A/N: Thanks for the awesome reviews, as always. (I live for reviews!!) To answer a few of your questions, yes, it was the Resolutions episode of Voyager that inspired this – and I couldn't help laughing over the fact that someone (Arizona94 – very sharp!) figured that out in ONE shot!! (Have I mentioned that I love all my fellow Sci-Fi geeks? You guys rock!) And, my extensive (and previously useless) collection of facts about volcanoes stems from the fact that I am a secondary-level science teacher with a degree in molecular biology, a minor in chemistry, and a certification to teach broad-field earth and physical science. Thus, my brain is littered with more science trivia than any one person should be allowed to obtain in a lifetime. I'm thinking that if I write another, oh, eight hundred and fifty SG-1 stories, I might begin to tap the ocean of scientific information that I've accumulated. However, having said all that, my knowledge of advanced astrophysics is really shaky, so please excuse my sometimes-sketchy references to wormholes and the space/time continuum. (Just ask my friend Jeff, who has on several occasions unsuccessfully tried explaining how the 7 chevrons relate to finding a position in 3-dimensional space relative to the stars and the home planet. Just don't get it.)

Eh, no one's perfect!

Chapter 3

Jack awoke feeling a little… odd. Something was just a bit off, though it took a moment for him to figure out what, exactly, the issue was. As awareness slowly crept into his sleepy brain, he realized that the unusual feeling was rooted in the warm, slumbering body spooned snugly in front of him. It had been a good, long while since he'd woken up next to anyone in quite this manner. I mean, sure, he slept in the same tent as Daniel all the time. But, (thank God!) that experience was absolutely nothing like this one.

The feel of Sam's warm, sleeping figure was somewhat muted by the two thick blankets between them. However, it appeared that during the night, the zipper on Sam's bedroll had come somewhat undone, and Jack's arm had found its way beneath the covers. The bare appendage now rested on Sam's warm, scantily clad torso, which gently rose and fell with each slow breath she took. His hand was splayed across her warm, flat stomach, and the crook of his elbow rested on the gentle curve of her ribs. All in all, the sensation was delightfully cozy and electrically intimate.

As he lay there, slowly adjusting to the dim, pre-dawn light, he felt a host of conflicting emotions creep up on him. It had been a long time since he'd experienced anything quite as right as this moment seemed to be. And, at the same time, he knew it was completely contrary to every instinct he had as a soldier. Fraternization rules existed for good reasons, and he'd never been more painfully aware of them than at this particular moment. Members of his team placed their lives in each other's hands on a regular basis. They all depended on him to be impartial and unbiased, so that he could make sound decisions in an instant of danger. Any emotional conflicts within himself could potentially place them all at risk.

It was a bitter, double-edged sword. On one hand, he knew he needed to remain somewhat detached from his teammates in order to be most effective. On the other hand, he knew that the feelings he held for his second-in-command were not going away. This left him in the unenviable position of either ignoring those feelings or somehow resolving them.

A weaker man might have used the potential for life-threatening danger as an excuse to act on his feelings. Jack knew, however, that such an excuse was never going to fly with him. They encountered far too many situations where one or all of them faced death. If he gave into those desires on every such occasion, he'd be… well… probably in federal prison somewhere for breaking every rule of conduct that Air Force officers were expected to follow.

Before that thought had a chance to leave his head, Sam stirred and sighed gently in her sleep. A moment later, she rolled over and stretched, nestling closer until her face was snuggled against his bare chest. Then, one hand slowly slid its way along his ribs until it came to rest in the middle of his back, effectively wrapping her arm around his torso.

Jack froze. He abruptly realized that the zippers on their sleeping bags weren't just a little undone. They were almost completely open, and, much to his supreme uneasiness, both facing inward, leaving no barrier between the bodies nestled inside. Sam's sudden movement had shifted both sets of covers enough that her oh-so-warm, barely-dressed body was intimately pressed against his in a rather interesting manner. Jack closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He should have thought about the location of the zipped side on his bedroll when positioning his gear in the tent yesterday afternoon.

