Fic: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (NC-17, Sam/Jack)
Title: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Author: Pepper
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 2464
Featured Character(s): Jack, Sam
Pairing(s): Sam/Jack
Summary: What was that noise?
A/N: I originally began this for the sg1_by_hand ficathon, aaaaaaages back - prompt at end. I finished it to cross off another of my 50 Top Tropes - and also because I have THE most appropriate icon.
Many many thanks to holdouttrout for the beta and the encouragement!
---
She woke in the night feeling warm and content; somewhere out in the universe with the three people she loved best, huddled down together in a pair of two-man tents, with the rain thrumming down and... and the Colonel moving restlessly behind her.
Not that she wanted him to be sleepless, but there was something very comforting about hearing another person close by. If she was honest - and she was too relaxed not to be - a large part of the comfort came from knowing that it was this particular person. She was on the edge of sleep, though, so lay still, waiting to drift off again. He'd probably just come in from second watch, she thought sleepily. It had been her turn to take first, so she'd settled in to enjoy a blissful few hours of continuous sleep.
The Colonel turned in his bag, and huffed quietly, obviously annoyed at his insomnia but trying not to wake her. Then he rustled some more, and just as she was beginning to really wake up and wonder if he'd been bitten by an insect or something, he lay still. Sam sighed softly, and relaxed further into her bag. All was peaceful again. She began to drift...
What was that noise?
It was barely audible above the sound of the rain, but once she'd noticed it, her brain latched on to it, trying to identify the source. It was rhythmic, it was coming from the direction of the Colonel, and it sounded like... like...
Oh.
Oh, god.
Oh, good god.
He wasn't - was he?
She listened carefully, now completely and utterly awake.
Yes, he most certainly was.
She felt a warm flush - only partly embarrassment - sweep her entire body, and realized just how hot the thermal sleeping bags were. Her legs prickled with sweat. Her muscles tensed as her brain sent a signal to move, to unzip the bag, to turn, but she stopped it just in time. For god's sake. She couldn't let him know she was awake.
Which meant she'd have to stay still... and listen.
From the soft sounds - she thought she could discern muffled breaths, could picture knuckles brushing cotton and arm hairs ghosting past the inner lining of the bag - she knew he was going slowly and steadily, which didn't help cool her down one bit. She had a sudden, vivid mental picture of him as he lay behind her, face focused inward, concentrating, his long-fingered hands unfaltering and sure, familiar...
She opened her eyes in an attempt to banish the idea. It didn't help. There was no speck of light, nothing was visible, and yet the inside of a tent had never looked so arousing. She could picture it - the material wet and slick to the touch, curving softly under the persistent pressure from the rain... She cursed silently, lips moving against the darkness.
Surely this was against the Eighth Amendment, the Geneva Convention, and the humanitarian laws of most civilized planets? Cruel and unusual punishment. It was like one of Daniel's wacky mythological tortures - being forced to feign sleep while listening to audio porn from Colonel O'Neill. She wondered what she'd done to deserve such cruelty, and then found herself wondering what had brought it on. It wasn't as if anything unusual had happened on the planet. There hadn't been any sexy aliens - not even a hint of civilization, in fact - no strikingly unusual plant life, no detectable pollutants in the air. It was merely an ordinary, boring, alien planet.
...God, her life was weird.
Now she thought about it, though, she had caught him looking at her with unusual intensity across the campfire just that evening, before the rain kicked in. She tried to picture what she'd been doing. Nothing exciting, she was sure. In fact, hadn't she been eating chicken casserole at the time? Yes. She'd taken a bite, wondering whether the unusually spicy flavor was on purpose or whether it had gone off, and had glanced up - and found the Colonel's eyes on her. He'd held her gaze for a long, long moment, and then closed his eyes and turned his head away, blowing out a breath.
She'd turned her eyes back to the chicken casserole, telling herself that the flush on her cheeks, the buzzing in her ears, and the strange tightness in her stomach was just the onset of food poisoning. He hadn't done it again, and her symptoms had soon gone away. The rest of the evening had been... normal. Maybe he'd been a little quiet. Nothing remarkable, though. But she just knew - somehow, she just knew that moment had led to this. It wasn't about ego, or paranoia - it just... was.
