It had been a perfectly normal day when SG-6 made their punctual return from P3X-457 and brought with them an allegedly magnificent medical breakthrough in the form of (what Jack was told was) a perfectly normal moss. "How is it normal if it's alien?" he had asked, but no one seemed too concerned.
Hearing that she was studying the moss, he strolled into Carter's lab (also normal) whistling some 90's TV theme song (normal), picked up something shiny looking (normal) that she immediately took from his hands (normal) and gave him that glare he'd never admit he thought was cute (normal), to which he sheepishly shrugged and just started whistling again.
Normal, normal, normal.
Therefore, no one expected what happened next.
One minute he was poking carelessly at the moss she was observing, and the next, before Carter even had time to give him a disapproving glance, the moss sprayed something gooey all over their shirts.
"Uh...Carter?"
"Sir?"
"I'm finding it kind of hard to move."
"Me too, sir."
"As in, physically impossible?"
"Yes, sir."
There was goo. Lots of goo. And it was growing.
"Maybe if I just..."
Carter leaned forward and tried to remove some of the goo that had attached itself to his shirt, but it was growing too fast for her efforts. The goo on her combined with the goo on him and they were rapidly finding themselves being stuck together by a giant glob of goo (in a less worrisome circumstance, Jack thought that would make a fun tongue twister to tackle. He almost smiled. Almost.).
"Carter?" he asked again.
"Yes, sir. I...I think the moss released some sort of substance, perhaps as a defense mechanism to prevent it from being tampered with."
"Defense mechanism?"
"The moss itself could be some sort of alien life form. We had no way of knowing. It was producing a low level of energy radiation, but nothing remotely dangerous. No one suspected it could have any type of intelligence though."
"Carter!" he barked, motioning back and forth between them and the goo that was plastering them together at the chest. "Worry about getting this off of us, yeah?"
"Uh, yes sir."
She looked embarrassed, and he honestly didn't blame her. This kind of close-proximity situation was just the thing the two of them tried to avoid at all costs.
He knew the not-so-normal alien moss had been a bad idea from the start.
"Maybe if we just try a little harder to, you know, pull apart," she suggested, and while it wasn't as wordy and technical as most of the solutions he was used to hearing come from her mouth, the ones that left his eyes glazed over and mouth slightly ajar, it sounded pretty reasonable. Or maybe having Carter stuck ever so snugly against him was just making him desperate.
"Okay."
She squared her feet and braced her hands against his shoulders, and he did the same. They both grunted in unison as they attempted to push away from each other but with absolutely no success. In the end, they both let out an exasperated huff of air as their futile efforts came to a close.
"Got anymore brilliant plans in that brain of yours, Carter?"
"Well, the substance seems to mostly have metastasized on our shirts. It's possible there's a chemical that is somehow attracted to the cotton fibers in the fabric. So I guess we could just..." Her face flushed slightly, and his eyebrows grew together in confusion.
"What?"
"Take our shirts off, sir."
"Ah," he said, nodding once.
Moments of awkward silence passed as nobody moved.
"Sir?"
"Yes, Carter?"
"Maybe we should, well, do this somewhere more private? Perhaps the locker room?"
She really did have brilliant ideas. He suddenly pictured two half-naked officers standing around in front of the security camera peering down at them as they waited for some random security detail to fetch them non-gooey t-shirts.
"As much as that would help to ease the awkwardness of this already very awkward situation, don't you think we should keep this thing contained in here?"
"I think it's safe to assume the substance is done spreading, sir," she replied firmly.
"Well then...to the locker room it is!"
They both tried to move at once, which really only left them standing right where they started. He waved his hand in a way that said he'd lead the way, and she nodded. They managed to very haphazardly find a walking pattern even though their upper bodies had little mobility considering they were plastered together from chest to stomach.
One elevator, two levels, a few stumbles, and a hallway later (not to mention all the puzzled stares they were given along the way), they arrived at the doorway to the locker room. Out of anxiousness, they both moved to go through the door at once which turned out was not a good idea. They both winced as their shoulders collided with each side of the door frame.
"We don't fit."
"Really?" he asked, annoyance in his voice.
"There's no one around," she commented. "I suppose we could just do it here."
He grunted in approval and reached for the hem of his shirt which...was covered in solidified goo. By the disappointed look on her face, she had no doubt made the same discovery.
"We're going to have to help each other," she said.
She hesitantly prodded at his arms, and he raised them in response so that she could circle her arms around his waist and grasp the back of his shirt. She yanked it up to the back of his neck and stopped, unable to pull any further. His rough fingers came in contact with the skin of her back and made her jump slightly, and he mumbled an apology. Following suit, he grasped the hemline of her shirt and pulled it up to her neck. Then, with the combined efforts that only two teammates of seven years could pull off, they both yanked each others' shirts over their heads and somehow managed to free themselves the rest of the way.
