Title: PG2 912
Author: Jojo
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk
Season: 6
Summary: Anyone ever leave those post-its out with little things to remind yourself about? And then later read them and have no idea what they're about?
A/N: Thanks to Emry and Mel.
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The best thing to do would be to hide it, Jack decided, clutching the illicit object in his hands and walking through his rooms. If he was going to keep it in his house, he couldn't have it on display and he certainly couldn't have it anyplace where someone doing a casual search of his belongings would find it.
It would have to be a really good hiding place, too, considering the people who were likely to go through his house.
Not that he was paranoid, of course. Just cautious. He lived in a world full of suspicious people, dangerous people, who were more than willing to use him as a target. They'd done it before and they would do it again. It was something he dealt with every day and something he took on as part of his job.
The benefits of his job just about outweighed the drawbacks.
Sometimes that balance fluctuated, though.
[Sir]
Hence the reason for his current situation.
He walked into his office and ran an expert eye over the cluttered shelves, his fairly tidy desk and his drawers, two of which were half open and threatening to overflow. Damn. He really needed to organize in here.
On the hiding front, it was too obvious, he decided. He half-turned to leave the room when something bright caught his eye. Leaning forward, he scanned the yellow note he'd left for himself, stuck to the computer screen: Jonas. PG2 912.
What the hell?
God, he hated it when he left himself cryptic messages. They would make sense when he wrote them, of course, because he would be so steeped in the subject of whatever the note was about that of course it would make sense. Days later when he finally returned to his home office, of course, new things would have happened. New reports would have been filed. New experiences, new conversations. The yellow notes that he so helpfully left for himself would make absolutely *no* sense.
Jonas. PG2 912.
PG2 912?
What planet was that? It didn't sound familiar. Certainly didn't sound recent.
When was the last time he'd been in here, anyway?
His eyes lingered on the desk calendar, which lay open on the day he'd last updated it. Ah. Over four weeks ago. Brilliant. He really hoped 'Jonas. PG2 912' had either been sorted out or wasn't very important.
Jack moved on.
His kitchen wasn't an appropriate place to hide something like this. If any one of his friend stumbled upon it while they were visiting, there would be uncomfortable questions and awkward silence. He really didn't want anyone to know about it.
It wasn't that Jack was embarrassed, exactly. Just... Just things were complicated. And to anyone who didn't understand the situation – a situation that was kept completely quiet from both of them - it would look weird. And dangerous. Not that anyone could prove anything, because it wasn't as if he and Carter had regular naked trysts in the briefing room.....
[Nice image there, Jack]
..... but he was aware that keeping a photograph of just her in prominent display in his house was stepping over a line that would make things more concrete than they already were.
So he'd have the photo in his house. But no one but him would know where it was and no one but him could see it.
He bypassed his living room – again, too obvious – and slowly walked up the stairs, the unframed photograph held between his hands. There were only four rooms upstairs – the main bathroom, the spare room, his room and his own bathroom. Automatically, he ignored his room first and walked into the spare room. This was dangerous, too, he decided, since Teal'c sometimes stayed over when the inside of the SGC got too much for him.
Not that Teal'c would ever say that. He'd just appear shortly before they were due some time off and Jack would take him home.
He didn't think Teal'c was likely to search the spare room. There really wasn't much to search, after all, which was the problem. He needed to find a place with plenty of hiding spaces.
Damn.
It would have to be his bedroom.
Slowly, he walked out and towards his own room, avoiding the pile of dirty socks that seemed to have sprung up at the corner of the stairs.
There was something intimate about having a photograph in the bedroom. Up until fairly recently, he'd had a picture of Sara and Charlie on his chest of drawers. A small, unframed photograph, propped up against the box which contained all his cufflinks and old Air Force officer's insignia. That picture had gone back into his locker box and been replaced with one of just Charlie, basketball under his arm, cocky O'Neill grin on his face.
There was no spite behind it. It was just time to stop mourning after that particular part of his life. Sara was gone, had been gone for some time, but he'd been clinging to her memory in a way that didn't make any sense. She'd made it perfectly clear that there was nothing left for them now. They'd tried friendship but that had led to long, uncomfortable silences.
The fact of the matter was, they'd grown apart. They had nothing in common any more. The bonds of marriage were gone, the family they had created had broken up. Charlie had died. His current job and its obvious secrecy had been a non conversation.
