Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Three days later Jack was a little frustrated with his imagination. The dreams hadn’t stopped or gotten less distractingly sensual. Last night Sam had shown up in his dream in crotch-less panties and presented herself to him. Like a stallion he mounted her from behind and drove into her until both had moaned the other’s name. The dream had faded after they collapsed on the bed in exhaustion.

Where before it had left him in a dreamy pleasant sort of mood now, it was leaving him frustrated. He was living in a limbo of having what he wanted and knowing it both wasn’t real and wasn’t right for him to be doing. And he couldn’t figure out what had prompted it. In the past he’d had such dreams but generally they weren’t this absolutely vivid. He could smell her, taste her in these intense dreams. Things that didn’t usually happen and in the past he’d usually only had dreams about her like that when one of them had faced danger. His body’s way of affirming they were both alive as he couldn’t just take her home and bed her in reality.

So when she cheerfully greeted him from under the control room consol with a chipper “Good morning, sir.” He just grunted and headed to George’s office to turn in his reports. Fortunately Hammond was not in so he dropped them in the in box and left.

Sam watched him in confusion as he stalked back through the control room to the stairwell.

“What’s eating him?” Walter asked her.

“No idea. He was in a good mood when I talked to him before he left for a couple days off.” Sam said mystified.

“Do you suppose something happened while he was off?”

Sam shrugged. “I was busy here all weekend so I didn’t drop by or call him for anything. I’ll ask Daniel later. He’ll probably know.”

But Jack stomped down the stairs and didn’t hear their conversation. He was busy making his way to his office before he had to talk to anyone and the foul expression on his face kept everyone he encountered from wishing him a good morning anyway.

In the safety of his office he closed the door and huffed a sigh. The last thing Jack wanted was to look Sam in the eyes. Seeing nothing but her BDU clad legs sticking out from under a console had made him want things his overactive imagination had been filling in the blanks about in vivid detail.

He groaned and scrubbed at his eyes. She was driving him mad and it wasn’t even her fault. He knew a good workout would help but he really didn’t want to run into anyone so he threw himself into his paperwork. That’s where Daniel finally found him about an hour after lunch time.

“Are you that far behind, Jack? NO one has seen you for hours. Not even Sam.” Jack was a predictable man. He spent his morning handling anything that had popped up over night, spent some time with Daniel or Teal’c then ate lunch, grabbed his paperwork and camped out in Sam’s lab writing reports for a while before checking in with other team leaders and heading out for the night. Daniel could almost set his watch by the man usually but there was occasional deviation so it didn’t raise any flags when Jack never surfaced all morning. He’d only gotten concerned when Jack worked through lunch and never showed up in the gym to work the kinks out.

If Sam had kicked him out for being a nuisance, he’d have shown up in Daniel’s lab to bother him instead and complain that Sam had kicked him out.

“Just busy, Danny. Did you need something?” Jack said absently not looking up from his work.

Daniel looked at Jack’s sorters and his out box was overflowing. “Did you get yelled at again, Jack?” he said waving at the full bin.

“Everything is peachy, Danny. Just trying to get some work done for a change.” Jack said not looking up from his work.

Daniel narrowed his eyes. “Did you and Sam have a fight?”

“What?” Jack yelped. “No.” He ground out and tapped savagely at his keyboard now pointedly ignoring Daniel.

“Oh… kay… well, I’ll leave you to your work.” He said and left.

“And shut the door.” Jack called out.

Daniel waved his hand down dismissively rather than flip the other man off and shut his door.

“Sam.” Daniel said conversationally when he got to her lab.

“Oh hi Daniel. Did you find the Colonel?”

Daniel nodded “Yup.” He tilted his head. “Did you say something that upset him?” Daniel asked her.

Sam looked up from her work. “Not that I know of. Did he say something?” Her face settled into concern for her commanding officer.

“It’s more what he didn’t say.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well as soon as I mentioned you, he got very jumpy.” Daniel told her.

