Sam/Jack messy, screwed-up, against-the-regs relationship thing

Had it happened four years (and three decades) earlier, she might have said it was a natural progression. Giggling with the gentle, feminine Jenny as they watched Jack, watching Daniel teaching Teal'c how to drive. Jenny had eyed the handsome archaeologist, in his beatnik clothes, and wondered how Sam could possibly see him as no more than a brother. And Sam's eyes had rested on the Colonel, in his black leather jacket and jeans, and admitted aloud for the first time that yes, she really did have a type, of which Jack was a fine, fine – he put his hands on his knees and bent forwards, laughing fit to burst as the van shot forwards and Daniel squeaked in horror - *fine* example. And later, camping with him under familiar stars, in unfamiliar clothes, the informality had suddenly felt dangerous when his dark eyes, sparking with humour, met hers. The journey from friends to lovers would have felt right – natural.

Two years after that, it would have been understandable. A forgivable lapse of judgement, when the merest brush of his fingers against hers set her pulse pounding, heat flooding her body, and she'd spent entire briefings focused only on the fact that he'd sat just that little bit too close. The enforced distance between them had been absolutely, utterly unbearable. Losing their restraint would only have proven that they had breaking-points, like any human beings.

But after six years of repressing, denying, holding back and being strong, giving in was a sin.

---

Big damn mirror universe story that just kept going, and going, and going...

On his return, Sam had something to show him. "Sir, I think I may have found something."

"You didn't touch it, did you?"

"No, sir," she sighed.

"Amazing. It's almost as if someone listens to my orders around here." He strolled over. "Is it the big, honkin' space gun I asked Santa for?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Darn. Oh well." He indicated for her to go ahead. "Confuse me, Major."

"Well, sir, there's really not much to confuse you with," she admitted. "Look." She waved her hand in front of a series of short inscriptions, and the writing blurred, metamorphosing into a drawer that slid smoothly out of the rock. She looked up and caught the Colonel glaring at her. "I didn't touch it!" she protested.

Jack looked up, and blew out a slow breath. "Give me strength," he asked the ceiling. Then looked back at his 2IC. "Well?"

"Permission to... touch stuff, sir?" He raised his eyebrows, and she indicated the drawer. "It's – I don't think it's on."

"Oh, go on, then. Knock yourself out. Just, y'know, not literally."

---

The Man

"I quit, Carter! I resign! I'm giving my notice! They can have the damn stars back! I'm sick of this!"

Sam sighed, quietly. This was starting to be a theme of Jack's Generalship. He had been threatening to quit on a bi-monthly basis since he took up the post. "What is it this time?"

He'd been looking around her room, but, at her exasperated question, his gaze snapped back to her, his eyes narrowing. Oops – had she been just the tiniest bit disrespectful? It was so hard to maintain a proper attitude when your commanding officer behaved like a five-year-old. "Watch it, you," he said, half-heartedly.

"Sir, sorry, sir," she said, as obsequiously as she could manage. "What's the problem, sir, and how might I be of assistance? Sir."

---

The Unedited Jack O'Neill

"Sam?"

She looked up in relief. "Daniel. Hi." Looked down at the Tok'ra healing device. "Take this away from me before I break it, willya?"

"Um..." He moved closer, and picked up the device, examining it. "Not going well, I take it?"

Sam sighed heavily. "No. I don't understand it enough to modify it - and unless we can get some help..." She glanced up, hope brightening her eyes. "Any news on that front?"

Daniel dropped his head, and Sam's hopes slumped. "The Asgard aren't usually this difficult to contact," Daniel said. "I mean, they – of course I don't expect them to drop everything and come to our aid whenever we... but I thought, seeing how it's Jack, they-" He broke off his disjointed sentence, abandoning it as a lost cause, and sighed. "I guess they're busy with the Replicators."

Sam swallowed. They'd been back from Antarctica for two weeks now, and her inability to find a way to rescue Colonel O'Neill from his icy imprisonment was beginning to seem permanent. She'd set up a makeshift lab around the stasis pod, working round the clock for almost a solid week, and had only been dragged back to Cheyenne Mountain by the promise of all the technology stored there. Surely they had something they could use – something in all the junk they'd brought back through the Stargate over the years that could 'fix' him? "Heard anything from-"

"No," interrupted Daniel, knowing what she was going to ask. "They know to contact us straight away if there's any... any change. Anything whatsoever." They'd made that very, very clear. If Jack so much as blinked, his team would hear about it instantly.

They were both silent for a moment, caught cruelly halfway between mourning for their friend, and desperately fighting to get him back. Daniel set down the healing device carefully. "I found this in my in-tray this morning," he said, and reached into a pocket, then slid a tape across Sam's desk towards her. "I don't know who left it there, but I'm wondering if General Hammond has something to do with it. There can't be many other people with access."

