But he was so right in calling a halt. She'd loved him as a dear friend for years and she still wanted him as a dear friend when this marriage was over. She wasn't naïve enough to think that if they slept together while they were "married," they could go back to their former friendship. She'd have to be sure she wouldn't mind continuing to be his lover and either hiding it from Landry and Mitchell, and taking a chance with her career, or facing not being on the same team with him.
She took several deep breaths. Okay, that wasn't really helping at all. She still wanted him so much she ached. A couple more deep breaths. Think of something distinctly unromantic. Think about his dirty socks. That was helping some. Finally she was enough in command of herself to look him in the eyes. She didn't have to say anything though. Daniel said, very softly, "You've decided we're moving too fast, haven't you?"
Sam gave a tiny nod. "You are unbelievable. You kiss unbelievably well for starters." Just for a moment she weakened and started to move toward him again.
He put his finger on her lips. "No, Sam," he warned, "think."
She kissed his finger and laughed a little. "And unbelievably wise, considerate, and understanding. I don't think I've ever, even ONCE, had another guy I was involved with be this good to me," she said, adding in her head, especially including a certain general.
"We're involved then, Sam?" he asked, cocking his head and looked at her questioningly, a slight smile on his face.
"We're involved," she agreed. "That's why we have to stop now. We need to be really sure that we're ready to go to that level. Hell, Daniel, less than a week ago, I couldn't conceive of really kissing you and I've had your tongue down my throat for the past quarter hour or more." That was an unwise thing to say because the heat started all over again. "Smelly socks, Sam, smelly socks," she chanted the mantra in her head.
She turned and cuddled against him, her head on his shoulder. Daniel smoothed her hair and said, "So what does this mean, Sam? What do you want to do?"
"Thanks so much for letting me decide instead of pushing me to follow your agenda," she said gratefully. "I don't see any harm in a kiss here and there, even some making out, but I want us to think about what kind of relationship we want to have after the marriage is over before we do anything beyond that."
"Makes perfect sense to me," Daniel said. He stood up, lifting her with him as if she didn't weigh anything and setting her on her feet. "Let's put those boxes together we brought and gather up my stuff."
They worked really diligently for about an hour. There wasn't really that much quality stuff. When you keep dying and people keep getting rid of most of your belongings, it sort of dims your ardor for feathering your nest, Sam thought. When they had gone through his apartment after he ascended the first time, it had had a lot more settled, more furnished feeling. The time consuming part was deciding what made sense to bring. The two things he really cared about bringing were his books and a very nice set of kitchen equipment. He had individual pans that cost more than all the pans Sam owned altogether. Clothes were a matter of indifference to him so they ended up with Daniel packing up his books and his kitchen and Sam doing everything else.
In his closet she found a pair of black leather pants. She got an instant mental image of Daniel wearing them and was having trouble imagining where and why he would ever have acquired them. She walked out to the kitchen, holding them behind her back. "Daniel, have you been riding motorcycles?"
"No," he said absently, his attention focused on carefully wrapping something whose purpose was a complete mystery to Sam. She could have believed it was an instrument of torture but then all kitchen equipment was an instrument of torture for her, one way or the other.
"How about dancing in clubs?"
"I CAN dance, Sam. I stopped being a complete geek a long time ago," he answered still focusing on the wrapping but paying her a little more mind than before.
"Then," she said, producing the pants from behind her back with a flourish, "what would these be about?"
"Oh," he said and made a face. "You found THOSE leather pants."
"Yes…." she said and waited him out.
"It was when I was spending some time with Sarah after she got de-Gou'alded. We were just walking along the street being sort of silly and she saw these in a shop window. There was a bet involved. It's a long story," he returned to fiercely concentrating on his kitchen utensils.
"You're not going to tell me?" she asked, burning with curiosity and jealousy.
"Nope."
"Even if I tickle it out of you?" With that threat, she tossed the pants over a kitchen chair and moved in from behind.
He finally captured each of her hands in one of his and, imitating Jack's voice, ordered, "Now stop that, Colonel."
Her face fell at the reminder of Jack. "Oh, Daniel. What are we going to do about Jack?"
