This Time

by Princess of Geeks

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asp/pgeeks/thistime.php
Summary: The team that plays together, stays together.

This time they all ganged up on Teal'c, because he needed it. He didn't tell them that, of course, but he did. Sam knew that it had been hard for him to confront his former, what, comrade? Brother in arms? Anyway, it had been the day before on P2X-983 -- well, it was the day before by some calculation. Eleven hours before, how about putting it that way. Meeting Jaffa who knew Teal'c was always difficult, like being blindsided. And it was even harder when, like this time, they confronted Serpent guards from what was left of Apophis' forces. Those were scattered now, defeated or ambushed, suborned or dead, their bodies littering a dozen worlds. Mal'tac had not been a friend of Teal'c, exactly, but.... It was just hard.

So he never asked for them to care for him in that way, when something went wrong for him in particular. But tonight, they all wanted to do that. Tonight it was for him. They met at Sam's this time. Often they went to Jack's, sometimes to Daniel's, but tonight they were at Sam's. She'd driven Teal'c from the mountain, or actually, he'd driven her car, just for fun, and the two of them came into the quiet house, and kicked their shoes off in the front hall. She'd barely been home for a month, and the house smelled dusty and the air felt stale. Sam opened the last beer languishing in the fridge, and gave Teal'c a Pepsi with ice, and kidded around with him and fed him Doritos and some kind of canned bean dip -- all she had in the way of snack food after the hellish couple of weeks they'd had -- and then Daniel and the colonel showed up bearing pizza and a cold twelve-pack. But they didn't get to the pizza for a while, and Sam, as it turned out, didn't get to the pizza at all.

Because once they were all assembled, all of a sudden, Sam couldn't stand it. The gathering together of the four of them, in her living room, was like a signal flare going up. She couldn't get out of her head the look on Teal'c's face as he bent over to check Mal'tac's neck for a pulse. Right then there had been no time to stop, no time to talk. They had to kill the rest of the Jaffa detail and get out of there, but Sam had seen Teal'c's face, one frozen moment, weighted with memory, and that expression was something she had to, needed to, erase now. For him and for herself, and if that was selfish, well. It didn't feel so selfish. Or it was a kind of selfish she could justify.

That's what was in her mind as she touched his shoulder, tight black T-shirt stretching even tighter as he reached to put down the empty container of dip on her coffee table. She touched his shoulder and heard Jack and Daniel emerge from the kitchen, arguing about whether putting anchovies on half of a pizza did or did not either ruin the other half by simple proximity.

"I'm sorry," she said, and Teal'c, bent over as he was, caught in the act of standing, was just the right height, and she cupped his face in her small, strong hands and kissed him. He closed his eyes, so she did, too, and he was so warm, warm and smooth, his skin always burnished, almost glossy under her hands, where the others would have been sandpapery. His mouth was so soft, and after a long, long beat, she pulled back and opened her eyes. His were still closed.

"I'm sorry," she said again, and pressed herself to him and put her arms around him. When he felt her embrace he hugged her back, enveloping her. And this was what she loved about it (or one of the things), because she sometimes feared she couldn't have been enough for him by herself. There was simply too much of him; he could be like a big hungry bear when he dropped his guard, as she figured he would tonight. But she never had to give that a thought, never had to make that a factor, because the others were there. The others were always there. They were all there, her team, her men, and it made her buoyant and happy. She wanted them all, she wanted to have them and feel them and encompass them. She held Teal'c tighter. She felt their arms, too -- coming around her, coming around Teal'c. Daniel was muttering and Sam didn't catch the words, only the rueful tone, and on the other side of herself she felt Jack, silent as an ambush, holding tight. The colonel's wiry arms in their long sleeves; Daniel's solid, bare arms. She turned her head so that Teal'c's heart thudded along under her ear, and then she felt the sting of her tears. She wouldn't shed them; there was no point. But it made her relieved to know that tears were there; that she could still cry. Something else these men had given her, or perhaps returned to her. All the things she drew from them would make a long, long list.

"God, Teal'c," Daniel said, and his voice was full of kindness and regret, and she heard them kissing, but she just stayed where she was, the first circle of arms around the mountain that was Teal'c. The front of Daniel's shoulder crushed the back of hers, and Jack pressed against her other side, the long warm length of him, and he put his lips to her neck, and then her cheekbone. She opened her eyes then, and Jack was smiling at her, showing her all his beautiful crinkles, and without detaching her ear from Teal'c's heartbeat she tilted her head and offered her mouth and Jack kissed her.

It was grounding, it was home, and she closed her eyes again and held Teal'c tighter. She felt Jack sigh and lean harder into her and she loved it, getting to be crushed between the two of them, and Jack, of course, knew just exactly how much she loved it, and she exhaled noisily and felt Jack grin as he nuzzled her hair. Then she felt him stretch up and kiss Teal'c himself, and Daniel chuckled, and Sam figured they were all kind of nuzzling each other, the three of them.

