A/N: All I can say is that this story wanted to be written so bad it almost had me falling asleep at the keyboard. Feedback is always loved.

Of Studying and Pants

The summer day had been sweltering. Even deep inside the mountain, Sam felt the residual mugginess cause her black t-shirt to cling to her back uncomfortably. She wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead and stretched, arching her back to the point where she almost lost her balance on her stool.

It was late. There was no getting around that. Not so late that she felt she couldn't stay awake one more second even with the aid of coffee, but late enough that the saner people of the SGC had all left for the day. The people with families, friends, social lives, or simply lives in general that didn't revolve around the latest technological discovery from P4L-889, they were the ones who had made their ways out of the bowels of the mountain. This explained why Sam was still in her lab. She had no family to come home to, no close friends outside of the SGC, and, as the colonel liked to remind her every so often, no semblance of a life either.

So it really didn't matter that it was rapidly approaching midnight and there Sam Carter was, poring over the schematics of the latest device like the fate of the world depended on it.

"Why do the crystals go there?" she muttered absently to herself, tracing the pattern on the schematic drawings and searching for their corresponding position in the device. Her fingers lightly danced on the machine's surface, tracing the lines of writing and design over the grey naquada panels until her fingertips caught slightly on the edge of the panel she was looking for.

"There you are… now, let's see how to put you back together again…" Sam grinned as she pulled out the crystals one by one, noting each one's position in the panel. Then, she put them all back again. They glowed briefly, casting a rainbow of lights across the room, but died out suddenly. Despite holding a PhD and being a major in the USAF, she couldn't help but pout like a child in disappointment. "The power source must be shot," she mused, going back to the diagrams.

It was hours before she figured out the issue with the power source, and by that time Sam's eyes were burning. Her body was just short of ordering her to get to bed. Sam rubbed her eyes again, and focused once more on the machine.

"Five more minutes. Then I'll go to bed."

A noise from the hall startled her. Sam jerked, almost losing her balance on the stool. Her cheek felt cool and honestly a little wet. It took her a moment to realize she'd been sleeping with her cheek pressed against the cold surface of her lab table and that she had apparently been drooling ever so slightly. The device's schematics were still laid out in front of her, and the device itself still sat lifeless off to her right.

"Carter, shouldn't you be at home doing that?" spoke a familiar voice from the doorway of her lab. There, leaning casually against the frame, smug grin plastered all over his face, was Colonel O'Neill. Dammit!

"I can't really take the device home to study it, sir," she returned, feigning ignorance.

"C'mon, Carter, we both know you weren't studying the device."

"Well, I was…"

"You were napping."

"No, I wasn't." Was blatantly lying to a superior officer a punishable offense? Bigger question: did she even care? If lying meant the colonel wouldn't have more ammunition to use against her at inopportune moments, then that was the way to go.

"So you're trying to tell me that you were studying with your eyes closed?"

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes, sir. I was… studying with my eyes closed."

"And drooling." That damn grin on his face was getting bigger and more dangerous by the moment. Sam had to seriously reign in the part of her that wanted to walk right up to him and wipe it off his face. As it was, he was the one doing the walking. During their question and answer period, he'd detached himself from the door frame and was slowly and stealthily making his way over to her table.

"It happens, sir." Sam's eyes darted nervously over him, taking in the smirk, his posture, his walk, his gestures, anything at all that could give away what he was doing in her lab at some ungodly hour of the morning. He reached the opposite side of the table and stopped, planting his hands on the table top and fixing his eyes on Sam. Under normal circumstances, having someone openly staring at her made Sam nervous. These were not normal circumstances, however, and the Colonel Jack O'Neill certainly wasn't a mere someone. As his eyes remained trained on her, Sam felt her face heat up slightly. His was not a casual stare; his dark eyes seemed to memorize her as if she were a book lying open to be read. Sam could almost feel his eyes roving over her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, her mouth… her neck…

As his gaze moved lower, Sam couldn't help but swallow. Hard. He shouldn't have been looking at her like that. Everything and everyone said he shouldn't. But he was, and truth be told Sam was enjoying it, even if the suddenness of it all unnerved her.

"S-Sir?" she stammered as his gaze continued to move lower still. "What exactly are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes! Of course it matters! I mean," Sam paused in her explanation as Jack stood up and walked around the table so that he was now standing directly behind her. She tried to turn and face him, but two firm hands on her shoulders prevented that.

"You mean?" he prompted, his hands never leaving her shoulders. The gesture shouldn't have been sexy or suggestive in any way, but Sam couldn't find a way to convince herself of that.

"I mean," she began again, acutely aware that his hands were gently tracing patterns on the soft skin of her neck and stretching the fabric of her t-shirt to gain access to her collarbone, "we can't just… you know… There's too much at stake! We could both lose everything!"

"Mmmmm," Jack simply mumbled, his face now close enough to Sam's head that she could feel his breaths tickle her hair and neck. "I'm not worried."

