Five Seconds by Jojo

[Report This]
- Text Size +

Story Notes: Season: 7

Spoilers: Enemy Mine

A/N: Thank you, Karen! *smoooock*. And thanks to Michelle for being uncontrollable.

Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk

Five Seconds

Watching her yawn for the third time in so many minutes, Jack raised his eyebrows. "Bored?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the scrolling numbers running down the screen in front of her. The rest of the control room was pretty empty - everything, barring an emergency, was shut down while Carter did the overhaul. "Well, this is the really tedious bit, so yeah. You?"

"Pleasantly cruising on a drugs high, actually." He eyed the cooling beverage in front of him, tilting it towards him and making a face. The Doc had vetoed coffee - for what reason, Jack didn't know, and since she'd been on her way to letting him out of the infirmary, he hadn't been willing to linger any longer - and so he was stuck with tea.

It didn't quite have the same impact.

Technically, Jack wasn't supposed to be on base at all. Fraiser had 'suggested' that he go home, but since she hadn't forced the issue, Jack had decided to go on up to the control room to visit Carter and keep an eye out for Daniel and Teal'c or any emergencies.

"That's nice, sir," Carter replied, before yawning again. She propped her cheek up on her arm and widened her eyes at the screen, obviously trying to stay awake.

Swiveling his chair from side to side, he peered out at the Stargate. "Did we really have to do this, Carter?"

She nodded, not paying particular attention to him. She clicked on the mouse and brought up another scrolling screen of text - this time red and blue (very exciting).

"Let me rephrase that... " He halted his chair so he was facing her. "Did *you* have to do this?"

Carter dragged her eyes away from the scrolling red and blue text and looked at him, her eyes flickering to his sling and then back to his face. "What do you mean?"

"I mean.... couldn't someone else have done it?" Okay - quick - what the hell had she said she was doing again? He scrunched up his face. "The complete... system... diagnostic overhaul... thing?"

She tilted her head to the side. "Other than me?"

Jack rolled his eyes. Conversations with her were usually not this difficult. Maybe it was the drugs. "Is boredom making you slow?"

She laughed and sat upright, shaking her head to get rid of the boredom fuzz. "I guess. I wanted to do it, though."

"You *wanted* to?" Man, he needed to teach Carter the concept of 'fun'. Really. She had obviously never had a day of fun in her life.

"Well... yeah." She pulled a thick file of computer printouts towards her and scanned the first page thoughtfully.

Jack sensed she wasn't telling him something. He narrowed his eyes and moved his chair closer to her. "Carter? What am I missing here?"

She slanted him a look, eyes once again going to his sling and then back at his face. "With respect, I don't know what you're talking about, sir."

"Oh, yes, you do."

"Sir, really..."

"Don't 'sir' me, Major. You could have dumped this on anyone..."

"Not at the beginning!" she exclaimed, plaintively. Glancing around to make sure they really were alone, she hissed, "I really had to oversee the beginning, sir. Really."

He raised his eyebrows. She was looking a little... panicky now. Which was interesting. Kinda weird, but interesting. "And this part? The... boring looking-at-screens part?"

"Maybe not this part," she admitted, grudgingly.

"So you could be out there," Jack jerked his head towards the inactive and deceptively innocent-looking Stargate, "with the rest of the team."

Carter's eyes swiveled back to the pad of paper in front of her. She turned the page and lifted it up, scanning it with apparent concentration. If her cheekbones hadn't been slightly flushed, she might have gotten away with it. "In theory. But, and the General agreed with me, this is a delicate procedure and it's better that I be here to oversee the whole process in case something goes wrong."

Oooh. She was good. Very good. Sneaky, almost. But he was sneakier - and the drugs had him buzzing nicely. "Why didn't you want to go, Carter?" he asked smoothly.

She looked offended. "I did!"

"No, you didn't."

"Sir, I can promise you, originally I really did want to go." Blue eyes. Blinking. A glance at his sling and then back up to his face. More blinking. "Really."

"What happened?" He tried to put himself in Carter's place. The planet wasn't particularly interesting from an astrophysics point of view - and communing with the odd Unas was more Daniel's thing. "Didn't want to go hunting Una... Unasses? Remind me to ask Daniel how to pluralize that, would ya? It might come up in my report."

"Yes, sir." Sighing, she turned as the screen came up with something new. A couple of keyboard commands and a particularly loud thump on 'Enter' and the screen started doing its scrolling thing again.

"The Unas aren't your thing. I can understand that."

Her shoulders slumped dejectedly and picked up her cup of coffee. "No, I guess they're not, Colonel." Taking a sip, she winced - it was probably cold - and hurriedly put it back down.

