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Jack is passing the front door on the way to switch out his empty beer bottle for a full one when he sees a pair of headlights swing into his driveway. Blue-white slatted shadows drift across the wall. It’s after eleven, so he figures it’s just some lost motorist using his drive to turn around. He settles back down on the couch with the cold beer, clicking play on the VCR. Third period, 3–2 Blackhawks over the Kings. He’d taped the game. He always tapes them. That way he has to make it home to watch them.
The Hawks blow their lead and Jack sourly switches off the TV. He grumbles, stretches, grabs the half-full beer to dump down the sink. He’s still not sure he’ll sleep – he’s not sure he’ll ever close his eyes again without hearing Carter tell him that she’s not going to be okay – but the exhaustion is starting to win.
The headlights are still there.
Jack nudges up one of the blinds and peers into his yard. He lets it fall again. Takes a long breath, with his forehead pressed against the doorframe.
Outdoors, the air is frigid, and he hasn’t put on a jacket. His breath plumes thick and silver. He tugs on the passenger-door handle of Carter’s car and slips in, sealing the cold outside.
She’s staring straight ahead, eyes focused somewhere far beyond his front door. Her hands twist on the steering wheel, forward and back, knuckles white.
Jack puffs on his cold fingers, trying to rub some warmth into them. After a while, he says, “Carter?”
“You didn’t need to come out, sir,” she says. Her voice is tight, like her throat is swollen. “I was doing an excellent job of not knocking on your door.”
“I noticed,” says Jack. She doesn’t say anything else. After a minute, he asks, “All is not right in Oz?”
She huffs a quiet laugh. It sounds desperate. Also a little wet.
“Carter?”
Her hands at ten and two, still sliding over and over the leather of the steering wheel. It’s the only sound in the car.
“I really thought – sir, I really thought this was it, this time.”
As if he hadn’t figured that out when she’d allowed herself to lean on his shoulder in the holding cell. She’s been different, since Daniel. Less sure that they’ll make it out of each successively tighter scrape. It’s one thing to know they’re not invincible, another to be forced to believe it.
But he recognizes that it’s taken a lot for her to confess it out loud, and I know is a crueler response than she deserves. It’s also a cowardly one.
“Yeah.” Jack looks at his hands in his lap. “Me too.”
She turns her head at that, looking at him, and suddenly he takes it all back and wishes she weren’t because her gaze is intense and it’s asking far too much of him. He feels entirely stripped down in its blue light.
“What if it were, sir?”
“Major?”
“I mean, what if it had been?”
He flinches. And he doesn’t want to, but because she’s asked, he forces himself to imagine his night if only three of them had come back alive. Not that different, in the end. Shower, debrief, home. He’d still have driven past the gas station on the way, putting off refueling until tomorrow. The Blackhawks would still have lost 4–3 on Thursday night.
But the thought of it. His same life, without her in it. Nothing like the same. It squeezes a garotte around his throat.
He strangles. “Carter.”
“When you were on that moon…”
God, had she felt like this? He’s going to shake apart.
He clears his throat. “Teal’c said it wasn’t great.”
That not-laugh again. Even wetter now. She takes one palm off the wheel to swipe angrily at her cheek, then puts it back again, still twisting.
He rests his hand over hers, and she stills.
“Carter.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you again then, either.”
“You didn’t stop looking,” he points out.
“I couldn’t,” she whispers. “You needed me to.”
“I always need you to,” he admits.
“If today had been – if it really had been it…”
“I know,” he says, because he does.
“I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”
“They’re not.”
Even through tears, she manages to sound cuttingly skeptical. “Really?”
Jack shrugs, not taking his eyes off hers. “What else needs to be said?”
He means it. She knows how he feels about her. He likes to think that he knows how she feels about him. It’s more than he thought he’d ever get. He doesn’t need anything else.
But she’s shaking her head. “It’s not about what we say.”
And sure, he’s had the same thoughts – of her in his kitchen making coffee in the morning, of holding hands in the grocery store, of arguing over what movie they’ll watch on Friday night, of her fixing the drippy faucet in the guest bathroom as he grills them hot dogs on a summer afternoon. A life lived together, not just in parallel.
He realizes abruptly that his hand is still over hers. He looks at it as if, now that it’s been caught, it will move of its own accord. It doesn’t. Her skin is chapped with the winter, warm to the touch, the hard bumps of her clenched knuckles nestling into the curve of his palm. Jack swallows. His hand moves – good, he thinks at it, that’s right, but to his dismay he finds that it’s prying her fingers from the wheel, flipping them upright so he can intertwine them with his.
Maybe this will be enough, he thinks. It’s not about what they say, but here he is, showing it another way.
