A/N: I watched Dirty Pretty Things for the first time a few months ago. This fic was inspired by a line said by the character Guo Yi. At one point he says to one of the main characters, Okwe, "You know, Okwe, good at chess usually means bad at life". It struck me that that seemed like something that could be very easily applied to Jack. And thus, the idea for this fic was born.

Chess

You really are quite an idiot sometimes, Jack, Jack O'Neill thought to himself. Six hours had passed since the incident, and yet he was still mentally kicking himself. His fingers closed around one of the white pawns and moved it forward. It'll be a miracle if she even speaks to you tomorrow. He sighed in frustration, rubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes so hard he saw starbursts. When his momentarily blurred vision cleared, he turned the chess board that lay open on his coffee table so that the black pieces were now in front of him. A few moments later, he moved one of the rooks and turned the board around so he was playing with the white pieces once again.

Playing chess against himself with just a recording of Madame Butterfly playing in the background was just one of many indicators of the sad state of his personal life, but there was one thing it was perfect for: taking his mind off the fact that he couldn't manage to act like a responsible, mature adult for more than two seconds. Especially not, it seemed, when she was involved.

In the end, he let black win and went to bed. His last thought before he succumbed to the pull of sleep was that tomorrow had to be better. Because, really, there was no way it could be worse.

-oOo-

It had been a long day at the SGC. Long, and very, very dull. Being stuck on base with nothing but paperwork to do all day long was not Jack's idea of a fun day at the office. He'd boxed a bit with Teal'c in the morning, but that had simply served to put off the inevitable, not to mention left him with a suspicious ache in his backside. He had tried to massage it discretely while meandering through the corridors to his frankly alien office but had stopped after the sixth patrolling SF had given him a strange look. A patented Colonel O'Neill Glare put them back in their places for the moment, but Jack had no doubt there would be more than a little laughter at his expense in the very near future going on in the corners of the SGC.

Not that that seemed to be incredibly different from the normal state of things around here. Colonels just didn't receive the same respect they used to…or perhaps it was because they didn't realize he was a colonel in the first place? Maybe he really should get 'colonel' embroidered on his BDU's so no one would forget…?

While he pondered the pros and cons of actually having his uniform say 'colonel', Jack didn't realize where he'd been walking until he arrive at his destination. He'd assumed he'd been walking in the direction of his office, but somewhere along the way his legs and feet seemed to have developed minds of their own. One minute he was near the elevators, still scowling at the cheeky SF's and the next he had mysteriously found his way to Carter's lab. Carter's empty lab, he amended mentally, poking his head inside the open door and surveying the veritable rainbow of blinking lights. Lots of doohickeys, but no Major Carter.

Not to worry, though; she'd be back soon. She was Carter, after all. There was only so long she could stay away from her lab on non-mission days before she started going into severe withdrawal. Jack was convinced he'd even seen her start to seize when he'd (purposefully) kept her away from her lab for five hours straight one time back when she'd first joined the program. In his defense, it had been Teal'c who had suggested that maybe Sam should come out of her lab a bit more. Jack conveniently disregarded the fact that at the time the Jaffa had made the statement, he'd only been on Earth a month or so.

Besides the withdrawal factor, there was also the fact that she'd left the door open. Carter wouldn't do that unless she was going to be back shortly.

Jack decided to wait. He grabbed a stool and sat himself down, cooling the palms of his hands on the smooth surface of her work table. As he waited, the lights continued to blink. And blink. And blink some more. After a few minutes, the lights ceased being amusing and simply became annoying. He was sorely tempted to figure out how to turn them off, but settled for drumming his fingers against the table instead. That, at least, was much less likely to get him into trouble than touching some of Carter's experiments.

It was then that Jack started to wonder just how different his definition of 'shortly' was from Carter's.

Ten minutes passed and there had still been no sign of Major Carter. Jack was starting to feel like a bit of a fool, sitting around in a half-lit lab full of machines built to accomplish tasks he couldn't even dream of and waiting for a woman he really had no business visiting, not when he had work he should have been doing. But he wasn't about to give up now. Not when he'd invested this much time and patience into the meeting. And besides, paperwork could wait a bit. He'd always done his best work under the pressure of a deadline, after all. Without thinking, Jack picked up the nearest object on the lab table, a small metallic cube, and started passing it from hand to hand.

