Spoilers for the Broca Divide
One month later
Jack has on nothing more than a towel around his waist, when suddenly he comes into nearly physical contact with Samantha Carter. This, he thinks grumpily, is the danger of having a locker room where the only difference between men and women was the hands on a clock.
"Carter, sorry, didn't know you were in here," he says, quickly pulling a shirt over himself. Sam snakes a hand in the small hairs of his back, and pulls him into a kiss.
"Mmmph!" he says into her mouth. Then he pushes her away, "Carter! Wait! What the hell is going on?"
"I want you," Sam says, grabbing him by his lapels and kissing him fiercely. No, this isn't right. Sam doesn't kiss like this, and she never says 'I want you'. She never asks for anything she wants, especially sexual things. She would dance around whatever she wanted and leave him to figure this out. Something is going on, and he has to figure out what it was.
From inside of her mouth he says, "Why? I mean no!" He pushes her away again. "Carter, this is a little out of line, don't you think?"
She shoves him onto the long wooden benches of the locker room. "Don't you want me?" she asks him, kissing him again.
"No. No, not like this, for crying out loud." He's not going to have sex with her in a freaking locker room. That's not what she deserves. When they have sex again, it's going to be like it was before -private, gentle, and long. He shoves her back once again. "Carter! What's gotten into you?"
And that particular question suddenly makes sense. Of course, something has gotten into her. Probably the same thing that got into the guy who attacked Teal'c a few hours ago.
Sam's lips are on his again, and he rolls her onto the floor. There is a second when he's on top of her where he doesn't want to stop her. He's missed her so much. God, he's missed SEX so much. But she's not in her right mind, and he would never do that to her.
"It's about time you saw a doctor, doctor," he says pulling her up.
-0-0-0-
He can't stand to see her tied down like that. It almost makes him wish that she had never brought her in.
"It will keep her from hurting herself until the sedatives take effect," Janet says, sounding a little bit apologetic herself.
"This pretty much what Johnson has?" Jack asks, suddenly needing justification. He was right in bringing her here, wasn't he?
"Oh, I'd say so, and the other members of the team. This is the strangest thing I've ever seen. C'mon, take a look," the doctor says, leading him over to rooms that look too much like prison cells for Jack's comfort. "We've converted DEFCON 1 living compartments from when this place was a missile silo into isolation chambers. You never know what you're going to bring back through the Stargate. Notice the swelling of the brow ridge? Some are even developing new follicle growth," she says looking in at Johnson.
"Any idea what's causing it?" he wants to ask the doctor if Sam is going to be ok. If there is anything that he can do to make her better.
"Wish I knew. I've got calls in to every specialist in the service, but I've got one hand tied behind my back because of the need to know classification of the Stargate Project," Janet slams the door shut, and walks to the next door. It's an alien virus, and if she doesn't figure out how to cure it, people are going to die. It's a lot of responsibility for one person. "And it's spreading. We got two more in an hour later. I've never seen a behavioral disorder like this. All the victims are acting like animals."
"You think Carter has the same thing?" he asks softly. All of these people are violent. What happened in the locker room had certainly not been gentle, and it certainly wasn't the kind of thing that Sam was usually into. But it had been a long way from the violence these people are demonstrating.
"Mm hmm, behavior fits. All the victims are behaving like primitives," Janet says.
Jack scratches the back of his neck. Right, because Carter would only be interested in him if she was basically a monkey.
Except, once in the desert, she did choose him.
Jack hates the idea of leaving Sam in the infirmary, but he has to go figure out how to solve this. He goes back to the bed where she is strapped down, and runs a hand against her cheek, "I'm going to figure this out, Carter."
-0-0-0-
Jack is staring out the glass at the Stargate. He only left the infirmary to figure out how to solve this, and now he's just cooling his heels. Maybe he should head back to the infirmary, at least until Hammond clears them to go back to that planet. He turns to go back to the infirmary.
"Jack! There you are. Got on the internet to do a little research on Australopithecus and, wow… What happened to you?" Daniel says, taken aback by his friend's injuries.
"Oh, I got into a little wrestling match with Carter," he says, hoping that his sarcasm is going to be bitter enough that Daniel wouldn't press it. Jack can't deal with the emotional part of this, not yet, or he would fall apart.
"Why?" Daniel asks pretty critically.
"I guess she's got whatever Johnson got. I had to drag her off to the infirmary," Jack says, scratching at his arms. He's really hoping that the carefully worded admission will make Daniel stop asking questions.
"What, she start a fight with you like Johnson did with Teal'c?" Daniel asks. Jack should have known, he's a linguist for cripes sake. It's pretty hard to dance around a linguist with words.
He sighs, "No, she uh, she tried to seduce me."
Daniel's eyebrows raise, "Ah… wouldn't that be a good thing?"
"Well, under normal circumstances, sure. But when it is in the public locker room, and she's like a wild animal… not so much."
"Oh," Daniel stands in silence for a second, "So are you getting back together?"
Jack turns to him, shaking his head, "I don't think that whatever just happened meant anything, believe me."
"Well, is she all right? I should go see her," Daniel says tenderly.
Jack's blood boils. A part of him knows that this is irrational. That Daniel is grieving for his wife, and isn't trying to steal Sam from him.
"Why?" Jack asks fiercely.
Daniel might be a linguist, but he isn't so great at body language. He especially misses the body language that indicates when people are interested in them, and when they are jealous.
"What do you mean 'why'? Because I care about her," Daniel says.
Jack grabs Daniel by the lapels, and grunts through his teeth, "Care about her, what does that mean?"
