The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Based upon Stargate: SG-1
Chapter II: State of Equal Rest or Balance Due to Equal Action of Opposing Forces, or "Equilibrium"
- . - - - . -
Jack lay in his favorite La-Z-Boy chair. His arms were wrapped around his favorite physicist, Samantha Carter, who lay back against his chest. She had intertwined their fingers. She liked doing that, holding his hand, he'd learned in their few months of dating. Pretty much every chance they got, they were holding hands.
It was such an innocent gesture, but it meant the world to her, so it meant the world to him. She was a hand holder. Sure, he had liked holding hands as much as the next guy, but ever since he noticed that Sam was a hand holder, he noticed he was one too.
They were watching some movie that she claimed to love. Well, they were earlier. He stopped paying attention, instead focusing on the blonde in his arms, and he was pretty sure she had fallen asleep. That was alright.
Originally, their plan had been to go out to dinner, but when he had gotten to her place, he could tell she was exhausted. She tried to pretend that she wasn't, but he could see through her. So, they went through the drive-thru and he took her back to his place.
They ate their burgers and then she climbed onto his chair with him, like she always did. In addition to being a hand holder, Samantha Carter was a cuddle-er, but that was okay. He liked cuddling with her.
They had fallen into a bit of a pattern since they started dating. Sam called it "equilibrium," saying that all forces acting were equal and opposite. It meant that she was comfortable with them. He had to admit, he was pretty damn comfortable, especially at times like these, cuddling together with his arms around her and holding hands.
A vibration startled him and he moved a little, searching for the source. It was on his thigh. Sam jumped as well. "What is?" she looked around, confused and groggy, "oh," she realized. She let go of his hands and partially rolled over and put her hand in her back pocket to pull out her cell phone.
"Hello?" she answered with a yawn.
Jack could hear the voice on the other side of the phone. "Sam?"
"Oh, hi Dad," she answered, leaning back into Jack's chest. He slung his arms back around her, leaning back into his comfortable position in his chair.
"Did I wake you? It's eight thirty."
Sam stretched a little against him. "Yeah, it's been a long couple of days."
"Why don't you come let me in?"
Sam bolted upright, all signs of sleep gone from her. "You're at my house?"
"Yeah, aren't you here? Your car's here."
"Umm," Sam's voice waivered. "No. I'm not."
"Where are you?" Even through the phone, Jack could hear the suspicion in General Carter's voice, and to be honest, Jack was about as nervous as Sam. This was not how he wanted to meet her father, the Major General.
"I'm . . . um . . . at a friend's place. We had take-out and I fell asleep. It's okay, you stay there and I'll have him drop me off."
"Him?" the general's voice rose.
"Dad, we'll see you in fifteen minutes." Sam hung up on her father. She turned in Jack's lap. "This isn't exactly how I planned for you two to meet," she said with a nervous expression that showed her teeth but was definitely not a smile.
"Yeah, me neither," he replied truthfully. Neither of them moved. No one knew about their relationship, and they liked it that way.
"Come on," she said, getting off him and pulling him to his feet. "We shouldn't keep the General waiting."
They drove to Sam's house in a comforting quiet. He pulled into her drive, behind her father's vehicle. He was leaning on the hood with his arms crossed casually. Sam looked at him. "I'll get out first, take your time, a little, not too much time . . ."
Jack smiled. "I'll count to three." Well, it was nice to know that she was more nervous about him meeting her dad than he was.
Sam smiled nervously before jumping out of his truck and walking over to her father. "Dad!" she wrapped her arms around him. He did the same and kissed her cheek.
"Do I get to meet your friend?" he asked.
She smiled nervously and held her hand out towards Jack. "Dad, this is Jack O'Neill. Jack, my dad, Jacob Carter."
"It's nice to finally meet you, Sir," he said, walking over from his truck. He would have offered his hand to the General, but didn't because he didn't think he would take it.
General Carter considered him carefully for a second before turning back to his daughter. "Jack O'Neill? As in, the First Sergeant O'Neill you work with?"
