Disclaimer - MGM/Gekko/Double Secret own them.
Future fic, vague spoilers for 'Divide and Conquer' and 'Nightwalkers'. Feedback would be appreciated :)
Many thanks to Anna!
*
It's not how she expected it to be.
She'd always thought she'd see him again somewhere, but had envisioned their meeting at some kind of reunion (though it had to be said, thoughts of him now were few and far between, and laced with the kind of regret she didn't know how to classify).
So yeah, she'd expected to see him again - somehow, somewhere.
She just hadn't expected it to be while she was buying an extension cord.
They're frozen in the doorway of the store - her about to leave, him just walking in - staring, blinking, briefly wondering if their eyesight has failed or they've finally, after everything they went through, cracked.
Funny how after all this time she still feels she can think 'they', as if she can speak for him.
And *that's* nicely ironic, because right now they both seem to have trouble saying anything at all.
It should be simple (or in actuality, incredibly complicated and a marvellous feat of evolution - but that had always been somebody else's speciality): open mouth, activate voice box and vocal chords, speak.
But then she'd probably only end up saying something about how. damn. good he looks.
How is that fair?
Eventually he manages something.
"Didn't know you'd moved to DC."
Okay, so no greeting it was then. She nods. "Few months ago. You?"
This was an incredibly surreal moment. Trapped in the entrance of an appliance store, making small talk with the man who was both her former CO and something vastly more complicated.
Or at least, he used to be.
"Just visiting. Staying with a friend. Asked me to pick something up."
She nods again, because it seems like the thing to do. "How long you here for?"
"Couple of weeks. I-"
A woman with too many shopping bags pauses just outside the doorway, clears her throat loudly, and fixes them with the kind of glare that says she *will* get into the store today to buy that vital toaster, and she's willing to disembowel anyone who gets in her way with the complimentary knife set that comes with it.
Sam looks at him. He looks at her.
As one, they step outside the door - him backward, her forward. He stumbles, a little (that's ironic too), and her free hand automatically lifts to grab onto his forearm.
They're still staring at each other; haven't *stopped* staring at each other, the potential murderer all but forgotten.
He speaks.
"You wanna-?"
"Yeah."
*
The coffee shop seems quiet, foreign. Yet when she looks away from him she can see the other customers - laughing, talking, see their lips move. But the sound of it seems...far away. Not real.
She isn't looking away from him very often.
They each have a coffee in front of them, but it's more a formality than anything else. Gods knows she hasn't touched hers.
As she continues looking at him, she remembers things - things that, up until now, she forced herself *not* to remember.
She's good at that.
The curve of his hand. The subtle strength of his body. The way she holds his gaze and knows *precisely* what he's thinking even though he hasn't said a word.
She speaks.
"You wanna-?"
"Yeah."
*
Her apartment door bursts open as they stumble inside, the keys in her hand slipping to the floor as her fingers spread across the back of his neck, nails tugging slight against his skin as she thoroughly enjoys his mouth with her own.
Someone, somehow, manages to remember to close the door, but her hands are already moving, tugging his jacket - his *leather* jacket - off.
He mutters something deeply about an unfair advantage, and before she's almost aware of it both her jacket *and* her top are off.
Not that she's complaining; just looking forward to when he removes the next layer of clothing.
Up against the wall, gasping for breath, she remembers everything.
Everything.
*
There are things she knows.
Wormhole theory.
Lock picking.
The fact that she left her new extension cord in the coffee shop (and doesn't particularly care).
The fact that he's *never* looked better than when lying next to her, naked, his hand resting atop her thigh.
But there are some things she doesn't know.
"Why didn't this happen before?"
She remembers his retirement party. Shaking his hand. Kissing him on the cheek.
She remembers when she transferred to Washington, when the accident meant she couldn't go off-world anymore. Wondering if he knew.
He hasn't said anything about her leg. But then, he wouldn't.
The only thing he says at all, is the truth.
"Timing."
And maybe that's all it was.
~FINIS