Best of All

Let's be honest. In an overt ploy to gain readership, two characters in this story are named Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter. The plot has next to nothing to do with the stargate or anything you'd find on an episode. It's all about fishing and sex -- as if there were anything else. Well, it might be a little bit about Hemingway, and even more about Colorado. Narcissistically, it assumes that all the events in my own "Dancing on the Volcano" took place, but you don't have to read that one to understand this one. Thanks to new Technical Consultant Jennifer, who wasn't nearly as reluctant as Bob.

As to spoilers, I've seen half the fifth season as of this writing, and a few references have slid in, but I don't think there's anything major, except Carter herself. I am presuming both my stories take place after half the men in the galaxy have nobly sacrificed themselves on Sam's behalf. But hey, why not? She is, after all, the New One True Space Babe (well, actually, Amanda Tapping is, but close enough).

This is for my tiny baby sister, because she asked for another story, and it's also for Michael. Welcome to the family, viejo.

Oops, forgot the disclaimers: stolen characters, stolen "Lines for a Dead Friend" (although I gave Papa credit in the text), stolen fishing adventures . . . wish I could say I felt bad about any of this. Wish I could say I'm not trying furiously to think of a way to get rich off this, but that would be a lie, and I'm morally opposed to those.

Dead soldier. Dead soldier. "Dead soldier," Jack said out loud, grimacing as he swallowed the last of his beer. He laid the bottle down on its side, next to its two companions on his kitchen table, and spun it listlessly. Another motion drew his eye, and he followed it up until he caught sight of his reflection in the side of the metal toaster. "Old soldier," he muttered, scowling at the face staring back so angrily at him. He dropped his head closer to the tabletop, chin resting on a fist as his other hand set all three empty bottles to spinning. It was really too early in the day to be drinking, and certainly much too soon to have polished off three beers.

Broody. That was what Sam called it. A combination of brooding and moody. She didn't like it when he got this way, so he supposed it was just as well that she wasn't around to see it.

Sam was gone. He knew that for a certainty. This being Saturday, she had gone over to play chess with Cassandra, but from there she had kicked up her motorcycle and headed for someplace Jack knew nothing about. The hell of it was that even though he knew that was what she'd done, he couldn't call Janet Frasier to confirm it. He was reasonably certain the doctor knew about Sam and him -- maybe Sam had even told her directly -- but they were all pretending none of this was taking place. Which meant calling to see if Sam was still over there was out as an option.

So many secrets in his life. It was getting old, as he was getting older, and it kept getting harder to remember which things had to be kept from whom. There was only one person in the world privy to everything he currently knew, and that included how very much he loved her.

Which was part of the problem. He loved Samantha Carter -- hell, he was still in the stage where he was totally smitten with everything about her -- and she loved him, but he was still her boss and they still worked for the U.S. Air Force, which frowned on what it politely termed "fraternization." Their relationship had the tacit approval of their boss, so long as he was "officially" unaware of it.

So Jack and Sam maintained their separate houses, drove their own cars to the base, did not go grocery shopping together, and, on the rare occasions they went out, made scrupulously sure that nothing about the place could be construed as romantic, so that their presence could be explained in the guise of two colleagues socializing without fraternizing. This always turned out to be more awkward and uncomfortable than expected, so most of the time they settled for their own marginal cooking, or ordered delivery or take-out. They ate take-out a lot.

Abruptly Jack pushed his chair back from the table and the still-gyrating bottles. Restlessly he paced out of his kitchen and down into his living room. It was Saturday, a rare, completely free day off for both of them, and instead of spending it with him Sam had chosen to take it for herself. "Breathing space," she called it.

He understood the concept, but not why she felt she needed it. She had spent more time attempting to explain this to him than she had on all her scientific gizmos combined, and still he didn't get it. They had spent so many years trying to deny, avoid and get over their mutual attraction, and now he wanted to make up for all that lost time. Then too there was the part where two workaholics had trouble giving up a lifetime of habits, so free time was still a precious commodity, particularly since they were so meticulous about avoiding even the appearance of impropriety while on the job, even when they were off-world with only their teammates, both of whom knew about the relationship and neither of whom seemed unduly concerned by it.

"I spend all day with you guys," she'd tried to explain, repeatedly. "I spend all day -- sometimes several days on end -- interacting with a whole bunch of people, and all I want to do is come home where it's quiet, where I can do what I want to do when I want to. But you're there, putting things where I wouldn't, asking for my attention . . . "

"I thought that's what you wanted," he'd said, more than once. "What we wanted."

"It is," she sighed. "But I haven't lived with anyone for a long time, and I made a lot of mistakes last time that I'm just not going to make again. I can't do that to myself."

Alone in an empty house, Jack wandered out onto his deck. The nubs of grass had turned to brown in spots, the green leeching from his lawn even as it faded from the trees, leaving them splashed with bright yellows and eye-catching reds. The sun stood in stark contrast to his grim mood, coming down gently from a cloudless blue sky to warm his shoulders.

What Sam didn't seem to be getting -- although if he were honest he perhaps hadn't made the effort to explain clearly -- was that he needed her for the very same reasons. Mistakes? He was the mistake champion. He hadn't lived with anyone for a long time either, and what had taken him a long time and a lot of growing up to realize was that although he had loved Sara -- and Charlie -- deeply, he had never given what he needed to of himself. He had spent his life with them, but he had not shared it with them.

Jack stared sightlessly at his trees, their yellows blurring into a colorless abstract. Today he'd craved Sam's company, but instead of telling her that he'd given in to her need for breathing space.

"It's your fault," she'd said, just that morning, as they teetered precariously on the brink of a fight. "You're the one who told me to take up golf, fly a kite or knit something. Knitting! What about me makes you think I'd be interested in that?"

