"I've been thinking about something," Jack said as he rinsed off and dried the last plate from dinner.
Sam looked up from the game of solitaire she had going on the table. "What's that?"
Jack turned around and walked towards her, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants. "I guess we've pretty much decided we're going to be here awhile, right?"
Sam set the cards down and straightened, putting her hands in her lap. "I suppose we have."
"Well, while we're here we should probably be doing something, right? Recording scientific data... stuff like that."
Sam's eyebrows arched, and she smiled a yeah-that'd-be-nice-but smile. Jack raised his hand and motioned for her to come to the other side of the cabin with him. He heard her chair scrape on the wood as he walked away, going to his bed to pull a box out from underneath. The top was draped with a piece of fabric, and he pulled it aside as she reached him.
"It won't be the most accurate thing in the world, but I did my best to calibrate it," Jack said as he lifted the telescope from the box, setting it down on the bed. He heard Sam's soft gasp, but didn't look at her. Not yet. "I figure you might be able to..." he motioned up towards the ceiling. "Get a better look at the Ornorean field and at least know why we're stuck. And you know that metal the washtub is made of? How light it is? Kinda like aluminum, but a hell of a lot stronger. I talked to Aaroon about it, and he says it's abundant in the hills. Could be useful, right?"
He looked at her then, and a wave of warmth hit him at the genuine happiness that brightened her face. Jack smiled, and turned back to the box.
"I made a couple of these. Again, not positive on the magnification, but I'm guessing this one." He set a much smaller version of the telescope on the bed, holding the other in his hand. "Is somewhere around fifteen times magnification. And this one around thirty. I think I can talk to Eman Tennson – the guy who made them – and see if he can make them to order. He makes them now for the kids. As toys."
Sam picked up the lower magnification lens and held it to her eye. "This is amazing..." she said softly.
Jack paused to watch her, enjoying the excitement in her eyes. Almost like when she made a new discovery, or finally figured out one of her doohickeys.
"Oh! And I tried to get pre-made journals, but they didn't have any. So, I made these."
He took the final contents from the box. Two leather bound journals of blank parchment, each with a charcoal pencil attached by a leather thong. Sam took them from his hand, running her hand over the soft leather.
"You made these? All of these?"
"Yeah, well, I just figured you -- we -- should be documenting some of this stuff. That way, when we get back to Earth--"
He stopped mid-sentence when Sam wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. The journals fell to the bed with a soft thump as her fingers curled into his hair. Jack returned the embrace, pressing his face into the curve of her neck. Hell, he was never one to turn down a chance to hug Samantha Carter.
"Thank you... Jack," she said against his ear.
He tightened the hold, closing his eyes when she said his name. Since the 'fight' she hadn't 'called' him anything. Not sir. Not General. Not even Jackass. Nothing.
She pulled back, her hands sliding down his shoulders to his arms, but he didn't release her. Not yet. "Hey, it was nothing."
Sam smiled. "It wasn't 'nothing', Jack. How long have you been working on this?"
He shrugged, but still didn't take his hands from her waist. "A week. Almost two. Maybe... well, three."
She touched his cheek, resting her palm against his skin, and Jack didn't think twice about turning into the touch. Her thumb brushed his lips, and he remembered the last time they had been this close. He had touched her the same way. Jack looked down at her, meeting her gaze.
What he saw there flashed through his blood like wildfire. Her eyes shifted to look at his mouth, and Jack barely suppressed his groan as she leaned up on her toes and pressed her lips to his. For several beats of his heart, they just held their lips together, neither moving. Then Sam parted her lips, and Jack's world exploded.
He slid one hand up her back to hold her closer, touching her face with the other as he slanted his open mouth over hers. Their tongues connected, completing the electrical circuit that shot through him, sending every sense into overdrive.
Jack moved his hands over her body, enjoying every curve that he had known by sight but never by touch. She leaned into him, her arms coming around to press into his back. When her hands slipped beneath the hem of his shirt, and her delicate yet strong hands made contact with his skin, Jack curled his fingers into her clothes but forced himself to pull back.
Sam looked up at him, her eyes heavy and dark with what they both were feeling. Jack knew that much. Her hands smoothed over his skin, playing havoc with his ability to think. And he needed to think.
"What, Jack?"
He brought up one hand to touch her face, and she closed her eyes as she kissed his palm. Jack wanted to groan with the erotic effect.
"Sam..." he managed to say. She looked up at him again. "I'm not Pete."
She withdrew, he could see it happening. And not just from his arms. Sam stepped back until her calves bumped the edge of the bed. "What?"
Jack held on to the contact as long as he could, until she was out of reach, but left his arm extended. "That didn't come out right."
"How did you mean it to come out?" Her voice seemed astonishingly small, and the cabin suddenly large enough to swallow it whole.
He brought his hand up to rest on the back of his neck and bent his head forward, trying to push through the haze of desire to make her understand. This couldn't be just...
"I can't be his stand in. A substitute," he finally said.
She stared at him with wide eyes. "How could you even think--?"
"How? Because, Sam, last time I checked you were engaged. To him." He paused and took a cautious step towards her. "Not me."
She looked away and crossed her arms over her body, visibly swallowing before she spoke again. "It's been six months. Jack..."
"And what does that mean, Sam? It's gonna be awhile before we get home so we might as well make the best of it?"
