Title: Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Warnings: None
A/N: Congrats to Sue! A big thank you goes out to the ever fabulous mrspollifax.
The flames struggle up the north wall. Sam halts, holding up a fist so that Jonas knows to stop as well. The probie lingers just behind her, waiting.
Sam breathes deeply, and it echoes in the small space inside her mask. The apparatus feeding her oxygen is her only focus for a split-second until her eyes adjust to the contrast of raw power against black shadows. She watches the flames, calculates the direction of wind, searches for the places where air pockets might have formed due to the gaps in the walls that have already begun to collapse. Seeing nothing that could account for the hairs standing up on the back on her neck, she waves Jonas on, and they make their way further into the inferno.
Sam has long believed that firefighting is a metaphor for mankind's attempt to understand and control nature. It's a dance, it's a complex formula, and for all these reasons she loves this job. Despite the fact that it also comes with an old boys' network that she struggles with some days, despite the danger and the odd hours, she loves this job and she can't imagine doing anything else.
The fact that she's been sleeping with the chief for the last six months doesn't change things either. In fact, the transition has been easier than she expected. Her fears that the power structure of their work relationship would complicate things at home, or that knowing her intimately would change how he'd view her at work, none of it has materialized.
She's also been surprised that she can read Jack in ways that she couldn't with any other man she has dated in the past. Including that first second when she always knows what he is thinking, right before his expression turns and he starts to remove some article of her clothing. After that, there's not a lot of complex thinking on either of their parts. It is the only situation where she is quite a fan of being rendered stupid. But in that first second, it's always clear whythe sex is about happen.
At times it happens for obvious reasons, like she's been assigned to a work a dangerous wildfire out west. Or she just got home from a bad suburban scene where two kids died. It could be that she's wearing that tank top he likes and she gives him a suggestive wink, or he's had it up to here with paperwork, or there's nothing good on TV so why the hell not? Occasionally, there are reasons she didn't expect to discover when they took this step in their relationship. It probably should have surprised her more than it did to discover he could be quite a sap, remembering why he fell in love with her all over again in the second before she is pushed up against a wall, and well, the rest just sort of happens from there.
Sam halts her progress again, and despite the bulky suit, she can tell that she startled Jonas.
"What?" he asks, looking around.
She'd let her thoughts wander too far and caught herself only a moment before she'd stepped on an unstable part of the floor. They point the hoses at hotspots that seem to jump up out of nowhere.
"No sign of accelerant." Jonas' voice comes through her earpiece. "At least not on this level."
She nods in agreement and they continue to move through the building on fire.
Sam knows some of her girlfriends will think she's weak for falling for the chief, for the anti-woman's lib stereotype that she is reinforcing. But she didn't ask for this, and she couldn't help herself, and frankly, she'd like to challenge any woman to work closely with Jack O'Neill and not fall a little bit in love with him. The fact that she's held out for as many years as she did certainly must prove she's not weak.
And now that she knows how fantastic weakness can feel, there's no going back. At times the sex is fast and furious; other times it is slow, teasing, sweet torture. And interestingly, the form it takes seems to be completely unrelated to the reason. She's done a few calculations just to prove it to herself, like investigating the rate of oxygen feeding a fire. She's found the P value shows no correlation between her talking in big mathematical words and subsequently being bent over the kitchen table. She had a theory for a while there that his kitchen table might have been the fire station's briefing room table in Jack's little fantasy world.
Where it happens, she believes, is a combination of both convenience and any kind of rational thought. Because, yes, there was that time that neither of them thought through the ramifications of having sex on a beach in Puerto Rico. Yet they are, for the most part, pretty traditional, and the bed gets the bulk of the action. She's perfectly OK with that, and she suspects that Jack is too. After all, it's good as it is; there's no need to spice it up. Plus neither of them are teenagers— something he's reminded her of once or twice in that second before or in the seconds immediately following.
"Out that way," Jonas points. Sam sees the light, not from flames but rather the headlights of one of the trucks. It is peeking inside between two beams through the black burnt walls and the colorful flames destroying them. Sam directs the probie to follow her out of the building and to safety.
"Carter."
Her name never sounds the same when anyone says it, as if the chief holds some secret to her inner being that no one else has yet to discover.
Sam pulls off her mask and heavy gloves. "Nobody left inside, sir. No sign of accelerant; I'd say it appears to be an accident, not arson, but I can't do anything more until tomorrow."
"Good work." Jack nods once, then goes to issue more orders to the men standing nearby.
Sam doesn't watch him walk away, turning instead to look back at the building. Smoke billows into the night, disappearing into thin wisps the further it travels from the fire. Later tonight, once the last smoldering piece of wood is finally extinguished, Sam knows she'll be in the chief's arms.
She likes that he always kisses her afterwards. A little snuggling happens so long as they aren't somewhere where it can't, like that time in the supply closet three minutes before a meeting that they were both supposed to attend. She's positive— though he's never said it, and she'd never ask— that the snuggling is not something he feels obligated to do.
Jack usually falls asleep first, but she's frequently not far behind. It's true that she gets annoyed when he snores, and he complains that she talks in her sleep sometimes. Apparently it's often wind speed calculations or other formulas that she's reciting, and Sam is convinced he's only bothered by it because it's never some embarrassing secret that he could use against her. But despite it all, she wouldn't choose to have her sex life be any different. Because in that second before, when the flash of humor or need or fear crosses Jack's face, she's reminded again that this thing between them is the best thing she's ever been blessed with in her life. And it's worth fighting for.