Of course, at the time, fending off a half-naked Carter really hadn't crossed his mind.

Totally oblivious to his growing discomfort, Sam appeared to be sublimely relaxed. As one delicate foot crossed the border from her sleeping bag to his, Jack's eyes flew open. In the next instant, a long, slender, bare leg was gliding dangerously along his lower limbs. As a finishing touch, a low, satisfied noise softly rose from the back of her throat.

Great. Not only was his scarcely-dressed second-in-command practically sliding into bed with him, she was actually purring while she did so.

He lay completely still, rooted to the spot. Half of his brain was screaming at him to disentangle himself and stop things before they really got out of hand. The other half, on the other hand, was already counting the ways it could rid Sam of the few remaining garments she was wearing.

Later on, Jack wondered which part of his consciousness would have won that debate. However, he never was given a chance to find out on his own, because, just then, the object of his inappropriate lust finally woke up.

The upper half of her body slowly shifted backwards, until her face was a few inches away from his. Sleepy, blue eyes lazily peeked out from heavy lids, quietly absorbing his presence before lethargically drifting shut.

Jack knew the exact moment she'd processed the scene before her, because her liquid relaxation was violently replaced with rigid stiffness. As he sensed her pulling away reflexively, instinct took over. His muscles contracted, holding her exactly where she was.

What the hell am I doing? The thought ripped through Jack's overloaded brain, clearly coming from the logical, 'officer' half of his head. The rest of him, however, was caught up in a 'happy dance' over gaining control of his body and bending it to his baser instincts.

Sam's eyes flew open, reflecting embarrassment, guilt, anxiety, fear, and a good dose of raging desire. "Sir…" she whispered uncertainly, "Uh… what, exactly, is going on here?"

Okay, Colonel. Here's the part where you smile nicely, reassure her and LET GO! "Well, Carter, apparently you decided that since I promised not to jump into your sleeping bag, you thought you'd jump into mine instead." With that remark, Jack smiled nicely, reassured her with his eyes, and… held on tightly.

More happy dances from his hormone departments.

For her part, she was still stiff as an ironing board. "I'm sorry, sir. You should have woken me up before…" she trailed off, gesturing to their intimate position.

He stared intensely into her bright blue eyes. "Are you, Carter?"

She blinked in confusion. "Am I what, sir?"

"Sorry?" His words were almost off-hand, but his brown eyes glimmered with something deep and powerful.

Stepping on her knee-jerk desire to respond with the simple, appropriate "yes" that she knew would usher in their familiar professional distance; she thought for a moment and took stock of the situation. She was lying in the arms of one very warm, very solid Jack O'Neill. Neither of them was wearing a stitch beyond their underwear, and they were currently entwined in a snug embrace that seemed to raise the temperature in the tent a good four-hundred degrees. Beneath them was a very unhappy composite volcano with a bad case of indigestion. If it decided to blow up before they'd found shelter, this could well be the last morning she spent anywhere. The only down side, as far as she could tell, was that she was certainly breaking every fraternization regulation in the UCMJ.

Jack felt Sam unconsciously relax as thoughts flickered across her face. It only took a few seconds of contemplation before she looked up at him, grinned impishly, and said, "No. Not really."

Oh yeah. Now you're in trouble. You can just kiss your career goodbye, O'Neill, because with those enormous, innocent eyes blinking up at you, you're as good as done for. You should have–

Flipping the same switch in his brain that he activated during Daniel's boring archaeology lectures, Jack turned off the sensible voice in his head mid-sentence.

Caution was really overrated, anyway.

Without a word, he abruptly yanked her body the rest of the way into his sleeping bag and deftly reached behind her to pull up the zipper. Sam's eyes widened in response. Then, she giggled.

Having never mastered Teal'c's single-eyebrow-lift, Jack settled for raising both of them. "What's so funny?"

