Author's Note: Yeah. So this chapter managed to take on a life of it's own…
Sex-like stuff follows. I mean…you saw the chapter title. Right?
"We should talk about the Steps of Intimacy," Natalie says to a visibly uncomfortable Jack O'Neill.
"I'm familiar with how it's done, doc," he tosses with false confidence.
"I'm sure," she says wryly, "but I'm talking about the Twelve Steps of Intimacy. The ones Sam has to deal with – the ones you have to deal with – now before it's wise to move on.
"Sam doesn't really like to talk about sex. Well, except to keep telling me she's not ready to have it and that I deserve to be having it."
"Well," Natalie shrugs, "you do deserve a sexual relationship if you want one. We all do."
"I want Sam."
"You're allowed to want both, even if she's not ready to give you both. You know that," Natalie asks gently, "right?"
"I don't want to do anything that's going to make her uncomfortable. And I don't want to do anything that's going to make her run."
"Are you worried she's going to run?"
"Natalie, she's physically run from me before. Hell yes, I'm worried about it."
"That was quite a while ago. She's in a very different place now."
He sighs heavily. "So now we get a twelve-step process?"
Natalie can't help but laugh. "Well, in a manner of speaking…yes." She hands him a pamphlet. "I've given Sam a book you might want to look at. But this is the Cliff's Notes version."
He accepts the paperwork with a grateful smile. "Thanks."
"Talk to her about it. Stop telling her you don't care about sex. She knows it isn't true. She knows you're willing to wait. It's time to level with her, Jack. She's strong enough. She can take it."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"I want to do all of the steps. In order."
"Okay," he says.
"I mean, I know we've already done some of them…years ago…but—"
"Okay," he says again, very patiently with a hint of a smile.
"I think it's important. Natalie thinks it's important…"
He smiles fully and reaches out, palms her upper arms and then runs his hands down until he can grasp her hands. "Do you not hear me agreeing with you or were you just prepared for an argument?"
"I…well…I don't know," she finally says, deflated.
"It's fine. We can do this any way you want."
"It's just…I've already made you wait so long…"
"Sam, there's no use even trying until you're ready. We'll take this slowly. Do I want you?" He waits until she screws up the courage to meet his eyes. "Hell yes, I want you. I've wanted you since I met you. But I can wait."
"But you shouldn't have to."
He huffs with anger and aggravation. "Stop. Stop saying that. I know you feel that way. You've made that very clear. What you don't seem to understand is that I don't feel that way. I don't know why you have so little faith in my ability to love you because I damn sure have done everything I can to show you. I know I'm not the most traditionally emotionally available guy, but I didn't get here without being able to accurately identify my own feelings. Hell, I was able to accurately identify how I feel about you. Why can't you trust me on this, too?"
She's dumfounded. He's right. And she's not sure she's ever heard him ever string that many words together on any subject, let alone something that was so personal and emotional. "You're right," she says quietly. "I'm sorry."
"I don't need you to be sorry. I need you to trust. Trust me to love you right, Sam."
She tears up as his features soften. "I'm trying. God, Jack, I'm trying."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"So we're just supposed to…touch?"
Sam trails her finger down the page in the book open on her lap until she gets to the section she's looking for. "Touch with the intent to arouse."
"You really don't have to try very hard, you know that, right?"
She chuckles but the tension is riding high in her shoulders. He reaches out and trails a finger down the side of her face. "Hey," he says softly, "we stop as soon as you need to."
"This is just Step Nine. Remember?"
"More or less second base," he recites, "got it."
"Well, less of second base."
"Over the clothes," he says with a nod. "No problem."
"Geez," she groans and tips over to bury her face in the back of the couch. "This is ridiculous. I feel ridiculous. Do you feel ridiculous?"
"Sam," he laughs. "Everybody's got to start somewhere, right?"
"It's just… we did the first eight all in one go and that was so easy."
"Well," he shrugs, "we've been doing most of the first eight for years. I've never touched you intimately. Well," he grimaces, "not on purpose. Never even to cop a cheap feel," he says with a wink.
She laughs at that and her shoulder settle a little. "We should talk about how far this is going to go. That way, if I don't have to stop we still know where we're stopping. To, you know, align our expectations."
"Sweetheart," he gives himself a mental high-five when she doesn't really frown at the endearment – though he thinks it probably has something to do with the fact that this time he said it like Bogie and he's yet to meet a woman that didn't want at least a little Bogart in her man, "I think you've had your head buried in that book for too long."
"Jack!" she says, exasperated.
"Okay, okay, align my expectations."
"Kissing and hugging are okay," she says matter-of-factly.
"Good," he says, "because I think the ship's pretty much already sailed on that one."
She rolls her eyes. "Hands are okay. Above the waist and over the clothes," she cautions with a raised finger and warning eyebrows. "But nothing that would be considered foreplay."