He'd opened his mouth to explain that he'd had trouble thinking of any leisure activities because he didn't do very many of them either, but decided he'd botch it up and that it was safer to say nothing.

She'd looked at him disbelievingly for a long moment out of those expressive eyes -- he didn't like what they were expressing, but he had no idea what he could say or do to change it -- then snapped, "I'm going over to Janet's." And then she left, gathering up her leather jacket and boots on her way out, so he knew she would go first to her house for her Indian, then onto the chess game at Janet's -- and perhaps a bitch session about him, probably men in general, if indeed Sam had told Janet about their relationship -- and then she would climb on that damn bike and be gone for the rest of the day. Leaving him here alone to wallow in his abject misery.

Jack pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. He gave small thought to calling Teal'c, seeing if he wanted to do something. But SG-1 had just spent a very long, bruising week on a planet with a lot of hills, some semi-friendly natives and some other, less-friendly natives, and a peace accord to try to broach between the two in order to possibly access the trinium that lay in the no-man's land between them. Things had not gone as well or smoothly as they could have, and right now Jack really didn't want to deal with anything that would remind him of work -- and going to the base to fetch Teal'c would certainly be a reminder. This was probably just the sort of thing Sam had been trying to explain to him.

Then Jack sighed heavily, realizing what he could do with himself on a clear, late September afternoon. It was in fact a perfect day for it; he wasn't doing anything else but moping; and the rest of the day stretched out before him without any other course of action suggesting itself to him.

He could go fishing.

Up until his birthday three months ago, he had thought of fishing with fondness, an activity that took him back where he belonged, to Minnesota. It meant a few days away from the base, away from his job, sitting placidly for one of those rare times in his life, enjoying the sun, the sound of the loons, and maybe occasionally reeling in a bass as long as his arm. It meant beer and mosquitos, not shaving and no phones, no distractions except for the squirrels who ventured dockside to castigate him.

But then, on the day in late June that he turned forty-five, Sam had changed his entire perception of fishing. And not for the better. Now fishing -- much like the rest of his life -- had become a lot more complicated.

Not that his birthday had been a bad day. In fact, it turned out just the opposite: he had been planning on ignoring it, as he did most years, but Sam had different plans. He thought he'd received his gift early, in the form of one hell of a wake-up greeting, but that was only part of it.

Using some pretext or another, Sam managed to finagle her way out of a base security meeting that ran overly long, so she was waiting for him when he got home from work. "Happy birthday," she said after a long kiss at the front door.

"It is now," he agreed.

"We have a dinner reservation in Manitou in forty-five minutes," she informed him, leading him into the living room. "But you need to open your gifts first."

"Are you one of them?" he teased, making a grab for her.

"Not yet, but if you play your cards right . . . " Adroitly she side-stepped his grasp and pointed toward a pile of wrapped gifts.

"It's gonna take me forty-five minutes just to unwrap all these," he said. No one had given him a wrapped birthday gift in years. "This is . . . this is . . ."

"You're welcome," she said, bussing his temple.

She sat near him on the couch and watched with obvious delight as he worked his way methodically through the pile. "I'm sensing a theme," he told her, after opening boxes containing a creel, waders, a vest and leaders. The next box was long and slender, and contained a graphite fishing pole.

"Fly rod," she corrected, handing him one last box, which turned out to contain an assortment of artificial flies.

Jack didn't know what to say. She'd spent a small fortune on him, but . . . "I've never done this," he confessed.

"I know. But the sales clerk said this is the kind of fishing they do in Colorado. I thought if you could do this you wouldn't have to wait so long between fishing trips. It might give you something to do on weekends."

He leered at her. "I thought we already had something to do on weekends."

"Yes, but -- " He watched her visibly bite back the words she wanted to say, saw her determination not to argue with him on his birthday. "You can exchange all of it for something you want," was what she eventually settled on.

"Carter -- " he began impatiently, then immediately realized how wrong that approach was, and on how many levels. A month or so into this, and he still had trouble remembering it was okay -- preferable, even -- to call her 'Sam' off-duty. She never made a mistake on this. At work it was always a punctiliously correct 'Sir' or 'Colonel,' but as soon as they walked through a door in one of their houses he became 'Jack.'

He slid across the couch and gathered her resisting form in his arms. "I'm sorry, Sam," he said into her hair. "I don't mean to be an ingrate. No one's even really given me a gift since -- " He stopped, stricken: that wasn't going to help his case at all.

"Sara?" Sam guessed, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

"Well, yeah. Look, I'm just getting myself into trouble here after you went to a lot of effort to make this a special day. Why don't you take me to dinner, and I'll do better."

"Promise?" she asked. He suspected she might be laughing at him.

"I'll try," he answered honestly. "I do love you, Sam."

"I know." She stopped short of calling him a knucklehead, although he knew the temptation had to be there.

She wouldn't give him time to shower or change -- "Dinner's only part of it, and we need daylight" -- and she insisted they take his truck. But that was okay with him, because he liked driving. It made him feel normal, part of the everyday American experience. A lot of times it felt surreal, passing his neighbors with their non-classified jobs, knowing that there were other worlds and otherworldly threats of which they were blissfully unaware.

He drove west, the sun still at an afternoon angle as befit the longest day of the year. As a kid he'd always thought it cool that he got more daylight on his birthday than anyone else. And today, all these years later, Sam seemed to be suggesting it just might work to his advantage once again. He reached across the bench for her hand and squeezed, although he had decided he was safer keeping his mouth closed.

Manitou Springs perched precariously on the sides of a ravine, the entire town operating more on a vertical plane than a horizontal one. Jack steered the truck up steep, narrow streets, following Sam's directions, until they arrived at a restaurant so out of the way that he wasn't even sure which of the adjacent buildings they wanted. But Sam led the way confidently, almost prompting him to ask if she'd been here before. At the last second he recognized that as an imprudent idea and kissed her instead, thrilling more than he expected to at the ability to do that outside of their houses.