Looking up at him, she blushed slightly as she spoke. "That's not your Beretta, is it, sir?"

He chuckled, recalling the last occasion they'd huddled together in one sleeping bag. "Not this time." This sure beat the hell out of that experience. "By the way, Carter, you can quit calling me 'sir.' That whole protocol thing sorta flew out the window about five minutes ago."

She smiled wryly. "Yeah, I suppose insubordination is the least of my worries at this point."

Jack laughed again. "Well, then, Major, we might as well relax and enjoy breaking the rules."

Sam gazed up at him, a humorous gleam in her eyes. "You're pretty good at breaking the rules, aren't you? Much better than I am, anyway."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Sam, I know nuns who are better at breaking the rules than you are."

She looked at him levelly. "Well, you really can't use that line now, Jack, seeing that I'm half-naked and in bed with my commanding officer while out on an official military assignment. You do realize that at the moment, we're getting paid to fraternize?"

"Huh," he said, sounding genuinely intrigued. "That's a new one, even for me."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, as nice as this is, I think we'd better stop before–"

Her words were cut off abruptly as his mouth crashed down on hers. Sam entertained the idea of resisting for, oh, about three nanoseconds before she totally succumbed to the intensity of the kiss. She decided to just live for the moment.

Caution was really overrated, anyway.

Daniel sat in his lab, poring over the results of the UAV's surveillance data. They'd sent the aircraft into the skies as soon as there was enough predawn light to get decent photographs of the mountainside. A vulcanologist was already meeting with General Hammond on the preliminary results. Sam's suspicions, unfortunately, seemed to be right-on-the-mark. Daniel was just collecting the entire array of thermal images and using a computer to superimpose them onto the standard photographs. It really wasn't necessary, he knew, to confirm that the mountain was ready to blow; however, he wanted to do his best to predict which face was most likely to erupt.

Tiny dots of color marked the hot spots on the thermal images, which, in most cases, neatly corresponded with steaming crevices on the pictures of the mountainside. To his relief, the vents and bulging distortion did all appear to be on the opposite side from where Sam and Jack were camped.

Feeling relief wash over him, she sighed deeply.

"What is your opinion, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c gazed intently at his friend, looking almost anxious. He had not wanted to leave his teammates behind any more than Daniel had.

Straightening his glasses, Daniel looked at the Jaffa and smiled reassuringly. "I think they'll be okay. The activity is very concentrated on the side of the mountain with the gate. They might be kept from returning home until things cool down there, but they should be able to find shelter until the eruption is finished."

Seeing Teal'c relax visibly, Daniel settled comfortably into his chair and glanced at the computer screen one last time. Just as he was about to save the file and take his findings to the General, he noticed something that made his heart drop to his toes.

"Oh hell." Leaning close to his monitor, Daniel immediately pushed himself to the edge of his chair and clicked his mouse button a few times. Apparently, his closer examination did not ease his mind. "Son of a…" He trailed off, biting back a string of interesting curses in at least six languages. "Teal'c!"

The warrior was looking at Daniel with a great deal of concern. "There is no need to yell, Daniel Jackson. I am right here. What is the problem?"

Daniel ejected the data module from his computer and glanced around the room anxiously. A moment later, he shoved a classical music CD into the machine and turned up the volume on the attached speakers. When the loud sounds of Mozart filled the room, he leaned over to the very confused-looking Jaffa and shoved the cartridge at him. He spoke in a low whisper with his mouth hidden behind a strategically placed hand. "Make sure that this gets lost, Teal'c. I doubt anyone will come looking for it, because they have enough information without it. But, just in case, find someplace very, very safe to put this, and forget it ever existed."

If Teal'c questioned Daniel's judgment, he made no mention of it, but simply nodded silently and deftly pocketed the storage media. Immediately, Daniel reached over and flicked off his computer without ceremony, causing silence to retake the room. Then, obviously in a hurry, he jumped out of his chair and made a bee-line for the control room.