God, what if he did this regularly? Off-world, that was - she wasn't going to speculate about how often he did this back at home, and whether he pictured her when he did - except that now she was speculating and omigodstopit! No, it was unlikely: the Colonel rarely let his guard down fully, no matter how safe the planet seemed to be. Besides, she would have noticed before now; off-world, she was a light sleeper. He certainly wouldn't do it in a tent with Teal'c meditating beside him; no matter how deep his state of kel'no'reem, Teal'c could wake in an instant. In a tent with Daniel was more feasible; Daniel was hardest to wake out of all of them. And, great holy buckets, there was an image to give a girl some spectacular dreams.
She was so. very. turned on.
She breathed in deeply and quietly, and tried to relax her body, telling herself she was falling asleep again, that she was sleepy, very, very sleeeeeeeeeepy. It worked - for about a second.
She could hear his breathing grow ragged as he lost himself, now and then quieting as he recalled his surroundings again. In her mind's eye he was curled on his side toward her, one arm bent underneath his head, the other resting on the sharp edge of his hip, hand dipping down into his loosened pants, wrapped around his hot, smooth skin. Her eyes closed involuntarily. She pictured reaching out and slipping a hand over his, feeling the tension in his grip and then slowly raising her eyes to meet his. Watching as surprise morphed into a mixture of wariness and trust, as he let go and allowed her to take over.
She imagined discovering the feel of him and his responses for herself - how he'd react when she brushed her palm down him, shiver-soft, and then grasped his solid flesh, and drew the circle of her fingers in a slow, firm slide up, and down, and up again. Maybe she would tease the softer flesh at the top, caressing and squeezing him more gently than he touched himself, until he was teetering on the edge. Then maybe she would press down hard, taking him by surprise, and maybe that would be when his intent gaze finally broke, his eyelids lowering as he gasped and shuddered, fighting to retain control, to make it last...
She only realized that she was moving when she was already in motion - rolling over, bag and all, to face him.
They both froze.
He wasn't even breathing. Hell, neither was she. And now she had to do something, or risk finding out if one could actually die of embarrassment.
So she curled her head until it touched his chin, breathed in his smell, and did what she'd desperately needed to do for the last ten minutes: she reached down, unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, slipped her hand in past her underwear, and touched herself.
The electric shiver that ran through her at her first firm stroke matched his surprised jolt, as he realized what she was doing. He murmured a wordless exclamation into her hair, and wriggled closer, his hands seeking proof through the barrier of two sleeping bags. She shifted to allow his body to align with hers, bending her leg back so that the soft, slippery cushion of the material couldn't bounce them apart. His hands eventually rested over hers, avidly curious. So she let him feel. His breathing quickened; she could feel the alternate heat and coolness of it through her hair. She knew he'd also be able to feel the heat of her face, as close as he was, but this was worth a little embarrassment - oh, it was worth it.
When one of his hands left her, she breathed out an involuntary moan. He shivered, pressing still closer, as much as was possible. The sensation of almost-contact, the proximity of the intimacy she craved - it was simultaneously frustrating and a huge, huge relief.
Knowing herself but imagining it was him - his fingers, his unfamiliar touch - Sam was already close. The position was restrictive, she couldn't move very well or reach very far, but she stayed put, the awkwardness adding to the feeling of a first encounter. Which, in a way, it was - but at the same time, they weren't crossing the major line. And that truly was more about self-restraint than sophistry.
A gust of rain clawed at the tent, but Sam was no longer listening. The Colonel moved more freely now that he didn't have to worry about waking her, but slower than before - matching the pace she set. Sam wriggled her free hand around until she could feel the tense muscles of his wrist beneath her fingers. Their bags rasped against one another, artificial intermediaries sighing in nylon. They moved together.
Already on the edge, he came first, gripping her wrist hard enough to hurt. She paused and waited for him, her own breath coming faster as he panted into her hair, a strangled noise catching deep in his throat, and shuddered against her - once, twice, and a long third time. His grip suddenly loosened, and she felt herself falling away - but quickly caught herself and pushed forward again. His hand moved to hold her, unable to wrap his arms around her as she was sure he would have done otherwise. Instead, he found her hip, kneading his encouragement. His ragged breath brushed prosaic parts of her - her forehead, her ear - and it was enough.
