Merry Christmas, Bex & Erin!

Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: mini!Jack/mini!Janet/mini!Sam, AU, high school
Rating: Explicit. Gay sex. Straight sex. Together at last.
Summary: Sequel to Late Summer Tangles. Jack notices something in the sky that could be an alien ship, so he convinces Sam to help him steal a plane for a closer look. Janet agrees to cover for them. They all end up in a military holding cell, and do... what young and virile people... do.

Jack tapped his pencil against his desk, the eraser hitting the plastic in an unsteady rhythm. Occasionally, he would lose his grip and the pencil would clatter to the desk. He'd pick it up and begin again.

Sam, sitting next to him, knew he was attempting to think. She'd told him three times already to stop. Thinking or tapping or otherwise. The teacher was droning on in front of the class, threatening to get out the old film projector.

When Jack dropped his pencil, she stepped on it. He glanced at her. "There's something wrong," he said quietly.

She scowled. "Yeah, no shit." Something very wrong with thinking she might just very well be gay, but she's been dating her best friend for the past year and she likes it. Except on the days when she missed having him as a best friend. Like today, when she couldn't be too mean about the pencil thing, because he'd mastered the art of looking crestfallen.

Jack gazed forlornly at the pencil. "Not with me, with the world."

Sam rolled her eyes and said, "Did you drop LSD this morning?"

"Give me my pencil back."

Sam glowered, but removed her foot from the pencil. Jack bent down and snatched it from the floor. "Now, look."

She looked.

He balanced the pencil on two fingers outstretched in front of him. The pencil was perfectly balanced for a moment and then began to tilt, the metal tip pivoting upward slightly, and then dipping, clattering to the desk.

The teacher looked in Jack's direction. Jack smiled sheepishly. When the teacher shook his head and went back to teaching, Sam leaned over and said, "Big deal."

"I can feel the pull even when I'm holding the pencil." He shoved it toward her. "Here."

She took the pencil and had a hard time getting it balanced, but then, she'd never been as naturally coordinated as Jack the Jock. Frustrated, she closed her fist around it and pressed the eraser into the desk. "I don't feel anything."

"Do you deny the pencil?" Jack squinted.

"Maybe there's something in the air that's reacting to the lead or the aluminum. Maybe there's increased particles per million having to do with that damned hole in the ozone layer."

Jack leaned closer. "It's magnets."

"What kind of magnets would overcome the earth's own polar fields?"

He cocked his finger. "Exactly."

She ignored him for the rest of the class.

* * *

Sam gripped the handlebars, wincing at the vibrations that penetrated her thick motorcycle gloves. The machine had been given to her by her never-home-military-father after she played the mommy card, yet again. She got to ride it to and from school because she as a spoiled brat. An Air Force brat. And she was on the honor role. And president of the chess club.

She felt a bang against the back of her helmet. Janet, behind her, had tapped helmets, and now squeezed her waist. Janet was the other half of her complicated relationship with Jack. Sam couldn't remember too clearly, but she thought Janet had seduced them both, and made them realize how they felt about each other. At least, that was the romantic version. Jack and Sam never quite figured out Janet's part in it, but they were too grateful to her to question why she was still around. She was hot.

Jack wasn't much for school. He got the grades he needed to qualify for the Air Force Academy, but cared more about maintaining his pilot's license and keeping away from his folks. Sam never had the same trouble at home, since her dad was never around, and when he was he yelled more at her brother.

Janet, though, was the one who didn't like going home at all. She was the head cheerleader, made straight As, and was, according to gossip, only hanging out with Jack and Sam to make a statement. What that statement was, no one had figured out. Sam thought there must be a reason beyond Jack's pick-up truck and Sam's bed, away from the trailer park where Janet's mother lived, but she'd be foolish to ask. Janet, crazily, had indicated their relationship had something to do with high school not lasting forever. Jack and Sam both indulged her games of pretend.

Still, having the head cheerleader on her motorcycle made Sam smile every day she gave Janet a ride. She was sure Janet enjoyed the bad-ass factor and Sam obliged by wearing a leather jacket and not saying much in public. In return, she got Janet squeezing her waist on dangerous turns and stroking her stomach when the road was open before them.

As they hit Route 4, Sam's cell phone buzzed against her thigh. She ignored it, but when Janet's rang, Janet let go of Sam's hip and flipped her phone open. "It's Jack," Janet said into the helmet's microphone. "He wants us at his place."

Sam stiffened and made no move to turn around and head in Jack's direction.

Janet squeezed her. "He says it's urgent."