"Come on, T," Jack said. "The pizza's just as good cold."

Sam smiled, and took someone's hand, and they made a parade down the hall. She wondered, as she stripped off her blouse and unzipped her jeans, why they didn't end up over here more often, because, of the three of them who lived off base, she was the only one with a king-sized bed, but it didn't matter. Sleeping often seemed to work better in ones and twos, and they had learned they could make love just about anywhere; it didn't have to be in bed. As she put a knee on the mattress, climbing behind Daniel to press herself to Teal'c's back, where he sat between the others, she wondered, fleetingly, if they would ever, ever, do this offworld. Probably not, she thought, despite the lesser chance of surveillance, unless it was somewhere completely benign, like the Land of Light or out in the countryside of Orban. But SG-1 didn't make many repeat visits to the planets they contacted. That was just how it was. But home. Home was good. Very, very good. And they all knew how to be careful.

She wrapped her arms around Teal'c, and, as she so often did, waited to follow Jack's lead. It made her smile, that she did that even in for this, but habits were hard to break and this was a pretty rewarding habit.

With a tenderness that always stunned her, no matter how many times she was privileged to see it, Jack ran his hand gently down Teal'c's leg as he slid off the bed and folded himself into what was, for him, a comfortable position for his bad knee and his back. Jack began to rub Teal'c's feet. Teal'c sat very still, but they knew how to decipher that stillness. It was a stillness that meant Yes. Please. Sam smiled and she and Daniel, wordless, each took one of Teal'c's hands, slowly working on each finger, pulling and pressing, finding the ligaments and each separate knuckle. Sam tried to give the task her full attention, and she felt herself pull in, slow down, until she was utterly and completely right here, and the most vivid thing in her mind, vivid enough to dominate the difficult new gate diagnostics she and Herman were struggling to write, vivid enough to push aside even the exploding memories of the engagement they'd just had, was the feel of Teal'c's fingers. She focused on them, and on the sound of his steady breathing, the spicy smell of men's skin, the flex of the warm sheets under her knees.

Teal'c's fingers clutched reflexively and she looked up to see Jack going down on him, and Jack's eyes were closed. Now he knelt on a pillow Daniel must have tossed him. Torn between wanting to help and wanting to watch, she did a little of both, kissing her way up Teal'c's arm and running her palms over his skin, much as Daniel was doing on Teal'c's right.

Jack took his time, and, watching, she felt her skin kindle, felt herself melt and relax and open. Daniel must have noticed, because he leaned around behind Teal'c to sample a nipple. She grinned and mussed his hair, letting the spangle of pleasure crawl along her arms and her abs, but soon he released her. The air felt cold where his mouth had been, and she shivered again and leaned closer against Teal'c. She and Daniel waited on the other two, petting Teal'c, kissing him, watching Jack. Once Sam glanced over to admire Daniel's hard-on. That was the only problem with this thing they had -- there was just too much to do! Too much to admire! She smiled, and settled her thigh more comfortably against Teal'c's, and watched, and petted, until finally Teal'c said, hoarse and strained, "O'Neill; enough." He took hold of Jack's arm near the shoulder and pulled him up. The two of them kissed, something Sam never tired of watching. It was shocking and beautiful and up close. Jack's erection knocked against Teal'c's knee, and then Jack was on the bed with them and they all were kissing, a confused muddle of smiles and lips and warmth and wet.

It wasn't quite choreographed -- there was an elbow to her ribs, and Jack fondly snarled at Daniel, "Will you make up your mind? For cryin' out loud," but what they settled into was what Teal'c wanted, conveyed to the other three with few words and firm touches.

Teal'c was on his knees, with Jack behind him, and Daniel wedged under him, and his mouth between Sam's thighs, and she laced her fingers with his and felt Jack squeeze one of her calves. She tried to visualize what Daniel had been trying to make up his mind about -- probably whether to go with blowing Teal'c, picking up where Jack left off, or sliding behind Jack to make -- a sandwich!, she concluded, enjoying both those mental pictures -- but it was fast becoming way too much work to think at all, everything dissolving in a hazy warmth punctuated with the lightning strikes that were Teal'c's well-informed tongue. Even her grip on Teal'c's strong fingers faded from her consciousness, as he licked her and tongue-fucked her until her thoughts blurred into red. She missed Teal'c's climax entirely.

She felt the echo of her cries fading along the walls and ceiling. Jack, sweaty and disheveled and ravished, was grinning at her, his cheek against Teal'c's spine, and Jack patted her leg and they all kind of collapsed sideways amidst quite a lot of grateful moaning.