"You're really worried about him?" Daniel said. He put his arms around her and pulled her back to lean against him.'
"We hurt him. I hurt him. He had a right to expect to be told."
"He wasn't available to be told," Daniel said.
"Well, then, he had a right to expect me to wait until I did tell him before I did anything," she corrected herself, sighing deeply.
"What aren't you telling me," he said very quietly.
"Don't you dare tell anyone or let on to him that I told you this," she said turning to look at him. "You promise?"
"I promise."
"Well, when I was in Washington, Jack and I spent some time together. He checked it out. I really can't be considered under his command any more in a way that would make a relationship between the two of us against the regulations." Daniel raised an eyebrow. "I know I said differently a couple of days ago but that was just to get you off that track." She scrubbed her face with her hands. "So there we were, trying to decide what we wanted to do with that information. Be careful what you ask for, Daniel, they say, because you might get it." She laughed, rather bitterly. "Actually it was a lot like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Daniel was left completely at sea. He had watched a couple of episodes with her, enough to vaguely know the characters, and he was not getting it. "You're Buffy? Jack's Angel? Or maybe Riley – the uniform and all."
"No. Actually it's more I'm Cordelia, Buffy's self-involved friend, and he's Wesley."
"Sam," Daniel objected. "I'm not all that into the show but I can't see a match there at all, for either one of you – you're certainly not self-involved -- but particularly between Jack and the brilliant, dorky geek Wesley. Now I could kind of be Wesley…"
"I can't believe we stopped in the middle of this very serious conversation to get into Buffy in such detail." She shook her head. "We belong together, Daniel, because no one else in the known universe really wants to have the conversations we want to have." He smiled at her sweetly and said, "I won't argue with you."
"What I meant was the relationship. They were very hot for each other all one season. Finally after wanting it for months, they kiss and they're like well that was one huge disappointment. And that's the end of that."
"So kissing Jack didn't work?" Daniel prompted.
"He kisses just fine but the earth didn't move, you know? I mean I spent years thinking that if I had Jack I would be totally happy. He kisses me and it's just a kiss. I pulled back and looked at him and he was just a man. A terrific man but I had this blinding revelation that the time for us to be together had come and gone." Daniel didn't pepper her with questions. She could tell he wanted to but he was being so great about this, letting her tell it at her own pace.
She rested her face on his shoulder and put her arms around him. "It wasn't very pleasant after that. He … well … it isn't like he tried to force me or anything but he was pretty persistent about not wanting to accept my no. Nothing at all like the way you just handled things. We left it that we'd think about it some more." They stayed there silently for a few beats.
At last Daniel said, "Under the circumstances, it might be best for you to see him without me. He won't want to talk about this with me as an audience."
"Would you drive me over there?" she asked. "Wait for me?"
"Okay," he agreed just like that. No argument and no qualifications. She absolutely couldn't believe what a gem she had here in this man. She'd known he was special but she hadn't begin to really guess.
Sam broke away from him, wanting to move on to something else. Her eyes fell on the pants. She walked over and picked them up. She came back toward him, deliberately putting a lot of strut in her walk. "I would give anything to see you in these."
"Anything?" he asked, taking her playful cue. "Really anything?"
"Well not completely anything but name your terms."
"You want me to put them on like right now?" he asked.
"Yeah, right now."
He considered that with exaggerated thoughtfulness. Finally, he said, with great deliberation, "Then you have to not say anything about how messy I am for 24 hours."
"Daniel, I don't think I can do that," she responded doubtfully.
"If you don't to see me in the pants…" he shot back.
"I don't mean I don't want to. I mean I don't know if I am physically able to," she said mournfully. "How about if I promise to try really hard?"
"Good enough." He held out his hand for the pants. When he got them, he started to leave.
"Where are you going?" she asked, grabbing his arm.
"I'm not changing in front of you," he said. "It would spoil the dramatic effect."
She pouted, but let go of his arm. She leaned against the counter, thinking to herself, "How could I not have known how much fun we could have if we just started thinking outside the best friend box?" She became impatient when he was gone for several minutes. "You make the audience wait too long," she called out to him, "and they go from anticipation to being pissed. Good performers know better than to piss off their audiences."
