A/N: A bit of an advance warning: there's going to be a very angsty chapter in the near future. Probably not the next chapter...but soon. I'm telling you now so you all don't get genre whiplash or something.
Carly had taken to wearing Jack's shirts to bed while he was away. These weren't exactly the most graceful choices in sleepwear (due to their significant difference in height, the necklines were just this side of indecent on her, and long sleeves had to be rolled back several times), but she wasn't doing this for style. No, she'd realized early on that those shirts had Jack's scent all over them.
Jack was a very clean man...even in Satellite he'd showered almost every day. He had once boasted Carly that the other guys complained about him using up all the shampoo and soap, but he wasn't the one smelling like a landfill. Carly had decided against pointing out that they probably smelled that way because Jack used all the soap. At any rate, she found the faint soap-and-cologne smell of the shirts to be very comforting; almost as good as actually embracing him. Other people would most likely say that it was the laundry detergent she was smelling, but Carly knew that it wasn't the same as detergent at all.
Depending on her mood, Carly had one of two reactions to the scent. If she was feeling anxious, or uncomfortable due to being pregnant, this ritual helped her relax and get to sleep more easily. When she was in a happier frame of mind, she often got aroused by the mental images that the aroma invoked. Then she'd have to take care of that little problem (which also had the effect of relaxing her, so it was all more or less the same in the end). This reminded her of how she used to fantasize about Jack in the days before they met, although back then Carly would have practically had to sell a kidney just to get her hands on one of his dirty socks.
None of this was quite a secret, but Carly had never told Jack about it directly. She suspected that if she did, he would tease her about it for quite some time.