fic repost: "Accidentally on Purpose" (Sam/Janet)
Title: "Accidentally On Purpose"
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: PG-13 for some not very nice words
Spoilers/timeline: Mid-S3, post-"100 Days"
Summary: Janet makes a confession, and Sam isn't sure how to deal with what it means about Janet or about herself.
Notes: Written for thenewhope for stargatesanta 2003.
Disclaimer: The characters belong to the powers that be, not to me. No money was made; please don't sue.
Words: 2409
Accidentally On Purpose
Janet kissed Sam. They were hugging goodbye and Janet was aiming for Sam's cheek and missed, and her lips just glanced over Sam's. It felt good. Not good like a man kissing you tenderly and passionately, but good like a friend's hug. It was still good. Sam imagined that was what it was like to kiss a woman friend, and she wondered if the kind of woman who had women friends ever worried about it. About snatched kisses and soft lips and fingers dancing over skin. She tried to shake her head clear.
"Sam." Janet had disentangled their arms, was looking at Sam curiously, with maybe a hint of annoyance. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight," said Sam, and she walked down the steps, taking them slowly, and she found her car. Looking up towards Janet's house, she saw that Cassandra's light was still on. I should tell Janet, she thought. It's a school night, and Cassie should still be asleep. I think Janet will want to know.
She hurried back to the porch without thinking, rapped on the door, found, when she threw it open, that Janet hadn't moved. Her lips were pursed. "Yes?" Sam had the uncomfortable impression that she was making a not altogether unexpected mistake.
"Cassie's still up. I just wanted to tell you."
"Cassandra!" Janet hollered. "Turn off the light and go to sleep!" Somewhere in the dark upstairs, a harried teenage girl flicked a light off viciously. "Now, let's try this again. We hug goodnight. You leave. You go home, I go upstairs, you go to bed, I go to bed."
"Nothing’s changed."
"No, Sam, nothing's changed. Please go home."
Sam thought of apologizing. She wasn't sure for what; she couldn't say, "I'm sorry you've fallen in love with me, Janet. I'm sorry that the feeling is less mutual than it could be. I’m sorry that I’m even considering asking you if I can spend the night.” So she didn’t apologize and she didn’t ask, and when they hugged this time, the smaller woman felt awkward in her arms, deadweight. It was Sam who aimed for the spot between Janet’s cheek and her mouth, the no-man’s land that wasn’t quite romantic but was definitely heading in that direction.
Janet choked back a laugh and said under her breath, “Straight women.”
Sam wasn’t sure whether she should be relieved that Janet wasn’t too disappointed or hurt that she had recovered so quickly from rejection. She chose wry laughter-at herself, at Janet, at the irony.
She’d worshiped Colonel O’Neill for so long that it hardly even registered when the hero worship transformed itself into love. Dark love, love that kept her up late nights thinking about it, love that she’d planned to tell no one but that had registered so obviously on her face that Janet had figured it out even before she’d been ready to acknowledge it to herself.
Janet was perceptive like that.
She wanted to avoid her for the next few days. It should have been easy. They were due for a long mission, and Daniel had wheedled and begged and landed them a planet Colonel O’Neill was calling the Anthropologist’s Wet Dream. Sam felt the coarse humor dripping down her standard issue uniform, leaving her unaffected where three years ago she would have been up in arms about sexual innuendo.
Three years could change a lot. Three years transformed Daniel from a geek into a soldier, Teal’c from an enemy into an ally, Janet from a stiff-necked doctor into a mother. Three years had changed Sam from a woman into a person. And Janet was threatening to erase all those years and all those transformations and take them right back to their first meeting, in the biomedical lab, white coats and goggles and the uncomfortable feeling she got around all Air Force women, possibly because she’d never gotten over the high school assumption that all female military personnel were bulldykes. But that feeling had vanished, and Janet was just one of the family.
Specifically, the mother of their one living child. Then she thought of her family, of SG-1, of Charlie and Shifu and Ry’ac, and she realized there was a reason Cassie was hers before any of her teammates’. Cassie truly was the daughter she’d never known she wished she had. And that child’s mother was in love with her.
“Telling you was a mistake. Sorry, Sam.” “Sorry, Sam.” “Sorry, Sam.” “Sorry, Major Carter. Just a few more minutes and we’ll have the blood ready for analysis.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” she said with a smile. Daniel and the tiny, makeshift team Janet had sent offworld with him had been taking blood samples from the natives. It was, as usual, tricky work to convince them that giving up their blood for science was neither dangerous nor blasphemous. Sam sat on a tree stump and watched the Colonel bitching to Daniel that they’d better wrap things up soon because he was bored and wanted dinner. Daniel was doing a wonderful imitation of a parent condescendingly consoling a recalcitrant child. Teal’c looked menacing.
