Jack ripped himself awake, up out of a nightmare of what once would have been considered epic proportions but now was just run of mill after a month in Astarte's clutches. It wasn't even bad enough to wake him up so he wondered what had pulled him up out of the hell he'd been envisioning. There was a loud knock on the door – he could hear it all the way in his bedroom; he wondered why the person didn't just ring the doorbell.

With a groan he rolled out of bed and retrieved his sweatpants from the floor near the edge of the bed and pulled them on over his jockey shorts. He gave a cursory search for a t-shirt but didn't come up with one right away and the knocking was getting more insistent.

"Coming," he grumbled, definitely not loudly enough for the person to hear, but the knocking paused long enough for him to get to the door. He pulled it open without checking the peephole and was confronted by Samantha Carter in motorcycle leathers, a wide look on her face, her blue eyes glued to his bare chest. He cleared his throat uncomfortably – as he was suddenly reminded she had an attraction to him that was misplaced – and she immediately flushed with color in the early morning light. He waved her inside, taking stock of her decidedly non-regulation clothing and wondering why the hell she was on his doorstep looking like that, and led her through to the living room, her eyes hot on his back.

"It's early, Carter."

"Yes, sir. Sorry to have woken you."

He waited for her to continue but she didn't. "And why are you here on a Saturday morning at-" his eyes flicked towards a clock but it was too far away to focus on, "this early hour?" Looking like one of his wet dreams? Oh, no, O'Neill, not going there. Too early, too her, too... much.

Her eyes flitted around the room seeming to light on everything but him, which seemed strange after her frank appraisal of him at the door. It had been uncomfortable to be perused that way. It reminded him of the way Astarte had looked at him, appraisingly, as he was prepared for her. Overall, he wasn't sure what to do what that information as it was a wholly new sensation considering he was a man for whom modesty was a fairly foreign concept. Finally, her eyes landed on his feet. He wiggled his toes under the weight of her stare and she bit her lip before speaking. "The files, sir. I'm on my way to the base and the General asked me to stop and pick up whatever you've finished with."

"Oh, right." He turned to go to the dining room, leaving her standing in the living room, the heat of her gaze burning into the planes of his back. He could feel her eyes on him as vividly as he could feel the lashings from the insurgents in Iraq in the memories from the Blood of Sokar and it only took a moment to throw him from the innocuous moment with her to the rage filled memory of being beaten to within an inch of his sanity and he had to brace himself against the wall with the intensity of it.

"Sir?" she asked, her sweet voice a beacon for him to follow back from the depths of his memories, but it wasn't enough.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said gruffly, and stalked off towards his bedroom. He rifled through his dresser until he came up with jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, a baggy, comfortable outfit that covered him from her eyes completely and saved him, he hoped, from another moment like the one he'd just had. He took a few deep breaths, more comfortable away from her and the way she was making him feel – between the way she looked and the feelings that elicited inside him, and knowing how she felt, and her frank appraisal of his body it was all forming a storm inside him that felt too familiar, anxiety like from one of Astarte's memories. He resisted the urge to go into the bathroom and empty his stomach into the toilet because it felt too much like losing.

He reached out and wrestled control of the situation from the recesses of his brain. He focused on what was tangible, what seemed real, what was, relatively, easy. He needed to talk to her about what she thought she felt. Nip that shit in the bud.

When he returned to the living room she was standing exactly where he left her looking unsure of what was happening. Her eyes glided over him from head to toe. She instantly looked more relaxed to see him fully dressed and that made him relax a little, too. But it wasn't enough, because part of him wondered why she was still there. She could have taken the files and fled the uncomfortable encounter. But that didn't make sense either because how was she to know which ones he was done with and which ones he needed to keep? He was being irrational because of his discomfort. And it pissed him off.

He figured, since he was already uncomfortable, and his discomfort had a way of manifesting as hard and uncompromising, it was as good a time as any to broach the subject of her little crush. Get it over with while he wasn't feeling magnanimous. She could take her motorcycle leathers and wide, penetrating eyes and get the hell out of his house. Before he felt something that he couldn't tamp back down into the dark recesses it belonged in. "Coffee?" he grunted.

