DISCLAIMER: Stargate and all who travel through her are the property of MGM, or something like that.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This snippet of a story is in response to Rocketchick's 'Sam as a romance writer' challenge on the samandjanet list.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Not Quite Shakespeare
By ralst
...Samuel brushed his hands across Jane's delicate skin, savouring the exquisiteness of her...
"Carter?"
Sam snapped down the top of her laptop, almost severing her thumb in the process. "Sir?"
O'Neil gave the quivering piece of hardware a suspicious look, but fearing an answer that would cause him to doubt his command of the English language, he refrained from questioning Sam about whatever she'd been working on for the last four hours. "Daniel's decoded the latest doohicky and seems to think the planet's harmless," one side of his mouth lifted in a smirk "so I've told Doc Fraiser to expect an emergency."
"Janet?" Sam rubbed her hand across the lid of her laptop. "Will she be joining us on the mission, Sir?"
"Noooo," Jack sighed, "it was a joke, Carter, you remember those, don't you?" Before Sam could formulate a reply he turned on his heels and left, a "1400 hours at the nearest stargate of your choice" following in his wake.
Sam checked her watch, she had almost two hours before she'd need to get ready for the mission. Two hours that she should really spend on the piece of Asgard technology Colonel O'Neil had accidentally brought back from Thor's ship - it had turned out not to be a dandy little toothpick, as the colonel had assumed.
Sam's eyes sought out the alien device then darting away to check the security camera, before landing on the laptop in front her. She shouldn't. She knew she shouldn't.
Sam opened the lid and began to type;
...flawless shoulders. Fingers trembling with need, he traced a cool line between her shoulder blades until they impacted against the silk of her bra. "Oh Janet" he sighed, his deft fingers making shorttttt...
Sam squinted at the page. She'd done it again, added a T where there shouldn't have been one. That made the eighth time in the last two hours. She was a PhD, dammit, you'd think she could spell the name Jane without the assistance of an on-line dictionary. Hitting the delete key she quickly managed to obliterate her mistake.
..."Oh Jane" he sighed, his deft fingers making short work of the bra's clasp. "I have waited so long to have you here in my arms."
"Oh Sam."
His mouth descended upon hers, their tongues meeting in a caress of velvet and coffee...
Coffee? Sam double-checked what she'd written, unsure where that particular image had come from.
"Did Jack tell you?"
Sam jumped, her finger brushing against the computer's touch pad and threatening to wipe out a day's worth of writing. "Daniel!"
"Sorry." He took a long sip of his drink and waited for Sam to fiddle with her laptop and deftly close the lid. She didn't look particularly pleased to see him. "I thought you'd like to know that I managed to decipher the Porlavian's alphabet. It was quite similar to the tablets were found on PV5483, only the upper section of..."
"Daniel?"
"Yes?"
"The colonel told me about the mission," she gave a pointed look towards her laptop, "but if you don't mind I have a lot of work to do before then..."
"Oh." He blinked away his surprise, having become accustomed to Sam's scholarly interest in his work. "I'll see you at the gate."
Sam spared him a tight smile before returning her attention to her computer screen.
...meeting in a caress of velvet and... and... She hit the delete button ...meeting in a velvety caress, Jane's fingers delving into Samuel's thick, sun-kissed hair. The feel of taut nipples pressing into her skin sending a cascade of feeling throughout Jane's body. Her...
Nipples? Sam knew men had nipples, and she was reasonably sure they could become taut, but... Slowly she closed the lid of her computer, absently noticing the slight wobble that now accompanied the screen's descent. There was something wrong with her story. She didn't know what, but there was definitely something wrong.
Placing the tiny machine under her arm, Sam set out to consult an expert.
Janet had been taking inventory before Sam came in, and despite her usual pleasure at her friend's company she was beginning to wish she was still counting Band-Aids.
"I suppose," Janet hedged, "but it would really depend on your definition of taut. Men's nipples can certainly become firmer, if the right stimulation is applied, but it's not something that's often commented upon."
"It's not?" The word had seemed to fit so perfectly as she'd typed it into the computer, but the second she'd looked at it sitting there in pixelated black and white she'd known there was something not quite right. "Are you sure you've never heard them described like that? Maybe in a romance novel or somewhere." She added casually.
"A romance novel? I haven't read one of those in years." Janet gave her friend a penetrating look. "And why exactly did you need to know this?"
Sam blushed, her impulse to escape only just tempered by her desire not to offend her friend. "I was..." The rest of Sam's sentence was swallowed up in a mumble.
"What?"
"Writing a novel."
"A novel?" Janet smiled at her friend before a disturbing thought interrupted her delight in Sam's blush. "Containing taut male nipples?"
"I..." Sam's blush intensified. "I thought it might help stimulate the artistic side of my brain." The stupid article she'd read in Physics Monthly hadn't mentioned untold embarrassment when it suggested the benefits of bilateral brain lobe employment. "Recent studies have shown that equal stimulation of the..."
