New spacepirate fic: Living The Dream
Such a relief to have this finished. This is the fluffy one. I tried to write an angsty one, but it's not working out so far. I will keep hammering away at it, but wanted to have something to post today.
Title: Living The Dream
Author: Pepper
Rating: PG
Season: AU
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. I borrow for fun and frolics. You knew that already. Further disclaimer: I know noooooooooothing about engines. Terms gathered from Wikipedia sprinkled fairly randomly.
Featured Character(s): Sam, Jack, Teal'c
Pairing(s): Sam/Jack
Summary: A pirate's life isn't all leather and space guns, you know...
A/N: Written for the
spacepirate_ficficathon, from prompt #4: Starship engines that are cranky so Sam spends a lot of time fixing them. Grease stains. Livestock handling and a reference to Kirk transporting whales back in time by someone on board.
And last but not least, happy birthday,
annerbhp!
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When Jack first heard someone refer to him as a pirate, he didn't stop grinning for three days.
---
"Well, that's it: we're screwed."
Sam emphasized the finality of her statement with a thrown piece of...something ... that clanged satisfyingly against the hull, and bounced off into some darkened corner of the ship. "Did we need that?"
Sam glared. "That," she said, crossly, "is the reason we're screwed. Do you know how much damage it's done?" She didn't wait for him to reply, which was probably just as well. "The compressor is scratched to hell, the coolant pumps look more like colanders, and there may be a crack in the shock cone. If I'd just found the parts to replace it on Lalande..." She saw the blank look that had settled on Jack's face, and scowled. "The engine," she said, slowly and clearly, "is crap."
"Needs new parts?"
"Needs a new engine."
"Ah."
"I've been shoring it up with string and duct tape too long."
Jack stared. "You duct-taped the engine?" He wasn't sure whether to be frightened or impressed.
Sam merely shrugged. "You've always known I'm a MacGyver fan."
"Yeah, but... where did you get it?"
"I have my sources," she said, mysteriously.
"It's alien duct tape, isn't it?"
She didn't answer. Oh yeah, it was alien duct tape all right. Where the hell did she find alien duct tape? He didn't remember seeing any alien stationery stores on Lalande.
There was a pause as Sam scrubbed angrily at the black grease stains on her hands. The rag she was using looked to have been soaked in oil, so it wasn't really helping, but she was too annoyed to notice. She also had a couple of smudges on her face, which Jack was, quite frankly, finding adorable. He wanted to point them out, but knew that she wouldn't react well. Probably because he'd be grinning when he did so. There was something about grease-stained, irritable, Engineer Sam that grabbed him right... there.
She shot him a suspicious look, and he quickly composed his expression. "What?" she snapped, anyway.
"Uh, you've got something..." he waved vaguely in the direction of her face. She scrubbed with the rag, making it infinitely worse. "Okay," he said, helpless to stop the smile, "you'd better stop that."
She glared at him, glared at the rag, and growled. "We're going to die of starvation, oxygen deprivation, or radiation poisoning on this goddamn moon. Laugh that off." She threw the rag at him, and he caught it instinctively - then wished he hadn't, as a sticky layer of oily grime transferred itself to his fingers. Oh, ew. He opened his mouth to object, but was interrupted by a hideous noise, a combination of screeching and bellowing, and a stomping and scraping of sharp things against the hull, audible through several layers of spaceship. They both winced. "Of course," she added, "we might also get torn to bits by those... things."
"Livestock," corrected Jack.
"Evil livestock," grumbled Sam.
"Honest profit," reminded Jack, absently stuffing the rag into his pocket, and rubbing at the set of long scratches down his forearm. They were just scabbing over, and itched like hell. "For once. You said we needed to buy-"
"I remember what I said! I just didn't know you'd manage to find a livestock that dangerous!"
Actually, she'd been the one to find the seller - Jack had just made the deal. But he wasn't about to correct her. "Well if you really don't like them, we could always," he waved his hands, "get rid of them. Beam them out of here, maybe."
Sam gave him a thoroughly disapproving look. "Sure thing, Captain Kirk," she said, sarcastically. "We'll just send them back in time, and then go slingshot ourselves around the nearest sun and head home."
Jack frowned at her. "You could just have said 'no'."
"Anyhow, that would be inhumane."
"I thought you said they were evil?"
"Inhumane to wherever we left them."
"Oh."
"Don't pick that - it'll never heal."
Jack lifted his hand quickly away from the scab, her tone speaking straight to his inner five-year-old. "C'mon, Carter," he growled. "Am I gonna have to give you a pep talk? Because you know I will."
She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "And we wouldn't want that."
"Damn straight." He stuck his hands in his pocket. "Gah!" He pulled out the oily rag, and threw it into a corner, and tried to wipe his hands on his pants. It just seemed to spread. No doubt the inside of his pocket was coated in it, too. Damn, this stuff was sticky! He sent her an accusative look, and she grinned cheekily. No matter what sort of mood she was in, she could still find his misfortune amusing, apparently. Great. "Is the engine really irreparable?"
She sighed. "Not irreparable," she admitted. "Just kicking my ass at the moment."
"Okay, well, you're taking a break."
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Yes," she said, looking around her, "I am."
"I meant a proper break. One with hot beverages and a look outside."