Her eyes flicked to the same clock his had earlier. "Sure."

He nodded once and moved into the kitchen to make the coffee, she followed him and he could hear her peeling herself out of her leather jacket and throwing it over one of the dining room chairs. When he turned around she was in his kitchen in clothes that molded themselves so closely to her body that she might as well have not been wearing anything at all and he had a moment of bodily confusion wherein he went from lust to ambiguity to idle interest to disgust with himself all within the span of three heartbeats.

If he didn't know her better he'd wonder if she was up to something, showing up so early, unannounced, dressed like she was. He'd wonder if she was trying to get some sort of reaction out of him. He knew Carter. He wouldn't have thought her duplicitous, but maybe he was wrong. If he wasn't, it didn't help disseminate the anger that bubbled up at her, though. How dare she stand in his kitchen and look like that and make him feel like she had? Didn't she know he didn't have any right to feel that way?

She cleared her throat and when he finally he tore his eyes away from her he realized he'd been staring at the juncture of her thighs. Great.

He looked into her eyes again and found that she was giving him a look he couldn't quite decipher, but if he had to, he'd have characterized it as loaded. He raised an eyebrow at her. "What?"

"Coffee, sir?"

He rolled his eyes and turned away to finish making the coffee, he was sure whatever had been on her mind, it hadn't been coffee, but if that was the way she wanted to play it, fine. Except, it wasn't fine. They needed to stop the thing before it got out of hand. And it might be damn uncomfortable to talk about, but fuck it – it wasn't like it was even the hardest thing he'd had to do in recent memory. And if it was hard for her, tough. If she couldn't handle it then clearly she wasn't prepared to be serious about anything anyway.

"Listen, Carter," he started, but then he wasn't sure how to go on.

"Yes, sir?" she prompted when he didn't continue.

He took a deep breath and set aside the anger that had bubbled up inside him before and tried for something that resembled the voice of a concerned CO. "Look, it's been brought to my attention that perhaps there are less than professional feelings happening here."

She looked confused for a half second and then she flushed scarlet. "Oh god," she said lowly. At first he thought it was embarrassment and then he saw anger light behind her eyes. "I'm going to kill him."

"Now wait a minute, Carter-"

"No, sir. This has Daniel written all over it."

"This situation isn't Daniel's fault." he pointed out in a tone of voice designed to tell her exactly whose fault it was.

"I told him-"

"Not to say anything, I imagine, because you know how damaging something like this can be."

"Sir, I-"

"Carter, take a minute," he said to cut her off a little more effectively. "I think I know what's happened here."

She looked at him, gobsmacked. "You do?"

"We've gone through some stuff. You're young and impressionable. And I'm – I've done some things that could be considered..."

"Yes, sir," she said quietly. "But no."

"No?"

"I'm not that young. Or impressionable."

"I'm giving you an out here, Carter. Take it." He was desperate for her to take it. Because this wasn't going the way he envisioned. He'd expected her embarrassment, perhaps even anger, but he hadn't expected to feel a bit of softness towards her when he'd seen it play out across her face. It didn't mean the anger was gone, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it hurt him to see her so clearly in pain of some kind.

"I understand that, sir. And as much as I'd like to take it, as much more comfortable as that would be... I'm sorry. I know this is the last thing you need."

"The last thing I need? Carter, this is the last thing you need! What you're feeling, it isn't real it's just-"

"With all due respect, sir, what exactly is it that you think I'm feeling?"

"It's just... it's... it's a crush, Carter. It's... I'm your CO, maybe there was a little hero worship and it..." She was turning a more brilliant shade of scarlet moment by moment. He knew he wasn't faring any better. He cursed the fact that he knew he was blushing.

"A crush," she said quietly, so quietly he had to look up at her. She looked like she had tears in her eyes as she bit her lip. "Hero worship." She shook her head. "You're wrong. It's not a crush. It's not hero worship," she spit the words. "I lost you. Again and again. First to that damn fire rain, then to Laira, then to an undercover operation, then on another planet, and I felt all of that. You have no idea what I went through to bring you home not just once now. You have no idea how I've had to justify my actions to those around me. This is not just some silly crush, sir. I know how I feel."

