The Other Man

He got the feeling there was someone else.

The 'other man'.

There was no real reason for him to feel this way, it was just a niggling sensation he had as she sipped the remnants of her wine after dinner, her thoughts elsewhere.

It drove him nuts.

"Earth to Sam."

She blinked, lashes dipping down and up in a curtsey that was utterly distracting. "Pete?"

He half-laughed, "I don't know why I bother taking you out sometimes, Sam. You're only ever half here."

At least when they were at home - his or hers - he could get her full attention, and when he managed *that*, Sam Carter could be utterly dazzling.

She winced and set her glass down, rubbing her finger over the rim. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he said. "Be here."

The finger toying with the glass was getting annoying, so he reached out and captured it in his hand. "Tell me about your day."

Her face went blank, and Peter cursed himself. It was an automatic question - one which billions of people asked their partners every night when they came home at the end of the day.

Through a process of difficult question and evasion, he'd learned it was The Wrong Question to ask Sam Carter.

The Wrong Question as in, she wouldn't answer it. Or she wouldn't give a satisfactory answer to it.

"It was fine."

Unsatisfactory answer.

In Peter's mind, a satisfactory answer involved actually naming the people she worked with, or talking about her projects or what she did that day. It involved giving a personal side to the work, not just the summarised overview.

He *hated* summarised overviews. He wanted the details, the nitty-gritty of her day. He wanted to know what made her tick.

"Fine as in... 'Fine, I finished another project'? Fine as in 'Fine, I did nothing of any real importance today but nobody stomped on my toes so it was okay'? Fine as in 'Fine, my boss fired me, but I was happy to shake the dust of that place from my feet'?"

Pushiness was not his style, but with this woman, Peter had learned it was push or get nothing.

She considered her answer, carefully, choosing her words. "Fine as in 'Today we made some progress on the project, but not enough for my liking.'"

"Would there ever be a day where you made enough progress for your liking?" He loved her energy and drive - it was what had attracted him to her in the first place. Unfortunately, he had learned that all her energy and drive went into her work. Very little of it went into her personal life - and even his presence hadn't changed those old habits all that much.

*There* was her laugh. "Probably not. How was your day?"

"Wonderful. Amazing. Quite awesome. Stupendous. Are you bored yet?"

Another laugh. Things were looking up - and he really did mean *up*.

"No," she said. "Not bored. Just...tired."

"We could go home," he suggested, and he *did* make the suggestion suggestively. Depressing as it was, there were moments when he suspected the only level on which they met equally was the mattress of a bed. Or the kitchen counter. Or the refrigerator door. Or the dining table.

Okay. The libido was going to be put out the back door and not let back in until they got home.

Really.

Of course, it refused to sit and stay like a good libido, and bounded right back in as she smiled - the most adorable smirk that was doing wonders for his ego. Peter might not be able to talk to her about anything topic she wanted to speak about, but by God, he could give her a good time in bed!

The drive home was too long - made longer by the hand on his thigh. Not creeping up his thigh, not stroking it, just sitting there.

His libido contemplated pulling over the side of the road, hauling her into the back seat, and sacrificing elegance in desperate *want*. It did this at each stop light. He kicked it out the door and tried to concentrate on the road. Of course, after the sixth red light, it did get a bit old.

Sam, on the other hand, damn her eyes, knew quite well what she was doing to him with just that hand on the thigh.

They got home and everything coalesced. Quite delightfully.

And yes, Sam Carter could be utterly dazzling.

Certainly, she took his breath away.

Afterwards, they spooned together like kittens and slept like the dead.

And Peter woke up at six AM on Saturday - the same time he woke up every day of the week.

And he started snooping.

It wasn't intentional or malicious. It was just...curiosity. Peter was curious about this woman who gave him everything and nothing, who had more veils in her soul than could be found in a mosque full of Muslims.