He indulged himself inside too, once seated in a dark alcove. He held her hand, nudged her knee with his, winked at her -- every flirtatious trick he knew, trying to show her Jack O'Neill at his most charming. He even paid attention to everything she said.

She, on the other hand, tormented him as only she could. Breadsticks disappeared nibble by nibble into a mouth that he had already learned was quite capable. It was a lesson he didn't mind learning over and over again, and that possibility hovered over the table until he had to beg her to stop before he committed an indecent act that would get both of them arrested.

On their way out of the restaurant -- Jack supposed the food had been good, but who the hell cared? -- Sam set him off all over again by pressing up behind him and sliding her hand into his pants pocket. "My turn to drive," she whispered huskily, withdrawing a ring of keys. At that moment, she could have had whatever she wanted, because all he could do was nod helplessly, standing stupidly until she pushed him into motion.

She never made it to the highway, bumping instead onto a county road that wound up and around. That branched off onto a dirt forest road, somewhat rutted, that snaked through stands of lodgepole pine and aspen. "What's up?" he asked, but she only smiled mysteriously at him, now downshifting as the truck headed down a hill, pointing toward a cleared spot where the terrain flattened out. She pulled off into an area large enough for two cars, the flattened grass eloquently illustrating that others had had the same idea, although theirs was the only vehicle here now. Theirs? His. It was still his truck, even if she drove it better than he did.

She killed the engine and a stillness settled around them, a stillness filled with expectancy. He looked at her. "Now what?"

She smiled and opened her door. "You'll see."

He met her coming around the hood of the truck, but instead of stopping she kept coming, sliding her arms around his waist and bringing her mouth up against his. Her kiss was quick and hard, full of an excitement she could no longer contain. "I hope you like it," she said, her face still close to his. "The second I saw it it made me think of you."

"Saw what?" he asked, smiling in spite of himself, caught up in her contagious enthusiasm.

By way of an answer she grasped his hand and towed him along a dirt path worn through the grass. "Obviously other people come here," she said over her shoulder, leading him up a grassy rise toward a stand of cottonwood that soughed softly in the light breeze, "but I've never seen anyone up here."

"How often do you come here?" Jack asked, although really he wanted to know if this was the place she came all those times she wasn't with him. He caught her looking at him with something akin to sadness in her face, and he realized she had once again read right through him.

"Just often enough to make sure it's as perfect as I first thought," she told him softly. "This is for you, Jack." She turned back up the path, her fingers sliding from his. A long step allowed him to reach her hand once more, and this time he linked his fingers firmly between hers. She squeezed his thumb tightly, and he knew his apology had been accepted.

The foot trail crested over a rise and started down under a green canopy of trees. Now he could hear a rough, rushing sound that required a moment for him to identify it as water. The dirt underfoot grew blacker, more studded with tree roots, and his legs kept brushing against green shrubs.

Sam ducked under a dead cottonwood leaning lazily against its live neighbor, then wended her way through a thicket of willows. Jack was on the verge of complaining about leaves in his face when they broke through and came to a stop on a small knoll above the bank of a creek. "Whoa," Jack said, the word expelled involuntarily.

The knoll dropped to a rocky bank that gurgled and spit as the creek rushed merrily past, sunlight dancing across the chop of the surface. Across the way the creek was bounded by a hardened mud bluff that soared up to the blue of the sky. As he followed the line of the gnarled rock, a hawk launched itself from a crag and spun in lazy circles, searching for a thermal to carry it higher.

As the hawk lofted itself over the bluff into the evening sun, Jack dropped his gaze to find Sam watching him, not the bird. "You're right," he offered softly. "It is perfect. Thank you."

"You're welcome," she replied, dropping to a sitting position in the grass and pulling him after her. Once he was comfortably ensconced between her legs, he felt her lean forward against his back, her chin resting on his shoulder and her breath soft in his ear. He reached back to her hips, his thumbs toying with the rivets on her jeans.

On their side of the creek the bank bent gently, bordered down to the rocky shoals by green willows and tenacious cottonwoods, their gouged trunks often leaning precariously out over the water. Rocks thrust up here and there from the creek bed, sometimes tearing at the water and sometimes just gently parting it.

"About two miles upstream there's another spot," Sam told him, her breath wafting gently past his earlobe. "It's a little more public than this place, but it'd be a good spot to get out after you'd fished your way upstream, and then you'd have an easy walk back to your truck along the road." One of her thumbs located a nipple through his shirt and began rubbing gently.

"Upstream?" he echoed. "Two miles? What kind of sport is this?"

"One in which you keep moving, I guess. They told me you always fish upstream, so the fish don't hear you coming."

"Whatever you say." He wasn't sure he believed her, but she had yet to lie to him about anything. It was just disconcerting to find there was so much to learn about an activity he thought he'd mastered as a kid.

The shadow of the bluff slid along the creek, heading their way. Everything to their right stood in a somnolent pre-twilight dimness, while everything downstream poised vibrantly in a strong wash of evening light that lit up the green leaves on the trees and sent water skittering downstream in a jeweled haze. Straight ahead of them the creek turned turbulently into a foamy whiteness, although the water ran smoothly both above and below where they sat.

Absently, Sam's hands slid below his chest. Or maybe not so absently: one hand seemed to be making a beeline for the hem of his shirt, disappearing under it until her fingers made contact with the skin of his abdomen. The other hand just kept moving south, its mission clear and direct. Speaking of mastering activities . . .

He twisted in her arms and kissed her, no longer listening to the creek since his heart now beat in a more insistent tattoo. Placidly, he let himself be pushed back until he was lying in the grass, Sam's weight directly over him as their tongues tangled somewhere behind her teeth. His nostrils filled with an enchanting mixture of loamy soil and woman.