"Pshaw. I wouldn't even dream of foreplay."
"Jack."
"Okay," he says. "Okay. In all seriousness. Kissing. Hugging. I'm going to get all fresh with your sweater and the parts that fill it out so nicely. I am not going to touch any skin I can't already see or anything below your waist. As a matter of fact, you have no below the waist. Neither do I. I'm going to touch you with the intent to arouse. You're going to touch me with the intent to arouse but you're not going to have to deal with any of the physical reality of that arousal." He quirks an eyebrow at her. "That sound about right?"
"Could you make it sound any less romantic?"
Finally he just rolls his eyes at her. "Samantha? Come here." He reaches out and wraps his hand around the nape of her neck and pulls her forward. By the time their lips meet, she's smiling. He kisses her softly, sweetly, until the fanciful tip of her lips is chased away when he slants his head and then her mouth is open under his and he's stroking her tongue with his and she makes that little mewling sound in that back of her throat that is completely unintentional but most certainly has the power to arouse him.
Her sweater is soft beneath his left hand. Some sort of cute, fuzzy animal-soft and he alternates his touch so the fibers tickle his fingers or he's digging his fingers into the softness of Sam beneath the fabric. She sucks in a breath when his fingers skim along her bottom rib, then she giggles when he trails his fingers down the ridge of her spine.
She does this thing with her nose to make him tilt his head in the other direction and then she's in control of the kiss and running her hands across the planes of his chest. He lets her push him back a little so she's leaning over him, entirely in control of the situation, when he crooks his finger and uses his knuckle to draw small patterns on her belly.
She sucks in her breath and the muscles quiver beneath his hand but she doesn't stop kissing him – doesn't even falter – so he figures it was either a tickle or arousal but probably not fear. So he chances it and runs his knuckle up to her sternum. Still okay, if the way she sucks his tongue into her mouth when he tries to retreat is any indication.
He tilts his chin up and forces her back into the submissive role of the kiss. She pouts a little against his mouth and he can't help but smile. "Oh no. You don't get to be in charge of all of this."
"But I was enjoying that."
He likes the breathy sound of her voice. "Me too," he says. "But I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy it all."
"Then you should let me…" but she doesn't finish and just reasserts herself. Oh well, he thinks and takes the opportunity to try that knuckle thing again only using their more reclined positioning to run his knuckle all the way up between her breasts.
She exhales a soft, moist, "Uh," into his mouth and shifts a little so his knuckles brush against the inner swell of her right breast and all of a sudden he's perfectly fine with letting her be in complete control of the situation because he wouldn't have touched her like this so quickly. She shifts again and he finds himself dragging his fingertips down the outer swell of that breast and she's grabbing the front of his shirt and leaning back until she's beneath him and they're trying to figure out where all the legs go – he's trying to figure out where his dick can't go – and he's balancing above her and then Jesus, Mary and Joseph he's got a palm full of Samantha Carter's right breast and he can tell she's wearing a lace bra just because of the way the sweater catches on the fabric and not because he watched her put it on that morning with her back to him.
He thumbs her nipple and rips his lips from hers. He presses their foreheads together and they breathe damply into the small space between them. "You okay?" he asks.
"Yeah," she breathes and pushes her breast farther into his hand. "You okay?"
"Oh, yeah," he says right into her mouth because he can't not be kissing her anymore.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
With all the planning and negotiations that had gone into Step Nine, he's blindsided several nights later – after more heavy petting sessions that were a raging success – when she's standing right outside the bathroom door when he opens it after his shower.
"I just have to," she says and then leans forward. The next thing he knows the flat of her tongue is against his chest swiping away a drop of water and he's suddenly wishing he was wetter and also wearing more than a towel.
He groans and she scrapes her bottom teeth against his skin. "So, Step Ten it is…" She switches sides and he hisses when her tongue catches the edge of his nipple. "Sam, you should let me get dressed."
"Dressed would probably make it more difficult to do the whole mouth-to-chest thing, don't you think?"
He grabs her shoulders and pushes her back reluctantly. "Pants, at least."
She looks down as if she's just realized he's standing there wrapped in terrycloth. "Oh." And then she takes in the way he's already starting to tent that terrycloth – almost fifty can kiss his ass, thank you very much – and her eyes widen. "Oh."
"With the intent to arouse, right?" he says and can't help but smile at the way she apparently can't help but look.
"Take it off," she says. And suddenly any playfulness that was in her eyes is gone.
"Sam," he starts but she cuts him off.
"No. Really. Take it off."
"This isn't part of Step Ten is it?" he asks with confusion. "I mean, we're just supposed to do the whole mouth to chest thing…right?"
"There's no step for looking. Just touching. And I need to look."