Sensing he was still missing something, Jack rubbed his head, making a face when he jolted his shoulder. He hoped the painkillers weren't wearing off already - he'd only been here for... oh. Four hours. Wow. Time sure passed when you were watching Carter watch a computer.

"So.... is this all you're going to be doing while Daniel does his thing?"

"Yeah."

"You could go off and join them, if you wanted to. I mean, tomorrow or something. Get someone to watch over this."

"It's fine."

He was *totally* missing something. Totally. Massively. There was a great big black chasm of... misunderstanding. Bigger than it usually was, actually, and she wasn't even using four-syllable words. "You just want to stay here. Watching words," he waggled his fingers at the screen, "scroll down."

"Yes," she said through her teeth.

Uh-huh.

"Carter...."

"Sir?"

Wow, she was practically spitting at him now.

"Do you take any medication that renders you incapable of taking a break from technology?"

Carter gritted her teeth. "I didn't want to go because you were here."

He opened his mouth to bitch about her lack of a life and then realized she'd said something... a little different. "Huh?"

"In addition to the fact that I *really* didn't want to go hunting Unas - never mind I would only be in the way - it seemed a little churlish to make someone else do this when I've got nothing else on my plate...."

Hurriedly, before this babbling could get *any* worse and she managed to entirely avoid answering the question by distracting him, he interrupted, "CARTER!"

"Yes, sir?"

He inched the chair a little closer. She fidgeted. "You didn't want to go because I was here?"

"Um..." Carter fixed her eyes on the Stargate. "Well, as I was explaining earlier..."

"Answer the question."

See, if it wasn't for the drugs, Jack figured he would have avoided this conversation at all costs. He would have run far... far away.... as far as his slightly achy left knee would take him.

She shifted in her chair. "For about... five seconds."

"Five seconds?"

"Then I realized you were fine," Carter said quickly, holding her hands up.

Yeah. He was missing something again. "Then why the hell didn't you go off with Daniel?"

She grimaced. "Because I'd already told Siler I'd finish this by myself."

Ooooh. "That was during the five seconds when you thought something was wrong. With me. So you could... stay behind."

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Uh-huh."

Jack looked down at his sling. Carter played with a sheet of paper, flicking one of the folded corners and occasionally glancing at the computer screen. She looked mortified.

It was possible the silence could have been more uncomfortable. Possible, but unlikely. Maybe if they were both naked...

"Sorry," she muttered, interrupting a line of thought that probably wasn't appropriate for the control room.

"What?"

"Sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

Carter rolled her eyes. "I don't know! I wanted to fill the silence with something."

"Oh! Oh, right. Well... don't be. I mean... I probably would have done the same."

"You would?"

"Yeah."

She cleared her throat. That sounded like a good idea so he cleared his throat too. Then he sniffed. She sniffed. He wondered if it would be a good time to discuss the weather.

"Hey - isn't Daniel due to report back soon?"

Oh, thank God. New topic. Daniel! Jack checked his watch. "I don't know. I'm not technically supposed to be here so Hammond isn't keeping me informed. I know he reported back to the Generals a couple of hours ago."

"Oh. Well, I thought I overheard something."

"Yeah?" Desperate to keep the conversation going, Jack looked at his tea and had an idea. "You're not doing anything at the moment, are you?"

"Er..."

"I mean, you could take a break?"

"I could."

"Want to go and have... tea?"

Her lips twitched. "Tea?"

He pointed to his arm, though she'd barely taken her eyes off the damn sling all night. "I'm not allowed coffee."

"Oh yeah. Sure. I could go for some tea." She grinned, as if this was the best news of the evening. "I just need to find someone to..."

"Watch the computer?"

"Yeah. To watch the computer."

"Is that going to take long?"

She looked around the deserted control room and raised her eyebrows. "Possibly."

"I'll go to the commissary and meet you there, then. How do you take your tea, Carter?" he asked, quirking his lips into a sarcastic smile.

"Black." She raised a finger. "One sugar."

Black. One sugar. Black. One sugar. He halted halfway towards the door "Hey!"

She was hovering by the phone and had to lean back to look at him. "Sir?"

"That's the way I take it!"

The moment he said it, he regretted it. For God's sake, it was just *tea*.

But she didn't seem to mind. She gave him one of her big smiles and laughed. "We do have pretty similar tastes, sir. I'll see you there in a few minutes, okay?"

"Sure, Carter. See you there."

-end-

Table of Contents | Reviews - 0 |

[Report This]

You must login (register) to review.