[Moments of Adoration]

Very, very, veeeeery late backup for the Sam/Jack ficathon for the very very, veeeeery patient holdouttrout, who wanted: wagers, technobabble, freckles, and boredom. Title from Dar Williams' "The Ocean." Man, many, maaaaaany thanks to nanda and Karen for the beta.

The damn thing had rung almost half an hour ago, pulling them both to sharp wakefulness out of habit. Carter had at least had the decency to look apologetic when Bill Lee's excited chatter followed the answering machine's generic greeting. Jack had grabbed the receiver from the cradle and shoved it into her hands before pulling his pillow over his head.

When the phone clicked off, Carter said, "Sorry. Dr. Lee's a little twitchy about one of the devices SG-18 brought back. They somehow turned it on in transit, and we can't figure out how to turn it off."

"I can't believe you gave him my number."

"I didn't tell him it was your number." Jack wasn't sure if the irritation he heard in her voice was for him or the equations she jotted in a notebook she'd retrieved from the nightstand. "And I told you being available for consultation was the deal for me getting the time free to come out here this weekend."

There wasn't much Jack could say to that, since he'd been the one to cancel their plans the last two times. "So. Things okay with your thing?"

"You tuned out the second I said 'electromagnetic resonance', didn't you?" Abandoning the notebook, Carter wriggled back down under the comforter and curled close, letting out a pleased sigh when he started to play with her hair.

"No, I tuned out as soon as I figured the world wasn't ending." Jack had had a scheme for briefings at the SGC, specific words and phrases he watched for. With Daniel it had been: food, ceremony, ritual and "fascinating engravings." With Carter it had been: explode, weapon, radiation and "fascinating technology."

Not that she really talked about work since she'd gone back to the SGC, at least not the kind of things that set off his warning signals. It was all anecdotes about Teal'c and Daniel and Mitchell and Vala, and while that filled a lot of the void that had opened up when Jack got on that plane to D.C. and his new job, he missed hearing Carter talk about her work. Not the content so much as watching how it animated her, like one of her quantum particles pushed into an excited state.

Jack wondered if he should tell her that, that it didn't bore him; he'd happily listen to her read the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series cover to cover. Just maybe not in a way that he sounded like a complete sap.

"Anyway," Carter said, breaking his train of thought with the slow drag of her fingertips just above the waistband of his boxers. "I told Dr. Lee to just leave it alone in the lab under containment until I got back."

"Which means you'll only spend half the day secretly trying to figure it out." That earned him a jab in the ribs, and he wheezed out a breath as Carter squirmed out of his arms and straddled his stomach, pinning his arms under her knees. "I'm totally on to you, Carter."

She stared down at him, mouth pursed in a tiny frown. Jack started to ask what he'd said wrong when she shook her head, the frown disappearing into a theatric sigh. "I think I'm insulted."

"Come on, Carter. We both know you can't go an entire day without doing some work." He wormed one arm free to pull her down for a kiss, but she slid off of him and clambered out of the bed.

"Just for that, I'm using all the hot water."

She hadn't been joking. The spray sputtered to ice cold just as he lathered up, and Jack was pretty sure Carter heard his undignified yelp.

The bed was made by the time he got out of the shower and toweled his fingers and toes back to life. His jeans, left on the floor in his hurry to get out of them the day before, sat piled on his pillow with one of his socks and his boxers. Carter, he had learned, was pathologically incapable of leaving anything on the floor. His shirt was probably stuck somewhere between the couch cushions, and he had no idea where the other sock had ended up.

He checked under the bed and behind the dresser just in case, but found nothing other than their bags and bits of Carter neatly stacked around the room - a few scientific journals, a bottle of moisturizer, the pair of earrings she'd worn to dinner the night before. It was like that at his apartment in D.C., too.

Abandoning the search, Jack sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his jeans after digging a clean pair of socks from the dresser. In Colorado, he had his own drawer in her dresser, and she'd neatly rearranged her medicine cabinet to accommodate his toothbrush and aftershave. The integration had happened in small spurts over the last year - they still only saw each other every few weeks at best - but it had been easier than he'd thought, all this, with Carter.

Jack's stomach rumbled and he pushed up off the bed. It was almost time for lunch; maybe he'd convince Carter to go into town and try the new burger place he'd noticed on his last trip up here. He tossed the boxers in the hamper, but left the lone sock stretched out on his pillow.