"I have more to worry about, that's why! There's a court martial, dishonorable discharge… we'd both probably be kicked off the Stargate program entirely for this kind… kind of…" but Sam couldn't quite find the ability to finish her thought, as Jack's lips had replaced his fingers and were currently caressing the sensitive spot behind her ear. His hands had moved as well, trailing down her bare arms until they found their resting place just below her waist. His touch sent fluttering sensations racing throughout her body. It was getting a little difficult for her to breathe.

"Jack?" she managed, her hands finding his and coming to a rest on top of them. His fingers twitched slightly under them and against her abdomen. Sam was sure she was hanging onto rational thought by a thread. She'd wanted this for… well, far too long to be perfectly healthy and now here he was, Jack O'Neill, man of her dreams but normally so completely inaccessible, seducing her in her own lab in the middle of the night.

He didn't actually use words to reply, but Sam could feel his 'yes?' against her skin as it rumbled in his throat.

"What… why… why now?" She should have asked him to stop, but the part of her that was strong enough to ask that question had long since been pushed to the recesses of her mind, or at least it had been since Jack had lifted up the hem of her shirt and started running his fingers over her abdomen.

"It was time," he whispered against her ear. Soon after that neither of them was capable of speech, as their mouths were locked tightly together in an act too-long delayed.

To Sam, it felt like time had stopped. His kisses, his hands, his scent, the warmth and feel of his body… it was all too good to be true. His explorations were gentle but at the same time, a hint of urgency overshadowed them. She was entirely caught up in the sensations, though; he was the only thing in the universe that mattered at that moment in time.

That was probably why Sam didn't realize her pants were pooled around her ankles when she tried to stand and take a step closer to him and found herself practically falling into his chest. She felt Jack grin into the kiss he gave her before he lifted her up to rest on her lab table.

"Patience, Samantha." Sam looked up to find that damn smirk back on his face. She wanted to slap it off, but settled for a more pleasant form of removal.

"Whatever you say, Jack," she whispered back into his ear.

For the probably the first time since starting work at the SGC, Sam was not excited by the prospect of the start of a new day. This day was blissfully perfect just the way it was.

"Carter? Carter! Carter, wake up!" barked a familiar voice from just behind her. Upon registering just who said bark belonged to, Sam shot upright, looking around frantically for her pants.

"My pants!" she cried, her slightly bloodshot eyes wide open and searching her lab for her pants, as well as any other items of clothing.

"Uh, Carter?" Sam turned around to find a very confused, not to mention fully clothed, Colonel O'Neill behind her. "You're already wearing them."

Sam looked down, noting the blue regulation BDU's, black combat boots and black t-shirt she was already wearing. She felt them, patting herself a few times just to make sure she wasn't dreaming. No, it was real. She was really dressed. Colonel O'Neill was really behind her, and from the organized state of her lab table, she really hadn't had mind-blowing sex on it a little while ago. Damn. It must have all been a dream. Again. Sam resisted the urge to groan with frustration.

"Oh. Right. Of course."

"Did you happen to go home at all last night, Carter?" Jack pressed, giving her a piercing look that was definitely not in the same vein as the one he'd given her in her dream.

"No…" Sam could feel her face start to flush, this time out of sheer embarrassment more than anything else.

"You know, if you study these things too much you're going to end up -"

"Sir, would you please put that down. It's very fragile!" Jack set the remote control device he was fiddling with down a little heavier than was necessary. Sam winced at the thought of what he had done to the internal circuitry with that move. Her thoughts didn't stay there for long, however, as images from her dream kept resurfacing with each glance at him. If that kept happening, Sam knew she was in for a very, very long day.

"So…" Jack mused, walking around Sam's lab table, now with his hands clasped behind his back. If he noticed how nervous and shy Sam was acting around him currently, he didn't mention it. Sam was pretty good at covering up the social awkwardness of the situation, but she couldn't hide the flush from the tips of her ears to the base of her throat no matter how much she tried. He was going to ask, she just knew it…

"Wanna get some breakfast?"

The day progressed slower than usual and by the time she decided to go home, Sam was fairly relieved that she hadn't slipped up and mentioned anything about her dream from the previous night. In fact, the colonel gave almost no indication that he even thought something was up with her that day.

As she was walking out to her car, Sam felt a strong hand on her shoulder a few seconds after hearing footsteps approaching her. It was Jack, of course; only someone on SG-1 would pull a stunt like that and not end up in twenty-four hour hospital care. The feel of his hand on top of the shirt made her heart skip a few beats.

"Danny, T, and I are heading out to get take-out and rent some movies. Wanna come?"

Sam deliberated for only a second. Being in close proximity to him all evening probably wouldn't do anything for her dreams, but at least it beat sitting around in a lab with only the other machines for company all night long!

"If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants." --Albert Einstein