Title: Patchwork
Author: Christi (christim@comcast.net)
Rating: 17+, I suppose….
Category: HORRIFYINGLY syrupy, sugary sweet fluff that’s trying to
disguise itself as real fic and failing miserably.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Anyone up for staging a coup?
Author’s Note:
--
He couldn’t quite get a full breath yet, still gasping for air as the
sweat cooled on his skin. It was probably just the endorphins still racing
through his body that made the world fuzzy at the edges and had him believing
that this moment was perfect.
Probably.
But the fact was that Sam lay underneath him, sprawled across the
slightly faded squares of his grandmother’s quilt and seeming quite short of
breath herself. So really, even if the moment wasn’t precisely perfect, anything that involved a naked Samantha
Carter came close enough.
He was still touching her—in fact, he couldn’t seem to stop.
Nuzzling her stomach, tracing down her sides, entangling his legs with
hers, all so unconsciously that the only thing that registered was the slightly
delirious repetition in his brain of samsamsamsam.
There may have even been some (very brief) hand holding, though he’d rather
file a thousand requisition reports in one day than admit to it.
Better to just rest the side of his face on her stomach and concentrate
on trying to breathe.
--
For the first time in—well, in entirely too long—Sam couldn’t seem to
hold on to a rational train of thought. Instead, she was flooded with
sensations and feelings and half-formed queries that didn’t quite string
together.
She noted that the cabin smelled a little musty and thought it was
strange considering they had been here not a month ago, back when they could
say for the first time that the only issue between them really was the regs.
But maybe a
She wished Jack would stop running his hands down her legs because her
nerves were still alert and over-sensitized. While the feeling was good in
theory, if she didn’t get a few minutes to process everything, to properly
register that after years they were finally here,
she’d probably implode.
She wondered how her underwear had managed to be removed almost the
second they had walked in the door, and yet one of her shoes had only been
discarded next to the bed—but then she remembered how they had tripped over the
threshold and how Jack had slid down her body, teeth and lips and tongue while
she collapsed against the front door.
She realized that her feet were slightly elevated, and it took a moment
to realize it was because they were resting on the pillows. Looking to her
right, she saw the post of the bed’s footboard. Rolling to her stomach, she ran
her fingers over the wood for a moment before resting her head on her hands and
breaking into peals of helpless laughter. When Jack tilted his head, bewildered
by her abrupt amusement, she just gestured wildly, not sure where to start.
“We’re a bit ridiculous is all,” she finally said.
--
Feeling lazy and silly and happyhappyhappy, Jack just had to smile, resting his chin on
her shoulder. She was right really, but then he had learned a long time ago
that Carter usually was.
“There are worse things,” he pointed out, pressing a kiss against the
nape of her neck, hands still moving across her body.
There was a curious sense of relief in every movement, and he found
himself curbing the impulse to babble out everything he had ever wanted to tell
her, but deemed too personal, too close.
He wanted to tell her that this was his grandmother’s quilt. She had
started to make it the day after her wedding and finally managed to finish it a
week after Charlie was born. The pieces were memories—wedding dresses and
christening gowns and torn blue jeans, and now Sam was a part of that for him,
a piece of the whole.
He wanted to tell her about his grandfather who had his only two
children at the age of 58 and lived long enough to fish with Jack every summer
until he graduated from high school.
He wanted to tell her that science had been Charlie’s favorite subject,
which was silly because he didn’t talk about Charlie, and even if he wanted to,
now was hardly the time.
But he wanted to all the same.
Instead, he ran his hands down her back, relishing the feel of skin
beneath his fingertips. “Do you know how many fantasies I’ve had about this
back?” he breathed, nipping at her left shoulder blade.
It wasn’t particularly romantic or soulful as confessions go, but it
would do.
--
Hands over her back, concentric circles round and round that slowly
heated up what had been cooling skin.
Why had she wanted him to stop again? A delighted hum filled the air, an
involuntary praise of the havoc he wreaked so quietly on her body without
really having to try too hard. Still….
“My back?” she asked, amused.
It seemed like a strange body part to fixate on. But then, she had always had
an irrational fascination with his hands. Which of course, had turned out to be
as perfect as she had imagined, long and dexterous and calloused in all the
right places, catching against just enough skin….
His mouth was working its way down her spine, a line of heated kissed
and nips straight down her back as his hands led the way south, sliding around
her ass and over her legs and then back up and oh....
As he slid two of those perfect fingers into her, she briefly considered
proposing to him. Which was irrational because they’d be separated by half a
country after this two week reprieve, and even if that wasn’t an issue it was
too soon and too much and too fanciful of an idea to have come from Sam
Carter’s brain.
Then he shifted his fingers a little up and to the right and the flash
of heat in her body made her wonder if maybe a week would be a long enough
waiting period.
--
She was warm and responsive and so beautiful lying there, handfuls of
the quilt twisted in her fingers while she thrust back against him and he
remembered the silver blanket and the expanse of skin. Maybe there wasn’t a way
to explain that he had been so busy trying not to look down the front of her makeshift covering that he
had ended up ogling the back.
He suspected that it was something that wouldn’t make sense to anyone
else. So he just let it go because at least he had told her something. Wondering at how easy this
all was and wondering if it would last and wondering what was going on in her
head—none of it mattered, because he quickened the pace of his fingers and she
broke apart, a quiet gasp and blue, blue eyes staring at him.
Sam.
Another smile broke free and he didn’t even try to stop it because she
was here and everything else would sort itself out. Jack wasn’t sure when he
had become an optimist, but he figured that it was sometime between an arm
wrestle invitation and two seconds ago. What difference did it make?
The need to tell her things—silly, stupid things—was still there and still
as unfamiliar as ever. But maybe he could learn to live with it or maybe it
would fade in time—either would be fine. In the meanwhile, he decided to just
go with it.
“I love you,” he said. It wasn’t a confession or a revelation or
melodramatic or expected—it was just what was.
An unsurprised blink and a perfect smile were the responses he received.
After another moment her hand rose and threaded through his hair, drawing him
down for one quick kiss, then another.
Pulling away, she just kept smiling. “I like your quilt,” she finally
said.
He grinned, flopping his head back on his hands with a contented sigh.
“It was my grandmother’s.”