AU: When an exploration mission goes way off the left field, Jack and Sam are left to patch up their lives. Will that door stay open? POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: Trauma, Sexual Situations, Tragedy, Slight Non-Con early on, but nothing crazy. Please note that I am Australian, hence my spelling of words such as favourite with 'our' instead of 'or' and Mum instead of Mom.
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are the property of MGM/Amazon. No copyright infringement intended. I am once again taking my favourite two Gaters for a walk in an Alternate Universe. Takes place after 5.05 Red Sky with some canon episodes skipped (overlooked) and others referenced.
Rating: Gonna start this one as M from the get-go.
Triggers: Sexual tension and that darn room, a touch of non con to start, but heavier later on. There will be others down the line, will advise as they pop up to avoid spoilers. I want to keep you guessing at least a little while.
Chapter 1: Seduction
"SG-1, you have a go. Godspeed!" Hammond called over the intercom.
"Thank you, Sir!" Colonel O'Neill answered. He threw me a discrete smile before we walked through the event horizon to P6X-755. We emerged the other side cold as always.
"The site is that way Sir." I provided.
"Great! Let's move out." The Colonel said with a flourish of his hand. I smiled at his exuberance. We headed off, Daniel and Teal'c up front, me in the middle and the Colonel watching our six.
"Brrr, I don't think I'll ever get used to that." Daniel groused as he wiped off what was left of the frost on his face with his bandana before tying it on his head.
"Has it not been 4 years Daniel Jackson." Teal'c queried.
"5 years for him." The Colonel piped up.
"Jack, that first year doesn't count, I went through the Gate twice and spent the rest of the time living on a desert planet." Daniel complained.
I snickered as I listened to them argue like to two old women about what did and did not count about a range of things like eating cake did not count as accepting marriage and going caveman and claiming a young woman did – didn't – did – did not – count as an off-world girlfriend – OK fine! – but getting hooked on sarcophagus juice absolutely did count. I could not stop my laughter. Eventually they turned the topic who had been the coldest.
"Oh, Carter and I win that one, Space Monkey!"
"Well, I don't know Sir, I mean you couldn't have been that cold." I said, throwing a look at him over my shoulder, alluding to his sidearm comment while waggling my eyebrows. He smirked back at me while silently telling me through his very expressive eyes that if it weren't for the broken leg and ribs, we may have been warmer. I felt the heat rising across my skin and looked away quickly. He was way better at flirting than I was. Daniel eyed our exchange and huffed.
"Seriously, you guys have got to stop that." Daniel said.
The Colonel laughed, "Never Danny, never."
"Well, do us all a favour and get a room so you can make moony eyes, or God forbid, do something about it." Daniel complained. I looked back at the Colonel for his reaction, but saw nothing but closed dark eyes. The moment had passed, it was business as usual. We walked in silence for a few minutes before the chat turned to the upcoming summer break. The SGC was being operated on a skeleton crew for two weeks, something that didn't normally happen.
"I will be visiting R'yac." Teal'c announced proudly.
"Great! Say hi to him for us." The Colonel replied chirpily, Teal'c nodded and smiled. "So, Danny, have you managed to get in on a dig somewhere?" The Colonel asked.
"Ah yeah actually, Catherine is heading to an approved Mesopotamian dig site just outside of Baghdad, she's asked me to come along." Daniel replied. I threw at look back to the Colonel just in time to see him tense up once again. He always did that when Daniel talked about anything related to Iraq.
"Right." He tersely responded. The Colonel rarely let us in on anything that happened in his black op days, we only knew about the four months POW thing because of Colonel Frank Cromwell's visit during the blackhole incident years ago.
The conversation died quickly after that, returning to basic mission chatter until reaching our destination nearly two hours later. The large temple was mostly intact with only a few broken areas of roof, several smaller shrines dotted around it in various levels of degradation. We walked inside. Daniel immediately set his gear down and grabbed his notebook.
