Title: Resolution

Author: Sam938

Rating: PG13. There are a few paragraphs that imply sexual situations, but not much. No violence, some swearing.

Summary: Mid season 9. Sam and Jack resolve what's yet to be resolved from season 8.

Classifications: S/J romance, mostly fluff. Lots of sap, and the story interprets Air Force fraternization regulations in a non-standard way, so if you're a stickler on this topic, don't read, please. Oh yeah, did I mention sap? Yep, think I did.

Archive: SJD yes. Others please ask.

Disclaimers: Don't own the characters, etc. etc. and this was written for entertainment, not profit.

Status: complete.

Feedback: Sure. Thanks, very much!

A/N: This was written in 2005, at the end of season 8, projecting what could happen when Sam is asked to move back to the SGC permanently by Landry and she's already in a relationship with Jack. She's temporarily assigned to the SGC, on leave from 51.

--

"What are you doing here?"

Jack looked up from his reports on his currently "lapped" laptop. With his bare feet on the coffee table and a beer on the side table, he'd comfortably settled in. He'd been working there for nearly two hours before she'd finally gotten home.

The really interesting part was that Sam's automatic was still pointed at him, even now that she'd figured out who he was.

Okay, so… it was true that he was ensconced in her living room without notice, but he did actually did have some precedent with that…but, well…that wasn't the point.

And yeah, he knew things had been tense at the SGC lately, but this was getting ridiculous.

After all, it wasn't exactly breaking and entering. He did have a key. He had one for her house here in Colorado (which she hadn't sold yet), one for the Nevada apartment, and she had one for his in D.C. In fact, they had way too many keys for his taste, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she was still pointing a gun at him.

"Nice to see you too, Colonel."

"God, sorry." He watched with interest as she finally reholstered the gun.

He took another drink of his beer and listened with even more interest as she tried to apologize for nearly shooting him, making a mess of it.

She finally gave him something reasonable that he could work with.

"I thought you might be the NID or something-- uhh--"

"Worse."

"Yeah."

"Well?"

Jack figured it was always better to ask these things up front.

"Oh, you're definitely not worse." She smiled, finally, a real Carter smile, and then moved towards him and the couch.

His last coherent thought was that he really needed to visit Colorado Springs more often.

Two hours later, with Sam's head against his shoulder, her legs wrapped around his, and the moonlight shining in through the skylight in the bedroom, he decided that maybe what he'd come here to propose as suggestions about the future might just be OK.

Sam stirred, and then rose up above him, her legs straddling his hips, her hands and arms balancing her and holding up her upper body up she started a rhythm that was obviously going to kill them both.. uhh .. in a good way… a very good way.

He turned them both over and pushed her back down on the bed, his body over hers, trying to calm them down.

"Sam. We have to talk."

"Later. Missed you. " She wrapped her legs around him again in another position that had as much possibility and promise as the first.

He groaned and counted to ten. "No. Now."

"Really?"

Given that she could feel that he was hard again against her body, and practically in her body, he could understand her confusion.

Hell, he was confused himself.

He gulped and then swallowed, but stayed firm in his determination, as well as elsewhere, unfortunately, and finally found the strength to pull his upper body away from hers. He rested his weight on his arms, stared down, and gave her the most serious look he could currently manage given their situation.

"Yes. Really. We need to talk now. We can finish this after, or at least I hope we will."

She grinned. "Is that blackmail?"

He thought about his options. He could lie, but the truth seemed like the best possibility at the moment. "Yeah."

She smiled and stretched underneath him, relaxing into him. "Thought so. Just wanted to be sure." When she moved against him again he nearly said the hell with it; they could talk tomorrow after all.

But that was just cowardice on his part avoiding a discussion about what he hoped was the inevitable.

"Jeez…damn it, Carter. I'm serious." He pulled away and sat up against the headboard. When she stayed where she was, he grabbed her arms.

"Up." He maneuvered her up against his shoulder, until she was sitting next to him.

"Jack?" She sounded confused, and slightly worried.

Hell, he hadn't meant to do that… it was just that…

"Why are you here? Is everything alright?"

He rubbed his hand over his eyes, wondering how he had managed to screw this "well planned" conversation up before it had even started. Yeah, well done, O'Neill.

"Yeah…uhh…yes. At least I hope so."

