addiction. The Doc concluded that repeated use of a sarcophagus under any circumstances was dangerous. While he lay in an infirmary bed, Teal'c and Carter came to see him. He even woke up one night in the throes of a cramp to find Carter sleeping in the chair next to his bed, her head pillowed on her arms, cheek resting against the hospital sheets. Then there'd been the nights when he woke up in his base quarters, trembling. He'd hoped it would pass. It didn't. After Iraq, he'd had Sara in the house - Sara and Charlie. He couldn't count the number of times he'd slipped from their bed after a nightmare had woken him from sleep - or the number of times she'd asked him to come back to bed after he spent hours trying to purge the demons of memory from the hell of his mind. Iraq didn't even compare. Four months as a POW did not stack up against even four days in the hands of the Goa'uld. Humiliation, degradation, and some torture was about as much as the Iraqis could manage. The Goa'uld could take you to the edge, kill you, revive you, then start all over again. Maybe he was just getting old…well, older. Still a stubborn ass, as Sara had called him more than once when they fought, but more aware of the fragility of his soul. More aware that he had less of the strength which would have once bullied him through a recovery. It would have been a lot safer if Daniel wasn't…ascended. There would have been someone else to turn to apart from her. Unfortunately, Daniel was among the land of the inscrutable glow-lights, who had the power of the storm at their fingertips but couldn't jail-break a friend from an enemy stronghold. Jack still resented that. Oh, he was grateful to his friend for the encouragement to hold on, but for crying out loud he'd been so close to telling Baal anything - if only to make the torture stop, and Daniel had stood there (glowed there?) and made frustrating platitudes. He woke up that first night, twisted amidst sheets sodden with his sweat. After the second sleepless night, he resolved he would do something about it. 'Doing something about it' had somehow meant turning up at her place that night and sleeping in her spare room. And somehow - Jack never understood how - he ended up sleeping in her bed. Just sleeping. If his brain and common sense had been in control, it would never have happened; if his libido had been in charge, then it probably wouldn't have stopped there. Unfortunately and fortunately, they were just sharing the bed. He snorted to himself. 'Just sharing the bed', his ass! He hadn't touched her yet, not that way. Right now, it was enough to know there was someone there for him. And, for some reason - again, he was not quite sure why - she didn't kick him out. At least he wasn't intruding on her love life. If she had a love life. Which was another thing he wasn't going to think about - along with which drawer held her panties. He arrived most nights after eight, having called her first with the words: "I'm coming around." He left most mornings around seven. Sometimes she was awake, sometimes she wasn't. If she was, sometimes he'd stay a bit later with a cup of tea or coffee. Nobody knew. Yet. How long could he keep the fiction up? How long before someone noticed that he was never home? How long before someone clued in to the fact that his truck was usually parked in the vicinity of Major Carter's flat? He didn't know, and he didn't want to know either. If Daniel were here, he would have played the angel on Jack's shoulder, advising caution. Daniel wasn't here. He shivered a little, out on the couch. The snake - Kanan - had liked the situation as little as Jack. Not only had the Tok'ra been forced to confront an antagonistic host, but forced to confront his own actions in the moral and ethical values of that host. Kanan had struggled with himself, with the guilt he already felt at leaving Shaylan behind. Without Jack as his host, Kanan's guilt would have faded with time - a woman he'd cared about but who had been ultimately insignificant in the grander scheme of the Tok'ra. Of course, without Jack as his host, Kanan would have died and his intel with him. The casual disregard for the smaller people was just one more reason Jack had to dislike the Tok'ra. Oh, sure, Jacob was okay - but Jacob had once been human and USAF military. He'd been old enough to be 'set in his ways' - unlike most of the Tok'ra hosts who seemed to be fairly young. And maybe Selmak - being so old and wise - was sharp enough to know that Jack O'Neill and his team dealt better with Jacob than they would with him. It was a little strange to have the fragments of the symbiote's memories in his mind - the bits and pieces shared between reluctant host and symbiote - mostly to do with two women, blonde-haired and slender. Kanan had loved Shaylan in his own way - in the only way allowed to someone who had sworn his fate and his future to the eradication of the Goa'uld. And Jack…cared about Sam Carter in his own way - the only way permitted to an officer commanding a subordinate. I still remember what Jolinar felt for Martouf, he'd overheard Carter telling Daniel one night while they were off-world. And sometimes it's hard to tell what's her