Fic: Drifting Back to Life (OT3)
Okay, so I wrote this fic for katcorvi's birthday way back in April, and then I emailed it to her and forgot about it for a while. Like Buffalo, I felt sort of hesitant about it somehow, but when I gave it time and then went back and read it, I ended up liking it a lot. Odd.
I'm working on finishing the iconfic, but I hope this will suffice until then...
Drifting Back to Life
by Jennghis Kahn
Pairing- Sam/Jack/Daniel
Rating- Adult, but not graphic
Category- Angst, yes.
Warnings- Spoilers for Meridian.
fanfic100 prompt: Death
A/N- This is a bit different than my usual OT3. This is based more on the Sam/Jack canon and doesn’t assume that Jack and Daniel are bi or that they’re fine sexually with each other. It’s… odd.
**
Happy Birthday to Kat! This is especially for you. An OT3 that can’t be really happy without each other. J
**
She knows it never would have happened if she hadn't been into it. Sam was and still is the key for them. She finds that strange sometimes, especially since the two of them have known each other longer than either of them have known her. They love each other, but it’s hard for them. She makes it easier.
She's been attracted to Daniel since the very beginning. Maybe since she first read his work on the pyramids and the aliens and later on, the reports on how he'd made the stargate work, long before she’d ever laid eyes on the man himself. It hadn't been unrequited, but they'd gotten so close, and he was still in agony over Sha're; and then there'd been a few times when a tiny, hidden part of her had almost wished that Sha're would meet her end and set Daniel free. It had been what they all expected, but still she'd felt guilty enough to realize that she and Daniel could never happen.
The attraction had deepened, they'd been through so much, but it had been easy to set aside... during the day.
Jack. Jack had hit her like a mortar round. One minute she'd been as annoyed by him as ever, the next he was willingly sacrificing himself to save the planet... and she'd never wanted to kiss a man so badly in her life. Everything he does hits her hard. Whether she's barely hanging onto protocol, trying to restrain a torrent of insubordinate ranting; or she's caught in his piercing gaze trying to hide a smile as he tries to tease it out of her with a bad joke.
Together, he and Daniel wrench emotions out of her that she'd never even known she was capable of.
She wonders sometimes if it was unavoidable. She likes to think that it was, because then none of them has to take real responsibility. Not like the Air Force would accept that as an excuse if they ever found out.
***
The hockey games at Jack's house are his way of drawing them all together. Despite the bond the four of them share, SG-1 doesn't spend a lot of time together outside of the SGC. Sam's only marginally interested in hockey, but it's good to feel like one of the guys once in a while, and she likes spending time with them. She thinks Daniel feels the same way. Teal'c finds sports fascinating, which pleases Jack to no end.
They drink beer, and Teal'c drinks iced tea, and they cheer on the Avalanche and the Blackhawks and when the pros aren't playing, they watch college. Jack explains the games to Teal'c, and it's only occasionally that he has to remind Sam and Daniel to stop talking about wormhole theory and ancient Egyptian agricultural techniques.
There’s a self-built wall between her and Jack that can only be breached when Daniel or Teal’c are there. Their presence somehow strips the meaning from the gazes and the accidental touches and the way they sometimes slip and call each other by their first names. Playing with Jack is like jumping a live wire. You just aren’t sure exactly what will happen, and the anticipation is so heavy, it’s nearly tangible.
Underneath it all, her heart still aches for Daniel, but he’s pulled away from her over the past year. She never told him about the Zay’tarc testing, but maybe Jack did. Either way, she feels like she betrayed him sometimes. Like both her and Jack did. There were all sorts of attractions from the beginning, things that have grown and deepened. But none of them was ever supposed to say the words out loud. It was unwritten but understood.
Five years of facing death together brings people close. Too close. You become so changed that finding relief on the outside is too hard, but finding it within becomes just as impossible. They can’t win.
Teal'c goes home to visit his family during the NCHA nationals. He’s the only one who’s managed to build a life outside of the team, and they’d never begrudge him that. They’ve all suffered, but Teal’c has endured a lifetime they can’t even imagine. He deserves more than they can give.
Sam and Daniel show up at Jack's house by themselves.
Things change without Teal'c there. As if he had been their safety line. They drink more than usual, and they talk. The game is slow and low scoring. Somehow they start talking about sex... and how long it's been since they've had any. It starts as a joke, but the smiles start fading and they’re sharing more than they normally would. Sam is surprised to realize it's been longer for them than for her.
They lament about how hard it is to connect with someone outside of the SGC, how much easier it is to just keep each other company. Jack keeps holding her gaze a few seconds too long. Daniel sits so close to her on the sofa she can feel his body heat. She thinks they're just worried about her. She's only a few weeks out from having her mind warehoused in a SGC computer while a sentient stream of energy took over her body. Jack had to zat her… twice. It was as close as she'd ever come to her mortal end, and they'd all been a bit clingy since it happened.
Even when the game goes into overtime, they ignore it and keep talking. The last mission was hard. Tiring. They seem to get harder every year. They're drinking way too much.
They barely notice when Colorado loses, but the distraction is enough to send Daniel off to the bathroom. He stumbles trying to get off the sofa, and Sam laughs at him as he grins and she props him up with a hand on his hip, but then he gains his balance and disappears down Jack's hallway.
Jack goes to get them all another beer. When he comes back he hands a bottle to her, cap already removed. His eyes catch hers as she reaches for the beer and there's something in them that sends a shiver down her spine. She wraps her hand around the bottle, but he doesn't let go. They pause there, him standing, her sitting, both holding the beer bottle while the condensation runs over their fingers, and they just stare at each other.
She can read the want in his eyes. It's been nearly a year since the Zay'tarc incident, and they've done a damn good job at keeping those inappropriate feelings 'in the room'. For some reason, he's dragging them all back out again tonight.
