"Can we do something fun this weekend?" Hannah asked over breakfast.

"Camp's fun," Ben said around a mouthful of cereal.

"I meant all together. With Aunt Sam."

Sam looked up from the report she was reading. "Like what?"

"I don't know," the girl said and went back to her cereal.

Sam had been thinking about things she could do with the kids. She felt kind of bad dumping them into day camp but she had to work. Perhaps they should all go do something together. "Movies?" she asked then took a sip of coffee that was still just a bit too warm.

"Boring," Ben said.

"Okay," Sam said and tried again, "bowling?"

Both kids shrugged.

Then she had a bolt of, she thought, pure genius. "Camping?"

Both kids perked up a little. "Where?"

"Up in the mountains. There are lots of campsites."

"Like real camping with tents and a campfire?" Hannah demanded.

"Yep," Sam said with a smile. "What do you think?"

"Can Jack go?" Ben wanted to know.

Sam faltered. One, she didn't know what the mission roster looked liked for the weekend. For all she knew the colonel would be off world with SG-1. Two, she wasn't sure how excited he'd been to give up his weekend, assuming he had one, to go camping with her and the kids. Three, she wasn't sure it was such a great idea, anyway, considering her friends campaign. Not that she hadn't done her fair share of camping with the colonel over the years without stressing their relationship past the point of propriety. But the kids were looking at her with hopeful eyes. She relented. "I'll ask him," she promised, "but he might not want or be able to go."

"He'll want to," Ben said with authority.

Sam gave Ben a sidelong glance. "Well, if he doesn't we're not going to give him a hard time about it, okay?"

"Okay," the children agreed.

Which is how she found herself standing in his office later that morning asking him if he wanted to go camping with her and the kids that weekend. "I didn't know if you were off-world or-"

"I'm not," he interrupted. "Sounds like fun."

"Really?"

"Why do you sound so surprised?"

"Well, I've never known you to go camping for fun..."

"I go to my cabin for fun, that's just one step up from camping. Besides, Carter, I spend more nights in a tent than most people do. If I didn't enjoy camping I went into the wrong line of work."

"Sir, I've heard you complain about sleeping on the ground."

He gave her a rakish grin, "I'm just not as young as I once was. Doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy a nice, leisurely camping trip. It'd be nice to camp somewhere we don't have to set up a watch rota."

She smiled. "Yes, sir."

"So tell the kids thanks for the invite," he said as if he somehow knew she'd had reservations.

"I will," she gave him a fond smile and she saw how his smile softened into something more personal. It made her belly tingle. She cleared her throat. "We'll head up Friday evening, if that's okay. We should be able to get the tents set up before dark."

"Eh," he scoffed, "we could put those things up blindfolded if we had to."

She laughed. "Yes, sir."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It turned out the colonel had a family sized tent he offered the use of. So they packed up all their gear and loaded it into the bed of his truck next to the tent.

"The weather's supposed to be great," he said to her as he hoisted the cooler in last against the tailgate.

"Good. They've never been camping before. I'd hate to introduce them to it in bad conditions."

"You really want them to like camping, don't you?"

"Well... yeah."

"I didn't realize you enjoyed it so much," he said.

"Well, I haven't camped for fun much in the last seven years, but now that I'm not going, well you know, it's nice to have the opportunity to sit around a campfire."

"In the dead of summer," he teased.

"Even then." They were going to Cheyenne Mountain State Park. It would be plenty cool in the evenings for a fire and they both knew that.

"Are we ready?" Ben called, bounding out of the house.

"Just waiting on you two," the colonel confirmed.

"I can't wait to go camping!" the little boy exclaimed.

"Are there going to be bathrooms?" Hannah asked, clearly not excited about the prospect of peeing in the woods.

"About a hundred and fifty feet from the campsite," the colonel confirmed. He then looked at Ben and said conspiratorially, "Girls," and shook his head.

"Aunt Sam says it's not really camping if you don't have to dig a latrine," Hannah said.

"Well, we'll let Aunt Sam dig a latrine if that's what lights her fire," the colonel said to the girl, "but the rest of us will use the facilities like civilized human beings." He tossed a grin at Sam.

She rolled her eyes at him before she caught herself. One did not simply roll their eyes at their commanding officer. And then it hit her, not for the first time, the memory that he was no longer her commanding officer. He might be a superior officer but really they were colleagues. Friends. She could roll her eyes at him if she wanted to – outside the mountain. When she returned her eyes to his, his were sparkling with mirth. Apparently he didn't mind the insubordinate side of her.

They all climbed into the truck, the kids in the backseat, and set off for the park. It wasn't a long drive, twenty minutes from her door to the parking area. She thought about what it would be like to take them on a trip they really had to travel for and hoped they'd enjoy camping enough that she could do that with them.

At the campground, the colonel pulled his truck into one of the last available parking spaces. He showed the kids where the bathrooms were and Sam suddenly realized he'd been there before. She wondered, had he brought Charlie camping at the same place? He'd offered to make the reservations and she'd just assumed he was being nice, but perhaps he was using prior knowledge. She gave him a look that he studiously avoided.