Then she lets out a small, sad sound at the contact and Jack slams his head back against the seat, and for the briefest instant while he clenches his eyelids shut, he wonders if he’ll ever stop lying to himself. But it’s moot now, because he’s tugged, or she’s moved, or maybe both, but either way, she’s falling across the gear shift and her mouth is on his, and God, she’s warm, she’s warm, the heat of her face against his, of her hair beneath his hands, her lips moving under his, and the bottom of his stomach drops straight down into liquid heat.
He lets go of her hand and untangles his fingers from the hair at the back of her head so that he can grab her waistband and haul her across the center console. She comes willingly, not breaking the kiss, her hands tunnelling through his hair now, tugging on his ears – Jesus, how is that so good, it’s so sweet and so desperate and a little dirty – as she lands in his lap. Blindly, he reaches down to find the seat controls, tipping them backwards all in a jerk so that she gives out a whuff against his lips as she topples onto him. Everything is still cramped; the seat doesn’t slide back as far as he wants, and he breaks away from her for just a second to gasp a breath and say, “Shit, Carter, your car is so tiny.”
“You sure know how to sweet-talk a girl,” she says, and she would sound like her normal wry self except that Jack’s hand is on her face and his thumb is sweeping across her cheekbone and it’s wet; she’s still crying. He leans forward and kisses her eyelids, one then the other and then back to the first one, clumsy.
“Don’t,” he says, “don’t. It’s okay – Carter –”
She sobs once, shakes her head. “No, it’s fine, I just need – please –”
So he kisses her again, and now with the seat leaning as far back as it will go her legs can fall on either side of his, bringing her pelvis flush against his, and they both groan. Jack rips his mouth away and puts it instead on the side of her neck, hot open-mouthed kisses leading up to her ear, and she gasps and throws her head back, giving him access. He can feel her quivering all along his body, pressed chest to chest.
He wants more space, he wants to go inside, he wants to not stop even for as long as it will take them to get to the front door, not even for a second – and, besides, he thinks that suggesting they take this to the bedroom will probably halt both of them in their tracks, and he’s too far gone to listen to the rational part of his brain that’s telling him it would be for good reason.
Carter shoves her hands under his shirt, and his skull thumps back against the headrest as he moans. Her fingers smooth over his ribs, and the car heater is blowing dry air over them, and a minute ago he really was honest-to-God thinking how he didn’t need anything more, and now he thinks he’ll die if she stops touching him.
“Sam –”
“Don’t say anything,” she pleads. “Please, God, don’t say anything.”
“Wasn’t gonna,” he promises.
He’s so hard that his pants feel like a new kind of torture, and he can feel her heat against him, and when he thrusts up into it she whimpers. He slides his hand around her back, cradling her ass, and does it again, more deliberately, and she buries her face in the crook of his neck and gasps again. She’s rolling her hips now too, grinding back down urgently, and he wants her, he wants her so badly, he wants to feel her and to taste her, but he can’t do that here – he can’t do any of that ever, technically, but here he is doing some of it anyway – so as a compromise he frees one hand and fumbles at her jeans button until she gives up on him and slaps it away so she can do it herself.
There isn’t even enough space for her to get her pants off – she’s practically pressed right back against the glove box, so he just tries to work his hand under her waistband and into her underwear – and yep, that’s not going to work at this angle, so he hooks an arm around her shoulders and flips them over so that he’s on top. By scooting his ass on top of the console, his back pressed against the windshield – and shit, that’s like ice, it feels like white fire all down the muscles along his spine – he makes enough room to get her jeans down to her ankles. Carter helps, lifting her butt off the seat in a way that makes her back arch and ensures that Jack is utterly incapable of making his first move when he comes down anything but a reach for her breasts, grazing his thumbs against her nipples as he resettles his hips against hers.
Carter presses her head into the leather and whispers yes, drawing it out, so Jack rucks the hem of her t-shirt all the way up to her armpits, drawing the flat of his palm along the soft skin of her stomach as he goes. She hisses in surprised pleasure.
“Shit! S–” She cuts herself off before sir can fall out of her mouth, and Jack grins against her sternum as he squirms a hand under her back to pop the closure on her bra.
“Attagirl, Carter,” he says into her skin, right before he sucks a nipple into his mouth. Carter fists her hand into the back of his shirt collar and twists. He growls, nips at her, and she giggles in response. Progress, he thinks.
Her other hand is resting on the side of his head, thumb smoothing over his right ear, and he’s seriously never going to think about his own ears the same. He’s also never going to be able to look at Carter in a t-shirt again without seeing it like this, scrunched up to her collarbones and pressing her bare breasts down appealingly. Which is maybe more of an issue, but he consigns that to the same place he consigned the low fuel light in his truck: a problem for tomorrow.