It had been another ten minutes before Major Carter returned to her lab, half-eaten sandwich still in hand. She looked distracted; Jack was pretty sure if she'd had more hair on her head, there would have been pens and pencils sticking out of it at odd angles, and all would have been chewed upon at the ends.

"Sir, what are you doing here?" she asked when she finally registered his presence. She smiled as she asked, but as her gaze roamed from Jack's face to Jack's hands, the smile turned into a look of mild panic.

"What?" he'd wondered aloud, curious as to what had caused the sudden change in attitude. "What's wrong?" Carter looked down at the device in his hands. Jack was beginning to think the mild panic he'd seen just a moment ago was more along the lines of severe panic. He tried to gulp but found his throat suddenly dry.

"Sir, what did you do to the Ysvelden Matter Converter?"

"Nothing?" That didn't seem to be the right answer, though, because for whatever reason the device he'd been manhandling for the past ten-plus minutes was now glowing purple; it hadn't been doing that before.

"Did you turn it on?"

"No?" Carter had now progressed to full-out panic mode. She was rushing around her lab clearing counters and generally stowing away everything she could lift without assistance. The device in his hands was vibrating slightly now, producing a low humming noise. That couldn't be good.

"We need to get out of here." Jack didn't need to be told twice. He'd dropped the device in the center of the lab table and exited the room. Carter got out a split second after him, slamming her hand on the control to close the lab door. Just before it hissed closed, Jack caught a glimpse of the now practically shining cube rising from the table. The thing had been emitting light so bright, it had made him see spots.

Definitely not good.

There'd been silence for a few disturbingly long seconds before a loud FOOM reached their ears. It was followed by more silence. It had taken a good minute or so before Carter had dared to enter her lab once again.

The door had had trouble opening, but eventually it parted enough to allow one person at a time to squeeze through sideways. For a moment, Jack had wondered why it wouldn't open, but the sight that greeted him upon re-entering Carter's lab explained everything.

Where once her giant lab table stood, now grew a tree. A wide-trunked, leafy, honest to goodness tree with its roots digging into the cement floors of Cheyenne Mountain and its branches blocking out most of the light from the fluorescent lamps above. That wasn't it, though. There were vines crawling all over every surface, and a few strong-smelling alien flowers had even started to bloom on the spot on the wall where the door's control panel used to be. Add a few annoying insects and some wildlife sounds, and it would be a fairly accurate recreation of the jungle.

And the look on Carter's face… huh, he'd never realized before that her nostrils flared when she was supremely pissed.

He grinned nervously. "You can fix that, right?"

-oOo-

The problem with thinking thoughts along the lines of 'this just has to be better because how could it be worse' was that, somehow, things always did turn out worse. Jack O'Neill's life was a perfect example of that rule.

The next day started off innocently enough. Wake up before dawn, shower, rustle frantically around the house for ID badge, speed up to the gates not a moment too early… in short, nothing out of the ordinary. He made a point of having Daniel deliver the bag of Godiva chocolate he'd bought after work the night before to Carter, just in case she was still in the mood to bite his head off, regulations, murder charges, and cannibalism taboo be damned. By all accounts, it was a wise decision, as the group of gossiping scientists he'd passed in the corridor on level seventeen had mentioned (rather pointedly – they obviously realized Jack was eavesdropping) that Major Carter's lab still looked like a slice of the Amazon rainforest and no one as of that moment had been able to figure out how to reverse the matter conversion. Jack spent the rest of the morning in his office, typing up reports like a good little Air Force colonel.

It was only when his stomach grumbled loudly that Jack stopped working on reports and gave into his need for food. He searched his drawers for a snack bar or even a stale, half-eaten bag of chips first, but was unsuccessful in finding anything remotely edible. The thought of raiding Daniel's secret stash of candy also crossed his mind, but then he remembered that the archeologist had threatened his life if he found out that another Kit Kat bar was inexplicably missing. This left only the commissary. Jack sighed. Going to the commissary may have guaranteed food, but there was also the chance that she would be there, and if there was one thing Jack O'Neill was going to do right today it was that he was going to give Sam Carter all the space she needed to cool down so she could stop being furious with him. His stomach growled again, even louder than before if that was possible.

