Samantha Carter would do things for chocolate that Jack tries not to think about. Standing on her porch in the pouring rain with a French Silk pie in his hands is a good time to remind himself of that policy. It takes him a good three minutes to work up the courage to ring her doorbell and in that time he realizes: one, that she hasn't said a solitary word to him that wasn't work related since he'd stolen the Tollan technology; two, that it's nearing too damn late to be knocking on a woman's door unless your only intention is to take her to bed; and three, that if he looks through the frosted glass of her front door he can see her standing at the end of the long hall between her kitchen and the door, staring at him standing in the dim light on her porch with a pie plate in his hand.
She turns and wanders off and he figures he's busted enough and he has chocolate, so he lets himself into her home. He's surprised by the classical music that plays – something electric and…violin…but traditional, and it seems strange and wrong and sets his skin prickling but it's also familiar and comfortable in a way that settles his stomach.
He finds her in the kitchen, leaning against her counter. She's in pajamas but he really can't get past the big, fluffy socks on her feet to fully appreciate the way her breasts really are just perfectly fucking round even without a bra, and okay…so maybe he can appreciate both.
"I brought pie," he says and thrusts it in her direction like he's a twelve year old boy giving flowers to a girl for the first time.
"I see that," she says and feigns disinterest as she peers at the whipped cream topping.
"It's French Silk," he cajoles.
She shrugs but grabs a spoon out of the cutlery drawer on her way past him into the living room.
They sit on the floor, he holds the pie between them balanced on one hand and she digs her spoon right into the center. The sound she makes in the back of her throat when the chocolate hits her tongue is going to fuel the daydreams he shouldn't be having for far longer than he's even willing to admit to himself. It's good chocolate. He should know. He made the pie.
She takes another bite, licks the chocolate out of the bowl of the spoon, then hands him the utensil. He takes it, he uses it; he feels unworthy as his tongue curls around the metal that was just in her mouth.
She swipes at the whipped cream with a finger when he retains the spoon for another bite and he tries not to focus on the way that finger disappears between her lips. Going rogue, even undercover, messes with his balance, his good sense and his libido and he knows from past experience it can take weeks to find his equilibrium. He wishes a little for the old days when he had a wife or the wherewithal to hire a professional because it seemed a lot easier to fuck his way to equipoise than it seems to watch Samantha Carter eat chocolate and pretend he wouldn't throw both their careers away if she even started to say she wanted him just a little bit the way he wants her. He knows part of the way he wants her is wrapped up in the flood of testosterone but he knows most of it isn't and it's that most of part that's scaring the ever loving shit out of him.
These meals they share started out as her looking for something and quickly became doorways into the parts of himself that he wishes he had more control over. She sticks her finger into the chocolate custard and he wonders if he really just wants to fuck her because the blue of her eyes make him remember a conversation over a fancy candlelit dinner that ended a year later in "I do."
But he doesn't love Samantha Carter. If he did, he reasons, he wouldn't have hurt her the way he hurt her and they wouldn't be sitting on her living room floor eating French Silk pie while she still doesn't talk to him. No, it's gotta be the testosterone, the loneliness, the fact that he hasn't been laid since Laira and if he's being honest, Edoran women were a hell of a lot less participatory than he'd grown to appreciate in the almost thirty years he's been having sex.
She shifts and pulls one of her knees up in front of her, wraps her arms around a leg covered in stretchy grey material and cocks her head to the side. "Not that the pie isn't good, but…what are you doing here?"
He stalls for time and takes another bite of the pie. She liberates the spoon from his hands and he's both sad and a little grateful to not have to watch her eat more of it with her fingers.
"I figure I owe you an apology, Carter."
"So it's French Silk apology pie?"
"It's you deserve to kick my ass but please don't French Silk pie."
She laughs a little. "You apologized," she says with a shrug, "and you were undercover."
"Then why are you not talking to me?"
She sobers and concentrates on the pie. They've eaten a little hole out of the center of it and he tries not to think of the pie as a metaphor and mostly fails. "Have you ever heard the saying that there's a lot of truth in a joke? Maybe there's truth in the things we say when we've got something to hide behind, too."
"Carter," he starts, but she cuts him off.
"You said you haven't been yourself since you met me." She takes a bite and passes him the spoon. "So, I guess I want to know, which part isn't you? Any of it? Or just the stuff that's just between us?"
He wonders if she's talking about just their professional interactions or if it's whatever these little dinners have become she's worried about. Either way he's lied to her, before the mission, during it, or after – there's no winning and he's not sure which loss is the best.
They work together. They do it well. It's important that she trust him. Their feelings, whatever they may actually be, are ether and they're disallowed. It would be easy to preserve the part of all of this that they're allowed to have, to maintain the professional relationship that he absolutely can't jeopardize. He can walk this whole thing back out of the danger zone she doesn't even know they've entered.
He can sacrifice whatever it is they're building here for the greater good.
He can.
"You and me," he confirms. And he's trying to figure out how to tell her that really, it's all about the two of them anyway because they're the ones who have a whole quire of paper that dictates how they're supposed to relate to one another and he doesn't actually follow a single damn rule.
The color drains from her face. She stands up and backs away from him. "So, you came here to apologize," she reminds him flatly.
He puts the pie on her coffee table. "I did. I am."
She crosses her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow at him and he wonders idly if girls learn that look for credit because Sara used to give him the same one and it usually preceded his spending the night on the couch.
"Okay," she says dully, "you apologized."
He's been in the military long enough to know when he's been dismissed. She follows him to the front door, presumably so she can lock it behind him. He tries not to notice how her eyes shine wetly when he turns to her before he goes. He stops with the threshold between them, "It's not a bad thing, Sam. You gave me someone to be nice to."
He watches as her shoulders unburden just a little. "Thank you, sir."
"I know this isn't okay yet," he says and hopes she realizes that he means the part of the sentence he can't speak, but it will be; I'll make it be.
"Well, I've got a whole weekend and French Silk pie to work it out," she say and spares him a half grin.
When she closes the door, she turns off the light in the hall and he loses sight of her right away. Usually he's wondering if she got what she came for and now he understands when she says she's not sure. He came for one thing, discovered something else, and is leaving just grateful that he'll have an opportunity to keep trying fit her. In his truck his grocery list is on a post-it note stuck to the dash. He scribbles out the question mark he'd penned after the word Wine and hopes for the best.