She sat in front of her dresser, looking at the face reflected in the mirror. Her hair was wrapped in a slightly damp bath towel; her face slightly red from her shower and possessing the slightly unfamiliar quality she always noticed when she viewed her visage without make-up. She was wearing a bath robe, she realised with a prickle of unease, that Pete had bought her.

Laid out on the bed was her new outfit she had spent a casual five minutes browsing for. Everything about tonight had an element of fatigue; the realisation that really, this had been far too long a time in coming. It would have been saddening if she wasn't so apathetic. Two years ago the idea of actually going out socially with Jack O'Neill would have freighted a thrill of excitement. Not so, now.

She opened her bottle of expensive perfume and realised, again, it had been a gift from Pete. The stab of faint guilt, never far from her these days, twisted in her chest again. She put the bottle down and instead selected a far cheaper body-spray a well-meaning Cassie had bought for her, insisting it was a 'younger' smell and apparently not realising her insult. She held down the button, deliberating how long to spray; walking the fine line between smelling wonderful and smelling like a Parisian brothel. The realisation of her deliberation cheered her slightly. On a subconscious level, perhaps she cared more about tonight than she thought.

She dressed carefully but quickly, pursing her lips at her reflection before adjusting hemlines, tightening the belt. The dress was of a different style to ones she normally selected, hopelessly modern and yet harking back to a classier era. It had a halter neck, which Cassie had assured her would slim her broad shoulders. She frowned, wondering when an eighteen year old had assumed responsibility for her wardrobe and why she hadn't noticed.

She slipped her robe back on over her clothes as she did her make-up, not wanting to spill powder on the red fabric. Pulling it off, she removed the towel and fixed her hair, as best she could. Day-to-day maintenance of her Air-Force regulated locks was easy, but at the cost of looking as she would perhaps have liked on these sadly rare occasions she went out socially.

Another critical assessment of her reflection resulted only in another twitch of a hemline. Then she picked up her shoes and left the room.

He ran his fingers, coated in hair gel, lightly through his greying hair. Definitely getting thinner, these days. Definitely an encroaching forehead. The fact that he was no longer bound by regulation to cut his hair short hadn't stopped him from still doing it. He sniffed at his shirt again, not sure if he was entirely happy with the scent of his new deodorant. Another recommendation by Cassie. Since entering college the teenager seemed to have become resident expert on everything, which would have been annoying if she hadn't the Carter-ish tendency of being right all the time. Jack considered this a bad thing for a teenager. When he was eighteen he'd been a fool, but he'd still thought he knew everything there was to know. Only experience had taught him the opposite was true. The fact that Cassie was so rarely proved wrong couldn't be good for her ego.

He sighed, rinsing the hair product off his fingers and absent-mindedly wiping them dry on his jeans. He checked his watch. Thirty three minutes past the hour. His taxi was late, but that was okay, because he wasn't quite ready yet. He checked the contents of his wallet and shoved it into his pocket; along with the key-chain his house-key was hooked to.

The taxi pulled up and he switched off all the lights apart from that in his front room, stepping outside and locking the door. He got into the cab, relaxing back into the unusually comfortable seat.

The driver sniffed and O'Neill made a mental note to throw away the deodorant when he got home. "Where to?"

"Uh, Johnssons' please."

Another sniff. "Meeting someone?"

"Several someones," O'Neill replied as evasively as possible.

The cab driver got the message and switched on his radio. "You don't mind...?" he added in concession to his fare as it searched for his selected station.

O'Neill shook his head.

Carter was apparently the first to arrive at the steak house where they had agreed on beginning their evening. She sat at the bar, ordered a drink. She was poking the ice with her straw when she felt warm breath on her ear, making the tiny hairs tingle.

"Evening," O'Neill said quietly, requiring the close proximity to be heard over the bar noise.

"Evening Jack," she replied as he slipped into the seat next to her. He smiled at her remembrance to address him by name rather than former title.

"The others not here yet?"

"Apparently not. Unless they've been camped out in the restrooms for the past ten minutes."

O'Neill smiled at her joke but didn't laugh. He ordered a Guinness and took a deep sip when it arrived.

The shroud of awkwardness was upon them again, they both realised as they intermittently stared and sipped at their drinks. "You look nice," O'Neill ventured when the awkwardness reached a hithero undiscovered level.

"Thanks."

More silence.

"You know, it's funny isn't it. On base we can talk about anything and suddenly..." O'Neill trailed off, looking guilty, as if he hasn't meant to say the words aloud.

"Funny," she said, beginning to smile.

"So how are things?"

Her smile disappeared. "Oh you know. Awkward. Seems to be a theme in my life at the moment."

O'Neill nodded, cursing himself for sticking his foot straight into his mouth. "I remember... dividing things up that you bought together. It's hard."

Her mouth opened slightly, as if she was about to say something but had changed her mind. In truth, she had forgotten that O'Neill had been divorced.

O' Neill put his hands flat on the slightly sticky wooden bar top, and she suddenly became intensely aware of her previously un-regarded hand, now in such close proximity to his that she could feel the warmth of the blood flowing through his veins.

His little finger touched hers and he met her eyes, his head held at an angle, the words on the tip of his tongue but remaining unutterable. She willed him to say them with every fiber of her being when-

"Hey!"

-- Daniel was wading his way towards them, Teal'c following in his wake. She dropped her gaze, looking at the ring of condensation left from her glass on the bar as Jack sighed.