He prowled around the house, wrapped in the robe she'd bought for him - his robe, to be used when he stayed over - and tried to make sense of this woman who let him into her body but wouldn't give him the key to her mind.

Sam Carter was, without a doubt, an enigma. And Peter was a troubleshooter by trade, he tried to crack puzzles - and if this woman wasn't a puzzle, then he didn't know what was.

He'd already tried the bookshelves and found nothing telling. Her taste in books was eclectic, bizarre. Astrophysics, aliens, archaeology, astronomy. Star Wars and sociology, Dean Koontz and Tom Clancy, military strategy and conspiracy theory. All jumbled in together, higgledy-piggledy.

But this morning - ahhh, this morning! - he found gold. Purest, refined gold.

The photo album.

A glance through the photos showed that it was up to date. The date was marked in the corner with the little orange letters of a camera dating system. They started at '98 and came up to last month. Maybe three dozen photos spanning five years.

He flipped through the pictures, greedy for the sight. And yet, amidst curiosity and exultation, he felt the sick hollow in his stomach - as thought he were a voyeur. This was a part of her life she hadn't seen fit to share with him, and he craved knowledge of it.

The theme was easy to spot. Four faces that came up repeatedly, time after time. There was Sam, of course. A thirty-something man with dark hair that was long, then very short, then just short. Then a black man who seemed to have a hat fetish. Then a man whose hair greyed as the years went on, showing his age.

Pete flipped through the photos one by one, seeing other faces mingled among the four main ones - a small dark-haired, dark-eyed woman; a girl who grew as the years went by; an older man, bald-headed and rubicund; and one or two of a man, muscular and with a good-natured smile on his face.

He flipped through them swiftly the first time, then went back more slowly. And paused with his finger on one photo halfway through. The man was one of the main four, but Pete hadn't really *seen* him the first time through.

The hair was greying, but the man wasn't old. There was good humour lurking in the lines of his face, but this man had seen great grief. A faint smile sat easily on the wide mouth, but Peter got the feeling that anything more would be earned - and to the people around this man, it would be a smile worth whatever it took to earn it.

Sam had evidently earned it.

In the photo that gave him pause, the man's gaze was turned fondly towards Sam. She was laughing at the person taking the photo, and the stranger had been caught in the expression of admiration.

There was something unsettling about it. He couldn't say what or why. The gaze of the man in the photo just...raised his hackles. Sitting back in the couch and staring at the photo, Pete was hard-pressed to explain why it was that this photo caught his attention - there was nothing vaguely possessive about the gaze the older man was giving Sam, it was just amusement and affection.

And yet...

There were footsteps in the hallway and she emerged into the morning, bleary-eyed, hair-mussed, and squinting at him in the pre-dawn light. "Morning."

"Hey sleepyhead," he said as she came down. Abruptly, it registered that he was looking through something of hers that she hadn't actually given him explicit permission to explore. But all she did was yawn and raise an eyebrow at his choice of 'reading' material.

Pete decided to beard the lioness in her metaphorical den. "Who's this?" He asked, tapping his finger on the photo that had concerned him so.

She squeezed herself in beside him, arm over his shoulders, her far leg crossing over both her own and his in pleasant possessiveness.

"That's the Colonel," she said, resting her cheek on his head.

"The Colonel?" Not 'Ben', or 'David' or 'Wainwright', or 'Smith', but 'The Colonel'.

Peter could almost hear the capitals making the rank a real noun.

"Colonel O'Neill. Two 'L's." He could hear the smile in her voice, and it was somehow private, excluding him from the beach of memory along which she walked.

"And he would be...?" *The 'other man'.*

She seemed surprised at his question. "My commanding officer."

"You have a commanding officer?" So many secrets about her he didn't know. So many things she wouldn't - or couldn't - tell him. So many barriers she held around her - and it was going to be a long, slow haul to bring them down.

"Mm-hmm." Great. Another one of those 'don't touch' topics.