An insatiable hunger for her ignited in his belly, forceful enough that he felt compelled to roll her over until she was the one lying beneath him. "You sure you've never seen anyone around here?" he asked, looking dangerously into her eyes as he levered one of his legs between hers.

She met him with that look of wicked mischief he so loved. "It's not like you're being asked to save the planet," she teased, bringing a finger up to trace the line that ran from the center of his forehead to his lips. Her light touch sent a shiver of anticipation up his spine. "Just me. But a hero can't turn down a request from a woman in distress, can he?"

"Oh, Sam," he growled, burying his face against the side of her neck, nipping without his teeth, always mindful that he couldn't leave a mark that would show. Didn't she know she was the one saving him, on a daily basis?

She rained kisses torridly along his jaw as the bluff's shadow enfolded them, until he could stand it no longer and slid his lips back into full contact with hers. He opened his eyes and instantly found hers, luminous from the last of the sun as they focused directly into the core of his being. The hunger growing inside him exploded into need too big to be contained.

She wrenched her lips from his and stared up at him, a smile lighting her features in a way the sun never could and the labor of her breathing drowning the last sounds of the creek. "Um, Colonel," she gasped, her fingers trailing out of his hair down his torso to his belt buckle, "I hope that's your sidearm."

"I swear it," he breathed, lowering his lips to hers once more.

The Earth had moved for Jack O'Neill that night. It had been one of the most intense experiences of his life, and certainly the closest one of his birthdays had come to perfection. He had stood with other worlds under his feet; he had seen all kinds of combat that few others had ever encountered; he had fornicated with his share of women in any number of locations; he had helped bring his son into this world -- and he was willing to stack that night with Samantha Carter up against any other life-altering experience. Unquestionably she was his, body, heart, soul and breath, and just as unquestionably he was hers.

Which was the only thing that kept bringing him back to this spot. He loved Samantha Carter, and she wanted so much for him to have something of his own to do that he dutifully packed the new fly rod, the one he would otherwise have broken after his first try, and kept coming back to see if he could unlock the secrets of this most frustrating sport. Jack hated being inept. He didn't mind if people found his intelligence -- or at least his attention span -- lacking, but it was important to him to be able to do things well. And fly fishing turned out to be something he could barely manage, let alone look proficient at.

On this bright July day, for instance, he stood glowering on the bank, fervently wishing he hadn't noticed the approval and appreciation in Sam's eyes when he informed her he was going fishing. He looked down almost angrily at the rod in his hand, wishing he either had the wherewithal to go do something else, following it up with a lie to Sam, or the gumption to tell her this particular little experiment just wasn't working.

"The only thing you're gonna catch clear up there with your mouth open like that is flies," a voice said, and Jack, adrenaline suddenly pumping, snapped his attention to the here and now to find a fisherman standing below him in the creek. "Sorry," the man said, warily eyeing the rod Jack had automatically transformed into a club in his hand. "Didn't mean to startle you."

"You didn't," Jack replied, knowing that bluff was lost as soon as he opened his mouth. Consciously he relaxed his grip and took a deep restorative breath.

But the man didn't call him on his transparency, just stepped out of the creek onto the shoal, shaking water from the surface of his waders. "It's a great day for it," he said, nodding at the rod now held loosely, reluctantly, in Jack's hand.

"I guess," Jack returned, his gaze sliding from the man, who seemed to be about his own age, to the water beyond. It looked lower than it had the last time he was here, two weeks previously.

"New rod?" the man persisted, but at least this part was the same in lake fishing: all fishermen stopped to talk to each other about their sport.

"Yeah. My girlfriend bought it for me." That simple statement, so long denied Jack, made him feel instantly charitable to this stranger.

"And you have no idea what to do with it," the man guessed.

Charity vanished. "I've been fishing my whole life," Jack informed him.

Beneath the brim of his fly-festooned hat, the man arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Here?"

Jack debated a brief moment before realizing the man would see right through his bluster. "Lakes. In Minnesota, mostly."

"Then hell, viejo, you've never been fishing at all. That's trolling. This is fishing."

Jack flared, but before true umbrage could set in, the man stepped up beside him -- he was taller than Sam but shorter than Daniel, and nearly as wide across the chest as Teal'c -- and added, "But it's very hard to get started, especially if no one's shown you what to do." He stuck out his hand. "Mano Flores."

Automatically, Jack transferred his rod to his left and shook hands, trying not to wince at the man's overly firm grip. "Jack O'Neill."

"Military?" the man speculated, and Jack nodded. "I'm an investment banker," he added, and Jack braced for a sales pitch or at least a question about which firm he had his investments with. Instead, the man turned and clumped back into the water, pulling loops of line into his right hand. "But today," he threw over his shoulder, "I'm a fisherman." Deftly he flicked his left arm, line spinning out and then snapping back under the July sun.

Jack watched as the line took on an ethereal life of its own, singing in terpsichorean splendor overhead. As the line sailed forward once more, Mano flipped his wrist forward and the line dropped lightly onto a pool of still water on the other side of the creek.

Jack's breath caught as he watched Mano's arm move slightly, making the artifical fly at the end of his line hop and skitter on the surface of the water just like a real insect. Obviously the fish believed it too, because in the next minute ripples broke the surface and suddenly the fly was gone, the line growing taut and bowing Mano's rod. The fisherman whooped with glee as he worked his reel, the rod bending impossibly concave as a silver fish thrashed out of the water into the sunlight.

Patiently Mano worked the fish -- this part Jack understood -- in and out of the water, reeling it through the foamy rapid toward the shallow where he stood braced, the water at a midpoint on his hip waders. At last Mano won the battle and hoisted the fish irrevocably out of the water, although the creature refused to admit defeat and fought on angrily, its muscled body twisting and flashing into the air just under the tip of the rod.

