The rain was relentless. It pounded down onto her shoulders, ran in rivulets down the back of her neck, fell in curtains off the bill of her baseball cap. Ahead of her, the two-track path wound its way up a hill and disappeared into the thick, over-grown forest. The people of the planet were lousy with horses and efficient wagons, but she trudged forward on foot, one sloggy footstep after another. The map in her hands was sketched on thick, fabric-y paper that - though it held together - had become blurry with the water.

She needed to find somewhere relatively dry to wait out the storm. For most of the day she'd been meandering through the large network of clearings, forests, and abandoned villages with half-collapsed buildings hoping to make some sense of the now nearly-useless map. An hour ago she'd come to the conclusion that it was just...wrong. Nothing on the map seemed to appear on the land before her.

Her radio wasn't working. Something in the hills, maybe, cut her off from the rest of her team and the colonel who she was sure was fit to be tied considering he had been less than thrilled about the idea of her solo-trip to the outer-edges of the lands the people had developed.

She considered heading back about two klicks to the last set of buildings, but realized with rains and the winds, the roofless and sometimes wall-less structures weren't going to lend her any protection anyway. No, she'd be better off determining her bearings and heading back to the currently occupied area she and the rest of SG-1 had spent the last week in with the remaining villagers.

She walked on, another hour in the probable direction of her team. The driving rain gave way to a storm with gusting winds and lightning and she admitted defeat. She casted around for anything that looked like it would offer half-decent shelter when she heard her name.

"Carter!" A few beats, enough for several footsteps, then again, "Carter!"

She turned until she thought her voice would carry in the direction of the colonel. "Here, sir!"

Out of the rapidly growing shadows of a near-by stand of trees he appeared, covered from shoulders to shins in a rain slicker that whipped around in the winds. She was suddenly very aware of being drenched to the skin. And cold. Very, very cold.

"Dammit, Carter! Where the hell have you been?!" He stalked in her direction. The acid in his voice was very much a holdover from the morning and rather insubordinate argument she'd engaged him in. The edge in his voice made her buzz a little in a way that was pretty pleasant.

"I...well...I don't really know, sir." She thrust the remains of the map at him. "This thing was useless even before it was ruined."

"What the hell is that? Is that the map?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, shit, Major." He stopped directly in front of her, so close she could see his dark eyes even in the low light. "We're about ten klicks from camp. We're going to have to find somewhere to wait out this storm. Data from the UAV says it's only going to get worse before it gets better."

She knew that. Well, she'd guessed as much. "I've been looking. I figured if I didn't find something I'd at least find my way back."

He took in the chattering of her teeth, the trembling of her body, "We've got to find somewhere now. You're in no shape to go on. In this weather it will take a couple of hours to get back. C'mon." His concern felt a little forced, slightly unnatural considering his otherwise prickly mood.

She followed along behind him, paying little attention to where he might be leading her. She didn't think she'd been to their current location anyway so it's not like she'd be much help, she rationalized. Soon, they stepped into a clearing, in the middle there was a small, intact building.

"Must have been a homestead," he said as they shouldered their way in through a wooden door that was swollen in its frame.

"Oh god, is that a fireplace?"

His chuckle was deep and rumbled through her a moment before a bolt of lightning split the sky followed immediately by a boom of thunder that made her jump. "Easy," he soothed. "Looks, like you're in luck, Carter. I think that's firewood." His voice ran down her back like desire. She liked the looseness the break from the weather seemed to promote. He didn't sound nearly as mad as he had every right to be.

It was so dark inside the one-room house she wasn't sure how he could tell, but the promise of a fire had her stripping off the heavy fabric of her soaked uniform jacket. She located a low bench with her shin and dropped her jacket onto it as she cursed the bruise that she could already feel forming.

He verified the presence of both firewood and kindling then set to work building a fire. By the time he was done done, she'd shed all but her black t-shirt and white, government-approved panties. He looked over at her as she pulled her bra out of one arm of her shirt.

"Christ, Carter, not wasting any time are you?"

She shook her head and shivered, her teeth chattered and she wrapped her arms around herself.

In the orange light of the fire she watched him stand and strip off his poncho. He appeared to be dry save for the few inches of exposed trouser between the bottom of the poncho and the top of his boots.