Daniel suddenly realizes that he's screwed. He tries to pull away, and says, "It means I care about her, she's my friend. Now let go!"
"She's not yours to care about," Jack says, wishing he could undo the barbeques where he had invited both of their teams over to their house.
Daniel just barely stops himself from pointing out that she wasn't JACK'S to care about, either. He's figured out by now that Jack has the same problem that Sam had. And he knows that if he gets into a fight with the Colonel, he's not going to come back a winner. "I'm just a friend."
"You just stay away from Samantha, ok?" Jack asks dangerously.
"Okay. Okay, Jack. I think you should come with me to the infirmary, okay? Just let go of me and… let go of my arm!" Daniel shouts. Jack lays a hard punch on them. Daniel falls back on the shelf, and crashes to the ground. Jack ignores someone shouting for a guard, and jumps on top of Daniel. He's hauled off him after a couple of seconds.
-0-0-0-
He closes his eyes. Tyler. Sam. He has to… to… He closes his eyes again. He has to focus, and the only thing he can focus on is: Tyler. Sam.
Janet comes into the cell, "Doc. Doc?" he pleads.
"Did you say something?" Janet asks, and there are too many words in the simple sentence for him to process. But she's looking at him, so he should speak now. He has to save her.
"Give more…" he grunts.
"What? Give more what?" Janet asks.
"More," he says, thrusting his arm toward her, completely annoyed that he can't find the word for exactly what he wants more of.
"An injection? You mean you want more sedative? You've already had more than the maximum safe dosage, twice as much as anyone else because you've been more violent," Janet says. But the only thing that Jack understands out of that is that she's shaking her head. She's not going to save Sam.
He grunts more loudly, "Give," he demands with all of his force.
"No. It's not safe," Janet insists. First, do no harm. Even if there is an alien virus that might just wipe the human race off the planet.
"Give! Give," Jack grunts as loudly as he can.
"Why are you so insistent?" Janet gives him the shot, and he leans back, feeling the relief. He waits for the clouds to ease from his brain a little, just a little.
"Doc!" Jack demands. She can't leave yet. She needs to stay so they can figure this out. So he can figure out how to save Sam.
"Colonel O'Neill?" Janet says, surprised that she seems to actually be talking to the second-in-command of the base.
"Me," Jack says, recognizing his own name.
Janet smiles at him, "So you are still in there somewhere."
Jack is confused. He doesn't feel like himself. He's never gotten drunk, not after his father, and he's not exactly the medication type. So the only altered state of consciousness he has ever had is a dream. "Dream? Dream?" he grunts.
"I'm afraid not, Colonel. It's very real. This is interesting. Enough sedative must knock back the primitive mind. Colonel, listen to me. I am not going to be able to keep you at this level for very long; it is too dangerous. It could cause permanent brain damage," Janet says again, using far too many words for him to process. He needs to understand what is going on. He needs to figure out how to help.
"What... What is it?" Jack asks, annoyed at how difficult it is for him to get the words out.
"It's a parasitic virus. All we can tell is that is seems to mess with body chemicals, all of them. Testosterone levels skyrocket, thus the aggressive behavior. It's histaminolytic, which means it breaks down histamine, we… w..." Janet says.
Jack still doesn't understand everything that she is saying to him, but he knows what Janet needs to do. He also knows it was something that she would only do with his permission. More than that, only something she would do if he convinces her to. "Experiment on me," he pleads.
"Experiment on you? I'm sorry, I can't do that," Janet says, shaking her head.
He looks into her eyes, "Use me." Then he pauses, and closes his eyes, "Save her."
And Janet finds herself hoping that someday, she will be loved like that.
-0-0-0-
That was a nice dream. Well, not really. Usually when she had sex dreams about Jack, the sex was exactly the same as when they had sex for real. The sex in the dream was rough, and… Jack told her no. It must be because she's worried about him rejecting her.
Then she realizes: it was not a dream.
She slams her eyes shut, and feels a tear sneak out of them.
Because Jack told her no.
-0-0-0-
Jack stands in her doorway for a while. She realized that he was there right away, but takes her sweet time to acknowledge him. She turns to him, and says, "I'm sorry, sir."
The words kick him in the gut for a second before he sees her face. "Why?"
She blinks at him, "I attacked you, Sir."
And he understands her in a flash. And he swears to himself he's never going to let another misunderstanding get between them. "Sammy," he says, moving over toward her, with a smile on his face, "Why do you think I said no?"
It's a question she doesn't want to ask herself. She shrugs.
"Sammy… I'm not big on public sex. Nor on partners whose behavior is being controlled by alien virus," he says.
She looks at him with home in her eyes, "That was it?"
"That was it," he says. He watches her relax. "I didn't know you were open to… that," he says, searching her eyes.
And she gets a smile on her face. He'd forgotten about that smile. It was glorious, because it didn't look sexual. To anyone who didn't know her, it was just a smile, barely different from her others. But he knew what it meant, and it was a yes.
"So… dinner?" he asks.
"You don't have to…" she begins, shaking her hand. She is his; he doesn't have to go through the motions with her. They are so far beyond the first date.
"Samantha, you're getting dinner," he says, "You don't have a mission Friday night, do you?"
She shakes her head.
"Do you think your dad can babysit?" he asks.
She nods.
"Ok then," he pauses, looking at her for a while, "Do we kiss at work?"
"I don't think so," she says.
"Ok, then," he says, turning to walk away.
"Jack?" she asks.
He turns to her.
"Best alien virus ever," Sam says.
"Yeah, I got to punch Daniel," he says, turning without explaining.
"What?" she asks, running after him down the hallway.