Chapter Text
A semi-truck horn blared outside the hotel room, dragging Jack O’Neill from the depths of a deep, sound sleep.
Immediately, the waking world had a fight on its hands. Sleep had a tacky hold, a tighter hold than it should have, and all Jack wanted to do was sink back into the warm abyss of slumber.
Resolved to do just that, he nestled down into the mattress, tugged the warm body in his arms closer, and…
Wait a second.
Jack’s eyes snapped open and he popped up onto one elbow to eye his bedmate.
His very female, very blonde, very naked bedmate.
He wondered who she was for only a millisecond, because he would know that blonde head of hair anywhere.
Which meant he had a big problem, because he had no idea how he ended up in bed with Major Samantha Carter.
Jack jerked back the arm he had looped around her midsection, the arm that had been holding them together in a perfect spoon position, and noticed that he was apparently dressed – or rather, not dressed – to match.
To recap: Jack O’Neill and Sam Carter were in bed together naked.
Jack scooted back far enough to break skin contact, then he grabbed a handful of the sheet and held it over his groin as he sat up and contemplated his predicament.
First things first: if he was going to try to solve this mystery, he needed to rouse the smartest person he knew. Unfortunately, it also meant things were about to get incredibly awkward.
“Carter…”
Carter grumbled sleepily and stirred only briefly before going still again.
“Carter.”
She grumbled again, this time sounding more irate, and arched her back in an effortlessly sensual stretch that put a spark of life in Jack’s…
“Major!”
Sam sighed and opened her eyes. He could see the moment when her surroundings registered, because her back and shoulders went stiff. She jolted when she realized she was nude, then she rolled toward her back enough to look over her shoulder at the person in bed with her.
Under other circumstances, it would have been funny how wide Sam’s eyes went when she saw her commanding officer in the bed with her. As it was, Jack just felt mortified.
It seemed Sam shared that sentiment.
“Oh my god!” Sam yelped and scrambled into a sitting position. The sheet pooled in her lap, leaving her breasts exposed, and Jack couldn’t help looking. They were there, they were Sam’s, and they were fantastic. He may have drooled just a little.
Sam squeaked and yanked the sheet up to cover her breasts.
The snatch ripped the sheet out of Jack’s lap, leaving him exposed.
As though without her control, Sam’s eyes fell to his crotch. Her eyes were already blown as wide as they could go, but her mouth popped open and hung agape for a nanosecond. Then she snapped back to reality.
“Oh my god!”
Sam hauled her pillow out from behind her and slammed it down over Jack’s hips.
“Hey! Easy!” Jack flinched. “This isn’t a pillow fight, Major.” He proceeded to secure the pillow over his lap, albeit with a far more gentle hand.
“Oh god, I’m sorry, sir! I panicked.”
“That kind of statement can hurt a guy, you know,” Jack quipped, then he sobered. “All right, question… what the hell is going on?”
Sam clutched the sheet to her chest like Jack might try to exact revenge and rip it from her. She’d gone bright red from her chest to the tips of her ears, and forever after Jack would have to deal with knowing that Sam blushed down past her collar. She looked around the hotel room (littered with their clothes, Jack noticed to his own embarrassment), then she shook her head. “I have no idea, sir. I don’t remember how we got here. Do you?”
Jack pawed at his bedhead. “The last thing I remember was eating lunch in the commissary after our mission to PT3-562.”
“That’s the last thing I remember, too,” Sam mumbled, distracted as she studied their room for clues. She started to move then froze, remembering her state of undress. She looked down at the sheet held desperately to her chest, then she pulled the rest of the sheet around her until she had her body wrapped.
Sheet-toga secured, Sam got up and padded barefoot around the room, collecting her scattered clothing off the floor while Jack scanned the area for his underwear.
While Sam was in the bathroom getting dressed, Jack fished his underwear off the floor and hurriedly stepped into them. He snagged his pants next, then held off on the shirt in favor of going to the window and peeking outside.
He saw an arid landscape beyond the hotel parking lot.
“Um… okay, so problem two – we’re not in Colorado.” At least nowhere near the Springs, anyway.