Sam let her shoulders slump and slowed the bike to make a u-turn. She wasn't really upset about it, even though she'd been expecting time with just Janet. Between cheerleading, football, track, science club, chess club, SATs, college prep, and being grounded for various misadventures, the three of them hadn't all been together in over a month. Maybe tonight, after Jack explained his crazy magnet scheme to Janet, they'd finally get laid.

The Colorado sky was turning grey and a cold, harsh wind made the motorcycle harder to control. Sam felt Janet snuggle closer to her back. Her hands started to get numb. By the time she pulled into Jack's parents' driveway, she was navigating by her single headlight even though it was only 1600 hours.

The rain hadn't started, but she could smell water in the air. A storm was coming.

* * *

"Storm's brewing," Jack said, cheerfully settled on his roof. A telescope, secured on a tripod bolted to the awning, pointed northwest. Jack had a digital camera attached, sending infrared images to a laptop tucked inside the window. Sam had designed the whole set-up, and now she fiddled with the cords that Jack had carelessly tangled, while he ranted about ionization in the atmosphere.

"Look into the telescope, what do you see?"

Janet put her eye to the lens. "Cloud cover. Grey."

"What else?" Jack leaned back against the roof, tucking his hands behind his head. He looked smug, and Sam barely resisted the urge to kick him in the stomach.

Janet folded her arms. "Do you want me to tell you the shapes I see? Bunnies? Mooses?"

"You see a moose?" Sam scrambled, her sneakers scraping against the tar shingles, and peered through the telescope.

"Frankly, I thought it was more of an elk." Jack sighed. "Sam, do you see what I see?"

"People everywhere..." Sam sang, her voice fading out as she adjusted the sharpness. "I see a hole in the cloud cover. With...right angles."

Jack snapped his fingers.

"Star destroyer?" Sam asked.

Janet was already bored. "What are you saying?"

Jack scooted up the roof and retrieved an image on the laptop. He used a red paintbrush to draw in the lines he and Sam had seen on the clouds. "See it now?"

Janet frowned. "It could just be...an anomaly."

"Except..." Jack pulled out a compass, and the needle wavered and settled, pointing one degree west of north. "Something big is out there."

A raindrop fell onto Sam's cheek. She squinted at the sky, but without the telescope, she could only see grey. "What are we going to do?"

Janet slid closer to her, touching the back of her neck. "We're going to go inside..." She took Jack's hand. "...and make a plan."

During the plan-making, Sam had been in favor of reporting the telescope images to the Air Force. A simple, anonymous email, or even not-so-anonymous and riding on General Carter's coattails, and the proper authorities would take care of any alien invasion. They were only a state away from Area 51, after all, and no one knew what was kept inside the local mountains.

Janet had been in favor of forgetting the whole thing, but she'd let them plan until late in the night, before shutting them up by pressing her mouth to Sam's neck, by sliding a condom onto Jack's cock with caressing fingers, by reminding them that it was hard enough for them to live in a world that wasn't ending, and why screw it up?

Even as Sam was arching under Jack, clawing at shoulders that had broadened and hardened in the summer, giving herself over to confidence and a sense of himself that almost didn't need to be faked, she was thinking of an imaginary spaceship. She saw in Jack's expression that he was thinking of the ship, too, and when he came, pulling out to spill against her belly, the orgasm had conceived a mission.

Janet was only thinking of them. She kissed Jack's ear, kissed Sam's lips, and curled up between them, trying to quell their nervous energy with the heat of her body. Sam's hand cupped her breast and Jack lazily stroked her hip, but their eyes met above her head.

In the end, Janet had agreed to the plan. She wanted both of them alive and well, so she was watching out for them by providing alibis and explanations and hiding the evidence in case something went wrong. Like the old, Vietnam-era plane Jack was flying smacking into the side of an alien ship. Not to mention laser beams, transporter devices, eviscerations, or Sam's dad.

* * *

The plan had to wait until Jack's next scheduled flying class, so they went to school the next day as usual. Janet had cheerleading practice at 6:30 AM, so she was wide awake and sweaty by the time Sam found her in the boiler room at 7:48, seven minutes before the first bell rang. Several other couples sought privacy among copper pipes and ominous equipment. Janet pulled Sam into a corner behind an array of tubes that fed the shower system and kissed her.

"You should really shower, you know," Sam said when Janet had tilted her head back to grin.

"I thought you liked me flushed and dirty."

Sam felt heat rise in her cheeks. "I do," she managed to say, as Janet's hand slid down her hip. "But you're that way whether you shake your pom poms or not."

Janet laughed. She kissed Sam's lower lip, and then took it between her teeth and tugged, forcing Sam to press forward for a fuller kiss. Sam's mouth opened against Janet, her tongue lashed out greedily, and the bell rang. Janet stepped back, squeezing Sam's wrist before turning toward the door.

