Note: I know it's repetitive but I can't help but continue to express my gratitude for all of your wonderful reviews. Thanks to everyone who expressed 'concern' for my husband. I particularly liked the suggestion that I 'throw him a bottle of water and the remote and get back to writing.' The rest of us got shots ages ago, (except for the babies, who are way too young and had to be carefully isolated from their daddy) and nobody else, miraculously, got sick, so I am now a firm believer in flu shots! Anyway, I still have not had much time to finish this chapter, so I did something a bit odd and cannibalized part of an unpublished story that was lurking in the dark corners of my computer. I adapted it to fit this story, so I hope the tone isn't too different. The next few chapters are going to push our little prisoners over the shippy edge, so they probably won't be quite as funny, but after the sappiness, the silliness will return with a vengeance. Maybe they can even co-exist eventually. That's the plan at least. All right, on with the show...
Ch 12: The Requisite Massage Scene
Halfway through the movie they had finally agreed on watching, Sam couldn't take it anymore. Jack had been… squirming. A lot. It was distracting, and it was beginning to annoy her. He couldn't be bored - it had been his idea in the first place to watch "Pirates of the Caribbean." Plus nobody could be bored during that movie.
Finally, she turned to him and said, "Is there some reason you can't be still for two seconds?"
He looked surprised at the sudden outburst, and winced as he settled back into the couch to be still.
"What's the matter, Jack?" Sam asked, her tone carrying the silent apology that went along with the question.
She was sticking to the rules of using his first name, but more often than not she just wasn't addressing him by any name. That, combined with years and years of 'sir' and 'Colonel' still meant that every time he heard his first name it grabbed his full attention. So now he had to answer.
"Just a little sore," he mumbled.
"From falling in your closet the other day?"
To her credit, she managed to ask the question seriously, without a smirk or the faintest hint of teasing in her voice. Then she got a mental picture of finding him in his closet, on top of all those boxes, covered in clothes, still clutching the wooden bar… the smile escaped for a flash of a second and was properly concealed.
"Ah, yeah. It's no big deal. Look, they're turning into skeletons," he said, wanting to get her attention back on the movie and off of him.
"You know, if a body was that decomposed it wouldn't have eyeballs anymore. Those would be the first thing to go," Sam commented.
"Well, I think I'm done with the popcorn, thanks so much for that, Sam," he said sarcastically.
"I'm just saying…" she started.
"They're cursed, the normal laws of… decomposition… don't apply to them," Jack argued, setting the bowl of popcorn down on the coffee table and glancing over at Sam to see if she was going to keep arguing with him or not.
She was watching the movie, determinedly not looking at him. Ha. He grinned and got up to go get a soda.
Ten minutes later, he was squirming again, and messing with the couch cushions. "Do you want a…" Sam started automatically, suddenly freezing. She had shocked herself, and luckily caught herself just in time. She had been about to offer him a massage, automatically, like it was something she did all the time. Clearly she was going insane. Giving him a massage would definitely not be a good idea. Especially just offering out of nowhere, Jack would have a field day with that cliché.
"What?" Jack asked, interrupting the mental berating she was giving herself.
"Uh… Tylenol. Advil. Something for the pain," she said quickly.
"Nah, it's not that bad. Yet. Thanks."
"Ah, yeah. No problem," she mumbled. Jack nodded and turned his attention back to the movie. Sam glanced at him and sighed. If it had been Daniel or Teal'c… or anybody else for that matter, she wouldn't have hesitated. No big deal. But because it was Jack O'Neill, a Jack O'Neill she'd been trapped with for months, who had been on his absolute best behavior the entire time in spite of her random crazy outbursts…
She smiled suddenly as she got an idea. He had done the whole betting thing to get her to stop saying 'sir.' She could probably use his own little method against him. When the movie ended, she asked casually, "Hey, do you want to play chess?"
"I don't know, it's kind of late… last time we played this late at night you lost, if I recall…"
"Yeah, that's why I want a rematch," she said with a grin. Well, this was just too easy, wasn't it?
