Somehow, I always forget to add this: These characters aren't mine. I just like to take them out to play. I promise I'll put them back and that I won't make them do anything untoward. I'm not making anything from this—except maybe a little satisfaction in sharing stories that The Powers That Be never got around to telling.

So there.

Passing Flight

It had felt good to go off world again. Of course, he'd had to put up with the likes of Harry Maybourne and his gaggle of Medieval wives, but in the end, he'd ended up with a rush of nostalgic adrenaline.

Oh yeah, and a time machine.

Cool.

He missed this part of the job. He missed being with his team, heading off to who-knew-where to battle who-knew-who over who-knew-what. It had been so easy to slide back into the routine of it. He sort of wished that he could use the little ship they'd found to go back only a few years—back before Tok'ra Xerox detectors and little nasty metal bugs. Back when they went off world, confronted a problem, and then fixed it.

So after his Jaffa kicking, system lord destroying, time machine adventure, he'd been greeted back by a voice mail from Cassie. They were out of milk.

It had reminded Jack that a) they were indeed out of milk, and b) he still hadn't talked to Cassie about moving back to Carter's house.

Talk about your buzz kill.

He would have gladly returned to Maybourne's harem as long as he didn't have to talk to Cassandra. Why was it always the women in his life making things difficult? He didn't have these problems with Daniel or Teal'c. Well, with Daniel, maybe. But only because Ol' Danny-boy was really quite scarily in touch with his feminine side.

Obediently, he'd gone by Albertson's and picked up a gallon of skim for her and 2% for himself. He just couldn't bring himself to drink the blue water of skim. He'd ordered the latest season of the Simpson's on DVD from Amazon and it had arrived while he'd been off-world. A little Heineken, a lot of Homer, and he'd have the 'nads necessary to discuss things with Cass.

He wasn't expecting to find Kinsey in his living room. Looking back, he should have shot him when he had the chance. Instead, they had played war games with the Ruskies, until the President of the former Soviet Union had figured out that his key General and top advisor was, in fact, a snake headed Goa'uld.

And then Kinsey had flown the coop in a stolen Al'Kesh. Yep. He really should have shot him when he'd had the chance.

Cassie wasn't there when he got home, but she'd left dinner warming in the oven and a bottle of Tums on the counter. She knew that dealing with Kinsey always gave him heartburn. He was oddly touched.

He dished himself some lasagna from the casserole dish and debated briefly before choosing a soda over a beer. Balancing the plate and the soda, he moved himself into the living room and sat, prepared to treat himself to all of his yellowish friends in Springfield. He'd barely pressed the first buttons on the remote when the front door burst open.

"Jack?" Cassie's voice echoed in the foyer. "You in here?"

He didn't have time to answer before her head poked around the divider. She'd added a streak or two of purple to the blond stripes in her hair.

"Hey—Melissa and I were wondering if we could host a study group here."

"Here? Now?" Jack's looked down to where his plate was balanced on his lap, his can of soda leaning precariously against one thigh, and each hand held a remote.

"Yeah—just a few people. It's for Biology, so I kind of need the help."

"Now?"

"The study rooms in the library are all full."

"How many?"

"Not too many—ten, I think."

"There's not enough lasagna."

Cassie grinned. "I know. We'll get pizza. It's really important. These are the smart ones in the class, and I could really use their skills."

Jack set down his remotes, picked up his can and plate, and stood. "It's really important?"

"Jack—come on. Please?" Her fingers tapped the wall directly below his picture of Sara and Charlie.

She was working on a whine, he could tell. Nothing could get him to clear out of a room faster than a woman whining. The General wondered briefly if she knew that. "Okay—do I need to clear all the way out, or can I hang around?"

"It might be kind of noisy."

"Studying makes noise?"

"Well, yeah, when there are a bunch of people doing it together." She said, but her tone said, "Duh."

Jack shrugged, the plate and can moving upward with the movement. "All right. But I've got an early morning meeting, so you'll have to clear out by eleven."

Cassie squealed and bounded over to him. She threw her arms around his neck and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "You're the greatest, General O'Neill."

"Back at'cha, General Pain." It had become their joke.

----OOOOOOO----

So that was how he ended up at O'Malley's eating wings and drinking a beer. He'd thought he would escape to his room, or to the deck above to look through his telescope, but in the end he'd wanted to be somewhere other than amongst the giggling and chatting that apparently comprised studying these days.

He sat at the bar, determined to make the beer last the duration, debating a game of pool. The people at the tables looked as if they were on break from college—too young, too tanned, too loud. He sighed. No pool tonight.

"So, what's with the long face?" The voice came from the bar stool on his left. He turned to see a woman sitting next to him. She was mid thirties—pretty. Lots of brown curly hair. She smiled. "You look upset about something."

He took a fortifying swig of his beer. "Not really."

She looked over in the direction of the pool tables. "It looks like they're having fun."

"It looks like they're drunk."

