Author Note: I wrote this a long, long time ago, but thought it needed a home here.

He wasn't Jack, and she was okay with that. Where Jack was hard angles and light hair and too many memories, Cam was easy touches, laughing blue eyes, and comfortable chatter.

They worked well together, but with Cam it was as much her doing as it was his. They settled around each other, gently taking more and more liberties with command. He deferred to her experience, sometimes, and sometimes she returned the favor by seeing situations in a light not jaded by eight years of work.

With Jack, it had always been his experience, his command, his final say.

She was okay with taking some of the blame these days.

And maybe she realized, now that it might be too late to put it into practice, that the whole thing would have worked out just fine if they'd just relaxed a little bit, if they'd been able to share laughter the way she and Cam could, if they'd been able to put the fate of the world in a separate category from their personal lives. It hadn't been her fault alone, and she knew this because she could sense how Cam was circling the issue, pushing at it in a way Jack hadn't dared to. He'd left it all up to her, and she'd made the wrong choice, but maybe she had a different chance now.

She was gradually being won over, and damn but that feeling was nice, reminded her of the good part of being with Pete, when he'd wanted her and when he'd done his best to get her on the same page as he was.

She had almost convinced herself that her happiness was worth everything again, until Jack came into town for nothing.

Literally nothing. There were no late teams, no world-threatening crises, no fishing tournaments.

He just...dropped by. On a whim.

Cam was in her lab, carefully not touching anything, leaning back, laughing and telling a funny story from his neverending supply of funny stories, and Sam was hunched over a half-assembled piece of alien technology she thought might be a really efficient battery, smiling. She looked up when the light from the hall was blocked, Cam already starting to his feet, prepared to salute, but Sam recognized the subtle clues that told her he didn't expect it today and would prefer not to bother with ceremony even before she thought about why he was there.

She nodded, said, "Sir," and kept working.

Cam frowned, looked between them, and hesitated.

"I'll...tell you the rest later, Sam." He nodded at Jack, left through the open door.

Jack took Cam's vacated stool.

"Just thought I'd say hi, Carter. He didn't have to leave."

She said, calmly, "There's only one stool, anyway."

Jack frowned, leaned forward, hands brushing the edge of her project, and Sam knew that this was it. The deciding moment. The fork in the road. The cliche to end all cliches.

"I've always wondered about that. Why do you only have the one extra?" His voice was still light, but she knew he was aware of the subtext to this meeting.

"Why are you here today, sir?" She was still bent over the machine, carefully aligning wires as if she wasn't having the most important conversation of her life.

"You didn't answer my question, Carter."

She shrugged. "Guess they figured there's only really space for two people in the room at once."

There was dead silence for a moment. When Sam finally looked up, she saw Jack looking as if he were struggling not to laugh.

And that was it. One moment of levity, and she suddenly knew, with relief, how everything from here would go. Because Cam wasn't Jack. Because she was waiting for something and had found it. She relaxed, her eyes glinted mischievously, and Jack barked out a laugh.

"Damn, Carter. Taking a metaphor a little far, are we?"

She shook her head. "Maybe."

A speculative look, and then he was up, Carter standing in response automatically.

He looked serious again. "Just so we're clear..." He stepped toward her, caught her arm before she could move away.

She said quickly, before she forgot, "I was taking things too seriously. Before."

A slow smile. "No kidding." He leaned forward. "Carter...you do know there's no point to having the room anymore, right?"

She smiled back at him. "Would you just kiss me already?"

And he did.