Midnight. The dishes have been done; the fire's lit. Sam puts her bare feet up on the coffeetable and contemplates the fact that she doesn't have to even think about work for another glorious forty-eight hours. It's been so long since they've had this. A weekend. A vacation, small and low-key though it might be; their lives right now are so frantic, so hectic, that two days feel like a luxury.

But stand-down it is -- ordered by the shrinks, who are starting to believe that SG-1's high efficiency and cheerful productivity might very well be a bad sign: the mania of a unit that's about to crack under pressure. Hard-won lesson. In year three, Lt. Caravelli had been smiling and happy and cheerful and eager and cooperative, and everyone had thought him a delight to work with, and one day he'd gone through the Gate with his team and two others and they'd gotten back two of them alive and Lt. Caravelli had still been smiling when they'd had to shoot him.

Sam knows it's not that kind of efficiency, but she hadn't tried to explain it. If she'd tried, she would have had to find a way to put into words what she somehow, subtly, knows should be left unsaid: the reason SG-1 is operating so well right now, has been for the past six months -- since they hit their stride -- is that Cammie reminds them of all the good parts of the way things used to be.

"You're quiet," Cammie says, from the other end of the couch. She's barefoot too. It's warm enough in here, with the fire going -- it really is too late in the year for a fire, but Sam likes the way it smells, the way the entire room takes on the warm richness, the way the wood pops and the flames dance. Hypnotic. Fire was mankind's first application of technology; it does her good to get back to humanity's roots sometimes.

They've both shed clothing, one piece at a time, as the room took on more of that radiating heat. Cammie is down to a pair of boxer-briefs (for a minute Sam had thought they might be Daniel's, but no, they're cut for a woman's body and a woman's curves) and a babydoll tank top that's too short for her frame; it dangles just over the curve of her breasts, framing the line of Cammie's muscled stomach, paler than the pieces of her that have been exposed to the suns of a hundred different worlds to tan and freckle. She's curled up in the crook of the couch's arm, her feet sprawled casually in the space between them.

"Just thinking, really," Sam says. The windows are open; it's raining outside, heavy and thick. She can hear the sound of it striking the roof, the pavement. She can smell it on the breeze wafting in. Fire and water, warm and wet. A full belly and a glass of wine, dangling from her fingertips, the half-bottle she's already consumed warming her further. Comfort. Contentment. Home.

"We're on stand-down," Cammie says. Soft laughter threads through her voice. "Pretty sure that means you don't gotta think so hard."

Sam makes a face. "I think about things other than work," she says. It comes out crabbier than it really should. There are people in the world who believe that Samantha Carter lives for her work, thinks of nothing more than schematics and equations and the cold clear perfection of science made reality. Cammie isn't one of them. Never has been. But Sam gets tired, so tired, of people looking at her and seeing not person but scientist, not woman but warrior. She's so tired of being on guard, of having half the people who look at her see only her intellect and the other half seeing only her sex, that even from a friend, that kind of teasing sets her on edge sometimes.

More so, tonight.

"Hey," Cammie says. Sharper now. More serious. She uncurls one leg, pokes Sam's thigh with her toes. "Talk to me, honey. What's wrong?"

Sam shakes her head. "Nothing," she says. "Just ... you know."

She gestures with the hand that's holding the wine glass: uncertain circle, unclear communication. Frustration and comfortableness all at once. She's not even sure what she's trying to say.

Cammie leaves her foot resting against Sam's thigh; her toes knead, lightly. Sam thinks Cammie probably isn't even aware she's doing it. "Bad week, huh?" she asks.

"Not really. Not more than the usual." Sam drops her head back against the couch, sighs. "Better than usual, really. And tonight was nice. I like it when we all get the chance to have dinner together, and I'm glad you decided to stay over instead of going back to Daniel's. And I'm glad that we have the downtime, but ... downtime makes you think."

"Yeah," Cammie agrees. She shifts slightly, turns so that she's half-lying on the couch, her shoulders propped against the couch's arm. When she brings her other foot up to rest it against the side of Sam's thigh as well, her knees bent, Sam puts her hand over the arch of Cammie's foot, squeezes lightly. Cammie makes a small noise of happiness and stretches both her legs out to put her feet fully in Sam's lap. It makes Sam want to laugh; Cammie at peace, Sam has often thought, is like a pushy cat who wants to be petted right now and will shove its head under your hand until you do.

She obliges by setting her glass of wine on the coffeetable and taking Cammie's foot in both her hands, digging her thumbs into that spot right behind the ball of the foot where the boots always cause cramps. "Oh, God," Cammie moans. "Marry me."

Sam laughs. "Sure. You can take care of moving us to Massachussets."

"Lotta think-tanks in Massachussets for when we get kicked out of the Air Force," Cammie says. "You can support us with your giant brain. I can be your kept woman. I cook."

