Unreasonable by Raqs (NC-17)
Rec Category: Sam Carter
Pairing: Sam Carter / Daniel Jackson
Category: Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson, Sam/Daniel, character study, het
Warning: sex
Author on LJ raqs
Author's Website: Dith Fic
Link: On Website: Unreasonable
On LJ: Unreasonable
Why This Must Be Read:
I had assumed someone would have beaten me to this rec long ago, so I was shocked to find it had never been recced in either the "Daniel," "Sam," or "Sam/Daniel" categories. "Unreasonable" is a fantastic Sam Carter character study - a simple moment at home between missions has Sam thinking about the normal life she gave up on having in exchange for the exciting life she chose at SGC. raqs explores the internal struggle Sam has between the desire for a normal life - a home and a husband and everything society says she is supposed to want - and the love she has for the life she lives and people she works with.
What follows is a wonderful conversation with Daniel that, yes, does lead to sex, but it's much more them acknowledging how deep their friendship is than it is a Sam/Daniel relationship and we watch Sam understand herself better, and also see Daniel and everything Daniel dreamed about and everything he's lost, and everything she has, even if it doesn't include a white picket fence.
This (along with surreallis's Blue Jell-o Metaphor) is one of the seminal fics for me in terms of understanding who Sam Carter is inside her own head. Even if you don't read ship or sex in fic, I recommend at least reading the first half simply for the exploration of Sam.
It hit Sam while Daniel had his head under the sink.
It was a curiously domestic position in which to see him, and one completely unsupported by reality. If anyone should be looking at the pipes, it was her. If anyone had a fighting chance of taking them apart and getting them back together, it was her.
And in fact, she'd been in the middle of taking them apart when Daniel had come over. So she'd washed her hands and they'd put their heads together over the report on the boxes from P4G-782 with the inscriptions on the side that claimed they were treasure but which had turned out to be, as near as she could tell, batteries.
After some entertaining discussion of the situations in which a primitive culture might develop lead-acid batteries before they developed refined petroleum products, she'd gone down to the basement to figure out what she had in the freezer that she might turn into dinner.
And when she'd come up, there he was, lying on his back, head under the sink, poking around in the pipes with a flashlight in one hand. She could just see the crinkly Daniel-frown between his brows that indicated how hard he was concentrating.
"You know, I had a colleague once who used to rave about how much you could learn about a culture from its plumbing," Daniel said conversationally from under the sink while Sam stood there and looked at him, her hands going numb from the solidly-frozen gallon bag of chili. "I wish I'd listened more to him at the time. Of course I spent most of my time in Egypt where plumbing systems tended toward the -"
Suddenly realizing that she was just standing there, staring at him, Daniel went quiet. In that particularly oddly thoughtless way he had sometimes, he shone the flashlight into her eyes.
"Sam?" he said.
With his chin tucked under she could see he'd put on a few pounds recently, and spiky wisps of hair were peeking from over his forehead where they'd gotten a little sparse lately.
Sam's mouth was dry.
He looked so normal, so real. This was what she was supposed to have at this point in her life. There was supposed to be a man under the sink. He was supposed to take care of things like leaky traps, and he was supposed to be proud of her and love her, and she was supposed to come home to him every night.
It wasn't. But it was supposed to be.
"Daniel," Sam said, and her throat felt tight, and she thought to herself with stunning clarity, You must not cry.
"What is it?" He wiggled out from under the sink, came over to where she was standing in the middle of the floor. He tried to take the chili out of her hands but she was gripping it.
Pairing: Sam Carter / Daniel Jackson
Category: Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson, Sam/Daniel, character study, het
Warning: sex
Author on LJ raqs
Author's Website: Dith Fic
Link: On Website: Unreasonable
On LJ: Unreasonable
Why This Must Be Read:
I had assumed someone would have beaten me to this rec long ago, so I was shocked to find it had never been recced in either the "Daniel," "Sam," or "Sam/Daniel" categories. "Unreasonable" is a fantastic Sam Carter character study - a simple moment at home between missions has Sam thinking about the normal life she gave up on having in exchange for the exciting life she chose at SGC. raqs explores the internal struggle Sam has between the desire for a normal life - a home and a husband and everything society says she is supposed to want - and the love she has for the life she lives and people she works with.
What follows is a wonderful conversation with Daniel that, yes, does lead to sex, but it's much more them acknowledging how deep their friendship is than it is a Sam/Daniel relationship and we watch Sam understand herself better, and also see Daniel and everything Daniel dreamed about and everything he's lost, and everything she has, even if it doesn't include a white picket fence.
This (along with surreallis's Blue Jell-o Metaphor) is one of the seminal fics for me in terms of understanding who Sam Carter is inside her own head. Even if you don't read ship or sex in fic, I recommend at least reading the first half simply for the exploration of Sam.
It hit Sam while Daniel had his head under the sink.
It was a curiously domestic position in which to see him, and one completely unsupported by reality. If anyone should be looking at the pipes, it was her. If anyone had a fighting chance of taking them apart and getting them back together, it was her.
And in fact, she'd been in the middle of taking them apart when Daniel had come over. So she'd washed her hands and they'd put their heads together over the report on the boxes from P4G-782 with the inscriptions on the side that claimed they were treasure but which had turned out to be, as near as she could tell, batteries.
After some entertaining discussion of the situations in which a primitive culture might develop lead-acid batteries before they developed refined petroleum products, she'd gone down to the basement to figure out what she had in the freezer that she might turn into dinner.
And when she'd come up, there he was, lying on his back, head under the sink, poking around in the pipes with a flashlight in one hand. She could just see the crinkly Daniel-frown between his brows that indicated how hard he was concentrating.
"You know, I had a colleague once who used to rave about how much you could learn about a culture from its plumbing," Daniel said conversationally from under the sink while Sam stood there and looked at him, her hands going numb from the solidly-frozen gallon bag of chili. "I wish I'd listened more to him at the time. Of course I spent most of my time in Egypt where plumbing systems tended toward the -"
Suddenly realizing that she was just standing there, staring at him, Daniel went quiet. In that particularly oddly thoughtless way he had sometimes, he shone the flashlight into her eyes.
"Sam?" he said.
With his chin tucked under she could see he'd put on a few pounds recently, and spiky wisps of hair were peeking from over his forehead where they'd gotten a little sparse lately.
Sam's mouth was dry.
He looked so normal, so real. This was what she was supposed to have at this point in her life. There was supposed to be a man under the sink. He was supposed to take care of things like leaky traps, and he was supposed to be proud of her and love her, and she was supposed to come home to him every night.
It wasn't. But it was supposed to be.
"Daniel," Sam said, and her throat felt tight, and she thought to herself with stunning clarity, You must not cry.
"What is it?" He wiggled out from under the sink, came over to where she was standing in the middle of the floor. He tried to take the chili out of her hands but she was gripping it.