She shook, her pelvis tilting towards him and then curling away when it was all too much, forgetting that it was her own fingers providing the pleasure. Breathing hard, she finally came to rest against him when all her joints loosened, and they shuffled down, readjusting so that they were cuddled together, boneless as kittens. After a few moments, his arm snaked out of his bag and wrapped tightly around her waist. He sighed contentedly, and Sam echoed it, beginning to drift, blinking softly against the heavy darkness. The rain pattered endlessly on, drowning the land.
Maybe now they could both get some sleep.
---
She woke in the morning with an unusually fuzzy brain to find herself lying face-to-face with the Colonel, his arm heavy across her waist. His eyes were open, and he was so warm and close, and his expression so uncommonly serious, that for a moment she couldn't remember exactly where they'd redrawn the line, last night. How far it had shifted.
"Good morning," he said, in a low, gravelly voice that struck sparks inside her chest - and she remembered.
"Morning." She wasn't quite ready to commit to whether it was good or not.
The moment stretched. And stretched...
Then, just as panic was beginning to fire her limbs, his lips twitched, and for a moment the creases in his cheeks deepened with the barest hint of a smile. Relieved, she smiled back.
"So," he said. "Will you still respect me?"
She chuckled quietly. "As much as I ever did."
The Colonel narrowed his eyes, feigning suspicion - and, ambushed by an irrepressible impulse, Sam leaned forward and lightly kissed him.
His hand tightened convulsively on her waist when she lingered a moment, but when she moved back, his face was wiped clear of all expression, except for a slight widening of his eyes that meant he was either thrilled or panicking. Maybe a bit of both. He parted his lips and drew in a breath to speak... and she saw the moment his wariness - or maybe his sense - won out. His eyes were regretful as he closed his mouth again, and instead of words, he touched his forehead fleetingly to hers.
"I need coffee," he declared briskly, making her jump, and levered himself up and away, unzipping his bag and reaching for his boots.
Sam rolled onto her back, wanting to indulge for a moment longer. She touched her tongue to her lips, memorizing his taste. When she looked again, he was watching her from the corner of his eyes, his hands pausing momentarily on his laces.
"It's gonna be a long, muddy walk today. Sun's out again, so it'll be hot, too." He yanked hard on the final knot. "And you know what all that means. Mosquitoes. Alien mosquitoes," he added, as if that was automatically worse than the monstrosities that comprised fifty per cent of the airspace around his cabin (or so Teal'c claimed).
"Lucky for me I stole Daniel's DEET yesterday," she said.
He gave her a flash of grin, and then rolled up and out of the tent in one smooth move. "Get your ass out of bed, Major!" he called back.
Sam blinked in the dazzle of sunlight from the myriad puddles outside, the light bouncing in through the gap he'd left in the tent flap. The Colonel barked cheerful morning orders, echoed by Daniel's sleepy grumble and Teal'c's unruffled tones. Sam reached up and touched her lips - and smiled.
Yes, it had probably been a mistake. Yes, there might be fallout at some point. But no matter how much their relationship ran contrary to regulations, nothing about it felt wrong. Even their worst mistakes - and at some low point, late at night with a universe to save and no idea how to do it, running low on sleep and high on caffeine, she knew this would rate highly on that list - never gave her that bone-deep feeling of wrongness, of incipient disaster, like low pressure before a storm. She'd become intimately familiar with that feeling, once upon a time, and when she'd given Jonas back his ring and felt that feeling lift, she'd been almost weightless with relief. She'd vowed then never to make the same mistake.
This... this felt like stepping out of a wormhole and into a forest. The air was oxygen-rich and full of life, speckled with sunlight. It was dangerous, yes - exhilarating and unpredictable, with no clear line of sight, and only the barest hints of what lay ahead. But above all, it was so easy to breathe.
---
END.
A/N: sg1_by_hand prompt: Sam POV. Sam and Jack off-world sharing a tent. Sam wakes and hears Jack getting off, and tries not to act like she's awake, even though it might be turning her on.