"When will I get to see you?" Sam asked, and then kicked herself. She knew it wasn't her place to ask things of Janet, that Janet gave to Jack and her because she chose. Janet's saliva was cooling on her lips and already she missed her.

Janet looked over her shoulder and winked. "When you save the world." Then she was through the door, and the second bell rang.

Sam, alone, slumped against the pipes. "That'll be the day."

* * *

Jack parked the truck at the edge of the airfield, on the outside of the security fence. Sam had grown up on this base, had learned every officer's name, had refused to go when her father transferred to Washington, D.C. She belonged here and had no doubt that she'd end up here, flying experimental planes and playing with computers, until she had proven herself enough to go use telescopes, or maybe... Texas or Florida. So what they were about to do felt like a violation... a betrayal. She wondered if would always feel this way when she were saving the world.

Jack had made his home here, too, had put himself into flying when teachers and his parents got too hard to handle. The base didn't hold him; the planes did. He could go anywhere in the world. So he would. He put on his aviator's glasses and grinned. "This is it. Saving the world."

"We could die."

"We could smack right into the thing that bends clouds. Or it could be atmospheric and rip us to shreds. Or we could be eviscerated."

"And even if we don't die, there's the military, and the police..."

"And our parents." Jack's grin got wider. "But at least we're saving the world."

Sam unbuckled her seat belt and turned to face him. "Are we?"

Jack shrugged.

"At least I won't die a virgin," she said.

Jack laughed. He leaned over and kissed her, chastely. Sam tangled her fingers in his hair and yanked him closer to deepen the kiss. She had grown confident in the last year. She'd learned to use her body as well as her mind. Janet had guided her. Even now she could almost feel Janet's hand on the back of her neck as she kissed Jack and straddled him, teased him.

She had learned to trust Jack, and, through that, herself. Now he was going to try and save the world, foolishly and bravely, taking the risks he wouldn't ask anyone else to take. Sam shivered against him. She didn't want him to die. If he was, she was going to be right there watching his six.

"Jack," she said.

"Hm?" He was dazed. His cock was half-hard underneath her.

"This is going to be awesome."

He grinned. "Hell, yeah."

* * *

"This is a bad plan," he said, lowering his sunglasses and looking out at the airfield. They were on still the wrong side of a chain link fence topped by barbed wire. Guard towers stood one hundred meters to his right and left, but they were unmanned. God bless Colorado budget cuts. Air traffic control, though, would have officers with sharp eyes and radar, once they got into the air.

"Do you have a better one?" Sam hugged herself. "We haven't seen the blip since the cloud cover broke. The sunlight is normal."

"Refractive shielding. The magnet's still screwy."

"But it hasn't moved. Hasn't shifted. Maybe it's just a broken compass. Look, we tried weather radar, Google satellite, hacking into civilian air traffic control, and even our own homemade antenna. Nothing's out there."

"Couldn't hurt to look, could it?" Jack started heading toward the main gate. "I get solo flying time. You get the laptop hooked into the plane's radar. No harm, no foul."

"Except someone will notice you've gone off-course. In a fighter." Sam walked along beside him.

"Really more of a drone. And an antique. Look, I'm not going to lose my pilot's license over this."

"No, but there might be jail."

"Christ, Sam. It's not armed. No one will even notice we're out to the northwest. And besides..." He turned and grinned at her as he flashed his ID at the guard. "Your daddy will keep us out of trouble."

Sam rolled her eyes as the guard winked at her and said, "Ms. Carter," proving Jack's point. "Yeah, but he'll ground me."

"No one keeps you grounded for long."

"Do you believe in aliens?" Sam asked him.

"Hell, no. With what's going on?"

Jack had already been accepted to the academy. With the rumblings in world politics, he would probably be going into a war. He was already making jokes about preferring to fly raids over Latin American drug-infested jungles than enforce blockades in Central Asia. No one sane fantasized about intergalactic threats when faced with that.

Even though Sam would be following him into the Academy, even though the pilot's license in her pocket looked the same as his, she knew she'd be at a desk. She bit her tongue.

He pressed. "Do you believe?"

Sam threw her head back and looked at the sky, a perfect blue Colorado morning. Up there, in space, she'd look down on the Earth and see no people at all. "Yes," she said.

"Well. Secret military experiment or invasion scouts. Want to make a bet?" He offered her his fist.

"A week of receiving oral sex with no reciprocation for the winner." Sam made a fist and brought it down on his. Jack repeated the gesture on her hand.

He looked pained, but said, "It'll be good practice."

Sam opened her mouth as wide as she could and grinned at him.

