Eclipsing Tradition
`It could have been perfect', Jack muttered to himself, slamming his axe into a particularity stubborn log. It split neatly down the middle with a satisfying `crack', and Jack left the axe wedged upright, embedded in the chopping block. Wiping the sweat from his face, he massaged his aching lower back, and looked around.
It was early evening; the temperature was dropping as swiftly as the sky was darkening in the west, and his cabin, no longer bathed in golden afternoon sunlight, was chilly inside. He'd been sent out to chop more kindling for the fire by Sam, who was currently ensconced in the kitchen, making something that Jack hoped – no, *prayed* would prove edible. The stars were beginning to shine brightly in the clear Minnesota sky. It would have been the perfect night bar one, rather huge, obstacle.
"Hey, Colonel!"
Jack glowered. Not fair, he decided silently. Not fair at all. Reluctantly, he looked up and forced a smile, glad the man was far enough away not the sense the resentment emanating out from Jack in waves.
"What?" he called back, gripping the axe's handle firmly and yanking it roughly from the chopping block. Reaching down, he picked up another piece of wood, placing it carefully on the block and lining up his stroke.
"Can I swim in here?"
"For crying out loud, Jonas, it's *autumn*!" Leaving his axe resting against the wall of the cabin, Jack brushed his hands off and walked down to the dock. "You'd freeze."
Not that that would be a bad thing, he added silently in his head.
"Oh. Yeah," Jonas said thoughtfully.
Jack looked down at him. Jonas was kneeling on the edge of the dock, reaching down to the lake, trying to test the temperature with the tips of his fingers and he was in such a tempting position…
Jack's foot twitched involuntarily.
Just one little nudge, and oh, the splash!
Reluctantly, Jack squashed the small part of him that was gleefully pointing out the great opportunity. No, he would *not* kick Jonas off his dock, regardless of what the man had unintentionally ruined. Bringing a pneumonic or hypothermic Jonas back to base was not a good idea, because it meant dealing with an irate Janet, who had access to large, shiny needles.
"Sir?" A feminine voice drifted down on the breeze, and Jack started, whipping around, trying hard to appear innocent.
Sam was standing in the doorway of the cabin, light spilling out around her. "Kindling?" she asked, her voice full of suppressed laughter, and Jack had the uncanny feeling that she had read his mind.
"Coming," he answered, walking back up to the woodpile and stacking small fragments of timber haphazardly into a basket. He followed Sam into the cabin, leaving Jonas happily peering around at the lakeside.
Sam watched in amusement from the kitchen as Jack stalked past her. Closing the oven door with a flourish, she wiped her hands on a tea towel and wandered into the dim living room.
Jack was kneeling in front the fireplace, rapidly completing the laying of the fire with the help of the kindling and newspaper. As she watched, he put the match to it, and it slowly ignited. The dark room was filled with a soft, flickering red glow, and she applauded quietly.
He turned. "Carter! I didn't realize you were there…" he said, fidgeting, picking up another sheet of newspaper.
"It was probably a good idea *not* to kick him off the dock," she told him cheerfully, leaning on the back of the couch and watching as he viciously scrunched the old paper into neat balls.
Jack winced. "Was I that obvious?" he said, quirking an eyebrow at her.
She grinned, and shook her head. "Only this much," she answered, bringing her first finger and thumb to about a centimeter apart.
"Oh, well..." Jack trailed off, and she was sure she heard him mutter something under his breath. In truth, Sam didn't blame him at all, since faced with the situation herself she would have felt the same. Sliding onto the couch, she glanced around the living room. It had a welcoming, comfortably disheveled feel to it and she relaxed into the cushions.
Looking back at Jack, she laughed incredulously; he was now rapidly juggling five or six crumpled pieces of paper of air.
"When did you learn that?" Sam asked, watching in astonishment as the balls flew around with dazzling speed.
Something of a sly look came into Jack's eyes as he threw the balls casually one by one into the fire. "When we were stuck in that loop," he answered finally, turning evasively and watching as the paper caught alight, filling the room with a brilliant radiance.
