At My Door by NeuroticMuse413

I knew Daniel was planning this for weeks. I marked it on my calendar, cleaned up my house, and even fixed up my hair. I had to since my last excursion through the Gate left me with scorch marks in all sorts of awkward places. I patched myself up in the mirror as usual – I’d learned to stock up on gauze and antiseptic years ago – and sighed at my tired reflection.

I’d probably pioneered some of the most important scientific fields in the last century, been engaged more times than most women with my income ever will, and still, I had butterflies the size of plates running around my stomach.

“It’s over,” I whispered to myself again and again. The truth was that it never was but I couldn’t say that. I shut my eyes and chanted it for a moment, trying to find the strength. I heard the voices outside my room. Daniel had sent out a memo to the entire SGC. But General O’Neill wasn’t part of the SGC anymore. He was in a whole other section and I knew for a fact that he didn’t check his e-mails even when he was at the SGC.

Even if he did care enough, I knew he wasn’t going to be out there but a part of me had practiced these speeches for years. I couldn’t help it. My retirement was just the final goodbye. There was no reason to hold on anymore. He wasn’t giving up his position anytime soon. I’d driven him so far up the ladder that a few stolen kisses and warm embraces didn’t mean a thing anymore.

“What is over, Colonel Carter?” Teal’c asked from my bedroom door. I jumped and spilled a bottle of perfume all over my hands. I cursed softly and hurried to my master bathroom to wash it off.

“Sorry! Sorry, Teal’c! I’ll be right there. And lay off the Colonel. I never want to hear another military rank as long as I live,” I said with a sad chuckle. Teal’c could see right through me, as usual. I should never have given him that book on basic human expression. He was meant to emulate it, not use it to psychoanalyze his teammates to death.

When I left the bathroom, trying to rub the smell off my hands on a towel, he was standing there with his arms behind his back. I knew that pose. He wasn’t going to budge either.

“Come on, Teal’c,” I said. “Don’t give me the eyebrow. I’m playing nice today.”

“I don’t believe I understand, Samantha. Why are you not joyous to be relieved from duty with honors?”

I shrugged and tried to make my way around him, back to the mirror to finish trimming the burnt bits of hair. My long ponytail was gone, yet again. “I don’t know, Teal’c. I guess I never expected I’d have to do it.”

“Did you believe O’Neill would be the first to do so?” he asked. Damn his bluntness.

I walked around the subject. I was just trying to buy time, to better compose my excuse but nothing came to mind besides a misplaced indignation. “He’s certainly been at it longer but no. I don’t expect anything of O’Neill.” I let my disdain drip off his name, making the anger rise inside me until I couldn’t help throwing the stupid perfume bottle at the wall.

He clutched my arm before I could throw my hairbrush and brought me to his chest. I sobbed for a few moments, as quietly as possible, before putting my pieces back together.

“Thank you, Teal’c,” I said, clearing my throat. I wiped away the only tear I let escape and nodded towards the door. “Come on. You owe me a dance, big guy.”

I smirked at him and went off into the party. Even as I greeted people, making the rounds like a drunken socialite, my eyes wandered the room for Jack. I even imagined hearing his voice among them. When I’d finally find time to sit down and breathe in the comfort of Daniel’s understanding, quiet presence by the veranda, I’d close my eyes and try to remember his voice, his smile, the power of his touch. It wasn’t even a matter of missing a friend or a lover. It was like missing my father all over again, mourning him.

Jack was family, just like Daniel and Teal’c if not more so.

“He should have been here,” said Daniel finally, tortured by my silence. “We dragged it out as long as we could. I’m sorry, Sam.”

I laughed. I could have denied it but it wasn’t worth it. I was retired, I reminded myself. No point in lying to my friends. There were no more taboo topics.

“I don’t know what I’d – I’d have done if he had come. It’s okay. We never agreed anything. I guess I just worked it out in my head that as soon as one of us retired, quit, got fired… we’d be at each other’s door,” I confessed. My voice was dead, emotionless.

“You were at his door when he was—” he began but I covered his mouth with my palm.

“That’s not going to make me feel better, Daniel. We were never anything. You can’t help growing a bond with people you work with, especially given all the death we see. It was easier for me thinking my superior officer would do anything for me. It’s easier now thinking he would have done the same for anyone.”

Daniel shook off my hand. “Don’t be an idiot. You finally had something going and you went off to Atlantis. What did you want him to do?”