He steers her backwards and sits down with her on the edge of the bed. "Okay. But let's talk about this first."
"I just realized what they meant by with intent to arouse. It's not just about knowing I'm turning you on it's about turning you on on-purpose."
"Is that not what you've been doing?"
She shakes her head. "Not really. I mean, I know it turns you on when we kiss. And when you touch me." She reaches up and brushes the backs of her fingers across one damp pectoral muscle. "When I touch you," she looks pointedly down at his lap where he twitches beneath the towel at the sound of her voice and feel of her hand. "But knowing about it and doing it are two different things." She leans forward and kisses his chest, right over his heart, warmly and chastely but his body isn't differentiating types of touch right now. "The reality is, Jack, you don't scare me. The idea of sex with you…doesn't scare me. That," she points at his half-erect penis, "scares me.
"So," she says matter of factly, "I think I need to just…deal with it. Face it head on, you know?"
"So to speak," he says and can't help the wry grin.
"So to speak," she says with an answering smile.
Without overthinking it, he tugs the towel so it's no longer secure, pulls it out from under him and tosses it to the floor. And then he sits patiently while she scoots back and puts more than an arm's reach between them. He supposes he can't blame her.
She starts by studiously meeting his eyes. "Thank you," she says softly and he smiles crookedly and hopes she takes that as encouragement.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She forces herself to focus first on the non-sexual features of his naked, aroused form. The way his eyes are slightly worried but soft and open. The scar on his shoulder from the time the alien ball pinned him to the wall. Various other scars and marks that pepper his upper body. The flat, brown nipples and golden and grey hairs on his chest.
The lines on his belly where the skin tucks as he sits, the stab wound scar high on his thigh, the way his chest hairs follow a line down his abs and fade to silver pubic hairs. She acknowledges his penis – the length of it, the girth, the way he's mostly hard and growing harder under her scrutiny. She notices things like the color of his skin and that he's circumcised but she's careful to think of it as nothing more than a penis. As a part of his anatomy that has no function.
She realizes, idly, she's never looked at a nearly fifty year old man when he was naked and finds that she always thought of it as older than it is. That Jack's body isn't all that different than the thirty-three year old man she'd seen naked last, if you discount the grey hair.
She makes a scientific comparison between what frightened her before and this moment. She reflects on the differences between Jack and the giant Jaffas. Many were frighteningly large where Jack is thinner, shorter, and far less intimidating. The Jaffa were dark like molasses and Jack is like the last rays of moonlight that tangle with the sun.
She considered his penis again but this time as something sexual, as something he wants inside her. No, as something she wants inside her. The idea is less abstract than she was really comfortable with. But this is Jack. Jack's penis. Jack isn't going to hurt her. He wants to love her. To make her feel pleasure.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
He works to not clench his hands into fists as she stares at him. It's difficult to accept her calculating gaze but it doesn't diminish the arousal he was feeling before or the thrill of sharing this incredibly personal moment with her.
He's never sat with someone, naked and aroused, knowing that the situation wasn't leading to sex. It's oddly intimate to give her control of everything and allow that she isn't going to give him anything or take anything in return. They are simply going to be together in this moment while she comes to terms with the idea of his body finding pleasure with her body at some undetermined point in the future.
He feels the height of his arousal pass. Normally he'd turn from her as he softened, embarrassed as his penis relaxes against his thigh, but he finds it fitting and maybe a little helpful that she is able to see him – the potentially problem-causing part of him, in a completely harmless, vulnerable way.
When it is clear his ardor has cooled completely, she slides closer to him until they are pressed together from naked hip to jean-clad knee. "Thank you," she says softly.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
"I don't know," she shrugs one shoulder. "But I'm still sitting here."
"Yeah," he lays his hand on her leg, just above her knee, "you are."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
After that he doesn't worry as much about whether or not he's dressed when she walks into the room. He doesn't necessarily shut the bathroom door when he showers. And if he wants to strip off a dirty shirt in the living room, well, he does. He figures the hard part for her has been breached and now repetition is key to proving that nudity doesn't mean she's about to be violated.
But still he sleeps in a t-shirt, careful to ensure she doesn't awaken to bare skin she's unprepared for in the middle of the night. Until, that is, the night that the heater is on the fritz and it's eighty-five degrees at midnight and he's pretty sure he's melting.
He groans and flips the blankets off of them. Sam's skin is dewy, too, but she looks a lot more comfortable in her tank top and panties than he is in boxers and a t-shirt. "Damn it," he grouses, "that's it. That. Is. It!"
He sits up and strips off his t-shirt. Next to him, Sam chuckles. "I don't know why you didn't do that earlier."
"I've been trying to be polite. But I'm sorry, Sam, it's just too damn hot."
"It's fine," she says sleepily. "And I'll fix it tomorrow."