Sam's eyes narrowed slightly, and she stared hard at the back of his head. Whenever the looping incident was mentioned, Jack always glanced at her with a strange, almost satisfied, smirk. It puzzled her.
She shrugged. It was no use thinking about it. Jack kept his own counsel remarkably well and the chances of getting anything out of Teal'c was next to nil.
Jack turned back around, silhouetted against the fire, and motioned for her to slide over. Tucking her legs under her, she glanced at his profile as he sat down and stretched his feet out toward the fire.
"When is the eclipse?" she asked, her body tingling slightly as his arm brushed hers.
"About 2300," Jack replied absentmindedly, gazing into the flames.
A comfortable silence enveloped them for several moments; a log fell in the fire, shooting golden sparks pin-wheeling into the air. Sam sighed. It was so peaceful and serene, and such a change from her neat little house in Colorado Springs.
Jack had invited her to his cabin after SG-1's disastrous mission to P3X-394, where it had not stopped raining once in ten days. The planet had been a quagmire, and the natives had been less friendly than both the weather and sticky, clay-like mud combined. Jack had not appreciated being forced to hike straight back to the gate amid the downpour and had demanded two weeks leave to `dry out' the instant they had arrived back in the `Gate room. General Hammond had had the good sense to give it to him immediately.
Her acceptance had been reckless and spur of the moment, prompted by the sad look of resignation in Jack's eyes even as he had invited her. Far from regretting it, Sam had felt almost wildly excited – that is, until they had been foolish enough to discuss their travel plans in the commissary, where Jonas had overheard them. He had promptly, and loudly, invited himself along, and an adjoining table of Marines, plus Feretti, who had been walking past, had listened in on the entire conversation. Sam's cheeks flushed hotly as she recalled the Feretti's knowing smirk and the sniggers of the Marines. She knew the betting circles on her and Jack would have racked up a gear or two as a result.
However, Jonas or no Jonas, Jack's cabin was captivating and worth every second of time spent on the rumor mill. Besides, it wasn't as if *anything* was going to happen.
"Thank you for inviting me, Sir," Sam murmured softly, not wanting to break the magic of the moment.
He stirred out of his reverie at that, and turned to her, smiling. "Jack," he told her simply.
Her confusion must have shown in her eyes. "It's not `sir', here," he supplied.
"Oh," Sam said, flushing slightly. "Okay. . . Jack." It felt odd, but it somehow suited the intimate atmosphere.
"Good. . .Samantha," he drawled, and met her eyes. Something indefinable charged the air between them; a strange heat that had nothing to do with the fire shimmered dangerously around her, and she dropped her gaze, suddenly shy.
The door slammed and they both flinched.
"Sam? Colonel?"
She felt, rather than saw, Jack roll his eyes in frustration.
"In here, Jonas," Jack said, rising to his feet. "Hungry?"
"Is he going to call you Jack?" Sam murmured, as she brushed past him on her way to the kitchen.
She heard him chuckle.
"Oh, there's not a chance in hell."
***
Hugging her coat around her, Sam rubbed her hands together briskly. It was cold – very cold. She longed to be back inside, sitting in front of the fireplace and gazing into the flickering flames: anything but standing on a small hill half a mile from the snug, warm cabin and watching her breath freeze into diaphanous white clouds.
She had begged Jack to let her stay longer on his couch, telling him that she would join them for the total eclipse, but he had told her in no uncertain terms that she was not going to leave him alone with Jonas for any length of time, as it increased the probability that Jonas would take an unplanned dip in the lake. He had also informed her that he needed her there to fix the telescope if Jonas broke it, and that if she didn't come, he would pull rank and order her.
In short, Sam hadn't had a choice.
So here she was, alternating between staring into the sky to where a black shadow was slowly encroaching on the moon's surface, and watching Jack as he simultaneously fiddled with the focus on the telescope and answered the many questions Jonas was firing at him.
