Title: Too Much

Author: nanda (nanda@diary-x.com)

Rating: NC-17 (explicit sex, language, mild BDSM)

Codes 'n Stuff: Sam/Jack Angst/Smut

Archive: SJD yes; nowhere else, please. You may link to my site if you want.

Season/Spoilers: S6, post-Full Circle; lots of Abyss spoilers in particular.

Status: Complete (1/1)

Sequel to: Meaningless

Feedback: Any and all welcomed.

Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.

Summary: It was never supposed to go this far.

A/N: Look, it's the Meaningless sequel -- finally. I've been playing around with another old fanfic cliche again: this time it's the hot-sex-cures-all-emotional-ills one. Hoo baby. And a second disclaimer: Still don't believe there was anything going on in S6; still playing what-if. Takes place two days after Full Circle.

Thanks: Karen and Michelle.

This story is also on the web all pretty and stuff at http://www.angstnromance.net/nanda/fic/sg1/nanda_toomuch.html

***

Too Much
by nanda (nanda@diary-x.com)

"You don't want to admit to yourself that the control, the detachment, are getting harder to maintain every time."
~ from Meaningless

***

She comes to him late at night when he has long since been lying sleepless in bed. This is not their usual procedure, but then, he's gotten used to the unusual with her.

So he says nothing as she enters his house (his senses always on high alert), walks to his bedroom, removes and folds her clothes, and climbs into his bed. There is very little light but he knows her body by heart now, probably did before he ever saw it.

He lies on his left side, she on her right, facing him. He hasn't seen her in two days, since they returned from Abydos, and he's sure she's not here to talk. Talking is for elsewhere: she would have cornered him in the mess or in the gear-up room. Because that's what they do.

But lately he's been unsure about the rules they've chosen to live by ("as in two friends, going to a wedding") and he decides it just might be time to live dangerously. (She is -- they are -- far more dangerous than any enemy they've ever faced.)

"I'm sure he's still out there somewhere," he says, his voice sounding loud in his empty (always empty) house. He means Daniel. And it occurs to him that it was intentional, on both their parts, staying away from each other after Abydos. The loss of Skaara, of Kasuf, of a whole fucking planet -- yes, the failure, their failure -- is still too raw. It's perilous ground, for them.

"I know." She shifts a little, uncomfortably, he thinks, and one of her knees approaches but does not touch one of his. "The others -- they punished Orlin when he defied them, but they didn't kill him."

Orlin. She has never mentioned that name before, not to him, not aloud -- only in her mission report. He knows it is no accident. Unlike him, she does not say things accidentally.

"But whatever they've done to him," she says, "it might mean we never get to see him again."

He knows this is true. And, living dangerously, he asks a very dangerous question, one he's wanted to ask her forever, it seems. "Would you have believed me? If I'd told you about seeing Daniel?"

He can hear her breath rustling on the pillowcase. "I don't know. I'd like to think so." Her shoulders tighten and then release. "But ... probably not. I still wish you had."

And he still feels guilty. He has all along, especially since he considers her to be one of the few reasons he's still (relatively) sane. He wonders how much his silence about Daniel has hurt her, wonders what it would take for her to tell him. He can justify it, if he wants to, by reminding himself that they never talk much. Not here. And there ... there is a different world, almost. They can't say these kinds of things there.

But maybe she's ready to live dangerously, too, because she voices another name they both try hard to ignore.

"It was when you were with Baal, wasn't it?"

He doesn't answer, but knows that is answer enough. His heart is already racing (for the wrong reasons), and he's half sure she can hear it. Or feel it, in the tiny vibrations of the mattress.

He expects her to say nothing more, waits for her touch to lead them to the real reason she's here. Instead, she challenges him. In a quiet way. No one watching them would recognize the dare, but he does.

"There's still a lot you haven't told us, isn't there?" In her tone is something he doesn't recognize: confusion, maybe, or fear.

He holds his breath before answering, a little surprised that this isn't harder to say. "I begged him to end it."

"Baal?"

"Well, yeah. But I meant Daniel."

There's a long, taut pause before she answers. "And he couldn't interfere."

"I did beg him to break me out first." He's suddenly concerned that she might think he gave up too easily.

"Couldn't do that, either?"

"No. But the Abydonians ..."

She lets him drift off. He suspects there's some anger bubbling just below her skin, though he knows it's not aimed at him.

"Do you wish you'd never done it? Kanan?"

"If you mean, do I blame you -- I don't." He knows she blames herself and always will. But he also knows she wouldn't change the outcome.

"That's not what I asked."

"I know." He finds her hand under the covers, surprising her; she jumps the tiniest bit but doesn't pull away. "I did," he says slowly. "While I was there. Death sounded a lot better. Now, I'm not sure."