"And drunk would be bad." Her statement was really more of a question.

"Drunk is drunk." Jack picked up the piece of celery that had come with his wings. "I just don't want to play pool with drunk."

"Ah, so it's the pool you wanted, not the company." She focused back on the plate in front of her. A large salad piled high. "My mistake."

The people next to her were obviously a couple. So, he figured, she was here alone, too.

He watched her unobtrusively as she picked up her fork and took a bite. She made a face as she chewed, looking around for something. Under a napkin, she found a small cup of dressing, and another full of chopped bacon. She smiled.

She was really pretty—what he could see of her face around her hair, at least. She was tall and slim, and filled out her sweater well. He looked away and dipped his celery into the ranch dressing they had brought with his wings. Frowning, Jack wondered exactly how long it had been since a pretty woman had started up a conversation with him in a bar.

He remembered disco playing, and some funky smoke, and someone wearing silver boots.

"It doesn't mean you can't have company if you don't want it." Her voice intruded again on O'Neill's thoughts. "I mean, here we are, sitting at the only two bar stools available in this place, side by side, and we both happen to be unaccompanied by anyone else. Some might call it kismet."

"Some might." He agreed. "Or some might call it pathetic that two such individuals as ourselves are sitting at the only bar stools available and yet, still, by ourselves."

"Is that self-pity I hear in your voice?"

"You tell me." Jack watched as she twisted her mouth up to keep from smiling. She seemed to smile a lot. But it was okay—she looked good doing it. She had a great smile.

"So why does an individual such as yourself find himself at a place like this alone?" She doused her salad in honey mustard dressing and liberally coated the top with the chopped bacon.

"Hunger?"

She poked him with a delicate finger. "I'm trying to ascertain whether or not you are involved with someone else."

Duh. That took a lot of thought. Was he? Physically—no. He was the proverbial bird, flying solo. Emotionally? All kinds of cans of worms would be opened by that. He opted for physical. He said simply, "Divorced."

"Kids?"

His mouth flattened impossibly. "No." That still hurt.

"How long ago?"

"Eight years."

"And you're still unattached?"

"It's complicated." Even Jack knew how lame that sounded.

"Well, all I can say is that the women of Colorado Springs must be blind to overwhelming cuteness." She poked him again.

"Cuteness, huh?"

"The overwhelming kind." Her eyes were kind of sparkly. He wondered how she did that.

"And you are—" He had to know.

She turned, offering him her hand. "Kerry Johnson."

He looked at it briefly before reaching across his wings and shaking it. "Jack O'Neill."

Kerry screwed up her face, her mouth smiling just a bit. The grip she still had on his hand tightened. Not unpleasant, he thought. "Not General Jack O'Neill?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm meeting with a General Jack O'Neill tomorrow. I could tell you where, but then I'd have to shoot you." She squeezed his hand again before letting it go.

And then the light dawned. "Kerry Johnson—you're CIA—here doing the—uh—investigation?"

"The Kinsey Trust thing. Yeah." She grinned. "I got here this afternoon. I'm staying at the hotel across the street."

"Fortuitous."

"There isn't a restaurant in the hotel—continental breakfast only—" Kerry waved her hand dismissively. "And I was too wiped to try and find something decent tonight. Jet lag—you know." Her grin widened. She turned her body towards him, resting her left elbow on the bar. "Now we know why I'm here—what about you?"

"My house has been invaded by freshmen."

Her look questioned.

"Someone's hosting study hall at my place. Term finals are next week."

"You have a kid in college?" Her brow furrowed slightly.

"Sort of." How did he explain Cassie? "She's the daughter of a friend who died recently."

Kerry mulled that over for a minute before clarifying. "Cassandra Frasier?"

He was slightly surprised that she knew that much. The raise of his eyebrows must have told her that. "How did you—"

"I do my homework."

"Ah." He laid his celery aside. "And what else did this homework tell you?"

She speared a cherry tomato with her fork. "Well, for one thing, I learned all kinds of things about you."

"Obviously not what I look like." At her look, he expounded. "You didn't recognize me immediately."

"That's not fair." The tomato looked like a small planetoid as she gestured with her fork. "Picture is in dress blues—not jeans and a sweatshirt. And your hair is different now."

"I'm in disguise."

She stabbed in his direction with the tomato. "It's grayer."

"Yes. It is that."

"Distinguished. Kinda sexy." Somehow, he couldn't take his eyes off the tomato. She moved the fork towards her mouth and pulled the tomato off the tines with her teeth. He caught a glimpse of her tongue, and he wondered randomly if she had done that on purpose.

How long had it been since he had mused on the movements on a woman's tongue? Jogging paths aside, of course. He decided then and there to only focus on tongues he was allowed to notice from now on.

"The picture doesn't do you justice, you know." She'd swallowed, and now a slice of cucumber had been impaled on her fork.

