"I
called your name out loud / To a stranger yesterday,"
- I Thought It Was You, Doug Stone
From the magazine stand, I watched her as she stood in line. Stared at her. Couldn't take my eyes off her.
She was pretty, of course, but that wasn't the reason. She was really very inconspicuous, dressed in jeans, a white sweater, and a black jacket. Blonde hair framing a fair face and curling around her ears, cut short but not shockingly. One slender hand held a steaming plastic cup, and in the other was a glazed cruller wrapped in a sleeve of wax paper: breakfast, apparently. Her black purse was slung sensibly across her body.
Inconspicuous.
Only she wasn't.
I slid over to the rack of postcards, a metal frame filled with mountainous and snowy vistas. Still transfixed by her, I absently reached out a hand and twirled the display. Around and around, shiny 4-by-6 inch glossies all telling me that I was in DENVER, COLORADO. Thank you, I thought, stilling the spinning rack, scowling down at a picturesque shot of the Botanic Gardens. Thank you so much for reminding me that I'm not really supposed to be here.
I looked up.
And as I'd known she would, she had spotted me.
She stared, too.
* * *
"Jack?"
I knew it wasn't him before my lips closed around the name, and even before his eyebrows lifted in unspoken puzzlement I was writhing in mortification. Damn. Obviously this man wasn't Jack O'Neill: he was too young, his hair was the wrong color and style, and he was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. Besides, this man was here, in Denver, and the Colonel was still undoubtedly back in Colorado Springs, 28 levels underground, oblivious to my leaving.
But still, something had made me blurt out his name. Something had triggered an embarrassingly involuntary response as I'd met the gaze of a complete stranger. Standing in the concessions line with breakfast in hand, I'd lifted my head and stared across the enclave into an unfamiliar face. Thin lips, a narrow nose, blonde hair bristling in a buzz cut not unlike what you might see at Cheyenne Mountain; pleasant, but nothing unduly stimulating. New blue jeans and a button-down, heather-gray shirt. Medium weight, medium width. Tall, but unremarkable.
But those eyes.
The donut slipped from my hand as I'd uttered the first name that came to mind, the name that connected most immediately with eyes of the chocolate-brown variety. The lashes, the lids, they were so singularly Jack O'Neill, so discernible and unexpected, that it was a miracle I retained the presence of mind to hold on to my hot drink.
"Whoa... are you okay?"
How he moved so quickly from the magazine stand to the line behind the cashier counter was beyond me; I was so wrapped up in my own disappointment and humiliation that 'thinking straight' didn't include being mindful of the world around me. The stranger stooped down briefly to retrieve my lost pastry and I closed my eyes, wondering how many people in the terminal were staring at me, and what kind of nutcase this guy thought I was. "I'm... fine. I'm sorry," I said, opening my eyes and avoiding his, both flustered and fearful of a repeat performance.
"Sorry? For what? You think I'm opposed to pretty women shouting out at me? Of course, I'd prefer they shout MY name, but I could always make an exception."
His teasing smile - for I was concentrating solely on his mouth - jarred me a second time. That curving of the lips, bordering on a genuine smirk but holding too much kindness for that. Shy, sly, self-deprecating.
And when he reached out and gently took hold of my arm, right below the shoulder, his grasp warm, firm but careful, I almost lost it altogether. My God, what was wrong with me?
"Ma'am? Are you all right? Ma'am..?"
*
My senses were handed back to me, along with a fresh pastry, a few minutes later. Slouched in a window seat, idly watching the planes dart across the runway and launch themselves into the sky, I glanced up at the good Samaritan with an equally-glazed expression.
"I thought you might like your breakfast with a little less airport grime on it." His voice was nothing like O'Neill's - too mellow, too melodic - but still, I regarded him warily.
"I'm sorry, I can't take that," I said quickly, nodding at the proffered donut and feeling a rise of impatience when he placed it on the table before me nonetheless.
"Well you'd better," he teased. "I hate this kind. And you know how overpriced airport food is." He nodded at the steaming cup I still held in one shaking hand, a caffeinated talisman that connected me to the real world. "I paid for your coffee too, by the way."
Heat rose in my cheeks. "Oh my God..." I berated, more to myself than to him. "How much was it... ? I'll pay you back...."
"I don't think so," said the stranger, sitting down across from me. "You're going to sit there and eat that donut and drink that coffee and... and calm down, for starters. You almost went catatonic on me back there. What's the deal?"
I carefully placed the coffee on the table, using the moment of sanity to take in the stranger's face. He was... handsome. Mid-twenties with close-cropped blonde hair shimmering in the harsh lighting. Those treacherous brown eyes were less treacherous now that I could see them up close, unlined for the most part but narrowed in concern. He had a strong face, a well-defined jaw and proud cheekbones. His clothing gave him the mien of a salesperson or other kind of pseudo-professional, which didn't fit with the hairstyle but was still somehow reassuring. Or would have been reassuring if not for the nosey attitude.
"The deal," I said, after a moment of consideration, "is none of your business."
He surprised me by chuckling at that - I thought - rather rude statement, and taking the seat across from me. "My name's Joseph," he formally greeted, and I partook in the offered handshake with lessening alarm. "Just 'Joe' works, too. Now, who's 'Jack'?"
"No one," I snapped.
"No one, huh? Do I look like this no one?"
My smile was vague and unconvincing. "Just a little around the eyes," I muttered, my eyes straying back to the donut and coffee. I'd left that morning without pausing for breakfast, not wanting the news of my transfer to leak beyond the General's door while I was still on base. Now, it appeared that I was home free. My flight boarded in five minutes, and so far no one had shown up to drag me back to Colorado Springs. My cell phone hadn't even rang once. The only obstacle had been this Joe and his familiar eyes.
