Chapter Text
“You can’t be serious,” Jack turned from peering in the fridge to looking at Sam over his shoulder.
She shrugged and then winced as she jostled her right shoulder, still aching from yesterday’s impact with the embarkation ramp.
“How can you have pasta sauce, but no pasta? In fact, how can you have no actual food in your house except for pasta sauce and frozen bananas?”
“Well, it’s just that everything goes off if we get stuck off-world or in lock down at the base and so I just ... stopped ... eating at home.” Her forehead wrinkled and she went to shrug again, remembering not to at the last moment. Readjusting the arm sling, she lowered her eyes, trying to look distracted rather than embarrassed.
The Colonel picked up his keys off the counter. “Right, well. I’m going out to the store. Don’t go anywhere,” he paused for a moment, remembering that Sam’s dislocated shoulder and broken wrist meant that she wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. “Well. Yes. Do you need anything from the store?”
“No, Sir,” she answered meekly, feeling like a teenager getting a parental dressing down.
“I’ll be about an hour,” he told Sam, walking out. When the front door clicked shut, she sighed.
He felt guilty for the accident that had knocked the Stargate over. And for their need to go jumping into it while it was horizontal because there was a surprise attack from a squad of Jaffa. Even if those sorts of events happened often in their off-world explorations, the Colonel always felt guilty when one of them was hurt.
The guilt was why he was here, in her kitchen, harassing Sam about her lack of groceries. The landing on the ramp had left her with a dislocated shoulder, fractured wrist and three badly bruised ribs. When they’d discharged her this morning, Colonel O’Neill had been waiting to drive her home and, once here, had decided to take over caring for her for the rest of the day.
Obviously she couldn’t cook, but instead of ordering take out, like she would normally do if she ate at home, he’d wanted to prepare something. And that had led to the discovery that, aside from beer, a few bottles of wine and some ice packs in her freezer, all she had in the house that could be described as food was pasta sauce and frozen bananas.
She appreciated his help, really, but all that she wanted to do right now was sleep. It was the only way to escape the aches and pains that were present on her right side, from the goose egg on her head to the barked skin and purpling bruise on her shin. Sam looked at the clock. It was half an hour too early to take her pain meds, but if she fell asleep without taking them she’d regret it.
Shaking two pills from the bottle, she downed them with water from the tap. The couch was calling for her. Actually, her bed was, but she didn’t fancy having the Colonel step over that magical line, so the couch would do until he got back.
The door was unlocked when he returned, which was fortunate, because Jack didn’t have a spare hand to dig out his keys. Leaving it standing open, he carried the first lot of grocery bags to the kitchen and was returning to his truck when he noticed Sam asleep on the couch in the living room.
Making an effort to move quietly, Jack retrieved the remaining grocery bags, pushed the front door quietly shut with his elbow and left the bags in the kitchen. He toed his shoes off and crossed the carpet to where Sam lay on the couch.
There was a cushion under Sam’s injured arm and she appeared uncomfortable even in sleep. With her right hip pulled up at an odd angle, her skirt had ridden up to her knees and he could see the darkening bruises on her knee and shin, except for where the dressings covered the places where the skin had been scraped off.
Jack let his eyes drift back up to Sam’s face, noting the crease in her brow and the corner of her mouth turned down in the beginnings of a grimace. There was a blanket over the back of the couch and Jack snagged it, careful not to wake her, and spread it out over his 2IC. The coffee table behind him looked sturdy enough and it held when he gingerly lowered himself on to it.
It tore Jack up to see any of his team hurt and it was usually he or Daniel that took the hardest hits. Himself, because he would rather put his body in the way of trouble over any of the team. Daniel was, well, better now, but in the beginning the guy had no field skills at all and it was all the rest of them could do to keep him alive on missions.
Carter, although she took hits, usually walked out of med bay after a mission. That Doc had kept her in overnight was a sign of just how hard and fast she had exited the wormhole. Carter had speculated that the gate may have taken a few heavy hits as they were in transit, causing them to come out faster than usual. Either way, jumping into it had meant that they had exited the gate horizontally and in the air.
There was work to do in the kitchen. A meal was waiting to be made and groceries needed to be put away. Reaching over, Jack meant to just take her temperature, to check if she were too cold or too hot, but his concern for her welled up and he stroked her cheek with his knuckles and lingered in the contact, instead of just checking the warmth of her skin.
Sam turned into his touch and the grimace in the corner of her mouth softened. He would do anything to see her pain eased, and so he stroked her cheek again and then brushed his fingertips over her furrowed brow. Where his fingers went they eased her and, in return, that eased him.
Unlike in the infirmary, there was no one here to see him kiss his fingertips and brush them over her lips. An apology, a declaration, a promise. To her, to himself.
Always.