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Title: Linger
Author: Annerb
Summary: They’ve been doing this…whatever it is for almost a month now. Sequel to ‘Convergence’
Rating/Warnings: PG-language, innuendo
Categorization: AU, angst, drama, Sam/Jack
Author’s Note: I, uh, may have written a sequel (or two) while I was waiting for the posting date for the secret santa over at sj_everyday . Remind me again that I need a new AU to play in like I need another hole in my head? Please? Set pre-series, but post-movie. Thanks to la_tante  for the beta. All remaining errors and weirdness my own.

Linger

Sam stretches out low over the green felt of the table, lining up her shot perfectly. She glances up at Jack right before she takes the shot, and his attention is a few feet wide of the eight ball. Noticing her regard, he gives her sheepish grin at being caught ogling her. Not apologetic, exactly, more like, ‘Can you really blame a guy?’

She gives him a slow, measured smile. Not looking away from him, she takes the shot.

The eight ball sinks squarely in the corner pocket.

Jack whistles. “Best fifty bucks I’ve ever lost,” he says.

Sam laughs, straightening up from the table. “I think I’ve earned myself another drink,” she says, scooping up the bills. “You need another?” She waves the money. “I’m buying.”

He flashes her that devil-may-care smirk of his that never fails to turn her insides warm and liquid, and how long can that possibly last? One would think it would wear off eventually, but they’ve been doing this…whatever it is for almost a month now, and she’s no less affected.

He lifts his still half-full beer. “I’m good. Besides, I want a rematch, and God knows I’m handicapped enough as it is.”

“Don’t tell me you’re intimidated,” she teases, placing her cue stick in the rack, letting it slide through her fingers.

“As we met, sweetheart,” he says, leaning one hip against the table. “As we met.”

She raises an eyebrow at him and this is so damn fun, this stupid innuendo game they are quickly turning into a fine art. “Keep calling me that and things are going to get a hell of a lot more intimidating,” she promises.

He holds up his hands in mock surrender, his grin widening. “If you say so.” He pauses. “Babe?”

Shaking her head, she turns back towards the bar, letting her hips swing just a little more than she usually would, knowing very well that he’s watching her retreat.

The bar is fairly crowded with Friday night throngs, the snap of pool balls fighting against raised voices and poorly piped-in music. It’s not exactly a dive, but close enough to feel textured and authentic, a great place to slip into anonymity. Or a semi-private party of two.

She’s still probably grinning like an idiot when she finally works her way to the front of the bar, leaning against it to catch the eye of the bartender. Before she can order though, someone brushes up against her just a bit too close. “She’ll have a gin and tonic with a twist.”

The sound of that voice completely shatters Sam’s buoyant mood, the smile melting off her face. She looks up at the bartender, pretending the other man had never spoken. “Glenlivet, neat.”

The bartender nods, his eyes darting briefly past her, and she knows he’s trying to judge the capacity for trouble in the little standoff developing at the bar. Sam forces a smile. She can handle this.

Her unwelcome companion’s fingers tug gently at her hair, a gesture that used to be familiar but now is only unsettling. “Scotch, huh? Well, look at that, little Sammie all grown up.”

His voice is slightly slurred, but nowhere near his capacity for belligerence. She knows this far too well. “I’m not interested, Jonas,” she says in her frostiest tone, refusing to even turn and acknowledge him.

Undeterred, he leans into her, his fingers dropping to her forearm. Proprietary, like they still belong there. They don’t. “And here I haven’t even offered up anything yet.”

Resigning herself to the encounter, Sam turns to face him. He’s slightly disheveled and doesn’t look particularly well rested and she has to ruthlessly stamp down on that old dormant part of her that wants to be concerned. He never needed to be taken care of, by her least of all.

“I don’t suppose you’d just go away if I asked nicely,” she says, working hard to keep her voice even.

He smiles at her, and she’s surprised by how little that familiar gesture affects her. Maybe because it didn’t used to be quite that feral. “Ah, Sammie,” he says, his hand moving up her arm, “we both know playing hard to get was never your thing.”

She pulls back, but his grip only tightens, a silent tug of war.

Jonas’ attention shifts off and behind her just long enough for Sam to suspect that their conversation has not gone unnoticed by Jack. God, this had better not turn into a damn pissing contest. She can only handle so much testosterone bullshit at a time. But Jack doesn’t barge in with bluster, rather stands just near enough to be intrusive while continuing to sip leisurely at his beer as if he has all the time in the world.

Jonas isn’t sloshed enough not to notice. “You need something, old man?”

Sam winces. When exactly had she wandered into a made-for-TV movie?

Jack doesn’t seem put off though. “Don’t mind me,” he says congenially. “I just wanted to get front row seats.”

Sam darts a look over her shoulder at Jack. It really isn’t a fair match up, and Sam suspects it wouldn’t be even if Jack were drunk too. As it is, Jonas just sort of stares back at him. “What?”

Jack looks at his watch. “Well, I figure that if you don’t take your hand off her in the next thirty seconds, she’s going to drop you on your ass. I think it’ll be pretty fun to watch.”

Jonas’ fingers dig into her arm, his pickled brain finally catching up.

Sam has had enough. “I think you’re seriously overestimating my patience, Jack,” she says, firmly removing her arm from Jonas’ grasp with one swift tug. “We’re done here, Jonas.”

As she steps away, Jack’s hand goes to the small of her back, and, instead of being patronizing, she somehow reads the fleeting touch as more of a, ‘I think you’re doing great, but I’m here if you need it,’ which is almost as unexpected and overwhelming as Jonas’ sudden appearance.