Catching the line just above the fish's mouth, Mano turned and grinned at Jack. "Twelve-inch rainbow," he said, starting toward the bank. "That's my fourth today."

To Jack's surprise, Mano stopped just shy of the shoal, gently lowering the trout, its thrashes growing more feeble with each bend of its tail, back into the water. One deft move of Mano's fingers and the hook slid cleanly from the trout's mouth, and with no sign of reluctance at all, the fisherman released his quarry. Without stopping to quibble, the trout flicked its tail and swam off downstream. Mano straightened, then noticed Jack staring incredulously at him. "Just giving back to the river what it gave to me," he explained.

"Oh," Jack said. Really, he supposed it wasn't all that different from setting your pole and sitting back, expecting to catch nothing at all. In fact, maybe Mano's way was better. "River?" he asked, harking back to Mano's choice of words. "I thought this was a creek."

It was Mano's turn to look incredulously at him. Then the fisherman laughed. "Viejo, you really aren't from Colorado at all, are you?"

For once, Jack remembered to go to Sam's house. He wasn't sure why that was such a hard thing to remember, even after all these months, except that her neighbors were too close at hand, the rooms in the house were a rabbit's warren of claustrophobia, and the windows were small and far between. After spending his day confined in a windowless facility twenty-odd stories below ground, Jack appreciated his own savvy in selecting a house walled largely in glass, especially after coming off a week spent at Sam's house.

Sometimes he debated inviting her to move in with him, but there were still so many complications, not the least of which was his knowledge that she got set on edge by the openness of his house almost as much as the confines of her domicile grated on him.

He dumped his waders and other fishing accoutrement in a heap on her front porch and wandered through the house in search of her. He found her out back, where she had the hose turned on her bike. "Hey," he greeted her as she twisted the nozzle closed, "have a good ride?"

"Uh huh," she replied, moving toward the spigot. She looked almost wary as she asked, "How was your day?"

"I met someone," he said. Seeing her eyebrow arch, he hastened to add, "A guy someone. A fisherman. He showed me how to cast."

"And how did that go?" she asked, still wary. She knew he hated admitting there were things he couldn't do well.

He leaned against the wooden table that seemed to be de rigueur for her neighborhood and watched as she wiped her bike down with a chamois cloth. "Actually, it went pretty well. Hey, do you know what 'viejo' means?"

"It's Spanish, isn't it? If I remember, it means 'old.' Or 'old man.' Something like that. Why?"

"No reason." Before Jack could feel too stung, he recalled that Mano hadn't sounded insulting. Guys called each other 'old man,' right? It was probably just the Spanish version of 'hey, buddy.'

Sam seated herself on the table next to him, her hands absently working the shammy cloth. He reached over with one of his hands, making a request; without comment she set the cloth aside and took up his hand instead, gently kneading his fingers between hers.

"Mano -- that's the guy -- said he's been in Colorado his whole life, and he's been fly fishing for forty-four years. He said he still only sometimes gets it exactly right. He said it takes a lot of work and effort to get the hang of it." Jack stopped, confused: he wasn't sure he was talking about fishing anymore.

"It's worth it, though, don't you think?" Sam asked, sounding just a trifle anxious. "The work -- and the effort? It eventually gets you to a place that makes you happy, right?"

By now, he was almost certain they weren't talking about fishing any longer. He reached behind her ear with his free hand, his thumb brushing gently across her cheek as he looked her directly in the eye. "It is more work than I expected," he told her honestly, dropping any pretense of a conversation about fishing. "And a lot more effort. It's never been this complicated before. But I already am happy. You make me very happy."

One of those adorable self-conscious smiles spread across her features, as it often did when she was being complimented. She deserved all the accolades she got and more, but she never really seemed to realize that.

"So, are you going to show me?" she asked a short while later.

"What?"

"How to cast."

"Oh, I don't know," he said, his voice sliding down a register. "That may require a hands-on approach."

"I was counting on that," she said, hopping to her feet and pulling him up after her. She let go of his hand and turned her back to him.

He stepped up until he was pressed tightly against her -- he clearly remembered the first time he'd done that, under the guise of hiding from Hathor's minions -- grasping her right wrist gently with his hand. "It's all about establishing a rhythm," he said, dropping the words right in her ear. "You come up, you come back, you come forward . . . " He took her arm though the motions he had learned that afternoon, feeling muscles stretch in protest. He'd be lucky if he wasn't sore tomorrow.

But his other hand was developing ideas of its own, dropping from where his arm was wrapped around her midriff to find the bottom of her shirt and begin a gentle exploration up under it. "You're gauging your distance," he explained, still working her right arm back and forth, "trying to decide just how much line you need to go where you want to."

She flinched as his fingers crawled up her soft abdomen -- she was far more ticklish than she liked to admit -- but any thoughts of an attack in that direction were dispelled by the languid sensuality he was gaining from the casting lesson. His fingers quested on.

"Once you've got your line scoped out, you point with the tip of your rod and drop your wrist," he instructed, bending her wrist forward as the fingers of his left hand worked their way inside her bra and latched carefully onto their prize. Sam's breathing grew heavier -- or maybe that was his -- and he gave up on the fishing lesson, wrapping both their right arms around her waist. He nuzzled her neck, drinking in the sweet muskiness generated by a day of riding. "You know what the best part of today was?" he asked, teeth gently grasping her earlobe and tongue laving the small earring within.

Sam's reply was to press her hips more insistently against his, where a rod of a different kind was getting ready to do some fishing of its own.

"We talked about you."

Sam stopped writhing his his grasp and turned, but not enough to cause his grip on her breast to be lost. Before the accusation could reach her eyes he was quick to add, "I could tell him you were my girlfriend without having to worry that it was gonna get back to Hammond."