The gate technician was a bit startled by the ferocity of Daniel's demand for a connection to the volcanic planet, but he didn't hesitate to comply. In moments, the stargate sprang to life, drowning out all other noise in the immediate area.

Sam's hands explored the smooth, lean planes of Jack's back with a thirst acquired over years of unfulfilled attraction. Their mouths had fused together in a kiss that probably qualified as a nuclear reaction. She was absolutely reveling in the feel of his strong, rugged body pressed closely against hers.

Jack's hands weren't idle, either. The hand that had earlier rested on her rib cage was slowly, maddeningly tracing a path to the lower elastic edge of her sports bra. As his fingers made contact with the fabric, Sam gasped in anticipation.

It was then that the radio crackled to life.

"Jack? Sam?" Daniel's voice was clearly agitated.

Muttering a four-letter oath, O'Neill growled in sheer frustration. "I swear, I'm gonna THROW THAT DAMN THING INTO THE VOLCANO!"

Sam giggled in spite of herself. "Maybe we should find out what he wants, first."

Glaring at the radio, Jack reached over to where his vest lay and practically ripped the offending device from it's clip. "What?" he barked loudly into the speaker.

"Rise and shine, sleepyheads. It's time to find shelter from the imminent disaster that's brewing beneath you." Oddly, Daniel sounded almost happy to hear Jack's irritated tone of voice.

Unsettled by this fact, Jack eyed the radio suspiciously. "So what did you find?"

Sam, too, seemed to hear the glee in Daniel's voice, and grew still as she listened to his reply.

"We're pretty sure it's going to go soon, probably within the next few days, though it's hard to say for sure. The good news is that the mountainside opposite your current location is obviously distorted and venting, indicating that the eruption will likely go in that direction. You should be safe if you stay off that side of the volcano until it's blown up and cooled off." Daniel's voice was more restrained, but there was still an underlying note of tension in it.

Jack was puzzled. Something was going on that Daniel wasn't openly discussing. Trying to piece together the information, he spoke into the radio, locking eyes with Sam as he did so. She looked just as baffled as he did. "So, what you're saying is that we're stuck here until the fireworks are over?"

Daniel replied coolly. "I suppose that's a good way of putting it. You know," he said darkly, "You guys are really lucky I studied that surveillance data so closely. Our geologist only made a quick, preliminary scan before he took his findings to General Hammond. I, on the other hand, decided to make a thorough examination of the thermal and optical pictures, corresponding the heated gas vapors with the crevices on the mountain. Once that was done, I sent Teal'c to go put the data in a safe place for future reference." He paused, clearly inserting more meaning into his words than they should normally contain. "I mean it. You're really lucky. Your side of the mountain was completely devoid of hot spots, with only one exception. And, I don't think that one area of thermal activity is going to be a problem. Not if you're careful."

Jack looked blankly at the radio, but Sam suddenly gasped with understanding. In the space of a heartbeat, she'd torn open the zipper to Jack's sleeping bag and quickly dove back into her own. Without depressing the 'send' button, he gaped at her and protested. "Whoa! Where are you going?"

He could see, however, that Sam was in no mood to return. Her face was ashen, and her hands were trembling. "He knows, sir!"

Totally exasperated and completely confused, Jack looked at her as though she'd lost her mind. "Carter, don't you think you're being a little paranoid? I mean, how could he possibly know–"

"The thermal imaging camera! If it did a complete survey of the mountain, it would have picked up all the concentrated areas of heat in the vicinity, including the presence of any large animals. If you were to lay a copy of that image over the regular photographs, you'd be able to see where all those warm areas were located." She looked profoundly shaken. "The camera is sensitive enough to determine whether there was one or two separate warm bodies in this tent of ours, sir."

Jack's face suddenly registered the significance of her words.

Holy Crap.

A/N: Oh, that was soooo much fun!