Author: Pepper
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 2464
Featured Character(s): Jack, Sam
Pairing(s): Sam/Jack
Summary: What was that noise?
A/N: I originally began this for the sg1_by_hand ficathon, aaaaaaages back - prompt at end. I finished it to cross off another of my 50 Top Tropes - and also because I have THE most appropriate icon.
Many many thanks to holdouttrout for the beta and the encouragement!
---
She woke in the night feeling warm and content; somewhere out in the universe with the three people she loved best, huddled down together in a pair of two-man tents, with the rain thrumming down and... and the Colonel moving restlessly behind her.
Not that she wanted him to be sleepless, but there was something very comforting about hearing another person close by. If she was honest - and she was too relaxed not to be - a large part of the comfort came from knowing that it was this particular person. She was on the edge of sleep, though, so lay still, waiting to drift off again. He'd probably just come in from second watch, she thought sleepily. It had been her turn to take first, so she'd settled in to enjoy a blissful few hours of continuous sleep.
The Colonel turned in his bag, and huffed quietly, obviously annoyed at his insomnia but trying not to wake her. Then he rustled some more, and just as she was beginning to really wake up and wonder if he'd been bitten by an insect or something, he lay still. Sam sighed softly, and relaxed further into her bag. All was peaceful again. She began to drift...
What was that noise?
It was barely audible above the sound of the rain, but once she'd noticed it, her brain latched on to it, trying to identify the source. It was rhythmic, it was coming from the direction of the Colonel, and it sounded like... like...
Oh.
Oh, god.
Oh, good god.
He wasn't - was he?
She listened carefully, now completely and utterly awake.
Yes, he most certainly was.
She felt a warm flush - only partly embarrassment - sweep her entire body, and realized just how hot the thermal sleeping bags were. Her legs prickled with sweat. Her muscles tensed as her brain sent a signal to move, to unzip the bag, to turn, but she stopped it just in time. For god's sake. She couldn't let him know she was awake.
Which meant she'd have to stay still... and listen.
From the soft sounds - she thought she could discern muffled breaths, could picture knuckles brushing cotton and arm hairs ghosting past the inner lining of the bag - she knew he was going slowly and steadily, which didn't help cool her down one bit. She had a sudden, vivid mental picture of him as he lay behind her, face focused inward, concentrating, his long-fingered hands unfaltering and sure, familiar...
She opened her eyes in an attempt to banish the idea. It didn't help. There was no speck of light, nothing was visible, and yet the inside of a tent had never looked so arousing. She could picture it - the material wet and slick to the touch, curving softly under the persistent pressure from the rain... She cursed silently, lips moving against the darkness.
Surely this was against the Eighth Amendment, the Geneva Convention, and the humanitarian laws of most civilized planets? Cruel and unusual punishment. It was like one of Daniel's wacky mythological tortures - being forced to feign sleep while listening to audio porn from Colonel O'Neill. She wondered what she'd done to deserve such cruelty, and then found herself wondering what had brought it on. It wasn't as if anything unusual had happened on the planet. There hadn't been any sexy aliens - not even a hint of civilization, in fact - no strikingly unusual plant life, no detectable pollutants in the air. It was merely an ordinary, boring, alien planet.
...God, her life was weird.
Now she thought about it, though, she had caught him looking at her with unusual intensity across the campfire just that evening, before the rain kicked in. She tried to picture what she'd been doing. Nothing exciting, she was sure. In fact, hadn't she been eating chicken casserole at the time? Yes. She'd taken a bite, wondering whether the unusually spicy flavor was on purpose or whether it had gone off, and had glanced up - and found the Colonel's eyes on her. He'd held her gaze for a long, long moment, and then closed his eyes and turned his head away, blowing out a breath.
She'd turned her eyes back to the chicken casserole, telling herself that the flush on her cheeks, the buzzing in her ears, and the strange tightness in her stomach was just the onset of food poisoning. He hadn't done it again, and her symptoms had soon gone away. The rest of the evening had been... normal. Maybe he'd been a little quiet. Nothing remarkable, though. But she just knew - somehow, she just knew that moment had led to this. It wasn't about ego, or paranoia - it just... was.
