stargateficrec | Vanilla on the Wind by Rowan Darkstar (Teen)

Show: SG1
Rec Category: Daniel Jackson/Samantha Carter
Characters: Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Samantha Carter
Het/Slash/Gen: Het
Warning: spoilers for Season 10 episode "Morpheus"
Author on LJ: rowan_d
Author's Website: Beauty in Shadows, LJ
Link: Vanilla on the Wind

Why this must be read:

This is an author who has a gift with the details. Through glorious description, the reader sees a glimpse, through Daniel's eyes, a Sam Carter trying to hold it together after Season 10 episode, Morpheus. Then with a Daniel who's both understanding and supportive, Sam is given the opportunity to know that she's not alone; she does have support in her team and in the man who loves her. Rowan has an incredible gift with words in this piece. It's descriptive. It's glorious. It's a fic worth reading!

Story Summary: Her lipstick's dark and Daniel can't catch her eyes.

They walk in silence, steps falling in easy rhythm. They've been walking side by side for nearly a decade.

The night is pleasantly cool after the thick heat of the bar, and the fresh air clears his head. Her presence is deeper tonight, thicker. He's used to the imposing presence of Lt. Col Samantha Carter in a jump suit or DCUs with flak jacket and P-90. He's felt the red heat of her anger, felt the shimmering electricity of her worry, her frantic nerves. But Sam Carter in low rise jeans and a soft blouse with a slight scent of amber and sandalwood is something more heady. More dangerous.

She turns her head to look for traffic at the corner that will lead them down the road into her neighborhood, and her shoulder moves close as he turns the same direction. Her skin smells of vanilla soap and something low and subtle he has learned is distinctly Sam. He caught a similar scent, once, walking through a department store in a shopping mall in Denver. He stood on the crowded mezzanine nearly a minute, bodies pushing around him, and he remembered what it felt like to have Sam's head on his shoulder, her breasts against his chest, her laughter soft in his ear. He hadn't realized she hadn't touched him in too many months to count. Things were falling by the wayside in the quest to save the world.

She watches the cars rush by as they wait for a chance to cross the road, and he watches her profile in the blue-grey light. He knows her soldier's danger-keen mind is registering the cars as they pass, but he can feel she's a million miles away, unaware of his attention on the sculptured lines of her jaw, her cheekbone, the graceful curve of her neck. He wishes for an absurdly poetic moment that he had the skill to paint or draw or somehow capture the lines of this woman on the street corner tonight. This woman who has travelled to the far reaches of the galaxy and back, who has been host to an alien symbiote and harbored memories of people and places she has never seen, this woman who still can't quite manage to remember when she's left soup heating on the stove.

She's hurting tonight and he thinks maybe he's the only one who's noticed. Which seems unreal in the life she has lived, for the woman she is. Or maybe not so, when he thinks about the woman she is.