He licked his lips.

Sam smirked and headed for the ladder. "Try not to act like a 17-year-old boy while we're actually in the air."

"Fine. I'll act like your dad."

No one could do cold shower like Jack.

* * *

"O'Neill, 49-1, we show you entering restricted airspace. Please turn around and return to base."

Jack hit mute on the radio. "Fuck. We're still 50 miles away from the target."

"I didn't know this was restricted air space," Sam said. She was bent over her laptop, which had data feeds hooked into the radar and telemetry of the plane. "And we'd be done if you'd picked a better plane."

After a half hour of being cramped into the co-pilot's chair behind Jack, her leg hurt and her breathing was labored from the mask and she was thinking this was a stupid plan. Fighter jets were only endurable when she was actually flying them, not when she was a passenger.

"Come on, Sam, 1970s born and bred. This is just like flying a space shuttle."

She rolled her eyes.

"O'Neill, 49-1, we are sending a military escort. You will respond, or you will be treated as hostile," the radio buzzed.

Jack shook his head. "One... more... minute... "

Sam's screen went blank. "Oh, shit." She looked at the readings on Jack's console, over his shoulder. The readings were still active, since the equipment was protected from electromagnetic interference by lead encasing, but they were going haywire, spinning and blipping so it looked like Jack was flying upside down, only three feet from the desert floor. "Jack...turn around."

He glanced at his readings, and then out at the perfectly clear sky in front of him.

"Jack! We got what we came for. There's something here."

He eased the ship into an arc, wincing as the starboard engine lost power and then spun up again, nearly stalling before a fresh mix of fuel and oxygen stabilized. "Oh god." He hit the radio. "This is O'Neill, 49-2, awaiting your instructions."

They'd flown another four minutes before two fighters, sleek and new, swooped into formation beside him. He gave a thumbs up to the pilot in the port cockpit, who merely stared at him, expressionless through the helmet. Jack looked chagrined.

Sam sighed. "I am so in trouble."

"Hey look," Jack said. "I'm flying formation!"

* * *

The landing terrified Sam. She was leaving the open and beautiful afternoon sky and falling onto a runway surrounded by soldiers with guns all pointed at her. The fighter escorts, like Jack had indicated, had been almost fun in the end. Jack even tipped his wings at them, and though they hadn't responded, she saw one grinning behind his mask in the cockpit. She wondered what they had been told. High school kids going for a joyride?

The wheels touched down. As Jack gently applied the brakes, she felt a noose tighten around her, constricting her chest. The fighter escort flew over, circling in case Jack lifted up again. She knew the planes were armed. She knew the specification of the armament, the range, and what her body would look like after impact. "I think I'm going to throw up," she said.

"Some hero," Jack said, and she knew he was trying not to pee his pants.

Military police guarded a flight crew that climbed the mobile stairs to open the cockpit and help Jack and Sam with their equipment. Sam tried not to look at the guns as she stepped down the ladder. On the tarmac, a policeman put her in handcuffs.

Not until she and Jack were locked in a holding cell in the basement of the base's tiny police station, and left alone, chained, without guards posted, that Sam realized no one had said a single word to them. Her laptop had been confiscated and she suspected her father had been called. No one had asked for identification, since everyone knew them and they had signed the flight log truthfully. She felt a stab of shame.

Jack said, "I can't believe they left us alone. And didn't search us. Don't they think I can use chewing gum and your Swiss Army knife to get us out of here?" There was only one cell, an iron cage with an old lock, and a small area in front of it where the staircase started.

"Can you?"

"No. Can you?"

Sam pressed her face against the bars. "Something's going on."

"You can, can't you?"

"We're in enough trouble. I'm not going on the lam with you."

"We have to save the world!"

"From what?"

He sighed. "From... whatever messed with our electronics."

"A jamming device. A malfunction. A power drain." Sam shrugged.

"Aliens."

"Secret military project."

"Oh, stop Scullying me."

Sam rolled her eyes and sagged against the bars. "Yes, sir."

The door above the stairway opened, and Janet descended with a military guard. Sam blinked and straightened. Jack ran his fingers through his hair. "The Man got you?"

Janet was wearing a silk blouse and a pleated skirt, and carrying nothing. The guards had probably taken her bag. She smiled. "I'm a material witness. Guess they knew you weren't studying at the library." She covered Sam's hand on the bar and said, "Your dad's on the way."

Sam slumped.

Jack winced.

Janet waved off the guard. "I'll be fine. They won't murder me."

The man shrugged and went back up the stairs. Sam deduced he was assigned to the post outside the door, and shouldn't be away from it anyway. Jack, though, was impressed. "How did you do that? Maybe you should have been in the plane with me."