There was no response. "Axel Rose didn't even make people wait this long," she yelled a few moments later, knowing he would be completely clueless about the fabled late starts to Guns 'n Roses concerts that had led to destructive riots." She was a little surprised that she knew about them. "I may have to start a riot in here," she warned.
A moment later, Daniel came back into the kitchen. Her mouth watered just looking at him. "Looking good," she said, proud that she was able to sound matter of fact. "But," she said, "You haven't REALLY shown me what they look like until you walk away from me."
He tilted his head and looked at her over the top of his glasses. "You wouldn't be treating me like a sex object here, would you Colonel?"
She blushed a little and walked up to him. "You'd never be JUST a sex object and I will respect you all day long but, Daniel," she asked very softly and brushed a quick kiss across his lips, "please walk away for me."
"How can I resist a request like that?" he asked and he walked away from her.
They were both very weary after running their other errands and hauling all the boxes home, needing two trips to get them all there. Her kitchen didn't have an inch of cabinet space left when they got all the pots and pans and myriad other pieces of equipment stowed. There were books in stacks on the floor next to the existing book cases. She was glad neither one of them had a large wardrobe. The closet space turned out to be the only thing that wasn't stressed.
They were draped over two easy chairs, just staring at each other in exhaustion. Daniel said, "Look at you, Sam. Are you sure you want to go ahead and try to deal with Jack tonight?"
"It isn't going to get any easier," she said. "I think the faster I do it the better it will make him feel -- you know, that I cared enough to try to keep him from being misinformed about this for very long."
"Sam," he leveled a very direct look at her. "It's not a real marriage but it's not exactly a platonic relationship either. In fact, there's a pretty fine line as to the difference as far as how he would see it." They both thought about the black leather pants and the aftermath of his modeling them for her.
She let out a long, shaky breath. "I know." She stood up. "Let's do it now."
"You don't want to change, get something more special on?"
"Daniel, I'm not going over there to seduce him. If I don't look all that good to him, all the better," she responded, a little irritated, although it was more with the situation than with him.
"Sam," he remonstrated gently, "you have no real idea of your effect on men, do you? You're seductive in BDUs." He got up too, took his car keys out of his pocket, and led the way out of the house.
Bolstered by Daniel's presence in the car, Sam squared her shoulders and rang Jack's doorbell. He'd sold his house when he went to DC and then turned right around and bought a small condo, ostensibly for investment purposes, although he didn't have a tenant in it. He had discovered that he really liked coming back to Colorado at least once a month. It had almost as much of a draw for him as Minnesota, although Sam was the only one to whom he had let that admission slip.
Jack took a while getting to the door. Finally, the door opened. Jack looked her up and down and then past her out into the street. "Daniel going to let you come in the house?" he asked, waving at Daniel, his expression making it clear that it was closer to flipping him off than communicating any friendliness.
"I asked him to bring me over here, Jack," she answered, levelly. "He has absolutely no problems with me talking to you. Let's go inside, okay?"
He looked out toward the road again. "Didn't it seem a little strange to him that you wanted to talk to me alone?"
"It seemed to both of us that you were directing your anger over the wedding at him more than me. We thought this might be easier." She really hoped he bought that. Perhaps she shouldn't have told Daniel, but she had so needed his support.
He made a sweeping gesture for her to proceed him. When they were seated opposite each other in the small greatroom, he said, "Well, talk."
"Jack, you don't have all the information about our marriage and there are some things you need to know. What exactly do you think you know, anyway and how did you find out?"
"I ran into Walter in a 7-11," Jack said. "It was a little like a drive by shooting only you were the "perp" and you weren't there. He said you guys got some sort of wild hair on a mission and got married in an alien ceremony. Then the aliens took offense at something and took SG-10 and Teal'c hostage to be held until the observer they sent is persuaded we are honorable."