Sam emerged from the bathroom dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve blue shirt. She looked over at Jack by the window, then she glanced back toward the bed and spotted the hotel room key card on the nightstand. She crossed to it, picked it up, and frowned. “We’re in Green River, Utah.”
Jack scowled. “What the hell are we doing in Green River, Utah?”
“I don’t know.”
“How the hell did we get to Green River, Utah?”
“I don’t know!” Sam snapped, then she seemed to remember herself and tacked on a perfunctory, “sir.”
The sharp retort drew Jack up short. He had to remind himself she was just as confused as he. “Right… sorry.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and made a frustrated noise.
“Um… sir?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh… could you maybe put a shirt on?”
Jack looked over at Sam and found her blushing again as she averted her eyes. Jack looked down at his bare chest and nodded. “Right.” He scanned the hotel room floor until he found a balled-up wad of fabric he recognized as one of his sweatshirts over by the bed.
He went to fetch it, and when he plucked it from the floor it unfurled and a pair of black panties fell out.
“Uuhhhh…”
Sam’s eyes went wide and she turned beet red.
Jack picked up the panties. “Well, these certainly aren’t mine.” His eyes snapped up to Sam in her faded pair of blue jeans. “Wait, does that mean you’re not…”
Sam lunged across the bed to snatch the underwear from Jack’s hand. “Shit,” she murmured as she stuffed the panties into her pocket.
Jack shrugged into the sweatshirt (when it went over his face, he couldn’t help noticing that it smelled like her), then he found himself watching his 2IC awkwardly.
Sam lowered herself to the edge of the bed and stared down at her folded hands.
“So, uh…” Jack began, then floundered. “Do you… I mean, does this…” he gestured at the bed helplessly.
She looked up at him miserably. “Just spit it out, Colonel.”
Jack winced but did as told. “Do you think there’s any chance that we didn’t have sex?”
Sam blanched and shook her head. “No, sir. We definitely did.”
“Okay, I’ll admit this looks pretty bad, but we can’t be sure…”
“I’m sure,” Sam grumbled. Then she made a face and shifted on the bed. “Well, I did, at least. And as bad as it is to sleep with my commanding officer, I hope you’ll understand that, given the gap in my memory, I’m hoping it was you and not some stranger.”
Jack blew out a breath and lowered himself onto the opposite side of the bed. “I was just grasping at straws. It was me.” He didn’t remember it, but there wasn’t a chance in hell he would have let her go off with some strange man, no matter their mental states.
For a minute, the two of them sat in silence. They were both all too well aware how detrimental this tryst could be to their careers, and neither one of them had a clue how to handle it.
“We were clearly under the influence of something,” Sam spoke up.
That made sense, but… “I don’t feel hungover.”
Sam shook her head insistently. “I don’t either, but normal, healthy people don’t have gaping holes in their memories.”
“That’s true.” Jack perked up. “So maybe we can’t even be held accountable for this. Clearly we were impaired in some way.”
“Right.”
“And the fact that we can’t remember it… sounds to me like we should be able to pretend this didn’t even happen, right?”
Sam looked at him a second, shocked, then she caught up to his train of thought and nodded. “Yes, sir. I mean, we have no memory of breaking regulations.”
“Exactly.”
“So in a sense, it’s almost like it didn’t happen.”
“Not so far as we’re concerned, it didn’t,” Jack concurred eagerly.
Sam pondered that a moment. “So then there’s no reason to mention it to anyone, since we wouldn’t even be able to answer any questions about how it happened.”
Jack slumped with a sigh. “Major, I am so glad you are with me on this.”
“Yes, sir.” She looked relived they’d agreed to lie… or at least omit certain details. “We would never knowingly endanger our careers like this. Whatever happened to us obviously altered our ability to reason, and therefore we were not in control of our actions. And if we were not in control of them, we can’t be held accountable for them.”
“Sounds airtight to me.”
Sam nodded.
Jack frowned.
“We still have to figure out how we ended up here, though,” Sam pointed out.
“Of course.” Jack stood and thumbed over his shoulder toward the door. “I’ll look around outside and see if I can find any clues. Why don’t you, uh, finish getting dressed…”
Sam blushed crimson again.
“And I’ll see what I can dig up.”
Sam nodded and all but darted back into the bathroom.
