by Rysler
* * *
Sam had tied a blindfold over her eyes to keep her from seeing the darkness. The cool rain against her neck was at least tactile, though she had long stopped being able to really feel it. Her extremities had gone mostly numb. She stomped in her boots to feel her feet, opened her mouth to let the water run in. Closed it to block the water out. Choked.
"Don't drink the stuff, Carter," Jack said when he heard her sputtering.
"Can't help it, sir." Saying the words sent a new torrent of rain into her mouth. She yanked down her hat, trying to shield her face. Her last cloth had gone to her eyes. She'd have to rip apart her tee shirt to create a bandana for her lips, which would expose more of her body to the dampness. She wasn't ready to do that yet. But in another hour…
"This planet sucks," Jack said.
Sam said nothing. She knew he was talking for the same reason she drank the rain. He needed sensory stimulation. The planet's total darkness and muted rain, with no wind, no lightning, was driving them both mad.
"Sorry about the flashlight," Jack said.
"It was muddy," Sam said. She'd said the same thing an hour ago. They only had the green illumination of their watches and a few flares. They'd shot off one flare four hours ago, hoping to see the Stargate again, but they'd only seen an endless, flat plain of mud, and the grey sky lit up against the orange light. Sam had cried. The rain had mixed with her tears, and Jack hadn't noticed. Or had pretended not to.
Three hours ago, they'd tried to separate to cover more ground, and then Sam had lost the call of his voice, and she'd found herself screaming, in her knees in the mud, balancing on the swiftly tilting world, afraid to more farther away from him. When he'd found her again, and had covered her mouth with his dirty hand, they'd agreed, silently, not to stray more than a few feet apart.
"They'll radio," Jack said. Once an hour, he said all this, as if going through a script.
"If there's nothing in the atmosphere to block the signal," Sam said.
"Couldn't you tell?"
"Sorry, sir, I left my tricorder on the set of Star Trek."
They stomped loudly forward, fighting the quiet, Sam trying not to panic at the nothingness crawling across her skin, made worse by the numbness. The operating mission theory was that if they kept walking forward, they'd go in a large circle, and find themselves back at the Stargate. There had been a DHD. Glowing orange lights danced in front of Sam's blind eyes. She groped for them, and tripped over something, and fell to her knees.
"I tripped over something," she said, turning around, feeling the ground.
"A spaceship?"
She laughed.
"A radio tower?"
"Sir."
"A tree root?"
Her hand found a ledge, and she slid along it. "A dent. In the ground."
"A dent? A fucking dent?"
"Sir."
His laughter hurt her ears. It was a loud, howling, hysterical sound. He kicked the ground, and mud splashed onto her face. "We're going to die out here, Carter," he said. "They're going to send search teams and find us killed by the gentle misting rain and the empty plains. 'This is the way the world ends.'"
"Sir. We've only been out here ten hours. We have enoug provisions for three days. We can probably go two more after that, if the water isn't toxic."
"If the water isn't toxic," he said. She heard a thud. He'd fallen to his knees beside her. "Carter, I won't survive another ten hours. This is torture. This is what the ancient Chinese have nightmares about."
"You have to keep it together, sir," she said, groping on along the edge of the dirt. She dug. She'd dug before, every half hour, only finding more mud. No snake had bit her. No vole had nuzzled her fingers. No worm had tempted Jack into a long discussion on fishing.
"Why? There's nothing out here to keep it together for." He laughed, again, that terrible sound, shocking in the planetary silence.
"For me!" She leapt forward, grabbing his shoulders. She shook him. "I need you."
"You need me for what?"
She kissed him, hard and bruising, wincing at the wet give of his lips. Like a cold fish, under the water. Or a dolphin or a shark, more realistically. As she pushed against him, he opened his mouth to her, maybe to order her to stop, but she swallowed his words and sought more of him, the heat beyond his lips. The relative dryness of his tongue, licking at hers. He shoved her away, and said, "For what, Carter?"
"To remind me that I'm alive. This is like being dead. This--"
"Purgatory," he said.
"Worse. The void. The space between stars. Hell."
"Do you think it's raining there?"
"I do, now."
He laughed; his normal laugh. She kissed him, and pulled at his hair, and squeezed the back of his neck, until he kissed her back. He unbuckled her vest and shoved it off her shoulders. She ignored his, sliding her hand lower instead, finding his cock, already hard, and blissfully hot against her hand, even through the wet canvas. "How long?" She asked.
"Since you said you found something, frankly," Jack said.
She laughed. He pushed her backward, into the mud. His hand squeezed between her legs, and then slid up her stomach, pushing up her tee shirt, revealing more of her numb skin to the rain. "Why, Jack?" She asked.
