Jack O'Neill had always been pretty normal about feet. As long as his two did what they were supposed to (provided a useful place to keep his socks and generally kept him from falling over) he didn't give them much thought.
But, sure, okay… Yes; He was a military man, and that meant he'd sat through a literal lifetime of USAF-mandated hygiene films on foot care in the field, so he was more aware than most of what could go wrong if you didn't treat them right.
The reels he'd been subjected to - most of which had a "Korean War" feel to them - bore jaunty names like, " Put Your Best Foot Forward! " and " Your Best Recruits are in your Boots! ", but beyond standard care and maintenance on-mission or off-world, Jack rarely gave his or anyone else's feet the time of day.
Or, at least, he hadn't, until he, and Teal'c, and Major Carter got stranded on a deserted planet, with only the clothes on their backs, and the boots on their feet.
The planet in question was tranquil and stunning. Steep purple mountains filled the land to the north, and the southern descent from their spiking peaks to the shore of the lake was a swooping gradient that any F/A-18 pilot would have been proud of.
All around him, smooth, tyrian and cochineal-coloured pebbles had collected in soft mounds along the placid lakeshore, the gentle slope down to the waterline allowing some of them to slip in and out of the lapping edge, leaving them shining like jewels in the warmth of the afternoon sun. They crunched under his Derby-clad feet, the unstable surface beneath each tread making progress slower and his soles ache in a way his combat boots wouldn't have allowed. He was on his way back to their small camp with an empty water bottle bouncing off his chinos, and a fresh kill over one shoulder.
Hogmeat was plentiful, and the animals were as stupid as they were abundant. If SG-1 hadn't needed them to survive, he'd probably have felt a lot worse about how delicious the curious little idiots were roasted over an open fire every night.
Teal'c was up-slope, snapping old, dry firewood in his massive hands, and adding the resulting splintered chunks to the cairn he'd maintained since their arrival. From the height of the pile now, Jack assumed Teal'c expected a massive haul from Jack's latest expedition. The hog on his shoulder was closer to a suckling, but with the berries and leaves Carter collected daily on the verges of the forest skirting the mountains, they'd be fine. He dropped his prize close to their firepit. He'd gut their meal later, closer to sunset, when it was less likely to spoil. He exchanged a series of grunts with the big man. They'd been here five days so far, this ritual no longer required narration.
A small, bulging canvas bag lay to the side of their seating area. Bluish leaves crowded the open hem and the belly of the thing dimpled with the berries he knew were within. The bag was close to bursting, as if its contents were as keen to escape capture as his hog had been when he'd grabbed for it. "Carter back?"
Teal'c pointed half a tree in the direction of the shore.
Jack turned on his tired feet and squinted through the sunlight glinting off the lake's mirrored surface. There she was, down at the water's edge, propped up on a massive, flat-topped boulder that would turn into a candy-coloured island if the water level inched any higher. Her back was to them, her attention on something below her. She looked for all the world like a gothic siren in her black t-shirt and dark combat pants. Jack understood exactly why ancient mariners were so obsessed with that myth - she may not have been singing, but he felt the pull regardless.
"I should…" Jack waggled his empty canteen at Teal'c who grunted once more and carried on breaking branches like they were twigs. "Yah." Monosyllables sufficed here, too.
In every hygiene reel Jack had ever seen, the importance of clean, dry feet had been emphasised, and clearly, the lessons hadn't changed when Carter passed through 'basic', because she was diligently following the same, familiar steps as he approached. One combat boot lay open and unoccupied to her side, angled in the sunshine to dry after her own foraging expedition. The other was still on, its heel propped up on a small crag that protruded above the waterline as she unlaced it. Easing it off carefully to avoid damaging her heel, she groaned as her toes wiggled in their crumpled, baggy-ended sock.
Carter twisted at the waist as he approached, gave him a soft smile and lined her second boot up with the first. "Good hunt, sir?"
"Hm?" Monosyllables had become a way of life around her, too, but for different reasons.
"Did you catch anything?" She turned back to her socks and slowly pulled at the toes, releasing her feet like she was opening a gift. For a glorious moment, she let them bask in the sunshine. Leaning back a little on her elbows she then stretched her body and eased, one foot, then the other, into the cool water below. As her toes broke the lake's surface they sent out happy little ripples that Jack was certain he felt in his soul.
