Author's Note: Sorry for the long delay (holds wrists out for slapping). I've had lots of schoolwork and been sick on top of that, all my attention had to go to making sure my grades didn't slip any more than they had to. Humble apologies.
This chapter was inspired partially by they song "Ballrooms of Mars" by T-Rex (hence the title), figured I'd give credit where it's due.
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Chapter 12: Ballrooms of Mars
Jack saw Sam up the ladder to his roof then climbed up after her. By the time he reached the platform and sat down on the second of the two chairs Sam was already blowing dust off the main lens.
"You don't use this much do you?" she asked.
"Guess not, I've been a little busy saving the world all the time," Jack shrugged.
"True," Sam admitted, sighting a star and aligning the telescope. She gazed through the device then straightened up and wrinkled her nose. "Do you have any other eyepieces?"
Jack fished a box out from under his chair and handed it to her. She couldn't see the marks on the eyepieces, so she just pulled one out and put it on, then looked through it. She fiddled with the focus and alignment a moment then cried out suddenly, "Wow!"
"What do you have? And don't try telling me you've never seen it before," Jack said.
"Orion nebula," Sam replied. "This is a really good telescope. Want to take a look?"
Sam moved her chair back slightly to allow him room, but the limited area of the platform forced an invasion of personal space anyway. Jack gazed into the telescope for a minute, then sat down again. Both missed each other's warmth in the crisp October night.
"Have we ever been anywhere near there?" Jack asked as Sam switched out the eyepiece again and pointed the telescope in a new direction.
She thought about it for a moment, then said, " I think PX9-757 is nearby."
"Which one's that?" Jack asked?
"Armbands, Apophis's new ship, force fields…" Sam replied.
"Good times," Jack sighed.
"No kidding," Sam agreed. "Jupiter," she added, gesturing to the telescope. "I count six moons"
An awkward silence ensued between them as Jack looked through the device. When Sam could stand it no longer, she got up, allowing Jack to take her seat and do what he wanted with the telescope. She crossed her arms for warmth.
"You know, we've actually visited some of those stars," Sam said as she craned her head up to the sky. "From here they're just little dots of light, but most are bigger than the sun."
"Where've we been?" Jack asked, looking up from the telescope.
"Well," Sam began. She sighted various constellations to orient herself, then pulled out a hand and began pointing at different parts of the sky. "Abydos is over there, Vorash, Tollana, the Nox home world, Keb should be a few degrees right of the moon, and Chulak, oh…"
"Those clouds are getting closer," Jack observed, following her gaze.
"Yeah," Sam sighed, "I'm guessing that in about fifteen minutes we won't be able to see much of the sky at all."
"Darn," Jack replied.
"Want to look at the Andromeda galaxy before it gets covered?" Sam asked.
"That where the Asgard live?" Jack asked as they exchanged seats again.
"No, the Asgard are much further out, we can't see their galaxy from the Northern Hemisphere," Sam explained as she fiddled clumsily with the telescope. Her hands were becoming numb and the reflex to shiver was getting more and more difficult to repress.
Andromeda was so far away that getting a good look at it with a telescope was a trick under the best conditions, so her inability to make minute adjustments to the alignment and focus was causing problems. Sighing, Sam attempted to wiggle her fingers and rub her hands together, and action that did not go unnoticed by Jack.
"You all right?" he asked.
"Fine, thanks," she replied, but if there was one thing Jack had learned from working with this woman for the past five years it was how to tell when she wasn't fine, whether she admitted to it or not. Therefore, as she reached a pale and sickly looking hand out to the focus he grabbed it and pulled her over toward him, rubbing her freezing hands between his own and breathing warm air over them. He didn't release her until he was satisfied that her hands were warm enough.
When Jack felt a bit of something wet on his hair and face he didn't think much of it, but the problem persisted, so he pulled out a small flashlight, light bulb covered in red cellophane, and flipped it on, watched it sputter and die, and hit it sharply against the palm of his hand, then used the resulting beam to examine his arm in the hope of finding out what was going on.
"Sam, it's snowing."
Sam looked up from the telescope and gazed around in the dim light of the flashlight. Jack couldn't help but watch as the snowflakes settled on her hair and eyelashes and skin then slowly melted. Sam managed to catch one on her sleeve near her wrist and set about examining its delicate form as best she could.
