ficpost: "Homelight on a Field of Stars" Sam/Janet
Title: "Homelight on a Field of Stars"
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: PG for mild sexuality.
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-"Broca Divide", pre-"Singularity"
Notes: For havocthecat in Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines, femslash_today's girlslash in space ficathon.
Summary: Experimental living, or, life before children.
Words: 908
Homelight on a Field of Stars
Sam comes home: the Earth is home, the world is home, Colorado is home and she's beginning to think Dr. Frasier's house is home and her own home is home, and Sam has seen the stars, knows the truth: the whole universe is her home. When Sam comes home a short woman with her hair back in a bun that will never manage to be severe greets her with a hot meal and a smile that creases her whole face, from full lower lip to usually worried forehead and that means, "How was your day? How was your week? How was the planet, are you feeling okay, let me know right away if you exhibit any unusual symptoms and by the way the dry-cleaning is in 'your' closet and when the heck do you get a chance to wear dry-clean only anything, anyhow?"
'Sam's' closet in Janet's house is where she stores essentials, and the masquerade of maintaining her own residence and spending her free time at Janet's and most of her downtime at the mountain and her uptime in the great wide galaxy makes Sam feel scattered and inessential, pieces of her everywhere, a coffee mug in her lab, another in Daniel's office, another in her own kitchen and one in the commissary and two in Janet's cupboard, on the high shelf that Janet can't reach.
Sam's dry-cleaning bill is an experiment, like everything in her life. It's an experiment in dress, in drag, in figuring out the perfect balance between the butch who lives inside her and the femme Meridith Carter painted on, the different but still feminine femme she is when she wears dress blues and attends military balls, the genderless scientist who's one thick pair of glasses away from never getting laid again, the woman Janet thinks she is, whoever that might be, the intrepid explorer in desert camo, one hand on her compass, the other on her gun, rethinking the whole concept of magnetic north, of North, of exploration, and on the down days, sometimes, she wears good silk shirts and weird stretchy pants that for whatever reason can't be washed, and Sam understands the mysteries of God's own creation, knows why and how the planets move, knows when the sun will next eclipse on various planets in multiple solar systems, but the whys of laundry are more alien to her than lost generations of Mongols, than ancient Egyptian spoken aloud, than snakes that live in human brains. Janet does the washing-up, and in exchange, Sam comes home. That's all Janet asks, all Janet will ever ask; Sam can't imagine her wanting anything else.
Just, please, Sam, come home.
Janet was married for three years and has done casual and has done serious and has done men and had done women, and she's friendly with her patients and with her higher-ups and with her colleagues, friendly enough for poker and for suggesting that they go out for drinks, but not friendly enough to actually indulge, but she's never, till Sam, really had a friend, though for a few months a year or two back, Jack O'Neill came close, before he lost Charlie and Sara and she divorced Nick and suddenly everything was uneasy between them. They're okay now, like nothing changed, and now, she knows (and loves, and has) Sam Carter, which makes everything, everything, different.
Sam wakes up looking already casually pretty, a woman who just needs a shower and a fine tooth comb to look like Miss Universe. Sam comes downstairs, drinks coffee and slices a grapefruit, checks to make sure there's mineral water in the fridge (though why she should care what Janet has to drink when she's away, who knows), takes a seat across from Janet, who dictates charts before Sam wakes up and stops when she hears the sounds of Sam waking up. Sam eats her grapefruit methodically, and Janet eats oatmeal and (on Sundays) an egg. Sam smiles, wide-awake, and they discuss the upcoming mission, or they don't, because sometimes there's nothing that can be said -- it's too boring, mineral deposits and naquadah, or it's too exciting, Apophis and his Jaffa, Janet won't sleep easy the whole time Sam's gone. And for a few minutes over breakfast, Janet feels like normal.
But she's not; she's a military wife, and though she'll hardball her way through the next few weeks, thrilling checkups and routine epidemics, doubtless a quarantine, maybe, if she's very lucky, not being sick herself, and finally (as she always does) Sam will come home, tousled and mussed and dirty, begging for a shower, avoiding Janet's eyes in the infirmary, and this discretion tells their story: the secrecy and the ecstasy, the tall tales Sam brings home, all true, the desires Janet had almost forgotten she owned, awakened, her two lives, one when Sam is away (and this life is full enough: any life that contains the daily threat of death and at least one new strand of flu a week could never be called dull), one when Sam is home (and in this life, Janet's a woman in love, and everything else recedes into the background).
Janet knows that this night will be enough, that Sam, who spends her days in far-away places, has come back to her unchanged, or close enough, just as wide-eyed and curious, as perplexing and perplexed. Tonight she'll show Janet the universe, one star at a time.