"Oh," she said, settling back into his arms. "Girlfriend?"

"Um, yeah. There another title you like better?"

"No, girlfriend works. But that makes you my boyfriend." Before he could object she added, "Don't worry, I won't use it in public. So, what else did you tell this guy about me?"

Gently he worked her nipple into a point of excitement. "That you're beautiful. And an astrophysicist. But he said he already knew you were smart."

"How'd he know that?" Her left fingers started sliding up his right forearm, causing an involuntary tightening of his arm around her waist.

"Because you're trying to turn me from a lake fisherman into a fly fisherman." Jack gave up his patient seduction and turned Sam in his arms, kissing her deeply.

For a heady moment she went with him. Then, "Jack," she murmured against his teeth, pushing lightly at his chest. "This is the backyard, and the neighbors still haven't forgiven me for the Pentagon raid on the place. I don't think Mrs. Perkins is too wild about the amount of time your truck spends parked out front as it is."

"Okay," he agreed, snatching one last kiss before leading her up the back steps to the door. "But that doesn't mean we're done with your lesson."

"I was counting on that too," she said, and pushed him inside.

Jack pulled into the grassy parking area and shut the engine off. He sat for a long minute, gripping the steering wheel, trying to summon enthusiasm. He wondered if Sam had any idea at all how much effort he was putting into this strictly on the assumption that it pleased her. He wondered why he didn't just start the truck up again and keep driving: he knew how to drive, he enjoyed driving, and the day was spectacular for it. "Colorful Colorado," they said, and today seemed to be the height of that color: aspens rioting in yellow and orange, scrub oak tricked out in red, cerulean sky cloudless, delineating every basaltic upthrust with a breathtaking sharpness . . . why not just drive around, taking in the scenery?

Jack sighed and got out of the truck. Because Sam had spent a lot of money buying things she thought would make him happy, and because by now he'd figured out she was always going to need "breathing space," regardless of how much he thought he needed her. Because it was something to do that required most of his thought processes yet had nothing to do with work.

Gathering an armful of gear out of the back of the truck, he headed for the river, even though it still seemed like a creek to him. Especially today, he amended, cresting the rise and looking down into the clear, shallow water. It didn't look like it was going to be any deeper than his ankles.

He was attaching his waders to his belt when a small rock plunked into the water right in front of him. He looked up to see Mano Flores, across the river and downstream, grinning at him. Jack couldn't help it: he grinned back.

Although much lower than the last time he'd seen it, the water still chattered noisily as it bumped over the rocks out in front of Jack, so instead of saying anything, he watched as Mano reeled in and waded toward him, floundering slightly near midstream, where the water reached perilously close to the top of his waders. So, more water in the river than Jack had guessed, although the shoal was easily twice as wide as the last time he had seen it, and more rocks broke the clear surface of the water.

"Hey, Jack, haven't seen you in a month," Mano panted as he reached comfortable earshot. "Catch anything yet?"

"Oh, 'bout a hundred bushes," Jack replied sardonically. "Few trees. My thumb. And, on one really good day, my waders took in most of the river."

Mano whistled between his teeth. "How'd you get out of that one?"

Jack hoisted his Leatherman. "I gutted 'em, then went out and bought a new pair. Don't tell Sam."

Mano shook his head, the flies in his hat clicking gently as he did so. "Damn, viejo, you must be in love. I fix my waders with raft patches and duct tape, because my hija would kill me if she thought I was spending any money out here." He pointed to a spot on his waders that was covered by bright blue duct tape.

"Duct tape comes in colors?" Jack asked in surprise.

"I'll keep that in mind," Jack replied, relieved that Mano had given him something he could smile about. He'd have to tell Sam . . . Just like a sudden cloud appearing across the sun, a frown eclipsed Jack's features.

Mano studied him before venturing softly, "Viejo, how come you're out here? You're not enjoying anything about this."

"That's not -- " Jack faltered as he realized Mano was speaking the truth. He really wasn't enjoying any of this, and if Mano asked him what he wanted to be doing, the answer was: sitting home with Sam, just watching her, glad they were both home, safe and sound, nothing more than nicks and bruises to show for a hellacious week, glad for the chance to rest, glad she had consented to be in his life. But Sam wasn't home, and he'd already tried sitting around by himself -- three empty beer bottles attested to the lack of success with that plan.

But Mano was still watching him, still waiting patiently for an answer. "Because Sam wants me out here."

Mano clapped Jack on the shoulder, causing Jack to jump slightly. He wasn't used to people touching him; at least, certainly not since Charlie's death. "Viejo, you should marry that woman. My wife yells at me when I wanna go fishing. I'm supposed to be home right now, cleaning out the garage." He studied Jack another long minute, clearly making up his mind. "You don't strike me as a man who likes advice, but I'm gonna give you some anyway.

"Forget that you've ever been fishing before. Quit comparing this to whatever you did in Michigan or whatever state you said. This is a whole new world, compadre: take it on its own worth, and quit comparing it to something it'll never be."

Jack stared out at the middle of the river. He could see through to the rocky bottom, and it still didn't look much more than ankle deep. As clear as it was, you'd think you could see fish out there, if there really were any fish in this river. "Whole new world," he echoed slowly. "It still looks like a creek to me."

"Damn, viejo, don't you have any poetry in your soul?"

Some days Jack wasn't even sure he had a soul. "No."

Mano's hand was on his shoulder again, resting easily there, until Jack turned to face him. "In the back corner of a little dark house on a ranch near San Luis was a tiny, rattletrap, roll-top desk. It belonged to my abuelito, my grandfather, and after he died my father and I cleaned it out and found this: 'Best of all he loved the fall, the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams. And above the hills, the high blue windless skies . . . now he will be a part of them forever.' "

Jack had always supposed poetry to be incomprehensible, unless it rhymed, preferably in a limerick about ladies from Nantucket, but he actually understood this. Even liked it, maybe. "Your grandfather wrote that?"