Carter’s saying his name. He takes his lips off her nipple with a wet pop that’s absolutely obscene, and he rests his chin on her breastbone so he can look up at her face. “Kind of busy here, Carter.”
“Sir, if you don’t touch me in the next five seconds, I’m going to shoot you.”
“You packing, Carter?” She’s not, obviously; his hands have been everywhere, all over her now. They inch back down her ribs.
“Find out,” she says. He’s not sure how she sounds that dangerous while gasping.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack says, and sinks two fingers beneath the elastic of her panties and straight into her heat. She cries out and slams her fist against the car door. Jack doesn’t pull his punches, pushing his fingers into her over and over, because she’s already dripping all over him, and fuck if he isn’t panting with how hot that is. She grinds her clit down on his thumb and he draws small circles against it, but he feels like he’s barely holding on for the ride, like she’s – as always – three steps ahead of him and breaking all the speed limits, while he’s clinging to the handlebars and they’re both pretending he’s steering.
The muscle of her shoulder is right there, so he sinks his teeth into it lightly and she keens. He never expected her to be so vocal, but it suits Carter – the wild Carter who hustles drunk guys at pool and flies along dark roads on her motorcycle and flings herself into battle with aliens.
Maybe it’s because he’s busy thinking about this that she’s able to take him off guard when she wraps her arms around his torso and flips them back over. Jack’s fingers slide out of her underwear, trailing wetness up her skin as she slithers down and away, somehow managing to fold her lower body into the footwell as she unbuckles his belt and opens his jeans. The cooler air of the car makes his cock twitch as it bounds free. She sends one giddy look up at his face, licks her lips, and then her mouth engulfs him in wet heat.
“Ah! Crap – Carter –” Jack flails, seeking leverage, seeking anything that will let him hold on. His hand slaps at the juncture of the passenger window and the roof, but there’s no handle there in this stupid, wildly impractical vehicle. He wonders whether there’s anything to the fact that she has a miniscule classic coupe and he has a giant late-model pickup, and whether that’s a sign that they’re well matched or that they’re doomed to live in different worlds, but he almost immediately becomes incapable of thinking anything at all.
Carter’s mouth is sliding up and down his cock, and she’s tonguing at the head on the upswing, and he slams his eyes shut because if he looks for another three seconds at the picture she makes, kneeling with her mop of blond hair bobbing and her lips stretched over him, this is about to be over extremely quickly.
“Fuck,” he says with feeling.
“Thought you’d never ask,” says Carter.
“Jesus, you’re making dumb jokes? I’m clearly –” he gasps – “not doing a good enough job distracting you, and also dumb jokes are supposed to be my job – if you’d left me three working braincells –”
Carter’s wiggling out of her panties and her jeans, which were still locked around her ankles. This program, at least, is one that Jack can get with, so he strips his own t-shirt off, but he doesn’t have a chance to tackle his pants before she’s back on top of him, her palms ranging over his pecs, scratching lightly in his chest hair.
It feels so good he almost doesn’t notice her urgency and the way she hasn’t quite met his eyes this whole time. Almost. He’s puzzled for maybe half a second, and then it clicks into place, all of it – the rushing and the desperation, the edgy jokes that give her the armored shell of a tough persona, her need to constantly change up their positions. She’s keeping it moving because she’s afraid he’ll come to his senses and stop them.
Fuck that.
“Hey,” he says quietly, stopping her with a gentle hand on her face before she can prepare to lower herself onto him. “Carter, hey. Look at me.”
When she does, settling back on his thighs, he sits up and kisses her. This time, he makes it slow and sweet, rubbing long, soothing lines down her back with the flats of his palms. She tastes like salt and like him, with a copper edge of desperation that he works to lick away. Gradually, he feels her come to stillness, her tongue lazy against his and her fingers curled just behind his ear, toying with his hair.
Only then does he break them apart, letting their lips be slow to part. He leans his forehead against hers. They’re so close that her face looks fuzzy.
“Hi,” he says, brushing the backs of his knuckles across her cheekbone.
She smiles – that full, affectionate grin he sometimes gets when she thinks he isn’t paying attention. Kind of indulgent, kind of adoring. It makes his chest go all soft and gooey, like the center of a chocolate lava cake. “Hi,” she says.
“I’m right here with you,” he says. “We’ve got all the time in the world, okay?”