"Sir?"
He winces at that, and she understands all too well.
"It's too hard," he finally says, his voice a weighed whisper. His eyes burn her.
She knows he's talking about her. About them. And for a moment she's afraid he's going to split the team up, and she won't have any of them anymore. But then he's pulling upwards on the bottle and she's standing up, following her hand until his arm is sliding around her waist and, oh... oh, she's kissing Jack, his mouth pressing hard against hers. The bottle disappears from her hand, and she has no idea if he took it from her or if she dropped it. His hands are sliding under the hem of her T-shirt, and he chases her mouth with intent each time she pauses to take a breath.
It's too hard. What's the point?
He tastes like beer and just a bit of mint, and it's somehow exactly what she's always imagined he would taste like. What she never imagined is that he would finally give up and give in, their careers be damned.
But now that he is, she doesn’t want to give him a chance to change his mind. Or maybe she doesn’t want time to examine that niggling feeling in the back of her own mind that is furiously waving a red flag and screaming soundlessly at her.
She slides her tongue against his and drags her fingertips lightly through the short hairs on his nape.
“Should I leave?”
Daniel’s voice shakes them apart a bit. Sam turns, and he’s standing in the entrance to the living room watching them. His hands are stuffed into his jeans pockets, and his gaze is steady. She doesn’t think to wonder until later about why he actually asked and didn’t just let himself quietly out.
“No,” she insists in a whisper, a little desperately and completely without thinking. She feels Jack’s hand close gently around her wrist. Oh God, the one thing she’s never wanted to do is choose, and somehow she’s sure her fumbling will drive them both away.
Daniel’s not looking at her anymore. He’s looking at Jack. They’re staring at each other, and although there’s not exactly an entire conversation going on silently between them, she is getting the feeling that this is something they both expected eventually. There’s a rising pulse in the pit of her stomach because she knows this isn’t about leaving or going or all of them sitting back down to watch television. This is about sex, pure and simple.
“Stay,” Jack finally says, and he means it.
They don’t say anything after that, and maybe that’s the only way it could have happened that first time. In silence. No explanations or joking or even any names. Just sighs and panting and moans that escape through gritted teeth.
She thinks this probably wouldn't have happened a few years ago, but there's been distance between them lately. Just enough to make this possible.
Afterward, Daniel gets up and leaves without a word in the darkness. Sam leaves soon after when Jack starts to snore softly. The alcoholic haze has burned away, and she lies in her own bed and tries to sleep, but she can’t stop the flashes of memory that seem to lick across her skin each time she closes her eyes.
In one hour she’d learned to tell Jack’s hands from Daniel’s as they slid unseen along her thighs. In the dark she knew the difference between their lips, their moans and the taste of their… skin.
**
The silence goes on the next day. She’s amazed at how easy it is to act as if everything is normal.
It isn’t until the briefing for their next mission that they realize they have a problem. Off-world? The three of them? Alone?
They stare uneasily at each other over the top of the table once General Hammond dismisses them and closes himself into his office. Teal’c stares at them for a long moment, reading their body language. He’s confused, but he doesn’t ask. He simply nods politely and excuses himself, leaving them to their own designs.
Jack finally shrugs and says, “It had been a really long time for me…”
“Yeah,” Daniel agrees quickly. “It had just been so long, and we have so little free time…”
Sam glances at both of them as they look at her to complete the circle. She knows it’s for the best, but the words stick a little in her throat. “Yeah,” she finally says, her throat dry. “One time thing. No big deal.”
They’re relieved, and she’s glad of that anyway. The mission goes well. They fall right back into their old roles.
But they don’t have another team night for a long time.
**
The second time is easier to explain away than the first. They’re on shaky ground with the first, and Sam knows this is why they never speak of it. The lack of words doesn’t prevent them from thinking about it though. She knows this every time she meets Jack’s gaze over the briefing room table, or each time she and Daniel run into each other in the hall and their hands linger a little longer than necessary.
She has no idea how to handle this. She has no basis for comparison in her past. It’s new territory, and she thinks they’re all just winging it.
Of course, winging it is what SG-1 does best…
The second time happens while Teal’c is strapped to a bed in the infirmary, his body near death as they try to free his mind from Apophis. They take turns sitting with him, but it’s hard. It’s hard to hear the contempt for them in his voice, and it’s hard to watch him hurting.
Jack takes it the hardest, and when Teal’c finally pulls through and comes to his senses, Jack seems to let go of a breath he’s been holding for weeks. When Janet chases them out of the infirmary, Jack makes a passing comment about the Rockies opening game that night.
Both Sam and Daniel show up with a six-pack.
They watch the game and talk about Teal’c. They drink beer but not as much as before. The Rockies win, and they all pretend to care.
“Teal’c would have loved this,” Sam says a bit wistfully. They eye each other guiltily. The lack of team nights hasn’t been lost on Teal’c, but he seems determined not to interfere in something he has accurately interpreted as a problem between the three of them. Sam glances at both of them. “We almost lost him, didn’t we?” she murmurs.
Jack says nothing. He sits in his armchair and turns his face to stone.
Daniel exhales a long, heavy breath. “We didn’t though,” he says quietly, his eyes meeting hers. She smiles and Daniel smiles back and the hug that follows seems so natural, except...
He doesn't let go. It just goes on and on, and she suddenly doesn't want it to end. He smells good and his arms are hard iron around her. He rocks her and laughs a bit when she sort of collapses into him. He murmurs something against her ear, a smile in his voice, and she thinks it sounds something like, "Feel good?"
It does. She makes an unintelligible and soft sound, even to her own ears, and his hands run slowly up and down her back. And suddenly... it changes. Suddenly all that attraction to him that she's been burying for years is simmering right near the surface, and all she can think about is how big his shoulders have gotten over the years and how the sound of his voice goes straight to her head like whiskey.