"Alright, alright, I'm going," he muttered, immensely glad no one was around to hear him talking to his internal organs.

The commissary was fairly empty when he arrived; apparently, most people had taken their lunch break during the normal lunch hour. Jack hurriedly grabbed a tray and started loading it up with whatever his hands encountered first. When he had taken as much as he thought he would need, he looked down at his tray to see what exactly he'd grabbed. There was an assorted mix of fruits, vegetables, puddings, jell-o, and even a sandwich buried in there between two slices of pie. Not bad. Sometimes eating late meant getting the world's worst leftovers, but not today. Jack smiled down at his pie and went to take a seat in the far corner of the room.

And then she'd walked in.

The first thing Jack noticed was that Carter looked incredibly tired. Her face was paler than usual, there were dark bags starting to form under her eyes, her hair was a disheveled mess, and there were tight lines at the corners of her mouth that only formed when she was abnormally stressed. If he had to hazard a guess, Jack would have said that she hadn't been to bed since before she came to work yesterday. And yet despite the obvious beginnings of sleep deprivation, she still looked as if she could kick his sorry behind from here to next Sunday if he so much as looked at her wrong.

To make things worse, she was currently walking towards him, her eyes focused on him in a tired yet icy glare. He really hoped she'd liked the chocolates.

"Hiya, Carter," Jack greeted neutrally, hoping not to set off any sort of hidden emotional triggers or anything. There was nothing wrong with a greeting, was there?

Glare. "Sir."

Okay, maybe there was something wrong with a simple greeting. Jack ignored the urge to run away as fast as his legs would carry him. Even if he cared nothing for his dignity, there was still a tray full of food to think about.

"How's it -"

Glare. "Don't. Ask."

If that didn't say 'shut up and go away!', he wasn't sure what did. So Jack decided to do just that: go quietly to his corner with his tray stacked high with food and eat said food in as unobtrusive a fashion as possible. He made to move in the direction of his chosen corner, which just so happened to be behind where Carter was standing at that moment. Jack figured he could brave the possibility of brushing shoulders with her, though; he hadn't made the rank of colonel by letting his fears get the better of him, after all.

In a different context, what happened next may have been considered comedic. Jack was fairly certain that if it had been two other people at the SGC instead of himself, laden as he was with a tray full of food, and Major Carter that he would have had himself more than a good laugh. As it was, it did happen to himself and Major Carter, and he wasn't able to get a decent laugh out of it because he'd been far too busy cursing under his breath and apologizing to Carter.

Someone who'd eaten earlier must have spilled something: water, soda, juice, any liquid, really. The liquid had pooled on the floor and had somehow been neglected by the custodian's mop. Both he and Carter had missed the puddle the first time they'd walked past it, but this time, just as Jack was passing Carter, the toe of his boot planted right in the middle of the mysterious spill. The rubber sole slid forward unexpectedly and he lost his balance. Instinctively, Jack threw up his hands, searching for something solid to cling to in order to stop his fall. Unfortunately, this meant releasing his grip on his tray. And unfortunately for Major Carter, she was the closest solid object to Jack at the time.

Jack's food returned to Earth a second or two after he and Carter landed in a tangled pile on the commissary floor. Sam ended up with red jell-o and chocolate pudding in her hair, and he was pretty sure that was the milk from his cereal he felt seeping through the back of his shirt. Jack didn't even want to guess what was plastered against his skull at the moment, but he had a nasty feeling it was his corn flakes.

The glare he received from Sam afterwards was beyond irate. The only thing Jack could do was babble the closest thing he had to an explanation, and apologize for the pudding that was currently dripping sluggishly from her short bangs. Certainly, he could have pulled rank and told her to suck it up, accidents happen, but he had a feeling that was the absolute worst course of action he could possible take. So he stuck to cursing spilled liquids and apologizing about jell-o.

He didn't see Carter for the rest of the day, which was probably just as well. Jack returned home that night irritated and unable to get the smell of soggy cornflakes out his nose, despite having taken three showers after the incident in the commissary.

This time when Jack played, he let white win. Then he went to bed, trying hard not to think of how the next day could possibly be any worse.

