TITLE: Welcome Home, Sam

AUTHOR: Trent Grey

CONTACT INFO: You'll be reaching the author at the following email: bianki@hotmail.com. Seeing as how Hotmail can be unreliable at times, I might not get the email until way, WAY later.

SUMMARY: This is that little reunion scene I think everybody wanted to see. I know I did!

RATING: G

WARNING: This is a slash story, with m/m themes. You don't like it, I'm not twisting your arm to read it. Feel free to leave if you wish. Also, this includes the death of a character, so I beg you, please don't kill me.

DISCLAIMER: I love Quantum Leap, and have for a long time. These characters aren't mine (it takes me months to create characters like these, I'm beginning to think), and they rightfully belong to Donald P. Bellisario. I never received any money for writing this fan fiction, and if you can believe it, I wrote it just for fun.

MISCELLANEOUS: The LAST cue card in Mirror Image has been ignored (as I believe it should've been). I guess you can assume this happens after Mirror Image. Also, the second cue card has been disregarded.

Sam closed his eyes, allowing himself to calm down. This leap had started out well enough. The room was quiet, and the lights were mercifully dim. The physicist could remember the number of times he'd been blinded when he had leaped in…

Huh?

Looking all around him with almost squinted eyes, there was something about the room that felt familiar… Everything was blue, and it would've really hurt his eyes if the lights had been on at full brightness. The only thing in the room was an oddly-shaped white table with thin legs standing immobile on the off-white floor.

Sam shook his head sluggishly, trying to shake off the Swiss-cheesing effect. Al, where are you? He stopped at the thought, shaking his head sadly this time. You aren't with me…You're with Beth. Where you should be. He sighed. Please be happy, Al.

Looking down at himself to see what he was wearing, he was surprised to see a form-fitting, padded, grey suit covering him from the neck down, the only part uncovered being his hands. This is familiar…isn't it?

A door opened quickly, allowing a man to enter the room he was in. The man was in his sixties, but the bright, even outrageous outfit made him seem a lot younger. His dark brown hair was combed efficiently, but it seemed to Sam that the natural curls in his hair rebelled every attempt to get them to straighten.

What caught Sam's eyes were the other man's eyes. They were like shining dark chocolate, if there ever was such a thing; dark brown with a glimmer that refused to fade. Right now, though, those dark chocolate eyes looked very forlorn and even a little angry. Everything in the man seemed to express that there was something wrong with the picture, but refused to give a hint as to what it was.

"Hey there." He spoke with a gravelly voice. Yet, despite the roughness in the voice, Sam could've never felt more secure. It was like having a soft, warm blanket wrapped around him. Al…

Sam caught himself before he frowned. Al? Don't you recognize me?

"Are you okay?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah." A sudden thought popped into Sam's head. Oh, God. Does Al think I'm a leapee?

"Do you know what day it is?"

What year had it been when they had simo-leaped? September eighteenth, nineteen-ninety… No, wait. Time had obviously passed since then. Sam corrected himself. From the second leap, he was surprised to remember that a week had passed since the Mach 3 leap and the baseball leap. Yet even though his memory was quickly returning, his mind was still churning, and now even simple math was escaping him. Sam shook his head with a frown.

Al sighed. "What's your name?"

"Sam..." Sam…Dammit! The Swiss-cheesing must have decided to pick the more immediately important facts to forget. His shoulders sunk in defeat.

"Can't remember your last name, huh?" Sam shook his head with a sigh. "Hey, don't worry about it, Sam. It happens. It'll come back to you soon. You remember where you live?"

…Shit. Another important fact that Sam couldn't remember. Again, Sam deflated and shook his head. "Where am I?"

"I can't tell you. Sorry, Sam."

Sam sighed. Glancing around absently for a place to sit, he remembered the table. Approaching the table a little slowly, he was stopped by a hand on his arm. Sam jerked his eyes up to Al in surprise. The first time we've touched. In…how many years? Why couldn't our first touch have been a kiss?

"You might not want to do that?"

"Do what?" Then Sam remembered. Oh, there's a mirror in the table… A mirror!

"Sit on that table." The reply was easy, as if it had been used many times. "The legs aren't very stable."

"Yes, they are." Sam gently wrested his arm from Al's grip, almost wishing he didn't have to, and reached the table, looking down at the polished mirror that served as the table's surface. Al quickly went to the opposite side of the table, his lips parted and ready to give either the real explanation or a cleverly contrived lie.

"Now, hold on a second, Sam-"

Sam looked at him calmly in response, wondering what he was going to do. Al blinked in confusion, obviously surprised by Sam's reaction, or lack of a sensible one, given the circumstances.