"Yes, Sir," Jack said, stepping up next to Sam, almost taking a defensive position.
"I suppose Sam's told you about me."
"A little, Sir."
General Carter watched him carefully. Jack knew that he was about to get the what are your intentions with my daughter speech. For a split second, he wondered if General Carter had ever given it before, but the thought vanished when he realized he didn't really care. "So you know that I'm in the Air Force, as well."
"Yes, Sir."
"Did she tell you what I did before I was promoted to general staff?"
"Yes, Sir. Sam told me you were a fighter pilot during Vietnam." Jack knew that the General was trying to get him to bend, but he held his ground. He didn't glance at Sam, even though he was sure she looked terrified.
"That's right. What did you do in the Air Force before you started analyzing deep space radar telemetry?" There was more than a touch of condescension in his voice. It was obvious General Carter didn't think some random desk jockey was good enough for his daughter. For having a brilliant daughter as a scientist, he didn't seem to think very highly of them.
"Actually, Sir, I don't analyze telemetry. My position in Cheyenne Mountain is more about troop management. But before I was stationed here in the Springs, I was a parachute jumper. I was removed from the active special forces when I injured my knee a few years ago."
General Carter tried to hide his surprise. Jack wanted to laugh, the man obviously hadn't expected that. Then he smiled at Sam. "Well, we don't have to stand out here in the driveway all night."
"Oh, right," she turned towards the door and let everyone inside.
The General coughed falsely. "Sam, do you mind getting me a glass of water?" he asked.
"Sure, Dad." Jack could tell she knew he didn't need one, but she fled from the room anyway.
When she disappeared General Carter turned back to Jack with a hard look on his face. "What are you doing with my daughter, Sergeant?"
"Excuse me, Sir?" By deliberately calling him "Sergeant" instead of "First Sergeant" Jack knew he meant the question as both threatening and derogatory.
The General took a step forward. "Let me rephrase. What the hell are you doing with my daughter?"
"At the risk of sounding juvenile, Sir, I'm dating her," he said in the light, yet serious tone he preferred to speak in.
"Don't get smart with me, O'Neill," General Carter snapped.
"Of course not, Sir. My mistake," Jack corrected himself without changing his tone.
"That is my only daughter," the General leaned forward, menacingly, "and, so help me God . . ."
He never finished his statement because Sam came back into the room. He turned and smiled at her. "Thank you," he took a sip from his glass.
"Sam, I think I'm gonna head home," Jack said.
She gave him an apologetic look. "You don't have to."
He stepped past General Carter, and stood face-to-face with Sam. "I know, I'm just going to give you some time with your dad. I know you haven't seen him in a while." He kissed her cheek. "I'll call you tomorrow." He walked towards the door, but paused. "It was good to meet you, Sir. I hope to see you again, soon."
- . - . -
It was Tuesday night and Jack sat in his favorite La-Z-Boy with his favorite physicist sitting between his legs and resting back against his chest. His arms were wrapped tight around her, and their fingers were intertwined.
Sam's father had left that morning and after work she came over with an "apology pizza," as she called it.
"I'm sorry Dad acted like that. I talked to him about it," she had said when she got there.
He smiled at her, taking the pizza and locating some plates and a beer for her. "It's not your fault."
She followed him into the kitchen. "That doesn't make it okay."
He put down the pizza and slung his arms low around her waist. "He just wants to protect you from all the sleazy enlisted guys who aren't good enough for you."
"Like you?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
He nodded, leaning in. "Exactly like me." She popped up on her toes to kiss him.
After their dinner, he sat down in his chair and she climbed onto him. He pulled the lever and rocked them backwards. He handed her the remote from the little table next to his chair and wrapped his arms around her, placing a kiss on the top of her head.
She channel surfed for a little until she found something about World War I weapons, then put the remote down and interlaced their fingers.
That had been at least an hour ago, now the show was onto weapons of World War II.