"Hmm. Well, I'm up for a rematch if you are. What are the stakes?"
"If I win, you have to cook."
"That's not very…"
"All week."
"Yeah, okay."
"Whatever I want," she added for good measure.
He narrowed his eyes at her for a few moments and said, "Okay. And if I win?"
"I don't know," she said with a casual shrug.
"How about if I win, you have to cook for a… no, that would just be punishing myself."
She glared and hit him with a throw pillow, but she was laughing. He grabbed the pillow, chuckling, and said, "I don't know… I'll go get the board and think about it."
"Okay. I'm going to go make some coffee. Are you sure you don't want some Advil or something for your neck while I'm in there?" she asked as she got up and headed to the kitchen.
"Nah, I'll be okay," he called as he headed to the hall closet for the chess set.
Sam made the coffee a bit nervously, wondering if her subtle reminder about his neck was going to work while he tried to think of a bet, or if she was going to have to come right out and suggest it.
"OH, SAAAAAAAM!" Jack suddenly called, sounding very proud about something. "I thought of something!"
She grinned as she added sugar to her coffee. Now all she had to do was lose discreetly. Taking both coffee mugs into the kitchen, she smiled and said, "What did you come up with?"
"Okay, if you win, I have to cook anything and everything for a week. If I win, you have to help me out with my little neck problem," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck and wincing.
She looked at him in surprise, hoping she wasn't overdoing it, and said, "Okay, but I get to be white this time."
"Okay," he agreed. They sat down on opposite sides of the coffee table, where he had already set up the chessboard.
Sam bit her lip in concentration. That, at least, didn't have to be faked. It was much harder to lose without being obvious about it than it was to win.
Luckily, she had practice. When Cassie was little, she had gradually played harder and harder as Cassie learned the ins and outs of the game, until finally Sam didn't have to let her win anymore. Jack knew her better though, so she had to be more discreet.
She gradually started looking more and more tired as the game went on, so he'd think her brain was gradually shutting down. Yawning and resting her head in her hand while she waited for him to move, she studied the board carefully. When it was her turn, she moved her bishop to take one of his pawns, paused with her hand still on the piece, and took it back. "Oops," she muttered.
"You'd better be careful there, or you're gonna lose," Jack warned.
"I don't think so, Jack. Maybe I need some more coffee," she said after making a different move. She went to the kitchen for a refill so she could let go of the slightly evil grin that had been threatening to escape for the past ten minutes.
Ten minutes later, she made the 'fatal' move. As soon as she let go of her knight, Jack leaned forward quickly and she objected, "Wait, wait, I want to take it back!"
"No way, your hand was off the piece. Those are the rules and you know it!" he said, capturing the knight with a rook so that her king was trapped between his queen, rook, and bishop.
"Come on, Jack, my hand was about a millimetre away from my knight before you swooped in…"
"Doesn't matter. You let go. Your turn's over."
"I would let you take it back," Sam argued, because he would expect her to. And because it was fun.
"I highly doubt that."
"Yes I would," she insisted.
"You didn't when we were in the infirmary after the armbands thing, remember? I had barely taken my hand off that pawn and you knocked it out of the way with your rook so hard it shot across the room and Daniel tripped on it."
"Oh yeah," Sam laughed at the memory.
Poor Daniel. He had just been allowed to get up and go take a shower, and was on his way back. He had tripped on the chess piece and hit his head on the corner of the crash cart. Three stitches later, Daniel was still glowering at both of them and Janet had confiscated their chess board and was threatening to refuse them Jell-O with lunch if they couldn't 'play nicely.'
Thinking about Daniel, Teal'c, and Janet had really started to get to her lately. Whenever something reminded her of them, Sam smiled automatically, but then was always flooded with feelings of missing them.
"Are you okay?" Jack asked.
"Yeah, I just… don't you miss Janet, Daniel, and Teal'c?"