Coming home hadn't been so bad. For one thing, he'd started sleeping with her -- in their own whacked-out, secretive, deny deny deny way.

"Kanan did it because he loved her," he says into the silence between them. "I hate what he did, but ... it's hard to hate the motive."

He hears her swallow, hears her open and shut her mouth, hears her teeth click together. She can't believe he said it any more than he can. And for a second, as she lies there, facing him, she is Shalan -- he half expects her to pull away from him, terrified. But she doesn't move. He can't even hear her breathe.

"Tell me," she says finally, in a voice that's almost not hers. Her hand is warm in his, a current starting to flow between them. "Tell me what he did to you."

They have never, ever talked about this. What little she knows came from the post-mission briefing (delayed) and his report (incomplete).

He tries to tell her. He does. "That gravity thing they've got. You know?" And that's as far as he gets.

"And ... knives?" she asks sadly.

And other stuff, but he can't say that, and he's not sure why she's pushing him (why they're pushing each other) but it feels like his back's to the wall. He's never told anybody which specific instruments of torture had been used, not even Fraiser, so how Carter knows about the knives is anybody's guess. As brilliant as she is, she still sometimes knows a lot more than she lets on. That would scare the shit out of him if he let it. It probably should scare the shit out of him. Tonight, it has an entirely different effect.

"And you didn't want to tell him about ... her."

"I didn't," he says quickly, grasping onto the only thing he can, the only bit of pride he has left from that horrible place. "I never told him."

It's dangerous to think like this, about this. He's afraid that if he remembers too much he'll wake up in that damn sarcophagus again. He's afraid that he really did lose his soul there and has only been pretending to have one ever since.

"I know you didn't," she says, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. And that's even more dangerous than what's going on up by the pillows. She's naked in his bed, and they're talking, and then the touching ... all three at once is not something they've ever done. And there are damn good reasons for that.

"The cell was worse, though," he says before he can stop himself. "Waiting."

"And Daniel ..."

"Was there. Yeah."

Her free hand snakes up between them, to touch his cheek. The gesture is more tender than it should be (they aren't supposed to do tender). His eyes slip shut.

And the rules sound like glass as they break.

"Why?" he asks, eyes still closed. He's not talking about Baal anymore. "Why now?"

"I don't know."

But that can't be entirely true: she never does anything by accident.

"It's not that I don't want to tell you."

"I know."

"You know I'm crap at this kind of thing."

"I know. I am, too." One finger slides to the edge of his mouth. God.

He doesn't usually let himself contemplate the unfairness of it all, the injustice. He has reason to know exactly how unjust life is. But sometimes he remembers how very cruel it is that he should have fallen for the one woman who was off limits -- and that she should have fallen in return. That they are both just unbalanced enough to do what they're doing. That they've seen so much, survived so many things that no human should survive, yet this could be what ruins them both, in the end.

These are the things he thinks as he wraps his lips around the tip of her finger and she hisses in a long breath. Then he thinks about the look he'd see in her eyes if it weren't so dark -- it's a look, he thinks, that she's never let him see it in the light.

"This is a bad idea," he says around her finger. "Now."

"I know that, too."

So he touches her cheek the way she had touched his and he wants so much to give her something, one little thing she can keep. A quiet shiver spreads from her body into his.

He blinks and he's back in that chamber in Baal's palace; blinks again and remembers all the things he couldn't let himself say, the things he'd have died to keep silent if only his death would stick. Blinks again and he's in his own bed, her long fingers cupping him through his worn cotton boxers. After that he tries very hard to keep his eyes open.

And she's eager now, too hungry, begins stroking him too quickly, and it's so good, ohhhh yesyesyes. Oh, Sam, yes. But no. He doesn't want a quick screw (he should, it's safer). He wants -- oh, there are so many things he wants -- something more, something real. He barely has a chance to raise his fingers to her chest before she's nudged him onto his back; he pushes her away and sits up. "Carter -- wait. Stop."

Confused, she kneels to face him and a swath of light cuts across her body from the edge of the blinds. Her lips are red and swollen (though he hasn't touched them) and her hands are in tight fists on her pretty, white thighs. His breath catches as he looks her up and down.

"Just -- wait here for a minute," he says, standing. It's hard to turn away from her but it's easy to find his way in the dark, easy to reach inside his closet and grab what he came for.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting you something." He returns to sit on the edge of his bed, holding his now-full hands out towards her. She obediently takes his offering, obviously not sure what it is until she feels the fabric.

"You're not serious," she says, understanding his intention immediately. She usually does.

"You said you wanted to know what it was like."

"I didn't ask you to act it out. Jesus."

He hears the edge in her voice and tries to make his own lighter. "Come on, you've never tied anybody up? Just for fun?"

"For fun, yeah. This is ..."

"Not fun?"

He doesn't need to see her eyes to know that the blue has taken on an angry tinge. "It's never been about that," she says darkly.

