Sam shut down her mint condition '40 Indian, the powerful vibration of the bike's engine slowly fading as she popped the kickstand with her boot heal. After having it sit in storage in DC for months, it felt good to have it back and be able to enjoy the exhilaration of speed with nothing between her and the open road but air.
She set her foot down on the parking lot blacktop, swinging her other leg off the bike as she took off her helmet. Several cars were parked in the lot, but not enough to make her think the bar and grill was packed. Sam was still acclimating herself to Colorado Springs, and had overheard someone at the Mountain say that O'Malley's was a good place to eat.
As she walked the granite steps to the front door, she shook out her hair and pulled off her gloves, shoving them in the pockets of her leather jacket. The interior of the restaurant smelled of flame-grilled steaks, slow burning hickory, and barbeque so tantalizing it made her mouth water. The click of pool balls bouncing off each other mingled with Garth Brooks on the juke box. Every corner had a television mounted near the ceiling, with a different game or sports show running with the sound muted.
The walls were lined with booths, with only about every third or fourth occupied, and the center floor had tables in a variety of sizes. A long bar with glasses hanging from racks over the bartender's head sat along the back of the space. Sam walked towards him, smiling and nodding when he looked up.
"What can I get you?"
"Sex on the Beach. Thanks."
"Find a seat, and I'll get it right to you."
Sam smiled again, and turned to face the room in search of a booth. A single figure caught her eye, sitting in the far corner of the restaurant in one of the booths. He rested one arm on the table, suspending a fork between his fingers over his plate with the other hand. One of his long, jean-clad legs extended from beneath the table. She almost didn't recognize him without his BDU's, but then again, he probably wouldn't recognize her in denim and leather.
She contemplated moving to the other side of the restaurant and leaving him in peace. Sam didn't know Colonel O'Neill that well, but she definitely got the impression that he preferred solitude. At least by what Daniel had told her. The Colonel had gone through one hell of a week, and probably didn't need his 2IC showing up out of the blue. But, then again, if he saw her and suspected she avoided him. . .
Sam looked to the bartender and indicated with a tilt of her head that she would be on the Colonel's side of the room. As she approached his table, he set his elbows on the wood and rubbed his face with his hands. She faltered, her better judgment screaming to leave him alone, but before she could, he lowered his hands and saw her.
They stared at each other for a minute, and the Colonel's stare tracked her from head to toe. He leaned back in the booth, his hands disappearing beneath the tabletop.
"Carter. . ."
"Good evening, sir," she said, taking the last step to the table. "I - ah - I heard about this place and thought I'd try it out for dinner."
He nodded, his eyebrows raised high on his brow. Colonel O'Neill parted his lips, and seemed to think before he spoke. "Uh, yeah. Good eats."
Sam pulled her lower lip through her teeth. "I don't want to interrupt. I just wanted to say hi."
"Hi."
"Hi." She smiled, a bizarre nervousness fluttering in her stomach. Every other day she traveled to other planets with this man . . . he had saved her six more than once . . . and to be perfectly honest with herself, she had saved his. So, why couldn't she have a coherent conversation with him outside of Cheyenne Mountain?
Because he intimidated the **hell** out of her. . .
Not a **bad** intimidation . . . not fear. But he was. . . Jack O'Neill filled up a room just by stepping into it. She respected him.
"I'm just--" She pointed to an empty table several booths down from him. "Have a good night, sir."
Colonel O'Neill motioned towards the empty bench across from him. "Sit, Captain?"
"Oh, no. I don't want to intrude. I--"
"Carter," he said, cutting her off. "Just sit down."
Sam swallowed, and slid in across from him as a waitress approached and set Sam's drink on the table. The woman took a notepad from her apron and a pen from behind her ear, smacking her gum loudly.
"What can I get ya, hun?"
"Um, I haven't really. . ." She glanced across the table at the Colonel's plate. Looked like her kind of meal: one-inch thick rib eye with a seasoned rub, red skin mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and garlic toast. "Could I just have what he has, please?"
"Sure thing, hun. One Jack O'Neill coming right up."
Sam glanced at him as the waitress walked away. He shrugged and motioned towards his plate.
"They took it off the menu last year. I just keep ordering it."
"Oh." Sam unzipped her jacket and shrugged it off her shoulders, revealing the soft sweater beneath. Its wide neck slid to the side, revealing her bare shoulder beneath. It was her favorite sweater, big and comfortable.