She started setting up the vials she’d need for the analysis. This was work she could do in her sleep, not the sort of work an elite team should be doing, but this was Daniel’s mission, and she wasn’t on-earth, and the infirmary was very far away, and Janet’s voice wasn’t ringing in her ear anymore. She’d finally gotten the damn voices to shut up. MacKenzie would be pleased, if MacKenzie knew anything, which he didn’t, because Sam was a private woman and kept to herself.
“Damn,” she said, checking her results, and then, “Damn,” again when she realized what she was seeing. “Come here, please, Lt. Green.” Lt. Green jumped, offered a hasty salute, and then peered into the vial.
“What does that look like to you?” she asked.
“A retrovirus, ma’am.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s in all the samples?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not good, is it, ma’am?”
“No, Lieutenant, it’s not. It means we’re under quarantine until we can figure out the mode of transmission and whether we’re at risk.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll inform the Colonel.”
Sam leaned back against a stump. They’d radio back to Stargate Command. They shouldn’t ask for backup, but they probably would anyhow, because this was Dr. Fraiser’s area of expertise, and things would go faster if they had a real doctor here, not just a few officers with some medical training. She wanted Janet there. Not because she was scared, but because she wanted someone there who would know exactly what to do, who wouldn’t panic, who would assume command as naturally as if she were six two and had testosterone running through her veins. As naturally as if she were Colonel O’Neill.
Janet didn’t come. Janet sent word, by way of a lackey (she was treating SG-7 for influenza picked up from the natives of -687) that they should hang tight and send samples back for further study when she had the time. She reminded them to eat right, get sleep, and try not to contract anything she couldn’t treat. “Don’t let Daniel break any bones,” she’d added.
The rainy season was starting. Chief Tamay asked Daniel if his team wanted to participate in the rain ceremony. Daniel said of course they did, and dragged his teammates to the circular arena, the place of power. Sam felt her hair begin to fizzle in the dampness. As the ceremony dragged on, hour after hour of incomprehensible chanting, even Teal’c lost his stoicism and began to look pained. Only Daniel retained his enthusiasm. Sam felt her energy draining. She wanted to be someplace warm and bright.
Colonel O’Neill nudged her. “Major.”
“Colonel?”
“Let’s blow this party. Man the perimeter. Check to see if the specimens have mutated. An urgent message from Hammond.”
“Yessir,” she said with a grin.
Once they were safely out of range of Daniel’s unhappy glare, the Colonel relaxed his pace.
“Sam.”
“Sir?”
“I think it’s time we had a little talk.”
Sam felt her heart begin to beat a little faster. “Sir?”
“You haven’t been yourself this mission. You haven’t confused me once. You haven’t babbled about the energy output of the ‘Gate, you haven’t been working your ass off to figure out why we’re stuck here, you haven’t even been listening to Daniel’s theory about the origins of the... rainy people.”
"Sorry sir.” Not what she’d been expecting.
"What’s the matter?”
She ran through the variables quickly. Her menstrual cycle, her frustrations, her feeling that on this mission, she was just an extra mouth to feed. Janet.
"Nothing.”
The colonel gave her a long look, then shrugged his shoulders. "Let me know if something gets the matter.”
"Yessir.” She was tired of saying yes sir and no sir and I’m just fine sir, but somehow that’s all she could say these days without feeling like she was overstepping her place and entering dangerous territory where feelings weren’t hidden and everything could spin out of control.
Janet got back to them three days later and said they were all free to go if Sam ran some final blood-work on the whole team to make sure they were still uninfected, and to tell the natives to eat right so the virus would stay dormant. Sam watched Daniel attempting to explain dormancy to the natives as she packed up her field kit and explained to Colonel O’Neill that they weren’t sick, weren’t going to get sick, and how, exactly, she knew that. Colonel O’Neill gave her a smile and a hand on her shoulder, which was his way of saying "attagirl. Way to not mope anymore.”
She felt her good feelings evaporate the minute she was in the infirmary and Janet was shining a penlight in her eye. Janet smiled at her. "Feeling better?”
"What do you-oh. Yes, I’m perfectly fine, Janet.”