"I think you're letting a bunch of bad situations and some pity color your emotions."

"Why is it so hard to believe that I would know better what I'm feeling than you would?" she spit at him.

"Because this could ruin your career, Major!" He hurled her rank at her in hopes it would help.

"You think I don't know that? If it were up to me, you'd have gone on oblivious to all of this like you have been all along. I could have gotten it under control. But Daniel..." She trailed off with a humorless laugh. "He just doesn't know when to shut up."

"He thought he was helping. He doesn't understand about the military. And he was worried about you."

In truth, Jack was a little worried about Carter, too. Because she sounded a lot more serious about her feelings than he'd thought she could possibly be. She was right earlier – he didn't need this bullshit. Neither did she. Couldn't she see how wrong he was for her? Couldn't she imagine how fucked up he was these days? It made him a little sick to his stomach to think she felt that way about him because he knew he wasn't a man who deserved that sort of feeling. He flashed back to her eyes hot on his chest and followed the natural progression of that heat to sex and felt the disgust boil back up, not for her but for himself and the allowance of such a desire.

"Well, worried or not, he had no right to say anything. Now you have no choice but to file charges," she said with an edge to her voice.

"Carter, I'm not going to file charges. You haven't done anything, for fuck's sake."

"And besides, I don't know how I feel anyway, right?"

"Carter-" he said lowly, a warning tone in his voice.

She slammed her hand down on the counter with a bang that made him jerk with the reflex of a person who'd just been tortured. He reached for her both to gain control of the situation and to remind himself that above all he was dealing with Carter. He was grasping her shoulders so tightly he could feel her shaking.

Her voice was gritty as she said, "I'm just some dumb junior officer who can't tell her ass from a hole in the ground, is that right, sir? Someone who's flaky enough to put her CO on a pedestal and worship the ground he walks on because he's got eagles on his shoulders and a dark glint in his eye? Some young girl, dumb enough to get a crush on her hot superior officer because she's too busy, too brainy, to go out and get laid? Is that it?" She laughed derisively.

She put her hands on her hips and her shirt stretched tight across her breasts, he was transfixed. He couldn't believe he was being sidelined by a nice set of tits after everything that had happened to him. What the hell was wrong with him? Then his brain registered that she was talking about getting laid and he conjured up images of laying her right there on his kitchen counter, sprawled out across the formica, and blood surged to his groin.

Suddenly, he had a strong desire to show her exactly how wrong she was about her feelings. Couple that with a very strong desire to prove to his body that what it thought it wanted was ludicrous, he snapped at her, "Carter? Shut up."

Her eyes went wide as her mouth snapped closed. The tension in her jaw made his hands itch with wanting to touch her, again, and that... the frustration with their argument, the frustration with his body's reaction to her – the arousal and the incessant desire to touch her – he lunged for her. She gasped as his mouth slanted down over hers, as one hand buried itself in her hair and the other did come up to cup her jaw. He felt the rush of air as she forcibly exhaled through her nose. A shocked sound issued from the back of her throat and it goaded him on, his lips hard pressed against hers, no finesse.

She made another, softer sound, a whimper, he felt her fingertips against his ribs, felt her lips move against his in an actual kiss instead of the weird approximation he had initiated. Instinctively, he suckled just a little at her top lip. Her welcoming mouth was the perfect invitation and he ran the tip of his tongue over the ridge of her top teeth. And then... it was the first electric jolt of their tongues touching that made him realize that maybe he'd miscalculated his position.

He slid his tongue against hers just long enough to enjoy the sensation skittering down his spine before he pulled back and just worked his mouth over hers for long moments. She mewled against his mouth, her tongue flicking against his lips, begging him for more of what had lit the fire so readily only moments before.

She raised her hands to his chest and he thought for a moment she was going to push him away but she curled her fingers into his t-shirt instead. He slid his hand from her jaw down her body to grip a hip covered by supple leather and pulled her into him, pushed his latent hardness into her soft belly, felt her gasp when she pulled the air from his mouth. He took advantage of her open mouth and curled their tongues together. He felt another jolt of pleasure that took him from half interest to fully ready.