"But taut nipples?"
"It's, it's a romance." She took in Janet's sceptical look. "A romance novel."
Janet thrust her hands deep into her lab coat pockets, annoyed but unsure exactly why. "Can I read it?"
"Read it?"
"Yes," Janet tried a reassuring smile, "it might help with your...your nipple problem."
At that moment all Sam wanted to do was wipe the sorry excuse for romance from the face of the Earth, but she hated to say no to Janet. "I suppose." She reluctantly passed over her battered laptop before her urge to escape propelled her to make a hasty exit.
With a mumbled 'nipples' Janet carefully opened the screen.
...Samuel stepped from his powerful motorbike, the smell of grease assaulting his nostrils...
It had been two days since Sam had given her fledgling novel to Janet and in that time she'd been held prisoner by an extremely pissed off Porlavian army, been forced to disabled the entire stargate network, broken free from gaol to reinitialised the start-up sequence before calling in for reinforcements. And somehow it still seemed easier than facing her friend and risking her work, and by extension herself, being ridiculed.
"Hey, Sam, how are you feeling?"
"Fine." Sam had been a little disconcerted to find that Janet wouldn't be conducting her return physical but she was secretly glad to see that her friend was concerned about her well-being. "Did you erm..." Her arm waved in the direction of a slightly battered laptop.
"Hmm?" Janet's gaze followed Sam's almost too casual gesture. "You mean the novel?"
"I wouldn't really call it a novel," Sam demurred.
Having waded through forty pages of badly written romantic claptrap, Janet was forced to agree. "It was interesting." She wasn't lying. Despite the cheesy plot and bodice-ripping language the story had held her attention like no other. She couldn't believe Sam would share it with her. Unless... "Your heroine, Samuel."
"Hero."
"What?"
"You called him a heroine."
"I did?" Janet moved around Sam to close her office door, the blinds on the windows already securely drawn. "A slip of the tongue."
At Janet's pause Sam began to think the worst. "You didn't like him, did you?"
"Who?" Janet waved her arm to forestall Sam's reply. "I mean, yes, of course I liked him. Loved 'him' in fact."
"You did?" Sam had thought the character okay, a little lacking in the social graces but generally likeable enough. But he hardly rated a 'loved him' comment. Surely, if a person was going to be attracted to a character it would be Jane. Now there was a loveable piece of writing.
"Well, sure, except for the gendered pronouns I've been in love with him for years."
Sam looked at her friend as if she'd been hit by a staff weapon. "Are you feeling okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Are we still talking about my story?"
"Kinda." Janet retrieved a stack of papers from the bottom draw of her desk, the crisp whiteness of the pages marred in several places by bright pink highlighter. "How about you give me a quick recap of the story."
Sam shrugged, the conversation had become a little odd but being alone with Janet was always a pleasure and she didn't see any reason to interrupt their time together. If Janet had been taken over by a Goa'ald pathogen they could just as soon fix it later as sooner. "Samuel is a meteorologist working as a volunteer for Green peace, and two months into his top secret posting to Antarctica his team is joined by a marine biologist called Jane..."
"Samuel, Jane and a top secret location?" Janet waited to see a flicker of recognition, but none was forthcoming. "Go on."
"Well Jane is this truly amazing woman. Not only beautiful but intelligent, kind and with the sweetest of smiles." Sam's voice trailed off as she became lost in the image of her creation. "Naturally Samuel falls in love with her."
"Naturally." A tiny smile graced Janet's lips. "Although it was more than I'd dreamed possible."
"Janet?"
"Carry on."
"That's pretty much it," Sam shrugged, she was not about to mention the nipples, "they foil a plot to melt the Polar ice caps, fall in love and live happily ever after. The end."
"Ah ha." For the smartest person she knew, Sam could be extremely dense. "So Sam, the blonde haired, blue eyed scientist and Jane, the tiny brunette with a great bedside manner, lived happily ever after?"
"I never said she had a great bedside manner."
"Well I do. No matter what Jack O'Neil says."
Sam looked as if she was about to correct her, but suddenly her mouth gaped open and her cheeks suffused with colour. "Oh."
"Oh indeed." Leaning against the desk, just in front of Sam, Janet let a playful tone enter her voice. "So, do we live happily ever after?"
Sam groaned, her hands coming up to cover her face and a thousand wishes for the ground to swallow her whole on her lips. "I didn't realise...I'm sorry Janet, I never would have..."
"Hey," Janet gently pried Sam's fingers away from her face, "I'm all in favour of life imitating art."
As Sam looked up she saw Janet's radiant smile and her lips began to lift in a grin of her own. "Even really bad art?"
"Especially bad art." Leaning forward Janet sealed her comment with a kiss, secretly promising to deliver an extra kiss for ever word of bad prose she had been forced to read.
The End