Love Hurts

Love doesn't put conditions on what it loves. Real love doesn't.

It isn't always happy and it isn't always fun.

Right now, love hurts.

He wonders if he's a joke among the other personnel of the base. If they look at him and whisper behind his back: the old Colonel pining after the young Major.

He's not pining. He has never pined after Carter. He's looked at her and felt the warmth of affection and the fierce grip of desire. He's stormed away from her, utterly infuriated by her insistence when he knew he was right. And he's committed to her in his own way, passing over the chance to get laid in favour of keeping himself for her in a quaintly old-fashioned manner.

It hurts that she's seeing this other guy. There's a part of him that doesn't want to share what he has of Sam Carter. That's right and just - some love should be intimate and exclusive. But there's a part of him that is happy that she's happy too. He just wished it was a bit bigger and the part of him that hurt was a bit smaller.

And he wishes he didn't see the guilt in her eyes when she looks at him sometimes.

There are some things a man doesn't want to know. One is that a woman you love is seeing someone else. Another is that the woman you love is sleeping with someone else. And still another is that the woman you love has someone else in her life but feels guilty about it because she feels some tenuous, unspoken tie of loyalty to you.

A man has his limits.

He has not yet reached his.

Not yet. Maybe soon. Maybe never.

Daniel nearly mentioned it. Teal'c is not so foolish. And Hammond won't show what he claims not to know. So Jack is safe from everything but her gaze.

He feels it on him when they're sitting by the fire after dusk on the latest planet they've been sent to explore. He feels it on him when she's explaining something he needs to know in order to make the executive decision that is his role and his right. He feels it on him as they go through the Stargate to each planet, and he feels it on him as they come home.

It isn't puzzled or worried or tender or guilty. Not all the time. They are soldiers, after all. Their humanity keeps them from being mere machines, and their duty keeps them from emotional displays. There are still 'moments' when something clicks and their gazes met and meld, whether in shared understanding of some action about to be taken or in the briefest moment of connection.

But once in a while, he'll look away from his surveying and meet her eyes, and something more ephemeral yet more meaningful than communication will pass between them. And one or the other will look away and nothing will be said.

Nothing has ever been said.

Not of their own free will, anyway.

And nothing will ever be said.

Not until the dangers are past, anyway.

But nothing could stop it from hurting.

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