Sunlight refracted like a fishnet across the rounded mauve pebbles and across her shins, and as she buried her toes in the lake bed, Jack felt like he was witnessing a miracle as grand as any gate activation. Sam Carter had made the gate work, and now, she'd found a way to exist on both sides of the event horizon simultaneously. He'd have been jealous of the fish on the other side of that barrier, if there'd been any. But as it stood, they hadn't seen any at all yet.
As Carter sighed and hummed in pleasure, her toes wiggling and shifting pebbles this way and that, he was pretty sure his opinion on feet was changing rapidly. She eyed him with curiosity. "...did you, sir?"
"Hog." He gestured towards their camp with a grimace. "It was pretty young. The blighters are getting wise." Or he was getting slower. He shifted from his right leg to his left, relieving the strain building in his leg.
She nodded her understanding, her lips pursing and depriving him of the smile he'd been enjoying. "If only they weren't so tasty."
"We could always stick to leaves…" That'd save him trudging off tomorrow to endure the entire painful, tedious process all over again. A hog a day was a tough ask with bad knees and business casual footwear.
Now, it was her turn to grimace. It was her job to gather edible plants - as she explained it, women's eyes held more cone-shaped photoreceptors than men's eyes did, which meant she was better equipped to identify ripe berries and younger leaves - so it was her hike into the foothills that brought back their fruit, salads and berries. If they ate more of them, she'd have to hike more. Plus, it was a long laborious process to test each new thing thoroughly for poison before they consumed it. "We could always try those apples again, sir."
He winced. The apples had passed the sniff test for cyanide, and had made it as far as the 24-hour skin contact test before he'd vetoed them completely. Even after removing the thin slice from the inside of his elbow, Jack's pupils had remained dilated and his vision had sparkled for the entire day. "That's a negative, Major." It'd been like the '60's all over again, and not in a good way.
She smiled. "Meat makes more sense, anyway. Nutritionally speaking, that is…"
Her combat pants were rolled up past her knees, and as she slowly swished her legs in the lake, her calf muscles flexed and relaxed and he forgot to pay attention to her opinions on caloric density and protein and the rationing of their few remaining MREs. By the time she paused, waited for his response and lifted her legs out of the water sending waterfalls off her skin and into the lake, he was feeling decidedly dense himself. "Um."
She flashed him a winning smile.
"Fine. Hog stays on the menu."
"Yessir." Her legs relaxed and her feet submerged once more.
He needed to distract himself from those legs and the woman attached to them, so he moved a little ways up-current, hunkered down and dunked his canteen. After he'd dropped a filter tablet into it and given it a shake, he scooped up a little water in his hands and splashed his face.
His skin felt instantly better, the sweat and grime of the day releasing its hold on him and swirling away with the gentle flow. Something about the alkaline nature of the water, Carter had explained. Up-slope, they'd found the burnt husks of a massive, decades-old forest fire. Rain had drawn the ash through the soil and stone down to the lake, she surmised, which meant the water here had developed a slightly soap-like quality. She'd spent some time expanding on her theory, but honestly she'd lost him the second she demonstrated by shucking off her pants, and wading into the water in her Air-Force issue underthings and t-shirt to wash her hair. When she'd splashed back to shore her shirt had clung to her curves and drawn his rabid attention to the sweep and flare of her waist and hips. It would have been less obscene, frankly, if she'd taken the shirt off first.
Jack coughed as he stood.
"You want…?" - she scooched over - "You've been hiking all morning." Her socks got a thorough dunking of their own next. Squeezed, redunked and rinsed, she slapped them on the rock behind her to dry.
His feet were barking, his toes gasping for release from their sweaty confines. Joining her ritual felt tempting on many levels - "Nah. I'm good" - but the last thing this scene needed was him wading in with his misshapen old paddles. A decade and a half in Spec Ops and countless low-altitude jumps had left him with a rack full of ribbons, an ass full of shrapnel, and the toes of a mangled monkey.
"' Don't Let Defeat Start with Your Feet' , sir."
He didn't recall that PSA. Maybe they'd made a new one. Maybe he'd slept through it. "Later. I'm heading up-current in a bit, see if I can't find a less soapy spot with fish." He leant his hip against the boulder, ignored his soles' grumbling with a wince, pulled out his sight finder and aimed it across the water. The lake stretched all the way to the horizon. If the water hadn't been potable, he'd have suspected it was a sea.
