Reflections
Chapter Ten
Jack had felt a certain amount of nervousness when Carter's number came up on his cellphone that afternoon. After all, he had no idea what state of mind she was in, how well or badly the mission had gone, or if she'd decided she didn't want him after all.
In the two hours between when she called him up and when she arrived at his place, he pulled out every nervous habit he'd ever had - and a few besides. All he'd done was invite her around for dinner, and she'd accepted, but noted that she was tired and might fall asleep on him.
Frankly, Jack didn't much care what she did, as long as he wasn't going to be put in the doghouse for sheer stupidity.
As he waited, he figured he probably wouldn't have been half so nervous if he didn't care about Carter qutie so much.
But he did, and so he was.
When she arrived, there was a moment of awkwardness. She entered the house with the movies he'd asked her to bring along. Jack bent to kiss her on the cheek, and she'd turned her head so his mouth landed on her lips.
The awkwardness was quite gone after that.
She helped him make dinner - she chopped, he cooked. He asked about the expedition, she complained about the trials and tribulations of commanding people who would quite comfortably ignore orders if they felt the payoff was worth it. Then she poked him lightly in the elbow when he grinned at her.
"I obeyed."
"Daniel didn't. And he led you astray more than once, as I recall."
Her mouth twitched slightly as she scraped the carrot parings into the bin. "He's a bad influence."
"Oh, ya think?"
They talked about the SGC, about the academy, about The Simpsons and her sci-fi shows. He mentioned several opera performances up in Denver, she hummed and hawwed and said she'd see what her workschedule was like. They ate and argued over the Iraqi democracy, the Michael Jackson case, and whether or not Jay Leno should have plastic surgery. Then they sat down and watched Back To The Future III.
Of course, the one thing they didn't talk about was them. It was on Jack's mind, and he knew that it was on hers, but they didn't speak of it. To talk about them simply wasn't them. It wasn't the sort of thing they did.
Which, perhaps, had gotten them into their stand-off state in the first place.
So, three hours later, as Michael J Fox unfolded the fax sheet that no longer contained his future - and the whole time-travel thing was definitely enough to twist Jack's brain into unpickable knots - Sam Carter was fast asleep.
She was stretched out along his couch, her feet resting on the armrest, her head lying on Jack's lap, turned towards the TV, but quite definitely asleep.
Once he realised she was asleep, he'd turned the sound down, a little at a time, so he could still hear it, but so she wasn't going to wake up if something suddenly exploded onscreen.
Mostly, he watched Carter. Even watching Mary Steenburgen didn't compare to watching Carter. Because when he played the tape over again, Mary would be exactly the same. But Carter was different every moment.
Right now, she was drooling slightly.
Jack decided it was a sign of how deep in he was that he still thought she was beautiful when drooling.
He traced a finger across her cheek and watched her eyes flutter open.
He was pretty sure he had an indulgent smile on his face, because after a moment, her lips curved to match his. "Hey."
"Hey," he said. "You know, you missed the best bit of the movie."
Sam shifted a little, but didn't get up. Which suited Jack fine. One hand swiped at the corner of her mouth, wincing as her fingers encountered the saliva. "I've seen it before, and I'll get to see it again."
"You're sure about that?" He asked lazily, letting his fingers slip over hers as she tried to withdraw them.
"Yes," she said, still trying to pull away. "My hand's wet."
He tugged back on her hand and after a moment's hesitation, she stopped resisting. Then he lifted her hand to his mouth, and licked each fingertip, gently. "I know."
Her expression betrayed her surprise. She was used to being the one in control of their relationship; the one sidling up to him. Even when they were both on SG-1, and then in the SGC, he'd always let her define the physical side of their relationship, only stepping across the line when crisis circumstances demanded it.
There was no crisis now. Unless it was the crisis brewing inside him, making him very aware that he'd lingered long enough.
He was sure. And the only way to know she was sure was to push the lines he'd never been comfortable in pushing. Not with her.
Ironic that it took him and Kerry two weeks to start sleeping with each other, but he'd been dancing around Samantha Carter for eight years. And of the two, the woman he wanted in his life - the woman he couldn't imagine living without - was the one he'd never made love to. Not yet.