Victory.
He tossed the t-shirts over her head and into the trash behind her.
"Two points," he mumbled, before turning his eyes back to her.
Suddenly, the fact that they were very half-naked became very, very apparent to both of them. Painfully apparent, actually.
His eyes darted down the skin of her neck and widened at the black, lacy undergarment that greeted him there. That was definitely not military-issued. And oh God, not only was it lacy and black and totally not military-issued, his throat went dry as he realized it was semi-transparent. And considering getting an eyeful of Carter's...well, of Carter wasn't his everyday privilege (and so not normal), the semi-transparent fabric may well have been completely transparent to his wandering eyes.
He gulped.
If he hadn't been too busy trying not to make it look like he was looking (and dear Lord was he looking), he would have noticed Carter's eyes taking a similar route over his sculpted chest and torso. She silently willed herself not to reach out and run her hands along the hard plains and play with the tuft of graying hair on his chest. It wasn't as if she'd never seen him in this state of undress, because so many years of missions together had presented many opportunities to pretend she hadn't dared a quick glance of admiration at her commanding officer's form, but this was so much different. He was only a foot away from her, so close that she could see his chest raise and drop with each breath and the muscles in his neck and jaw twitch as he gave her the same full attention.
Suddenly something clicked, and Jack flinched upon realizing they were both standing right outside the locker room with no shirts on, ogling the hell out of each other. Probably not the best way to end one's career, he decided, wincing as he imagined being expelled from the base for jumping Carter in the hallway of the most top secret base on the planet. Though the thought crossed his mind that they'd have every right to plead alien influence. Kinda.
He cleared his throat and her eyes snapped up to meet his, embarrassment coloring her cheeks as she swallowed hard.
"We should..."
"Yeah," she agreed, and even though they were no longer glued together at the chest by gooey, gross, green alien stuff, they both started in unison for the door and ran into a similar problem they had only moments ago. She chuckled awkwardly, and he managed a smile, stepping back and motioning for her to enter first. She accepted the opening and made a mad dash to her locker, opening it and pulling out the nearest article of clothing she could find. He watched from behind as she pulled on a black tank top, admiring how the muscles of her back stretched as she raised her arms over her head. She was nearly finished dressing by the time he finally caught himself staring. Again.
Remembering just how brilliant her ideas were, he mimicked her quickness and found his way to his locker, grabbing a black t-shirt and yanking it over his head. When he turned around to face her, she was looking at him wistfully and biting her lip. His heart sunk a little bit at the realization that this was just another one of those very awkward incidents that they'd end up burying beneath the surface, never to revisit again.
Part of him realized that maybe this whole thing hadn't been not-so-normal after all.
"I should get back to my lab and have the moss transferred to an isolation room," she commented, eyes dropping to the floor.
"Yeah, good idea."
"And we should probably get rid of those shirts." She tilted her head towards the trash can outside of the room, and he nodded in agreement.
She started to leave, but something inside of him snapped.
"Carter!"
"Sir?"
She turned back to face him, eyebrows raised expectantly.
His mind raced for things to say to her. Maybe he'd stab a joke at her, and she'd roll her eyes at him even though her smile (and sometimes a giggle, if he was lucky) said otherwise. Just maybe.
In the end, something very uncharacteristic happened, and laughter rumbled inside of Jack's chest. Thankfully the irony of everything caught up with her as well, and her face twisted into a grin until she also cracked up and a fit of giggles overcame her.
Victory again.
He took a step towards her, willing his aching abdomen to settle as he watched her hand fly up to cover her mouth as she, too, tried to get her breathing under control.
"We better get up back up there before someone else discovers the rather slimy affects of the moss," she said, biting her lip and giving him a crooked smile.
He smirked and nodded, exiting the locker room with her and quickly stopping to gather up the trash bag that held their once gooey, now solidified, molded-together shirts. They walked side by side to the elevator, and he followed her in. The doors slid shut behind them.
"So, Carter?" he asked as the elevator churned to life.
"Sir?"
"Do much shopping at Victoria's Secret?"
Her blush told him all he needed to know. Lacy, black, totally not military-issued see-through bras were a normal thing for Carter. As the elevator doors opened and she quickly found her escape, Jack couldn't decide whether or not he was glad he now knew this very important piece of information. There was one thing plaguing him though, and that was whether or not she occasionally chose to sport colorful undergarments beneath her uniforms in place of the black one he had the pleasure of seeing.
Jack exited the elevator, smirking to himself. On another normal day, when another SG team brought back another sample of very normal alien plant life, he decided he'd have to stroll into her lab and find out.