All they'd had left to talk about was the past, which had only resulted in more arguments, more discomfort, more reasons for them not to see each other any more.
That had been years ago. It didn't feel like it. He could still feel the kiss she'd given him, just short of his mouth, and the scent of her hair, the perfume she always wore. That sweater that was her favorite, those new jeans that she'd paid for with the money from her new job.
Tiptoeing like a burglar around his own bedroom, he opened cupboard doors and drawers, pushed aside clothes, lifted boots, moved books and papers. He wanted to put it somewhere. Needed to put it somewhere. And there was an illicit delight, now, in knowing that her photograph would be close.
Damn, but he was sappy.
Thank God he was hiding the thing. That way no one else would know.
He wondered if, in ten years time, he would look back on this and be excruciatingly embarrassed? Would he be older [duh], wiser [doubtful] and know that this, this *thing*, with her was just that. A thing.
An inappropriate, situation-enhanced, thing.
[Pleasenopleasenopleaseno]
Would he wake up one morning and realize the truth? Would he acknowledge, finally, out loud, screaming aloud, that he was making this up?
Or would she?
Fifteen years younger, one-hundred percent brighter, a thousand times more likely to succeed than him...
When the hell would she realize?
Or had she already?
Jack slowly lowered himself onto his bed. He pressed his hand on his forehead, massaging the tension desperately. Christ, he didn't like doing this to himself. He rarely steeped himself in this kind of depressing thinking. Hell, most days he didn't think of her at all, for this very reason. Thinking of her lead to doing things that he shouldn't. Inviting her places. Smiling a little too much. Cracking inappropriate jokes just to get a response.
He threw the photograph behind him and lowered his head into his hands.
What was he doing?
***
Okay.
This had been so much more fun when she was a kid.
Sam kicked herself off the wall and fell, awkwardly, onto her side, moaning as her left hip bone collided with the hard floorboards. The blood that had rushed to her head with the help of gravity, throbbed its way back through her body and Sam pressed a cool hand to her forehead.
Shit. What had possessed her?
She stood up, trying to appear every inch of her thirty-four years, and brushed down her jeans unnecessarily. There was no dust in her house. She knew this because she'd cleaned every inch only that morning.
[Twice]
She sighed and wandered over to her computer. No e-mail. What a surprise. Jonas had probably gone off to do something and she was half glad he had. He had discovered the joys of 'emoticons' and had been sending her literally thousands of e-mails with the moving yellow blobs. Eventually, Sam had been forced to switch off her HTML settings.
If she saw another damn waving yellow face she'd scream.
Still, at least her morning had been filled with 'pings' of arriving mail. That was almost as good as the ringing of her phone. Which happened so rarely it was verging on depressing.
All right. It *was* depressing. She had *no* life and it was beginning to bug her.
Maybe she could go for a jog. She'd already been to the gym. A jog would clear her head, refresh her, and if she took her time about it, could stretch over an hour or so, though her usual morning route never took her longer than half an hour.
A walk, then. Maybe she should go for a walk.
Decisively, Sam went to put on some shoes. A walk would be nice. Around the park, maybe.
[By yourself?]
Yes, by herself.
She pulled on her new favorite leather jacket and grabbed her keys. Automatically, she clipped her pager to her waist and dropped her phone into her pocket, just in case she was needed back at the SGC.
Typically, she was just about to lock the door when the phone rang. She cursed under her breath, fought with the lock – it was sticking again – and flew back into the house just as the answering machine kicked in.
"Hi, this is Sam Carter. Leave a message."
Her hand hovered over the phone, ready to pick-up. It could be just another telemarketer and she *really* didn't want to talk to one of those.
Silence.
She frowned and dropped her hand. She hadn't heard anyone hang up. Maybe it was a crank call.
"Er, hello. Damn."
She blinked. Colonel O'Neill?
"Carter, I hate your answer machine, " he sighed.
Fascinated, Sam leaned her hip against the side of her couch and waited. Really, she ought to pick up the phone and put him out of his misery.
"Just wondering... what you were doing... whether you wanted to..."
Sam stood up straight again.
".... hang out,"
Pause.
".....or something."
Was he...?
No. Of course he wasn't. The Colonel wouldn't do that. Why would he do that?