God, what if he did this regularly? Off-world, that was - she wasn't going to speculate about how often he did this back at home, and whether he pictured her when he did - except that now she was speculating and omigodstopit! No, it was unlikely: the Colonel rarely let his guard down fully, no matter how safe the planet seemed to be. Besides, she would have noticed before now; off-world, she was a light sleeper. He certainly wouldn't do it in a tent with Teal'c meditating beside him; no matter how deep his state of kel'no'reem, Teal'c could wake in an instant. In a tent with Daniel was more feasible; Daniel was hardest to wake out of all of them. And, great holy buckets, there was an image to give a girl some spectacular dreams.
She was so. very. turned on.
She breathed in deeply and quietly, and tried to relax her body, telling herself she was falling asleep again, that she was sleepy, very, very sleeeeeeeeeepy. It worked - for about a second.
She could hear his breathing grow ragged as he lost himself, now and then quieting as he recalled his surroundings again. In her mind's eye he was curled on his side toward her, one arm bent underneath his head, the other resting on the sharp edge of his hip, hand dipping down into his loosened pants, wrapped around his hot, smooth skin. Her eyes closed involuntarily. She pictured reaching out and slipping a hand over his, feeling the tension in his grip and then slowly raising her eyes to meet his. Watching as surprise morphed into a mixture of wariness and trust, as he let go and allowed her to take over.
She imagined discovering the feel of him and his responses for herself - how he'd react when she brushed her palm down him, shiver-soft, and then grasped his solid flesh, and drew the circle of her fingers in a slow, firm slide up, and down, and up again. Maybe she would tease the softer flesh at the top, caressing and squeezing him more gently than he touched himself, until he was teetering on the edge. Then maybe she would press down hard, taking him by surprise, and maybe that would be when his intent gaze finally broke, his eyelids lowering as he gasped and shuddered, fighting to retain control, to make it last...
She only realized that she was moving when she was already in motion - rolling over, bag and all, to face him.
They both froze.
He wasn't even breathing. Hell, neither was she. And now she had to do something, or risk finding out if one could actually die of embarrassment.
So she curled her head until it touched his chin, breathed in his smell, and did what she'd desperately needed to do for the last ten minutes: she reached down, unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, slipped her hand in past her underwear, and touched herself.
The electric shiver that ran through her at her first firm stroke matched his surprised jolt, as he realized what she was doing. He murmured a wordless exclamation into her hair, and wriggled closer, his hands seeking proof through the barrier of two sleeping bags. She shifted to allow his body to align with hers, bending her leg back so that the soft, slippery cushion of the material couldn't bounce them apart. His hands eventually rested over hers, avidly curious. So she let him feel. His breathing quickened; she could feel the alternate heat and coolness of it through her hair. She knew he'd also be able to feel the heat of her face, as close as he was, but this was worth a little embarrassment - oh, it was worth it.
When one of his hands left her, she breathed out an involuntary moan. He shivered, pressing still closer, as much as was possible. The sensation of almost-contact, the proximity of the intimacy she craved - it was simultaneously frustrating and a huge, huge relief.
Knowing herself but imagining it was him - his fingers, his unfamiliar touch - Sam was already close. The position was restrictive, she couldn't move very well or reach very far, but she stayed put, the awkwardness adding to the feeling of a first encounter. Which, in a way, it was - but at the same time, they weren't crossing the major line. And that truly was more about self-restraint than sophistry.
A gust of rain clawed at the tent, but Sam was no longer listening. The Colonel moved more freely now that he didn't have to worry about waking her, but slower than before - matching the pace she set. Sam wriggled her free hand around until she could feel the tense muscles of his wrist beneath her fingers. Their bags rasped against one another, artificial intermediaries sighing in nylon. They moved together.
Already on the edge, he came first, gripping her wrist hard enough to hurt. She paused and waited for him, her own breath coming faster as he panted into her hair, a strangled noise catching deep in his throat, and shuddered against her - once, twice, and a long third time. His grip suddenly loosened, and she felt herself falling away - but quickly caught herself and pushed forward again. His hand moved to hold her, unable to wrap his arms around her as she was sure he would have done otherwise. Instead, he found her hip, kneading his encouragement. His ragged breath brushed prosaic parts of her - her forehead, her ear - and it was enough.