"You sure you don't want to fix it tonight?" he wheedles.
"Couldn't if I wanted to," she yawns. "I need parts from the HVAC place and they don't open until seven."
"I'm gonna go take another shower. A man shouldn't be sticky in November, Sam. It's just not right."
She scoots closer to him and lays a proprietary hand on his chest. "Or," she says suggestively, "we could try the mouth to chest thing again."
"I don't know, you've been sounding pretty tired. And last time I ended up naked, so, wait. Never mind. I think we should try again."
"Keep your shorts on, buster," she says. There's only one kind of hot tonight and that's not going to be it."
"Sam, any time you touch me it's hot."
"Sweet talker," she says but her words disintegrate into a gasp when his hand slides up her back under her tank top. And that's when he realizes that making out with her while horizontal is one thing and making out with her while they're in their bed, half dressed, and horizontal is another thing entirely.
She's doing her level best to keep up her end of mouth-to-chest but he just can't stop kissing her. The silk of her lips, the clash of their teeth, the feeling of her bare thighs against his and the way she's not backing away from the suddenly raging and aching hard-on she keeps brushing up against are creating the perfect storm and before either of the fully realize how far they've taken it, he's skimmed one had up her ribcage between her silky skin and cotton tank top and pushed the garment over her head and damn if her breast isn't even more perfect in his hand when he's finally able to touch her skin.
She feels like silk in most places, satin in others and he recalls the scars he saw in the mirror so long ago now, and diamond in a couple places so he draws patterns on his palm with her nipple just because he can.
He can't see her, really, but he can damn sure feel her and she's arching into his hand. The hand she has tangled in his hair is urging him lower and after too many wasted seconds he takes the hint and rolls her nipple across his tongue. She gasps and he groans and she's fitting her lower body against him in ways he's trying really hard not to think about because this is all he gets with Step Ten and he's damn sure not gonna press his luck. Besides, this part is pretty damn fantastic, too.
Before long she's panting and gasping and looking for something to do with her lips and tongue and when he glides his fingers – the ones not pressing a perfect outline of his hand into her breast – across her lips she nips and sucks at the pads of his fingers in the same way he just knows she's going to do to the head of his—and he stops that train of thought before it's moving so fast he can't stop it.
When he takes a moment to breathe one gasping lungful of air after another, she rolls toward him and buries her face in his neck and bites gently against the corded muscle. Her hands slide all across his torso and dip dangerously close to the waistband of his boxers. He snags her wandering hand and presses it against his heaving belly and she flops onto her back next to him. She flings her free arm over her head and she's a perfect Venus in the stark relief of their bedroom shadows and shafts of moonlight.
Her chest heaves and he can't help but watch the rise and fall of her breasts. "Wow," she breathes. "That was…"
"Intense," he finishes.
"Yeah."
"We should do that again," he purposefully drags her finger through the sweat on his belly.
"After I've fixed the heater," she says.
"So," and even he can hear the grin in his voice, "tomorrow night?"
"It's a date."
She lies next to him and breathes deeply for a few more moments and then pulls away from him and rolls out of bed. "Where're you going?"
She chuckles. "Well, touch with intent to arouse, right?"
She smiles at him over her shoulder and crosses the room to her dresser. In a patch of moonlight she stops and strips off her panties and tosses them at the hamper. She's sterling silver with a perfect ass and for a few heartbeats it's just him and her and her perfect, naked ass in the room.
He presses a hand against his insistent erection that doesn't seem to get the hint that the party is over.
She pulls a clean pair of underwear out of her drawer and bends over to put them on. He groans and swears he hears her laugh.
When she turns, he's not even embarrassed to be found with his hand on his dick because now she's sterling silver with a perfect rack and, "God, Sam, I think you're trying to kill me."
"Fresh underwear," she says.
"Huh?"
"Touch with intent to arouse, right?" she asks him again.
Slowly, it dawns. "Hey! We did good!"
"Yes," she says with a smile and slides back into the bed next to him. "We did."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"So," she says over morning coffee, "last night was fun."
"Last night was very fun."
"And a lot easier than I thought it would be."
"Well, we kind of got caught up in things."
"I think that's good. Don't you?"
"Yeah," he says and slides his hand across the table to tangle their fingers together.
"I'm not so sure the next part is going to be that easy."
"Step Eleven," he says sagely.
"Step Eleven."
"It'll be fine. We'll take it nice and slow and we'll stop if you need to."
"Maybe it'll go as smoothly as the last ones," she says hopefully.
"And if it doesn't, it doesn't," he says with a small shrug. "We'll get there. And have a lot of fun along the way."
When she grins at him, it's genuine, but he can see a hint of fear in her eyes. But that's okay. Because now there's not a doubt in his mind they'll figure it out together.