Sam felt a stab of jealousy as she caught the expression he was giving Janet. "Then who'd run your computers, buttface?"

Janet chuckled and squeezed Sam's hand. "Are you two all right?"

"Yeah." Sam exhaled, blowing strands of hair off her face.

Jack grinned. "I got to fly in formation."

Sam smacked his arm.

Janet was looking around. "So different than Colorado Springs courthouse."

Sam perked up, and opened her mouth to question that, but Janet winked at her. "Another time." She let go of Sam's hand and began to wander around the tiny corridor outside of the cell. "A jail cell... All those prison movies come to mind."

Jack audibly swallowed.

Janet came back to the bars, and leaned against the iron. "What do you think? It'll be at least an hour... probably two... before they debrief General Carter and figure out what lies to tell us. Weather anomaly? Secret project? Cloak of invisibility?"

Sam thought Janet was smarter than she usually let on, but was distracted from commenting when Janet opened the top button of her blouse and smiled brilliantly. "How about it?"

"There's a world to save... There's something going on. Sex doesn't solve any problems," Jack said. He sounded frustrated.

Janet shook her head. "Such a guy. It's not about solving problems. It's about comfort. Making you feel better. Don't you want to feel better, Jack?"

"It won't change anything," he said, the petulance creeping back into his voice.

"Do you really want anything to change?"

Sam thought of the plane's engine almost stalling and the fear of death then, and again as she landed with guns pointed at her. She thought of the fear of incursion and her father and of going to the Academy next year and, though her mouth was dry, shook her head mutely. She didn't want anything to change. She wanted to go back to three days ago, when Jack was playing with his pencil, so she could stab him in the hand with it.

Jack was looking at Janet's breasts.

Janet stepped forward, reaching through the bars to grab Jack's shoulder and take Sam's hand. "Come on. When are we going to have this opportunity again?"

With her teenage hormones raging and her biological clock ticking and Jack's hand on her back and Janet's fingers caressing hers, Sam gave herself over to her impulses and prayed the guards watching the security cameras weren't watching too closely.

Or at least, weren't laughing.

Jack pushed his face against the bars and kissed Janet, in a gesture that should have been romantic but was now comical because of the way their faces scrunched into fishie expressions against the iron. But then Janet's tongue snaked out, licking along Jack's lower lip, and Sam forgot to laugh.

Sam reached through the bars, tugging Janet's shirt out of her skirt and running her hand underneath the loose fabric. She could imagine how her hand looked against Janet's pale torso, she'd seen it, felt it, often enough that she didn't even have to rely on touch as she moved higher, finding the lace of the bra.

Janet moaned into the air next to Jack's mouth. Jack threw himself against the bars so hard the clang echoed in the room. He was panting, animalistic, and Sam knew exactly how he felt. She tried to remember why they were in the cell in the first place, but as she met Janet's eyes she could agree that it was going to be fun.

"Jack," Janet said, purring and stepping back from the cell bars. "Why don't you concentrate on whom you can touch? No, don't look at her," she said when Jack put his hands around Sam from behind and buried his face in her hair, causing Sam to sigh and arch into him. "Look at me."

Sam bit her lip and closed her eyes. Jack's body against hers felt good. She wanted to push back against him, cameras be damned when he was hard against her ass and smelled like airplane grease and the wind.

A hand, though, touched her cheek. Not Jack's. Sam opened her eyes to see dark eyes as Janet leaned into her, kissing the tip of her nose, then her chin tilting through the bars, and finally, her mouth. Sam's face warmed with the sweetness and she offered Janet her tongue. Though the bars dug painfully into her arms, she reached through them and found Janet's breasts again, caressing her through her shirt until Janet's sighs echoed her own and Jack's.

Janet liked to dictate what they did together when it was the three of them, but Sam, coping with the fear the day had brought, and knowing just where to touch Janet to make her, yes, make that sound, drew the eager, heated responses she wanted from Janet's body. Janet was weak and panting, even though Sam was the one in jail and Janet was the voice of her crimes.

"Do you like that?" She asked Janet as her hand slid under Janet's skirt, finding Janet naked underneath. She felt bold even though the words came out shaky, even though she needed a stronger answer than even the wetness her fingers found could give.

But it was Jack who answered, "God, yes, fuck." He was still grinding against Sam's ass, easily turned on by the situation and Janet's presence, clothed or unclothed, in any room. He reached around Sam's waist to unzip her jeans. Sam squirmed, encouraging him as he yanked the denim down her thighs, leaving her half-exposed. Janet's hand pushed between her legs.

"Jack," Janet said, beckoning him with a jerk of her head. He reluctantly moved to Sam's side. "Take it out."

