A/N: This was originally a commentfic written in response to a. loquita's Chasing Cars Around Our Heads, which is available on this site and well worth reading. what you need to know is that Jack is retired, and Cassie has been giving him advice for that all important third date with Sam, upcoming this evening. Most of the title of the Cosmo article comes from the original story.
Disclaimer: None of the familiar characters are mine, and I'm not intending to or succeeding at making money from this. Feel free to enjoy it nonetheless, borrowed characters and all.
Checking It Out
by Thothmes
He really only needed the one loaf of bread and the quart of milk, which more than qualified him for the express lane, but that line was snaked out almost all the way back to the meat department, and Jack had reluctantly decided that being next in line at one of the regular lines would be faster, even if that one person was apparently buying supplies for an entire Marine battalion, and had to stop unloading her carts – carts, for God's sakes! – every few seconds in order to take another candy out of the grabby hands of the toddler in the first cart and put it back in the rack, while directing the – oh – ten year old pushing the second cart in the finer aspects of unloading, and calling the two wandering younger ones back into orbit. It had been a long day, starting with a rather disturbing call from Cassie about – Soooo not thinking about that! Twenty-two was waaay too young to know that much about sex and dating. And DAMMIT! Not thinking about that! – and proceeding to a fender bender when the car behind him failed to stop at a light, and Jack, who enjoyed kids rather more than the next man, really wasn't in the mood for these ones, who seemed more whiney and mouthy than most.
Desperate for escape, Jack scanned quickly through the candy bars that the kid had been grabbing for, but none of them seemed new or interesting enough to be worth getting, so he turned with a sigh to examine the magazines and tabloids on display. The tabloids were disappointingly bereft of alien sightings (although the number of post-decease Jacko sightings were up alarmingly), and Jack was still not entirely clear on who Jennifer Aniston was, let alone why anyone should care who she'd been spotted with, so he began looking farther afield. Family Circle was in full Back-to-School mode, so Jack moved swiftly on to Architectural Digest, which was dull, and Colorado Vacations, which was duller. Prevention had a feature on Essential Vitamins After 50 which caught his eye for a moment, but to look closer would be to admit to actually being a fogey, not just looking like one, and besides, Jack figured his doctor really had that covered. And that left Cosmopolitan, where after looking over the coverbreastsgirl, Jack's eye was finally, fatally drawn to In The Bedroom Tonight: The Ten Things To Do With A Cashmere Scarf You'll Both Love.
He really, really wished he hadn't seen that. He had no clue (beyond a premonition of bondage) what even one of the things would be, but parts of him liked it enough already that he was fighting the urge to readjust – For Chrissakes, O'Neill! There are children present! – and he could almost feel the soft teasing fuzziness. Were the ten things just different ways of tying, or was rubbing involved? Were there five things for him, and five for her, or were there ten things for the two of them together? He supposed he could buy the magazine and find out, but his five plus decades of life had taught him that if he did it would be almost as mortifying as buying tampons for his wife had been that first year of their marriage, and then the ten things would turn out to be unspeakably dull.
Jack shifted the bread over to his left hand with the milk, and quickly scanned the immediate area. Mom and kids were all occupied. The folks in the next aisle were busy arguing about the relative merits of pulp-less and full-pulp orange juice, and the couple on the other side were turned away. The unfortunates in the Express Lane were lost in their fits of flustered agitation, or sunk in a resigned funk. Jack reached briskly out with his right hand, and quickly seizing the front copy, placed it neatly down on the display case of Back-to-School notebooks that lay nearby. Moving with deliberately casual haste, he flipped pages until he discovered the table of contents, and then the correct page. Then he stepped back, appreciating as he rarely did, that reading at his age required either glasses or distance, so he could now stand back somewhat, and just glance over from time to time as if he and the Cosmo had no true connection.
Apparently by being a loyal husband well suited to monogamy, and then spending so much time off-world or in the infirmary, he'd lead an unexpectedly sheltered life, or maybe he'd just been less gifted with imagination than he'd thought (although Sara had never complained!) because – really! – the things they described were a bit shocking, and number eight was particularly intriguing, and bore perusing again, with closer attention. He had just leaned over to do so when –
"General O'Neill!"
Damn.
He glanced around, trying to appear relaxed, which was difficult after a full-body startle with a spreading blush. He reined in his eyebrows and tried for impassive, achieving something closer to disgruntled.
"Lieutenant Rash."
"Rush, sir."
Yes, he supposed she was, but she'd been the one to apply the cortisone cream after that nasty grass stuff on – well, that planet. She'd always be Lieutenant Rash to him.
"You shop here, sir?"
"Sometimes. Even retired Generals, who don't need salutes or 'sir's anymore need the occasional loaf of bread or quart of milk."
"Or a magazine?"
Frozen silence.
She glanced at the floor, at the woman at the head of the line who was folding up her receipt and gathering up her children and her purchases, now spread out into three carts, and back at the tall, straight-backed man who continued to focus impassively at a point some two feet behind her eyes.
"Or not!" she offered with forced cheer. "Your turn, sir!"
Jack turned with alacrity to the waiting checker and put his items on the belt. As he stuffed the coins and receipt back into his pocket, the color on his cheeks still high, in part in reaction to the dreadful thought that instead of Lieutenant Rash it could have been Landry's daughter, or worse – Walter! – he decided to at least impersonate a man and acknowledge the other officer as he left. She was bent over her cart, reaching for her last few items, putting them out using only her right hand. In her left hand she clutched the Cosmo, which she placed on the belt last.
She looked up into Jack's gaze and blushed. Jack's eyebrows rose, and his coloring receded.
"Good afternoon, Lieutenant," he said, and executed as smart an about face as he could with a plastic grocery bag dangling from his left hand. He'd seen that blush. And he'd seen that expression before.
You may be old fashioned, O'Neill, he thought and a little past your sell by date, but you've still got it.
His smile was small, almost undetectable, but it was quite smug.