The third time Jack devoted an entire cycle to Sam he made sure she knew about the whole space/time continuum mess first. It was important that she knew. He wanted her to be free to speak, without worrying about being overheard and what Kinsey or the NID might do with whatever she said and what kind of position she'd put Hammond in, much less the two of them.

And shit but he must really be in need of some serious sleep or a break in this loop because he couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted to talk?

"I want you to come back to the house with me," he said, quietly and she'd looked at him and blinked and it felt good to know that he could confuse her, put her a little bit off balance.

"May I ask why?" she replied.

"It's the only place I'm sure isn't bugged," he answered.

"How can you possibly…." Her voice trailed off at the look in his eyes.

Black-ops. Okay. If anyone knew whether his house was under surveillance, it would be Jack. She changed her question.

"Does it matter?"

"Does to me."

"Okay."

They took separate vehicles – Jack in his kick-ass alpha male, midnight black macho 4x4 quad cab and Sam in her sleek, efficient moonlight silver Volvo. Jack arrived just ahead of her.

He pulled up at the house and wondered if it was a mess inside and then shrugged because what difference did it make? He left room in the driveway for Sam and went inside.

The L-shaped house was slanted on the lot, slightly off kilter with the bedrooms and bathroom in the arm facing the street and the rest of the house tucked into the back. There was a long walk to the 'front door' from the street so a visitor had to be truly committed or truly invited. At first glance it was obviously an attempt to face the main living area where the creek and trees and green spaces could be enjoyed; but this was the house that Jack built – with its back deliberately turned on the world. There was a poem in there somewhere, or a children's book with an unhappy ending.

He hadn't been here in many, many cycles and he had just left this morning. The paradox made his head hurt.

The sound of her car in the driveway was too familiar, too normal. It would be much too easy to get used to and he wondered what she might do with this house, this bastion of masculinity, a male stronghold against the world. His fantasies had long ago stopped being about sex. Now they were about having another presence in his house – her presence. Sam sharing this space, warming it, taking off the hard edges and making it home, her stuff on his shelves, her matched set of dishes replacing the ones he'd picked up at various Dollar Stores after the divorce, her state of the art laptop in the office instead of his old clunker, her toothbrush next to his and her shampoo taking up space in the shower.

Her dazzling brilliance in his house, in his life.

She came in without knocking and stood hovering in the entrance for a minute. He imagined her coming like that and meeting her at the door with a kiss, nuzzling her ear, taking her coat and asking how she was.

"You want something?" he asked.

"You mean a beer," she smiled.

"Or water. I got water."

"Beer's fine."

She followed him into the kitchen the way she followed him off world – one step off his shoulder, on his 'good' side. Teal'c always took the side with the bum knee. He probably thought Jack had never noticed.

He handed her a bottle from the fridge with the neck caught between his thumb and forefinger, loosely, but her fingers brushed his when she took it. It was deliberate, it was effective. A sizzling charge passed between their fingertips and for a moment they stared into each other's eyes and had a dozen conversations at once without saying a word.

They went into the living room and she took the chair by the fire and he took the other one, facing each other on a slight angle.

"So?" she said.

"So?"

"Why are we here?"

"Why not?" He had a feeling he wasn't pulling off the casual innocence he was hoping for.

"Sir," she said and he wondered how she always managed that, chastising him without really ever overstepping the boundary into insubordination. She stopped and shook her head in a rueful way. "It's not fair."

"What's not?" Jack leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs out in front of him and tried to look as unassuming as possible. He took a long swallow of beer and watched the emotions play out on her expressive face.

"I can say whatever I want to you right now, but I won't remember it and you will."

"So don't tell me anything you don't want me to remember," he shrugged, though his heart was pounding.

"And if it's something I want you to know, to remember?"

"Then I'll remember it for both of us."

She looked hesitant and hopeful at the same time.

"We can't do this," she said, finally.

"This?"

"Give in to it."

"It? Christ, Carter, I'm the one with the reputation for being uncommunicative!"

"US!" she blurted out, "We can't do 'us', not the way we want. There's too much at stake."

"We could find a way to make it work," he answered, staring at his toes because her eyes were just too bright and honest.

"No we can't," she said, "Not with the NID and Kinsey breathing down our necks and…and… "

She broke off, one hand moving in the air helplessly.

"Fate of the world?" Jack guessed.

"You don't have to sound so off-handed about it," she said. "It's not like everything SG1 has accomplished isn't important."

"I didn't say that," he protested. He'd built that team. He was damned proud of that team and what it had done. "But isn't that what we're saying here? Bigger picture, saving the Earth, the whole Casablanca thing."

"Casablanca?" she repeated, lost once more when he took off on one of his tangents.

"The problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in this world," he quoted.

Something flared in her eyes. He watched the shift from cruise control to over drive.

"Well maybe they matter to those two people!" she snapped. She paused, wondering if she had finally overstepped.

