Title: Moments That Never Happen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They're not very good at talking. But they know how to hurt each other, and how to keep a secret. Post-Heroes. S/J UST.
Notes: Written as part of the TFLN Ficathon for the prompt: Stargate SG1 - Sam/Jack - (585): He's such a gentleman. He didn't even ask why my bra was flung on the seat of my car. He just took my snow brush, pushed it onto the floor and said, "Let's go I'm hungry.".
The only indication that he'd actually even noticed the bra, a lacy light-blue number, was the slight clenching of his jaw. Other than that, the motion with the snow brush could have just been a way of wedging the scraper beneath the passenger-side dash. The Colonel folded himself into the tiny car, letting out a small grunt when he obviously pulled something that was healing, but though his hand twitched toward his thickly bandaged side, he simply reached for his seatbelt. Sam watched her fingers, paler than usual from the cold air, tap-tap-tapping along the steering wheel. They were quite obviously out of time with the strains of Tom Petty's guitars coming from the radio, and she glared at them, as though it were their fault she'd completely forgotten about her bra and the man who'd caused it to end up there.
The sound of the Colonel clearing his throat brought her focus back to the present. "Let's go, I'm hungry," he said, studiously looking straight ahead. "And Daniel said Cassie was angry that we weren't home, again."
Sam sighed, without much energy behind it, as she felt the familiar feeling of guilt resting on her shoulders again. Guilt about Janet's death, guilt about Cassie's inability to cope, guilt about her inadequate attempts to substitute for another mother in Cassie's life, and guilt about the Colonel. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning back against the headrest, his eyes closed, and the flickering yellow of the streetlights they were passing under seemed to deepen the lines on his face. There were dark circles under his eyes, too, and she could swear his hair had gone greyer overnight. The worst part though, is that when he looks at her, when they talk, she has no idea what's going on. In some ways they've been closer recently than they have for years. In others...
She forces herself to concentrate on driving, the speedometer having sped up with her thoughts. He gave her a shoulder to rest on at the Alpha Site, and he comforted her in the infirmary, after. But then he avoids her, and tells her to get a life, and gives her boyfriend clearance to learn about the Program. And there are days like today, when she could swear that she's the last person he wants to see, when all that seems to radiate off of him is a tired air, a worn air, and her very presence seems to make his face cloud over. And she's so damn tired of it all. Tired of this muddled mess that they've been making, tired of him not caring, tired of feeling so damned guilty about finally doing something just for herself.
Her voice breaks the silence before she even realizes what she's doing. She can feel his eyes piercing her like a laser. "It's from last week, two days after Janet died. I picked Pete up, and he started to tell me how sorry he was, and I pulled over, and started kissing him." She sees him flinch out of the corner of her eye. "I sat in his lap, pulled my shirt off, and it didn't take much more than that before he was fucking me, right in that seat." Her chin gives a little jerk to where the Colonel is sitting, and she sees his fingers clench momentarily in his lap. "I must have forgotten the bra, in our rush to get inside." She doesn't recognize the cruelty in her own voice, the sharpness of her tone.
"Pull over."
His voice is so low she can barely make out the words over the strains of the radio. So she ignores them. But then his hand is digging into her thigh, and his eyes are darkly burning into hers, and there is no mistaking the order in his voice this time.
"Pull. Over."
So she does, gently guiding the car onto the gravel shoulder, and they're barely stopped before he shoves the gear into park and turns off the ignition. His face is mostly in shadow, but she can sense his intensity from the way he moves, each motion sharply defined, highly controlled. And then he's unbuckling their seatbelts, and his hand is back on her thigh, and she's probably going to have five individual bruises tomorrow given how hard he's gripping her. And she just watches him, unable to look away, knowing she pushed him, she caused this.
"Carter." His voice is deep and slow and calm, and it sounds like it does when he's making a deadly enemy disarm, his gun locked on their every move, and it sends a tingle down her spine. "I know you're angry about the Doc, and feeling guilty that she died, and if you think for one minute I wouldn't have willingly taken her place, then you're wrong."
She takes a deep breath and starts to respond, but he cuts her off with a finger against her lips and a sharp, "Ah!"
"You're grieving, and Cassie's grieving, and we're all grieving, and none of us know quite how to cope, how to get our feet back under us, because we never expected Janet to be on the list." He pulls her to face him directly, and she feels her stomach clench, and her breathing speed up, because he's so intense, so full of anger and energy, and this is the Jack O'Neill she fell for, working with him in the field, taking out enemies, laughing at his jokes, leaning on his shoulder. "And we've all got our coping methods." His is whiskey. She knows from all the times Daniel died. The Colonel manages for a few days, and then disappears into a bottle of whiskey, only to emerge with all emotion tamped down, unwilling to speak of it. "And maybe Pete is yours, but damnit, Sam," and his voice breaks, cracking over her name, drawing her back to the present, to the deep lines in his face, made deeper by pain and anger, "I -"
And then he stops, and draws a deep breath, and she can see the mask beginning to fall over his face.
And she feels like she was on the edge of something incredible, something vaster and more immense than she expected, something she's only ever had glimpses of before.
And her breath catches in her throat, and her belly clenches, and she can't figure out if she's happy or devastated or furious that he's walking the line.
He looks back out the windshield, "I don't need to hear the details of your personal life, Major. I'm just happy that you're happy."
But he sounds more tired than anything, weary, and worn down. The words roll off his tongue in an unnatural cadence, and she wonders how many times he's repeated that phrase.
She wonders what would happen if she told him the truth, if she told him, she's not happy, not really, not all the time. That she doesn't know how to handle Pete's prying into her work, and that they don't really have all that much to talk about when they're together, and that, secretly, she's really glad he lives in Denver, because it makes it that much harder to schedule dates.
Instead she looks straight out the windshield, turns the key in the ignition, and pulls back onto the road. They drive in silence, and she knows this will be another moment that never happened.
End.