She shook, her pelvis tilting towards him and then curling away when it was all too much, forgetting that it was her own fingers providing the pleasure. Breathing hard, she finally came to rest against him when all her joints loosened, and they shuffled down, readjusting so that they were cuddled together, boneless as kittens. After a few moments, his arm snaked out of his bag and wrapped tightly around her waist. He sighed contentedly, and Sam echoed it, beginning to drift, blinking softly against the heavy darkness. The rain pattered endlessly on, drowning the land.
Maybe now they could both get some sleep.
---
She woke in the morning with an unusually fuzzy brain to find herself lying face-to-face with the Colonel, his arm heavy across her waist. His eyes were open, and he was so warm and close, and his expression so uncommonly serious, that for a moment she couldn't remember exactly where they'd redrawn the line, last night. How far it had shifted.
"Good morning," he said, in a low, gravelly voice that struck sparks inside her chest - and she remembered.
"Morning." She wasn't quite ready to commit to whether it was good or not.
The moment stretched. And stretched...
Then, just as panic was beginning to fire her limbs, his lips twitched, and for a moment the creases in his cheeks deepened with the barest hint of a smile. Relieved, she smiled back.
"So," he said. "Will you still respect me?"
She chuckled quietly. "As much as I ever did."
The Colonel narrowed his eyes, feigning suspicion - and, ambushed by an irrepressible impulse, Sam leaned forward and lightly kissed him.
His hand tightened convulsively on her waist when she lingered a moment, but when she moved back, his face was wiped clear of all expression, except for a slight widening of his eyes that meant he was either thrilled or panicking. Maybe a bit of both. He parted his lips and drew in a breath to speak... and she saw the moment his wariness - or maybe his sense - won out. His eyes were regretful as he closed his mouth again, and instead of words, he touched his forehead fleetingly to hers.
"I need coffee," he declared briskly, making her jump, and levered himself up and away, unzipping his bag and reaching for his boots.
Sam rolled onto her back, wanting to indulge for a moment longer. She touched her tongue to her lips, memorizing his taste. When she looked again, he was watching her from the corner of his eyes, his hands pausing momentarily on his laces.
"It's gonna be a long, muddy walk today. Sun's out again, so it'll be hot, too." He yanked hard on the final knot. "And you know what all that means. Mosquitoes. Alien mosquitoes," he added, as if that was automatically worse than the monstrosities that comprised fifty per cent of the airspace around his cabin (or so Teal'c claimed).
"Lucky for me I stole Daniel's DEET yesterday," she said.
He gave her a flash of grin, and then rolled up and out of the tent in one smooth move. "Get your ass out of bed, Major!" he called back.
Sam blinked in the dazzle of sunlight from the myriad puddles outside, the light bouncing in through the gap he'd left in the tent flap. The Colonel barked cheerful morning orders, echoed by Daniel's sleepy grumble and Teal'c's unruffled tones. Sam reached up and touched her lips - and smiled.
Yes, it had probably been a mistake. Yes, there might be fallout at some point. But no matter how much their relationship ran contrary to regulations, nothing about it felt wrong. Even their worst mistakes - and at some low point, late at night with a universe to save and no idea how to do it, running low on sleep and high on caffeine, she knew this would rate highly on that list - never gave her that bone-deep feeling of wrongness, of incipient disaster, like low pressure before a storm. She'd become intimately familiar with that feeling, once upon a time, and when she'd given Jonas back his ring and felt that feeling lift, she'd been almost weightless with relief. She'd vowed then never to make the same mistake.
This... this felt like stepping out of a wormhole and into a forest. The air was oxygen-rich and full of life, speckled with sunlight. It was dangerous, yes - exhilarating and unpredictable, with no clear line of sight, and only the barest hints of what lay ahead. But above all, it was so easy to breathe.
---
END.
A/N: sg1_by_hand prompt: Sam POV. Sam and Jack off-world sharing a tent. Sam wakes and hears Jack getting off, and tries not to act like she's awake, even though it might be turning her on.