Next, Sam and the colonel slung packs with their gear onto their backs and gave the kids' backpacks to them. The kids each carried two collapsible canvas chairs. The adults carried the cooler between them. It didn't take them long to hike into the campsite, they could have made two trips but half the fun was being laden down with gear.

"Here we are," the colonel said when they arrived, "site forty-seven."

Sam looked around at the campsite. There was a picnic table, a fire pit, and a large tent pad that the colonel's family sized tent would fit on nicely.

"Okay," Hannah said, "this is cool."

"It's beautiful out here," Sam commented.

"Look!" Ben pointed at the fire pit. "Can we build a fire?"

"When it starts to get dark," the colonel said and smiled indulgently. "We need to get the tent up first."

Sam and the colonel worked well together and could have raised the tent in minutes just the two of them, but the camping was for the kids and they wanted to help. That turned into allowing them to do most of the work while Sam and the colonel directed. It took some doing, but finally, with a little help from the colonel towards the end, the tent was raised and the kids were walking around inside it oohing and aahing over the size and the screen windows.

"It's a great tent, sir," Sam said, because it was. It could easily sleep six so she knew they'd all be comfortable in it.

"I've had it for years," he said and she knew, then, that he'd bought it when he had a family. He had brought Charlie out here camping. Maybe, even, to the very same campsite they were currently using.

"When were you last camping?" she asked him. "You know, here on earth," she said quietly to avoid the little ears that were still inspecting the tent.

"I brought the family, the summer before Charlie..."

"Yeah," she said quickly when he began to falter.

"Sara hated it," he said with a wistful smile. "But Charlie loved it so much she agreed to come along sometimes."

"It's not for everyone," Sam said pragmatically.

"No," he said with a wry laugh. "She always said roughing it was a motel without cable."

Sam laughed. It brought the kids out of the tent and into the open underneath the shade of the tall trees where Sam and the colonel were standing. "So what's next?" Ben wanted to know.

The colonel looked at his watch. "Well, it's going to be getting dark in about an hour and a half. Let's round up some stuff for a campfire and then we can get dinner on."

He directed the kids on finding kindling and then larger pieces to keep the fire going. Sam, once she realized that he was really in his element out in the Colorado woods with kids, hung back and let him have his fun. While they looked for firewood and then had a lesson in building a good fire, she went through the cooler pulling out the foil packets that held their dinners that could be cooked over the campfire: incredibly healthy and appealing loaded french fries. Sam just shrugged as she pulled the food out of the cooler, it was part of the fun of camping. And it was easy. She'd gotten a book full of camping recipes and it seemed like something she could handle. Maybe next time she'd be up to something more... culinary.

She set up the canvas chairs around the fire while the colonel was still showing the kids the ins and outs of fire building. She pulled out bottles of water for each of them and put them in the cup holders in the arms of each chair and, before she knew it, they were all sitting down around the campfire waiting for it to die down enough to put the food on.

"This is fun," Ben said.

"Yeah?" Sam asked a little unsure, still hoping the kids would love one of her favorite activities. She sorely missed traveling off world with SG-1 and it had only been six weeks since she'd been on a mission. But the evenings spent around a fire were a fond memory. And even if Daniel and Teal'c weren't around, though she'd love it if they were a part of the evening and she thought about inviting them next time even if it was just for dinner and around the fire, it was still nice sitting shoulder to shoulder with the colonel.

"Definitely," Hannah said, pulling Sam from her reverie.

"Of course it's fun, Carter. We're fun people."

She smiled at the colonel. He smiled right back and her stomach did a funny little flop. Oh geez. Friends, she reminded herself. But it was tough to remember that she just wanted a friend rather than something complicated when he was sitting right there, in his element. Looking so good in his jeans and a grey t-shirt, how had she not noticed how good he looked before?

She thought about what it would be like to touch him, even as innocently as they'd touched in California. He licked his lips and suddenly the flop her belly had done was just the tip of the iceberg of the things that were happening in her body. So much for friends, she thought. One simply didn't feel this way about friends.

She broke the long gaze they'd held and looked at the fire and judged it to be just right to cook their dinner. Or, really, she judged that she'd better get to cooking dinner before she did something stupid.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Jack leaned back in his chair and balled up the foil that had held his dinner. He was surprised, to say the least, that Sam was letting the kids get away with eating such junk for dinner but he figured they all got a pass since they were camping.

He looked around at the kids still eating and Sam picking at her french fries – and looking for all the world like she just wanted a salad – and wondered if he'd done the right thing bringing them to the same campsite he'd visited with his son. There were a lot of good memories in this place for him and he wanted to make more good memories knowing that it would be easy to be melancholy about this place.