"You hope so?"

Oh yeah, this was going well. He decided it was time to just get it over with and jump in, given that he was doing such a great job of setting the scene, but she beat him to the punch.

"Jack, just tell me." She sat up, pulled away from his shoulder, and moved to the middle of the bed, looking at him questioningly, the sheet wrapped around her.

Great. Just great. Yep, this was just how he'd planned it. Why was it that Carter was the only person who ever managed to get under his skin enough to make him lose track of what he really intended to say when things got personal? OK, sure, he blurted a lot of stuff in "getting a little too close" situations when necessary, or shut up entirely, but it was well-planned blurting and well-planned silence. With Sam he just lost it because it was…about her being Sam… OK, stupid question.

He braced his shoulders against the bed board, took a deep breath and started in.

"Landry called me this morning. He requested that your temporary reassignment to the SGC be reclassified to permanent, and he asked for my help."

She stayed silent, saying nothing. Not good.

"From what I hear from him, you turned him down, but he thought you regretted doing so. Said your reason for refusing was that you felt obligated to your work at 51. He felt, however, that…something else… was going on."

He watched her expression carefully while he continued. "He asked me to intercede with you, given our… 'friendship'-- his word, not mine. He also implied, although being Hank he would never actually say, that if that didn't work, he hoped I would consider overriding your refusal by negotiating with Cook for the transfer, and then requiring the reassignment, whether you liked it or not. "

When she continued to stay silent, he decided to just get it over with and all of it out.

"Landry, of course, assumed my, as he called it, 'obvious interest' in making sure the SGC and everything under my command had the best possible people in all the right jobs would tip the scales about my willingness to discuss this with you.

"And he was right about that. So I am."

"Damn."

"That bad?"

"No—it's just that… well… I just didn't expect this to get to you, that's all."

"Why not?"

She ignored his question. "Damn it, Jack. I turned him down. That should have been enough. I never thought he'd take it further up the ranks. I thought this was over."

"Yeah. Well, life, and especially the military, doesn't quite work that way—and, I might add -- I already know you know that. So, you can imagine my surprise, seeing as I hadn't heard any of this from you, when I got Hank's proposal. And to be honest, it seems from here like I would never have heard anything about it if he hadn't called. "

He looked at her curiously, saying mildly, "Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"I—you were busy. I was busy and it wasn't that important. "

"Not good enough."

She rubbed her hand over her face and looked away from him. "I know I should have told you. I'm sorry."

"And you didn't because?"

"I just couldn't. "

"Why?" He tried to catch her eyes, but she refused to look at him, and instead, stared away from him at the wall. He really thought the wall was a pretty uninteresting sight, but what did he know.

He waited for his answer.

"You have enough on your plate. You didn't need this as well." She finally turned back and looked at him, he noted that she looked as, ah, ... icily determined… as he'd ever seen her look. And that was saying a lot.

"And before you do something, or say something really annoying, and start trying to convince me that reassignment would be for the 'good of the universe… country … whatever', let me be clear. I am not giving you up; I'm not giving us up. Not again; not ever. So this conversation is closed."

She got up off the bed, put on her robe, and opened the deck doors off of the bedroom, moving out into the clear, dry Colorado summer evening and looked up at the stars.

He followed her, grabbing his jeans from the floor next to the bed and put them on as he moved. When he reached the deck, he pulled her back against his chest, wrapped his arms around her, and lowered his head down into her hair, breathing in her fragrance. She didn't move away, but she didn't exactly respond, either.

An "icily determined" and what now appeared to be a "really pissed" Carter was a new experience; not because he hadn't seen that before because, of course, he had, many times, but this time the annoyance and irritation appeared to be directed at him, rather than at a piece of technology or a really bad, bad guy.

He took some comfort in the fact that she'd clearly gotten comfortable enough with him that she wasn't pulling any punches. Figuratively, thank god, they were just figurative punches. Carter had a pretty mean left.

He used his best "calming the horses" voice, and asked the question closest to his heart.

"Did you really think I would?"

" Would what?"

"Try to convince you to take the assignment? Because if I did that, under current conditions, we would have to give this up."

He continued. "Did you think I could? "

"I—of course not." Her ice and anger seemed to melt suddenly; and then dissipate, like a quick Colorado Chinook that left as suddenly as it arrived. He was relieved when she leaned back against him. But he couldn't let it go.