Checking her watch, she sighed. It had been over half an hour since the eclipse had started, and she was bored. If it had been just her and Jack, she thought mutinously, it could have been much interesting.
"Don't touch that!" Jack's cry of exasperation floated into the night air. "Jonas!"
Sam smiled. On the other hand, she thought, there were definite positives in the current situation.
"Hey, guys, it's nearly covered," she called, noticing that the remaining sliver of brightness was fast disappearing.
Instantly, Jonas and Jack jostled for a position behind the telescope.
"Fine, Jonas," Jack glowered, losing the battle with ill grace, "*you* watch the eclipse through *my* telescope at *my* cabin."
"Thanks, Colonel," Jonas replied cheerfully, completely missing – or blatantly ignoring – the sledgehammer hint, and Sam broke into subdued, hastily covered laughter.
Jack wandered over to where she was standing, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets.
"You lose, sir?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
"It was deliberate, Carter," Jack informed her caustically, looking up at the moon.
"Uh, yeah," Sam replied, nodding vigorously, and smiling innocently at Jack when he turned to her, crossing his arms defensively. He took a tiny step closer.
"You know something, Carter?" Jack said quietly in her ear.
Repressing the light tickle that ran down over her body and into her stomach, she met his gaze, which was dark and lit with stars. "Samantha," she replied, smiling mischievously.
"Samantha," he echoed softly.
The word was like a caress and Sam felt tickle intensify into slow creep of fire. "Jack?" she prompted, trying desperately to keep the quake out of her voice.
"There is a tradition in Minnesota," he told her, taking a tiny step closer. Looking over his shoulder, Sam saw that Jonas was engrossed in the telescope, and only a sliver of the moon was left glowing brightly. Any second now and there would be complete darkness.
"Yes?" Sam said, feeling her pulse rate skipping up exponentially as he drew closer still.
"When the moon is covered, you can do anything you want…" Jack breathed.
"Really?" Sam licked her lips unintentionally. Jack's eyes lowered instantly to her mouth, and Sam lost all control over speech when he looked back up at her with something almost predatory simmering in his gaze.
"Really," he whispered, his voice dropping an octave. "Nothing counts."
Flicking her gaze desperately from the moon, to Jonas, and to Jack, Sam saw the last glint of silver disappearing from the moon's surface, plunging the world into a star-lit dimness. Jack's silhouette, black against the thousands of tiny pinpricks of light, was moving closer, and closer – his nose was bumping hers and Sam's stomach began freefalling helplessly.
Jonas was right *there* and if he looked around right *now* –
Sam forgot about eclipses. She forgot about Jonas and she forgot that she was cold. In fact, all rational thought fled gibbering as Jack's lips somehow found hers in the darkness.
Holy Hannah!
Her hands instinctively grasped his arms tightly, searching for the balance her mind was rapidly losing, and she rose slightly on her toes, pressing herself against him. Sam gasped into his mouth as his cold fingers discovered a path through the labyrinth of her clothing, tracing patterns on her skin in icy fire. Wave after wave of pure heat seemed to be drenching her from head to foot, exploding into fireworks at every point where his body touched hers, and washing her last rational thoughts away in a flood of sensation. Sam noticed little nonsensical things in exquisite, Technicolor detail – the coldness of his hair from the wind, the rough threads of his sweater snagging under her fingernails, and the way he moaned, low in his throat, when she rocked her hips slightly against him.
The first light of the moon drifted serenely down, and they pulled apart, but only a little; Sam rested her forehead against his shoulder and tried to regain some composure. He was gasping, she could both hear it and feel it, and so was she. . .
Shutting her eyes tightly, she willed herself to move out of his arms.
Nothing happened. Damn.
She opened her eyes again; the faint starlight had cast Jack's face into sharp black and white relief, but the stark contrast did nothing to dim the heat and desire in his eyes. Her body responded to it before her mind even began inspecting its fried wiring – she had tilted her face upwards and was eagerly pulling his head down to hers when Jonas broke the silence with excruciating timing.
"Wow!" he said, still gazing up into the sky. "When will it happen again?"
