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“Whatcha doin’?”
Sam’s fingers stilled, and Jack could feel her smile, even though he couldn’t see it.
The room was dark and cool, but the woman next to him felt warm and alive in his – no – their – bed. It had been a few weeks since she’d shown up in his office – and he was finally getting used to the normalcy of it. He’d lived alone for more than a decade before their hasty wedding, and then continued to do so while his wife had been stationed at Groom Lake and he’d been consigned to the hell he’d come to recognize as DC.
At least while she’d been in Nevada, and then when she’d returned to Cheyenne Mountain, they’d been able to take a few days of leave here and there and meet somewhere in the middle, but that luxury had ended with her assignment in the Pegasus Galaxy.
And then, one day, she’d come home. To him – to the home that he’d bought in her absence. To the future that he’d tried to build for them. And for the first time in what felt like eternity, he felt like something vital wasn’t missing from his life.
If he had to put a word to it – he finally felt complete .
“Do you want me to stop?” Sleepy, her voice was languid and a little husky. As if to add emphasis to her question, his wife moved her fingertips again, stroking the roughness on his cheek. “Because I could stop, if you wanted me to.”
“No.” Jack shifted a little, pressing his jaw against her palm, as if to emphasize his answer. “I don’t want you to stop.”
He could see her a little, now. He’d awoken enough that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She was lying on her side, facing him, her skin nearly as pale as the sheets rumpled between them. He was used to her long hair now, and how it spilled around her shoulders and pillow like fine whiskey. Just a few hours before, he’d wrapped the strands around his hand and gently tugged her head back, baring her throat for his lips. Oh yes. He’d gotten used to it.
And her subtle purr had let him know that she hadn’t minded his strategic maneuver. Just like he didn’t mind waking up to find his wife had been exploring him while he’d slept.
“I always wondered what it felt like. For years, when we were off-world, you’d go to sleep around some campfire somewhere with a five o’clock shadow and wake up with this stubble. I found it fascinating.”
“It’s weird.” Smiling, he feigned confusion. “It started happening around puberty.”
“Way back then?”
“So very, very long ago.”
“Practically back in the Stone Age.”
“Smart ass.”
She giggled, pressing her cheek into her pillow before continuing. “I just always wanted to know what it would feel like if I touched it.”
“You’ve touched my face before.”
“Yeah. But not like this.”
As if to demonstrate, she slowly dragged her fingertips along his cheek towards his temple, and then shifted direction, trailing down his jaw to rest on the pulse point in his throat. Then her hand drifted lower, to tangle in the hair on his chest. Her skin, kissed by the night air, felt fresh and cool against his own. Her touch was reverently deliberate, as if he were something important, and she had been tasked with figuring him out.
He’d never been terribly comfortable being the center of attention, but he would — and had — tolerated worse things for her. When her hand stilled, Jack spoke through a tightness in his throat. “And?”
“And what?”
“Is it everything you’d dreamed it would be?”
Sam drew her hand back, fitting it under her cheek as she shifted again on her pillow. “It’s better. Far better than I’d fantasized it would be.”
“You fantasized about this?”
Her blue eyes sparkled a little as she nodded. “A little. Didn’t you?”
Jack hesitated, considering. At the time, his own mental gymnastics during those years seemed discomfiting, not to mention wildly inappropriate. But now? Over the past few years, he’d found some absolution for himself. In fact, there had been moments when the ability to build an alternate reality in his mind in which he and Carter had been able to assuage certain aches had quite literally saved him.
“I dreamed about you. After the download thing with the Ancient’s knowledge. The second time. When everything in my brain was turning to mush, I would look at you and I could see these moments that we’d had together. Stuff we’d gone through. It made me remember that I had something to live for. Something to stay me for.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Just images. Under the Domed City, the way you would smile whenever you saw me. How you leaned on my shoulder after we killed the Super Soldier. The look you gave Maybourne when he mentioned his wives. How you kept me alive in Antarctica. That sassy little grin you gave me after demonstrating the P-90 for the Jaffa. When you came to my house after the download and were interrupted by Daniel and Teal’c. Stuff . You know?”
For several beats, she was quiet, studying his face. When she spoke, her tone was practically a whisper. “I wanted to kiss you, you know. At the crystal array. When we were trying to make the ship go faster.”
“That would have been awkward, since you were practically living with Pete at the time.”
“You know that I never felt about him the way that I felt about you.”
