Title: The Inner Room
Pairing: Sam/Jack
A/N: Happy Birthday supplyship! Special thank you to mrspollifax for her beta work.

"This is nice."

"Mmm," Sam replies. It's not an actual word, but it's enough; Jack would probably get it even if she didn't reply at all. There is no doubt she's in full agreement that her current location— snuggled up against him under a blanket, in front of a roaring fire, inside their cabin in Minnesota— is very nice indeed.

God, they'd needed this for a while now. That fact was only compounded by her recent mission going south, including the loss of two of the Hammond's crew members' lives. Sam didn't know either personally, and she's been through tougher losses in the past, but still. She's needed this peace and quiet, and him. Somehow Jack sensed that and took care of giving all their friends the proper apologies, or explanations, or whatever, before hauling her out of the conference room following the debrief and bringing her straight here.

She slept in the car on the way, but she's still worn out enough that she could easily drop off again. Right here, with Jack's arms around her. But Sam figures that there's no way that Jack will sleep, so she's pushing herself to stay awake for at least a little while longer.

Jack's rattled after having spent almost two weeks wondering where she and her crew disappeared to, and now that he's got her back, he's going to be jumpy for a while. They've been through this before, too, and she knows the routine. He'll be hypervigilant, constantly invading her personal space and subconsciously checking for proof of her solid and safe beside him, even in the depths of sleep. He'll be a grumpy jackass one second and seducing her the next, though maybe that's not all that different than usual come to think of it. But he's begun to go through the stages, until she finally gets tired of putting up with it all and kicks his ass, metaphorically of course, until he stops.

But if she sits here any longer, in front of the fire and comfortable, she's going to lose the battle with sleep, so she stands and tugs on his arm.

"What?" he asks.

"Come with me."

He does. She pauses only briefly in the bedroom to kick off her shoes and then tugs him further into the bathroom. Not long after their first fateful trip here Jack updated the bathroom. Nothing too fancy, but he put in a tub that suspiciously is big enough for two. It's how she knew that they were officially "dating." Not that she ever believed for a moment that several nights in a row having great, but quiet sex with her former commanding officer while her other two former teammates were sleeping down the hallway was going to constitute the entirety of the thing. But extra signs like the bathtub boded well in those early days when she was still trying to translate it all over in her head; from reading his mind in the field to reading him as her new lover. She didn't think that they'd waited all that time just for a quick but hot affair. The bathtub was confirmation that she had been right all along to believe that once it happened, that was it, and there would be nobody else in her life for the rest of her life. And he wanted that too.

Sam reaches down and turns on the taps, adjusting the levels of hot and cold water until the mix of the two is about the right temperature to be comfortable and prune them sufficiently. Then she turns around and pulls the t-shirt he's wearing up over his head. He lets her, and that's when she realizes how tired he is as well. She unbuttons his jeans and he becomes mobile then, helping her take off his clothes and then hers. All of it thrown into a pile on the bathroom mat. He gets in first and settles back, closing his eyes as she turns off the taps and climbs into the 'V' between his legs.

"This is a fabulous idea, by the way," he says, as she lies back against him, letting him cradle her weight. He circles his arms around her and lets his hands rest, folded, against her abdomen.

"I thought so too." She turns her head, places a soft kiss against his neck. It lands wherever she could reach, doesn't matter right now. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. Jack O'Neill is a clingy cuddler when he wants to be, and she won't ever let his secret out. She's never been that way before now, before him. Only inside her own head does she admit that he's right, it really does help, especially when recent wounds are more the emotional than physical kind.

"I'm sorry about being late."

She's already said it, but it was over monitors once they got the communications restored and could contact Stargate Command again. She was on a ship light years away from where he stood in a room on Earth surrounded by people and computers and other distractions, but he only had eyes for her. Sam probably doesn't need to apologize at all, but it somehow helps too. More for her than for Jack, she's learned.

"S'ok."

And somehow it is, just like that.