Her face crumples a little at that, and she buries it against his neck. His own throat gets tight, because she’s right – they almost didn’t. Against his will, he thinks again of the night he could have had. The cold, lonely ice-light of the televised game on the walls of his unlit house. He holds her close, feeling his bare chest against the smooth skin of hers, reminding himself that she’s here too, warm and breathing.
He draws her face away from his neck so that he can see the proof of it with his own eyes. It’s pretty dark in his yard, but there’s enough light thrown back by the headlights hitting his house that he can see her looking at him, eyes soft and wide in a face gone a little hazy with pleasure. Now that they’re quiet he can feel the purr of the engine, or maybe it’s just his whole body humming with her, her nearness.
She must get the picture of where his head’s at, because she reaches down to line herself up with him.
“We good?” he asks, a little belatedly.
“Yeah, we’re good,” she assures him. Of course they are, he berates himself; as if she wouldn’t have thought of that.
When she sinks down, they both let out a slow, shaky breath. Jack’s hands come up to grip her waist, where it’s a little soft just above her hipbones. She rocks against him, and he rolls his hips up beneath her, making them both gasp.
It’s not the best place for this; she’s gripping the car’s frame for support, but there isn’t anywhere for her to put her feet on the floor on either side of the seat, so she doesn’t have the leverage to lift off of him much. They’re limited to little pulses more than real strokes. But Jack likes it: he likes that she can’t go far, that there’s almost no space between them. She’s everywhere, all around him and over him, and he likes the way he can see his fingers digging into the skin and muscle of her side, and the way that she’s so slick and fits so right around him that he thinks she couldn’t be more perfect.
“God – Sam,” he manages, relinquishing his grip with one hand so that he can get his thumb back to her clit. When he makes contact, she moans. He can feel himself like this, sliding in and out of her. “You feel so good.”
“You too,” she chokes. “Don’t stop.”
“Never,” he says, and she throws her head back, and how is it that with all that they’ve seen and everything they’ve survived, it’s this that looks miraculous: his hands on her stomach, her face in the reflected glare. The car is wrapped close around them but the night is enormous and enveloping outside, and this light, it’s interstellar, which is maybe why Jack is starting to see stars. His free hand leaves her side and shoots up to grip the nape of her neck urgently, so that she’s surprised into looking at him.
Her eyes are big and blown black, and he watches them flutter shut as he swipes one more circle around her center and drives up hard into her and she shudders apart around him with a cry. Jack is lit up from the tips of his toes all up his spine, his orgasm pulling him in like a black hole. He buries himself in her once, twice, three times more and then he’s with her, coming apart at the seams in her gravity.
She falls forward onto him, and she feels strangely small now that he’s got her wrapped up in his arms, with extra arm room to spare. He strokes her back again, long, sweeping motions as they pant together, him still inside of her and her head on his chest, where his heart is galloping toward her.
Jack lets out a long breath, trying to calm his body. The car smells intensely of sex and there’s a slick pool of wetness where they’re joined.
“Uh, oh,” he mutters, not stopping the slide of his hands over her back, “I hope we didn’t ruin the leather.”
Carter’s voice is muffled against his neck, which seems to have become her new favourite place to put her face. “Why do you think I made sure you were on the bottom, sir?”
“That’s what I like about you, Carter,” he says weakly, exhausted. “Always thinking.”
She makes a move as if to get up, so he tightens his arms to stop her. She laughs a little and burrows back in.
“Okay,” she says. “But I don’t think we can sleep like this.”
“Speak for yourself,” says Jack, who thinks sleep might in fact be coming for him any second. His body is languorously heavy and his mind keeps fuzzing out at the edges.
He knows she’s right: she’ll have to climb off him and somehow shimmy back into her pants and drive home, and he’ll have to go back out into the January freeze and get into his cold bed in his dark house. He thinks for thirty seconds about what it would be like if he could invite her in, if he could slip into bed with her with the golden bedside lamp lighting her up and hold tight to her warmth. Thirty seconds of lying to himself, he thinks. It’s not that bad, in the scheme of things. Hasn’t he earned it? Haven’t they?
Carter lifts her head and turns his face with a palm against his cheek. She kisses him long and slow, and Jack feels tears gather at the corners of his eyes because it feels like a goodbye. They’ve switched: the sex seems to have soothed her terrors a little, but it’s made him desperate. His fingers spasm tight on her shoulders.
“Carter – today…”
“Sh,” she whispers, “It’s okay, I’m okay,” and kisses him again. Her lips are soft, and the fact that they move over his of their own accord feels sacred.
“Don’t say goodbye.”
“Just ‘til tomorrow,” she promises.
“It won’t be like this.”
“No,” she admits. “Not like this.”
“Another minute, then,” he pleads.
She smooths a thumb over his brow. “As long as we can,” she tells him.