Despite his eagerness to undress Sam, he hesitated, his hand on his fly, where his penis tented his pants. He glanced at the cameras, and then at Janet, who could tell he missed the sheltering protection of Sam's body.

Sam, breathing heavily against the bars, still moving against Janet's fingers, spared no thought for their exchange. Janet was playing her now, and Janet had always been good to her, knowing just where to touch, just where to penetrate, to make Sam say, as she did now, with her ass exposed and Jack fumbling with his zipper, "I want to come. Please."

She felt Janet's thigh tremble under her hand at her words, but Janet merely said, "I want Jack to come, too. Against your ass. Right, Jack?"

His cock was out and Janet was stroking it, his hand on top of hers, moving together to squeeze his shaft and tease the head. Sam could hear the slippery, jerking sounds Janet's hand made, and that aroused her almost as much as Janet's middle finger against her clitoris.

Later, she'd think that Janet's coordination was amazing, and that her ability to use her hands like that meant she would be a good surgeon. But for now, Sam came, groaning and bucking against the bars, nearly hitting her head, thinking that screwing two fellow students in a military holding cell wasn't the most ridiculous thing she'd done, but maybe, possibly, the coolest.

Jack moaned, and Sam tilted her head tiredly on the bars to see Jack's blotchy, red face contorted in an expression that meant he was close. Janet saw it, too. "Against her ass, Jack," she said and let go of him. He jerked himself off, coming after three strokes, his orgasm spilling onto Sam's still-exposed bottom. She felt the sudden, wet warmth on her skin.

"Mm," Janet said.

Sam hitched her jeans back up and Jack zipped his fly. It had been quick and dirty, but that's what was expected in the situation, she thought. Janet allowed them to catch their breaths before taking over again, leaning against the bars. "Jack, kiss me." He did as bidden, his mouth lax, his tongue probing her mouth, and Sam felt heady at the sight. She was content to just watch until Janet said, "Sam, kiss me, too."

There was no room to even pretend to kiss Janet's mouth, which even Jack could barely reach with his outstretched, lapping tongue, and his hands were busy on her breasts. Sam watched the way he brushed each nipple with the tips of his fingers, as if strumming a chord. She knelt on the concrete floor. Janet's feet were halfway between the bars as she stood as close as she could. Sam pushed her hand under Janet's skirt again, finding the wetness, and slipping beyond it, inside, to feel Janet tighten around her finger.

She used her other hand to push the fabric up and leaned as close as she could to lick at Janet's mound. Crinkled hairs scratched her cheeks, and she reached out with her tongue, tasting wetness and swollen lips, but wanting that small, hidden spot that made Janet hers. She added a second finger inside Janet, straining further, trying to compensate for the fainter kisses her of mouth. Janet's taste and smell surrounded her.

The things they were doing were making Sam blush in a way they hadn't the times she'd done them before in private. She was fully-clothed now, but she was on her knees and that made her feel vulnerable. Janet must have felt that in the way Sam touched her, that Sam was channeling nervous energy, because Janet twitched as if Sam was sending an electric charge. Sam responded by twisting her fingers further inside Janet, increasing the pressure on Janet's clit, trying to offer more of herself.

Janet came, her moans muffled by Jack's lips, her hips rocking against Sam's hand. She was held up by the bars she clung to as she quivered, and when she could breathe again, spent less time straightening her clothes than they had, because it only meant stepping away so that her skirt would fall into place.

Jack helped Sam to her feet and kissed her to remove the wetness from her cheeks. She laughed as his lips tickled her face, and had forgotten entirely why they were in there until the door swung open. Even Janet looked chagrined, and Sam wondered if they all stank of sex, but the guards didn't so much as sniff the air as the cell was opened and the three were escorted up the stairs.

* * *

Jacob, Sam's father, the General, was waiting for them in the police station's main office. He spared a nasty look for Janet, a disappointed look for Jack, and didn't even look at Sam. "Leave us," he ordered the military police, and the police left to stand outside. "What the hell is going on?"

Jack stepped forward. "We took our plane off-course and into restricted airspace during an approved flight session, sir. I was hoping to reach 50 hours in the cockpit today."

"That's all?"

"It may have been the nature of the restricted airspace, sir." Sam offered.

"Which was?"

She looked at the ground. "We don't know."

"You must have known something or you wouldn't have--" Jacob's face was grey with worry and frustration. He didn't know whether to look at Sam or Jack. His gaze flitted between the two. He was listening, but Sam knew he'd yell the first moment he felt he'd assessed the facts.

She swallowed. "We wanted to know, but we didn't discover anything. Hardly a theory. Just..."