His words were the catalyst needed to prompt a much belated reaction – Sam and Jack jerked away from each other as swiftly as if hot, scalding water had dripped onto their bare skin.
There was no answer for several seconds, and Jonas turned, looking at the pair quizzically. Realizing that Sam was not going to speak and Jonas would find it surprising if neither of them answered, Jack rallied what was left of his brain and strove to find to a suitable reply.
"It's hard to tell," he answered slowly, looking at Sam, his words heavily laced with double meaning, "I wouldn't mind if it happened again - soon."
Sam made a muffled noise somewhere between a choke and a gasp, and turned quickly away.
"In fact," Jack continued, without missing a beat, looking at Sam's shaking back, "I wouldn't mind if it happened every day. What do you think, Sam?"
Sam blew out a long, shaky breath – how was it possible for her body to go from an icy chill to a fevered heat in a few short minutes? Her skin was prickling strangely, sweat dampening her hair and shining her face, and she could still feel his mouth on hers. . . taste his skin. . .
Don't go there, she thought to herself desperately. Think! Anything!
She turned, a confident reply already shaping on her lips and was about to utter it when she was sucker-punched by the look on Jack's face. He was smirking at her with *exactly* the same evasive smile that always flickered on his face when the looping incident was mentioned.
Her mouth dropped open. That meant – that meant –
Jack lifted his eyebrows at her quizzically. "Sam? Care to share with us?" he said, gesturing with his hands.
She snapped her mouth shut, and grasped blindly for any thread of speech. "Yeah, I agree. Yes. Totally," she answered emphatically, not even sure what she was agreeing to.
Jack's smirk grew larger and Sam cringed, mentally damning herself to Sokar's planet as her mind belatedly clicked his question and her reply sweetly together. She was a Major in the USAF, not a freshman - and yet she was stuttering like a teenager on a first date.
"We should come up and see it next time, Colonel," Jonas replied enthusiastically, seemingly unconscious of the strange undercurrent between his teammates.
"Oh. Yeah. I agree," Jack answered, gazing at Jonas seriously. Just not with you there, he added silently in his head. "Are we done?" he asked, looking happily up at the sky.
Jonas eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and then nodded. He began to carefully disassemble the telescope's tripod, and Jack rushed to defend it, pushing Jonas out of the way.
Sam dithered in the background, ignoring the argument going on in front of her about the correct way to fold a portable tripod, and worked hard at remaining carefully numb. She sank down against a tree, and tried to think deeply about the prickliness of the bark and the exact reasons an eclipse occurred. When that failed dismally, she started silently reciting every physics law she had ever learned, over and over in an urgent mantra.
She was *not* going to think about the way his body had fit against hers, or how he had – damn it!
***
"You *kissed* me!" she hissed at him, when Jonas was a fair distance ahead.
"Oh, you noticed?" Jack replied promptly, smirking at her again.
Sam paused in confusion, and then shook her head violently. "No, not just now. In the loop - you kissed me, didn't you?"
Jack tilted his head on one side and appeared to think about it for a second. "Yup," he said, nodding cheerfully at her, "you have a problem with that?"
Sam stared at him, at a complete loss for words. Of all the responses she had expected, a confident, decidedly happy affirmation was not one of them.
"You know, *Samantha*, you really should work on your dropping mouth habit," Jack told her, seemingly serious. "You might catch more than a fly," he added wickedly, looking up at the moon.
Sam closed her mouth quickly and scowled at him.
"That's better!" Jack said, with a distinct patronizing edge in his voice.
She ignored him.
"How did it happen?" she asked him, her curiosity overcoming her resentment.
"Oh, you know…" Catching Sam's baleful glare, he quickly added, "I resigned."
"You resigned," Sam echoed, blankly astonished. Would *anything* in this night make sense?
"And then I kissed you," Jack continued, shrugging. He glanced slyly at her. "In front of General Hammond," he added, with a masterly timing.
"What?!" Sam exclaimed, her voice rising a couple of decibels.