She visibly flinched, her mouth falling open. Sam swallowed hard before she spoke. "No, Jack." Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
Jack sank down hard on the edge of his bed, holding his head in his hands. "For cryin' out loud," he mumbled under his breath. Once again, O'Neill, things are completely FUBAR. After moments of the silence stretching out between them, her body drawn so tight he could feel the tension in the air, Jack stood.
Sam watched him with tear-filled eyes, and he touched her arm. "I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't--" He shook his head and let his hand drop from her arm, then walked to the door.
Sam's entire body jerked when the door closed, and she pressed her eyes shut against the silence in the cabin that suddenly seemed so vast and deafening. Her eyes burned and she blinked against the tears. She couldn't take a deep breath, and her heart pounded in her chest like a caged bird.
She sank down onto the edge of her bed. Processing the last few minutes was like trying to figure out a movie when someone had cut out ever other word.
Jack O'Neill had never been the most eloquent person she had ever known, but in the end she usually could figure him out. If she paid attention and didn't jump to any conclusions. Which was the opposite of what she had just done.
She wiped her cheeks with her fingers, looking across the space to the array of things he had made for her. Telescopes, rough microscopes, and journals to write it all down. Sam smiled, despite the weight in her chest, and picked up one of the journals. The tanned leather was smooth and soft, and he had taken great care to fashion them into sturdy covers for the parchment inside. The paper crinkled under her fingers as she turned each page.
Sam curled her lower lip through her teeth and realized she could still taste his kiss. The slight stubble on his cheeks had abraded her skin, leaving it tingling and alive. She ran her fingertips over her lips and closed her eyes.
He had to know. To understand...
She stood from the bed and grabbed her wrap, barely getting it around her shoulders before stepping into the evening air. The slight dusting of snow they had received two days before was already gone, but the ground was hard beneath her feet and the wind held a sharp nip. The night sky was lit up, as usual, with the silver filaments of the Ornorean. Sam wondered if she could ever look at a simple night sky again.
She looked around the yard, and spotted his form standing between the barn where they kept their milk cow and the small bunch of chickens they had accumulated. His face was tipped to the sky and his hands were in his pockets.
Sam walked slowly towards him, taking deep breaths to steel her nerves and hopefully give her the right words to say. She was ten feet away before he spoke.
"Carter..."
She stopped, wrapping her arms around her body as much against the quivering butterflies in her stomach to the cold. This was it. Live or Die. Do or Don't. She knew it, and Jack probably did, too.
"It's cold. You should go inside." His voice was heavy, so low she could barely hear it.
"I came to tell you something."
He turned his head slightly, his back still to her. She felt his gaze on her, even in the dark.
"You were wrong, Jack."
He took a breath. "About what?"
"You aren't the substitute for Pete. He was the substitute for you."
Jack turned on his heels, the gritty earth crunching beneath his feet. But he didn't move any closer.
"When I was on the Prometheus, I had hallucinations. Visions. And one was my father. He told me that I deserved to be happy. To love someone, and to be loved just as completely in return. He told me to find that love."
She heard him expel his breath, and his head tipped forward, the dark outline being her only guide to what he did. Before he could speak, she kept going.
"I misunderstood what he -- what my subconscious-- was trying to tell me. I thought he meant I had to go find love. To seek out something I didn't have."
"That's not what he meant?"
Sam shook her head. Her throat was thick with the emotions she couldn't let out. Not yet. "No. I didn't have to find love. I just had to accept it. So, Pete wasn't the love to make me happy. If he was, it wouldn't have taken me over two weeks to finally say yes. He was what I was willing to take when I couldn't have who I wanted."
"Like you said, Sam. It's been six months. Maybe this is just time and distance."
"No, Jack. It's not. Do you know how I know?" He didn't say anything, and she swallowed against the desert in her throat. "I know because, up until you said his name in the house, I hadn't even thought of Pete Shanahan. Not right after we realized we were stuck. Not in the months since. And especially not when you were kissing me."
Silence stretched between them, and Sam could barely breathe. Had she gone too far? Had she said too much? Finally, she drew in a shaky breath and turned back to the house. Before she took two steps, Jack closed the space between them and gripped her elbow, turning her back. She looked up at him through a haze of tears she didn't have the will to hide anymore.
"Sam, I -- We're not going to be here forever."
She tried to smile, but the weight on her chest was too much. "Here. Earth. It doesn't matter anymore, Jack. I can't go back to the way it was. It's too late. I want this -- I want you -- too much to ever go back."
He stepped closer, bringing his face into the light cast by the front window. His eyes were almost black in the dim light, and his lips were set and straight. Sam held her breath as he drew towards him, not saying a word. His large hands, with fingers so long he should have been an artist, held her face as he tipped her chin up and their eyes met. Everything disappeared – the tears, the weight, the worry – as he leaned in and kissed her. Slow and deep and complete.
Her shawl slipped from her shoulders as she wrapped her arms around him, falling willingly into the drowning pleasure created by his touch. A shiver moved through her, and Jack pulled back from the kiss, a small, slow smile bowing his lips. Holding her gaze, he slipped one hand down her arm to link their fingers together and bent over to retrieve the wrap. Sam smiled as he straightened, and together – hand in hand – they walked back into their cabin.