“I do.” Jack reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. While he was at it, he mirrored her previous explorations, from temple to cheek to throat, her skin as smooth as his beard was rough. “That didn’t make me feel any less guilty for thinking the things that I did. For imagining the things that I did.”
“Even when you were with Kerry?”
“ Especially when I was with Kerry.”
Oh, those eyes. Jack could live a thousand lifetimes and never get to the bottom of them. Even in the dark of night, Sam’s eyes glistened with a profound kind of sadness. For what? Missed moments, perhaps. Lost opportunities, lost time. It was as if she’d gathered all of the seconds that they’d spent pushing away from each other and distilled them into a well of sorrow from which she’d drink for the rest of her life.
Maybe that was why he felt so driven to make her happy. As if making this whole “married” thing work would expunge away other, less agreeable things that had passed between them. They couldn’t get back the past ten years, but they could fully embrace the next twenty, or thirty, or however-the-hell long the Universe allowed them to have.
Another whisper. Quieter, this time. “No sense dwelling, right?”
“None at all.” Jack’s lip twitched upward. “C’mere.”
Fluffing the covers a bit, he reached out and slid his hand around her waist, tugging gently until she scooted towards him. Hip to hip, belly to belly, she nestled near him, wrapping her leg around his lower body in an effort to get even closer. He tilted his head towards hers, pressing a kiss to her forehead. His free hand found a handy perch on the knee so nicely curved around his thigh.
“What kinds of things did you imagine?”
Grimacing, O’Neill exhaled roughly. “Do you need all the details? Or can we just skip the naughty bits?”
“There were naughty bits?” She’d glommed onto that entirely too quickly.
“Carter — It was a long eight years.” His tone was harsher than he’d intended, filled with equal parts embarrassment and self-recrimination. “Eight years of near-celibacy and unresolved tension. What do you think?”
“We’re married, Jack.” Sam pushed. “You might as well tell me all the details. At this point, what is there to hide?”
What point was there in obfuscation? Well – saving face was right up there at the top of the list. Not letting his genius wife know just how immature and puerile a fantasy life he’d nurtured was a big reason for him to clam up and change the subject. “It’s just sex and other stuff. Nothing more exciting than that.”
“Nothing more exciting than sex?” Incredulity dripped from her tone. “I thought that sex was the be-all-end-all of most guys’ fantasies.”
O’Neill tore his gaze away from his wife’s and refocused over her – at the wall on her side of their bed. He’d loved this room from the first time he’d seen it. The realtor he’d worked with had pointed out the tray ceiling, with its crown moulding and hidden lighting. She’d exulted over the original hardwood floors and pocket closet doors. And yes – the master bathroom was a glorious feat of engineering and plumbing with its gigantic multi-spigot shower and the raised garden tub. But Jack had immediately been drawn to the sliding glass door on the far wall that led out to a small private balcony. The house backed up to a preserve of some sort – old growth trees and pristine forest. Even with the city on the other side of them, this room, and this balcony, would always give them some semblance of private space. Nights had been torturous for him while she’d been in Pegasus, but lying in bed with the drapes flung wide had allowed him to stare through his insomnia out into the black expanse of the universe and wonder if she might be staring back.
And yes – when she’d walked into his office and asked about fishing, Jack had responded physically first. Vigorously. Much to the chagrin of his secretary, he might add, who had beat a hasty and immediate retreat. He and Sam had sent Glinda a gift basket after that little episode, although it had still taken her a week or so to meet him eye-to-eye again. Still –
“Sex is just sex, Sam.” His mind roiled in search of the right way to say what he meant. “It’s just an act. Tab A. Slot B. Repeat. You know? There were – other – things in my mind, too.”
Her leg tightened on his own, her heel pressing into his right calf. “What do you mean?”
“Like right now.” His hand moved idly up and down her thigh. It was an absent caress, not really accomplishing anything other than assuaging his need to touch her. “We’re just lying here, talking. We’re touching, but it’s not intentional other than for the purpose of the touching.”
“It’s just us being together.” She’d always been able to understand him. “It’s not leading to anything.”
“At least, not right now.” His hand stilled on her leg as he wriggled his hips in playful suggestion. “Let’s not rule that possibility out completely.”
“Jack.”
“But still, this is better.”
“How so?”
He chose a different tack. “A few weeks ago. When you walked through my office door.”