In her skivvies down to her bare toes, she remembered the morning and when they'd been embroiled in a bitter disagreement regarding his chosen course of action. Well, as bitter as she could reasonably be with a commanding officer. But he knew she was mad, and she knew he was too. He exhaled loudly. "Well, c'mere already."

Before she could wrap her brain around it, she was pressed between him and the fire. The heat of the flames warming her breasts, belly and thighs, the heat of his body against her from shoulder to ass. He curled his hands around her arms and she gasped at the difference between his over-heated hands and her chilled skin. When the goosebumps continued to cover her arms, he resorted to friction.

He cursed low, under his breath and snagged his fingers under the hem of her t-shirt, ripping it over her head in one smooth, too-practiced motion. "Propriety ranks lower than hypothermia, Carter," he said as if she'd protested. She hadn't. And anyway, the shirt had been sodden and was probably soaking the dryer clothes he was wearing.

There was so little space between her and the wall of heat of the fire that she wasn't too cold. And the wall of heat behind her didn't hurt much, either. So she stood there, bare breasts heavy under their own weight and the low buzz of desire that always followed a charged interaction with him.

After a while, and as she came up to something resembling the warm one-room-house temperature, she felt obliged to apologize. "I'm sorry, sir," she spoke to the fire, wanting to turn to see his eyes but realizing that him catching a surreptitious glance of her breasts over her shoulder was completely different than turning around and presenting him with her nearly naked body.

He sighed heavily. "Me too."

"I shouldn't have insisted on finding the device."

"I should have ordered you not to."

"You did."

"Then I shouldn't have changed my mind."

"I was fairly persuasive."

He clenched his jaw and she could feel the tightening of those muscles against her temple. "Yeah. You were."

She shifted her weight from one foot to another. "I think I'm warm enough now."

He took a step back from her but didn't say anything.

"Can I borrow your poncho?"

"Why?" he asked even as he handed it over.

"I'd like to dry my underwear." It wasn't the first time she'd been in his presence without wearing underwear. They'd been in the field together for years, it wasn't like they were all perfectly dressed at every moment. But it felt different, knowing how he'd been sneaking little peeks at her half naked body and how she was still buzzing from their argument and proximity. It was one thing to take off wet underwear in front of a teammate, but it was an entirely different thing to take off wet underwear.

She pulled the slicker over her head, half turned towards him because she knew what a view it would give him and because she felt like playing a little dangerously, for reasons she didn't want to game out too much. A little push, a little pull and a shimmy and her underwear fell down around her ankles.

"You're so damn frustrating, you know that?"

She didn't bother answering him, she just dragged the low bench over in front of the fire and laid out her clothes the best she could to dry them.

"I don't want to fight with you," he said to her back. And it was a lie. Fighting with each other left them both keyed up.

"I don't want to fight with you either." Another lie.

"It doesn't feel good." Lie.

"It feels electric. Turn around." He did without question and she stripped the sweat-inducing plastic over her head. Naked, then, she spread it over the floor and sat with the bench between her and the fireplace. She gathered her legs up in front of her so she was covered. Mostly. If skin covering other bits of skin counted. "Okay."

He turned back around and sighed grievously. It had been too many years of riding the edge of their attraction, she knew. And no, it wasn't like stripping down was her only option. But it was her best option and if they couldn't both be adults about it, then fine, but she wasn't going to sit through the next several hours completely uncomfortable.

That seemed to be the point at which he lost all ability to reason.

His eyes trailed over her. "You give me way too much credit."

"For being able to ignore me? No, I don't. I give you the exact right amount of credit."

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow and clenched his jaw. "There's a difference between trusting me to do the right thing and sitting in front of me like that when we both know I'm barely hanging on."

"That's what you look like barely hanging on? Jesus, Jack, I think you spent too many years in special ops."

"Sir."

She laughed derisively. "Um, no. Not when I'm sitting here naked and we're talking about sex. You look at me like that and I get to call you Jack."

He grinned, lazy despite the charged atmosphere. "I don't know, Carter. I think the sir thing would work for me even when you're naked."

"Maybe after you retire. I can't go back out there with you and associate sir with sex. I just can't. It's hard enough now, every time I say it. I'm not going to be able to do it if that's what I'm calling you when you're inside me."

The grin slid off his face, replaced by something hungry. "Fuck, Carter. Really?"