"No, Ernest Hemingway wrote it. But it spoke to my grandfather, who was a fisherman. And to my father. And to me. So now I'm passing it on to you, because you are a fisherman too. Give it a new chance, viejo. Stick around long enough, and you'll hear the cottonwoods sing. Hell, you might even catch a fish."

Mano started up the bank, headed for his car parked somewhere downstream in some spot Jack had yet to find while driving past. Jack had no idea what to say, but felt he ought to say something. "Mano?" The fisherman turned, but Jack still didn't know what to say.

Mano smiled. "I'll tell you what. I'm gonna leave my card under your windshield wiper, and someday when you've got a spare evening, you bring your girlfriend over. My wife makes the best damn chile verde in the state. Besides, I wanna meet this pretty lady of yours who thinks fishing's important."

"Okay," Jack said softly, barely audible over the clatter of the river. "That I can do."

Mano smiled, raised his hand and turned, trudging back to whever it was he parked his car. Jack watched him top the rise, then turned to face the river. "A whole new world, huh? I oughtta be able to do that."

Determinedly, he waded out into it. The water swirled gently around his ankles, growing more insistent as he moved into the current. It wasn't as cold as he'd been expecting, although it couldn't be considered warm by any stretch of courtesy. He felt himself tightening in response, although the heat of the sun had already dampened the sweatband of his cap.

Jack stood a long moment, letting the sunshine wash down on him as the water flowed around him. Nostrils flaring with the comingled scents of water, wood, rock and leaves, he looked downstream to the bend of the river, studying the wash of yellow lining both banks as the afternoon sun filtered through the turning cottonwoods. As he watched, a nearby tree started shedding in a slight breeze that rustled the treetops but not the river's surface. Yellow leaves tumbled gracefully down, landing without disturbance on the water where they bobbed lightly, carried irrevocably downriver. Leaves floating on the trout streams . . .

The leaves caught the lip of a backwater, then brushed on past. Without really thinking about it, Jack raised his fly rod, left hand automatically looping line. Up, back, forward, back, forward -- the line zinged overhead, rather than flopping listlessly as it always had before, until it popped over the center of the pool. Back once more, then Jack flicked his wrist as his arm came forward, dropping the fly right at the top of the pool.

"Damn," he said, then laughed out loud. That felt good when it was done right!

He watched his fly drift slowly to the downriver end of the pool, then pulled the line back with his left hand, flexing his right arm again. Once was a fluke, twice . . . Line spun out gracefully overhead until the fly plunked down very nearly where he wanted it.

For an hour Jack stood there, fishing that same eddy, feeling the difference in his arm and wrist on the occasions he got his cast right. Nothing came close to nibbling, but he'd probably picked the completely wrong fly for this time of year and river condition. He thought he had a woolly bugger on there; probably he, of all people, should have opted for the double renegade.

Eventually he moved, pausing to glance up at the bluff, eyes seeking out the hawk. Instead he watched a crow launch its ungainly black body from the rocks, skimming across to the top of a cottonwood, its landing shaking loose another cascade of yellow leaves.

Best of all he loved the fall. Damn, viejo, you must be in love. You should marry that woman. Yeah, he probably should. Wasn't going to happen any time soon, though. There were other questions he ought to ask her first.

Standing in the middle of the river, Jack threaded a new leader, with two different renegades attached, onto his line. He coated it in the waxy substance no one seemed to be able to give a name to, but which everyone said was necessary to keep the leader on the surface rather than in the water. He looked up, eye caught by a large rock sitting wide and squat, a smooth, black hippopotamus, just out of the current, not far from the bank. This was the sort of situation when Jack was at his bush-catching best, but . . . "Whole new world," he murmured, spinning out his line.

His fly touched down neatly on the backside of the rock, all nearby bushes intact. His line still on the water, Jack surged his way upriver to gain a better vantage point. Suddenly his slack zipped through his left hand, and he looked down dumbly to see it all feeding up through the rod before it occurred to him: a fish had snagged one of his flies and was now churning its way upstream.

He tightened his grip on the moving line, clasping it simultaneously to the rod as he reached for the reel with his right. The fish hit the end of the slack and jerked, brought up short. Jack took advantage, reeling against the fish, leaning back as he hoisted the rod higher.

The trout broke the surface just to the side of the rock, fighting Jack for every inch of line. Jack reeled furiously, watching the tip of his rod bend in obeisance to the river. The trout had to be solid muscle. The damn thing fought like it outweighed Jack, although he knew his line was only rated at ten pounds, and so far it was holding.

Jack knew the moment the fish lost its battle. It wasn't anything obvious, almost more imagined than actual, but Jack felt it through the line and rod in his hands. Pressing his advantage, he reeled in a few last feet of line, bringing the trout out of the water right before his knees.

For all that fight, it was a disappointing, scrawny little thing, barely checking in at nine inches and probably weighing less than four pounds. But Jack was exultant. It was a rainbow, swimming in a river in Colorado, and Jack O'Neill had caught it. With a fly rod. After only three months of trying.

Remembering Mano's first lesson of the river, Jack splashed over to where the rock jutted out of the water, its rounded top suggesting that it got covered by the river at some point in the year. Bracing against the rock and utilizing the quiet water in the hole behind it, Jack lowered his still-thrashing catch back into the water. With a twinge of regret -- it was his first river trout -- he reached in for the hook. Swearing gently as he sliced his finger on the trout's tooth, he slid the barb back and watched the fish wiggle free. "So long," he said, as it flipped its tail indignantly and swam off.