"I'm holding." Sam gave him a reassuring smile.

Al smiled a little and even gave a reluctant little laugh, his dark chocolate eyes still wary as they looked at Sam. "Ah, yeah. Uh, well-"

Sam raised his eyebrows, permitting himself a little smile.

"By the way, Sam, how old are you?"

"I was born in '53." Thank you, God, for letting me remember that. "But you haven't told me why I'm supposed to hold on a second."

"But you didn't tell me how old you were." Al countered.

"If I don't know what year it is, how am I supposed to know how old I am?" Sam pointed out easily. "And stop trying to change the subject."

"And which subject is that?" Sam quickly recognized it as Al's desperate voice, the same one he used when he had a secret that he was trying not to let someone find out.

"Why you didn't want me to see my reflection."

Al frowned. He knew that hadn't been the subject, but that's what he was basically trying to keep from this Sam. He had to admit that this Sam was one sharp cookie. "It's…complicated."

"Oh." Sam decided to let it drop when he caught a look at Al's hands. A simple band of gold was on Al's right ring finger. "Are you married?" His eyes flicked up to meet Al's fast enough to see a shadow pass over them.

"I was."

"What happened?" He asked gently. I made *sure* that he and Beth were together… Didn't I?

"She was killed. Car accident." His answer was terse, but Sam didn't miss the pain it held.

"Oh, God." Sam turned away from him, a guilty flush battering his cheeks. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault." Al sounded rather embarrassed at his reaction. "It was an accident."

No wonder you're here. "Yes, it is."

Al walked around the table to face him with a look that was half-incredulous, half-suspicious. "What are you talking about?" That serious voice had Sam had come to know as the Admiral's Voice.

"If I hadn't leaped in after Cokeburg, she would've been alive." Sam looked at Al's eyes, his blurred vision turning those chocolate eyes into dark brown circles. "Ironic, isn't it? When I didn't tell her that you were alive in Vietnam, she pronounced you dead and remarried. And when I try to make things right for you, like I should've done in the first place, she's killed in a car accident." With that, Sam began to quietly chuckle with a sad smile while Al stared at him, stunned.

"Sam?" Al's voice was barely a whisper.

"Hi, Al." Sam smiled at him.

Al's whole face lit up, all of the lines on his face and signs of suffering in his eyes misted away as if they had never been there. "Sammy!"

He grabbed Sam up in his arms, burrowing his face in the taller man's neck. God, I've missed this! Al thought to himself gratefully. Feeling Sam's arms wrap around him tightly, he burrowed further into the warm embrace, wanting to lose himself in him.

"What's happened since I left?"

"About five years." Al lifted his head to look up into Sam's green-gold eyes. "But I know what you mean." He smiled, wrapping his arms around Sam's neck. "A lot's changed."

"Like what?"

"First, Tina and Gooshie tied the knot, if you'd believe it."

"Tina and Gooshie?" Sam asked with a smile, his eyes getting unfocused as he thought back. "Remember when I was that veterinarian and Buddy Holly was my son?"

"Yeah." Al nodded.

"You told me how Tina had been cheating on you with Gooshie. And right when I needed you to make sure Widow-maker didn't throw me off, Tina had called and I had to deal with that horse myself?"

"Yeah." Al's eyes smiled at that one. "We broke it off a while back, and she and Gooshie got married two years ago."

"Wow. Who woulda thought it?" Sam grinned.

"Yeah." Al grinned back before resting his head easily on Sam's shoulder. "Well, that's happened. And… you know how close we were before you started leaping?"

Sam nodded after trying to remember. "Yeah. We were sharing a house, weren't we?"

Al nodded with satisfaction, but then he looked uneasy. "That's not really all we're sharing…" He cut himself off quickly. "Sam, what do you remember? Of the new timeline, I mean?"

"I dunno." Sam shook his head. "The new one's blurring with the old one, and it's getting all jumbled and confused. Why?"

"Sam," Al started, pulling back to look his friend in the eye. "There's no easy way for me to say this, but just hear me out."

"What is it, Al?"

"We're …lovers." Al's chocolate eyes went immediately to Sam's, searching. "Or we were." He added quickly.

Sam looked at him steadily. "Oh, I don't know." He let himself grin.

One of Al's eyebrows rose in question.

"'Lovers' sounds good." His eyes looked in Al's, taking in the shining dark chocolate, and raised his own eyebrows.

"Yeah, I guess it does." Al grinned back.

They leaned in and shared their first kiss. It was a while before Al pulled back to look into Sam's green-gold eyes.

"Welcome home, Sammy. I love you."

"Thanks, Al. I love you, too."

THE END