He feels it too. He steps back from her, blue eyes searching hers out as his jaw tightens. She watches his throat work as he swallows hard.
She realizes she still has fingers tangled in his shirt.
She glances to where Jack is still sitting in his chair watching them. She can see the tightness in his jaw and his eyes look almost… eager. He wants it to happen again. It’s why he asked them here, why they came. He’s leaving the decision up to them.
She kisses Daniel and pulls him close. He isn’t hesitant once she shows her willingness. He slides his hands low on her hips and steps up against her. When he moves his mouth slowly over her neck, she hears Jack leave his chair and come up behind her. He presses warm against her back, and she turns in Daniel’s arms to face him.
This time they aren’t silent. This time they savor it all, maybe because they have to accept that this whole thing is a choice they’ve made freely.
She explores more this time. They all take their time, and she finds that Daniel will shiver when she runs light fingertips over his navel, and that Jack will swear softly when she licks slowly at his neck. Jack and Daniel take turns finding new ways to make her moan. There are tentative touches between Jack and Daniel, but she can see that they’re having a hard time working it all out. It’s easier for them to focus on her and let the rest go unseen and unspoken and acknowledged only in the darkness.
The orange light of dawn is just starting to creep up over the horizon when she and Daniel leave this time.
**
This time there's no excuses the next day. They sort of shrug it off, and take it in stride. They all go out of their way to show how unaffected they are by this thing.
Sam chalks it up to one of those things that sometimes happens when people are under stress. She's sure it won't ever happen again.
**
She's proven spectacularly wrong after her encounter with Orlin.
Her feelings for Orlin are quite obvious. Once his existence is made known, the nature of their relationship comes into question. She spins it as much as General Hammond will allow her to on the official report, but she still has to come out with some of the more intimate details.
Jack won't look at her in the debriefing. He sits very still with eyes of obsidian and runs his lean fingers over his upper lip. Daniel's not in the debriefing, but he knows enough anyway. He asks her quietly how she's coping when they're in the locker room later. He smiles at her, but he looks a little sad. She's starting to wonder if she was wrong...
When he shows up with Jack on her doorstep the next night, she knows she was wrong. This does affect them. This isn't just stress relief. This means something.
"Aren't we enough for you?" Jack asks as he's licking his way down between her breasts, fingers peeling away her shirt.
"I didn't realize you were supposed to be," Sam grumbles, a little pissed off. This is why women like to talk about relationships, she thinks. They need to know that there is a relationship. She lifts a thigh into his groin, presses and rubs. It's a little bit threatening and a little bit encouraging. Jack groans.
"We were just worried, Sam," Daniel says softly against her neck.
"Worried I was going nuts or worrying I was fucking someone else?" she demands with a gasp as Jack's hands tug her pants off, and his mouth settles between her legs.
"Both," Daniel grinds out, finally angry. He covers her mouth with his, and then there's no more talking. There's just groaning and sliding and too much that feels too good.
In the morning, they make up the rules and talk about how they're going to get away with this without the Air Force finding out.
**
After that, it happens regularly. Not just after bad missions, but after good. They switch houses just in case. Each time it happens is different, random. It doesn’t matter. No one’s watching. The Air Force doesn’t care as long as they make an effort to keep it invisible. Teal’c does care. He cares and he notices, but if he’s troubled, he doesn’t say.
**
It’s after she’s abducted by Adrian Conrad that things change. Jack puts himself out there for her. He risks his career and his life to weasel the right information out of the NID, and he brings the rest of SG-1 to the rescue. He's shot in the process.
For some reason, it brings her and Jack closer together... and it sends Daniel into a slow, downward spiral. It's subtle at first, a slow tearing away that they don't feel until he starts turning down Jack's team nights. There's a heaviness to his soul that they can't fix, and they both try and talk to him, but it does no good. Daniel has never been easy on himself, but it seems now as if the weariness of the past few years is finally catching up to him.
Jack tells her to forget him as he rocks inside of her on her living room floor one Saturday night. He's angry and confused but tries to bury it. Sam wants to talk about it, she's worried, but Jack just coaxes her into sex and then pretends to fall asleep afterwards. She hears him leave quietly an hour later.
She's suddenly frightened.
**
Daniel dies a month later. It's slow and painful, and they have to watch it all happen. She tells him how she feels about him, but he leaves anyway. The way his body disappears is not as surprising as it should be. She watched Orlin do the same thing in the end, but it's scarce comfort to know Daniel is now living on another plane of existence. He's still gone, and he's not coming back. It hurts.
**
She and Jack can't deal with each other. Sam needs to talk about Daniel. She misses him and she's angry and she can't get the pain to recede and let her breathe. Jack hurts, but he buries it. He doesn't want any reminders. He wants everyone to act normal until life really becomes normal again.
They can't be in the same room together without hurting.
They still manage to sleep together, and it's only then that he seems to be able to let go a little bit. Maybe because in the dark there's no rank or protocol and she calls him 'Jack' with a breathless voice, and when she comes apart in his arms, he feels like life is still in his control, at least for a while.
He's only angry for a week when she accidentally calls out Daniel's name as she comes on top of him early one morning.
**
It's Jack who faces the most danger the next year. Sam gets him back safely, for the most part, each time, but it's not easy. Sometimes it feels as if the whole year was spent in her head. There's this constant drag at her spirit that she can't seem to fight. She wonders if this is how Daniel felt the year before he died, when he was in his tailspin and heading downward.
Jack comes back from his ordeal with Ba'al, and he's different. He talks about it just enough for Sam to realize he was closer to losing it than he ever has been before. It scared him.
