Jack woke up with a start, but years of experience waking in strange places allowed him to immediately remember where he was, and whom he was with. Only he wasn't, not anymore. The moonlight streamed in through the windows of Samantha Carter's bedroom, illuminating the empty crumpled sheets lying in bed next to him.

He got up and left the room to find her. He didn't have to look far. She was sitting at her kitchen table, staring out the sliding glass door in front of her. Her back was to him, and as he watched, she ran her hand through her short blonde hair, still tousled from sleep. Then, smiling slightly, she looked over her shoulder at him. "You gonna stand there in the doorway forever, or would you like to come in and join me?"

Jack sat across the table from her, his reflection in the door's glass moving with him, explaining how Carter knew he was there despite his silence. Gesturing to the mug of what smelled like tea sitting in front of her, he asked, "Trouble sleeping?"

Sam glanced down into her tea, seeming to search for answers in its brown depths. Taking a deep breath, clearly making a decision, she looked back up, her wide blue eyes boring intently into his own brown. "I guess I'm just a little worried. The last week with you has been – incredible. Really. But last night, seeing you writing out your resignation…"

Carter's voice trailed off and she dropped her gaze, her nerve exhausted, but Jack had heard enough. "Made it all pretty real, huh?"

"Yeah. There are just so many unknowns. What if--?" Her words broke off abruptly at his chuckle. "What?"

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's… You're being so – you." He reached forward and gently stroked her cheek with the back of his hand as he concluded, "I love you, Samantha. That's all that really matters now."

"But…"

Jack shook his head. "No 'buts.'"

Being Samantha Carter, however, she refused to be silenced. "They might not accept it, Jack. You know how the Pentagon feels about you."

"Then I'll resign my commission."

"You could lose everything."

He smiled at her. "Why, where are you going?"

"I…" Realization struck, and she blushed slightly, smiling back at him despite her concern. "Nowhere."

"Then I guess I don't have to worry, do I?"

"Jack, I can't ask you to…"

"You never have," he agreed, unable to completely keep bitterness at his own stupidity out of his voice. He quickly continued, "Carter, I've saved the world I can't count how many times. I don't think anyone is going to insist I still owe anyone anything."

Carter nodded. "I know that, rationally. It just matters so much, and we've waited so long." She smiled, defeated at last by his optimism. "I guess I'm just not used to being happy. I keep expecting something to go wrong."

Jack saw the opening he had been waiting for. The opportunity he had wanted since sitting at the pool with Mark Carter watching Sam play with her niece and nephew, when his whole future had opened up before him. "Sam, there is one way to be sure. One loophole in the regulations, something even the military can't regulate." He intentionally left out the fact that it would prove to her once and for all, publicly and legally, that his 'always' meant forever.

He waited, unable to breathe, watching her reaction. He could almost see the gears turning behind beautiful eyes which grew still rounder and wider as she realized what he had meant. "Jack…? You can't mean… Are you asking me to--?"

He shook his head and reached across the table to take both her hands in his own. This simple physical contact gave him the courage to continue. "No, Carter. I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm telling you that I love you more than I would ever have thought possible, and I can't imagine the rest of my life without you by my side. I know you like I know myself, and no amount of waiting could teach me more.

"I'm also telling you the one way to be absolutely certain nothing can come between us. Once we're married, the Air Force can approve my retirement, they can transfer us, or they can ignore us. The one thing they can't do is punish us. Marriage isn't against the regulations, and with your record, no one can even claim favoritism. At least, not for you, though that might explain my promotion—"

Jack interrupted himself, saying, "Look, Sam, I'm not asking for an answer now. Just think about it, okay? But know one thing: if you decide to marry me, I'll have you in front of a minister so fast your head will spin. You've been warned."

Sam nodded wordlessly and, to Jack's intense relief, she was smiling slightly as he finished speaking. Having said what he'd wanted to say and not wanting to pressure her into a decision she'd later regret, he quickly changed the subject. "Speaking of doing some thinking, I know this great little spot for it up in Northern Minnesota. Nice cabin besides blue waters…"

That succeeded in breaking the mood, and Carter chuckled, shaking her head in disbelief. "Jack, are you asking me to go fishing? Again?"

He gave her his best little boy smile. "Yeah, sure. You betcha."

-------------

At first, she'd resisted his invitation, but he'd eventually defeated all her arguments against the trip, so here they all were in Minnesota, Daniel and Teal'c having been invited as much for their company as to hide the new nature of Sam and Jack's relationship. They couldn't both put in for leave to the same place at the same time, and a team-building exercise was the perfect cover.

Sam was forced to admit the day had been wonderful, and she'd revised her opinion of fishing. Well, to be perfectly honest, she'd revised her opinion of fishing with Jack. She smiled to herself. She'd been finding there were a lot of things which were better with Jack; practically everything, in fact, which was why she was out there now, thinking about Jack, and about how the thought of marrying him was so different from marrying anyone else. She'd thought about marriage before, obviously, since she'd been engaged twice already. In both cases, there had been problems from the start, little things that she had initially felt she could live with but which had loomed larger as the wedding date approached.

With Jack, ironically, she had the opposite problem. The idea of being married to him, of shaping their personal lives together in the same way they'd long shaped their professional ones, felt too right, too perfect. Sam kept looking for the catch; the problem with their getting married which she was failing to see, because as far as she could tell, Jack was right. Marriage solved all their problems, and opened up a lifetime of happiness too good to be true, which, of course, brought her back around to the original problem.

Caught up in her thoughts, Sam failed to notice Jack's nearly silent approach. "You need to stop doing this," he softly admonished from behind her.

She turned to look at him. He stood lit by the moonlight, hair messed from sleep, hands shoved into the pockets of wrinkled sweatpants which she vaguely recalled tossing on the ground earlier that evening. His mouth turned up at the corners in the tenderest of smiles under brown eyes shining with love.

All fear and doubt were forgotten in an instant, and Samantha smiled back at him. "How quickly did you say you could get a minister?" she asked before stepping forward into the circle of his embrace.

Jack pulled her to his chest, his hand at her neck pressing her cheek to his shoulder. "You sure?" he murmured into her hair.

"More sure than I've ever been about anything before," she answered honestly. His arms tightened around her, and she relaxed against him, the tension of the last few weeks draining into his solid frame. Parts of which, she noticed, were quickly becoming more solid. Her instinct, trained over years, was to avoid mentioning it, but now…

She rubbed her abdomen against him, and he moaned, "Carter…"

She smiled and kissed his neck, "Mhm?"

"Maybe we should move inside…?"

She giggled. "Before you have to explain to the guys why you've got your sidearm out?"

"Oh, not that," he replied, chuckling himself, "I'd tell them the truth."

She pulled back to look up at him, one eyebrow arched warningly. "Which is?"

"I'd tell them you wanted to use it for… 'target practice'." She playfully batted him on the chest and, still laughing, arms wrapped around each other, they headed back into the dark and silent cabin.

-----------------------------

The next morning at breakfast, Sam and Jack told Daniel and Teal'c their plans and, after an appropriate round of congratulations, they began making phone calls. A marriage license could be obtained by Saturday; a local pastor was available and could come out to the cabin on that day; Cassie was sure she could get there by Saturday morning, even if she had to drive all the way up from Minneapolis. If, amidst the flurry of activity, Daniel and Teal'c noticed that their friends looked as if they hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, they may have exchanged knowing grins, but wisely chose not to mention a thing.