“Move on!” I shouted, standing. Almost everyone had gone. Those remaining were too far away to hear me. I didn’t have to whisper when I certainly felt like screaming. “I told him to move on, Daniel. I just assumed—”

“Assumed what?” came a voice behind me.

He always did have impeccable timing. I snapped around but I knew that voice anywhere. It made my skin over my heart quiver and ripple and I wanted to die. “General!” I yelled, holding my heart in place.

He gave me his odd, one-sided smirk. I realized he was in full Air Force formal blues and a few sprigs of white flowers were sticking out behind his back. “What’s up?”

Daniel burst out in snickers. “God, you two really do have bad timing,” he said, walking past us back into the party.

Jack didn’t even notice. His eyes were fixed on mine. “Got the gang back together, huh?”

“Now it is, yea,” I said, still wide-eyed and stunned. “What are you doing here, sir?”

He laughed. “Cut the sir, Sam. You’re retired!” he exclaimed as though it were truly wonderful news and not the most devastating decision of my life. I smiled but bared no teeth. “Come on! Get happy!”

He pulled the bouquet of flowers from behind his back. It was large and white, hardly romantic but I doubted he knew the meaning of flowers. I bet he couldn’t even pronounce their names but they were still lovely.

“Your assistant picked them out?” I snarked.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

I laughed and allowed him to wrap one arm around me, hugging me awkwardly. I kept the bouquet between us, limiting the intimacy. I shut my eyes and breathed in, unable to stop myself. His scent made my tense shoulders drop and my heartbeat slow to normal rhythm. It was the smell of gunpowder and office furniture and… safety, the feeling that drew me to him.

I groaned and stepped away. He seemed to sense something brewing inside me. “What’s up? You okay? You’ve got your I’ve-got-a-headache brow.”

I smiled and avoided his eyes. I looked off at my bedroom door just through the living room. Only the truly closest friends remained, too caught up in stories of old times to notice me dragging Jack off to my bed. He didn’t resist, not even when he realized where I’d taken him. He shut the door behind him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, his back rested to the door as though intentionally blocking my way out. “I got stuck in DC. The President wanted me to—”

I pressed my body to his, effectively shutting him up. I kept my hand on his chest, keeping me at bay. “I don’t care. You came.”

“Well, yea, Sam. You think I’d miss seeing you off?”

I gulped. “You know?”

“That you got a cushy job at Cape Canaveral? Yah. I’m on your references list, Sammy. They called me up. I of course raved about your ability to blow up stars and all that junk.”

My eye got wide again. “You better be kidding.”

“If I weren’t, I’d be in handcuffs and that bed over there would be a prison cot. Classified, remember?” he said with a gulp and a smile. I was still dangerously close.

“Then why are you here, Jack?”

He smiled larger than I’d seen in years, back when he was just a colonel and I was a lowly captain. I told myself things had changed, that I had gotten braver and ventured off on my own, survived well enough without him… but that was all a lie. I couldn’t see the strings but they were there, tying us across whole universes.

“Are you just here to say goodbye?” I urged him on.

He shook his head. “You didn’t think I’d wait for you to come back, did ya? Now, why the hell did you retire?”

A shiver ran through me, so strong that I had to stumble backwards onto the edge of the bed to control myself. I sat but he lingered by the door. “I couldn’t do it anymore, Jack. I couldn’t do it as easily as you can. I can’t pretend anymore.”

“Pretend what?” he asked, cautiously coming to sit beside me. Instinctively, my head fell on his shoulder. It fit so perfectly that, for a moment, I believed this was actually happening. I remembered all the other times I was allowed this intimacy, on other planets where labels and professionalism didn’t matter, where memories could be easily erased.

“After Hammond died… I… I can’t do this thing you do. You can show up to work and act like you don’t care but I’m not like that. I don’t have a cabin in the woods to escape to. I don’t have another life. Every time I try to get one, I just get reminded that no one will—will ever know me like you do!”

I was in tears, uncontrollable and sudden and I quickly realized that it was okay as long as his arm was around me. He didn’t move. He was a rock, my own personal brick wall. I could collapse before him as I’d done countless times before and he’d always be there to steady me. Just like Daniel and just like Teal’c. Just like Janet and General Hammond did when they were alive.

My tears seemed irrelevant and I hurried to wipe them off. I was strong again, as long as he never let go.