Sam wanted to laugh out loud, but instead she just hugged tightly to whatever masculine limbs were most convenient -- it seemed probable that it was pieces of Daniel and Teal'c, but she didn't worry about it. She was still too high and flying to worry or wonder about anything.

That would have been fine, that would have been all and more than enough, but as soon as Teal'c caught his breath and let go of Daniel he turned to her, craning his neck a little, and then he dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth and looked back and caught Daniel's eye and smiled -- his real grin, like he was about to tell them the punch line of one of his inscrutably obscure Jaffa jokes. And she knew it had worked, that she had gotten her wish, that all the sadness was erased, just as she'd hoped; that the memories were gone, for a moment or for a night. Teal'c grinned at Daniel, and Daniel was effing telepathic for Teal'c's expressions, so Daniel elbowed his way across Teal'c, making them all, well, the only word was giggle. Daniel slid a hand under Sam's nape and smiled at her, a bit quizzical, and she fell in love with that look all over again. Then Sam had to close her eyes at the warm velvety feel of him sliding into her. He filled her entirely, immediately. She shivered and grabbed his warm, sticky shoulders. God, it was right, it was good. She was full. She would burst, she was so full.

"Kinky old guy likes to watch this," Daniel said, and kissed her neck, then her lips. His mouth still tasted tangy and rich, almost sour -- different from his come, different from Jack, too.

"I do indeed enjoy watching this," Teal'c said in that mellow voice that Sam adored, that no one else got to hear now, ever, and Sam just grinned against Daniel's mouth and hung on. She wrapped her legs around Daniel's hips and Daniel made love to her. It was too much, too much for her inadequate brain to comprehend -- the way he pounded into her so that she felt they were fusing, giving her himself, merging with her, and yet she was nearly as aware of the others as she was of Daniel, who should have been the only one she could feel like that, seeing as how it was him inside her -- but she was so, so aware of Teal'c's hand in hers, aware of Jack's hands on her knees. Tears again, perhaps escaping to trail down her cheeks, perhaps not. She didn't come again, not after what Teal'c had given her, but she cried silently and hung on tight, until Daniel stiffened and pressed his face into her neck, silent and panting, and he was done. He settled his weight onto her, comforting and heavy. His breath was hot on her neck. He kissed her again, just under her ear this time. Teal'c's other hand was trapped between them where he'd reached, at some point, to cup her breast.

"That's so good," Daniel breathed. "Thank you." She felt his heart slow. She slowly moved her legs down, relaxing her knees, enjoying how he moved and shifted inside her as the geometry changed. Someone took her free hand, peeling it off Daniel's back, and it was Jack, who was smiling and watching, too. They lay there, all of them in her bed, and she drifted, mostly just feeling the exquisite ebb as Daniel slowly, slowly softened. She listened, heavy and sleepy, and let them do whatever they wanted without interfering; they knew where everything was. It sounded like they were cleaning up, fussing over it, coming and going from her bathroom, bitching pleasantly and softly about who had to sleep in the middle. There was no good way to solve that when they were at her house unless they split up, and she could feel that tonight that was unlikely to happen. Since the bed would hold them all, sometimes they all liked to stay in it, but Teal'c and Jack always both wanted the outside edge. Of course they didn't feel right sleeping while hemmed in.

"Look," Sam muttered patiently, eyes still closed, her face against Daniel's armpit, her back to the wall, "in the morning I'll rearrange the room and move the damn bed out so that both sides are accessible and away from the corner, okay? And why didn't we think of that before tonight?"

"I always said she was brilliant," Jack said, and she could tell from the location of his voice that he'd given in and settled for the second slot, between Teal'c and Daniel.

"We could undertake this bed-moving now," Teal'c said, all amiable.

"Uh, no. In fact, hell no," Daniel said, drowsiness dragging at his words. "Sleep now." He snuggled closer to Sam. Jack threw an arm over them both.

Sam sighed, nuzzling Daniel, and reflected that it was awfully nice of Jack to give in, but that it made sense, because this time it was all about Teal'c, this time he should get what he wanted, anything at all, while the night lasted. Jack and Daniel's hands fumbled together, their fingers interlacing, on the soft swell of her hip.

The next thing Sam knew was the dreaming, breezy hush of the empty house -- the erratic tick of the fan motor in her stereo amplifier out in the living room, on its last legs and too noisy. The tumble of ice in the refrigerator. The condenser kicking on outside, and then the whoosh of the air through the vent across the room. The comforting sounds you only hear when it is absolutely still, and no one else is around.

The bed was warm, but it was only her warmth, collected under the nest of covers the others had tucked around her before they stole away. The pillows held their scents. The strip of light under her drapes was growing bright, and she could smell Daniel's coffee wafting from the kitchen, a parting gift, and this time there would be, not old donuts or leftover stale bread to make toast, but fresh, cold pizza, there in the cardboard box in her fridge. This time.

the end