"You think it's worth it at this stage, sir?" - her voice was muffled - "Siler's" - she huffed with effort - "bound to have the gate connected any day now."
He lowered his scope and turned towards her once more. "That's what you said two days ag-"
She had her hands fisted on the hem of her shirt, and was pulling it up her body and over her head. With a pop, her face re-emerged, her hair now a chaotic and gorgeous mess she was sure to fix if he said anything about it. Luckily, he'd lost the ability to speak. He swallowed in a throat so dry the entire lake couldn't fix it. Skivvies . The top half. Oh, boy .
She smiled at him in a way that made him suspect she knew exactly what she was doing to him, and not for the first time, he wondered if those berries they'd been eating were entirely safe.
This wasn't like the hair-washing incident. Teal'c had been present for that, a chaperone, a silent safeguard to keep Jack in check, keep his eyes mostly forward and away from his 2IC's incredible body. This time Teal'c was halfway up the beach, busy with his breaking, and there was no-one to judge him for staring at all the curves and dips and valleys on show.
And Carter didn't seem to mind him looking, which made it even more dangerous.
Turns out, he'd been wrong about the wet t-shirt. His major, perched on a rock in rolled-up combat pants, dogtags, and a sports bra was definitely more obscene. "Definitely."
"Sir?"
"Nothing."
She let her eyes drop, leaving him to his secrets as she lifted one foot off the lake bed. "Maybe I'll join you when my socks dry out." Water cascaded from her heel and calf muscle and for a moment it looked like the lake was reaching up to pull her foot back in.
"Hm?"
He caught sight of tension in her lip before she bit it. "Fishing."
She didn't meet his gaze as she bent and scrunched up her shirt like a towel and smoothed away the drops clinging to her toes. As she drew it along her elegant arch and let the soft fabric trail across her ankle and up her shining shin, Jack thought he caught a tiny flick of her focus turn his way.
She stopped where her turn-ups barred her way. Jack had never been more angry at the concept of pants in his entire adult life.
"If you still want me to, that is."
"Sure!" He'd spoken too fast. "...sure." He added the second one in the hopes that it would smoothe out the eagerness of the first one. All it did was compound the problem.
"Okay, good." Her other leg received the same tender, thorough attention.
The military's foot care movies were never this compelling. Maybe if they had been he'd have paid better attention. Or, he thought as his major rested her dried toes on the little craggy outcrop again and bent forward to wash her shirt, maybe he'd have been even more distracted.
"But, since we'll have to wait for my stuff to dry" - her eyes flicked towards him again - "that gives you time to look after yourself, too, sir."
Did she just… "Was that a trap, Major?"
She smiled and scooched a little more. "As this team's designated field medic, sir, I insist you take off your shoes."
He didn't mean to groan, but he did anyway. "Look, my shoulders are killing me. My back is stiff, and my knees feel like they're full of trail mix. I won't be able to reach the damn things until I've rested and stretched out a bit."
"I don't want Janet sending me for more training because you gated home with blisters."
"Carter…"
"Those shoes aren't suitable for a- a 10-mile ruck, sir, let alone the terrain we're covering every day, and we both know it. The longer you stay in them the worse support they'll give you tomorrow, and the next day and -"
He knew she was right. "Fine…"
"And it's not like Teal'c can take over." Teal'c was good at many things, but sneaking up on a hog was not one of them. Much like his favoured weapon, the man was built for intimidation and bluster, and the animals sensed that a mile off. Teal'c was more effective stalking firewood than hogs.
"I said fine , Carter." He pulled himself up onto the boulder beside her with a theatrical flourish. The smile she offered him was more than enough to defeat his reluctance. "I'm off my feet. That's as much as I can do for now."
It wasn't until she'd twisted off the rock into the water in front of him like a mermaid that he realised she had more in mind than rest.
"Didn't you just dry your feet?"
Wth the water lapping at her knees and her chest glowing in the slanting sunshine, she waded in front of him and began picking at his laces. "I'll dry them on your shirt when I get out."
"Eh…"
"I found more of those berries you liked."