"What do you see Daniel?"
"Well, at a glance, it looks similar to Ancient Greek, but it could also be Roman since a lot of their gods were just Romanised Greek gods, but I'd need time to translate."
"OK, you know the drill, don't touch anything except your books, Teal'c, you watch him, Carter and I will scout the perimeter."
"Yes Jack." Daniel huffed before throwing him a flimsy salute.
"Yes Sir" I replied, trying to hold in my giggles. I covered my mouth quickly to smother another giggle when the Colonel threw me a rueful look. We started our walk.
"How many hours of daylight do we have left Carter?" He asked me once we were outside.
"Well Sir, this planet has a 28-hour cycle, the axis tilt is similar to Earth, we are in the southern hemisphere, so it's Winter…" I looked up at the star with shielded eyes, "… at a guess Sir, I would say we have 10 hours left, give or take an hour."
He laughed and shook his head, "The only part of that explanation I needed Carter was the last 10 words."
"Where's the fun in that Sir?" I asked cheekily.
"Where indeed. So, we'll let Danny play with his rock carvings for 8 hours before heading to that tree line to make camp for the night."
"Sounds good Sir." I smiled. Eight hours was more than enough for me to get my soil samples.
After a few minutes of walking, he asked, "So, what are you doing for your two weeks?"
"You know me Sir, I'll be holed up in my lab. I had considered going to see Mark, but he's going to be working for most of it. He said he'd hook me up with a friend of his, so I wasn't bored during the day, but going to San Diego and spending the days with someone other than Mark defeats the purpose."
"What about your niece and nephew? Surely, they will be there with their Mum."
"Nope, they are off to Florida to see their grandparents, so it would just be me and this friend of Mark's." I made a face.
"Matchmaking, is he?" The Colonel asked. I looked at him, his face unreadable. My heart had picked up a beat that the thought that he might be jealous, but I couldn't see anything to suggest that he was affected by the idea that my brother was trying to hook me up with someone. I sighed.
"Trying. Ever since I broke up with Jonas. Though now I am running out of excuses to not meet this guy." I huffed. "It's the first thing he mentioned when we got a moment to ourselves when Dad and I visited him last time."
"Why don't you just say thanks but no thanks?" He asked.
"Believe me, I have tried. I know I could pull my military badassery on him to shut him up."
"Badassery? Tell me Carter, is that a scientific term for your skills?" He said with a small smile. Even small smiles made his face light, and there goes my pulse again.
"Scientific term? No." I shrugged and smiled back at him. "Colonel O'Neill term? Yep." His face lit up again in an even bigger smile as his eyes searched the horizon. I found myself wishing he would smile more often. "Anyway, since he hates the military, I know that would be a one-way ticket to him never talking to me again."
"If not for the kids, hey?" It was simple question, and 100% right. I smiled at him.
"Yeah, I love those two rug rats. I've already missed out on so much because of our squabbles, so I just deal with the jabs at the Air Force and his 'matchmaking' as you put it."
"Very noble of you, Carter." He looked wistful while looking off to the distance, scoping our surroundings. "So, it's safe to say that you want kids?"
"Oh, yeah… one day. I have to find the right man first." I replied looking into his brown eyes.
"Well, that's half the challenge, isn't it?" He murmured.
"That it is." I said with a smile. At some point I had dropped the 'Sirs' without him saying anything. It was times like this that I cherished. When it was just Sam and Jack instead of Major and Colonel. Deep down, I knew I'd already found the man of my dreams; I just couldn't do anything about it. Since our topic had left the bounds of military propriety, I steered us back in another direction. "How about you? Any plans for the break?"
He made a raspberry noise, "Well, since Hammond is away, I'm in charge of the base. So, two whole weeks of chair racing and cake eating with some occasional paperwork."
"You might want to throw a gym session in there if you are planning on two weeks of cake eating Sir." I said, then laughed at his drole look.