“Why though? I haven’t talked to him except to say good morning to him and he grunted at me and left. I figured he was just having a Monday and he’d feel better after some coffee.”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t pretend to understand how Jack’s mind works, Sam, but since it seems to be connected to you somehow you’re probably the only one that can fix it.”

Sam looked thoughtful. She hadn’t had a disagreement with him or tossed him out of her lab in days. She had no idea why he might be avoiding her honestly. Come to think of it the other day, he’d been unusually affectionate with her. Had she missed some social cue? It wouldn’t be the first time. She let out a small huff of breath. So it was up to her to sort this out. She bit her lip. She had things to do. It would have to wait. “’I’ll take care of it when I have time, Daniel. I have too much work to do right now. See if you can get him to go work out. That usually improves his mood no matter what the problem is.”

It wasn’t lost on Daniel that Sam automatically knew what Jack needed emotionally with just a description of his mood. Even though he was Jack’s best friend, Sam knew him better than any of them. So possibly it was about Sam… but not directly about her. Daniel headed back to Jack’s office.

He rapped a knock on the other man’s door first before popping his head in. “Hey, come spar with me. I need a workout buddy.”

“Daniel, I really don’t have time to…”

“Jack… your inbox is empty.” Daniel pointed out. And Daniel was pretty sure he’d never seen Jack’s inbox empty. Ever.

Jack looked at the empty box as though it was a traitor. He frowned up at Danny’s hopeful smile. “I suppose I could take a break.” He admitted reluctantly. That Daniel was back instead of sending Sam after being dismissed meant she’d been busy and wouldn’t be wandering around the base. He had thought a workout might help earlier.

An hour later he was tired, sweaty and focused on beating the crap out of Daniel with a Jaffa training staff instead of his frustrated libido. He wasn’t doing that great of a job at it either. Daniel had the focus Jack had lacked at the start of their sparring session and Jack was fairly bruised at this point.

Daniel sensing he’d softened the older man up a bit finally went for the kill. “So what was bugging you earlier?”

“Don’t know what you mean, Danny.” The staffs hit each other with a loud whack.

“Sam said you didn’t even say good morning to her then you hid in your office all morning. Is everything ok?”

“Everything is fine.” He said, feigning at Daniel’s legs only to crack his staff on the other man’s wrists.

“Ow! Jack! That was cheap.”

“I don’t plan to fight fair against a Jaffa.” Jack reminded the younger man.

Daniel shoved him backwards across the mat as he knocked Jack off his feet.

Jack sprang up and made to thump Daniel on the head. When Daniel blocked he twisted and jabbed him in the armpit instead.

“Technically we try to shoot Jaffa.” Daniel reminded him as he rolled his shoulder back into its proper position.

“Are you going to yammer or fight, Danny?” Jack swung at Daniel’s knees and the younger man jumped back. He looked up at the clock.

“Crap. I have a meeting with team eleven in half an hour. Sorry Jack.”

Jack just shrugged though. He knew Daniel wasn’t going to drop the subject about him and Sam and he’d only come to spar to work off some steam. “Let’s go hit the showers. We’re too evenly matched these days anyway.” Jack told him.

“I’ve been practicing.”

“I’m getting old.” Jack countered as they hit the locker room door.

Daniel chuckled and they stripped to get into the shower. “How hard did I knock you back? That’s some bad mat burn, Jack. You should have Janet check it.”

“It’s fine, mom. Stop fussing.” Jack said and shook his head as he moved under the water, not caring that it wasn’t quite hot enough yet. “And quit checking out my ass.”

Daniel laughed. If he was going to check out anyone’s ass it wasn’t going to be Jack’s. He wondered if Jack had been itchy in his sleep. A couple of the furrows looked more like fingernail marks than mat rash. He shrugged though. Now Janet’s ass… That was one he’d check out. Some time during Daniel’s pleasant imagining of a semi clothed Janet Fraiser, Jack had left the locker-room. He shut off the water and dried off. He still had no idea what was bothering Jack but Sam had been right, he was more relaxed after their match and he had a briefing to get to.