She opened her eyes and couldn't quite suppress a moan of pain. Her arms and face were stinging with pain, like a thousand paper-cuts concentrated on a agonizingly small area.

"Hey."

She blinked and a pinkish blur at the foot of her bed in the infirmary resolved itself into Jack O'Neill, an intense look in his dark eyes. She wondered how long he had been sitting there, watching her dream.

"Hey," she replied and he smiled.

"You look terrible," he informed her, mirroring her expression.

She chuckled softly. "I feel it."

He stood up and moved to her side. Her breath caught in her throat despite herself as he reached a hand out towards her, touching her hair gently, stroking it away from her face. "Daniel and Teal'c are going to be okay. Daniel has a couple of fractured ribs, a dislocated elbow and a broken wrist, Teal'c got a broken leg and a concussion."

Carter winced. "Ouch. I think I got off fairly lightly."

He made no answer, electing to smile at her instead. He didn't move his hand, his thumb tracing the lines on her forehead with skin-tingling gentleness. "You looked pretty fantastic last night," he murmured after a few moments.

She hadn't smiled this much in days! "You weren't looking so bad yourself."

There was another pause. "Carter...?"

"Mmm?"

Her breath hitched for a second time as he swooped downwards to plant the lightest of kisses on her forehead. She was still blinking in shock when he straightened, the ghost of a long-forgotten cheeky grin haunting his face. "I'm glad you're okay."

She wondered if his heart was thumping as hard as his, if her face had taken on the slight red flush his had adapted. She wanted to say something witty, something clever that could acknowledge how wonderful she found those tiny touches of his lips, illicit and longed for for time immemorial, and yet still allow her to sound casual, cool and unaffected, unflustered by this startling development.

She decided no sentence, no paragraph even could achieve that and settled instead for: "Me too!" She sounded more breathless than she would have liked and his grin became more than a mere shade.

"I better..." He left the sentence unfinished but she knew what he alluded to. Being the civilian commander of the SGC didn't alter the amount of paperwork he was expected to complete. He had work to do, she had rest she needed to take.

As much as she wanted to she would not allow herself to reflexively call out and ask him not to leave.

But she did allow herself an ear to ear smile. That was only fair, she thought.