Title: Long Distance
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Category: Fluff. Like cotton candy.
Rating: Remarkably tame.
Spoilers: Season 9
Summary: Five conversations Sam and Jack might have had after he left for Washington.
He calls her. It is a couple of weeks after fishing, an hour since he was officially head of Homeworld Security.
"Colonel Carter speaking."
He pauses, but only for a moment. "Carter."
"Sir! How's Washington?"
He grimaces into the phone, but says, "Oh, you know...hot, dreary, hot."
"It should get better, sir. You should be almost done with the summer weather."
A longer pause.
Finally, he says, "Too soon?"
"Yes," she says, the word coming out in a rush, as if she'd been holding the sentiment in the whole conversation. Which, he thinks, she probably had.
"Ah. Well, have fun with your geeks, then."
"Thank you, sir. You, too, sir."
He hangs up.
Every time she passes the phone the next week, her fingers itch. She firmly resists picking it up, but finally, on a Friday, she's bored and unable to concentrate. Everyone at Area 51 actually goes home on weekends.
She has to get through his assistant, first, and she almost hangs up until she hears him in the background.
"I told you already, Jeff-no, I don't want to see the Senator's assistant, I want to see the Senator!"
She hears a crisp "Yes, sir," and then she's put on hold.
Not for long.
"Carter!"
"Sir."
And then nothing. Her mind goes blank. She hadn't actually gotten this far in her thinking.
She is startled when he says, "You called?"
She replies automatically, "Yes, sir."
She tries to collect her thoughts and fails. She sighs. "Sorry, sir."
There might be the hint of a smirk in his, "No problem, Carter. Glad you called. Talk again soon?"
She twists the phone cord in her hands. "I'd like that, sir."
He's hiding from his aide when he thinks of her. He dials her number with his cell.
"Carter."
"Got any new gadgets yet?"
"Sir? Why are you whispering?"
He shrugs and takes a look around the hallway corridor. It's still deserted. "No reason. Just trying to...keep quiet."
He feels like he can hear her thinking. "Where are you, sir?"
Time for a change of subject. "I had a meeting with the appropriations committee today."
Whoops, not a change of subject.
"What did you do?" She's amused.
"Nothing!"
She doesn't say "You wouldn't have to," but he hears it just the same.
"Carter!"
"Well, you have to admit, sir, your track record..."
"Impeccable."
She lets the silence speak for her. He takes another look around the corner.
Whoops.
"Gotta go," he whispers quickly. And then, as an afterthought, "Next time? No sirs."
"Yes, sir," she says promptly, and he laughs as he hangs up, deciding that maybe he better just give up and take the heat for today's mishap.
It takes her a while to call back, but when she does, there are no slips of the tongue at all, not even when they stray into business. It's a long conversation, too, and Sam moves around her apartment straightening up, unpacking more boxes as she talks.
"So I'm going to be out that way in about a month."
She knew this already. "Really."
"Yeah. To take a tour of the facilities, meet with the staff leaders, be utterly confused..."
She gives him a small laugh and smiles, folding some of her socks.
"And I was thinking we could...go to dinner."
She stops folding. The reality of what they're doing, what he's asking hits her and she can't think of anything to say.
He lets out a huff of air. "Too soon?"
She swallows. "No! No. I'd like that."
She imagines a sigh of relief, feels it herself.
"Okay, then."
And now she's recovered, enough that she can say "Okay" back, and mean it.
They end the call, and as she tosses the phone onto the couch, she's grinning.
Now his fingers itch all the time. He calls her; she calls him. There's a period of two weeks where they play a sort of constant phone tag.
He catches her humming one day during a lull in the conversation and grins for days afterward.
She talks excitedly about one of her projects, and he makes sarcastic remarks about it.
"Maybe it's just a glorified wheat grinder," he says innocently, sprawling on his ridiculously cushy couch.
"The power input is way too large for something like that."
He wiggles his toes. "It could be a great, big vegetable peeler."
"Jack!" she protests, and stops dead. He sits up.
"Jack?" he says, eyebrows raised. She hasn't yet used his name, even with all the sirs missing.
She still doesn't say anything. He lets her stew a second, and says, "Jack? Who is this Jack person of which you speak?"
She huffs a breath of air and chuckles self-consciously, then says, "Someone who doesn't know a vegetable peeler from a phase-shifter."
"It that what you think it is?"
"Well, it's certainly not a can opener."
"How do you know?"
She's smug, "No blades."
"Ah."
"Jack," she says again, and he likes the way it sounds, "This could be something really big."
He gets that. "So...I should see it when I stop by next week?"
"Definitely."
"Then I'll see both you and your laser can opener next week. Sam."
He ends the call on her silence.