Sam picked it up and read the label curiously. "'Roll 34B, Col. O'Neill'..." She glanced up at Daniel in surprise. "From the documentary?"

Daniel nodded. "I had a quick look. It's his interview - the whole thing, not the edited version they put on the documentary." The SGC had been given a screening, originally commissioned to celebrate their thousandth trip through the Stargate, but ultimately ending up as a tribute to Janet Fraiser and the other people they'd lost over the years. Cassie had been given special dispensation to attend. It had been hard to sit through - harder still to face Cassie afterwards - but cathartic. Jack's interview had been added last-minute, after Hammond had ordered him to co-operate. He'd been professional, courteous - perhaps a bit terse, but Bregman had done an excellent job, both of editing the footage and of drawing out the Colonel.

Sam turned the tape in her hands, staring at it. It was all too much like a last farewell. She glanced up at Daniel. "My place, tonight? Tell Teal'c?"

Daniel nodded. "I'll bring the booze."

---

Sam/Jack angsty relationshippy piece

One of the things she's been looking forward to, now she and Jack have finally got together, got their act together, got the show on the road, is waking up with him. It isn't the thing she's *most* been looking forward to, admittedly – there are things that rate a little higher on that particular list – but she's been having warm thoughts of snuggling, and sunlight across coverlets, and easy conversation, and soft morning kisses, and all the other benefits of being with someone. Magnified a thousandfold because this isn't just 'someone' – this is *him*.

So to wake up for the fifth morning running to find that, yet again, he's vanished from the bed, is a little... irksome (one of his words).

She finds him out on his deck, sipping coffee, newspaper spread across the table in front of him. "Hey."

He looks up, and grins. She understands that look, now – knows what it means, whereas before she'd only had unproven theories. He's thinking that she looks adorable – sleep-mussed, hair everywhere, wearing her tank-top and a pair of his boxers because they'd been the closest things to hand. All he says, though, is, "Hey."

She tries to phrase it in a way that doesn't sound accusatory. "You're up early." But he can read her like a book. It's tough, being in a relationship only a week old, but having known him – been close to him – for going on nine years.

"Yeah." His eyes flit away. She can read him, too, and takes full advantage of that fact. He doesn't want to talk about this. "Sleep well?"

She nods, narrowing her eyes at him. As a subordinate, she let him get away with changing the subject. As a lover, she can't afford to maintain the same rules. "Jack..."

"Samantha."

She knows full well that he says her full name in *just* that tone to make her pull that goddamn goofy expression. She knows it, but still she can't help herself. There's just something about the way he says it, low and sweet... It melts her, quite frankly. Every. Single. Time.

Damn, distracting man!

"Jonathan," she says, firmly, in response. That gets a reaction. She's never called him that before. She has a suspicion that she's just reminded him of his mother, or perhaps a teacher, from the disconcerted expression that flits across his face. He covers it quickly, though, with the ingrained habit of hiding any weakness.

---

Sam birthday fic

He'd grown close to his team, over the first few months – how could he not? But he still spent the first Christmas alone in Minnesota, incommunicado. There were a series of messages from Daniel on his phone, when he got back, wishing him Happy Christmas, then Happy New Year, then asking him to call if he felt like a chat. Sam had sent him a Christmas card, with a jolly reindeer and a lame joke about maybe coming across Santa's planet someday. He made a New Year's resolution to work on her sense of humor.

When he arrived back at the Mountain, he exchanged greetings with Teal'c, feeling slightly guilty that the big guy was still confined to base. He ruffled Danny's hair, realized he'd missed annoying him over the past couple of weeks, and wished Sam happy birthday. The others stared at him in surprise.

"Uh, thanks, sir," said Sam.

"I didn't know it was your birthday, Sam," said Daniel, in a slightly accusative tone. "When?"

She shrugged. "The twenty-ninth. I didn't realize anyone else knew. It wasn't a big deal." Jack had tipped up his eyebrows at this, and her eyes widened in alarm as it occurred to her that if he knew the date, then he'd known what birthday it was. The Big Three-Zero. "Sir..." she said, as warningly as she dared. Jack grinned devilishly.

---

Jack and Vala

All of Vala's encounters so far with Jack O'Neill had involved beer, so to see him not slouched over a sticky table, rolling a bottle of Bud or Guinness between his long fingers, peeling the label, teasing Daniel for being a lightweight, glancing surreptitiously at Sam's ass as she beat Cam at pool yet again, or fruitlessly trying to involve Teal'c in an argument, was quite strange.

Vala herself hadn't acquired her cliché yet, but she assumed it was just a matter of time. She was thinking it might be desperately obvious flirting that annoyed the hell out of everyone else. There was something in his eyes that said he might be amenable...

---