I, Samantha Carter, have three different guys.

Five if you count Jonas Quinn and Pete Shanahan.

But I do not have ties to them that are as utterly profound as the ones I share with Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, and Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill.

And lately things have been cosmically disastrous between the four of us.

I don't know when it started. When that boulder was released and we all began to stumble along this path that seemed to be heading nowhere but downwards.

But it was becoming an annoyingly constant rivet in our lives as a team, and it was not going to be easy to get rid of, despite it's overall recentness in our long term friendship.

I suppose I first noticed it when I found the men brooding earlier in Daniel's office and they offered me the revelation of the fact that things were really changing between us…all of us. And my engagement was not beside itself in the issue or reasons for this transformation that was taking place.

Suddenly, the warning signals that my subconscious had been unsubtly blaring at me for quite a while began to be acknowledged by my conscious mind, and I was bowled over by the conclusions it was drawing.

For so many years we had become used to one way of life: work, work, go off world and end up in trouble, come back home and get out of trouble, go back off world and make sure we don't make the same mistake twice.

We were each other's only friends on downtime, any other person not directly part of the SGC, was always put of by the information we had to keep from them, and the hours, days, and sometimes months, where we could never be found because of a classified mission that would be incomprehensible to a human mind unless you were in the absolute know about the organization and all its quirks.

We gave up trying to form relationships outside of our working environment, and Teal'c had not even attempted this venture previously.

It used to be so simple to just spend downtime with Janet and Cassandra, or have lunch with Sergeant Siler, or relax with the guys at O'Malley's.

We used to not need anymore.

Even Jack, with his boasting of being the only one on the entire base to have something remotely resembling a life outside of the program, spent most of his downtime alone, and would return to work as soon as the emptiness of his solitary cabin made him miss the odd companionship of his team.

But…and I will never be able to explain why…I can tell you the answers to some of the greatest mysterious of infinite galactic regions…yet I will never figure this puzzle out…but, for some reason, I walked into my empty house one evening (or morning, I had worked pretty hard and late, nothing unusual) and I felt a bout of sickness bleed into my heart. And I could not stand the sight of my hollow abode that was nothing more to me now than an establishment where I could pick up my mail and sleep.

That was the first moment since joining the program, where it pained me physically, to know that I never had more.

It was not very long after that.

In an area of my head that I rarely visited, I started to mentally record this same restless behavior in the men I had come to cherish and adore.

After all, we had always done everything together, why should I think that this revelation could possibly be solely mine?

Teal'c was the very next, I decided, to come to the same observation. Which was very much astounding. I would have never thought he would want to pursue etching out a status here on earth. But he was a very perceptive man. He probably decided after assessing my own attitude, that eventually we were each going to feel the same to some extent, and figured he wouldn't waist any time.

So he got an apartment. Albeit a shortly lived in one, but nonetheless…

Then Daniel…Well, he took an expected route, and began searching off world for an "outside" life. What else was to come from a man who had instantly traded in his own planet, which he had lived on for about thirty years, for a world that he had experienced for less than a month?

His wandering mannerisms were slight but detectable. He tensed and hardened a bit in his demeanor, but made friends as easily as he'd ever had. Easier among those of the female persuasion, now that he had edged into more of a military role, and displayed his bookish and shy musings less often.

He will request to be left behind one day, on a world that he wants to make his home.

And I will not stop him, although it saddens me to my very soul, because I can never say no to him.

The General was the last to catch this feverish emotion. Most likely because he got out more than the rest of us, but it did not elude him and he hinted at being stir crazy.

I will never talk to him about it, but we both know that he wouldn't have picked up on SG-1's suddenly unanimous urge to become social creatures if I hadn't gotten myself engaged.

I heard about Kerry Johnson through the grapevine.

I'd met her twice. I'd liked her.

She was intelligent, we were able to discuss in mild detail some equations and anomalies we had encountered before in our time at the SGC.

She was polite, but not overtly. If you managed to get her talking about a subject she felt passionately on, then every pretense of etiquette was abandoned, and she didn't notice or didn't care who she offended.

She was lovely, in appearance and in her light humor. Her hair was a dark, shadowy brown color, cut in short layers that curled at the bottom where it's length ended just before reaching the middle of her slender throat. Her face was void of make-up…she didn't need any with her even complexion and lightly tanned cream skin that showcased her delicate but fiercely poised features.

And her eyes were green. Like trees. Speckled with gray. Like rocks.

With merely a first impression she had managed to gain my good grace.

With merely a first date to a certain General, she had quickly fallen out of it.

But I played the professional, as was a habit of eight years, because I knew for a fact that Jack felt the same way about Pete as I now did about Kerry. That managed itself some solace in my troubled thinking.

So I guess we all found what we needed…or wanted. A fiancé, an apartment, a quest for another home, and a girlfriend…

But we lost things too…things that we have shared for eight years. A love that used to be worth waiting for, a piece of our lives once reserved for each other, conversations outside of work, and ties that were agonizingly tearing apart strand by strand.

Soon it was all going to blow up.

We were all just pretending here, we didn't really need a life outside of work and each other; we didn't truly want our free time to be spent with anyone who wasn't one of the four SG-1 members.

It's going to unravel on us sooner or latter. It's going to explode.

After that happens, we'll either hate the sight of one another, or be even closer than we ever were.

I have three men.

With Jack O'Neill I shared an unrequited love and a barely tamed passion, and now we share awkward tension. With Daniel Jackson I shared intellect and exuberant loyalty, now we share cryptic messages on an answering machine. With Teal'c I shared comfortable reflection and mutual heartache, now we share a glance on the battlefield.

And I wonder if I'll ever regain the connections that once so urgently bound us together.