It was that jolt of pleasure that made him rip his mouth from hers and take a step back from her. Both of them were breathing heavily, chests heaving. She opened her mouth to speak but he held up his hand to stop her. There was nothing she could say that would make what they'd just done, that would make his reaction, okay. She closed her mouth abruptly. He turned and walked away, leaving her alone in the kitchen, the coffee percolating behind her.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sam stood in the kitchen long enough to hear his bedroom door slam. She stalked to the dining room and snatched her leather jacket from the chair she'd thrown it over earlier and stuffed her arms into the sleeves. She shot a glance at the files and spared half a thought for the General and her trip to the base before she decided that all of it could wait until she'd had a chance to process what had just happened. With shaking hands she turned the doorknob and let herself out of his house.

She stood by her bike long enough to make sure the tension she was vibrating with wasn't so detrimental that she couldn't ride but she determined herself safe enough so she fitted her helmet over her head and climbed aboard. As her motorcycle roared to life she swallowed down the feeling that everything had just gone terribly wrong. As she turned an arc in his driveway she shook from her head the idea that they'd just ruined their relationship.

She clenched her fingers around the handlebars, the anger radiating through her from fingertips to toes. She could feel it thrumming through her, the complete fury with him and his high-handedness about her feelings. How dare he insist he knew better than she did? She shifted gears and sped up as she pulled out of his neighborhood and out onto the highway.

She shifted gears again and hit the speed limit, shifted once more and blew past it. With the pavement whipping past her she finally felt like she could think. She thought about the feel of his mouth against hers, his tongue wrapped around hers, the electricity that sparked between them, his body hard against hers. She squeezed the bike between her thighs and revved the engine.

She'd been careful to not fantasize about what a physical relationship with Jack O'Neill might be like and now she was glad that had been her long running rule because there was no way fantasy could have lived up to the explosive reality. They had instant chemistry, that was for sure – no matter what he said about her feelings, he couldn't deny that there were definitely sparks between them.

In truth she was surprised by his physical reaction to her after what had happened to him. She wondered if it had anything to do with his reaction to what had happened. His refusal to say anything at all to her afterwards spoke volumes, she just wasn't sure what the words were. Underneath her anger was confusion from the part of her that was still cognizant of what he'd been through and that knew that all his reactions were colored by those events.

He hadn't talked about what had happened to him yet and she was desperate to know because she was desperate to know what she could do to help. Because while she knew the darkness she'd witnessed in the colonel that morning was a real part of him, it was a part of him he usually kept carefully covered over and the fact that he'd let her see it so fully told her a lot about his state of mind.

Because yes, she was angry as she could be at him for the way he was treating her about her feelings, but that didn't make the feelings go away. Part of her wondered if his inability to believe she felt what she felt had anything to do with that crack he'd made about her feeling pity for him. It made her heart hurt that he could think that. The pain made the anger recede.

She turned her bike around and headed back in the direction of his neighborhood.

She flirted more closely with the speed limit on the way back so it took her an extra five minutes to make the return trip but she realized, as she was pulling back into his neighborhood, that she'd only been gone about forty minutes. She hoped it had been long enough that he'd at least answer the door for her. She wasn't going to force him to talk to her. She thought it was probably best if they didn't try to talk anymore at all – enough had been said between them on that particular day.

She parked her bike behind his truck again and climbed off. She walked slowly to the door, steeling herself for whatever greeting he'd bestow upon her. At the door, she pulled herself up to her full height, knocked, and then waited. The door came swinging open with more force than was truly necessary.

"For cryin' out loud, Carter. Can't you just leave well enough alo-"

"Files," she interrupted simply.

He studied her for a long moment as if he didn't believe that was really why she'd returned, then rolled his eyes and turned and left her standing on the doorstep. She didn't follow him inside but instead stood there in the gaping doorway. He returned a moment later with a handful of folders. He held them out and she resisted the urge to snatch them from him. She took them civilly then turned away.

Halfway to her bike she still hadn't heard the door close so she took a chance and turned around to find him watching her. "You know," she said as casually as she could muster, "you can call it a crush if you want to, but that kiss..." She shrugged one shoulder and tilted her head. She saw the way he squeezed the door frame, so she turned on her heels and continued on to her bike. Let him chew on that a while.