"It's been a really long few days," she said, the steel in her backbone melting out through the hole of chagrin. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm sorry."

He pulled off his jacket and handed it to her. "If that's what's on your mind, I'm not."

"It's getting harder and harder to do the right thing.

He waited until she'd threaded on the jacket and arranged it the best she could before he sat down on the floor next to her. "I know."

"So now what?"

"I'm not sure I want to do this anymore. We're breaking the regs already. So why are we dancing around each other like this?" He drew a long, straight line on the pale skin of her thigh with a knuckle.

"Because you're going to make General. And soon."

"That's a bad reason."

"No. It's not."

"Dammit, Carter-"

"No, sir. It's a good reason to do our best to not make this any worse. But a good reason isn't always enough, is it?"

"Do you ever think this has become so much worse than it should be because we fight it so hard?"

"I'm not exactly fighting it anymore."

"I'd noticed," he said wryly. Between them, he fingered the hem of his jacket where it settled against her naked hip. He dipped finger into the crease between her body and her pulled-up thigh.

She felt the scrape of his fingernail all the way to her clit. "You're touching me."

"I'd noticed." The self-satisfied grin was embedded in his voice, she didn't need to look at his face to see it.

"I thought we were trying to figure this out."

"I thought you were trying to explain to me how my making General had anything at all to do with this."

"Don't do that, Jack. Not now. You think it's bad the way things are now? Imagine what it'll be like when you're the General and I'm a Major. What if you take over for General Hammond? You could be assigned to the SGC. What then?"

"What makes you think you're not making Lieutenant Colonel if I make General?"

"And that helps how?"

He wormed the rest of his fingers into the space between her leg and body and pushed down until the leg nearest him was stretched out in front of her. It's only the low light of the fire that maintains her relative modesty. The low light, and his better nature. The nature that's better than the one forcing the conversation he'd decided it was time to have.

He flattened his hand, high on her thigh. "Okay, so the chain of command thing is probably going to keep being an issue."

"It's an important issue."

"You know what's important? The things we make important."

"I don't know what the hell that even means."

"What happened to that guy you were dating?"

"Pete? It didn't work out."

"Why not?"

She hesitated. It didn't work out because he wasn't Jack. It didn't work out because as much as she hated to admit it, she missed the dramatic, unresolved sexual tension that existed between her and her commanding officer. It didn't work out because it was too nice. Too easy. But she didn't need to tell him that.

He already knew. "That's what I thought. I'm not saying any of this is easy."

"I don't like easy anyway," she confessed. "The part that bothers me is that it's never going to be right."

"It'll be right one day."

"When, Jack? When will it be right? Years from now when you can finally retire? And what between now and then? More of this? Because, I've got to tell you, it's driving me crazy to have you right there and not being able to touch you."

"So touch me."

It was a tempting entreaty. She covered the hand on her thigh with one of her own. She pressed him firmly into her flesh. "I told you, I don't like easy. And that would be really easy to do right now."

He dislodged her hand and let his fall down to the velvety-soft, dewy skin on the inside of her thigh where she knew he was privy to the knowledge of her being hot and more than a little damp. If she shifted, just a little, she could have his fingers right where she wanted them. But that would be easy, too. And waiting to see what he'd do, if left to his own devices was fun. Harder, but fun.

He surprised her when he yanked her thigh towards him, spreading her legs. He waited a moment then breathed deeply. She blushed the moment she smelled herself, knowing he could smell her, too. She wasn't exactly embarrassed, but she hadn't planned on being so thoroughly called out.

The look in his eyes made her mouth water. She wanted him. She wouldn't deny it even if she could. She was tempted again to shift into his fingers, but the angle would have been frustrating for them both. So she'd have ended up in his lap, and then, with his fingers inside her, she'd have ended up with his tongue in her mouth. After that she'd have ended up under him and it would have taken the undoing of one button and one zipper and he'd have ended up inside her.

"Too easy," she said instead.

He sighed. "Yeah." But he still glanced down, looked at his dark hand against her pale thigh both cast in the shadows of their bodies. He pulled his hand away. "We'll figure this out."

"After you make General."

"And you make Lieutenant Colonel."

"It'll be harder to pull something off when you're the base commander."

"Well, you've never liked easy anyway."

She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. "No. I really don't."