She was watching him with that solemn, still gaze, like the moment in the dawn before the birds sang or the sun rose. The sense that something was coming.
Jack didn't wait for the 'something' to rear its head. He bent down as she sat up, and their mouths met somewhere in the middle in a kiss that seared his nerve endings with the sparkle of desire.
He didn't know what made kissing Sam so different from kissing other women. Maybe it was the familiarity of her, the scent, the feel, the sight, the sound of her as she somehow wriggled up into a position that was not quite sitting in his lap but came damned close.
From his position, the advantage was that he was solidly seated, and so had both hands free. It meant that while his right hand cradled her head as his mouth left hers and began moving over her jaw, his left hand was free to slide down the column of her throat.
He rested his fingers in the hollow at the base of her throat, and felt the warm beat of her pulse rapping out an unsteady tattoo against his skin as he nibbled his way up her jaw to her ear.
By now, Carter was actually sitting in his lap, having eased herself up to be more comfortable, and she wasn't sitting back and letting him have all his way. Her fingers were sliding across his stomach in ways that were very unsettling. And if she continued shifting on his lap like that, she was going to find him extremely unsettled.
Her mouth was back on his again, teasing him with licks of her tongue, the sensuous, intimate taste of her intoxicating.
He later said that his hand acted of its own accord. Of course, he could say that then, when she was unsuccessfully hiding a smile.
But when his hand gently brushed down the line of her breastbone, popping the top few buttons holding together the edges of her shirt, his pulse was beating nearly as wildly as hers was when his hand came to rest over her heart.
Beneath his lips, Sam gasped slightly but leaned into him. Jack managed to decide the woman should be on the FDA list of proscribed substances, before she shifted on his lap and the last shreds of coherent thought tore from his grasp.
At some stage, they went from sitting up to lying down, and her shirt front went from buttoned shut to fully open. Jack didn't remember that bit all that well. What he did remember was the taste of her skin and her hands on his waist, the rush of his blood through his veins and certain other parts of his body, and the tinny sound of a cellphone's ring...
Damn!
It had rung several times before either of them registered the noise, and he lifted his head from hers and stared into eyes that had the slightly unfocused look of an aroused woman.
"I think that's mine," she said.
He turned his head towards the noise, and saw the red-and-silver phone on the coffee table. "You could ignore it," he said, and was surprised to discover that his voice was all raspy.
Sam winced and reached out towards the coffee table, dragging herself up a bit, while Jack sighed and scraped one hand through his hair while the other tried to keep his full weight from sagging onto her. She grabbed the phone just as it stopped and sighed in exasperation.
"Always happens."
She flipped open the phone to look at the number and stared as it started ringing again. "It's not a number I recognise..."
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Guess they really want to talk to you."
As she lifted the phone to her ear, Jack deliberately began fingering her nipple and watched her eyes kindle, even as she batted at his hand. He just grinned at her as she coughed and spoke into the mouthpiece, "Carter."
A few seconds later, she jerked up, nearly bashing heads with him. Her eyes were wide and stunned as she stared at Jack. "What?"
He couldn't hear the person on the other end of the phone, but he could hear the tones: a dry amusement that communicated itself in the overtones of voice. The cadences of the voice said it wasn't an emergency, but her attitude was tense.
"Okay," she bit out. "But this had better be worth it."
"What is it?" Jack asked as she shut the phone and tossed it to the floor.
She took a deep breath, and her mouth pulled to one side. "Agent Barrett wants to speak to us."
"What? Now?"
Her smile was tight as she tugged at her bra and buttoned up her shirt. "He asked that you not reach for the gun you keep in the drawer." Her eyes flickered over to the side table with the phone set on it - and the drawer in which most people kept phonebooks.
Jack didn't ask how an NID agent knew where he kept his guns.
But when there was a briskly discreet knock on the dining room door, Jack did want to know how the man had gotten into his house. He was so going to have to improve his security around here. Lately, too many people had been getting into his house without him knowing.