"Carter!" Jack whispered, casting a feverish look ahead at Jonas.
"Sorry, sir." Sam shook her head, trying to clear it. This *had* to be a dream. She was going to wake up soon, and find she had dozed off in front of the fire. Right?
"You are . . . okay. . . with that?" Jack asked softly, his confidence faltering slightly as he looked at her furrowed brow.
"What, with General Hammond?" Sam answered, having regained some of her sense of humor under the series of shocks.
"Carter. . . " Jack rolled his eyes.
"Its fine, sir. I would have done the same thing," Sam replied, without thinking, and could have bitten her tongue out.
Jack grinned helplessly at the horror-struck expression on her face.
"I did not say that," she pleaded, thumping her head lightly with the heel of her palm. He was still her C.O. – even if he had just kissed her, turned her insides into a quivering mass of jello and rendered her incapable of coherent thought.
Her C.O.
What the hell was she *thinking*?
Sam twisted her hands together. "Sir, we should talk," she said hesitatingly, looking down at her feet. They were drawing near to the cabin; Jonas had already reached it, and as Sam watched, light suddenly cascaded out a window, making a bright golden pool in the darkness.
Jack shook his head. "Not tonight," he told her, his tone brooking no argument. "It's a tradition – no serious talk on the night of an eclipse."
Sam laughed in spite herself, stopping just outside the door and resting against it. "What other traditions are there in Minnesota?"
He glanced at her mischievously. "You really want to know?"
She eyed him for a moment. "I don't think it would be a good idea, sir," Sam finally told him regretfully, opening the door, and sighing slightly as the warmth of the house encircled her. She began shrugging off her coat, and Jack gently took it off her shoulders, his cold fingers brushing her neck. Sam shivered.
"Thank you," she said, turning and facing him and for a brief, tingling moment, their gaze locked tightly. Sam beat off an absurd urge to throw herself into his arms, and took a tiny, barely perceptible step backwards and Jack nodded, once, folding her jacket in his hands.
"Well. . ." he trailed off, shrugging faintly. There was a slight pause.
"I'll see you tomorrow, sir," she said softly, turning and walking lightly up the staircase toward her bedroom.
"That's `Jack'," he called after her.
Sam turned, and paused on the top step, one hand resting on her hip and the other gracefully on the banister. In the soft light, enhanced and reflected in the polished wooden floors, she made an irresistible figure.
Jack waved his hand in the air. "We'll – talk," he said, crumpling her jacket further, his heart skipping a beat as her smile drifted down toward him.
"Good night, Jack," she told him, her eyes luminous, and then disappeared into her room.
Her door shut with a muted click and Jack, smiling broadly, hung her jacket on a hook and meandered toward the kitchen. Jonas was already in the shadows, ransacking the fridge for something, and Jack flicked the lights on.
"Colonel," Jonas said, emerging triumphant from the fridge with a bright yellow banana, "thanks for inviting me – that was amazing."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," Jack replied absentmindedly, looking around for the cookie jar, and finding it pushed back on one of the top shelves.
"I've just got one more question," Jonas said, ripping the top of his banana, and throwing it across the kitchen and into the bin with perfect aim.
"Shoot," Jack told him, taking a bite of cookie.
"Is Sam a good kisser?"
What?
Oh.
Oh, SHIT.
**********
~fin~
Story Notes: SPOILERS: Direct for WoO. Set somewhere in season 6.
A/N: Thanks to Allie O'N, and DJ. {hugs to both} This would be a reply to nhawk's *horrible* lunar eclipse challenge *g*. I hope it suits.
FEEDBACK: Adored. :)
EMAIL: stars_like_dust@hotmail.com
A/N: Thanks to Allie O'N, and DJ. {hugs to both} This would be a reply to nhawk's *horrible* lunar eclipse challenge *g*. I hope it suits.
FEEDBACK: Adored. :)
EMAIL: stars_like_dust@hotmail.com
End Notes: Feedback is what makes the world go round. Really. *g* stars_like_dust@hotmail.com
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 ]