"It's true, sir," Jack said.

Jacob said, "Whatever's going on, it's above my head. Do you understand, Sam? I don't have clearance."

Sam lost her breath. She thought being a general gave him superhuman powers in the military, and now... There was something he didn't know. Something he wasn't even allowed to know. The realization frightened her more than the thought of invasion and she trembled.

The door swung open and a colonel came in, carrying a file folder. "General Carter, can I have a word with your spud?"

"Of course, George."

The man looked from Jacob to Sam. Jacob left to stand outside with the guards. The colonel settled into the desk chair next to dispatch. "I can't tell you much, but I can tell you that you nearly screwed up something big."

Jack said, "You owe us a better explanation than that."

"I don't owe you anything, son."

Sam frowned. "If we'd known what was going on--"

"It doesn't matter. We know what's going on. Do you understand? Trust us. Trust the military. Trust the science. Trust your futures, kids. I know who you are."

"That's not enough," Jack said.

"Accepting what isn't enough is part of growing up."

Sam looked out the window at her father.

Jack exhaled, but didn't make any more demands.

"Next time..." He slid a post-it note toward them. "You notice anything untoward. Email that address. We'll take it under advisement." He saw their cynicism and cleared his throat. "We'll take it seriously. I promise. You're dismissed."

"You can't just throw us out, after we saw that thing--" Jack tried again.

The colonel stood. "O'Neill. Carter." He spared a glance and a smile for Janet. "Fraiser. It won't always be like this. You will all know what's going on. It'll be worth it. As long as you don't fuck it up by getting yourselves thrown into a deep, dark hole in the desert in the interests of national security because you can't keep it in your pants." He tapped the folder. "This is your future. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Sam mumbled, and Jack echoed her. They all headed for the door.

"Fraiser," the colonel called. "Stay a moment."

Jack looked over his shoulder, mouthed, 'Material witness,' and smirked as he left. Sam offered a fearful wave. Janet could hear Jacob's lecture begin as the door closed.

"Now, Janet... I know about your aspirations. I know about your financial situation. I know about them. And it's time to talk about your future..."

* * *

Sam stood outside the station with Jack and her father. Two guards flanked her little group, one standing between them and the old, worn building and one standing by the street. She noticed their fingers were away from the rifle triggers, but they could move faster than she could. Any escape attempt would be met with armed resistance. And her father would probably be pissed.

Jack was looking off toward the distance. He wore an angry expression and Sam knew he would snap if anyone spoke to him. Jacob, smartly, kept quiet. The Air Force had spent twenty hears teaching him how to wait, though Sam could feel disappointment radiating from him.

She lowered her head. A few hours ago she had been flying with Jack on top of the world, and yet, she had failed. Her father's condemnation, Jack's scowl, and the atmospheric 'problem' that she hadn't been able to solve that still frightened her all left her feeling like nothing. The sky seemed far away. She wanted to move closer to Jack, but she knew it would make her father madder.

Jacob had never seen Jack as good enough, which didn't make sense given his current low opinion of her. Jack was too proud to humble himself into the graces of even the great General Carter, and Sam had pointed out this made the two men rather alike. Thinking of this, she took a step toward Jack. His fury, at least, she could soothe.

The door swung open and Janet came out, smiling.

Sam changed direction and took a step toward her. "What happened?"

"They...offered to pay for medical school. Not medic training. A full M.D." Janet was breathless and her eyes were wide. Sam looked over her shoulder at the colonel who had followed her, and thus missed the tinge of fear in Janet's expression.

Jack saw it. He moved to put his hand on her arm. Jacob saw it, too, and asked, "In return for what?"

"Joining the Air Force, of course," Janet said, with a self-depreciating laugh. "Can you imagine me a soldier?"

Sam could. "You'd be formidable with an M-16." She grinned.

Janet frowned. "I'm not going to be flying anything."

Jacob laughed. "I'll teach you to shoot. You've got some catching up to do."

"Thank you, General." Janet's expression lost a little of it's fear as she smiled at him.

"You call me Carter."

"Not Jacob?"

Jack and Sam exchanged glances. Neither dared to look at Jacob. But he was grinning. "When you become a General, you can."

"What about us?" Jack rubbed the back of his head and glanced at the colonel.

"You will never do this again," The colonel said. "Or you will never be a soldier."

Sam felt the paper with the email address burning in her pocket. "No, sir."

* * *

That night, at Sam's house, Jack kept watch by the locked bedroom door while Sam and Janet kissed on the bed. Jacob was downstairs playing dad with Mark. Sam could hear the strains of a football game through the floor.