"It's never been about honesty, either." He takes one of the ties from her hands and stretches it out between his own. He can't tell which one it is -- it's not like he wears them regularly -- but it feels like silk. He can't recall buying any silk ties.

Her head slowly moves up, as if she's dragging her eyes from his hands to his face. And when she speaks, the only emotion now is sadness. "You were tied down? That's kind of ... low-tech."

"No. I just couldn't move."

"The gravity generator."

He mumbles something that he hopes sounds vaguely affirmative and dangles the fabric above her belly, teasing, just touching. And after a moment of indecision she leans in to give him one sweet, soft kiss (nothing like the few desperate kisses they've shared) and says, "Turn on the light so I can see what I'm doing?"

He does, silently reaching behind him to the bedside table.

There are more kisses then, as she moves around him on the bed; the inside of his wrist, the palm of his hand. His knees as she slides his shorts off before turning her attention to his ankles. And he can see her eyes now, meeting his at every turn. Hypnotic and safe, but terrifying, too. Because it's not supposed to be like this, with them.

He doesn't struggle against his bonds, doesn't imagine himself, now, back in that place. There's only the blond hair, the blue eyes, the incredibly erotic mouth he's spent way too much time staring at in briefings. She's drawing mysterious patterns on his chest with her tongue and he wonders how she knows that, too, wonders if she can see all of his invisible scars.

Her fingertips trace the muscles in his arms, the curve of his ribs, and at this moment she could ask him to do anything and he'd have no choice. He has no choice. And it's got nothing to do with the knots.

So amazing, his Carter (no -- not his). So untouchable as she sucks at the skin just below his navel. She moves in long, slow breaths, catching his eyes whenever she can because God knows he can't look anywhere else. And it's not like this, usually; it's nothing like this on all the nights when they try to keep up the illusion that there's nothing between them but sex. It shouldn't be like this now but he's finding it hard to feel regret as her mouth moves lower and her fingernails dig into his hip.

He half-consciously arches off the bed, trying to get closer to her in the only way he can. But then she raises her head for a second, smiles at him just a little, and what he sees in her eyes -- everything bare, exposed in a way he's never seen her -- makes something burst inside him, makes him want to pull her into his arms and never let go. It's *too* real (he'd wanted real), too raw. Too much like they might get up in the morning and do their grocery shopping together, like the real couple they can never be. He pulls his arms tight, fists balled around the fabric.

"Carter ..."

"No," she says quickly, bowing her head again. Her voice is thick. "Don't say anything."

And oh, God, he wasn't lying when he said this was a bad idea. He just hadn't realised ... God. And she chooses that moment to wrap her mouth around his cock. She sucks him in tight and her teeth tug at his skin and her tongue, as always, is fire. He wills himself to obey her, to stay silent, but he can't help the low moan that explodes out of his throat.

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to keep some control, and when he opens them he meets hers immediately. She's so, so beautiful, gazing up at him through long lashes while her tongue strokes him from base to head. So fucking beautiful, even like this, sweaty and flushed with desire. She has no right to be so beautiful and he has no right to need her as much as he does.

The connection must feel as powerful to her as it does to him, because she breaks it -- averts her eyes, frees him from her mouth. She nibbles at the inside of his thigh (he's spread wide open for her, it's easy to reach) and the sensation is so distracting that he's not aware of what the rest of her body is doing until a foot moves above his head and her knees settle on either side of his chest. And then he's back in her mouth and she -- God, she's inches away from him, pink and swollen and glistening, all he can see and all he can smell and just out of reach. His neck is not long enough.

He hears himself whimper in frustration and she responds with a flick of her tongue that nearly makes him choke. Just one taste, he thinks desperately, just one, and he can tell how aroused she is not only by the sight in front of his eyes but by the way she's rotating her hips, by her thighs delicately touching his ribs and her ankles hooked over his arms, by her mouth jerkily stopping and starting on his cock.

She shifts, her pelvis tilting further towards him and then arching away, her mouth working faster, controlling him. He is going to come and he is going to come hard, harder than he ever has with her. And it's nothing he can stop, nothing she can stop, even. Just sensations now, breath and touch and scent and her tongue, God, her tongue, and that biting pang in his gut that he should not be feeling, not now.

But God, so fucking beautiful, every inch of her. She's grasping him tight now with one hand, tugging and pulling not quite in time with her mouth. She can't keep up the rhythm, she's too far gone herself, he knows this even as he falls closer and closer to the edge. And her other hand slides up his chest, her fingers rising to spread her own folds and circle her own clitoris, inches from his face. OhGodOhGodOhGod. It's the most amazing thing he's ever seen, it has to be, and it's his undoing: he grunts as his hips jerk widely into her mouth, his orgasm almost more than he can bear. And somewhere he realises that she's sucking him dry (she doesn't usually swallow) and that she's found her own climax as her whole body convulses above him and she makes a sound like a strangled sob.