-oOo-

Nothing worse than the incident with the Ysvelden Matter Converter or the accident in the commissary happened in the following weeks, but that wasn't to say things got significantly better either. First, the planet SG-1 visited in search of naquada deposits ended up being covered in mud that smelled like dead fish, and just their luck but they were stuck there for three days extra because a mudslide cut them off from the gate. When they'd finally returned home, it had been to news that even with the three day extension, none of the scientists on base had yet been able to figure out how to reverse the effects of the matter converter, so Sam's lab still looked like a transplanted piece of the tropics. Sam had showered (twice) before locking herself in her base quarters with the Ysvelden device.

Neither Jack, nor Daniel, nor Teal'c was fool enough to interrupt her.

On their next trip off-world, Sam had contracted what seemed to be similar to a bad case of the chicken pox, only coupled with a really bad head cold. It wouldn't have been half as bad, however, if it hadn't been Jack who'd been the one to sneeze on her and get her sick in the first place. To add insult to injury, Jack didn't even break out in spots; in fact, his coughing and sneezing cleared up before they'd returned to Earth. It was as if he'd never gotten sick in the first place. Sam had glared at him (in a very professional manner, of course) for the rest of the mission, except for the moments when she was distracted by the hundreds of itchy red welts covering her body. She'd ended up in the isolation for five days after they got back, while Jack had gotten off with two.

Carter spent her five day sentence in isolation fiddling with the confounded matter converter; her lab still bore a striking resemblance to the island of Borneo. Jack was beginning to think that not even all the chocolate in the world would be able to make up for the inconvenience of having her experiments and equipment turned into vines and flowers.

Other mishaps occurred along the way, but after the bootlaces incident before their mission to P4C-551, Jack couldn't bring himself to remember them all. But despite his track record, every night he would go home at night and play chess, praying to whatever omniscient being could hear him that maybe tomorrow would be better.

-oOo-

Jack opened his refrigerator, closing his eyes for a moment against the chill. It had to be a hallucination. That was the only reasonable explanation he could think of as to why Major Samantha Carter, the woman he'd inadvertently yet successfully annoyed, irritated, and embarrassed for nearly a month straight, was currently sitting in his family room, setting up his chess board for a game. When he opened his eyes, she would be gone, along with the Chinese food she'd brought along.

Deciding that a good ten count was long enough to clear his head of any and all hallucinations, he opened his eyes.

He still smelled Chinese food, and if he wasn't mistaken that was the crown of a blonde head of hair peeking over the room divide. So… not a hallucination? Jack wasn't sure if his month could stand to get any stranger. Grabbing two beers, he closed the fridge before it leaked any more cold air into the house and proceeded back to the family room.

"So… this is a good will visit, then?" he asked non-hallucinated Carter tentatively, taking his normal seat on the couch in front of the chess board. He passed her a beer, which she accepted with the same small smile she'd been donning when he'd answered his front door that evening. Jack gave an uncomfortable half-smile in response, sitting down on the sofa.

Having opened the beer and taken a swig, Sam's eyes narrowed, focusing on the chess board. She chewed her lower lip, deep in thought. "You could call it that." She started the game, moving her pawn and looking up expectantly at him from her seat on the floor. Jack had offered to move his chess board from its customary position on his coffee table to someplace where she would have a more comfortable seat, but Sam insisted she was just as comfortable on the floor. He wasn't entirely sure if he believed her, but Jack wasn't going to push. Not when this seemed to be the first streak of good luck he'd encountered in quite a while.

"You know, I'm sorry about the whole matter converter thing…" He moved his first piece. "It was an accident, I swear."

The next piece Sam moved she set down on the board with a little more force than necessary. Jack resisted the urge to gulp; she was scary when she was upset. "I know. It was still pretty frustrating though, not having access to my experiments for three weeks because they had been turned into plants." She paused. "Though, I suppose it could be considered a good thing, what you did."

"It could?" Jack wasn't sure how turning a lab into a rainforest could be considered 'good', but if it meant she was less irritated with him, he'd take what he could get. "How so?"

"Well, it didn't give us any choice but to figure out how the thing worked. It was nice not to have to ship something that fascinating off to Area 51 almost as soon as we acquired it." She didn't look up from the board as she captured one of his rooks. In his next move, Jack responded in kind.