"Is the first time of the year?" Jack asked.
"I think so," Sam replied.
"We should go inside," Jack suggested.
"It's not that cold," Sam said, "the snow's not even sticking."
"You're freezing and you know it," Jack informed her.
"In a few minutes, then, I've nearly got it," she said.
Jack sighed and agreed to the compromise.
Naturally, it took longer than those few minutes for Sam to find the galaxy to her satisfaction, a point that Jack made sure to point out at random intervals.
Not being one to give up, Sam continued fine-tuning the telescope despite his protests, and the resulting conflict of interests nearly drove Jack to pull rank or pick Sam up and carry her down the ladder, but luckily she finished before he got around to it.
After taking a moment to gaze at the galaxy herself, Sam relinquished the telescope and her chair to Jack and took his chair instead, teeth clenched to keep them from chattering and cold arms tucked close to her body.
Jack had fully intended to look at the galaxy for a few seconds at most, just to humor her, and then they could go inside and get warmed up. However, once he had a look he wished he could stay there forever, studying its vibrant colors and elegant spiraling tendrils and cursing the telescope which reduced Andromeda's core to a blurry smudge.
In all his years of traveling to distant stars he really had forgotten the majesty of actually watching them. It looked so perfect and untouched, but if there was life all over this galaxy, then it had to be all over that one, and he suspected they weren't doing a much better job of leaving the place the way they found it. Did the Milky Way look so serene from Andromeda, despite the acts of the Goa'uld and humans and Jaffa? When he looked at the arc of stars and dust than made their way across the sky behind Sam the thought didn't seem so outrageous.
He couldn't really see her, just her silhouette, but he was quickly coming to the same conclusion about her that he had about the Andromeda galaxy: she was damn good looking in the first place, but infinitely more beautiful when viewed without the bias of the SGC, and funny, and interesting.
Her head was craned up to the sky and Jack suspected she was smiling. Nonetheless, she looked slightly diminished in the cold, but stock still, as though she were frozen. Frozen.
"We should go inside," Jack informed her, a little more sternly than the last time.
"Sounds good," Sam replied.
Jack put the good eyepieces away and threw a tarp over the telescope then followed Sam down the ladder.
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The front door was difficult to negotiate with his numb hands, but he managed it eventually.
They rushed into the welcoming heat and paused in the entryway, brushing off any hitchhiking snowflakes. Their next destination was the kitchen sink. The water couldn't have been more than room temperature, but it spelled agony for their frozen hands, which burned and stiffened and turned red in protest as their hot blood became reacquainted with the extremities.
Eventually, the water ceased to feel so hot, but the pain did not halt so easily, and their ears and noses and toes were coming to realize the difference between the temperatures they had and where they liked to be. Thus, Jack went off in search of blankets while Sam rummaged around the kitchen for the makings of hot chocolate.
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By the time Sam came into the living room, Jack had already coaxed a fire out of the fireplace. She passed him his mug then wrapped herself in a blanket and joined him on the couch, sitting only a few inches from him rather than the usual foot without even realizing it.
They sat in silence, sipping their hot chocolate, each agreeing that this was the only was to warm up after freezing out in the snow. Presently, their collective thoughts turned to their relationship, and the knowledge that they were once again overstepping the boundaries and that it was only a matter of time before General Hammond found reason to court martial them, but neither could come up with a satisfactory solution.
When Jack could no longer stand his own thoughts, he reached for the remote control and turned on the TV, then flipped through channels until he paused on an old documentary about the UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico.
"That looks kinda like Thor," he remarked, as a picture of an alien flitted across the screen.
"Sure does," Sam replied, sitting up a little straighter.
They, of course, already knew that the aliens from Roswell looked exactly like Thor, and why, but the subject turned out to be one of great amusement to them, and they spent the next few hours laughing at the documentary and interjecting things that Thor liked to say whenever an alien popped up on the screen.
Every once in a while they'd play a game of twenty questions or talk about nothing and everything, but mostly nothing of any significance. Most importantly, they enjoyed each other's company.
Eventually, they settled into a comfortable silence and fell asleep on each other's shoulders while the forgotten TV continued to quietly blare infomercials about how to get rich fast or loose those extra pounds and the fire slowly burned down to embers.
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A/N: Next update later today, Happy Thanksgiving!