"Good. Cassie’s been asking after you. Will you be coming over this Saturday?”
"Of course. Nothing’s changed.”
"Nothing’s changed. And even if it had, nothing would change with Cassie."
"Of course not."
But everything had changed, and Sam wasn’t sure what to wear after lunch on Saturday, when she was going to drive over and play chess. She considered, wildly, asking the rest of the team over too, as if being alone with Janet were too much. She wasn’t sure why she was afraid, but she was. Afraid that she would run over to Janet’s house for chess with Cassie and stay for the weekend. That she’d crawl into Janet’s spare bed and wake up with Janet in bed with her. She didn’t want to think about what she’d do if that happened.
She wouldn’t run away screaming. She wouldn’t say no. She couldn’t say yes.
"I’m in love with you." "I shouldn’t have told you. Sorry, Sam." "In love with you..." "In love with you..."
"Shut up, Janet. I don’t need to hear this."
She counted on her fingers the number of men who had propositioned her since she’d come to Stargate Command. Then she counted how many men had propositioned her before. It wasn’t difficult. Jonas Hanson. And then no one, since she was engaged and the sparkly diamond ring on her finger drove off any potential suitors. And then no one, even when she gave the ring back, because... because she was good at saying no with her eyes and her smile and the way she walked. She’d let those defenses down with Janet because Janet was a woman and you shouldn’t have to worry about women.
She worried about Janet. That she wasn’t coping with things as well as she claimed to be, or that she was coping with things but deep inside she wasn’t and it would all come out when a member of SG-1 was on the table and instead of "10 milligrams epee" Janet said "I’m in love with Samantha Carter." And then where would they be?
So for her own self-preservation, Sam needed to talk to Janet. After she gave Cassandra her goodbye hug and watched her make a beeline to the telephone, she said, "She turned out okay, didn't she?"
"I like to think so."
"You did a good job, Janet."
"Thanks. I think having SG-1 around helped."
Sam looked at the floor. Weneedtotalkweneedtotalkweneed... "Janet?"
"Is something bothering you?"
"This thing... us. We can't do this."
"Sam, I don't see that we have a choice. I did it for two years. I shouldn't have said anything, and I'm sorry that I did. It was stupid and unprofessional and unethical."
"If I changed my mind?"
Janet didn't even blink. "Then I'd say no."
"Then it's a good thing I didn't change my mind, huh?"
"Ready to go? I don't think Cassandra's going to be off the phone for the rest of the night."
Sam smiled. "I'm ready. Let me get my coat."
She stared at Janet, willing her to make the first move, to slip into a hug. Her long black coat was too hot for the house. Janet slicked back her hair, still up from work, and, with a roll of her eyes, loosely embraced Sam.
Sam kissed Janet. She wasn't sure if she'd been planning it or not, whether she thought it would feel good or just thought it would be a good idea, but she kissed her, and there was no mistaking it for a slip of the tongue. Janet's lipstick made her skin seem flaky under Sam's lips, and she didn't open her mouth for a good minute while Sam stood there, terrified, not moving her arms or her mouth because she was afraid that if she did, Janet would have the knife that she kept in her bra at Sam's throat.
Then Janet opened her mouth. But before she let Sam's tongue slide in, she whispered, "What made you change your mind?" And Sam couldn't tell her. She could taste olive oil and Parmesan cheese from lunch, could calibrate, calculate, could fold spindle and mutilate envelopes with top-secret documents that were never intended to get to certain Pentagon officials, she could jimmy a lock, load a gun and unload it into a target half an inch wide half a mile away, but she couldn't tell Janet why she was kissing her.
But she was.
And it felt good, friend-good, more-than-friends-good, good like passion and tenderness and sweetness-Janet's, and also hers. Janet urged her to be passionate, to be tender, to kiss her long and deep until her neck felt stiff from leaning down so far.
She disentangled their arms and their tongues, and smiled at Janet, who said, "Goodnight, Sam."
"Goodnight, Janet. Thanks for tea." They'd had tea. Half an hour ago, they'd been drinking tea in the kitchen.
She walked to her car whistling gaily, like Colonel O'Neill whistled after flirting with waitresses at the restaurants they went to as a team once a week. Like Daniel whistled the morning after the night he'd spent with Ke'ra. Like Teal'c-okay, Teal'c didn't whistle. But Sam did, off-key, she was sure, and so loudly that she didn't hear Janet, watching her from behind the storm window, whisper, "straight women."
