“Almost there,” Jack prompts. “Just a little higher.”
“This one?” Sam asks, fingering the faded spine of some ancient book. He’s stretched out to his full height inside the National Archives in Atlanta, Georgia trying to reach a book that this man, calling himself Captain Jack Harkness, insists will help them banish a whole town of ghosts. His brother and him have salted and burned more than a dozen graves and still the ghosts keep coming. They’re at wits end, and they need help. So Dean is on ghost duty and that leaves Sam and Jack here to research.
“No, to the left,” Jack says, casually leaning against the opposite pair of stacks, watching him sweat.
Sam’s shirt rides high against his back as he shifts to the left. Stretch of bare skin between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his jeans. Feels exposed under the eyes of a stranger. Jack’s impossibly blue eyes. "You know they have ladders for this,“ Sam complains.
"Almost there,” Jack repeats.
Sam touches the binding of the book next to the last and tugs it off the shelf with a grunt. He retracts into himself like a slinky, shoulders hunched forward, pretending to be smaller than he is. His shirt falls back into place covering the brand of his boxers. Jack looks disappointed.
“That Atlanta Woman’s Club Cook Book?”
Sam reads the cover of the book and frowns, looks to Jack for an explanation. But Jack just grins. That’s when Sam scans the decimal code on the spine of the book and realizes he’s been duped.
“This whole section is cook books,” he accuses. “Are you telling me a cook book is going to stop all of these hauntings?”
"I haven’t met anything a good pot roast can’t solve,” Jack says with an easy grin. Then he turns to the shelf he was leaning against this whole time and pulls a book about the local town’s history, hands it to Sam. “Here, that’s what you want.”
Jack exits the stacks without another word leaving Sam with a burning feeling on his cheeks and in his gut. He feels exposed again and unconsciously pulls at the hem at his shirt before following Jack.
*whispers* Sam holding a baby and Jack smiling at how peaceful they both look.
Aaaand I might have to write this now….