"The truth, Sam."

"I don't know. Yes; some days, maybe."

He really didn't like that answer. He waited to hear more.

It took a while, but more finally came. "God, I don't know, Jack. To be honest, I didn't want to ask the question. This is all so new. "

He stayed silent, waiting her out, wanting to hear the rest.

Her voice finally filled the quiet of the night. "It's not that easy. Nothing's ever easy with us. I thought maybe after the – well, anyway, for a while there I thought things might be calmer. But now –."

She stopped mid-sentence. "The point is that the crises are never going to stop; at least not in our lifetimes as far as I can see. And I didn't want you caught between duty and inclination again. I didn't want either one of us to be there again, but one of us had to be, so I made the call."

He shifted his weight and put his head next to hers, looking at the stars, thinking carefully about how to continue the discussion.

"What you did, in fact, was make a decision that affects us both without talking to me about it. That's a problem, Sam."

She shook her head. "Yeah, I guess. When you put it that way, I have to agree. I'm sorry, Jack, but I--"

He interrupted her before she could start into self-recriminations, swearing mentally. This was so not where he had intended to take this discussion or where he wanted it to go.

"C'mere." He pulled her over to the chairs on the deck, so she was facing him, and leaned towards her, keeping her hands in his.

She sighed. "Jack, this situation is affecting your Command. If we weren't together, you would be asking me to return."

"And you'd want to go."

She shrugged and looked away again. "I guess. There's a lot at stake. It's just that I'm so damned tired of it all."

"Sam, look at me. Please."

When she finally turned back to him, he continued. "I don't want to talk about Landry and his proposals. And I don't give a damn about the state of the universe right now. What this is about is trust; it's about making decisions together, not alone. Do you believe that I love you? Do you trust me?"

"I – yes."

"Then marry me, Carter."

"What?"

And then there was stunned silence.

Jack swore at himself, reviewing what he'd said. Yep, that had been a good move, even a great move. Make it a command order and use her last name in the bargain, why don't you? Oh yeah, that was classy.

He tried to retrieve the situation. "Sorry, that came out wrong."

"You didn't mean it?"

Oh great. Now she was even more confused.

He snorted, exasperated with himself. "Of course I meant it." He raised his hand up, as a sort of tentative time-out, compromise or defense; he wasn't sure which.

"Hold on here. I'm not very good at this."

He winced, and then tried again. "Sam, I don't want to keep this quiet any longer, and I don't want either of us to feel that they have to protect the other or to make decisions alone. I want you with me for the rest of our lives in a real partnership. I want you to know that you can trust me, no matter what, and that I can trust you.

"Will you marry me?"

OK, this was as stupidly and as embarrassingly sloppy as anyone could ever possibly get, but...it mattered. He needed to know and he wanted a future.

And then, it was all right.

She smiled a mega-watt Carter smile that lit up the night for him, and pulled her right hand away from his in order to touch his face. "I didn't know you were a closet romantic, General. I'm going to have to keep that in mind in our future discussions."

He rolled his eyes to the top of his head. " OK, I deserved that. I take it that's a yes, then?"

"Oh yeah, you betcha." And then she was in his arms again.

Much later, Jack looked up at the dwindling night stars, shifting Carter's head against his chest to a more comfortable position. They'd fallen asleep hours ago; the sun was starting to rise over the plains in the east. He looked west to the mountains, where the rose hue was reflected in the clouds. Sam shifted. "Cold?"

"Yeah."

He looked around the deck and snatched a blanket from the floor. "Better?"

"Yes." She opened her eyes, looking at the sunrise. "Beautiful."

He agreed, looking down at her. "Oh yeah."

He could feel her begin to wake, her mind start working again, as she came out of the depths of sleep. Something was bothering her; he could sense it. "What is it?'

"Nothing."

"Sam…"

She shrugged into his chest. "It's nothing. We just never finished the conversation last night on what happens next. So when I go back to 51, I suppose you'll let Landry--"

He interrupted. "Sam, stop. You're doing it again."

She lifted her head to look at him, honestly confused. "Doing what again?"

"Making assumptions about the future without consulting me."

"I am?"