“You mean, when we totally traumatized poor Ms. Baldrich and sent her running for the hills?”
“Ah.” Jack grinned before shaking his head. “Pinky’s tough. She’ll get over it.”
“She has to be, to put up with you.”
“She’s a peach. Truly.” He meant it. Glinda was one of his people, now. He’d miss her when she retired in a few months. Jack made a sound in his throat that signaled a subject change. “But when you came through that door, what did you want?”
“You.” Sam’s answer was immediate.
“For what? For sex?”
“Well.” Sam shrugged. “That was a perk. But I just wanted to be with you.”
“Why?” He knew he’d sounded like ‘The General’, so he backed up and tried again. “Why did you want to be with me?”
“Because you’re home.” Immediate. She’d found her reason so quickly that she’d started speaking before he’d finished. After a pause, she clarified into the quiet. “You’re my home.”
The light had changed, pre-dawn glow seeping in around the edges of the drapes in the window. Strange how the colors in the room morphed into something otherworldly. Sam’s hair had shifted from dark gold to nearly silver, her skin gleaming like sheer moonlight. The hollow of her collarbone, the curve of her cheek, the definition in her shoulders seemed even more pronounced in the blue-gray shadows. Her eyes shimmered as if bottomless – dark, and deep.
He tugged his hand free of the covers to tease at the dimple hiding next to her lips. “And that’s the difference. Sex is just sex. But this — right now — this is more real.”
He could see her brain working that out, filing it in the appropriate place. He was used to it, by now, how she had a way of working her thoughts into something that made sense to her.
Sometimes, she even managed to make him understand the complexities, too.
“Intimacy.” Her smile unfurled, slow and sweet. “You’re talking about intimacy.”
“Not the same thing as a quick roll in the hay.”
She ignored his crudity. “So, this is what you fantasized about?”
“Kinda.” His thumb played along her bottom lip, tugging at it until she responded with an exaggerated ‘smooch’. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s my age speaking, but there are things far more alluring than fancy underwear and easy women.”
“Like what?”
“Things like — I can tell it’s been three or four days since you shaved your legs.” He found her leg again beneath the covers, making a deliberate pass at it with his palm.
She bit at her bottom lip. “It’s all about the stubble.”
“It’s the fact that you’re comfortable with me being okay with the stubble.” He grinned at that, leaning in to take her lips in a light kiss. “Also —I came home this evening to an unmade bed.”
“That was partly your fault. You made me late this morning.”
“I made us both late. But coming home to see the bed unmade – that was the sexy part.” His palm tightened on her knee. “That was something that we shared. Like seeing your shampoo next to mine in the shower. Finding one of your hairs on my uniform coat. Knowing that you’re waiting for me. That I know exactly where to touch you.”
“That, you do.” Sam scooched closer, resting her head on his pillow. “You’re remarkable with that particular skill.”
She filled his senses, quite literally. Her scent, her feel, her heat – all exactly what he’d yearned for during those long years of nothingness. He couldn’t have turned away if he’d tried.
“We should probably go back to sleep.” Her breath tickled at his collarbone.
Jack peered over her sleep-tousled head towards the clock on her nightstand, where green numbers glowed. “It’s nearly dawn. Four-thirty-eight.”
“Gah.” Sam had picked up a few of his mannerisms over the last decade. “That’s an unholy hour.”
“You’re the reason that we’re both awake, Carter.”
“I know.” Smiling to herself, she lifted her hand to his face again, running her fingers along the new growth of his beard. “I’m really not sorry, though.”
“Me either.” He traced her eyebrow with his index finger, then lightly tickled at the fan of her eyelashes. More to himself than to her, he found himself saying the quiet things out loud. “Damn, but you’re beautiful.”
“You’re not so bad yourself, there, General.” Her hands had slipped around his waist to knead lightly at his lower back.
“Even pudgy and gray?” Damn his desk job. Jack really needed to go off-world for some real exercise. The Pentagon gym wasn’t cutting it.
“You’re not pudgy.” Sam grinned through her lie. “And the gray makes you look distinguished.”
“You know that you’re the cause of most of it, don’t you?”
“What – the gray?” She raked through the hair at the back of his head, ruffling it into its customary messiness. “How is that my fault?”
“Stress. Worry. Terror.” Jack scratched at his stubble before putting his arm down. “Watching you step through the ‘Gate, not knowing if you’d be able to get home. Watching you get kicked around out there, and returning wounded, upset, or broken. I aged a hundred years every time you walked through the event horizon.”