"Yeah, I do. Well, Teal'c definitely. And… even Daniel," he admitted with a wince, as though it was painful to confess. "And the doc… well, she's all right as long as she doesn't have a needle or a penlight in her hands… Now quit trying to get out of paying off your bet," he said with a smirk.
She laughed and said, "It's pretty late, I'd understand if you want to go get some sleep and maybe tomorrow…"
"No way. We had a deal."
"Okay, okay," she said, getting up off the floor and stretching a bit.
She narrowed her eyes at Jack. He was looking a little too smug. So smug in fact that for a split second she debated telling him how she'd planned the whole thing, just to wipe that look off his face. However, that would certainly defeat the purpose of all her careful plotting and he'd never let her live it down.
Okay, she thought, smiling to herself. I'll have to come up with another way to get rid of that look.
Jack was watching Sam uncertainly as she approached him. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time… his neck hurt, she could make it feel better. But now he wasn't so sure this was safe. The closer she got to him, the more nervous he was getting.
Sam picked up on this immediately and happily. For some reason the more nervous he looked, the less nervous she felt. "All right," she finally said, sitting down on the arm of the couch right next to him.
Jack, for his part, had gone uncharacteristically still. He knew if he turned his head to face her, he'd be face to face with her chest. Swallowing hard, he stared resolutely ahead, even when she scratched the back of his neck lightly with her fingernails, which still weren't very long but were longer than they usually were when she was going out in the field every other day.
"Where exactly does it hurt?"
Praying she hadn't noticed the shiver that had just run through his body, he twisted so that his back was to her and he was sideways on the couch, his back against the high arm rest, and her. "Just… my neck. And shoulders," he added. Hey, he probably wasn't going to get this opportunity again. He was going to enjoy it.
Sam rolled her eyes but said, "All right."
Jack briefly entertained the idea of adding, "And back," to the list, but figured that might be pushing it a bit too far. He jumped slightly when her fingers started rubbing the very top of his neck unexpectedly. He let out a groan in surprise.
"Too hard, Jack?"
"No," he croaked.
He rolled his eyes. Not only was she assaulting all his senses with a professional-grade massage, she had to just casually throw in "Jack," which she still wasn't saying with the frequency she had always thrown out all those 'sirs.'
Jack suddenly had the feeling that he had now completely lost all control of the situation, but she was doing such a lovely job on his aching neck that he found he no longer cared.
He hadn't been lying. His neck, especially the left tendon, was so tight Sam couldn't believe it. "You really wrecked it," she said sympathetically after several minutes of silence. Realizing that for the past few days he had obviously been in quite a bit of pain helped her focus more on making him feel better and less on being self-conscious about what she was doing.
"Mmmm."
She smiled at what she assumed was an affirmative response. As his neck muscles gradually loosened up, he relaxed a lot more, melting back into the couch, and her, until he was leaning back against her, without being consciously aware of when he had done that. The only problem with that was that, while it was very comfortable having his head leaned back into her chest, it was hard for her to reach the area she was supposed to be massaging, especially after she had worked her way down his entire neck.
Biting her lip, she couldn't believe what she was about to say. "Jack?"
"Hmm?" He had apparently lost the ability to speak, which made her strangely proud. Refusing to analyse that, for now at least, she decided to just be glad he wasn't making sarcastic or suggestive comments. It also gave her the guts to make her next comment.
"Permission to remove your shirt, sir?"
"Yuh-whu… huh-what?" he asked drowsily.
"So I can reach your shoulders. You said they were bothering you as well," she reminded in a business-like tone she had picked up from Janet.
"Oh. Yeah. Shoulders." He leaned up, away from her, and started pulling it off.
Sam helped him, deliberately raking her fingers up his sides in the process, he was positive. After the shirt was removed, however, the nervousness returned as she stared at his bare back. There were only a couple of ways she could massage his shoulders. He could stretch out on the couch and she could straddle him, or he could remain sitting up and she could stand behind the couch.
She definitely did not trust either of them to be horizontal at the moment, so before he could say anything, she moved behind the couch, leaned over slightly, and resumed the massage.
