Before stepping through the Stargate, Jack turned to look at his team. They were assembled at the bottom of the ramp, fully prepared to make good on their threat to come after him if he wasn't back in five minutes. They had Hammond's approval, as a matter of fact.

"Keep the lights on," he said. "I'll be back."

Sam smiled at him, but the intense look in her eyes didn't fade.

Jack took Charlie's hand and stepped through the Gate. A moment later it snapped closed.

The team watched the clock closely and the minutes crawled. Teal'c seemed to be the only one capable of standing still and it made Sam wonder how much time the Jaffa had spent simply standing, waiting on the pleasure of his 'god'.

At four minutes and forty-five seconds, Sam was ready to call for the Gate to be dialed when it started spinning. The MPs around them raised their weapons without any instructions to do so. When Jack stepped through, Sam was the one who walked up to meet him.

They stopped barely a foot apart and circled so that they were on even footing, so he wasn't towering over her. Eyes met – Sam's questioning, Jack's full of reassurance. Then love recognized love and all of her questions were answered. Sam didn't need any more proof than that.

She wanted to hug him but Hammond's voice calling for a debriefing stopped them.

"I want you all up here in the next two minutes. We've got a PR nightmare out there and I need every detail of what happened out there and I need it an hour ago."

"Yes, sir," Jack called, without looking away from Sam. Then to her he said, "Guess we can't go home quite yet."

"No," she agreed, "But we will. That's a promise."

His smile was fleeting – there and gone and probably she was the only one who saw it at all.

They followed Teal'c and Daniel to the Briefing Room, close enough to hold hands with each other but they didn't.

(0)

The debriefing was more grueling than usual. Hammond wasn't kidding when he said he wanted every detail. No one envied him having to figure out what to tell the public, much less what to tell Sara O'Neill and her father. They were finally dismissed almost two hours later. Daniel and Teal'c had gone to their separate quarters, after each casting one more concerned look at Jack and a follow-up glance at Sam for confirmation that he was okay. They had reluctantly left them alone only after getting a single nod from her.

The ride topside and the walk out to the truck in the parking lot were both quiet. It wasn't until they reached the truck that Sam spoke.

"You want me to drive?"

"No, I got this," he said.

She gazed at him over the hood of the truck from the passenger side and somehow they came to an understanding without saying anything more. Jack loved to drive almost as much as he loved to fly. He loved the control. He loved having at least one thing he could boss around that didn't tell him no or argue with him.

She got in the passenger side door but slid across the seat to sit in the middle, closer to him. In response she got that fleeting smile again just before he started the engine.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"Starving, actually," he admitted.

That made her happy. It was a good sign. Jack didn't eat when he was bothered by something.

"Well, I'm too tired to cook when we get home. How about you?"

"You want to hit the A&W on the way home?"

She nodded. "I could go for a burger."

"Okay then," Jack said.

(0)

The A & W was thankfully almost deserted. They ordered food and took it to a horseshoe-shaped booth in a quiet corner. Sam slipped in first but not all the way, just far enough to be able to look at Jack if he decided to talk. But close enough to touch.

They ate in silence at first and from the way Jack was wolfing down his bacon double cheeseburger she knew he was starting to recover. Sam reached for her Diet Coke as Jack was reaching for his coffee and somehow she managed to brush her hand across the back of his, lingering for a moment. Jack's hands were ridiculously big, long-fingered, callused in all the right ways. The look she gave him over the top of her cup was also long and lingering.

Jack cleared his throat, swallowed coffee and then said, "So are we okay?"

"Okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, um…what the entity said about Sara…."

Sam's eyebrows lifted. "You think I'm shocked to find out that time in your life is still painful for you? Jack."

The way she said his name was always a turn-on for him. It had been since the first time she'd said it, and that hadn't changed; not even now, when it sounded as much like chiding as it did like love.

She put her hand over his for a moment. It was a light touch, with her thumb resting on his wrist.

"No," Jack answered. "I know you get that. I just don't want you to think that I need them back to be happy. The entity seemed to be saying-"

"The entity had your emotional pain confused with your physical pain," Sam interrupted. "I got that. I'm kind of glad that it couldn't find anything that hurt you connected to me, to be honest."

"I love you," Jack said.

Sam concentrated on her burger for a long time, biting, chewing, swallowing, chasing it down with soda. Then she finally said, "I know that. I do, really." But she sounded uncertain nevertheless.

Jack nudged her foot with his under the table. "What?" he urged.

She put down her sandwich and leaned towards him. "You and Sara," she began, then paused, inhaled and continued, "you didn't break up. You didn't fall apart gradually and agree to separate. You were together and then got ripped apart. I can't help but wonder if things were different…if she hadn't met Drew…."

"But she did," Jack said quickly. "Sam, look. There are a thousand things that could have, might have happened. We could go all the way back to me just locking up the damned gun. Is there some point to hashing over all of them?"

She looked at him and finally shook her head. Jack didn't like dealing in 'what if' and he was right.

But, there was one more thing…

"Did you ever notice that Sara and I look kind of alike? I mean, I could be her sister."

Jack blinked. "What?"

"Come on, Jack," she said. "You have to have noticed."

His jaw worked, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he managed to say, "Tall, blonde, blue eyes. Honey, that's just my type. It's why she caught my eye. It's why you caught my eye. I'm just lucky that you're also brilliant and incredible and still, for some reason, want to be married to me. You're a lot more patient with me than Sara ever was. We're more involved in each other's lives and I used to worry that maybe it was too much but so far it's working. You're great with Charlie. I was resigned to spending the rest of my life alone and then you came along and, I mean, really I had no idea I could fall in love like that again-"

Jack broke off, possibly shocked by how much he had just willingly shared.

Sam smiled at him, taking pity. There was a year's worth of exhaustion in his eyes at the moment, along with a day's worth of bristle on his jaw and shadows like bruises under his eyes. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to ease his pain. She didn't want to talk anymore. She didn't want to keep digging at old wounds and things that were better left to lie where they were.

She touched his hand again, running fingernails along the tendon and bone. At the same time she rubbed her leg up and down against his. It wasn't hard to do that. Jack's legs always took up miles of room and she'd been accidentally bumping against him since they'd sat down.

"You're getting better at this 'talking' thing," she told him.

"Yeah?" he asked, looking hopeful, almost boyishly innocent.

"Yeah," she gave him a bit of a seductive smile. "It's sexy, like everything else about you."

Some of the exhaustion lifted as he looked back at her. A flame sparked in the back of his brown eyes.

"Finish your burger," Sam said, dropping her hand to his leg and smoothing it up over his jeans, fingers gliding along his inseam. "You're going to need the energy."

(0)