She rose up on her side, balancing on her elbow. The strap of the slinky nightgown thing she usually wore to bed slung low down one shoulder, baring the graceful curve of her collarbone and upper arm. With her new position, she could take his chin between her forefinger and thumb and move his head this way and that. “Ah. So – this bit of gray here? And here? And this big patch here?”
“All your fault, Colonel.”
“Hmm. Don’t they say that a kiss will make it all better?” Deliberately, she picked a spot and leaned in until she’d caressed it with her lips. Flickering a look up at him, she brushed her thumb through his stubble, then found another place that needed her attention. Warm, sweet, her mouth paused there, and then moved on to the next. And on. And on –
Jack’s eyes drowsed closed, his breathing edging on just-this-side of ragged. His wife moved on to a place a kiss just next to his mouth before ducking to minister to the sensitive skin next to his Adam’s apple. Softly, gently, her lips nipped at his throat – replaced by her tongue whorling in teasing patterns at his skin. Finally, she raised her head and regarded him with a diligence that bordered on brazenness.
“Did I get it all?”
Swallowing, he made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a grunt. Honestly – he was surprised that he could even conjure up that much eloquence.
“Is there anything else on you that needs my attention?”
Holy hell – yes .
And he was gracious enough to show her exactly where it was.
—----OOOOOOO—----
“Can you stop by the pharmacy for that prescription today?”
She’d finally finished showering, and had padded out onto the balcony in her bathrobe. O’Neill sat on the single chair he’d stuck out there – a broad, low-backed padded affair that he’d snagged from a garage sale a few weeks after he’d moved to DC. He’d seen it and immediately known that Sam would love it. It was the first thing he’d bought for the new house, and it had been intended for someone who didn’t even live there yet.
More of that fantasizing thing, he guessed.
“I’ll do it on my way to that thing we have tonight.” He looked up at her as she angled towards the only other thing in the tiny space.
“Is this one new?” She reached out to touch the dull metallic gray of the barrel. “It looks different than the one I remember.”
“The optics caved on the one I had before.” Jack indicated the telescope with a tilt of his head. “I got this one about a year ago.”
“Mm.” She skimmed her fingertips on the controls, careful not to futz with the settings. “What thing – that reception on the Hill?”
“It’s at Senator Valmont’s house, but yes. That reception.”
“Crap. Is the address —“
“I’ve already added it to your contacts list. You can use the navigation feature to get there.”
Still, her shoulders drooped just a bit. “Do we have to go?”
O’Neill smiled at her. “Only if you want to schmooze additional funding out of Congress.”
“Damn.” Sam made her way back to where Jack sat in the chair. “I’d rather just come home and have orange chicken and Mongolian beef on the living room floor. Kind of like a carpet picnic.”
“Oh, the trials of leadership.” He turned in his seat, unsurprised when she pivoted and lowered herself onto his lap. It was habit, now, to wrap one arm around her body and lay the other in her lap. She was warm against his bare chest.
Her arms went around his neck as she sighed. “I’m going to be late.”
“Not my fault this time.”
Her smile was glorious. “True. This one’s on me.”
She’d lingered in her ministrations, drawing things out until there was really no point in going back to sleep. Not that he’d minded. But then — he didn’t have a meeting this morning with the Joint Chiefs.
Not that she appeared to be in too much of a hurry to get to it. And really, he wasn’t in a hurry to see her go.
It was life itself, to be here with her. The small and mundane having become vital. This moment was like hundreds of others they’d have in their future. So normal, and yet so very, very profound. He was finally whole after so many years of feeling broken.
Sam studied his face for a long, long time before lifting her fingertips and skimming his jaw.
“Smooth.” His voice was low, indistinct. Unnecessary to say, so the syllable emerged from between his lips as a whisper.
“You shaved.” A little sadness colored her tone. “I liked the beard. It tickled in good places.”
Just because he could, Jack ran his palm up from her calf to slip beneath the opening of her robe and come to rest on her thigh. “So did you.”
“I did. That’s what took so long in the shower.” With an exaggerated groan, Sam melted against him, nestling her face against his neck. “I am so glad to be home.”
“I’m glad you’re home, too.” Jack pressed a sideways kiss to her temple. “But you’ve really got to get going.”
Groaning, she shifted so that she could look up at him. “It’s going to be boring. Those meetings are the worst.”