And she would never have believed that this was a mistake that was not entirely unexpected.
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: PG-13 for some not very nice words
Spoilers/timeline: Mid-S3, post-"100 Days"
Summary: Janet makes a confession, and Sam isn't sure how to deal with what it means about Janet or about herself.
Notes: Written for thenewhope for stargatesanta 2003.
Disclaimer: The characters belong to the powers that be, not to me. No money was made; please don't sue.
Words: 2409
Accidentally On Purpose
Janet kissed Sam. They were hugging goodbye and Janet was aiming for Sam's cheek and missed, and her lips just glanced over Sam's. It felt good. Not good like a man kissing you tenderly and passionately, but good like a friend's hug. It was still good. Sam imagined that was what it was like to kiss a woman friend, and she wondered if the kind of woman who had women friends ever worried about it. About snatched kisses and soft lips and fingers dancing over skin. She tried to shake her head clear.
"Sam." Janet had disentangled their arms, was looking at Sam curiously, with maybe a hint of annoyance. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight," said Sam, and she walked down the steps, taking them slowly, and she found her car. Looking up towards Janet's house, she saw that Cassandra's light was still on. I should tell Janet, she thought. It's a school night, and Cassie should still be asleep. I think Janet will want to know.
She hurried back to the porch without thinking, rapped on the door, found, when she threw it open, that Janet hadn't moved. Her lips were pursed. "Yes?" Sam had the uncomfortable impression that she was making a not altogether unexpected mistake.
"Cassie's still up. I just wanted to tell you."
"Cassandra!" Janet hollered. "Turn off the light and go to sleep!" Somewhere in the dark upstairs, a harried teenage girl flicked a light off viciously. "Now, let's try this again. We hug goodnight. You leave. You go home, I go upstairs, you go to bed, I go to bed."
"Nothing’s changed."
"No, Sam, nothing's changed. Please go home."
Sam thought of apologizing. She wasn't sure for what; she couldn't say, "I'm sorry you've fallen in love with me, Janet. I'm sorry that the feeling is less mutual than it could be. I’m sorry that I’m even considering asking you if I can spend the night.” So she didn’t apologize and she didn’t ask, and when they hugged this time, the smaller woman felt awkward in her arms, deadweight. It was Sam who aimed for the spot between Janet’s cheek and her mouth, the no-man’s land that wasn’t quite romantic but was definitely heading in that direction.
Janet choked back a laugh and said under her breath, “Straight women.”
Sam wasn’t sure whether she should be relieved that Janet wasn’t too disappointed or hurt that she had recovered so quickly from rejection. She chose wry laughter-at herself, at Janet, at the irony.
She’d worshiped Colonel O’Neill for so long that it hardly even registered when the hero worship transformed itself into love. Dark love, love that kept her up late nights thinking about it, love that she’d planned to tell no one but that had registered so obviously on her face that Janet had figured it out even before she’d been ready to acknowledge it to herself.
Janet was perceptive like that.
She wanted to avoid her for the next few days. It should have been easy. They were due for a long mission, and Daniel had wheedled and begged and landed them a planet Colonel O’Neill was calling the Anthropologist’s Wet Dream. Sam felt the coarse humor dripping down her standard issue uniform, leaving her unaffected where three years ago she would have been up in arms about sexual innuendo.
Three years could change a lot. Three years transformed Daniel from a geek into a soldier, Teal’c from an enemy into an ally, Janet from a stiff-necked doctor into a mother. Three years had changed Sam from a woman into a person. And Janet was threatening to erase all those years and all those transformations and take them right back to their first meeting, in the biomedical lab, white coats and goggles and the uncomfortable feeling she got around all Air Force women, possibly because she’d never gotten over the high school assumption that all female military personnel were bulldykes. But that feeling had vanished, and Janet was just one of the family.
Specifically, the mother of their one living child. Then she thought of her family, of SG-1, of Charlie and Shifu and Ry’ac, and she realized there was a reason Cassie was hers before any of her teammates’. Cassie truly was the daughter she’d never known she wished she had. And that child’s mother was in love with her.
“Telling you was a mistake. Sorry, Sam.” “Sorry, Sam.” “Sorry, Sam.” “Sorry, Major Carter. Just a few more minutes and we’ll have the blood ready for analysis.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” she said with a smile. Daniel and the tiny, makeshift team Janet had sent offworld with him had been taking blood samples from the natives. It was, as usual, tricky work to convince them that giving up their blood for science was neither dangerous nor blasphemous. Sam sat on a tree stump and watched the Colonel bitching to Daniel that they’d better wrap things up soon because he was bored and wanted dinner. Daniel was doing a wonderful imitation of a parent condescendingly consoling a recalcitrant child. Teal’c looked menacing.