Colonel O'Neill picked up his beer and tipped it up to his lips, the neck balanced between two fingers and his gaze on her. Sam felt it, but couldn't bring herself to meet it. She pulled the cutesy umbrella from her drink and slid off the red maraschino cherry on the stem, popping it in her mouth. He was staring at the frothy, pale orange drink with definite skepticism as she pulled another cherry off the umbrella.
"I love sex on the beach," she said, sucking the alcohol from inside the cherry.
"Excuse me?" he asked, nearly choking on his mouthful of Guinness.
"The drink. Sex on the beach."
"Ah."
Uncomfortable silence stretched out between them. Sam stirred her drink with the wooden stick of the umbrella while the Colonel poked at his steak and potatoes with his fork. She shifted, crossing her legs beneath the table, bumping his leg with her foot.
The waitress came with her dinner, setting down with a wink. Sam thanked her, and picked up her steak knife and fork. The Colonel went back to eating his dinner in earnest as soon as she took her first bite, and they ate in silence for several minutes. Every few bites, Sam snuck a glance at him. While enjoying a particularly succulent piece of steak, she found herself watching him.
"Ask, Captain."
Sam choked, swallowing her steak as he lifted his head and looked at her. "I'm sorry, sir."
He straightened, his utensils crossed over his plate, keeping his gaze trained on her. "Just . . . ask."
She took a deep breath a deeper gulp of her drink, wiping her lips with her napkin. "To be honest, sir, I don't know what it is I want to ask. Or, if I even have a question."
"But something is on your mind."
She shook her head slowly, not in denial of is statement, but as a way to process her thoughts. "Colonel, when I was at the Pentagon I thought I had seen some pretty amazing things. I met some amazing people. And then. . ."
"Then you came to Colorado Springs."
"Yeah," she said, nodding. "I stopped believing in fairy tales when I was a kid, but some of the things we've seen - we've done - "
"It doesn't go away. Not as far as I can tell."
"The bafflement?"
He shrugged, draining the last of his beer. "If that's what you want to call it."
The waitress returned and took away their plates, leaving another beer for the Colonel. She motioned towards Sam's glass, still a quarter full, and Sam shook her head.
"Usual, Colonel?" the waitress asked.
"Yeah. Make it a double," he said, motioning between himself and Sam. "Dessert. You'll love it."
While they waited for the dessert, the Colonel shifted towards the wall, setting his back against it with one foot set in the seat. With his leg raised, he rested his elbow on his knee. "You still want to know something."
Sam bit on her lower lip, drawing in a breath. "The first trip to Abydos with Daniel. . ."
"How did I get to go? With no knowledge of wormholes or Stargates, or ancient languages?"
"Well, yeah."
"Daniel didn't tell you?"
Sam shook her head. "No." Something in his voice stated loud and clear that he knew he had been the topic of discussion more than once between her and Daniel Jackson.
He didn't look at her, focusing somewhere past their booth into the dim light of the restaurant. "They needed someone who would do what was necessary, even if it included not coming back."
Realization came to her, like a spider dropping onto the back of her neck, making her shiver. She knew he had lied on the mission report, had left Daniel behind and told everyone they had set off a bomb and killed everyone. At the time, Sam hadn't understood why a career soldier like Jack O'Neill would so blatantly break orders. Then, she had followed him on missions and knew he wasn't a man to always follow the rules. Yet, it had been a big break in protocol . . . huge.
"How long ago did your son die?" she asked, her voice a whisper from her dry throat.
"Almost two years ago." His dark eyes watched her.
"Just months before the Abydos mission."
He lifted the longneck bottle to his lips, drinking, but watching her.
"You didn't care if you came back." The words sat in her chest like deadweight. He didn't answer, but she saw the honest truth in his eyes. "But you did come back, and you saved everyone there. Something changed."
He shrugged. "Daniel has a way of being . . . convincing."
Sam looked down at the table, absorbing the information. It had only been a matter of a few days since she had learned about his son Charlie, and the way the boy had died. Daniel had told her enough for her to know that, no matter what face Jack O'Neill wore for the world, there was unimaginable pain behind it all. It was hard for her to imagine . . a man that appeared so strong, so in control, and sometimes so damn funny she had a hard time not losing it all together in their debriefings . . . to imagine that he had lost so much and managed to face the world each day.
"Don't worry, Captain . . . I'm not prepared to be counted among the lunatic fringe, despite Daniel's assessment of the military's selection process."
She snapped her head up, mouth open. "No, sir. Of course not!"
"Your words, Captain. Not mine. I'm just a Jonas Hanson waiting to happen, right?"