For the next two hours Jack fished his way upstream, actually caught up in and engrossed by what he was doing. He didn't catch anything else, not even a bush or tree, but most of the time his line landed where he aimed, when he aimed, and it just felt like it was working. Mano had been right: it was a whole different world out here when it worked. A good world; one worth coming back to.

Usually, once he got anywhere close to the opening in the bank flora where he got out, he gave up any pretense of fishing and waded out the last several hundred feet. Today, jubilantly, he kept casting, spinning his line out even past the pull-out.

In his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of something that didn't belong. An old instinct he never stopped to question drew his eyes back to the spot even as he turned, squaring up to face whatever it was.

It was Sam, straddled in a posture similar to parade rest on the bank, flanked by young aspen that were almost her size, their yellow brighter but somehow not so lustrous as her hair. She wore her riding leathers over jeans and a t-shirt, her helmet dangling from her left hand. She was offering him options, he knew: if he failed to acknowledge her or scowled in her direction, she'd be gone as abruptly as she'd arrived. But if he wanted her to stay, she would.

What she didn't know was that he needed no options. The moment his eyes lit on her his heart began to pound with all that he felt for her: love, lust, like, respect, admiration, a touch of awe -- and all of it capped by the sure knowledge that of all the men on all the worlds, he was the one she chose to bestow all those same feelings upon.

He sloshed his way toward her, collecting line as he went. He stopped while still in the riverbed, the water bending gently about his ankles. She was watching him, a slight, contented smile on her lips, but there was something in her eyes, something she was reaching for. He tried his gentle flirtatious tone. "Whatchya thinkin' about?"

"You," she replied. "And me."

"Good thoughts?" he asked, but now she was looking past him at the river.

"Mmm," she answered noncommitally. "You looked good out there."

"Today, anyway. I caught a fish."

"You did?"

"Yeah." He held up his finger with its war wound. "It bit me."

"I didn't even know fish had teeth." She stepped down the bank until her booted toes touched the water.

He took another step toward her, away from the river, but he recognized they were both still in their respective armours, his waders and her leathers, both still in "breathing space" mode. This was not all her fault, he realized suddenly. "I'm learning all kinds of things out here, myself," he told her.

Now her eyes settled on his, and he understood he'd been wrong earlier: he did have a soul, and Samantha Carter could bore directly into it without even trying. "I made a mistake today," she said.

That flummoxed him. "You did?"

"Yes. You needed me, and I left. That was wrong, and I'm sorry."

Jack stepped out onto the bank beside her, his heels still settled in the river's edge. "I don't mean to smother you," he said softly.

"I know. You don't."

"But yeah, today I needed you." He wondered if she had any idea how hard it was to say that out loud.

Of course she did. She reached a tentative hand to his jaw, breaking the "breathing space" plane. "I thought this would get easier as we went on," she confessed. "Not harder."

His feet were freezing and his legs were sweaty in the neoprene waders. He unclipped them from his belt. "That's because we started in the wrong place." He bent to shuck the waders, then straightened to find her waiting in puzzlement for an explanation. "I should've asked you out. We should've tried dating."

"That would never have worked, given our situation."

"I know. But it would've made things a lot easier. It still would. You're the hardest secret I've ever had to keep, Samantha Carter."

"Me too," she said, and that looked like relief in her eyes.

"So I'm asking."

"Asking what?"

"If you'll go out with me."

"Jack, we can't -- "

"Well, movies are probably out. And romantic dinners, unless you wanna go out of town. But I know this great place to go fishing."

"Fishing?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Because -- " He watched a myriad of emotions play across her face before she settled on a slow, self-conscious smile. "Why not? I don't know the first thing about it, though."

"Then it's good you'll have an expert like me around."

Mischief appeared in her eyes. "I think you just want me along to admire your skill and prowess."

He shook his head and held up his finger. "No, I want you around so you can kiss it better when I hurt myself." He drew his breath in sharply as she sucked his finger into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it. But this was part of their problem. Using all the willpower he owned, Jack gently withdrew his finger. "Sam. We're dating, remember?"

"Right."

With the tiniest of regretful sighs, Jack leaned down to pick up his waders. "I thought those were darker," Sam said, examining them with a small frown.

Jack quickly wadded them up. "What're you doing out here, anyway?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound desperate.

"Oh, I don't know," Sam replied airily, waders mercifully forgotten -- or at least dropped for now. "I was riding along, and thought I'd stop to see if there was a big, strong man I could pick up."

"And if there was -- ?"

"Well, then I was gonna give him a ride on the back of my bike down the road to where he parked. If I was lucky, he'd be driving a truck, and if I was really lucky he'd have a two by eight in the bed."

"And if he was big enough and strong enough, he'd help you put your motorcycle in the back?" Jack guessed, and he couldn't help himself: he reached out to take Sam's hand in his own.

Her fingers curled around the flat of his hand, gripping him tightly as though she never meant to let go. "Exactly. Then, since we're not too far from Manitou, I'd let him take me to dinner at a little, out-of-the-way place I know. And, if he was really, really good, I'd let him kiss me goodnight."

"But where are you gonna find someone like that?"

"Oh, men like that are a dime a dozen," she answered breezily.

But suddenly her eyes were delving once again directly into his soul, and he was looking down into hers: scientist, soldier, colleague, friend, lover, woman -- and he was irrevocably lost. Found, too, all at the same time. "God, Sam," he whispered. "You have no idea how much I love you."

"I love you more," she whispered back, completely seriously.

They stared at each other some more, until someone clattered heavily over rocks above them, and they looked up to see a man decked out in full fishing regalia climbing down toward them. "Afternoon," he greeted them casually, as if he hadn't seen them mooning over each other like the love-struck duo they were. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

Jack smiled at Sam, then let her help him up the bank. "Best of all," he replied.