Sam gave him a brief, terse smile as he got up to open the door. As he glanced back at her, she was finger-combing her hair, looking distinctly self-conscious about it.
Agent Malcolm Barrett stood just inside Jack's dining room, with a slightly enigmatic smile on his lips as he looked through the doorway towards Carter, then up at Jack. "May I come in?"
"You seem to have let yourself in already." But Jack stepped back to let the other man in.
One corner of the pale mouth tugged upwards as he walked past Jack. "There is that." Barrett took the chair in the corner, settling himself neatly and looking surprisingly at ease for a man who was dressed in a suit.
Maybourne had possessed the same skill of looking quite at home in his surroundings, or so Jack recalled. He wondered how the other man was doing on his little planetoid. Quite surprisingly, the SGC had heard neither hide nor hair of him since.
Knowing Maybourne, that just meant Harry'd found himself some kind of illegal activity to engage in. Probably smuggling or something like that. Jack made a mental note to get someone to check up on the rat. For old time's sake, if nothing else.
He sat back down beside Carter and lifted an eyebrow at the other man. Barrett was here for a reason. He could state what he had to say and then get the hell out of Jack's house.
"I'm sorry to...interrupt you at this time," Barrett said smoothly, looking from one to the other. His expression was bland, but Jack knew the other man had known exactly what was happening when he arrived. He'd probably timed his interruption precisely for when things were heating up. After eight years of mostly-bad experiences, Jack would believe anything of the NID.
Jack felt somewhat less than charitable towards Malcolm Barrett, NID, at this moment. It didn't help that Sam was sitting inches away, ramrod straight. She looked like nothing quite so much as the Air Force officer Jack had spent years keeping at arm's length in his mind as well as in body.
"What's this about, Agent Barrett?"
Barrett's mouth twisted. "It's actually about a whom, not a what."
Sam's voice was easy, but Jack could hear the sudden tension in it. "What's happened?"
A cricket chirruped somewhere outside, and the noise fell loudly into the second's pause between the question and the answer.
"As Colonel Carter would know, the NID keeps tabs on all data traffic coming in and out of the SGC, particularly anything that goes through the Air Force network systems. There's classified data in the SGC networks, and even though procedure tries to keep those networks separate to the general Air Force ones, there are ways and means to circumvent it."
"And it's not always SGC personnel doing the circumventing," Sam said with a slightly acid note to her voice.
"No, it's not," Barrett agreed. "However, in this set of circumstances, it is a member of the SGC initiating the intrusion into security systems." He looked at Sam. "Someone has been accessing a variety of data through the backdoors into NID systems using your userID, Colonel. Given that there are two Colonel Carters in the SGC at present, we're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."
"Thus your presence here?" Jack inquired, a little nettled by the way the other man was staring at Carter.
Barrett didn't break gazes. "Thus my presence here." He looked Jack, and shifted in his chair. "Actually, this visit is off the record." His mouth quirked a little as if in a private joke.
Sam seemed surprisingly calm, although Jack could feel the tension pouring off her. "What's he been accessing?"
"The NID have files on prominent personnel, as might be expected."
Jack narrowed his eyes. "Are we talking the kind of files that Hoover kept on the leading 'communists' of his day?"
Barrett didn't answer, but directed his next comment to Sam. "Your userID has been logged accessing your own files at NID. All the known backdoors at NID are watched."
"And you thought I should know?"
"I thought you should know."
"Out of the kindness of your heart?" Sam asked, and the acid undertones were now more distinctly audible.
The cricket got in a full verse of chirps this time.
Jack felt very superfluous in the staring competition between her and the NID agent. He wasn't sure he liked the feeling that there was more going on here than he'd ever known about. Although it shouldn't surprise him after eight years working with her. Carter gained admirers wherever she went and whatever she did.
"You should know better than that, Sam," Barrett said, and there was a quiet dignity in his voice that reddened her cheeks. He continued, as briskly as if the interlude hadn't happened. "Why the data was accessed, we don't know. It's possible he just wants to know more about your background. Or," he said with careful deliberation, "it's possible he's looking for weaknesses."
Sam was quiet for a long moment, and both men watched her, gauging her reaction.