Sam laughs, the way she's supposed to, but it rings hollow. It isn't even something in particular. Just the grind. Day in. Day out. The way half the base never seems to take notice that she is a woman, that she has a body, isn't any better than Jay Felger staring at her breasts and Rodney McKay's creepy and intrusive sexist language in the databursts from Atlantis. She's so fucking tired of the way General Landry's eyes move straight over her, over Cammie, and fall on Daniel or Teal'c instead.

And she found out something about herself this week that made her feel silent and ashamed, and she can't put off thinking about it any longer. "I'm sorry," she says.

"For?" Cammie sounds puzzled.

Sam strokes her hands over Cammie's foot. "Thursday. When we were in that jail cell, and that guard came in, and you started baiting him. I caught myself thinking that I was really glad you were there. That you were drawing his attention. I actually caught myself thinking: thank God there's finally another woman on this team, so that when someone decides to rape one of us, I've got a fifty-percent chance of not having to be the one to go through it."

Saying it out loud makes her feel even more ashamed. Because that threat, that danger, has been part and parcel of her life for the past ten years, every time she goes through the Gate, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference that she knows a hundred ways to kill a man with her bare hands, that General O'Neill and Teal'c both made sure her lessons in unarmed combat weren't just something she knew in the sparring ring but knew, down in the depths of her muscle and bone. It is part of her job to walk into cultures that use women, that sell women, that view women's bodies as property and commodity, and it is part of her job to negotiate with those cultures, to be present for negotiations with those cultures, and that very act of negotiation lends those attitudes legitimacy. Finding that she has become a person who thinks something like that, finding out that the attitude of poison has seeped through her until she could think something like that, revolts her.

Cammie's quiet for a minute. "Can't say I blame you," she finally says. "You been dealing with that a long time."

Sam keeps her head down, works her knuckles into the arch of Cammie's foot. "I caught myself thinking that, and I was horrified at myself. I am so sorry. Because I don't know when I turned into the kind of person who could wish something like that on one of my best friends just so I don't have to go through it myself."

"Again," Cammie says. Quietly. So quietly.

Sam has never told her. Never wanted to. They all put so much at risk every time they go through the Gate, and Cammie knows that. Cammie's a smart woman. A team commander. Cammie knows the statistics for the SGC: in America it's one in four, and the women who go through the Gate are trained and armed and vigilant and aware and it doesn't make a single bit of difference. Four out of five. Cammie knows. But Sam has never told her. She's always felt that Cammie deserves one space where the topic isn't always on the table, isn't always lurking around every corner and underneath every word.

She should have realized she wouldn't have to tell Cammie anything.

"Again," Sam says. Her hands fall still, until Cammie flexes her foot in silent command.

"Baby," Cammie says -- still quiet, still calm -- "you wouldn't be human if you didn't think that way."

It's forgiveness and absolution, blanket and complete, and it makes Sam want to cry. "I don't want to be that person," she says. "I don't want to think like that. I hate that I have to think about it, and I hate that I feel like -- I feel like --"

"You're not that person," Cammie says.

She sounds positive, so sure, and Sam doesn't know if she's somehow failed to convey some crucial element of the creeping horror that's been slumbering in the pit of her stomach since Thursday afternoon or if Cammie has heard it all and just doesn't care. "How do you know?" Sam asks. "How can you be so sure?"

Cammie takes her feet out of Sam's lap, and for a minute Sam wants to protest, wants to grab for them, wants to touch (here, now, in this room that is warm and safe and comfortable, the rain through the windows, the sound of the fire snapping). For a minute, Sam is worried that she's frightened Cammie away, that Cammie has finally realized --

-- but no, Cammie is only standing, stretching, linking her hands together and rising up on her toes, reaching for the ceiling in a graceful arch. The fabric of her tank top rides up further. Sam can see the swell of her breast, pale and luminous.

"Because," Cammie says. She looks Sam in the eyes, holds her gaze, strong and confident and assured. "You knew you were thinking it. And that's what makes the difference."

She reaches her hand down. Sam stares at it for a long minute. "Come on, baby," Cammie says. "Let me take you to bed."

It's not a solution. There is no solution. There never will be.

Sam breathes in and lets the breath out, slowly, with control. "Yeah," she says. Because Cammie's good at making her feel wanted, without feeling pressured. Because Cammie understands. Because Cammie knows her. Because Cammie is not ashamed. Because Cammie makes her feel like it's all right for her not to be ashamed.

Cammie's skin is warm when Sam takes her hand, and she smells like smoke and rain. Sam can feel the gun-calluses on Cammie's hand, beneath her fingers. And she thinks, as Cammie lets go -- turning to bank the fire, check the locks -- that maybe it's a better idea to be glad there's another woman on the team for a different reason entirely, because there are some fears that only another woman can understand: viscerally, down deep, down where the primal fears lurk and swirl and slumber.

With two, there's someone there to stand beside you. Maybe it's enough of a difference.

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