It makes a strange sort of sense when their relationship smoothes out, and suddenly he's there for her in ways he never was before. It almost feels like a normal life, if she overlooks the whole 'breaking the regs' thing and the possibility of a court-martial.
She feels happy.
And then Daniel comes back.
**
Samantha Carter. Was there ever anything... between us?
She tells him no when she wants to scream yes. Yes! Yes! Yes, there was everything between us. Between you and me and Jack, and we miss you. So much.
But when they talk, and she's trying to convince him to come home, she can feel that weight that used to pull him down, and it's lurking there inside him. She doesn't want him to endure that again. If it means he'll never be theirs again, then she's willing to take the hit. He deserves a free choice.
Instead, she and Jack pick delicately at his mind, trying to find if any strands of memory still exist that lead back to them. She knows that even if he remembers, he might not want to resume their old relationship.
**
"I'm remembering things much more clearly now." Daniel leans on his elbows on her lab table across from her. He watches her carefully, and she smiles at him as she thumbs through the reports he's just brought her.
"That's good, isn't it?"
He sort of half-shrugs and half-nods. "Yeah... I guess."
Her mouth runs dry. She sighs and leaves the reports alone. She looks up and meets his gaze. Something in her chest flutters as she takes in his face. She's still not used to seeing him again and knowing he's alive. "You guess?"
He hesitates, and then, "Remember when I asked you if there was anything between us?"
She licks her lips nervously. "Yes," she answers softly.
He meets her gaze steadily. "Why did you lie?"
She doesn't say anything at first. She looks away and takes a deep breath.
"Sam?"
She looks back at him. "How much do you remember?"
"I remember you and I..." He pauses to give her a nervous smile. "Spending a lot of time together outside of work."
She smiles and waits.
He nods. "And in bed."
She picks at the paperclip holding the reports together. "I didn't want you to feel obligated, Daniel. Things were... complicated before you... died. If you came back without that baggage, I wasn't going to saddle you with it all over again."
His hand slides over hers, his thumb moving soothingly over her knuckles. "It's coming back to me slowly, but I think it's all there. Maybe we need to look at this as a second chance. Maybe we need to make a new decision about whether it's what we really want."
She turns her hand over so their palms are together. She threads her fingers through his. "Yeah. That sounds good." Her voice is shaky though because he obviously doesn't remember everything yet, and she doesn't want to give him up again.
He leans across the table and gives her a chaste kiss on the cheek. She turns at the last second, and he kisses the corner of her mouth instead. They stare at each other. It's a moment.
She realizes she has to say something before he leaves. She calls out to him as he's leaving her lab. He turns and looks back, eyebrows raised.
"When you remember me... do you remember Jack too?"
His stunned expression tells her he doesn't. "Jack?" he asks incredulously.
She nods, and that sudden heaviness is back in his eyes.
She stares at the reports without really seeing them.
**
"The game's almost over," Jack says, as she looks up at him from where she's using his thigh as a pillow. "I guess he's not coming."
"He remembers everything now. It's his decision, Jack."
"I know..." Jack trails away and finishes off his bottle of beer. He leans his head back against the sofa. "He didn't remember me, did he? He remembers you."
"The thing between you and I overshadowed everything. I don't think he was ever sure where his place was in the relationship."
"Funny. I always felt like you and he were... and I was the one who..." Jack shakes his head. He smoothes the hair at her temple and leans down to kiss her. "Let's go to bed." He's changing the subject, but she's okay with that.
She stands and stretches with a yawn, and refastens the bottom buttons to her shirt. They hadn't been so consumed with the game that they'd been ignoring each other...
Jack turns off the television and the living room becomes dark. He hesitates as he passes through the dim light coming through the window from the streetlamps. He stands to the side of the window and pries up the side of the blind, peering through to the street. "He's sitting outside in his car."
Sam moves over to the window and peers out beside him. Daniel's car is parked in front of the neighbor's curb. She can see his shadow inside behind the wheel. "How long has he been out there?"
Jack shakes his head. "Daniel..." he mutters softly. "What's the matter with you?"
She goes out to get him, barefoot and jacketless, in the cool air of the night. She can see the far off flashes of lightning from a coming storm on the horizon. They're supposed to get rain tonight.
He's sitting with his forehead resting on his hands on the steering wheel. When she opens his passenger side door and drops into the seat beside him, he jumps and stares at her, startled. "Sam."
"It's a lot more comfortable inside," she says, teasingly. "Jack has beer and there was pizza."
Daniel blinks at her. "I... I just wasn't sure..."
She puts a hand on his arm. "We want you back."
He meets her gaze in the dark. "You and Jack."
"Yes."
He stares at Jack's house, and Sam glances to where she knows Jack is watching them. The window looks dark, but she knows he's there.
"I don't know what to do," Daniel whispers.
"Do what you want to do, Daniel," she offers. "Come back and let us show you what you mean to us."
The words are eerily familiar to both of them. He glances at her speculatively. "I wasn't going to show up tonight, but I couldn't stop thinking about you. Either of you. I finally just got in my car and came over. It's been a long time..."
"I know, but it doesn't matter how long you've been away. We'll always want you back." She slides closer and tugs gently at the hair lying against his neck. He turns into her, and she lets him pull her into a hug. She presses her mouth against his neck, and she can smell soap and leather and so much of Daniel that it almost brings tears to her eyes. "It isn't the same without you." She sighs into his skin.
He pulls away just enough to rest his forehead against hers. "Show me," he says.
She leads him back across Jack's yard, the cool, long grass silky against the soles of her feet. Jack opens the door for them, his dark eyes pulling them in as easily as his arms. He closes the door quietly behind them.
~end~
Okay, back to the iconfic.