"Sam, if you ever get sick of the Air Force… and the whole astrophysicist genius thing doesn't work out, and you need references for a new career as a massage therapist…" Jack was particularly proud of himself for managing to string that many words together in a nearly-coherent thought.
She laughed quietly. "Thanks, I'll let you know."
After half an hour more, she had more than worked out all of the tension in his shoulders, and he was in a unique state of relaxation and alertness. He hadn't known it was possible to be so completely relaxed and aroused at the same time.
It occurred to him that her hands had to be exhausted. His brain was much too fuzzy to care that what he was doing was so not allowed. He reached up to his own shoulders, covering her hands with his.
Sam inhaled sharply, but she didn't think he noticed. He did. He rubbed her fingers and the backs of her hands lightly with his thumbs for a few moments, then slid his hands up her slender arms, curling his fingers around them just above the elbows.
She got the message and leaned over further, hugging him around the shoulders from behind, before her brain could tell her it was not a good idea. Her face was right next to his. Jack could feel her breathing on his neck.
Turning his head to see her face, he held his breath as his eyes found hers. He swallowed slowly. "Sam," he finally said.
"J-Jack." She mentally rolled her eyes at the stammer that came out of her mouth.
"I have another question for you," he said, speaking quietly but quickly, before the part of his brain that normally stopped him from doing and saying this type of thing kicked in.
A bright white light suddenly filtered in from the kitchen. They both looked towards it automatically. It disappeared quickly. Sam looked at her watch. "Wow, it's really late," she commented. "I was wondering when Thor was stocking the kitchen."
"Yeah," Jack mumbled. Great timing, buddy. It's the 'Carter's about to agree to go fishing, hey, what's that light' incident all over again.
Sam stood up, releasing the hold she had on his shoulders reluctantly, but she had prolonged the contact much longer than she should have already.
She stepped back around the couch and leaned against the arm rest, looking down at her tired hands.
"Um, you had a… a question?" she asked.
"Yeah."
His eyes went from happy and relaxed to piercing in no time flat. She hated it when he looked at her like that. It didn't make sense, but she always thought he was reading her mind right through her eyes. At the same time, she took it as an unspoken challenge, so that no matter how uncomfortable it made her, she refused to look away.
Sometimes, like when they were stuck on opposite sides of a force shield or she was begging for his support on a crazy rescue mission for her father, that was a very good thing. More often than not, it just ended awkwardly, leaving her feeling dissatisfied and vaguely irritated.
"I was wondering if you…" Jack started.
She saw the moment he changed his mind. She had been absolutely convinced that he was finally going to bring everything that had always gone unspoken between them out into the open. But something stopped him. She hoped it wasn't something he had seen in her eyes, but what else could it have been?
"If you… knew what would happen if you went through the Stargate backwards?" he finished with an apologetic smile.
"You would come out the other end backwards," she answered.
"No, I mean, the back end of the wormhole, like if you walked around the back of the ramp. Can you go through it, or would it kill you?"
"Well, you definitely can't go through it. And like the proper side or the event horizon, if you stuck just your hand through, for example, you should be able to just pull it back out. Remember, the wormhole only demolecularizes whole objects, so unless the power was cut off prematurely…"
"Cool," he said simply. "Uh. Well, thanks. For the lesson and the… massage."
"Anytime."
He raised his eyebrows.
"The lesson," she said quickly, rolling her eyes because she knew she was blushing. And he had that smug look back on his face. After all that hard work to get rid of it, too. "I was talking about the lesson. Goodnight, s… Jack." She hurried to her bedroom, eager to get out of there before something else went embarrassingly wrong.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Thor!" General Hammond yelled, exasperated with his new friend.
"My apologies, General Hammond. I forgot the food deliveries were on automatic timer…"
"They were so close!"
"I concur. It has taken much time already, however. Despite our untimely interruption, I do not believe we will have to wait much longer."
"I hope so," Hammond muttered.