For some reason he was thinking 'Setec Astronomy' and he couldn't for the life of him work out why.

"And these guys?" He pointed to another photo that featured 'The Colonel' as well as several other guys. All guys. Did she work surrounded by guys or something?

She poked a finger at the relevant face, "Murray. Daniel. Janet. Jonas. General Hammond…"

Pete stared at the rotund guy with the bald pate. "He's a general?"

"Mm-hmm." And he hit the wall of Don't Touch once more. He was starting to feel a little bruised.

Maybe it was better not to pry into her life after all. Live for the moment. Enjoy her company and the sex. And don't try to look beyond the veil she'd hung over her private life. It would only cause trouble.

His eyes returned to the photo of Sam and 'The Colonel' - he couldn't stop staring at it. Wondering.

She seemed unashamed of the photo and the look the man was giving her in it. Aware of it, but not abashed by it. And she was decidedly reticent about speaking of any of the rest of the photos.

So Pete discarded the photo album, picked her up (which was no sinecure either - she was tall and leggy and beautifully toned) and took them back to bed.

An hour later, as she dozed in bed, he made buttered toast and percolated coffee to present to her in bed. He'd just scraped the butter thinly across the raspy surface of the toast when the front door reverberated with a firm *rap-rap-rap*.

Pete glanced at the clock and frowned. Who went visiting at eight on a Saturday morning? Other than the Mormons, of course.

He wrapped the robe more securely around him and went to see.

The door stuck in the frame - the weather had been unseasonably humid and the door had swelled - and he yanked it open. And stared.

There was no mistaking the man who stood on the front porch of her house.

He could feel the piercing gaze even from behind the sunglasses perched on the nose of the man who stood before him, his expression briefly surprised before reverting to a very neutral pleasantness. Pete definitely hadn't earned his approval. Yet.

"Colonel O'Neill, I presume?" Peter wasn't above taking any advantage he had with this man. He certainly felt at a disadvantage when it came to the parts of Sam's life that she refused to share with him.

"That would be me." He eyed Peter levelly and cautiously, measuring him up, "Is Carter home?"

No introductions, no niceties. Straight to the point and damn the torpedos.

And he didn't seem to feel the need to know the first or last thing about Peter. In The Colonel's eyes, Peter was a non-entity, of no importance, not even someone whose name should be asked.

He'd never thought of himself as a vindictive guy, but the urge was coming upon him to prod this man into some kind of a reaction. He was being very tempted to tell the absolute truth and say that Sam was in bed, quite exhausted from this morning's bedromp. It would be interesting to see The Colonel squirm. Assuming that there was a heart under all those hard steel edges that Peter was seeing now.

"She's in bed." The implication was plain and clear.

Up went the eyebrows, and, although there was no hint of the eyes behind the sunglasses, Peter got the feeling that he'd been summed up, measured up, and found distinctly wanting.

"O-kay," was all The Colonel said. "Well, let her know I dropped by, and I'll call her later."

Evidently, Pete wasn't even to be trusted with a message.

He went back to the coffee and the toast in a slightly less-than-pleased mood.

"Who was that?"

She wasn't wearing anything under the thin silky robe. Quite distracting. "The Colonel." He handed her a mug and she accepted it, her eyebrows rising.

"What'd he have to say?"

"I wasn't trusted with a message." Pete shrugged, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "He said he'd call you later."

Sam nodded, apparently content with that. If she noticed his bad mood, she said nothing of it, but allayed his concerns in other ways when it was clear he'd finished his coffee.

But even her response in bed wasn't quite enough for him to put aside his misgivings. It nagged him, like a fishwife in his head, distracting him, disturbing him. It ached like a muscle strain, and grated like nails down a blackboard.

He'd wondered if there was an 'other man' in her life.

He still wasn't sure.

But, for all that Pete was the man sharing her bed, he couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that he was the 'other man'.

*