Sam shook her head slowly, trapped in the storm that twisted behind his schooled-to-be-expressionless eyes. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" she choked out.
"I'm pretty sure we were, weren't we, Carter?"
Sam tilted her head, focusing on benign things like the salt and pepper shakers and the steak sauce at the end of the table, and the condensation on her glass as it ran down the side to pool on the wood. She knew what she wanted to say, but was pretty sure it wouldn't come out of her mouth **anything** like it was in her head.
"You're a good man."
"How do you know," he snapped, and the force and tenor of his voice made her jump.
But she steeled her resolve and met his gaze, clenching her teeth before speaking again. "Because you saved an entire planet from destruction, even though it was against orders. You gave Teal'c a chance at redemption. You sat beside Kowalski while he fought for his own sanity. Because you didn't take advantage of me when I was . . . not acting in my own best interest. And because your son died, and it hurt."
His lips formed a straight, tight line as he stared at her. Then he blinked and picked up his beer again. "Of course it hurt."
"If it didn't, **then** I'd worry."
Sam had the sinking feeling in her gut that she had gone too far. Said too much. He was, at the simplest level, her commanding officer and it wasn't her place to be analyzing or giving her opinion on his life. And even if it was, sitting in a bar and grill over steaks and drinks - where she had not been invited - was not the place to do it. He drained the last of his second bottle, and set it down on the table with a hard thump.
She took a breath in through her nose and dug into the pockets of her jacket, pulled out a bill, and set it on the table. There was no way her exit could be graceful, but she was going to do her best to slip away without any more conversation. Sam draped her coat over her arm, and scooted towards the edge of the booth.
"Dessert hasn't come yet," the Colonel said, not looking up.
"I'll see you tomorrow, sir."
"Carter. . ."
"This isn't what I intended."
"Yeah, well . . . the road to hell, and all that."
Despite herself, Sam grinned. She stood up and pulled the leather jacket on over her sweater. "Thank you, sir."
"For what?"
"Just . . . thank you."
The waitress returned with a plate in each hand, each heaped with more chocolate cake, hot fudge sauce and whipped cream than Sam could recall ever seeing in one place. She set one down in front of the Colonel, the other on Sam's side of the table. "Enjoy," she said before walking away.
"You might as well stay," he said.
"I don't think--"
"It's called Death by Chocolate."
"But, I--"
"It's really good."
"Sir--"
"For cryin' out loud. Carter . . . just **sit down** and shut up."
As easy as that, the tension and friction of moments before released. Sam smiled, and sat back down again. If anyone had asked her earlier that day if she knew her commanding officer, she would have answered with a tentative affirmation. Now, were she honest, she'd have to say she didn't know him at all. She never did.
But . . . she knew he liked his steaks thick and his beer cold. And he apparently had a deep abiding love for chocolate. The rest . . . that would come in time.
TE
Story Notes: RmceWrtr@hotmail.com
Pairing: Jack/Sam - in that they are both in it. It's a piece that illustrates their . . . um . . . potential.
Rating: It's pretty clean . . . a curse here or there. . . PG to be safe.
Spoilers: Well, um. Anything up to Cold Lazarus
Timeline: Season 1 - Post Cold Lazarus
Note: Another in the 'Moments' Series.
Archive: http://outoftheroom.homestead.com/CarterShutUp.html (With all the pretty pictures), Sam and Jack, SJfic. . . if you'd like to post it somewhere else, just let me know. I'm sure I'll say yes, just want to know where.
Feedback: YES!
Special Thanks: This really must seem redundent to some, but Jen... to you, babe!
Special Note: The year of Carter's motorcycle was confirmed as a mint 1940's by Amanda Tapping during a Q&A session. FYI
Pairing: Jack/Sam - in that they are both in it. It's a piece that illustrates their . . . um . . . potential.
Rating: It's pretty clean . . . a curse here or there. . . PG to be safe.
Spoilers: Well, um. Anything up to Cold Lazarus
Timeline: Season 1 - Post Cold Lazarus
Note: Another in the 'Moments' Series.
Archive: http://outoftheroom.homestead.com/CarterShutUp.html (With all the pretty pictures), Sam and Jack, SJfic. . . if you'd like to post it somewhere else, just let me know. I'm sure I'll say yes, just want to know where.
Feedback: YES!
Special Thanks: This really must seem redundent to some, but Jen... to you, babe!
Special Note: The year of Carter's motorcycle was confirmed as a mint 1940's by Amanda Tapping during a Q&A session. FYI
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]