Jack didn't know her thoughts on Samuel. She hadn't yet said anything on the subject of her 'twin brother' tonight. He hadn't asked, since right now he was just happy that she was Samantha, and didn't really want to bring up the man who could have been her. Gratefulness could cover over a multitude of things Jack O'Neill didn't want to think about.
Still, he'd spent eight years watching her, observing her, picking up her attitudes and opinions from the tidbits of her conversation. And tonight, he'd gleaned that she'd dealt with her professional insecurities about Samuel.
She was staring at a point in the middle of the coffee table, apparently lost in thought. Finally, she looked up, sideways, at Jack. One hand reached out and slipped into his, and he closed his fingers about hers as she looked to Barrett who was watching them with careful neutrality.
"Are you saying he might try to get rid of me?"
Barrett returned her gaze with quiet deliberation. "I'm saying you should be careful."
--
Jack was reluctant to let Barrett 'leave the way he'd come in', so the agent walked out the front door and vanished into the darkness.
They had to teach that at NID academy or something. 'Spooks 101 - How To Make A Dramatic Entrance And Exit.' The guy was wearing a suit for crying out loud! You couldn't get much more obvious than that!
Carter was filling the dishwasher when he shut the door behind him. He could hear the clink and clatter of plates and cutlery. Rather than join her immediately, Jack went around the house checking the doors and windows were all closed.
"I should get a locksmith in, I swear," he said as he returned to the kitchen. "Way too many people getting in here."
She glanced up from the sink, a funny little smile on her lips. "It wouldn't make much difference, you know."
"Why not?"
The smile grew wry. "I taught him how to pick locks."
"You taught...?" Jack was astounded. "Why?"
"Because he asked," she said, as though the answer was obvious. Then she relented a little. "Jonas was learning it about the same time - when you were accused of shooting Kinsey. I was already teaching Jonas, and while we were working together to clear your name, he saw me pull my lockpicks to get into a house. He wanted to learn how to do it, so I gave him lessons."
Jack was tempted to ask if she'd given Barrett anything else at the same time - a free ride, maybe - but he bit his tongue. Not his business then, barely his business now. He might not have been the first man in her life, but he intended to be the last.
Still, he had at least one other thing on his mind - and so did she, if her pensive expression was any indication. "What do you think of this news about Samuel accessing your records?"
The smile faded a little. "I don't know what to think." Carter rested her hands on the bench behind her as she leaned back. "Part of me wants to believe that he'd never do that - that I'd never do that. But I've accessed NID systems when things were tight at the SGC - gone in and used the backdoors to get the information I needed when I needed it - so who am I to say that he doesn't have reasonable motives?" Her mouth twisted. "He might just want to know what the official 'history of Sam Carter according to the NID' says. I know I'd be curious if I was in another world where there was a very different counterpart to me."
Jack could understand that.
Her gaze lifted to meet his. "What do you think?"
It could go either way in Jack's estimation. On one hand, he couldn't believe that Carter would do any such thing. On the other, Samuel wasn't Carter. A Carter, but not Carter.
And he didn't know Samuel Carter well enough to be able to tell her one thing or another. Besides, it wasn't as though she needed him to tell her what to do, what to think. She never had.
So he crossed the room and took her in his arms, cornering her against the bench.
"I think," he said, with distinct deliberation, "that it's time for bed."
A smile flashed across her features, momentarily blinding him as she wound her arms around his neck. "You do?"
"I do." Never mind that his heart was somewhere in his stomach, which was churning away like crazy.
Relax, it's just Carter.
Then again, the problem was that it was Sam Carter.
Take it easy. Go slow. You've done this before, Jack, it's not like it's your first time.
Another voice - a more pragmatic one - suggested, Start simple.
So he started simple. His head drifted in gently, his nose brushing her cheek before she turned her head a little and mouth closed over mouth with exquisite sensation, sliding them both into liquid desire.
It was, perhaps, a few minutes later that she tilted her head away to catch her breath. "Did you say it was time for bed?"
"I did."
"Then I think you'd better take me there, sir."
Jack did. And then some.
- TBC -