Her hand touched the phone and she mentally ordered it to pick up the phone. It resisted, uncharacteristically unwilling to do what she told it to.
Maybe he was bored. Maybe he couldn't get hold of Teal'c or Jonas.
Maybe he just wanted to see her – was that so weird? God, her heart was pounding *so* fast.
The machine beeped; the Colonel had reached his limit. "Thank you for calling," it told him before cutting him off.
The 'New Message' light blinked at her.
Sam held a hand over her chest and felt her heart pound beneath. What was going on here? So he was acting a little weird. So he'd called her out of the blue. So he'd... asked her to come round.
So he'd never done that before.
Didn't mean anything.
Didn't mean if she went over there he'd throw her over his shoulder [too heavy] and take her to bed [up all those stairs].
Then tug her boots off, peel her jeans down, unbutton her shirt, strip her naked and...
She screamed when the doorbell rang.
"Miss Carter? Your door's open..."
***
Jack was still kicking himself ten minutes later. What had possessed him to do that?
Instinctively, he'd reached for the phone to call her back and apologize for being inappropriate – but then he'd thought, surely that would be emphasizing the inappropriateness? And therefore rendering everything *really* inappropriate?
So, in the end, he'd pulled his hand away abruptly and stuck it in a pocket. Backed away from the phone. Her photograph had glinted at him on the bed and he'd snatched it up, remembering his original intentions. God, he had to hide this. *Hide it hide it hide it.*
So, ten minutes later he was still desperately searching for a place to put it. Suddenly it was incriminating evidence. He mentally and physically ran through various places in the room. Pulling open drawers, shoving aside winter sweaters and looking under the bed. His closet seemed promising – he had a load of old shoe boxes which he kept, convinced they would one day be useful. If he returned a pair of shoes into one of the boxes, he could hide the photo underneath the tissue paper...
The doorbell rang.
"Go away," he muttered, on his knees in front of the shoe boxes. It couldn't be anyone important. Jonas always called ahead, Teal'c just wouldn't turn up at the door and Carter...
Jack sat up straighter and looked towards the hallway.
No, it wouldn't be Carter.
He pulled out a particularly large black box and pulled off the lid. Lots of tissue paper in there, he thought, picking up the photograph and staring at it.
She looked pretty.
"God, O'Neill, *grow up*," he muttered, turning his head away from the photograph in disgust. Damn Jonas and his camera. Just... *damn* him. He mimicked, sarcastically, Jonas's innocent voice, " 'Here, Colonel, this is a nice one of Sam. You know how she feels about photos of herself. You'll probably have to hide it.'"
So here he was.
Hiding it.
"Colonel?"
It *was* her.
Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit*shit*.
Wow.
This was an odd feeling.
He was bizarrely excited and horrified at the same time. And all she'd done was come to his house. He could only imagine what he'd feel like if she...
"Sir?"
"Give me a minute, Carter!" he yelled, hoping the noise would travel down the stairs to the door just as well as it was traveling up.
The freaking photo was still in his hand. Crap.
He shoved it into the shoe box and then put the lid on. Hurriedly, he stacked it with the others and slammed his closet doors closed. The relief was pretty intense, all in all.
The way he was feeling, if he never saw that photo again, it would be too soon.
"Sir?"
"I'm coming, I'm coming," he called, running down the stairs. "Damn, Carter, never took you for the impatient type. What's up?"
She smiled at him oddly. "You called."
Shit! "Oh... yeah. I did."
"You want to 'hang out'?"
"Um... yes. I do."
"With me."
"That so weird?"
From the look on Carter's face – it was. And he could completely agree with her sentiment.
Jack's mind raced desperately as she stared at him, shifting uncomfortably on his porch. "Er, actually, I do have something to ask you, Carter."
If anything, she looked relieved. "Yes, sir?"
"... PG2 912?"
"PG2 912?"
"Yeah!"
"You called me... to ask about PG2 912?"
Very, very minutely, Jack shook his head and she remained quiet for a few moments longer. He held her eyes, willing her to understand.
"PG2 912," Carter breathed, finally. "You know... this might take a while. And since it's such a nice day, why don't we talk about PG2 912 outside. Somewhere. What do you think?"
There was a lot to be said for having a genius as a 2IC, Jack thought happily, reaching for his keys and shoving his feet into a pair of sneakers.