Jack didn’t blame her. Jeans were not forgiving garments when going commando.
**********
Sam took longer than necessary in the bathroom in order to be sure the colonel was gone by the time she came back out.
The certainty that she had slept with her commanding officer had her stomach in knots. They had both been fighting an attraction and feelings for years, but they had always been so good about keeping it professional. And now this. What the hell were they thinking?! It felt like throwing away years of hard work, and for what?
Feeling like she was enacting the worst walk of shame in human history, Sam left the hotel room and took a look around outside.
She wasn’t really sure what she was expecting. Maybe chaos in the streets, military helicopters overhead, the sound of sirens screaming in the distance. Surely anything that could get her and Jack into bed together would be causing cataclysmic events nationwide.
But it looked like a normal, clear-sky morning. In Green River, Utah.
Sam spotted a diner next door to the hotel, and since she was in desperate need of some coffee, she headed that way.
The waiter showed her to a booth, and Sam didn’t start to feel like she could tackle the problem until she’d had her first few sips of coffee. It didn’t make her any less the woman defiled by her commanding officer, but she felt more human and capable of problem-solving.
A gentleman next to her got up and left, leaving behind a newspaper on the table along with the remains of his meal.
Sam reached over and snagged the paper. Her eyes went wide when she saw the date.
“Hey, Carter,” Jack startled her when he slid into the seat across from her. He had a handful of items with him, brochures by the looks of them. “Found my truck parked around the corner, so I pawed through it and found a few things that could help us solve some of this mystery.”
“Sir, it’s Sunday.”
Jack’s mouth hung open, stalled on whatever he was going to say. “Excuse me?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“That’s impossible.”
Sam handed him the paper.
Jack put his pamphlets down, took the paper, and scowled at the date. “We’re missing four days?”
“Apparently.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Sam’s mind was racing. Four days… who knew what they’d done over the course of four days? “This is worse than we thought.”
Jack glared at the paper like it was guilty of doing them wrong.
“What did you find in your truck?” Sam asked curiously, hoping it would exonerate them at least a little.
“Hmm?” Jack looked up from the paper, then blinked. “Oh, right.” He tossed the paper onto the table and slid the collection of pamphlets toward her. “I don’t know if I should be relieved or sad about this, but I found a bunch of brochures for state parks.”
“State parks?” Sam parroted as she rifled through the brochures. She found tourist handouts for Goblin Valley State Park, Black Canyon Dragon Trail, and Fishlake National Forest. She frowned, puzzled, and looked across at Jack. “You mean we lost our ability to exercise good judgment, and what we did with it was this?” She held up the brochure for Goblin Valley.
“Looks that way. That’s why I said I’m not sure if this is good news or bad.”
She lowered the brochure and cocked her head at him.
“I mean, we get a case of the crazies and the worst thing we do is go to a bunch of parks?”
Sam swallowed. “Not the worst thing we did.”
Jack froze. “Okay, not the worst. But still, this is lame, Carter.”
Despite herself, she smiled. It was pretty… well, bland, but it was a relief. They could have done so much worse than sight-see.
“What I want to know is why the hell we decided to come here. As far as I know, I didn’t have any burning desire to visit Utah.”
Sam noticed a brochure with a brilliant night sky behind a canyon feature, and she paused.
“What?” Jack asked, because he knew her tells.
“There was supposed to be a meteor shower Friday.”
“Yeah, I was going to watch it from my roof. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, I had been a little disappointed our schedule wouldn’t allow me to go somewhere more remote for a better view.” She looked up at Jack expectantly.
He looked dubious. “You think we drove out here to stargaze?”
Sam shrugged and slid the night sky picture toward him. “I don’t know, but it was something I wanted to do. If we’re looking for reasons we might be here, it’s the only one I’ve got.”
“Huh.” Jack pondered the picture a moment. “Okay, so we get zapped by something that makes us blow off work, and we skip town to watch a meteor shower.” Jack rubbed at his eyes. “Well, that’s not so bad. I was worried about…” Jack stopped, looked around the diner, then finished in a hushed voice, “well, let’s just say you could do a lot of damage off your leash, Carter.”
Sam arched an eyebrow at him. “Sir?”