and what's me. Jack understood a little - but it was easier for him and Kanan. He'd only met Shaylan twice, and Kanan had never met Carter at all. Their feelings were intact - mostly. He wished that some of the other memories weren't quite so intact. It was cold again, and his body hurt. The non-existent wounds in his arms and chest ached - although the sarcophagus had fixed his body, it hadn't been able to 'fix' his mind to make him believe he was no longer wounded. So he still 'felt' the knives in him, even after he was healed. Doc called it 'phantom pain' and said that in time, the feelings would go away. In time. The cold bit into him, deep as his bones in the earth, and as terrible as death itself. Worse, since death was supposed to be eternal, but the sarcophagus made it temporary - and repeatable. No-one should have to die twice - or three, four, or five times. The thought dragged him to his feet and propelled him on his way. He was at the door of her room before he questioned where he was going. It was a disconcerting habit he'd picked up over the last week. In the early-morning hours when his self-control was not as strong as it needed to be, the merest thought of what Baal had done to him was enough to prompt him to Carter's bed. Not for sex - although even the thought of that activity sent a stir of interest to his groin - just for the comfort of being close to another human. Slowly, he pushed the door open and closed it behind him. As he climbed into the bed, she turned over but said nothing. After he settled himself, she shifted back so his arm lay in the hollow formed by her shoulder, neck, and jaw, and she was close enough for him to smell but not quite close enough to touch. Impulse struck him, and he shifted closer to her and kissed her. He had aimed for her cheek in a brief moment of mingled thankfulness, desire, and relief. If he wasn't so tired, he would never have acted on such a thought. Really. But she turned towards him to speak, and his lips caught on the corner of her mouth - and stayed there. The moment stretched, lingered, passed…then her mouth moved against his, tasting his upper lip with a sweet slowness that sent tingles down his spine and into his groin. His free arm - the one not trapped by the curve of her neck - wrapped itself around her waist as he leaned forwards and she leaned back into him. Just a little, but enough to let him know that this wasn't revolting to her. Her hand touched his cheek, drawing him in deeper - as if he needed encouragement! She was warm, flesh yearning for flesh as she twisted around in his arms, her body heat transferred to him through the thin material of her pyjamas. One arm slid up under his tee, the fingers stroking slowly up the hollow of his spine, and almost instinctively he shifted his pelvis into the cradle of her hips. Then she broke away from him, turning her head to escape his mouth. Jack felt a moment of panic as he listened to her slightly uneven breaths. Her words whispered against his cheek. "Are you sure?" Of all the questions he'd expected her to ask, this wasn't one of them. Was he sure he wanted this? Yes. It would mean trouble and difficulty, but taking Daniel and Teal'c into SG-1 had meant trouble and difficulty, too - and that was long before they ever went out into the field. "Are you sure?" He had to know. The silence stretched too long. He was ready to roll off her when she spoke. "We've gone too far to go back." The answer hurt a little. He traced one finger through her hair over her ear, "And that's the only reason you'd…" He bit the sentence off and looked away with a grimace. Of course it was the only reason she'd ever think of…doing anything with him. He didn't need to kid himself, the score was perfectly obvious. The understanding ached. "No," she said, her finger touching his chin, drawing him back to her. "That's not the only reason, Jack." His name on her lips had a powerful effect on him: chest-squeezing, heart-thrumming intensity. For the first time, he was glad she'd never called him by name before. It made the use now more intimate. "I'm not…whole, you know." Not after everything which had happened in his life. "I know." She kissed him lightly. "Neither am I." Hanson, Jolinar, a whole string of pretty-boys who'd kicked the bucket or ended up gone, rewritten memories, a burnout job with a burnout schedule, and having to deal with her commanding officer on a level which the relationship wasn't supposed to take. "Are you sure…?" Her answer was quiet and certain. "Yes, I'm sure." So he leaned down to kiss her as deeply and as thoroughly as he could manage. Her arms wrapped around him and desire tingled through his body making him forget the torture he suffered under Baal - if only temporarily. But after tonight, there would be tomorrow night, and after tomorrow night there would be the night after… A few days before, the hunger for the sarcophagus had driven him savagely. He'd struggled with the need for another 'dose' and in the end he'd beaten the hunger down until it was nothing more than the tiniest craving, easily mastered. This was an addiction of a different kind. * FINIS |
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