October 2015

They've been sitting across from one another for the past 20 minutes. The only sounds in the kitchen are the gentle crunches of two sets of teeth chewing cereal and the occasional clink of a spoon against the bottom of a bowl.

Jack finds himself wishing for the phone to ring or her cell to dance across the table. He's known it's coming for a while now, but he's still hoping for a last minute reprieve.

He's three months into retirement and so far he's managed to avoid going completely stir crazy. The freedom took a while to get used to, but he's found things to fill his days and created new routines that don't revolve around an office he hates going to or an endless march of meetings that make him want to pull his hair out.

His part-time consulting gig on a handful of training programs keeps him in the loop on the happenings at the SGC. Throw the assortment of youth groups he's started volunteering with into the mix and it makes for a schedule that's both filled and fulfilling, not to mention fun.

But just because he's doing okay with retirement so far doesn't mean he's prepared for Sam's first business trip.

She's had a relatively smooth transition into her new role as the head of Homeworld Security. Most of the IOA reps have even been on their best behavior lately. Jack puts it down to the fact that turnover in the group is low and most of them feel at least a little bit bad about how they handled her removal from command of the Atlantis expedition.

Sam hadn't been a willing successor but she's growing into her new job a little more every day. She'd fought Jack and the president when they'd first approached her about taking over. Citing her short tenure as SGC commander and the single star on each shoulder, she'd argued that she was too junior to take the job. Jack's reminder that he'd had even less time running the SGC under his belt before he'd taken over Homeworld Security had gone over like a bag of hammers. The president had been more tactful, assuring her that her hardware wouldn't be an issue and then sending her home to think about it.

It had taken another week and a half, but in the end, Jack had convinced her she was the logical choice. Yes, she was young for the post relative to him and George Hammond, but she'd also started accumulating other worldly experiences a hell of a lot earlier than either of them had. Plus, she was the only person on the planet with experience commanding an SG field unit, the Atlantis expedition, a vessel in Earth's interstellar fleet and Stargate Command. She was much better prepared for the job than he or Hammond had ever been. Eventually, she'd agreed with him.

It took a while for her to find her feet, but now even Sam will agree that this post is the perfect fit for her. She's still able to look out for their people, but now she holds real sway when it comes to budgets and resource allocations. Best of all, the other people in the room put a lot of stock in her experience. When Sam says the program needs something, nobody pushes back quite as hard as they ever did when he was in charge. Funding for every branch of Homeworld Security has increased since she took over. At this point, if anybody is wanting for anything it's because they never bothered asking for it.

On scientific matters, her reputation as a leader in the field of extraterrestrial technology is invaluable. Sure, the IOA member countries occasionally trot out an expert of their own, but more often than not, they defer to her expertise. She's got a lot more time to be involved in the science of it all than she ever had when she was running the SGC, and even though it's not the hands on lab work she loves, she's thriving.

Jack knows she still loses sleep worrying over how she'll handle her first planetary crisis, but those jitters are healthy. She's as ready as anybody can be – a truth he reminds her of at least once a week.

He knows that she's afraid one day she'll be out maneuvered and that everything they've worked so hard and sacrificed so much for will suffer for her mistakes. He also knows that she worries she's gotten the job because she's a pretty, non-threatening face to put on a scary sounding military program that can't stay secret forever. He's made it a point to try and convince her otherwise, but whether she's buying it is anybody's guess.

Sam drops her spoon into her bowl and shoves it away. Between the sharp metallic clatter and the angry china squeaking across the wooden tabletop, Jack starts.

"What if I screw the negotiations up?"

She's off to Beijing for her first round of talks negotiating team allocations for a more multinational Stargate Command. For the past two weeks, she's been agonizing over whether she'll be ready to play hardball with the IOA when the other members decide to stop playing nice with the new kid at the table.

"You won't," Jack says simply.

Her confidence is still a bit shaky, but he knows for a fact that she can recite the president's position in her sleep. She's done it twice in the last week. Besides which, Cavanaugh has folder after folder of historic data and future projections packed up and ready to go. If there's something Sam needs to know that she doesn't already have committee to memory, all she has to do is ask.

"I've never been the diplomat, Jack."

"You could have fooled me," he retorts. "Look at everything you've accomplished so far."

"They've been going easy on me. And all I've done so far is convince them to make up for the years of funding shortfalls they've been forcing on us since we beat the Ori. This is going to be different."

"Carter…" he drawls the warning.

She opens her mouth to protest but is interrupted by the buzz of her cell skittering across the table. She snatches it up and answers, all cool efficiency. There's no trace of her uncertainties in her voice, and that's how Jack knows she's going to be okay heading up Homeworld Security. Despite what she thinks, she knows how to shove aside all her fears and doubts and be the calm, cool and collected Air Force general the people counting on her need her to be.

While she deals with the call, Jack clears their bowls and loads them into the dishwasher. The mid-sized Washington apartment he's called "home" for so many years isn't the retirement destination he'd had in mind, but it's where Sam is. She's home to him, even if it's not quite the way he used to imagine his retirement.

He's happy, ecstatic even, that they've finally reached a place where they can be themselves. They both enjoy their unconventional relationship; to hell with what anybody else thinks.

Behind him, Sam disconnects her call and pushes her chair back from the table. He can hear her slip her feet into her regulation heels and knows without her having to say a word that her car is here. He turns to face her, dreading the moment when she walks out the door and leaves him to his own devices for two whole weeks.

Before Jack can even think about cracking a really terrible joke to break the sudden tension, she's crossed the kitchen to stand in front of him. He hugs her tight and wishes for a split second that they were different people.

But as much as he used to like imagining what it would be like to retire, marry Sam and have 2.4 kids and a dog and spend every summer in Minnesota, he would never give up the lives they have now. He has her in every way that really counts. It's enough.

"Take care of yourself. No pizza and beer binge nights just because I'm not here to rat you out to Dr. Watkins." She's aiming for levity, but it falls flat.

"I'll be good," he promises. "Cass will make sure of it."

Cassandra took thorough notes on her mother's tactics for dealing with Jack, and he has no doubt that the long weekend she'll be spending with him will include all sorts of fine heart healthy cuisine. It's really not fair – when he used to babysit her, he'd fill her up with junk food and keep it their little secret.

"I'll call when we land."

"I'll be fine, Sam. Really." Jack squeezes her hard. "So will you. You're ready."

She takes a deep breath and steps back, squaring the shoulders that now bear two stars apiece. She flashes him a smile that shivers with barely contained nerves, and then the last traces of Sam are gone.

He's standing before Major General Carter – an officer he's had a hand in molding for nearly two decades. Over the years, Jack has asked her to do the impossible and watched her deliver time and time again. Now the time has come to ask the easiest thing in the world of her.

"Go be brilliant."

She flashes him the bright smile that still has the ability to take his breath away, even after all these years.

He helps her gather up her bags and load up the car that Cavanaugh insists Sam use rather than driving herself around town. Sam hugs him one more time and then she's gone.

Jack slowly saunters back up to their apartment and closes the door behind him. He draws a deep breath and takes in the silence. It's going to take a while to get used to having the place to himself again, but he will.

This is what they do. They take turns leaving one another but they always come back. He knows now that they can hold on to the warmth and friendship they've built between them, no matter how far apart they are or for how long.

They'll be okay. Always.