I parted a little and looked up at his face. Just like I thought. Stone. Immoveable.

He smirked awkwardly. “Yea, well… it’s a gift. And a curse,” he said.

I would normally have laughed but he was so… different, and at the same time, it felt like déjà vu. “How can you do that? How can you be so calm?”

“I’ve got you to freak out for me,” he answered, his smile growing wider. I parted from him a moment to get a better looked at his face, to better read him. He understood that I expected a real answer this time. There was no more reason to lie. “Sam, how many times have we been inches from death? And what do I do? I look at you and ask you to come up with some crazy scheme and you always do. I don’t have to understand it. I just have to listen to you and trust you and I know we’re going to be fine. You’re a little emotional sometimes but that’s what makes you so… brilliant. You care. I’m here to make sure you don’t let that blind you.”

“You keep me steady,” I whispered, reaching up to caress his cheek. It didn’t feel wrong or forbidden. There was no one looking in, no cameras and no one to stop us.

“It’s why we work,” he said. I noticed the present tense, the double meaning. He noticed it too and added, “We were a good team.”

I smirked. “The best. The SGC is positively dying without us,” I joked, keeping up with his charade.

That was the thing about Jack. You never really knew if he was talking about work or us. It’s how we were able to stay together for so long without letting it get in the way. Hell, without getting caught.

He came to the same realization and whispered tentatively, clarifying, “I’m dying without you.”

The room was silent, everything but the beating of my heart. The tears came again but they too were silent. He smiled and wiped them away with his thumb. We were almost intertwined, our arms tangled in a slowly-creeping embrace. We were still fighting with ourselves to give in. It was easy to cry, to rest upon each other. It was harder to express what we spent over a decade trying to hide, what would always be unspoken.

We couldn’t say those three words. I love you. It didn’t exist to us. There was just a kiss, one like many stolen before and easily forgotten or dismissed. Only this time, it lasted so long. It seemed almost endless until we heard Mitchell’s knock on the door.

“Hey, are you guys done in there? Some of us need to use the damn bathroom!” he shouted.

Jack and I chuckled and broke apart. Our limbs were sore as though our bodies fought with themselves to give in and give up at the same time.

Jack wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and smiled at me. I turned a cherry red and quickly stood, doing the same. He cleared his throat and checked the clock by my bed.

“Crap!” he hissed. “I have to be back in DC. You gonna be okay?”

I laughed. I’d been fine without him in a whole other galaxy. I could handle a couple of days. “Yea, I’ll be fine,” I answered hoarsely.

He straightened himself up and went to the leave. Daniel and Vala were on the other side, leaning against the door. I doubted they could have heard anything but they still nearly fell into the room.

“It was his idea!” shouted Vala though I knew better. Daniel gasped dramatically as though offended.

“Oh shut up!” he responded.

Jack tried to sneak past them, obviously in a hurry. He checked his watch one more time to make sure. “I gotta go,” he said again, his tone apologetic and low so I knew he was talking to me alone. Daniel and Vala looked from me to Jack and back again, slow smiles blossoming on their treacherous little faces.

“I know,” I answered, not wanting to give too much away. He still lingered, almost jumping in place as though fighting with himself to leave.

Cameron blasted past Daniel and Vala, holding his crotch as he hopped to the bathroom. “You bastards! I was waiting outside for fifteen minutes!” he said, slamming the bathroom door shut.

Jack laughed and waved between us, whispering, “Can we finish this later?”

I nodded and he was off, smiling like a kid.

Vala narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Daniel crossed his arms, smile wide as a Cheshire cat’s. “Why Colonel Carter, you’re blushing!” said Vala. She turned towards Daniel and smacked him in the arm. “I told you there was something there! Why’d you always tell me to shut up?”

“I tell you to shut up no matter what you say,” he replied calmly. I burst out laughing and pushed them out the door. I wondered if Jack and I could ever be so comfortable with each other. It didn’t matter. I just knew that we took the first step. He showed up at my door and that’s all that counted.

It meant he was willing to try, that he still cared for me. Hell, maybe he even loved me.

I didn’t get my hopes up right away. I still had Cape Canaveral calling me every other hour and Jack was in DC all the time for some reason. It didn’t matter. All I knew was that all other goals, all prospect of career, seemed meaningless after those ten years at the SGC. We’d seen more than any person on this planet.

Surely, we could handle a romantic relationship. If we were willing to try. Right?

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