He sighed. This new habit of hers was going to take a while to get … whatever. "Yes, you are. Yes, you do have to stay assigned to 51 for a while; we can't get married unless there's no direct chain of command. But after that…" He broke off and waited, wondering when she'd finally get the point.

It clicked. "But after that, spousal exception kicks in."

Finally. He'd never thought of Carter as dense before, but this …

"Yes. After that, if you want to, you can rejoin the SGC, or stay at 51. It's up to you. Either way won't damage your career or our connection. And it will all be above board, legal, and according to the regs."

She was nerve-wrenchingly silent for a moment, and then seem to come to some sort of conclusion. She stared at him curiously. "Just when did you come up with this marriage idea?"

He looked down at her, startled. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Give."

"Hell, I guess about seven years ago."

"Just seven?"

"I was in denial for a while."

She smiled, and put her head back down on his chest. "Good answer."

He ran his hand through her hair, thinking. "You didn't think that I came up with it so that I could have you and you back at the SGC, did you?"

The thought made him actually slightly outraged.

She shrugged, and said mildly, "You usually do find ways to have your cake and eat it too."

He sat up suddenly, practically knocking them both on the ground in the process, completely flustered. "I would never do that. Never."

He stopped explaining when he saw her expression and then let out his breath.

"Damn it, Carter. You're teasing me. Don't ever do it again. You nearly gave me a heart attack."

She smiled, and tried to pull him back down to a comfortable position for them both. "Sorry. It was hard to resist."

He resisted, still flustered; he couldn't help it. He pulled a box out of his jeans pocket, wanting to prove his innocence.

"Here." He handed it to her. "This has been burning a hole in my pocket since Daniel nailed Anubis. I've been trying to find the right time to give it to you, but things have been so busy that--."

He stopped suddenly when he saw that she was staring at him, her eyes wide and misty.

Damn. Now he felt like a jerk. Sam deserved more than his throwing a box at her while he was feeling stupidly defensive.

He was never, absolutely never, ever in his lifetime going to get the hang of this romance stuff.

"I wanted to do something … uhh… romantic and all that, but there hasn't been time. I'm sorry, Sam. I should have waited. I wanted this to be special."

She looked down at the box. "It is. I can't imagine anything more …special." She gave it back to him and he noticed that her hands shook slightly. "Open it for me, will you?"

He cleared his throat, feeling suddenly nervous himself as he opened it. He was right; he was never going to get the hang of this.

"Uhh… look, if you don't like it, that's fine. It was my grandmother's, and my mother's, so it's probably old fashioned." He mentioned quickly before she mistook him, "It was never Sara's."

He couldn't stop himself from rambling. "I had it sized to fit your finger a while back, but if you don't like it, or don't want a ring, we can do something else. I --"

She put her hand over his mouth. "Stop. It's beautiful. I love it."

Okay. That was all right then.

Then his hands started moving of their own accord. He watched as they took the ring out of the box and put it on her finger, his emotions rough and tumultuous, his thoughts rambling.

He'd loved two women in his life; he'd proposed to them both. And god help them, they'd both accepted him.

The Jack O'Neill that had proposed to Sara had been fresh out of the Academy and convinced that he could take on the world and make everything right for her, for everyone. That man had been an arrogant, optimistic fool. He'd learned a lot since then. Now, he was still arrogant, but tired and worn, and knew that happiness was fleeting and that he didn't matter much in the great cosmic scheme of things. And he knew that, given their work, the fact that both he and Sam were still alive was nothing short of miraculous and that the probability that they'd stay that way wasn't high.

But when he looked at the ring on her finger, and the smile in her eyes, he saw a promise, a commitment, and a statement that told the world and the great cosmic scheme to go to hell; they'd make their way together in the open and the light.

He swallowed as he ran his hand over hers and the ring and tried to lighten the mood. "It's not fair, you know."

She looked up at him, startled. "What's not fair?"

"Never understood why guys didn't get to have one of these too."

She snorted. "Will a wedding band do?"

He grinned. "Yeah, I think that will be fine."

"C'mon." She got up and started pulling him up off the chair.

"Where are we going?"

When she didn't answer and just kept pulling, he tried whining. "Carter, are you planning the future without consulting me again?"

She laughed and manueavered him into the bedroom. "Not a chance. Just relocating the negotiations."

"Ah. That's all right then." He pulled her back into his arms.

TBC...