Jonas, for all his lack of manners and his clearly overdeveloped alcoholic habit, is not an idiot, and his ability to read body language is not compromised in the least. If only the same could be said of the filter between his brain and his mouth.

“That didn’t take long,” he says with a leer, and there it is in his eyes, the sharp-edged meanness—the thing that finally made her walk away from him, from everything she invested in them. She wonders even now if it was something new, something done to him, or if that is just wishful thinking, an excuse for why she was too damn naive to see it was always there in the first place.

She practically feels his next words coming, but still isn’t prepared for them.

“Then again,” Jonas says, “I’d never expect a gal like you to let go of one branch until she had a nice, firm grip on the next.”

It isn’t even so much the words, the insult, that hurt so much as who they are coming from, a man she seriously contemplated marrying. The fact that part of her still feels sorry for him. She should tell him to go to hell, but the air in her lungs is burning way too much to get the words out.

“Okay,” Jack says, his body tense next to hers. “Now my patience is well past the point where I kick your ass, drunk and pathetic or not.”

Sam puts out a hand to stop him—after all, if anyone is kicking anyone’s ass tonight, it’s going to be her—when one of Jonas’ buddies appears, looking wary and harried and sober enough to know trouble when he sees it.

“Hey, Jonas,” Tom says, taking him by the shoulders. “I think you’ve had enough fun for one night.”

Jonas protests, but Tom’s firm grip on his shoulder persuades him to move away with him. “Sorry, Sam,” Tom says sheepishly back over his shoulder as he drags Jonas back off to their booth in the corner.

Sam watches them retreat for a moment, before spinning on her heel and walking off in the exact opposite direction. She doesn’t have a destination in mind, just away, and doesn’t slow down until she’s crossed the entire bar and is well out of sight of Jonas and his friends.

The farthest part of the bar just happens to be a dark, clogged dance floor full of clinging pairs of people shuffling to corny music. She comes to a stop as she runs out of space and Jack is there just one step behind. She feels jittery between the adrenaline and embarrassment and plain old anger. She thinks longingly of the drink she left behind on the bar, wishing she’d had the foresight to grab it as she left.

She’s still deciding her next move when Jack touches her shoulders, tentative at first as if to test out her reaction, and then sliding down her arms when she doesn’t pull away. Far from unwelcome, she leans back into the touch—a touch so different from the one she just escaped. It doesn’t demand anything of her.

“Hey,” is all he says, soft and understanding and somehow familiar.

She closes her eyes because maybe she doesn’t feel like she’s about to blow her top anymore, but that only makes way for the second place, much less welcome reaction. She’s already cried all the tears over that asshole she ever plans to.

Maybe Jack gets that, because he guides her further into the anonymous crush of people, turning her to face him and pulling her in close. It’s some swaying, generic song she’s probably heard a million times on the radio, but that’s not what she’s paying attention to as they move through the crowd. His hands move smoothly up and down her back, like he somehow knows exactly how to touch her, what she needs. She breathes out, turning her face into his neck, concentrating on letting go of everything but the unexpected ease of this.

The jukebox clumsily shuffles through a few songs before Sam works up the nerve to speak, to answer the question she knows he has to be wondering. Had she really been in a relationship with that asshole? Willingly?

“I may have a compulsion to fix things,” she says against his shoulder, her fingers twisting in the fabric of his sleeve.

“Things?” he parries, not letting her get away with lying to either of them.

She sighs. “People,” she edits.

He lets out a soft huff, something between humor and self-deprecation, even as his hands continue their soothing rhythm up her back. “Well, that explains a lot.”

Lifting her head from his shoulder, she looks him straight in the eye. “I don’t think you’re broken.”

He gives her a wry look of disbelief.

She shakes her head, feeling a different sort of frustration building. “Maybe you were. But whatever happened out there to change that, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

His eyes slip past her. “And if you did?”

It’s a startling confession, and she isn’t sure whether to be flattered or terrified, this idea that she might have had anything to do with the staggering transformation of this man from hard-edged hopelessness to the sort of dawning wakefulness that characterizes him now. Dazed, but moving forward.

Maybe she can admit it was the broken man who drew her into that reckless first night, the very lack of long-term consequences as appealing as anything in her life at the time. But she still thinks she would have walked right past him that second time if not for some fundamental, visible shift in him.

It isn’t the broken man that attracts her, continues to draw her in, but rather the man crawling back up from the dark, rebuilding himself day by day.

She doesn’t know how to put any of that into words, so she settles for touching his chin, bringing his gaze back to hers. “That’s not why I’m still here.”

He stares back at her and for a moment, she feels like she’s being given a rare look at the honest, bare man. “You sure about that?”

“Yes,” she says because her surety of this fact may be all she has.

“Well,” he says, disappearing back behind a self-deprecating smile, “at least one of us is.”

She smiles, trailing her finger along the edge of his collar, loving the way his eyes darken at the contact. “It’s a start,” she says, because for once she just can’t obsess about where this may be going, what exactly it is she’s getting herself into. Maybe knowing where they are right now is enough—only half-certain or not.

“Yeah,” he agrees, drawing her closer, molding her body against his. He’s still looking at her like he can’t quite believe she’s here. “It’s one hell of a start.”

She relaxes into him and the sway of the music, everything forgotten but the feel of his hands, sure and steady against her waist, the texture of his jaw against the skin of her neck as he leans into her.

Because maybe the real truth is she’s hoping he’ll be the one to fix her.

.fin.

Sequel: Falling Back to Earth