Also, I had to laugh because I wrote Bird Stealing Bread way after this one and yet because I'd forgot about this one, I used a same bit of dialogue in both of them. Only three words, but it stood out horrendously to me. I haven't changed it though, because, well, it fits.
I'm working on finishing the iconfic, but I hope this will suffice until then...
Drifting Back to Life
by Jennghis Kahn
Pairing- Sam/Jack/Daniel
Rating- Adult, but not graphic
Category- Angst, yes.
Warnings- Spoilers for Meridian.
fanfic100 prompt: Death
A/N- This is a bit different than my usual OT3. This is based more on the Sam/Jack canon and doesn’t assume that Jack and Daniel are bi or that they’re fine sexually with each other. It’s… odd.
**
Happy Birthday to Kat! This is especially for you. An OT3 that can’t be really happy without each other. J
**
She knows it never would have happened if she hadn't been into it. Sam was and still is the key for them. She finds that strange sometimes, especially since the two of them have known each other longer than either of them have known her. They love each other, but it’s hard for them. She makes it easier.
She's been attracted to Daniel since the very beginning. Maybe since she first read his work on the pyramids and the aliens and later on, the reports on how he'd made the stargate work, long before she’d ever laid eyes on the man himself. It hadn't been unrequited, but they'd gotten so close, and he was still in agony over Sha're; and then there'd been a few times when a tiny, hidden part of her had almost wished that Sha're would meet her end and set Daniel free. It had been what they all expected, but still she'd felt guilty enough to realize that she and Daniel could never happen.
The attraction had deepened, they'd been through so much, but it had been easy to set aside... during the day.
Jack. Jack had hit her like a mortar round. One minute she'd been as annoyed by him as ever, the next he was willingly sacrificing himself to save the planet... and she'd never wanted to kiss a man so badly in her life. Everything he does hits her hard. Whether she's barely hanging onto protocol, trying to restrain a torrent of insubordinate ranting; or she's caught in his piercing gaze trying to hide a smile as he tries to tease it out of her with a bad joke.
Together, he and Daniel wrench emotions out of her that she'd never even known she was capable of.
She wonders sometimes if it was unavoidable. She likes to think that it was, because then none of them has to take real responsibility. Not like the Air Force would accept that as an excuse if they ever found out.
***
The hockey games at Jack's house are his way of drawing them all together. Despite the bond the four of them share, SG-1 doesn't spend a lot of time together outside of the SGC. Sam's only marginally interested in hockey, but it's good to feel like one of the guys once in a while, and she likes spending time with them. She thinks Daniel feels the same way. Teal'c finds sports fascinating, which pleases Jack to no end.
They drink beer, and Teal'c drinks iced tea, and they cheer on the Avalanche and the Blackhawks and when the pros aren't playing, they watch college. Jack explains the games to Teal'c, and it's only occasionally that he has to remind Sam and Daniel to stop talking about wormhole theory and ancient Egyptian agricultural techniques.
There’s a self-built wall between her and Jack that can only be breached when Daniel or Teal’c are there. Their presence somehow strips the meaning from the gazes and the accidental touches and the way they sometimes slip and call each other by their first names. Playing with Jack is like jumping a live wire. You just aren’t sure exactly what will happen, and the anticipation is so heavy, it’s nearly tangible.
Underneath it all, her heart still aches for Daniel, but he’s pulled away from her over the past year. She never told him about the Zay’tarc testing, but maybe Jack did. Either way, she feels like she betrayed him sometimes. Like both her and Jack did. There were all sorts of attractions from the beginning, things that have grown and deepened. But none of them was ever supposed to say the words out loud. It was unwritten but understood.
Five years of facing death together brings people close. Too close. You become so changed that finding relief on the outside is too hard, but finding it within becomes just as impossible. They can’t win.
Teal'c goes home to visit his family during the NCHA nationals. He’s the only one who’s managed to build a life outside of the team, and they’d never begrudge him that. They’ve all suffered, but Teal’c has endured a lifetime they can’t even imagine. He deserves more than they can give.
Sam and Daniel show up at Jack's house by themselves.
Things change without Teal'c there. As if he had been their safety line. They drink more than usual, and they talk. The game is slow and low scoring. Somehow they start talking about sex... and how long it's been since they've had any. It starts as a joke, but the smiles start fading and they’re sharing more than they normally would. Sam is surprised to realize it's been longer for them than for her.
They lament about how hard it is to connect with someone outside of the SGC, how much easier it is to just keep each other company. Jack keeps holding her gaze a few seconds too long. Daniel sits so close to her on the sofa she can feel his body heat. She thinks they're just worried about her. She's only a few weeks out from having her mind warehoused in a SGC computer while a sentient stream of energy took over her body. Jack had to zat her… twice. It was as close as she'd ever come to her mortal end, and they'd all been a bit clingy since it happened.
Even when the game goes into overtime, they ignore it and keep talking. The last mission was hard. Tiring. They seem to get harder every year. They're drinking way too much.
They barely notice when Colorado loses, but the distraction is enough to send Daniel off to the bathroom. He stumbles trying to get off the sofa, and Sam laughs at him as he grins and she props him up with a hand on his hip, but then he gains his balance and disappears down Jack's hallway.
Jack goes to get them all another beer. When he comes back he hands a bottle to her, cap already removed. His eyes catch hers as she reaches for the beer and there's something in them that sends a shiver down her spine. She wraps her hand around the bottle, but he doesn't let go. They pause there, him standing, her sitting, both holding the beer bottle while the condensation runs over their fingers, and they just stare at each other.
She can read the want in his eyes. It's been nearly a year since the Zay'tarc incident, and they've done a damn good job at keeping those inappropriate feelings 'in the room'. For some reason, he's dragging them all back out again tonight.
"Sir?"
He winces at that, and she understands all too well.
