Consequences
Season 7 through Fragile Balance
Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Note: To be honest, I don't read much fic. I'm sure, however, this idea is hackneyed as all hell. I can only promise that I intend to make it my own and hopefully you won't think it's too awful.

Chapter One

Samantha Carter rarely hit the snooze button on her alarm clock. Samantha Carter rarely used the alarm clock at all. But her sleep had been interrupted by odd dreams where she was sure she was being watched and left her exhausted enough to hit the snooze button repeatedly. So many times, in fact, that the alarm shut off altogether in defeat.

She slapped it one more time, confusing the equally grating ringing telephone for the standard buzzing. When the slap didn't have its desired effect, she woke up enough to realize two things - she needed to answer the phone and she was terribly late, though not in that order. In her lateness-induced panic, she had one leg in her BDUs before she completely understood the ringing signified more than how very late she was. She didn't even know what time it was, just that it was never so bright when she got up in the morning. In fact, it was usually still dark.

Breathless, she grabbed the phone while pulling her pants the rest of the way on. "Car- Ow!" In her hopping attempt to get her pants zipped up without dropping the phone, she managed to slam her knee into the bedside table.

"Are you ok, Carter?" Normally, Jack's voice would have been welcome since she loved to listen to him talk, but when she was running late, he was sure to distract her.

"Yes, sir." She saw no need to go into details about oversleeping if it was at all possible. She had issues with admitting she was human and oversleeping was at the top of her list of things she got embarrassed about. She'd sooner walk into a room full of people naked than admit to needing something as normal as a good night's rest.

"Good."

She wanted to smile and allow herself to be amused by her CO's jovial tone, but the frenzy caused by oversleeping would not allow such an indulgence. "What do you need, sir?" She moved the phone away from her ear long enough to pull her t-shirt over her head.

"I'm just curious about something."

Her initial amusement turned to irritation as she ran her fingers through her hair for a millisecond before stepping into her boots and heading to the bathroom without bothering to tie them. "What's that, sir?" She smeared toothpaste on the brush and started working on her teeth, not quite caring if her boss knew she was brushing her teeth while she was talking to him.

"Are you planning on coming to work today or did I miss the memo about you taking the day off?" The tone of his question revealed that he wasn't in quite as good a mood as she'd originally thought. He was covering it, but he sounded angry.

"I'm sorry, sir. I overslept. I'm on my way."

"No, really, I've been known to lose a memo or two in my time."

"No, sir, it's my fault. I apologize."

"And there are, of course, those memos that never actually make it to me."

"I'm sorry, sir. Again."

"Are you sure you want to stick to that oversleeping line, Carter?"

"I swear, sir, the phone just woke me."

"You wear a watch, don't you?"

Because of the attitude she was getting from him, which was actually quite rare since she never gave him cause to be angry with her, she stopped long enough to check her watch. "I think it stopped."

"No, Carter, it's two."

There was a long pause, which was particularly rare from Carter. She never had occasion to be stupefied. "In the afternoon, sir?"

"Oh, yes. I assure you, it's two o'clock in the afternoon."

She was so flabbergasted by how late she'd slept that she forgot entirely about their ranks. "I'm seven hours late for work and you're only checking on me now?"

"The last time you disappeared it took two days for us to notice you were missing, Carter. See, I was worried." The defensive sound of his voice belied his words. "I didn't want to crowd you."

"You didn't notice, did you?"

"Ok, no. I didn't." He sighed. "I was busy working on some late mission reports."

"So what broke?" Forgoing breakfast and lunch, she headed for her car and prayed she hadn't been distracted into forgetting anything by the colonel's call.

"Why would you assume something broke? Can't I be worried about a member of my team who's never late for anything?" He sounded insulted, but she wasn't buying it.

"So what broke?"

He was silent for a minute, obviously weighing having to admit it against having to deal with whatever it was on his own. "Blue screen of death. I'm not rewriting those reports. I've been at them since first thing this morning."

She chuckled openly at him, assuming her assistance with saving his work would be worth him forgetting about how very late she was. "I'll be right there, sir."

"Drive safe, Carter."

Jack knew he shouldn't have teased Carter about being late. But since he'd known her for several years and she'd never given him such an obvious opportunity to tease her, he couldn't not tease her. Fate, being the evil, heartless bitch that it was, kicked him in the teeth the next day.

After a miserable night of not sleeping, having weird dreams, feeling generally uncomfortable and being unable to shake the notion that someone was watching him, Jack managed to oversleep himself. Unlike Carter's good luck, Jack wound up walking into a briefing that had started an hour earlier. General Hammond was not pleased with him and Jack, at the first opportunity of the general turning his back, snapped at his friends.

"You know, someone could have called me."

Carter, who felt much better after having had a full night's sleep and quite pleased that her own absence had been completely missed by the general, grinned smugly at Jack. "Well, sir, I was going to, but I didn't want to crowd you."

Teal'c and Daniel glanced back and forth between the pair, unsure whether they were truly angry with each other or not.

Jack, who had been angry - although more at himself than anyone else - felt his anger disappear, only to be replaced by a quite unsettlingly intense desire to kiss that superior grin right off Carter's face. He stared at her intently for a long, silent, almost palpably charged moment while his brain quickly produced a list of the possible outcomes of such a move. Although many of them involved a very willing Carter, he knew it was still probably a bad idea, especially when the general seemed unhappy. When Carter's face had turned an acceptable shade of red for Jack to rest assured his line of thinking was clear to her, he smiled, and his mind instantly conjured up a wealth of baseball statistics to distract him.

Once he was suitably under control, he nodded. "For the record, Carter, I won't mind being crowded if it prevents me having to explain being late to a general."

Carter tugged at her collar and turned her still blushing face to the papers in front of her. "Noted, sir."

Jack was contented enough at having flustered Carter that he was able to accept the general's ruff remarks about his lateness without making a smart remark or diverting the blame by pointing out how much worse Carter's infraction had been the previous day. He merely listened, arrogant grin firmly entrenched, barely noticing anything beyond Carter. By remaining quiet, Jack allowed his lateness and his inattentiveness to be forgotten.

And except for the occasional, inconsequential blunder by Jack, the lateness cleared itself up.