"If I go outside I'll die. It'd be restful, sure, but..."
"A look outside, smartass. You haven't even seen it, have you?"
"Seen what?"
He grinned. "I'll take that as a 'no'. C'mon."
The ship was small for a starship, but fairly roomy for a home. They passed by the commissary - merely a small room where they prepared and ate meals, but Sam and Jack had called it that through force of habit, and the name stuck - and Jack grabbed two cups of hot caffeinated drink. It wasn't coffee, it wasn't tea, but it was hot and stimulating, and not unpleasant once you stopped expecting something else. Then he dragged her up to the bridge, the best place from which to view the outside world - or moon, in this case.
Teal'c looked up as they entered. "How is the repair work progressing?" he asked. It was pressing on all of their minds at the moment.
Jack answered for Sam, who was staring out of the main viewscreen, open-mouthed. "She'll get it done. Just needs a break."
Teal'c nodded, satisfied. "I am confident in Major Carter's abilities."
"Me too." He nudged her. "You hear that, Sam?"
"Hmm?" She blinked at last. "What?"
Jack grinned indulgently. "I said it's pretty, isn't it?"
"It's amazing."
'It' was the view. They'd landed on the steep slope of a mountain, giving them a good view of a large expanse of landscape. The moon was bleak, desolate - and stunning. An electrical storm tore at the ground, blue lightning arcing epileptically between the swirling clouds and the grey, featureless land. The colors of the sky were angry purples and feverish pinks, infinitely varied, constantly in a state of restless stirring. It looked lethal - poisonous. From a suitable distance, it was beautiful.
Teal'c stood, and nodded to Jack. "I will go and see that Daniel Jackson is not disturbing the animals." He left them alone on the bridge.
Sam and Jack exchanged looks. "Those things have gotta go before he starts naming 'em," muttered Jack.
Teal'c, for some reason, had taken a liking to the livestock. The livestock and Daniel, however, had instantly developed a mutual antagonism. The fact that they attacked Daniel every time he went to feed them was taken by Teal'c as evidence of a flaw in Daniel's character - to the archaeologist's indignation. Teal'c defended the creatures, saying that they were merely expressing their natures. Daniel said that this proved that they were, by nature, homicidal maniacs. This had only made relations frostier.
Sam and Jack were steering clear until it blew over.
Jack became aware that Sam was murmuring something. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," she whispered to herself. "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
It sounded like a quote of some kind, but he didn't ask - just wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her and - carefully - his hot drink. He leaned his chin on her shoulder, and together they looked out of the viewscreen. "You see?"
She nodded, and braced herself comfortably against him, freeing a hand to sip. "Yeah. It's beautiful. Thank you."
"Hey, no problem. I'm always around if you want an excuse to goof off." They watched silently as a particularly vivid display of lightning stuttered across miles of grey earth. "I bet the thunder's something else."
"Deafening," agreed Sam.
"It reminds me of the Red Spot on Jupiter." He nodded at the storm. "That storm'll outlive you, me, Daniel - even Teal'c. Pretty humbling."
"Oh yeah."
The drinks were starting to get awkward. He let go of her briefly to set the cups down on the nearest console, and then gathered her close again, chest-to-chest this time. She turned comfortably away from the spectacular view, seemingly happy to look at him instead. "It's a pirate's life for me," he murmured, leaning forwards to gently blow warm air into her hair, making her shiver. She smelled nicely of engine oil. At least, Jack thought she smelled nice, but it was entirely possible that he was biased. "Honest trade? Not so much."
Sam smoothed the edge of her right hand - the only clean bit of her - along the scratches on his arm, her skin pleasantly cool against the itchy warmth of the healing injury. "Once I get the ship going again, and we're shot of the livestock from Hell, we'll go steal you something big and Goa'uld," she promised.
"A space gun?"
"If you like."
"Ooh!" He squeezed her, and she laughed breathlessly, moving closer willingly. He finally gave in to the impulse to kiss her neck, and breathed warmly against her skin, and Sam drew in a deep breath as his arms tightened around her. They slowly adjusted so that their bodies were in full contact, head to foot, and her laughter faded, as the world (or moon) seemed to fade into the background. Her hand traveled up his arm, to close around the nape of his neck, and for a moment they hovered on the knife-edge of temptation. But, even now, work had to come first - at least, it did when they were stranded on a strange moon, with a busted engine. Any other time, and he'd be 'discussing the issue with his technical consultant' - the explanation Daniel had started to give to various aliens when Jack and Sam had pulled another disappearing act.
"You need any help?" he asked, breaking the spell. Sam gave a slow, sexy smile, and he groaned slightly, temptation warring with the need to get the hell off this moon. "In the engine room, I mean. You women have one-track minds." Although in the back of his mind was a Star Wars scene he was thinking of persuading her to re-enact. Scoundrel...
She hesitated. "I could use someone to bounce things off," she admitted eventually.
Jack reluctantly let go of her, and tapped at his head. "Solid rubber," he pronounced.
She patted his chest, grinning, and stepped away from him with the tiniest sigh of regret. He followed briskly as she headed back towards the engine room. This little break might have been intended to refresh her, but it had left him feeling pretty good too.
"We're talking about ideas, and not pieces of engine, right? Right, Sam? Sam...?"
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ARRR.