"It's too hard," he finally says, his voice a weighed whisper. His eyes burn her.
She knows he's talking about her. About them. And for a moment she's afraid he's going to split the team up, and she won't have any of them anymore. But then he's pulling upwards on the bottle and she's standing up, following her hand until his arm is sliding around her waist and, oh... oh, she's kissing Jack, his mouth pressing hard against hers. The bottle disappears from her hand, and she has no idea if he took it from her or if she dropped it. His hands are sliding under the hem of her T-shirt, and he chases her mouth with intent each time she pauses to take a breath.
It's too hard. What's the point?
He tastes like beer and just a bit of mint, and it's somehow exactly what she's always imagined he would taste like. What she never imagined is that he would finally give up and give in, their careers be damned.
But now that he is, she doesn’t want to give him a chance to change his mind. Or maybe she doesn’t want time to examine that niggling feeling in the back of her own mind that is furiously waving a red flag and screaming soundlessly at her.
She slides her tongue against his and drags her fingertips lightly through the short hairs on his nape.
“Should I leave?”
Daniel’s voice shakes them apart a bit. Sam turns, and he’s standing in the entrance to the living room watching them. His hands are stuffed into his jeans pockets, and his gaze is steady. She doesn’t think to wonder until later about why he actually asked and didn’t just let himself quietly out.
“No,” she insists in a whisper, a little desperately and completely without thinking. She feels Jack’s hand close gently around her wrist. Oh God, the one thing she’s never wanted to do is choose, and somehow she’s sure her fumbling will drive them both away.
Daniel’s not looking at her anymore. He’s looking at Jack. They’re staring at each other, and although there’s not exactly an entire conversation going on silently between them, she is getting the feeling that this is something they both expected eventually. There’s a rising pulse in the pit of her stomach because she knows this isn’t about leaving or going or all of them sitting back down to watch television. This is about sex, pure and simple.
“Stay,” Jack finally says, and he means it.
They don’t say anything after that, and maybe that’s the only way it could have happened that first time. In silence. No explanations or joking or even any names. Just sighs and panting and moans that escape through gritted teeth.
She thinks this probably wouldn't have happened a few years ago, but there's been distance between them lately. Just enough to make this possible.
Afterward, Daniel gets up and leaves without a word in the darkness. Sam leaves soon after when Jack starts to snore softly. The alcoholic haze has burned away, and she lies in her own bed and tries to sleep, but she can’t stop the flashes of memory that seem to lick across her skin each time she closes her eyes.
In one hour she’d learned to tell Jack’s hands from Daniel’s as they slid unseen along her thighs. In the dark she knew the difference between their lips, their moans and the taste of their… skin.
**
The silence goes on the next day. She’s amazed at how easy it is to act as if everything is normal.
It isn’t until the briefing for their next mission that they realize they have a problem. Off-world? The three of them? Alone?
They stare uneasily at each other over the top of the table once General Hammond dismisses them and closes himself into his office. Teal’c stares at them for a long moment, reading their body language. He’s confused, but he doesn’t ask. He simply nods politely and excuses himself, leaving them to their own designs.
Jack finally shrugs and says, “It had been a really long time for me…”
“Yeah,” Daniel agrees quickly. “It had just been so long, and we have so little free time…”
Sam glances at both of them as they look at her to complete the circle. She knows it’s for the best, but the words stick a little in her throat. “Yeah,” she finally says, her throat dry. “One time thing. No big deal.”
They’re relieved, and she’s glad of that anyway. The mission goes well. They fall right back into their old roles.
But they don’t have another team night for a long time.
**
The second time is easier to explain away than the first. They’re on shaky ground with the first, and Sam knows this is why they never speak of it. The lack of words doesn’t prevent them from thinking about it though. She knows this every time she meets Jack’s gaze over the briefing room table, or each time she and Daniel run into each other in the hall and their hands linger a little longer than necessary.
She has no idea how to handle this. She has no basis for comparison in her past. It’s new territory, and she thinks they’re all just winging it.
Of course, winging it is what SG-1 does best…
The second time happens while Teal’c is strapped to a bed in the infirmary, his body near death as they try to free his mind from Apophis. They take turns sitting with him, but it’s hard. It’s hard to hear the contempt for them in his voice, and it’s hard to watch him hurting.
Jack takes it the hardest, and when Teal’c finally pulls through and comes to his senses, Jack seems to let go of a breath he’s been holding for weeks. When Janet chases them out of the infirmary, Jack makes a passing comment about the Rockies opening game that night.
Both Sam and Daniel show up with a six-pack.
They watch the game and talk about Teal’c. They drink beer but not as much as before. The Rockies win, and they all pretend to care.
“Teal’c would have loved this,” Sam says a bit wistfully. They eye each other guiltily. The lack of team nights hasn’t been lost on Teal’c, but he seems determined not to interfere in something he has accurately interpreted as a problem between the three of them. Sam glances at both of them. “We almost lost him, didn’t we?” she murmurs.
Jack says nothing. He sits in his armchair and turns his face to stone.
Daniel exhales a long, heavy breath. “We didn’t though,” he says quietly, his eyes meeting hers. She smiles and Daniel smiles back and the hug that follows seems so natural, except...
He doesn't let go. It just goes on and on, and she suddenly doesn't want it to end. He smells good and his arms are hard iron around her. He rocks her and laughs a bit when she sort of collapses into him. He murmurs something against her ear, a smile in his voice, and she thinks it sounds something like, "Feel good?"
It does. She makes an unintelligible and soft sound, even to her own ears, and his hands run slowly up and down her back. And suddenly... it changes. Suddenly all that attraction to him that she's been burying for years is simmering right near the surface, and all she can think about is how big his shoulders have gotten over the years and how the sound of his voice goes straight to her head like whiskey.