"No one will know. We'll die here."
"Is that all?" She felt oddly disappointed to be his dirty little secret, now, after four years of loving him, of wanting him, of just assuming he felt the same every time he saved her life, or her job, or her honor.
"There's no sin here. Not in the void," he said, panting the words against her ear. More heat. Dry breath. She arched against him, clawing at his head, his hair softened, but still bristly. She let it scraped her hand; hoped she'd bleed.
"Jack," she said, when he unbuckled her belt and released her gun and her knife and her canteen and left her defenseless.
"I like the blindfold," he said.
"You can see it?" She wanted to rip it off, to see, too.
"No. Just feel it, when I kiss your mouth." He kissed her mouth. "Or your cheeks." He kissed her cheeks. "Or your eyes." He kissed her eyes. She felt the pressure, like squeezing a sponge over her eyes, cool and almost refreshing. His cock, still in his pants, pushed against her thigh.
"Take off my clothes," she said.
"Won't we freeze to death?"
"Does it matter?"
He unbuttoned her fly and yanked down her pants. The cloth bunched at her calves. She spread her legs wide, and groped for him. Blind, she could imagine they were in a pool, or a jungle, or in her quarters with the sprinkler system on. Anywhere. Maybe the event horizon of the Stargate, swirling, feeling like water instead of light. But somewhere, instead of the void.
"Jack," she called, when he seemed to hesitate, and he entered her. She shuddered against the intrusion, glad of the rain mixing with her wetness. He thrust in again, making her cry out. She clung to his shoulders, riding him, letting their energy build together, their friction stimulating the atoms, creating heat she could imagine was fire, was light--why hadn't they tried this before?
He pushed her into the mud, sliding with each thrust, pinning her down. She slid her hand between them and found her clit. His hands were planted at her sides. He filled her again and again, until he gave and anguished, barbaric cry and collapsed on top of her, crushing her between his weight and the mud.
"God, Sam," he said, and reached between their bodies to cover her hand with his own. She let his rough fingers take over, harsh, hard, pushing back the sensation of rain with each stroke, until she convulsed, and gasped, and rain poured into her mouth. He held her, his chin against her cheek, so she could feel his stubble. "Can we sleep?" He asked.
"Set your watch. An hour of sleep, an hour of walking."
He sighed. She heard the beep of his watch as he set the clock, and the noise nearly made her cry. She wanted a symphony of electronics, but he tucked himself around her again, and then she could hear nothing but the hiss of rain again, the white noise covering up their own breathing, the stormclouds shrouding their naked bodies, as if they were aleady corpses.
Sam woke to the sensation of warmth on her face. She licked her lips, and they were malleable, but dry. She opened her eyes. Blackness greeted her. "Jack?" She asked.
"Well, I don't feel dead," he said. His voice came from nearby. He was no longer holding her. She heard a scuffle, and then he said, "Take off your blindfold, Carter."
She climbed to her feet, pulling off the blindfold at the same time. If the rescuers had come, well, she was naked already. Bright light greeted her eyes. She covered them, and yelped.
"Cruel, isn't it? They'll adjust."
She blinked rapidly, and then peeked through her fingers. She could see nothing but pale green mud, and the white light of the horizon meeting it at at a distant line. "It's green?" She asked. Above her head, she saw one solitary, hazy sun, shining down.
"Look closer."
She looked at her feet. Tiny green sprouts grew between her toes. "How long was I asleep?" she asked.
"About five hours," he said. "I turned off the alarm. I thought, if we were going to die, then--"
"Yes, sir."
"Right. Carter? Turn around."
She turned around, and there was the Stargate, its grey ring gleaming in the sunlight. "The circle worked," she said.
"Yeah."
"Can we go home?"
"Maybe… not yet," he said, and stepped closer. He was still naked, and half-erect.
She smiled, and said, "Fine, but, can we move to the steps? Just in case."
"One of my secret kinks," he said.
The ancient stone below the Stargate was already warming under the sunlight. She curled her toes, and threw her arms out, and then around Jack.
"From the void to Adam and Eve," he said. "I'm not stupid."
"Please, sir."
"Please what? There's stuff growing, Carter."
"We just caught the planet at a bad time."
"A bad time? You don't see anything metaphysical about this, doctor?"
"Like having sex made the plants grow?"
"People have been forced to have sex on strange planets before," he said.
"We are not a force of nature, sir."
"Speak for yourself."
He would have kept arguing, but she covered her mouth with his and took his penis in her warm, dry hand. So he shut up, and kissed her, and tried not to think about sunburn on his ass. That would be too ironic.
"No one will no," she murmured.
He said, "Let's call this planet, 'Paradise.'"
END