“You know what I mean! I go off the reservation and I’m probably going to go fishing. Which –” he waved the brochure for Fishlake National Forest at her – “I may have done. But you might get it in your head to build a nuclear reactor out of spare parts if you’re not of a mind to let someone tell you ‘no’.”
Sam fought back a chuckle. “Well, technically, sir, we don’t know this long weekend didn’t involve nuclear weapons.”
“Or leashes, for that matter,” Jack muttered.
Sam groaned and dropped her head into her hand.
“But hey, stargazing isn’t that bad,” Jack hastened to add. “I mean, a little lame…”
“You like looking at the stars,” Sam challenged.
“Well, yeah, but that’s something I’d do anyway. I feel like if this was a chance to be wild and impulsive, then I really squandered it.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.”
Jack harrumphed. “Could we at least check each other for tattoos? Not that I really want Bart Simpson on my ass, but I feel like this whole thing was wasted on us if we don’t have something to show for it.”
He was joking and she knew it, but it had the desired effect. Sam smiled, already feeling a weight lift from her shoulders. They only had an alibi for one night, of course, but surely if they’d done something nuts like rob a bank there would have been ski masks and sacks of money in Jack’s truck. But what he’d found were state park brochures.
Sam splayed her hands on the table top and stared at them, trying to trigger any memories of doing unspeakable things with them. She came up with nothing. They looked like they always did. Like she may have done nothing more scandalous than trace falling stars with them.
And slide across her colonel’s naked skin.
Sam pulled her hands quickly into her lap and hid them under the table. “We need to call General Hammond. Find out if we were the only ones… affected.”
“Yeah… after breakfast, though. I feel like I worked uuuh… um…”
Sam felt her face flush as he stopped himself before saying ‘worked up an appetite last night’.
“Nevermind,” Jack said gruffly, “just… let’s eat first.”
**********
After breakfast, Jack and Sam went back to the hotel room. Further inspection turned up their overnight bags in the closet, and Sam disappeared into the bathroom with a clean set of clothes to shower.
Jack looked high and low for his cell phone, couldn’t find it (or Sam’s, for that matter), then picked up the receiver of the room phone and dialed the base number from memory.
Part of Jack feared the line to Cheyenne Mountain would ring endlessly because something horrible had happened at the base; that it would be one of those horror scifi movies where all the people just vanish.
Instead, the operator picked up on the second ring.
“Cheyenne Mountain Security Forces.”
“Hey! This is Colonel Jack O’Neill calling for General Hammond.”
“Colonel O’Neill!” The guy sounded shocked to hear from him. “General Hammond’s been trying to reach you. Hold on just a second, I’ll transfer you.”
Jack listened to dead air only a few seconds before Hammond came on the line. “Colonel O’Neill?!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where the hell have you been, Jack? Do you know we’ve been looking for you for days? Is Major Carter with you?”
“Uh, yes, sir. We woke up this morning in Green River, Utah.”
“Utah?”
“Apparently. But I can’t tell you how we got here, sir. Neither of us can.”
A sigh. “We expected that.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Suffice it to say, we had a little incident here. You and Major Carter weren’t the only personnel to suffer some strange symptoms.”
“Daniel and Teal’c?” Jack asked, worried.
“They’re fine. Now.”
“But they weren’t? General…”
“I’d rather not say anything else over an unsecure line, Colonel.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Can you and Major Carter make it back to the base on your own?”
“I imagine we can, sir. We feel fine. Just no memory of what we’ve been up to the last four days.”
There was a concerning pause. “All right. Don’t worry about that right now, Jack. Just get you and Major Carter home, and we’ll deal with the rest.”
“All right, sir. We’ll report to you the moment we get into town.”
“You do that. And, Jack? It’s good to hear from you. I don’t mind telling you you had a lot of people around here awful worried.”
“I’m sure, sir.” Some of it would be concern for friends, but a lot of it would have been panic about two uncontrolled assets loose among the general public.
“See you in a few hours,” Hammond replied, then he hung up.
A minute later, Sam came out of the bathroom freshly-showered and wearing clean clothes.
“Talked to Hammond,” Jack said. “Apparently there was some kind of incident on the base and we weren’t the only ones who went cuckoo.”