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"Well," Kerry shook her hair back from her face and leisurely raked his body from head to toe. "I was expecting an old soldier type. You know—a 'damn the torpedoes' kind of guy."

"That would be Navy." Jack pointed out. "I'm Air Force. We don't damn torpedoes, we shoot them down."

"Whatever. All I'm saying is that in general—"

"In General—funny."

She grinned, and breathed out a laugh. "In general, higher up military types seem stiff. You're not that at all."

"Do you know me well enough to make that judgment?"

The cucumber went the way of the tomato. She shrugged as she chewed, holding his gaze. At her swallow, she licked a spot of dressing from the corner of her mouth. "I think I'd like to. Know you, that is. I'd love to know you better."

Jack regarded her intently. It had not only been a long time since he'd chatted up a woman in a bar, it had been so long that an entire generation had been conceived and raised. His last relationship hadn't even been with a woman on Earth. He wasn't sure he even knew how to function in this sphere any more. Not to mention the other elephant in his head—the blond one with the huge blue eyes.

But that elephant was marrying the shrub in a few short weeks.

Kerry Johnson, CIA, sat next to him right here and now. She was interested, if he still knew how to read body language, and they were both adults. And he was tired of waiting—of being alone, if the truth were to be told. Doc Polly might say he'd had a breakthrough.

"I mean, I know that we've just met, but I find you really intriguing—especially knowing some of the other—" She looked around and then back at Jack, lowering her voice, "more interesting things about you."

"You only want me for my intel. Nice."

Kerry glanced down at his jeans-covered thighs. "Well, since I've never met a General who fills out Levi's like that, I'd say there's more to it than just your intel." When she poked him this time, it was in the thigh. "Overwhelming cuteness, remember?"

Flirting. That's what she was doing. She was flirting with him. Jack watched her toss her curls again. Her brown eyes sparkled at him as she took another bite of her salad.

Completely against his will, he noticed again how well she filled out her sweater. Intriguing, indeed.

O'Neill took a sip of his beer, then lengthened the sip into a longer swallow. Setting down the beer, he dipped a wing into the dressing and took a bite, stripping the meat off in one scrape. Discarding the bone, he wiped his hands on a napkin. He knew she was watching him. And when she reached over and wiped a smudge of buffalo sauce from his mouth with the pad of her thumb, he knew she really was interested.

When she licked the sauce off her thumb, he started to be interested back.

She wanted him. Not in some vague future, when the stars would align and allow two dedicated officers to finally occupy the same life, but now, when there were no regulations infringing on the now.

"I mean, don't you kinda get a vibe? Believe me, that's the last thing I expected when I read your file. But then I find out that this hot guy that I'd been scoping since he walked in is actually the guy that I'm supposed to be working closely with over the next few weeks." She stabbed at another tomato. "Talk about your lucky days."

Jack raised his brows. "Lucky." He reached for another wing.

"I mean—I work with a lot of new people—I'm moving around all the time. Sometimes I like who I get to work with, and sometimes I don't." She bit the tomato off the fork this time. After a moment she continued. "I just consider it lucky when I get to work with someone cute."

"I thought I was hot."

"You, General, are both." She'd polished off her salad. Shoving the plate away, she dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. She turned her entire body to face him. "Very much both."

He was at a complete loss. The past few months flooded back at him. The pain, the disappointment, the longing, the rejection. The anger. The pain.

Most of all, the pain.

Kerry was watching him, judging his reactions, he knew. He tried not to show too much. He didn't want to appear too pathetic.

"So, I know that we just met—" she took a deep breath, doing all kinds of interesting things to that sweater.

"We did."

"And I know that we're going to be working together."

"We are."

"But we're adults, right?" She clasped her hands in front of her. "We can work together and play together—right?"

And he found himself nodding. And she chatted away as he finished his wings and his beer. And he found that it wasn't awful, being touched—his hair being futzed with, his shirt being smoothed. It had been eons, it seemed, since someone had touched him playfully—intentionally—easily. And then, like a gentleman, he found himself offering to walk her back to her hotel.

And when she took his hand, he didn't pull away. A hand in his felt foreign, warm, good. So he found himself clasping it more tightly, and then tracing the lines on her palm as they ascended the elevator to her room, as she traced a pattern on his abdomen.

Somehow he found himself answering her hint for a kiss—that lively face turned up to his, those lips slightly open, inviting. And when the kissing turned into more, he found himself almost able to forget that the hair he buried his hands in wasn't gold, and the eyes watching eagerly as he locked the door behind them weren't blue.

And when it was over, he found that in the dark, his eyes closed, he could almost forget that the woman lying beside him wasn't Sam.

He could quell the sense of guilt. He could forget. He could pretend. He could deny.

He just couldn't live like he had been—Alone. Wanting. Waiting.

And in the morning, he stopped and bought eggs and some more beer, and when Carter called, he could pretend that he hadn't just spent the night wishing she'd been in his bed, instead.

And he could pretend that he wasn't disgusted with himself.