A/N: Very short opening to something that is probably only going to meander a little bit, and not very far. Just a chance for me to play with these voices for a while. Hope someone out there might have a bit of fun reading it as I do. Tiny bit of colourful language but other than that not planning on anything more than K-rated UST.

There were plenty of things, Jack O'Neill reflected rather sourly, that no amount of military training or combat experience could train one for. He'd thought that over the years he'd pretty much dealt with whatever being in the field could send his way, and yet… nope. Right now, right here, this was something new. Something new and extremely unwelcome.

Jack huffed a sigh. His exhale of frustration ruffled the blonde hair currently just a couple of inches from his nose.

"Sorry, sir," Carter said. Her mouth was close enough to his neck for her breath to coast warmly over his already-warm-enough-damn-it-thank-you skin.

"Not your fault, Captain," he muttered, staring over her head at the rough wooden door of the cabin in which they'd been locked. Where the hell was the rest of SG-1? Danny could talk the hind leg off a donkey, surely he'd smoothed this all over by now?

"We've been saying it for a while now – the MALP is too limited for initial survey purposes," Carter went on, in a tone that suggested they were sitting in the briefing room instead of where they actually were. "It can only show us what's immediately in the vicinity of the gate. I'm trying to persuade the Pentagon that investing in a UAV that can cover more ground and give us a more accurate understanding of both terrain and local populations, but – well. The wheels of bureaucracy turn very slowly, especially when there's huge expense involved."

"Uh huh." Jack's back was stiff. His shoulders and arms were beginning to ache from the effort of holding them in a more appropriate way than their forced stance would suggest was natural. They'd already been here for north of 45 minutes.

"But I should have put more effort into finding a way to use the MALP more effectively, precisely to prevent situations like this," Carter said. "Perhaps there's a way to augment the MALP with increased sensors, or-"

"Carter," Jack interrupted. "How about we just concentrate on getting ourselves out of this situation before we start theorising about future ones, huh?"

She shifted slightly, gaze moving directly to his. Jack tried to pull back – they really were very close – but their respective positions made that impossible.

"You want to attempt an escape, sir?"

"That's generally a good idea when one's been captured by the enemy, wouldn't you say?"

"But I thought we were going to leave this to Daniel and Teal'c? I'm not so sure that the Codai are an enemy, sir – they're just cautious. You can't really blame them, given their history with the Goa'uld."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "They've trussed us together like a couple of hogs, Carter, I wouldn't exactly call that friendly."

"Uh – no, sir, but-"

"And anything could be happening to the rest of SG-1 right now. I mean, they've been gone for almost an hour."

"Actually, Colonel, by my calculation it's been about 20 minutes. It just feels longer, given our relative positions."

"Relative positions," Jack repeated. "Yeah, about those. How about we at least try to get out of them? My shoulders are about ready to pop out of their sockets."

Carter shifted against him. "You could try relaxing, sir. I won't… hold it against you."

He shot her a sideways glance. "Was that a pun? Now? Was that a little Carter humour, right there?"

She looked down, so that he just caught her little grin. "Just trying to diffuse the tension, sir."

"Tense? Who's tense?"

Carter looked up again, still smiling. "Honestly, sir. It's fine. You don't have to worry. You've been trying not to touch me since we were put in here, and it's just not possible. We're in an operational situation and our reports will reflect that. Nothing untoward is happening. Just relax."

Despite everything, he couldn't stop his eyebrow quirking at that one. "Nothing untoward?"

She blushed. Right there, right then, with her wrists tied together behind his back and his tied behind hers, hard-as-nails-and-way-way-WAY-smarter-than-him Captain Samantha Carter of the USAF actually blushed at one of his quips.

Shit.

Suddenly getting out of their current predicament as quickly as humanly possible seemed like the best idea he'd had in years.

[TBC]