Carter's laptop was dark when he came out into the living room. After rescuing his shirt, which had ended up wedged down the back of the couch cushions, he poked the space bar (he liked to leave her little notes with the sticky note program). When nothing happened, he poked it again. It wasn't in sleep mode. It was off.

"Don't look so shocked." She stood out on the porch, dressed in jeans and one of his thermal shirts, her hiking boots still crusted with dried mud from when she'd been out fiddling with the boat's motor the day before. The ripples in the loose mesh screen distorted her grin.

Clutching his shirt, Jack glanced between her and the laptop. "What, did it die, abandoning you to a life of actually interacting with the outside world?"

"Hush, you." The screen door creaked as she pushed it open to grab the backpack just inside. "Go get your boots on. The sandwiches are going to get soggy if we don't head out soon. And grab the bug spray, please." The door banged shut, bouncing against the frame as she shouldered the pack and fiddled with the straps. She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Well? Are you just going to stand there, Mr. 'I bet you can't go an entire day without working'?"

Jack dragged the shirt over his head - he hadn't exactly worn it for that long - just catching Carter roll her eyes at his smirk before the worn fabric obscured her. "I didn't think reverse psychology would work on you," he said. "Good to know for future reference."

She was laughing when he yanked the collar down far enough to see again. "Don't get your hopes up, Jack."

When he stepped out onto the porch, Carter waved at him from the driver's seat of his truck, its engine idling. "I thought we'd start up at Bear Head Lake State Park," she said when he climbed in.

"As long as we do the short trail." Jack clicked the seatbelt into place as she deftly maneuvered the big truck around and down the long gravel drive. "I've only got you here for one more night. I mean, the boat's motor is still tweaky, and I figured since you're here…"

She flashed him an indulgent smile. "You know how to make a girl feel special, Jack."

"Well, I'd show you just how special if you could talk Landry into another day..."

"I wish I could, Jack. Really."

"Come on, Carter." Jack knew he should leave it alone. Unfortunately he sucked at that. "What's so important that you have get back right away? Other than that thing from this morning, it doesn't sound like you're up to much these days."

That went over like a lead balloon. Her voice tightened, indulgence giving way to irritation, like it had when he'd given her a hard time about Lee's call. "Or 'other than' the constant impending doom from a race of ascended superbeings?"

"I read the reports, Carter." Spurred by his own sudden swell of frustration, it came out too sharp; her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. "I know exactly how little is going on with the Ori crap right now."

She ignored that, her eyes fixed on the road, her mouth pursed in a little frown. The same frown she'd worn that morning. "I had a talk with Teal'c before I came out here."

Jack blinked at the un-Carter-like non-sequitur. That was his thing. It made him nervous when she did his thing. "Is he still on about the money I owe him for that Stanley Cup bet? I told him the check's in the mail."

"He said you called him a few weeks ago, and said that, let me see if I can remember his exact words, 'If I may suggest, Colonel Carter, it might be prudent to be more forthcoming with O'Neill."

Shit. Damn pushy Jaffa busybody. He'd called Teal'c after he'd read Carter's report and Mitchell's report of the mess at the Supergate: "Tell me what she didn't." After Teal'c had hung up, Jack had just held the receiver, letting the dial tone drone on until his assistant poked his nose in and said, "General, is everything all right?"

Jack had placed the phone back in the cradle, hoping the airman wouldn't see that his hand was shaking as he pushed aside the all-too-vivid picture Teal'c painted of Carter abandoned out there in space among the wreckage, running out of air. When he'd trusted his voice not to crack, he told the kid, "Yeah, just peachy."

"I wanted to tell you," Carter was saying, "but…"

He couldn't ignore it that picture now. "But what? How many times has Teal'c not called me, Carter?"

"It's not like that."

"Isn't it? What happened to the whole 'let's not make work an obstacle anymore' crap?"

"I know. And I'm sorry." She fluttered one hand; half shrug, half plea. "It's just… easier sometimes. If you don't know."

Those words, those words from Carter hit Jack like a sharp punch in the chest. Everything inside him seized up hard, and she said, "Jack?" worriedly as he sucked in a rough breath.

"Yeah, I'm okay. It's okay."