It already felt like an emotionally charged evening with the looks he'd been exchanging with Sam. She looked like a woman who wanted something. Perhaps something like him. He was afraid to get his hopes up – after all it had been a month since she'd been home with the kids and she'd pretty well put the brakes on anything that seemed to be happening between them while they were in California – but the looks she was tossing his way were, not to put too fine a point on it, heated.

They were sitting close together. Close enough that he could reach out and brush the back of her hand with his fingers without moving from his reclined position. He'd purposely moved his chair closer to hers while her back was turned both to keep his face out of the smoke the way the wind was blowing as well as just to be closer to her. He figured, once the kids went to bed, they'd sit out by the fire for a while, talking. They didn't get much chance to just talk anymore, the two of them. And maybe then he'd touch her.

For the moment, though, he needed a distraction. He'd personally packed two large bags of marshmallows – as well as a box of graham crackers and some chocolate bars, but those could wait until tomorrow – one of which was earmarked for roasted marshmallows on their first night around a campfire. He went to retrieve one of the bags of marshmallows and produced four wire coat hangers from his pack.

"Okay, kids, time for dessert."

Sam groaned and put a hand on her belly. "No more junk."

Jack grinned at her, "Just a little more junk. We're camping!"

"What is it?" Hannah wanted to know.

Jack held the bag of marshmallows aloft.

"Roasted marshmallows!" both kids exclaimed with excitement.

Jack sat down in his chair and handed the bag of marshmallows to Sam. He began to unfurl the coat hangers until they were long, straight wires.

"I thought we were supposed to use sticks," Sam said with a grin.

"It's all fun and games until you end up taking a bite of tree, Carter."

"I'd rather use the coat hanger," Hannah said.

"Me too," Jack agreed. He passed the coat hangers around as he completed his work and finally they were all roasting marshmallows. He and the kids set theirs on fire. Sam, predictably, held hers just far enough away to achieve an even, golden brown. "Perfectionist," he teased her quietly as she delicately ate her marshmallow off the end of her coat hanger.

She gave him a brilliant smile.

They worked their way through more than half the bag of marshmallows before the kids started yawning.

"Time for bed already?" Jack asked them.

"They had a big day at camp," Sam said. "And it is starting to get late."

Jack checked his watch. It was coming on twenty-two hundred. "Then let's get those sleeping bags rolled out."

It took a while but soon the kids had been to the bathroom, changed into their PJs and were snuggled down in their sleeping bags between the empty sleeping bags Sam and Jack would occupy later on.

Jack waved Sam back into her chair and then went to the cooler and grabbed a couple of beers out of the bottom. He twisted the cap off both and handed one to her as he sat down next to her. It felt like their chairs were even closer than before as his elbow brushed against hers.

"Thanks," she said.

"So," he drawled, "tonight was fun."

"They seem to be enjoying themselves," Sam said and looked back at the tent when they heard a giggle.

"Tomorrow will be good."

"I think so, too. You're sure the archery field is open?"

"Seven days a week," he confirmed.

"Good." She slouched down in her chair a bit and tilted her head back to look at the sky. Through the trees they could make out the moon. "I've really missed this."

"Yeah?"

"I miss you guys."

"It's not the same without you," he told her. And it wasn't. He really missed having her on the team but he didn't know how to tell her that without blurting out everything else he was feeling, too. Her hair gleamed in the moonlight and it made him want to reach out and touch it. He checked the impulse by taking another pull off his beer.

"I don't regret giving it up, exactly."

"No."

"But I do miss it," she said with a sigh.

He brushed the back of her hand with the back of his, "I know."

She looked down at their hands. So did he.

"I miss you," he chanced. He wanted to cringe with the neediness of the statement but he held true, didn't flinch and just waited for her answer. He brushed her knuckles with his once more, lightly as if it could have been an accident, except they both knew it wasn't.

She turned her hand just a little, an invitation he wasn't going to turn down. He slipped his hand into hers and she tightened her fingers around his. It felt utterly forbidden and, despite being something he'd been doing since he was a kid, utterly titillating as well.

It felt like California.

"I didn't want any more complications, you know?" she finally said quietly. She might have phrased it as a question but he could tell she wasn't looking for an answer. "I didn't want to make things more difficult on the kids by splitting my attentions."

And suddenly he understood why she'd pulled back. "And I wanted to leave things up to you. I didn't want to push you."

"You've never pushed me," she said, tilting her head back up to the sky. "This," she squeezed his hand, "is going to be complicated."

"It doesn't have to be."

"How can it not be? We've got so much to work out and if you haven't noticed, I kind of have a lot on my plate right now. How do we..."

He waited for her to continue, but instead she just stroked her thumb along his hand. "How do we what?"

She shook her head. Then turned to look at him. "Just so you know, I never really stopped."

He thought back over the last couple of years and the way they'd built the walls between them. "Neither did I," he said honestly.

She smiled at him then and it was the most natural thing in the world to lean over and kiss her. It wasn't the kiss he wanted, the angle was all wrong for that, but it was soft and sweet and tasted of things to come.