She took a deep breath, banked the fire in her eyes and quoted, softly, "If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. And for the rest of your life."

He gazed at her, took another drink and said, "You've seen the movie."

"A few times," she admitted.

"I'll resign," he said, bluntly and she gaped at him, shocked. "I mean it. The minute the planet is secure, I'll give it all up, if you'll wait for me."

"Don't," she sounded strangled.

"Don't tell you that nothing is more important to me than you are? That a huge part of being out there, leading this team, is making sure that you're safe, that the planet you call home is safe, that everything I do is for you? Why not? It's the truth!"

"It's a kind of truth," she said, "It's one permutation of the truth…"

"Don't go all science on me," he growled.

"You have a Masters in aeronautical engineering! Don't go all 'stupid' on me," she shot back.

It shut him up abruptly, at least for a moment. His long, hard stare finally got her talking again.

"You can't make Major without a masters," she grumbled, "I looked it up. It's a matter of public record, unlike most of your file."

"I can resign now if that's what it takes to prove it to you," he said, quietly.

She looked suddenly terrified. "No don't please," she begged, "I can't… I can't be out there without you, not yet."

Jack sat up, leaned forward and rolled the bottle between his hands for a little while.

"Then we have to talk about what can be in the future, not what we can do now."

"We can't do anything now," she said, "Even if you resign, if we try to have a relationship, Kinsey will still come after SG1. Teal'c and Daniel will get caught in the fallout."

Jack finished his beer, set the empty bottle on the floor by the chair and raked his fingers through his spikey hair.

"I know."

Sam put her beer down on the coffee table. She had hardly touched it.

"There's more," she said.

Jack sank down again, rested his head on the back of his chair and stared at the ceiling.

"I know that, too," he said, sadly.

"You're next in line," she said, unnecessarily, "Hammond retires and you get the program. I get SG1, most likely. The program will continue even if we wipe the Goa'uld out of existence and you're the only one who can take it over."

"Don't wish that on me," he murmured.

"You know it will happen," she said, quietly.

He shifted his dark eyes so that he could see her, but didn't move otherwise.

"And then you'll get the program," he said, "and they won't be able to stop me from retiring forever."

"Could be a while," she said.

"The question is," he said, "is that what we want."

Their eyes met and the conversation was short and eloquent.

"Damn," he said, when it was over.

He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. He was so tired suddenly.

Sam slipped out of her chair and was suddenly kneeling in front of him. Jack thought she must finally be getting the real impact of this time looping thing because it wasn't something she would ever have done under normal circumstances.

"When was the last time you got to sleep?" she asked.

"Dunno," he admitted.

"Come on then."

Sam took his hand and urged him to his feet. Ten minutes later they had the house locked up and he had stripped to his t-shirt and underwear and was collapsing onto his own familiar bed. He closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable on a mattress that he didn't seem to remember anymore; and then promptly snapped them open again when he heard the sound of Sam undoing her belt.

He lifted his head again and saw her pulling it out of the loops on her khakis.

"Carter," he began.

"Oh hush," she said, "We can curl up together and the world won't end."

Jack privately thought that the world ending with him curled up around Carter in bed really wouldn't be a bad way to put a halt to the current madness.

Her belt and boots were the only thing she took off, to his great relief. The mattress shifted as she laid down beside him, facing him. She put her head on his collar bone and her knees on his thighs, deliberately holding everything else away. Her hand rested on his ribs.

"You're not mad I don't want to….to…." he let it trail off, unable to say the words.

"Do you want to?" she asked, with more than a bit of challenge in her voice.

Jack closed his eyes. He couldn't look her in the eyes and lie.

"Yes," he whispered, "But we can't… not like this."

"Because you'll be the only one who remembers," she said.

"Yes."

There was a pause and he suddenly realized she was shaking a little.

"You know that's exactly why I love you, right?"

"You realize I'll remember that you said that."

"Yes."

He pulled her tighter, kissed the top of her head.

"I love you too," he said.

Sam sighed, tilted her head back to offer him her mouth and he accepted. It was soft and slow and gentle and lulled him like a campfire on a dark night.

"I'm going to get you out of this," she promised, when they were done, "I'm going to fix the loop and get it all back to normal."

Sleep was tugging at him.

"I know you will," he said, voice slurred. "Counting on it."

To his surprise she fell asleep first. He felt her relax one muscle group at a time, her breathing slowed, her lashes a long dark crescent stain on her cheeks. The last reserve of tension drained away. A man who had not slept in who-knew-how-many-ten-hour-cycles didn't need to be coaxed to sleep. The ache inside him eased a bit. Sam continued to soften in his arms, not holding herself quite so far away and her weight was so good and so right. He felt a small tingling of arousal but that was only sweetness because he didn't have to do anything about it.

Sam was in his arms. He could feel her breathing, against his chest, against his neck. He could feel her pulse beating.

For now, it was enough.

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