Jack kept thinking about Sam's dad. The man had the right to be concerned about Jack. For all he knew, Jack was some smarmy enlisted man who thought he was a god because he knew how to shoot a gun. The General loved his daughter and just wanted to protect her, well Jack loved her too.
Every muscle in Jack's body tightened simultaneously. Jack loved her. Jack loved Sam. Jack O'Neill loved Sam Carter.
"What?" she asked, she had felt him tense, but was somewhat disinterested.
"I love you," he said, the words somehow making the idea seem more real.
She tensed as well. She didn't move for a second, but then let go of his hands and turned to face him. "Say it again," she breathed.
"I love you," he repeated, the words sounding almost exactly the same.
She smiled. "I love you, too." She scooted up to his face and placed a long, smooth kiss on his lips.
He nibbled on her lips as she pulled back. She then turned and settled back into her place against his chest and laced their fingers again, holding his arms around her tight.
"I love you," he repeated again.
She squeezed his hands. "I love you."
- . - . -
Jack watched the man turn Sam, while offering to take her to lunch. He fumed for a second, but let it happen. At least, he let it happen until the man's arm around her shoulder started to slide down. Jack jumped into action and grabbed the man's wrist before it got to her lower back or - heaven forbid - even further.
"Excuse me, Doctor McKay," he said, pulling the man around to face him. "I don't know how they do things where you're from, but here at Cheyenne we don't touch things that don't belong to us and we keep our hands to ourselves."
McKay smiled that arrogant smile, "Sure," and moved to keep going.
Jack tightened his grip and wrenched McKay's arm a little harder, causing pain. "Do you understand?" he asked.
McKay nodded, a touch of fear in his gaze.
Jack smiled darkly and released him. "Good. I guess I'll just accompany you to lunch then, just to make sure you learn our customs. You know, thanking the mess staff, using a napkin, those kinds of things."
Sam looked up at him with gratitude. He shot her a quick smile before stepping between her and McKay and heading towards the cafeteria with his hand on McKay's shoulder, pushing him along.
After lunch, McKay was thoroughly uncomfortable and more than a little scared, so Jack continued to follow him around until Major Jackson called him to help him with some fitness reports. Near the middle of the afternoon, Jack made his way to Sam's lab, grateful to see her alone.
"Hey," he said.
She looked up and smiled, glad to see him. "Hey."
"McKay give you any more trouble?" he asked, walking over to her.
She shook her head. "No. He was here for a while, but left as soon as we were done."
"Good." He leaned back against her lab table next to her.
"Thanks," she said, bumping his shoulder with hers.
"What kind of guy would I be if I let someone threaten your honor?"
She smiled at him and tilted her head up to kiss him. He pivoted around so she was between him and the lab table and kissed her. She put both hands on either side of his neck and held him close to her. This was the first time they kissed in the Mountain, he liked it. It almost felt like they were breaking the rules. He did enjoy fighting the man.
After a while she released his lips and pulled him into an embrace. He held her tight.
"If you touches you . . ." he said.
She pulled back and looked up at him. "I'll tell you."
Jack pulled her back to his chest tightly, thinking about McKay and others like him. He didn't know what he would do to someone if they ever touched her. Just thinking about it made him angry. He didn't want to have to find out what he would do.
He released her and kissed her lips once more. "I'll let you get back to work."
She squeezed his hand. "Thanks for being my knight in shining armor."
He flashed her a smile at her doorway. "Always."
- . - . -
Jack helped her remove the blouse she had worn to dinner, leaving the dark red spaghetti-strap skivvy shirt-thing she had on. He leaned forward slightly and she let him push her back into the couch. She brought her legs up so her was lying between them and tilted her head back as he kissed her neck. One of her hands immediately came to his head, tangling her fingers in his hair. He barely heard her glasses clattering onto the coffee table.
"Tell me about this," he said without removing his lips from her skin.
"About what?" she asked, straining to form words into a coherent sentence.
"About what I'm doing to your neck." He, again, didn't take his lips from her neck.