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: PG for mild sexuality.
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-"Broca Divide", pre-"Singularity"
Notes: For havocthecat in Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines, femslash_today's girlslash in space ficathon.
Summary: Experimental living, or, life before children.
Words: 908
Homelight on a Field of Stars
Sam comes home: the Earth is home, the world is home, Colorado is home and she's beginning to think Dr. Frasier's house is home and her own home is home, and Sam has seen the stars, knows the truth: the whole universe is her home. When Sam comes home a short woman with her hair back in a bun that will never manage to be severe greets her with a hot meal and a smile that creases her whole face, from full lower lip to usually worried forehead and that means, "How was your day? How was your week? How was the planet, are you feeling okay, let me know right away if you exhibit any unusual symptoms and by the way the dry-cleaning is in 'your' closet and when the heck do you get a chance to wear dry-clean only anything, anyhow?"
'Sam's' closet in Janet's house is where she stores essentials, and the masquerade of maintaining her own residence and spending her free time at Janet's and most of her downtime at the mountain and her uptime in the great wide galaxy makes Sam feel scattered and inessential, pieces of her everywhere, a coffee mug in her lab, another in Daniel's office, another in her own kitchen and one in the commissary and two in Janet's cupboard, on the high shelf that Janet can't reach.
Sam's dry-cleaning bill is an experiment, like everything in her life. It's an experiment in dress, in drag, in figuring out the perfect balance between the butch who lives inside her and the femme Meridith Carter painted on, the different but still feminine femme she is when she wears dress blues and attends military balls, the genderless scientist who's one thick pair of glasses away from never getting laid again, the woman Janet thinks she is, whoever that might be, the intrepid explorer in desert camo, one hand on her compass, the other on her gun, rethinking the whole concept of magnetic north, of North, of exploration, and on the down days, sometimes, she wears good silk shirts and weird stretchy pants that for whatever reason can't be washed, and Sam understands the mysteries of God's own creation, knows why and how the planets move, knows when the sun will next eclipse on various planets in multiple solar systems, but the whys of laundry are more alien to her than lost generations of Mongols, than ancient Egyptian spoken aloud, than snakes that live in human brains. Janet does the washing-up, and in exchange, Sam comes home. That's all Janet asks, all Janet will ever ask; Sam can't imagine her wanting anything else.
Just, please, Sam, come home.
Janet was married for three years and has done casual and has done serious and has done men and had done women, and she's friendly with her patients and with her higher-ups and with her colleagues, friendly enough for poker and for suggesting that they go out for drinks, but not friendly enough to actually indulge, but she's never, till Sam, really had a friend, though for a few months a year or two back, Jack O'Neill came close, before he lost Charlie and Sara and she divorced Nick and suddenly everything was uneasy between them. They're okay now, like nothing changed, and now, she knows (and loves, and has) Sam Carter, which makes everything, everything, different.
Sam wakes up looking already casually pretty, a woman who just needs a shower and a fine tooth comb to look like Miss Universe. Sam comes downstairs, drinks coffee and slices a grapefruit, checks to make sure there's mineral water in the fridge (though why she should care what Janet has to drink when she's away, who knows), takes a seat across from Janet, who dictates charts before Sam wakes up and stops when she hears the sounds of Sam waking up. Sam eats her grapefruit methodically, and Janet eats oatmeal and (on Sundays) an egg. Sam smiles, wide-awake, and they discuss the upcoming mission, or they don't, because sometimes there's nothing that can be said -- it's too boring, mineral deposits and naquadah, or it's too exciting, Apophis and his Jaffa, Janet won't sleep easy the whole time Sam's gone. And for a few minutes over breakfast, Janet feels like normal.
But she's not; she's a military wife, and though she'll hardball her way through the next few weeks, thrilling checkups and routine epidemics, doubtless a quarantine, maybe, if she's very lucky, not being sick herself, and finally (as she always does) Sam will come home, tousled and mussed and dirty, begging for a shower, avoiding Janet's eyes in the infirmary, and this discretion tells their story: the secrecy and the ecstasy, the tall tales Sam brings home, all true, the desires Janet had almost forgotten she owned, awakened, her two lives, one when Sam is away (and this life is full enough: any life that contains the daily threat of death and at least one new strand of flu a week could never be called dull), one when Sam is home (and in this life, Janet's a woman in love, and everything else recedes into the background).
Janet knows that this night will be enough, that Sam, who spends her days in far-away places, has come back to her unchanged, or close enough, just as wide-eyed and curious, as perplexing and perplexed. Tonight she'll show Janet the universe, one star at a time.