"I see. So I'm actually the good guy in all of this." Despite the fact that they were holding a conversation, the game was progressing at a fairly quick pace. It was exciting, playing against Sam. Far more exciting than playing against himself, but that went without saying. She was intelligent, logical, and even a bit cunning when it came to chess – the combination made for a thrilling game.

"Don't push your luck. I'm still not sure if I forgive you for covering me in jell-o and pudding." She sounded serious, but there was a hint of a smile teasing the corners of her mouth.

"Well, you do look good in red," Jack mumbled to the chess board before he could check himself. He looked up in time to see Sam's eyes flash with annoyance and he had to duck as she chucked one of his captured pawns at his head. "Hey! That was a compliment!"

It was a close game in the end, but somehow Jack squeaked through with a victory. He half expected Sam to leave after that, the half-eaten cartons of Chinese in hand. But she didn't. To Jack's surprise, she set up the pieces on the chess board for another game. And after she'd won that game (by as slim a margin as he'd won the game before), she set up the board for yet another. After a while, Jack stopped questioning and just started enjoying. It was astounding how easy it was to slip back into comfortable conversation, after weeks of walking on egg shells around her, so to speak. Usually he found these types of situations more than a little awkward. Maybe it was possible that finally, after all these years, he was learning some social graces…

Of course, maybe it was just the chess. Life always seemed easier when playing chess.

-oOo-

It was dark and the Chinese food and beer were long gone by the time they finished their last game. Jack was still grinning widely even after cleaning up, entirely pleased about the fact that he'd beaten Sam more times than he'd lost. Sam had tried to play it off as being distracted by the food and his lame apologies, but that didn't do anything to wipe Jack's grin from his face. In fact, it had only served to make it wider.

There would be some definite gloating going on in the very near future, of that he was entirely certain. Starting now, preferably.

"Carter, I thought you were supposed to be an all-around genius," he said through his grin. Unfortunately, Sam didn't seem to be in the mood to rise to his baiting. Jack waited a bit, grin still in place, but it didn't take long for him to get sick of her ignoring of him. "Carrrrrrrrrterrrrrrr…" he drawled. "What happened to being a genius?"

"Sir," Sam said with a slightly dramatic sigh of exasperation, "you really can be quite an ass sometimes." Her back straightened just a little at that comment; Jack was pretty sure she hadn't meant to say it out loud, but in the relaxed atmosphere of the evening it had probably just slipped out.

"And don't you forget it," he ordered, and was rewarded with a patented Carter eye roll. The relaxed atmosphere returned. It was then that Jack realized he felt disturbingly close to actually laughing. He decided now would be a good time to get Sam out of his house before he did any more damage to his reputation and helped her on with her jacket. He even opened the door for her.

That was when she kissed him.

It wasn't anything straight from a romance novel; in fact, it was fairly platonic as far as kisses went. Just a little peck on the cheek close to his ear that lasted for what he thought was maybe a beat longer than it should have. But that didn't change the fact that she'd kissed him. Out of nowhere, apparently. It was enough to wipe his grin from his face and completely freeze him in place.

And to make things even more confusing than they already were, she was smiling. Not nervously as if she'd just realized what a huge mistake she'd made, not sadly as if it had been some sort of final goodbye kiss, but shyly and looking rather pleased with herself, as if she'd just done something she'd wanted to do for a long while but was still a little unsure of the consequences.

Nothing happened for a few moments after that, and Jack wasn't sure but he thought maybe he was staring. Or possibly gaping. That, and his jaw was hanging slack. Needless to say, words completely escaped him.

"Thanks for the chess," Sam said finally before walking out to her car, smile still in place. The engine revved to life, the lights turned on, and then she was gone, the glow from her headlights obscured by the trees growing on the sides of his property.

Jack stood in his open doorway for a while after that, not entirely sure that what had just happened really had just happened. But it must have happened, because he could still feel her lips pressed against his cheek, and there was no way he could imagine that. Well, there was, but this was nothing like his brain's fabrications. This was… well, at the very least it gave him hope that he had been forgiven for all the trouble he'd inadvertently caused over the past few weeks. And at best…

His grin returned, spreading slowly across his face. He was never going to part with that chess set.