"W-W," she stuttered into a groan, "What exactly are you doing to my neck?"
He felt her other hand find a position on his lower back and the one in his hair flexed. "Sucking. I'm sucking on your neck."
She moaned again.
"So, Doctor," he pulled back a little, "explain the physics of that." Jack placed a kiss on her neck and moved his way down to her chest. He found a place low enough that it would be covered by most of her shirts.
He knew her wardrobe quite well, and what could and could not be seen. He couldn't help but take inventory of her outfit and every patch of skin he could (or could not) see every time he looked at her.
She let out a wonderful sound, something between a moan and a grunt, as he returned his lips to her skin. "It's what happens when you apply a pressure differential," she said, her words under great strain.
"Which means what?" he asked, forming the words against her chest.
"Difference," she gasped, then took a long deep breath. "A pressure difference."
"What's," he asked, using the opportunity to gulp some air, "pressure?"
"Force per unit area."
He smiled against her skin and ran his teeth over the mark he was making. "I already know what force is. Does pressure have another definition?"
"You're learning fast," she gulped air. For a second, she sounded extremely proud of him, but that disappeared when he turned her attention back to his lips on her skin and not the words coming out of them. "A lot of things in physics have more than one definition. Pressure can also be defined by 'P' equals rho 'R' 'T'."
He murmured his understanding. "What do those stand for?"
Her fingers flexed against his skull. "'P' is Pressure." He murmured again, she continued. "Rho is the density."
"What's density?"
"Mass per unit volume," she breathed.
"Nah, I don't like that one." He licked his mark on her skin. "What's next?"
"'R' is the universal gas constant."
"Like a multiplying coefficient?" he asked.
Her hand on his back shifted upwards to clutch his shoulder blade. "Exactly."
He shook his head a little. "What's the next one?"
"I think you'll like this one," she said before releasing a moan.
He smiled against her skin again. "Really?"
"Yeah," she breathed. "'T' is temperature."
He nipped her skin before moving a little lower, right to the line of the little shirt-thing she had on. "What's temperature?" he asked before latching onto the creamy skin.
"It's got a strange definition, but it's basically our intuitive understanding on hot and cold."
"Like, it's really hot right now, which means high temperature," he said.
Both of her hands flexed. "Exactly," she moaned.
"So what's the technical definition?" he asked, sliding his tongue under the top of her shirt-thing.
She didn't answer for a second, her hands gripped him tight.
"Sam?"
"Oh, right," she loosened her grip as she remembered what they had been talking about. "It's the measure of the entropy or disorder of a system."
"Tell me more."
"In an irreversible reaction, entropy always increases," she said, the breath almost completely gone from her voice.
He slipped his hands down to her waist and started working on her belt.
"Jack."
"Sam," he groaned.
"Jack, stop," she said. That time, he heard the inflection in her voice and stilled his hands, looking up. She had lifted her head off the armrest of the couch and was staring at him. Every muscle in her body was tense, the nails of every one of her fingers digging into him, he had made her uncomfortable - not for the first time. But, for the first time, there was fear in her eyes.
He almost jumped off her, rolling onto the floor and kneeling in front of her. "Sam, I'm . . ." for once, it was he who had nothing to say. He stared at his hands, the ones that had just been taking advantage of her.
She sat up and took his face in both her hands. "Jack," she said softer. It was clear to him that she was looking for some comforting words, but could not find them.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "It's okay that you're not ready, and I shouldn't've . . . I'm sorry." He stood up, causing her hands to fall away from his face. "I'm gonna go home now."
She grabbed his arm. "Stay."
"I'm not pressuring you into anything you don't want to do. I won't do that to you," it was more of a promise to himself than to her. He still couldn't look at her.
She stood up and pulled him to her, taking both his hands in hers. "I'm know." He was surprised by the confidence in her voice, usually talking about this kind of stuff made her nervous and uncomfortable.