"There's almost all a lie. I had to marry Daniel to keep them from killing him," Sam said. "In order to trade with us, there had to be some sort of a family tie so I agreed to let the royal family adopt me. Then Daniel and I got caught in something that looked compromising to them and honor demanded that he marry me or they would have to kill him. Evidently, for the honor debt to be met, it has to be a real marriage. They keep talking about the insult if Daniel doesn't 'truly accept me' as his wife. So they let us come back here but they kept the hostages to ensure that we behaved appropriately. Hanna's job is to watch us and decide when we've met the terms of true acceptance. Landry decided not to tell much of anyone the full story because of the observer. If people knew all of that, there'd be crazy gossip. It would be very awkward for Daniel and me and much harder for us to paint the picture we want the observer to see."
Jack's only reaction to her story was to blink once or twice. They sat in silence. "Okay," he said at last. "Ooookay. So, your life is just on hold until this observer can be convinced that you have a real marriage?"
"Sort of, yeah," she said, not entirely sure what he was driving at.
"When it's over, we can pick up where we were?" he asked, looking at her with virtually no expression on his face although she could see the hope hiding in his eyes.
"Jack, there's nothing to pick up other than a long standing friendship. I told you in DC that there wasn't going to be anything else."
"Damn it," he yelled at her, standing up and kicking the coffee table over. He clinched his fists at his sides and unclenched them before saying, at a reduced but still strident decibel level, "You said you'd think about it."
"You wouldn't settle for anything else, Jack," she said, shrinking back a little from his vehemence. She had been going to tell him that something was developing between her and Daniel but suddenly she realized that he could well feel that it was his responsibility to inform Mitchell and Landry that they really shouldn't be on the same team. In this frame of mind, he wouldn't be in any mood to cut them any slack.
Jack dropped back in his chair. He was breathing a little heavily. "Just go, Sam. Now." She started to speak and he cut her off. "Now," he barked and pointed at the door.
"I'm really sorry, Jack," she said, tears running down her face. "I really care about you and I never wanted to hurt you."
"Now," he hissed between his teeth and she walked quickly out of the house and then ran down the front walk. Daniel was out of the car, leaning against the car door, and she ran right into his arms.
"Was it bad, honey?" he asked.
Something in her thrilled to hear him call her honey. She couldn't remember him previously using any lover like endearments with her, although the way he said "Colonel Doctor" made it seem an endearment at times. "Yeah, it was pretty ugly. I really hurt him, Daniel."
Daniel looked toward the silent house. "I can't imagine anything worse than loosing the hope of being with you," he said in such a low voice that she wasn't sure she had heard him correctly.
He walked her around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. They were quiet all the way home. She flipped the television on and sat in front of it for two hours, absorbing absolutely nothing. Daniel finally walked over and flipped it off. "Daniel, I was watching that," she protested.
"It was an infomercial about kitchen knives," he said. "I am absolutely dead positive you were not watching it." He pulled her to her feet. "I know something that is very soothing. I saw my dad do it for my mom a few times after her mother died."
He steered her toward the stairs and patted her lightly on the bottom and said, "Go upstairs and get undressed and in bed. I'll be up in a minute."
She dutifully climbed the stairs, taking the steps one at a time in a very deliberate way as if she were a small child just gaining confidence in the activity. She took off her clothes, decided to defer her shower until the morning, brushed her teeth, and put on pajamas. Until this week, she had routinely slept in the nude when she was at home. In her dully minute, where she was so busy beating herself up for hurting Jack, for not handling things better, she took a moment to wonder idly if she'd be sleeping nude again any time soon.
Daniel arrived a moment later, carrying a book. He went in the bathroom and grabbed her hair brush. "Okay," he said, "part one is I brush your hair." He sat on the bed and she sat in front of him, his legs around her but far enough away that he could wield the brush. She had never known before that having someone brush your hair could feel so heavenly.
When he stopped, she protested. "We have to stop part 1 so we can do part 2," he explained. He took off his shoes and socks and his jeans and got in bed in his boxers and t-shirt and positioned her to lean against him. Then he picked up the book and began to read to her in a beautifully modulated, hypnotic voice. She feel asleep mesmerized by the story of the love of Annie and Er-Tom, floating above her cares, and it was all Daniel and all good.