He feels it too. He steps back from her, blue eyes searching hers out as his jaw tightens. She watches his throat work as he swallows hard.
She realizes she still has fingers tangled in his shirt.
She glances to where Jack is still sitting in his chair watching them. She can see the tightness in his jaw and his eyes look almost… eager. He wants it to happen again. It’s why he asked them here, why they came. He’s leaving the decision up to them.
She kisses Daniel and pulls him close. He isn’t hesitant once she shows her willingness. He slides his hands low on her hips and steps up against her. When he moves his mouth slowly over her neck, she hears Jack leave his chair and come up behind her. He presses warm against her back, and she turns in Daniel’s arms to face him.
This time they aren’t silent. This time they savor it all, maybe because they have to accept that this whole thing is a choice they’ve made freely.
She explores more this time. They all take their time, and she finds that Daniel will shiver when she runs light fingertips over his navel, and that Jack will swear softly when she licks slowly at his neck. Jack and Daniel take turns finding new ways to make her moan. There are tentative touches between Jack and Daniel, but she can see that they’re having a hard time working it all out. It’s easier for them to focus on her and let the rest go unseen and unspoken and acknowledged only in the darkness.
The orange light of dawn is just starting to creep up over the horizon when she and Daniel leave this time.
**
This time there's no excuses the next day. They sort of shrug it off, and take it in stride. They all go out of their way to show how unaffected they are by this thing.
Sam chalks it up to one of those things that sometimes happens when people are under stress. She's sure it won't ever happen again.
**
She's proven spectacularly wrong after her encounter with Orlin.
Her feelings for Orlin are quite obvious. Once his existence is made known, the nature of their relationship comes into question. She spins it as much as General Hammond will allow her to on the official report, but she still has to come out with some of the more intimate details.
Jack won't look at her in the debriefing. He sits very still with eyes of obsidian and runs his lean fingers over his upper lip. Daniel's not in the debriefing, but he knows enough anyway. He asks her quietly how she's coping when they're in the locker room later. He smiles at her, but he looks a little sad. She's starting to wonder if she was wrong...
When he shows up with Jack on her doorstep the next night, she knows she was wrong. This does affect them. This isn't just stress relief. This means something.
"Aren't we enough for you?" Jack asks as he's licking his way down between her breasts, fingers peeling away her shirt.
"I didn't realize you were supposed to be," Sam grumbles, a little pissed off. This is why women like to talk about relationships, she thinks. They need to know that there is a relationship. She lifts a thigh into his groin, presses and rubs. It's a little bit threatening and a little bit encouraging. Jack groans.
"We were just worried, Sam," Daniel says softly against her neck.
"Worried I was going nuts or worrying I was fucking someone else?" she demands with a gasp as Jack's hands tug her pants off, and his mouth settles between her legs.
"Both," Daniel grinds out, finally angry. He covers her mouth with his, and then there's no more talking. There's just groaning and sliding and too much that feels too good.
In the morning, they make up the rules and talk about how they're going to get away with this without the Air Force finding out.
**
After that, it happens regularly. Not just after bad missions, but after good. They switch houses just in case. Each time it happens is different, random. It doesn’t matter. No one’s watching. The Air Force doesn’t care as long as they make an effort to keep it invisible. Teal’c does care. He cares and he notices, but if he’s troubled, he doesn’t say.
**
It’s after she’s abducted by Adrian Conrad that things change. Jack puts himself out there for her. He risks his career and his life to weasel the right information out of the NID, and he brings the rest of SG-1 to the rescue. He's shot in the process.
For some reason, it brings her and Jack closer together... and it sends Daniel into a slow, downward spiral. It's subtle at first, a slow tearing away that they don't feel until he starts turning down Jack's team nights. There's a heaviness to his soul that they can't fix, and they both try and talk to him, but it does no good. Daniel has never been easy on himself, but it seems now as if the weariness of the past few years is finally catching up to him.
Jack tells her to forget him as he rocks inside of her on her living room floor one Saturday night. He's angry and confused but tries to bury it. Sam wants to talk about it, she's worried, but Jack just coaxes her into sex and then pretends to fall asleep afterwards. She hears him leave quietly an hour later.
She's suddenly frightened.
**
Daniel dies a month later. It's slow and painful, and they have to watch it all happen. She tells him how she feels about him, but he leaves anyway. The way his body disappears is not as surprising as it should be. She watched Orlin do the same thing in the end, but it's scarce comfort to know Daniel is now living on another plane of existence. He's still gone, and he's not coming back. It hurts.
**
She and Jack can't deal with each other. Sam needs to talk about Daniel. She misses him and she's angry and she can't get the pain to recede and let her breathe. Jack hurts, but he buries it. He doesn't want any reminders. He wants everyone to act normal until life really becomes normal again.
They can't be in the same room together without hurting.
They still manage to sleep together, and it's only then that he seems to be able to let go a little bit. Maybe because in the dark there's no rank or protocol and she calls him 'Jack' with a breathless voice, and when she comes apart in his arms, he feels like life is still in his control, at least for a while.
He's only angry for a week when she accidentally calls out Daniel's name as she comes on top of him early one morning.
**
It's Jack who faces the most danger the next year. Sam gets him back safely, for the most part, each time, but it's not easy. Sometimes it feels as if the whole year was spent in her head. There's this constant drag at her spirit that she can't seem to fight. She wonders if this is how Daniel felt the year before he died, when he was in his tailspin and heading downward.
Jack comes back from his ordeal with Ba'al, and he's different. He talks about it just enough for Sam to realize he was closer to losing it than he ever has been before. It scared him.
It makes a strange sort of sense when their relationship smoothes out, and suddenly he's there for her in ways he never was before. It almost feels like a normal life, if she overlooks the whole 'breaking the regs' thing and the possibility of a court-martial.