The berries . Dark pink, tart and sweet in equal measure, and smaller than a raspberry, they had been the first thing they'd deemed safe to eat on day two. They'd had a long discussion that evening about what to call them. Carterberries , Teal'c had suggested - since she'd been the one to discover them - but considering how they looked when he held them between his thumb and middle finger, and how good they tasted, Jack had instantly vetoed that idea. Blessedly, Carter hadn't objected and they'd settled on the vague term "those berries" instead. Even the thought of them was distracting, and with his 2IC so close now - and little more than a crop top to cover her own (god help him) berries - he didn't notice she'd got both his shoes off until she had his trousers rolled up and his poor, worn out socks in hand.
Fearing her judgement of his badly-healed toe and his surgery-scarred bridge, he submerged his feet as she turned away to dunk his socks. At least underwater, refraction helped mask his injuries. "Sorry they look so weird."
Her eyes found his in question as she squeezed water from his socks.
"My feet."
She barely glanced down. "All feet look weird, sir. They're odd, prototype hands with strange little fingers, a useless thumb, and way too much palm." It sounded like she was taking the shape of the human foot personally, like she'd much prefer an extra set of tool-holding appendages for complex repair jobs.
She leant past him and slapped the ragged remains of his socks on the rock beside her own. Water streaked from them in lines, darkening the stone like mascara tears. "If your socks are any indication, you're favouring your left foot, though."
"Yes, well, we all have our cross to bear." He clenched his toes and immediately regretted it as tendon pain shot up his right leg.
Brow furrowed, Carter bent and hooked a gentle hand under his calf, straightening his leg and pulling his foot up and against her bare waist. Her hands were cool against his skin as she made gentle, exploratory presses with her thumb and fingers. It felt good in a way he really shouldn't be allowing.
So, he bent his knee, a weak attempt to remove himself from whatever this good thing was that was happening, but her strong hand gripping further up his leg, just past his knee - so close to trouble - was proof that any attempt to retreat would just have him reversing into an even greater predicament. "What are you doing?" The question came out as more of a plea for more than a demand to cease, and once again she shot him that look, like she knew exactly - exactly - how close this nudged them to the line they dared not cross.
She angled her body to better support his heel against her cocked hip and began to work in earnest, the pads of her fingers pressing against his sole, and travelling in slow, meticulous lines this way and that. "My Mom was really smart." That remark made no sense in context, but she was performing magic, casting out all the aches and pains that had accumulated over the last few days, so he shut up and let her weave her spell.
Avoiding sensitive areas like she was psychic, she worked around anything he'd walked red, and kneaded the meat of his heel and the outer edge of his foot in a way that pulled a sigh from his throat before he could stop it.
"When Dad was deployed, she'd get bored, you know?" Her fingers walked up and down his bridge in a flying-V formation, following the path of his bones, never crossing them, never pushing too hard on the centipede of stitch marks left behind by one of his many restorative surgeries. Her nails flicked at the end of each journey, sending a thrill up his shin. "So, she'd take up a hobby, learn something new." Her pads pressed right where his foot met his toes and his head spun. Glorious. And when his leg relaxed and he allowed her to take the weight of it, she added, "I guess a full time job and raising two kids on an Air Force base wasn't enough to occupy her, so she picked up all sorts of extra skills. This" - she ran her index finger between his big toe and the next one over and he did everything he could not to moan - "was one of them."
"She seduced her CO from the feet up?" The words were out of his stupid mouth before he could stop them. Oh, Jack O'Neill could clamp down and hold on through pain and deprivation with barely a word spoken, but apparently, honesty was a cinch to draw out of him with a kind word and a soft touch.
Carter's hands stilled and his stomach dropped.
He wished for the water level to rise and drown him as he hazarded a look at her.
She was smiling, a little self-conscious flicker in her eyes and a shot of pink across her cheeks that could have been from the sun but wasn't. "Reflexology." How she made that word sound sexy, he didn't understand, but he lost his train of thought the second she started up again. "It's all foo , of course, the idea that each organ in the body could be mapped onto the sole of the feet, and that massaging certain areas could improve circulation, promote healing. It's ridiculous, but" - she slid her thumb down the arch of his foot and walked it back upwards - "it is very relaxing."
"You've got my entire body down there?" The very idea…
"Yessir."
Jack's spine tingled when she retraced her path. "What bit's that?"