"This is so weird," Janet said, when Sam let her catch her breath. She and Sam were naked, on top of the covers, unashamed that Jack, fully dressed, was watching. Sam raised an eyebrow. Janet continued. "I thought I'd end up a nurse with a husband and a dog and a tiny house somewhere."

"You still can." Sam kissed her shoulder.

Janet laughed. "Or I can do...what I really want." She'd always gotten what she wanted through other people, through manipulation, like she had done with Jack and Sam. She always seemed to be the center of attention, but because she had other people put her there, not because she stood on her own. She wasn't the type to figure out a plan to fly a plane into restricted airspace, but she could provoke other people's geniuses. She was good at patterns, and her pattern was changing.

Flushed with kisses, smiling through the dim light, Janet giggled and said, "An army of one."

"It's the Air Force," Sam corrected. She knelt over Janet and slid her hand between Janet's thighs, finding wetness. Janet sighed and spread her legs. Sam's lips pressed into her shoulder, and then her neck. She tasted pungent sweat, remnants of the stress of the day. Janet's skin was soft and slick.

Janet encircled her, drew her further into the softness, provoking Sam into moaning. Sam stretched to feel more of Janet underneath her. Her fingers worked, causing Janet to gasp and twist, and finally say, "Inside me... Sam..."

Sam obliged, slipping her middle finger into Janet, touching spots she had touched before, pressing one place to get Janet to jerk and wrap a leg around hers, pressing another so that Janet lost her breath and arched back, her dark hair spilling across the pillow. Janet said, "Harder," and Sam added a second finger. She pressed her face against Janet's neck, listening to her pant.

As Janet tightened around her fingers, it was Sam who came, with Janet's nipples pressing into her breasts and Janet's thigh pushing into her center with each thrust of her hips.

Jack saw the rigidness in her back, and then her shudder, and said, "Let me."

Sam gently slid her fingers from Janet and stumbled out of bed, leaving Janet sprawled and exposed. Janet smiled and lifted her knees, spreading herself for Jack. Tempting him. Sam tugged on jeans, sans underwear, and then an old tee shirt Jack had left there before, and took her place at the door. With her ear pressed to the wood to listen for her father's footsteps, she watched Jack.

He was fully erect when he freed himself from his fly, not even bothering to push his jeans to his thighs before he knelt on the bed. Sam wondered how long he had been hard. She wondered how he had been able to watch two girls going at it without interrupting them or leaving his post, and she shuddered at the discipline he must have.

When he made love to her, he was usually focused only on his cock, and how her body could make it feel good by its proximity. He had been a typical, geeky, horny boy before today. At least with her. Sam wondered if he'd always been so disciplined, alone with Janet. Had she trained him? Sam felt a surge of jealousy and pressed her temple into the door.

She thought of how Jack made love when it was the three of them together. Usually at Janet's direction, he and Sam would do kinky shit they'd never think of on their own. Every combination was different. Sam supposed that was the point. She looked back at Jack and Janet on the bed. He was unrolling a condom down his penis, adjusting it at the base. Janet reached for his shoulders, whispering to him, and he entered her in one smooth, determined thrust.

Sam saw that he was looking straight ahead, at the wall above Janet's head. He was grunting, rocking his hips against her, responding to physical needs, maybe even emotional ones, taking what he could from Janet, and Sam's presence. But his thoughts seemed elsewhere.

Janet, recognizing his mood as well as Sam had, held him to her, digging her nails into his shoulders, saying, "Jack." Jack moaned, increasing his thrusts, and looked down at the top of her head.

Sam caught a glimpse of the man he would become. With all that control, already, he'd surely make black ops. He'd kill other men. He'd commit the same crimes he had today, and he wouldn't be able to love like a boy anymore. Not the way he loved Sam. Maybe, though, the way he loved Janet.

When he was done, he cried, and Janet held him. Sam left the door and came to rub his back. The day had frightened them all. Janet stroked his hair, trying to soothe him. She exchanged glances with Sam, who was saying awkward things to his trembling shoulders. Janet was becoming a healer.

And Sam--Sam's hand stilled on Jack's shirt. She was caught between them, between Jack's killing and Janet's healing. Neither one of them could get her into space. Neither one of them could keep her grounded. Her hand shook.

"Do we have school tomorrow?" Jack asked.

Janet laughed against his hair. "Tomorrow's Sunday."

"Thank God. I don't know how to face being normal again."

"And Monday?"

"I'll be fine." He withdrew from them and fell backward on the bed.

Janet grinned at Sam. "Science fair prep next week."

Sam ducked.

Jack asked, "What are you going to invent?"

"A time machine," Sam said.

Janet laughed. "Where are you going to go?"

Sam didn't have an answer.

END