She feels happy.
And then Daniel comes back.
**
Samantha Carter. Was there ever anything... between us?
She tells him no when she wants to scream yes. Yes! Yes! Yes, there was everything between us. Between you and me and Jack, and we miss you. So much.
But when they talk, and she's trying to convince him to come home, she can feel that weight that used to pull him down, and it's lurking there inside him. She doesn't want him to endure that again. If it means he'll never be theirs again, then she's willing to take the hit. He deserves a free choice.
Instead, she and Jack pick delicately at his mind, trying to find if any strands of memory still exist that lead back to them. She knows that even if he remembers, he might not want to resume their old relationship.
**
"I'm remembering things much more clearly now." Daniel leans on his elbows on her lab table across from her. He watches her carefully, and she smiles at him as she thumbs through the reports he's just brought her.
"That's good, isn't it?"
He sort of half-shrugs and half-nods. "Yeah... I guess."
Her mouth runs dry. She sighs and leaves the reports alone. She looks up and meets his gaze. Something in her chest flutters as she takes in his face. She's still not used to seeing him again and knowing he's alive. "You guess?"
He hesitates, and then, "Remember when I asked you if there was anything between us?"
She licks her lips nervously. "Yes," she answers softly.
He meets her gaze steadily. "Why did you lie?"
She doesn't say anything at first. She looks away and takes a deep breath.
"Sam?"
She looks back at him. "How much do you remember?"
"I remember you and I..." He pauses to give her a nervous smile. "Spending a lot of time together outside of work."
She smiles and waits.
He nods. "And in bed."
She picks at the paperclip holding the reports together. "I didn't want you to feel obligated, Daniel. Things were... complicated before you... died. If you came back without that baggage, I wasn't going to saddle you with it all over again."
His hand slides over hers, his thumb moving soothingly over her knuckles. "It's coming back to me slowly, but I think it's all there. Maybe we need to look at this as a second chance. Maybe we need to make a new decision about whether it's what we really want."
She turns her hand over so their palms are together. She threads her fingers through his. "Yeah. That sounds good." Her voice is shaky though because he obviously doesn't remember everything yet, and she doesn't want to give him up again.
He leans across the table and gives her a chaste kiss on the cheek. She turns at the last second, and he kisses the corner of her mouth instead. They stare at each other. It's a moment.
She realizes she has to say something before he leaves. She calls out to him as he's leaving her lab. He turns and looks back, eyebrows raised.
"When you remember me... do you remember Jack too?"
His stunned expression tells her he doesn't. "Jack?" he asks incredulously.
She nods, and that sudden heaviness is back in his eyes.
She stares at the reports without really seeing them.
**
"The game's almost over," Jack says, as she looks up at him from where she's using his thigh as a pillow. "I guess he's not coming."
"He remembers everything now. It's his decision, Jack."
"I know..." Jack trails away and finishes off his bottle of beer. He leans his head back against the sofa. "He didn't remember me, did he? He remembers you."
"The thing between you and I overshadowed everything. I don't think he was ever sure where his place was in the relationship."
"Funny. I always felt like you and he were... and I was the one who..." Jack shakes his head. He smoothes the hair at her temple and leans down to kiss her. "Let's go to bed." He's changing the subject, but she's okay with that.
She stands and stretches with a yawn, and refastens the bottom buttons to her shirt. They hadn't been so consumed with the game that they'd been ignoring each other...
Jack turns off the television and the living room becomes dark. He hesitates as he passes through the dim light coming through the window from the streetlamps. He stands to the side of the window and pries up the side of the blind, peering through to the street. "He's sitting outside in his car."
Sam moves over to the window and peers out beside him. Daniel's car is parked in front of the neighbor's curb. She can see his shadow inside behind the wheel. "How long has he been out there?"
Jack shakes his head. "Daniel..." he mutters softly. "What's the matter with you?"
She goes out to get him, barefoot and jacketless, in the cool air of the night. She can see the far off flashes of lightning from a coming storm on the horizon. They're supposed to get rain tonight.
He's sitting with his forehead resting on his hands on the steering wheel. When she opens his passenger side door and drops into the seat beside him, he jumps and stares at her, startled. "Sam."
"It's a lot more comfortable inside," she says, teasingly. "Jack has beer and there was pizza."
Daniel blinks at her. "I... I just wasn't sure..."
She puts a hand on his arm. "We want you back."
He meets her gaze in the dark. "You and Jack."
"Yes."
He stares at Jack's house, and Sam glances to where she knows Jack is watching them. The window looks dark, but she knows he's there.
"I don't know what to do," Daniel whispers.
"Do what you want to do, Daniel," she offers. "Come back and let us show you what you mean to us."
The words are eerily familiar to both of them. He glances at her speculatively. "I wasn't going to show up tonight, but I couldn't stop thinking about you. Either of you. I finally just got in my car and came over. It's been a long time..."
"I know, but it doesn't matter how long you've been away. We'll always want you back." She slides closer and tugs gently at the hair lying against his neck. He turns into her, and she lets him pull her into a hug. She presses her mouth against his neck, and she can smell soap and leather and so much of Daniel that it almost brings tears to her eyes. "It isn't the same without you." She sighs into his skin.
He pulls away just enough to rest his forehead against hers. "Show me," he says.
She leads him back across Jack's yard, the cool, long grass silky against the soles of her feet. Jack opens the door for them, his dark eyes pulling them in as easily as his arms. He closes the door quietly behind them.
~end~
Okay, back to the iconfic.
Also, I had to laugh because I wrote Bird Stealing Bread way after this one and yet because I'd forgot about this one, I used a same bit of dialogue in both of them. Only three words, but it stood out horrendously to me. I haven't changed it though, because, well, it fits.