"Your neck- " - she pressed on the spot to the side of his big toe and he tried not to worry that its unnatural bend would put her off. She didn't seem to mind and when she worked her fingers in under the curl of his toes and walked along the soft ledge towards his little toe he reminded himself that everyone, apparently, has weird feet.
"And that's your shoulder blade… shoulder… bicep…" She licked her lips and made the same journey over and over, her thumb digging in a little more with every pass. It felt incredible. "Maybe after this you won't need to stretch out as much."
She dropped her hand then, to manipulate the opposite side of his foot, focusing on his heel. "You said your back was stiff, right?"
All he could do was hum his confirmation. "That what you're hitting there?"
She nodded. "Lower spine…" - her thumb circled - "...hip."
Jack couldn't help but wonder why Jacob ever left home when he had this kind of treatment available 24/7. "God, that's good." It was surely all bunkum , like she said, but he had to admit, he was feeling a lot looser already.
Her fingers hesitated for a fraction, then wandered up the side of his heel, closer to his ankle.
Something deep and low in Jack's gut tightened pleasantly when she applied pressure. He wasn't sure if it was her doing, or if he was starting to figure out the map she was working with. Either way, oh, it felt spectacular. His voice growled when he asked, "and what's that ?"
She licked her lips once more and pressed a little harder. "Good?" The husk in her own voice was unmistakable.
A moan of approval was all he managed in reply, but it hadn't escaped him that she hadn't answered his question. "How, unghh , how detailed was this foot map exactly?" Heat shot through him right to the one spot on his body he was trying really hard not to think about.
Her eyes burned as she circled, zeroed in and pressed again. "Very detailed."
"Sweet Jesus, Carter." He had been wrong about the rolled up combats and the dog tags and the sports bra. This … this was obscene. Obscene and hot and something he absolutely did not want to stop her doing. But - "I think there's something in those berries that's making us -"
"I think so, too." She rolled her thumb on that one spot again, her intentions as clear as the lake she was standing in. "I've been feeling it since the second night." She speared him with a look, heat and need writ on her face as surely as on his own. Honesty and vulnerability zapped between them. "But I'm finding it very hard to care." Her fingers slowed and their tempo changed from an insistent circling to a soft caress and if anything, the change just made him want her all the more.
"Options?" Because there was no way he was in a fit state to make any decisions right now.
"We need to cool it on the berries." Her thumb drew a careful arc across the side of his foot as her brow tightened in thought, and finally, heartbreakingly, she loosened her hold on his ankle, letting his leg relax and his foot return to the lake bed.
He groaned, half-sated and not in the lease bit ready for this to end. But he knew she was right - and as much as his body was humming with need now, and no matter how much he wanted to give in and blame his actions squarely on the berries that looked far too sexual to be a coincidence - he was grateful one of them was still capable of a little good sense. After all, "Sorry, General, we screwed each other senseless because we ate too many horny berries" was never going to fly with Hammond.
But she hadn't moved from her spot in front of him and her eyes were still raking over him like he was perfectly roasted hogmeat. "I haven't done your other foot yet, sir."
"Carter…" It was a plea and a warning and so much more, but his protest ceased when she lifted his other leg and pressed his dripping foot to her soft skin. The contact of his cool arch on her warm flesh was nearly enough to make him sob.
"If you can't hunt, sir, we'll have to eat more berries, and if we're right about them…"
His self control was already as thin as his worn-out socks; they'd end up breaking every rule in the book, some more than once if he had his way.
Fingers gripped him and slowly stroked, and pressed and twisted out an intimate ballet that strung music through his veins. Her eyes never left his this time, her attention on him and his reactions. Biting her lip, she ventured across the map of his foot towards the mirrored spot that had sent him skyward before, then away, teasing, drawing out the game and looping back again to send more shots of pleasure through him.
This was it, he realised as he watched her chest rise and fall, each breath coming heavily on the heels of the last, her body swaying as she worked on the only part of him she felt safe enough to indulge.
There would be no escalating fraternisation on this planet. This was as close as they would get; this utterly inflaming tableau was all they could allow themselves, so he relaxed back onto his elbows, watched her watching him, and basked in the feel of her hands, and the press of her intention, and the thought of her talented fingers exploring the map of his body instead.
Jack O'Neill had always been pretty normal about feet, but he knew from that moment on, he'd never look at them the same way again.