She started setting up the vials she’d need for the analysis. This was work she could do in her sleep, not the sort of work an elite team should be doing, but this was Daniel’s mission, and she wasn’t on-earth, and the infirmary was very far away, and Janet’s voice wasn’t ringing in her ear anymore. She’d finally gotten the damn voices to shut up. MacKenzie would be pleased, if MacKenzie knew anything, which he didn’t, because Sam was a private woman and kept to herself.
“Damn,” she said, checking her results, and then, “Damn,” again when she realized what she was seeing. “Come here, please, Lt. Green.” Lt. Green jumped, offered a hasty salute, and then peered into the vial.
“What does that look like to you?” she asked.
“A retrovirus, ma’am.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s in all the samples?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not good, is it, ma’am?”
“No, Lieutenant, it’s not. It means we’re under quarantine until we can figure out the mode of transmission and whether we’re at risk.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll inform the Colonel.”
Sam leaned back against a stump. They’d radio back to Stargate Command. They shouldn’t ask for backup, but they probably would anyhow, because this was Dr. Fraiser’s area of expertise, and things would go faster if they had a real doctor here, not just a few officers with some medical training. She wanted Janet there. Not because she was scared, but because she wanted someone there who would know exactly what to do, who wouldn’t panic, who would assume command as naturally as if she were six two and had testosterone running through her veins. As naturally as if she were Colonel O’Neill.
Janet didn’t come. Janet sent word, by way of a lackey (she was treating SG-7 for influenza picked up from the natives of -687) that they should hang tight and send samples back for further study when she had the time. She reminded them to eat right, get sleep, and try not to contract anything she couldn’t treat. “Don’t let Daniel break any bones,” she’d added.
The rainy season was starting. Chief Tamay asked Daniel if his team wanted to participate in the rain ceremony. Daniel said of course they did, and dragged his teammates to the circular arena, the place of power. Sam felt her hair begin to fizzle in the dampness. As the ceremony dragged on, hour after hour of incomprehensible chanting, even Teal’c lost his stoicism and began to look pained. Only Daniel retained his enthusiasm. Sam felt her energy draining. She wanted to be someplace warm and bright.
Colonel O’Neill nudged her. “Major.”
“Colonel?”
“Let’s blow this party. Man the perimeter. Check to see if the specimens have mutated. An urgent message from Hammond.”
“Yessir,” she said with a grin.
Once they were safely out of range of Daniel’s unhappy glare, the Colonel relaxed his pace.
“Sam.”
“Sir?”
“I think it’s time we had a little talk.”
Sam felt her heart begin to beat a little faster. “Sir?”
“You haven’t been yourself this mission. You haven’t confused me once. You haven’t babbled about the energy output of the ‘Gate, you haven’t been working your ass off to figure out why we’re stuck here, you haven’t even been listening to Daniel’s theory about the origins of the... rainy people.”
"Sorry sir.” Not what she’d been expecting.
"What’s the matter?”
She ran through the variables quickly. Her menstrual cycle, her frustrations, her feeling that on this mission, she was just an extra mouth to feed. Janet.
"Nothing.”
The colonel gave her a long look, then shrugged his shoulders. "Let me know if something gets the matter.”
"Yessir.” She was tired of saying yes sir and no sir and I’m just fine sir, but somehow that’s all she could say these days without feeling like she was overstepping her place and entering dangerous territory where feelings weren’t hidden and everything could spin out of control.
Janet got back to them three days later and said they were all free to go if Sam ran some final blood-work on the whole team to make sure they were still uninfected, and to tell the natives to eat right so the virus would stay dormant. Sam watched Daniel attempting to explain dormancy to the natives as she packed up her field kit and explained to Colonel O’Neill that they weren’t sick, weren’t going to get sick, and how, exactly, she knew that. Colonel O’Neill gave her a smile and a hand on her shoulder, which was his way of saying "attagirl. Way to not mope anymore.”
She felt her good feelings evaporate the minute she was in the infirmary and Janet was shining a penlight in her eye. Janet smiled at her. "Feeling better?”
"What do you-oh. Yes, I’m perfectly fine, Janet.”
"Good. Cassie’s been asking after you. Will you be coming over this Saturday?”