Sam smiled softly. She bent down to come up at his lips while he was looking down and she kissed him softly and let his forehead rest against hers. "Stay a little longer," she whispered. "Please."
"Sam, I don't want to force . . . I mean, we don't have to . . ."
She maneuvered him down onto the couch. "I know, I just want you to stay a little while longer." He put his feet up on the couch and spread his legs a little to give her some room to lie down on top of him like she always did. She leaned her back against his chest and pulled his arms around her. She intertwined their fingers, like she always did.
"I still love you," she said, not giving him a chance to start brooding.
He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her hands in his. "Don't ever let me do anything you don't want. If there's ever anything . . ."
She shushed him gently and placed a kiss on the back of his hand before settling his arms back around her.
He tightened his grip on her and didn't loosen it. "If I ever hurt you . . ."
She released his hands and turned over in his arms, crawling up his length a little. "You won't." She kissed his lips. "You just got a little excited. It's okay."
Even looking into her eyes then, he couldn't banish the image of her fear.
"I like it when you kiss me," she said softly, as if she was embarrassed to hear the words come out of her own mouth. She probably was embarrassed to say it.
"I like kissing you," he admitted quietly.
She smiled at him again. "Then stay, and hold me a little while."
"I love you, too," he finally reciprocated the statement she had made minutes ago.
She must have been satisfied with his answer, because rested her head on his chest. She tucked one arm beneath her but reached out for his hand. He brought his hand up and intertwined their fingers. "I love you so much," he said, tightening his arm around her.
She shushed him again but remained silent.
Her trust in him was . . . He didn't deserve it, that was for sure. Yet, she had made it clear that she trusted him. He wanted her so bad, but as she lay in his arms, all he could think about was making her feel safe. Maybe he could trust himself not to hurt her. He just had to keep her safe, and wanting to keep her safe was easy.
The next thing Jack knew, there was a bright light in his eyes. He squinted as he opened his eyes, seeing the light pouring through the large window. He squinted, staring at it (if it was possible to squint and stare at the same time). He didn't understand why it was bright outside, unless . . .
Then it hit him, it was morning. He had fallen asleep at Sam's house, on Sam's couch, underneath Sam. Their fingers were still twined together but his other arm was wrapped around her tightly. He smiled at her. He'd never seen her sleep, not like this.
He caught her snoozing in her lab, or dozing off world while they were waiting for something, but never like this. He had never seen her sleeping a real night's sleep, without a care in the world.
He wanted to marry her.
The thought popped into his head suddenly. So suddenly, he almost jumped, surprising himself. Marriage. The word tumbled around his mind for a few minutes.
A smile grew across his face. He wanted to marry Samantha Carter. He wanted it to be his job to make her safe. He wanted it to be his job to hold her when she was tired or scared. He wanted to make her completely off limits to anyone who might get hot for his teacher.
She stirred in his arms, and he knew she was waking up. A smile grew on her face before she opened her eyes. But, when she did open those gorgeous eyes of hers, they widened in surprise and embarrassment. "Oh my God," she whispered.
He smiled and tugged her face up to his. "It's okay, I like waking up with you."
Sam's mouth moved, but she didn't say anything.
He kissed her, once. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about."
The look on her face told him that she didn't believe him.
"Well, there might be one thing," he admitted.
"What?" she asked, that familiar nervous waiver in her voice.
"It'd be a little embarrassing if you asked me to stay the night and then didn't offer me breakfast the next morning."
She smiled her I'm-still-nervous-but-trying-not-to-be smile. "Do you want some breakfast?"
He shrugged, feigning disinterest. "I don't know what are we having?" He smirked, to let her know he was joking.
"Well, I've got cereal, or we could make breakfast. Eggs and bacon."
He smiled and kissed her again, leaning forward as a cue for her to get up. "Sounds delicious."
He watched her head down the hall towards her bedroom. Oh yeah, he thought to himself, we're gettin' married. If she'll have me, we're gettin' married."
- . - - - . -
~~ Stay tuned for chapter three, the finale ~~