Moments later her hand falls limply onto his chest and she drops her head on his thigh, her breath heavy and hot on his skin. His own lungs feel like they might burst and he can see, God, he can see her aftershocks rippling. So close.

Outside, the sun is beginning to rise.

She finally moves off him, unties him without a word, careful now to avoid his eyes. And she surprises him, again, because they've got a very familiar routine going, after: holding and touching and (more) not talking. It's just what they do.

But she does none of this, even keeping her fingers from brushing his skin as she untangles the last knot. Her jaw is set, all business now, and he knows it's her way of piecing her self-control back together but he's still confused by it. He's as confused by it as he is by the fact that all of their rules have now been torn to pieces (shards of glass beneath them); by the fact that he's just had what might have been the most intense sexual experience of his life with her. With *her*. In a non-relationship that they were always very careful to pretend meant nothing.

So, brain still churning in at least four different directions, he doesn't think to reach for her. He wants to -- even though he somehow knows she'd pull away -- but the synapses simply won't engage. And then she's gone.

Out of his reach, into the bathroom (he hears the door lock). The shower runs and he knows -- he *knows* -- she's crying in there but he has no idea how he knows it and no. fucking. clue what to do about it.

Their rules never covered this.

It's a very long shower, for her. He sits up, swings his legs off the bed, rubs his wrists absently. Finally decides to stay there on the edge of the mattress with his elbows on his knees and his hands scrubbing at his face. Tries not to stare at the (locked) bathroom door and tries to figure out what he'll say when it opens. He's thirsty but he knows, somehow, that if he gets up and goes to the kitchen she'll come out to find him gone, and then -- well, actually, he doesn't know what would happen then. He just knows he doesn't want it to.

She appears, finally, in a cloud of steam in the doorway. The light behind her shadows her face so he can't tell if her skin (God, her skin) is red from tears or from the heat. Both, he thinks. Her hair looks like she's only combed it with her fingers and she's wearing a towel that she holds tightly against her chest.

She leans against the doorframe, looking towards him but not at him.

"We can't do this anymore, can we?" He actually doesn't realise how true it is until he hears the words out of his mouth.

She shakes her head, almost in slow motion, and her voice is very tight. "No."

Hearing her say it hurts more than he expected it to. But the line they've just crossed is pressing painfully into his back. The rules, he reminds himself, were there for a fucking good reason. They both knew that.

"I have to go," she says. That's all: "I have to go." And he nods, because he knows it's true. He doesn't watch her cross to the chair where she had folded her clothes, doesn't turn as he listens to her slip them back on. It doesn't hit him until she's left his room, walked into the hall -- she's going and she's not coming back. And what they have might be totally fucked up -- *is* totally fucked up -- and wrong and painful and torture in its own way, but God, he's not sure he remembers how to breathe without it. Whatever it is.

He catches her near his front door. Turns her by one arm and very carefully does not say her name. All he says is, "Don't."

She won't meet his gaze. She shakes her head as he lightly pushes her back against the wall. Her eyes, even in the dusk of sunrise, are too, too bright.

"I have to go," she says again. Like it's the only thing she remembers how to say.

"No," he says, "you don't." Even though he knows it's not true, knows they can't go back.

She shakes her head and lets it fall back against the wall, her eyes shut tight. He's seen her take staff weapon blasts more stoically. He brings his hands up to cup her face, his palms on her cheeks and his fingertips in her hair, and then he's kissing her, hard. Kissing her with everything he has left inside him, which at the moment is not much.

She responds, but it's an autonomic reaction, like a knee jerk. They've never kissed much but he thinks she's never tasted better or felt softer or fit more perfectly against his body. And he's foggily aware that her hands are still down by her sides, against the wall. Until she raises them to push him away.

He steps back, puts a couple inches between them simply because he knows it's what she wants.

"I *have* to go," she says, almost on a sob that he pretends not to notice. She still hasn't looked at him.

He stands aside. Looks away because he knows that, too, is what she wants. Doesn't watch her leave.

Once she's gone he wanders aimlessly around his empty (always empty) house. He knows he won't be sleeping, and his bedroom holds little allure. But he makes it back there, finally, reasoning that he'll have to wash the sheets anyway and now's as good a time as any.

He starts to strip the bed and then stops, staring at where she had been. He picks up her towel, goes into the bathroom to hang it up, and stares some more. Then finds himself lying on his side, his head on the pillow she'd used, as he wonders how long it will retain her scent.

"Shit, Carter," he says.

***

fin.

"Just one hand to hold you in my heart and one hand to let you go." ~ E. Bachmann

Soundtrack: Beth Orton, Arab Strap, Crooked Fingers, and Roxy Music.