"Of course. Nothing’s changed.”
"Nothing’s changed. And even if it had, nothing would change with Cassie."
"Of course not."
But everything had changed, and Sam wasn’t sure what to wear after lunch on Saturday, when she was going to drive over and play chess. She considered, wildly, asking the rest of the team over too, as if being alone with Janet were too much. She wasn’t sure why she was afraid, but she was. Afraid that she would run over to Janet’s house for chess with Cassie and stay for the weekend. That she’d crawl into Janet’s spare bed and wake up with Janet in bed with her. She didn’t want to think about what she’d do if that happened.
She wouldn’t run away screaming. She wouldn’t say no. She couldn’t say yes.
"I’m in love with you." "I shouldn’t have told you. Sorry, Sam." "In love with you..." "In love with you..."
"Shut up, Janet. I don’t need to hear this."
She counted on her fingers the number of men who had propositioned her since she’d come to Stargate Command. Then she counted how many men had propositioned her before. It wasn’t difficult. Jonas Hanson. And then no one, since she was engaged and the sparkly diamond ring on her finger drove off any potential suitors. And then no one, even when she gave the ring back, because... because she was good at saying no with her eyes and her smile and the way she walked. She’d let those defenses down with Janet because Janet was a woman and you shouldn’t have to worry about women.
She worried about Janet. That she wasn’t coping with things as well as she claimed to be, or that she was coping with things but deep inside she wasn’t and it would all come out when a member of SG-1 was on the table and instead of "10 milligrams epee" Janet said "I’m in love with Samantha Carter." And then where would they be?
So for her own self-preservation, Sam needed to talk to Janet. After she gave Cassandra her goodbye hug and watched her make a beeline to the telephone, she said, "She turned out okay, didn't she?"
"I like to think so."
"You did a good job, Janet."
"Thanks. I think having SG-1 around helped."
Sam looked at the floor. Weneedtotalkweneedtotalkweneed... "Janet?"
"Is something bothering you?"
"This thing... us. We can't do this."
"Sam, I don't see that we have a choice. I did it for two years. I shouldn't have said anything, and I'm sorry that I did. It was stupid and unprofessional and unethical."
"If I changed my mind?"
Janet didn't even blink. "Then I'd say no."
"Then it's a good thing I didn't change my mind, huh?"
"Ready to go? I don't think Cassandra's going to be off the phone for the rest of the night."
Sam smiled. "I'm ready. Let me get my coat."
She stared at Janet, willing her to make the first move, to slip into a hug. Her long black coat was too hot for the house. Janet slicked back her hair, still up from work, and, with a roll of her eyes, loosely embraced Sam.
Sam kissed Janet. She wasn't sure if she'd been planning it or not, whether she thought it would feel good or just thought it would be a good idea, but she kissed her, and there was no mistaking it for a slip of the tongue. Janet's lipstick made her skin seem flaky under Sam's lips, and she didn't open her mouth for a good minute while Sam stood there, terrified, not moving her arms or her mouth because she was afraid that if she did, Janet would have the knife that she kept in her bra at Sam's throat.
Then Janet opened her mouth. But before she let Sam's tongue slide in, she whispered, "What made you change your mind?" And Sam couldn't tell her. She could taste olive oil and Parmesan cheese from lunch, could calibrate, calculate, could fold spindle and mutilate envelopes with top-secret documents that were never intended to get to certain Pentagon officials, she could jimmy a lock, load a gun and unload it into a target half an inch wide half a mile away, but she couldn't tell Janet why she was kissing her.
But she was.
And it felt good, friend-good, more-than-friends-good, good like passion and tenderness and sweetness-Janet's, and also hers. Janet urged her to be passionate, to be tender, to kiss her long and deep until her neck felt stiff from leaning down so far.
She disentangled their arms and their tongues, and smiled at Janet, who said, "Goodnight, Sam."
"Goodnight, Janet. Thanks for tea." They'd had tea. Half an hour ago, they'd been drinking tea in the kitchen.
She walked to her car whistling gaily, like Colonel O'Neill whistled after flirting with waitresses at the restaurants they went to as a team once a week. Like Daniel whistled the morning after the night he'd spent with Ke'ra. Like Teal'c-okay, Teal'c didn't whistle. But Sam did, off-key, she was sure, and so loudly that she didn't hear Janet, watching her from behind the storm window, whisper, "straight women."
And she would never have believed that this was a mistake that was not entirely unexpected.