"Look here comes Carter, the fun police!" He responded with a huge smile.
"Permission to join you for chair racing Sir?" I asked.
If it was at all possible, his smile grew wider. "Only if you promise to do that camera loop thing of yours that you love to brag about Major."
"Major Carter would never brag about something like that Sir." I replied.
"Hmmm, well perhaps you'd better let Sam out to play then?" He purred and nudged my shoulder with his. I felt shivers roll through my body, settling into a pleasant buzz. I loved hearing him say my name. I heard it so rarely these days.
I smiled wide at him, "Yeah sure youbetcha Jack." I replied using one of his midwestern sayings, though I am certain I butchered the accent. He smiled again and looked at his boots. I wasn't sure, but I thought I saw his face redden. Score one, I'd made the big bad Colonel blush. We came back around and finished our circuit.
We returned to find Daniel had already made his way to one of the smaller ruined dome buildings. From what I could see there were eight, though only two of them intact enough to get any information from. I stood just inside the door watching Colonel O'Neill walk up to peer over Daniel's shoulder.
"Anything interesting?"
"It's definitely a derivative of ancient Greek, I can't be certain, but this pictogram here looks a lot like Dionysus from Greek mythology." Daniel replied, pointing to a naked man adorned with vines holding a bunch of grapes in one hand and a goblet is the other.
"Dionywhatsus?"
Daniel huffed, "The Greek god of theatre, pleasure, insanity, indulgence, fertility, wine etcetera. I think each one of these smaller domes is dedicated to a different part of his worship, but I'd have to check each one to be certain."
"So, basically a guy who worships too much of everything. My kinda guy."
"It was also believed that he may have had a dual personality, you know naughty and nice, good and bad, order and chaos."
"Again, my kinda guy." The Colonel replied this time turning to me with raised eyebrows. I quickly looked away because I did not want him to read in my eyes how I wished to see him naughty.
"Yeah, not so good Jack. It was said that he could not be bound by fetters and those who worshipped him could be possessed and empowered by him, some even exhibiting super strength." Daniel continued, still studying the wall. "Needless to say, people generally went crazy or relented and did things they wouldn't normally do."
"What kind of things Daniel?" I asked as I approached another wall.
"Well, imagine not living by any constraints at all. If you want it, you do everything in your power to go and get it. He pretty much represents all side effects of overindulgence." Daniel replied, looking over his shoulder at me then glancing quickly to the Colonel, whose back was turned. I couldn't help but blush at the thought of getting what I wanted from Jack. So consumed by that thought, I didn't realise the Colonel had walked almost to the middle of the domed room until I heard his pained shout.
I spun around towards the sound to see him hunched over crouching with his hands on the ground. He shook his head as if clearing his ears of water. As much as I wanted to rush to him, I knew I shouldn't. Keeping my mind firmly on the job, I checked the room first before turning to check our rear position.
"Carter." He said, his voice dripping with seduction.
"Sir!" I half screamed; half breathed. His dark eyes drank me in, "Where did you…" I faltered; his eyes looked so intense. I felt my knees weaken as I took a step back. He followed. I speared a look over my shoulder to see the Colonel rising to his feet. What the hell? I swung my head back and raised my P-90 on the second Colonel O'Neill.
"Who are you?" I shouted. He moved fast, pushing my P-90 away from him with speed and finesse despite the fact that I was trained to avoid such an action.
"You know I prefer Jack." He replied before swooping in and kissing me. I knew I should have pushed him back because he was my CO, and on the floor behind me. Instead, I dropped my P-90 to let it hang loose on its strap and tangled my fingers in his oh-so-soft hair before kissing him back just like I had always wanted to. My internal protests died when he spun me and pressed me against the wall. I groaned and sighed into his mouth when I felt the object of his desire. My brain screamed that this wasn't right, it wasn't him, but my body betrayed my own better judgement. I wanted this; regulations be damned.