Except that it wasn't. Those words had been his mantra through his whole marriage - it's easier if Sara doesn't know, it's safer, it's better. He'd piled up reasons to keep Sara at arm's-length, added excuses like bricks until he'd walled her out of everything.

Just like Carter had done to him when she'd gone back into the field and gone silent, and he'd stayed at his desk.

Karma, Jack thought, is a stone cold bitch.

Jack had enough of stranglehold on the bitter knot in his chest to go back to aggressive avoidance as standard operating procedure when Carter pulled into the state park lot and found a space. "It's a nice day, so let's do the long trail," Jack said as he helped Carter shrug into her pack. The longer trail was also six miles of rough terrain, difficult enough to limit conversation.

Unfortunately the enforced silence also left Jack without anything to distract him from wondering things like if Sara had ever done what he found himself doing every step of that trail - dissecting the whole of a relationship for all the signs and signals he'd missed or maybe just ignored.

By the time they reached quiet clearing on the bank of a small stream that fed into the lake, Jack had worked that knot of sour cynicism right back up tight behind his ribs, and when Carter swung her pack to the ground and asked, "Do you want potato chips or Doritos?" Jack snapped, "What, no Cheetos?"

Carter ignored it; only the tightened line of her jaw indicating she'd even heard him. They ate the chips and sandwiches and potato salad amid carefully casual inanities about the trail and the weather. It was awkward and stilted and after twenty minutes of it Jack wished desperately for a staff weapon to throw himself in front of.

During lunch Carter had stretched out on her back in the grass. Her eyes were up on the sky, her brow furrowed like it did when she was working through something.

"So. What kind of clouds are those, Carter?"

"White ones," she said, never taking her eyes from them. Jack finished his sandwich and chips in silence.

But after washing off their dishes in the stream, Carter came and lay with her head in his lap, her jeans rolled up and bare feet muddy. "We never really talked about it, did we? Me transferring back to the SGC."

"Sure we did," Jack said, wondering if he now held a can of worms he wasn't sure he wanted open. "You said, 'I'm requesting a transfer back to the SGC,' and I said, 'Okay.'"

"Jack."

The weariness in her tone brought him up short. "I didn't think it was up for discussion, Carter."

"Well, it wasn't in the sense that I'd have changed my mind about going back. But I shouldn't have ignored how it would affect us, and I'm sorry."

Jack wondered how long she'd been kicking herself over that. "Carter, you're not-"

"Let me get this out." Carter sat up, picking bits of grass from her sleeves before resolutely folding her hands in her lap. "I'm not taking sole responsibility for failing to have that conversation. We both should have known better, and that's something we're going to have to come back to. But I haven't handled it well since that point, either. We did promise not to let work get in the way, and I blew it. It's just…"

She started the nervous plucking at her shirt again. Jack reached over and clasped her fingers in his. "I know, Sam. I really do. But a few more details in those reports would be okay. I won't even complain about the big words."

That got him the beginnings of a smile. "See Spot calibrate a naquadah generator?"

"Something like that." Jack watched her roll her shoulders; the tension that had held her back stiff and straight since he'd snapped at her earlier melting away. He wondered how much of it she'd been carrying even before that. "You're happy, right? With… stuff?"

Jack must not have been as cavalier as he'd hoped, because she crawled onto his lap, and cupped his face in her hands, "I'm happy, Jack. But sometimes, all this with us is easier than I thought it would be."

"Carter, that makes absolutely no sense." She flushed bright pink and Jack rubbed the palm of his hand on her back, under her shirt, to smooth any censure from his words. He felt her sigh.

"I don't find people easy. I expect interacting with them to be hard, and I guess that sometimes I try too hard to make it easier. And with this, with us, when it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, sometimes I felt like I was waiting-"

"For the other shoe to drop." He got that. Boy, did he. "We really suck at this, Carter."

She burst out laughing. "Oh, God, we do."

"Hey," Jack said. "Instead of you asking for more time off, how about I come back to Colorado with you? Hang out for a few days. Mow your grass, rub your feet after work. Maybe, you know, talk. About stuff."

The smile he got this time was blindingly brilliant. "You can make the time?"

"Well, creating time is probably more your department, but for you, Carter? Anything."

"I'd like that." Carter settled herself into his lap, like she had no intention of moving anytime soon. "And speaking of dropping shoes, I almost forgot. I found your sock."

Jack cupped the back of her head and pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. "I never doubted you for a second."