“True, but they’re a necessary evil.”
“Evil, yes. Necessary?” She was clearly waffling on the issue.
“Regardless.” Jack rested his stubble-free cheek against the cool sleekness of her still-damp hair. “I’ll get your prescription.”
“Good. It’s kind of an important one.”
“Oh?”
“My birth control. More of that ‘real life’ stuff.” She pushed herself up so that she could give him a pointed kind of look. “Something you might have fantasized about at one point.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Maybe.” She settled back in, her palm splayed on his chest, her breath warm on his sternum. “But in a good way.”
He’d take it. And since there was really no reason to respond, he didn’t. Until something niggled at the back of his brain – “You haven’t been taking the Pill?”
“My prescription lapsed. I was literally light-years away from you, so I took a break.” She yawned a little, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “It’s not like there’s a Walgreens on Atlantis.”
“But –”
“It’ll be fine.” She shifted again, pulling both legs up onto his lap, tucking both feet into the space between the cushions and the armrest of the chair. “I haven’t gotten knocked up yet. And with the exception of the time we freaked Ms. Baldrich out, we’ve been pretty careful.”
“Famous last words.”
“Anyway.”
“Anyway.” He’d have to leave that there, he guessed.
Sam closed her eyes, her body relaxing more heavily against his, but he welcomed her completely. It was cool, but not cold – brisk, but not chilly. Jack loved this time of day – that brief span between night and dawn where the colors began to change on the horizon and the clouds glinted with pinks and blues. And here, in this tiny space, he could sit and look out over the trees and imagine that he was back in Colorado, or even better, on one of the planets they’d ‘Gated to over the years, sitting around a campfire and watching the alien sun rise.
“Do you remember that planet that we ‘Gated to from Thor’s ship?”
She didn’t answer immediately. “When we had to defeat the replicators? And then we crashed his ship into the ocean?”
“Yeah. Then we ‘Gated to that planet to wait until Siler could get the Antarctic ‘Gate up and running.”
“Thor was rescued by his peeps, and Teal’c took the opportunity to go visit his son.”
“And then it was just you and me.”
“You were bored silly.” She chuckled – a breathy, quick affair. “You kept trying to fish in the stream next to the camp with that sad little net that you made out of the fibers of that weird tree.”
“Tried? I caught at least a dozen fish.” Jack poked her side, just to emphasize his point.
“That were four inches long.” Lifting her head, Sam regarded him with raised brows. “They were barely anchovies.”
He wasn’t going to win this one. But it didn’t matter. “The point is, do you remember the day that we hiked to the top of that mountain? You wanted to see if you could map some stars, but the clouds came in and it started to rain.”
“You found those big leaves and we made that ridiculous shelter, and we just stayed there until morning.”
“You fell asleep.” Jack’s hand made lazy circles on his wife’s back, the robe soft beneath his palm. “You were sitting there talking one minute, and the next you were snoring on my shoulder.”
“I wasn’t snoring.”
He snorted. “Okay. But you were leaning on my shoulder. And I didn’t want to move because I didn’t want to wake you up. So, I just sat there, watching you sleep.”
“That was early on, Jack.” She sat up, searching his expression. “What – two years in?”
“I’ve thought about that ever since. How tough you were. And how determined.” He raised a shoulder in a self-conscious shrug. “And how much I liked having you there, on my shoulder. So, I just sat there like a shrub, thinking about how pathetic I was to imagine that this young, beautiful, amazing woman would ever want to have fallen asleep on my shoulder.”
It could have been the dawn, a trick of the light, or maybe residual heat from her shower – but he could have sworn that her cheeks had gone a darker shade of pink. “I might not have been exactly asleep.”
It was his turn to study her. He didn’t even have to say anything – just wait until she’d gathered up what she wanted to say.
“I may have been pretending. Just a little.” She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “I might have wanted to watch the sunrise next to a man who I’d long since stopped thinking about as just my CO.”
And there it was. The answer to the question he’d never had the courage to ask. Through the chill, he felt a warmth seep through his bones. “Ah.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
“That was the first time that I wanted to touch your face.”
“Really?” He mulled that through for a long beat. “I’d been imagining – things – with you since you challenged me to arm-wrestle.”
They settled again – quiet, content, and warm. He wrapped both arms around her, then, hugging her close, nudging her awake only when the first golden rays of the sun burst through the clouds to kiss the tops of the trees.