“Daniel and Teal’c?”
“Fine. Now. Hammond wouldn’t tell me anything else over the phone.” He stood up. “Ready to head out?”
Sam nodded then stopped and looked sidelong at Jack. “Do you want to shower before we go?”
“I’d rather get on the road. We’re burning daylight.”
Sam pressed her lips together. “Sir, I really think you should shower.”
“Why? Oh.” She was subtly telling him he smelled like sex. “You know, maybe I will hop in for a quick shower.”
“Good choice, sir. I’ll pack the truck while you wash up.”
**********
Sam got the idea neither one of them had done more than throw a few changes of clothes in a bag, grabbed some toiletries, then dashed out the door when they left the Springs. They both had rucksacks instead of suitcases, for one, and Sam couldn’t find any work; she always took a few things to work on when she went out of town.
There was a large comforter balled up in the bed of Jack’s truck, and it loaned more credence to the stargazing theory. She could imagine them spreading the blanket out in the truck bed and lying on their backs to watch the stars. In fact, she was sorry she couldn’t remember it. It sounded…
“It sounds against regulations, that’s what,” Sam growled to herself as she folded up the comforter and shoved it behind the bench seat in Jack’s cab so it wouldn’t blow out on the highway.
She’d just finished stowing the gear and got into the passenger seat when Jack emerged from the hotel room. His hair was still wet from the shower, and Sam’s mind drifted. She had probably run her fingers through…
“Stop it,” she admonished herself as Jack got in behind the wheel.
“Stop what?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Jack eyed her a moment. “Carter… is this going to be a problem?”
“We said it wouldn’t be.”
“Yeah, I know we said that. But if you can’t handle lying about this…”
“Colonel… look, I can’t sit here and tell you what we did wasn’t obviously something I’ve wanted to do for… well, a while.” She stared out the windshield resolutely, worried her speech would falter if she looked at him. “Truthfully, considering the circumstances, I can’t say I’m all that surprised by what we did.”
“No… no, I guess not. I mean, if we weren’t listening to our rational inner voices…”
“It was pretty much guaranteed to happen.”
Jack looked long at her and pointedly did not deny her statement.
“And that’s an awkward truth to live with. That we would do it and that we did do it. And if something mind-altering like this happened again…”
“We’d do it again,” Jack finished with grim certainty.
Sam clenched her jaw. “The line’s been crossed, and we can’t uncross it.”
Jack fiddled with his keys.
“So yes, it’s awkward, but I’m not about to lose my job over something I couldn’t control.”
“I’m not about to let that happen either, Major.”
“If we have to act like this never happened when we’re around the general, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Jack hesitated. “What about when we’re not around the general?”
A canyon-sized silence filled the cab of the truck.
“Look, Sam… You’ve got point on this. I’ll play this any way you want to.”
She started to nod absently, then froze. “Wait a second.” Sam shot a look at him. “Are you suggesting we continue this relationship in secret? Like an affair?”
Jack’s eyes shuttered, a wall slamming down and making it impossible for her to read him. “I’m saying I’ll do whatever you want.”
That was… that was too much. That was dangerous.
“We can’t.” But hell if part of her didn’t scream ‘why not?!’ A part of her reasoned they’d already stepped over the line, might as well dance on the other side.
“Then we don’t.” Jack put the key in the ignition and started the truck.
“Jack…”
“Carter.” He spared a stern look her way. “If we’re burying this, you know what we have to do.”
“Right. Sorry, sir.”
The last word seemed to hit him in the gut, but he bucked up like a good little soldier and nodded determinedly.
But it seemed Sam couldn’t help herself. Maybe whatever had torn away their restraint still lingered within her. “Is that… would you want that?” she asked in a small voice, hardly recognizing it as her own.
Jack took a steadying breath and deliberately wrapped his hands around the steering wheel. “I would never ask you to take risks with your career you weren’t prepared to take.”
“That’s not a no,” she pointed out.
He glared at her. “If we’re putting this in that room, we should stop talking about it.”
Of course, he was right. Unless they were willing to explore their options (options, ha!), discussing it was only picking at an open wound. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t say for what, because she was sorry for a lot of things.
Jack nodded solemnly. “It’s fine. Let’s go home.”