I wasn't disappointed. Of course I wasn't. And I certainly wasn't hoping to be talked out of my current plans, or have my mind changed. Of course not. What was I doing - leaving - was what was best for everybody, whether they knew it or not.
Joe nodded slowly, digesting this small parcel of information. "Boyfriend?"
"Nope."
"Ex-boyfriend?"
"Uh-uh." Impulsively, I reached out and broke off a piece of the pastry. No, I hadn't paid for it, but he HAD offered. Which was nice. Too nice. Any moment now, I gauged, he was going to ask me if I was 'available'. He'd probably seen the destination on my ticket. I was well on my way to having my very own stalker. Wonderful.
But all he said was, "Potential boyfriend?"
I paused with the chunk of donut halfway to my mouth. "You're persistent, aren't you?"
"So that's it." He smirked at me. "What, you couldn't handle the rejection?"
I flushed, annoyed at the accusation that I'd run if Jack had turned me down. Talk about role reversal. "This IS the rejection," I said flatly, sucking a flake of sugar glaze off my finger. "Bad situation, okay? Let's just leave it at that."
But of course, he couldn't. Seemed he wanted something for buying me breakfast after all. "What, was he harassing you?"
"No," I declared, prying the lid off the Styrofoam cup. "It was... mutual. We felt the same. But one of us had to be the adult. And it was me," I concluded, not without a hint of bitterness. Damn him for putting me in the position of having to say no, for making ME the bad guy in all of this.
Joe chewed on his bottom lip, considering what I had said as though it personally affected him. The glint of concentration in his eyes reminded me, again, of my... former... C.O., and I wondered if I'd ever stop seeing him everywhere I turned. If this hollow feeling would even completely go away. "You're in the military," he guessed.
Bringing the cup to my lips, I blinked in surprised. "How'd you know?"
He shrugged, and that O'Neill-ish smile reasserted itself. "Well... I didn't really know, but... My mother was a three-star General when she retired. And my father worked for the government too, so I know the types. You're the military type."
I snorted. "Good to know."
"You've got the bearing," explained Joe, looking a bit flustered. "The... poise."
"Even when I'm going catatonic?"
"Even then."
I sipped my coffee, hoping he'd drop the questions about O'Neill and pursue some other line of questioning. Naturally, he didn't.
"So... I take it that your 'Jack' is in the military as well? Army? Marines?"
I enjoyed a moment of guilty pleasure - 'My Jack' - before correcting him. "Air Force. And yeah. He is... he was my C.O." I'd be damned if I didn't feel like a sinner, explaining out my wrongs in a confessional. "That is, my Commanding Officer."
"Yeah... I know," said Joe, looking a little daunted. "Your C.O., huh? That's heavy stuff."
"Tell me about it," I said, laughing humorlessly, my transgressions suddenly pouring out of me in a black wave. Part of me was embarrassed for laying all this on a stranger. Another part was wondering what the hell I was doing... this wasn't exactly like me. But for the most part, I felt a strange sense of companionship with this man... even tenderness. It was peculiar, but not frightening in the least; it was far too comfortable and contenting to invoke fear. "I've never been so disappointed in myself as I was when I realized I had these... feelings for him. I really thought I had more control of myself than that. But even then I was completely confident that I could keep it under wraps. That I didn't have to let it affect me or my job, or my relationship with him..."
Joe winced. "Did it?"
"Not exactly. Not until later on, when I found out... found out that he was having the same problem." My attention was temporarily diverted as the tail end of a 737 swiped dangerously near the broad bank of windows. "Having these feelings for me, hiding them, pretending they didn't exist. Just like I was," I elaborated, still staring out the window. "From that point on, it was just... just too hard for us to contain. Just knowing how the other person felt about it, having it all out in the open but not being able to do anything about it... it was like..."
"Pandora's Box?" offered Joe helpfully.
I smiled tolerantly at him. "Maybe. Yeah. I guess."
"And you're closing it now? By leaving?"
"You say it like it's a bad thing."
He paused at the rebuke. "I'm not judging you, really. I'm not saying you're taking the easy way out... I'm not saying that you're being cowardly about this..."
I wrinkled my nose, and not at the thickening dregs of my coffee. "You're a liar. That's exactly what you're saying. And you don't... you don't know the details." He didn't know the tragic mistake we'd almost made, the brief moment of foolishness that had the potential to ruin both of our careers, our lives. Yeah, so for a long time I'd been preoccupied with how it would be to kiss him, how it would feel, what I would do if he made the first move. But I'd never stopped to wonder what would possess me to be the one to initiate it, even if it was just the two of us, alone in the lab as had happened so many times before, playing our little games, throwing our little innuendoes, our little smiles...
I'd wondered what it would be like, and now I knew. Boy, did I know. But at what cost? The cost of looking like an oversexed idiot, making out with my commanding officer when I should have been making my report to him? The cost of maybe someday slipping up again, and taking it to another level? The cost of getting caught, as we almost had? God, it was too terrible to consider.
"Well you care about this guy, don't you?" Joe demanded. "You care enough to go ballistic when you thought you saw him. Do you care about what happens to him? You care of you never see him again?"
"Of course I care. That's why I'm leaving, so we don't do something we'll both regret."
"That depends on your definition of 'regret'," he pointed out. "It's the whole love versus duty thing, right? Why can't you have both? What's so wrong with this time and place that two people in love can't be together because they work together? They ask enough of you. They shouldn't ask you to sacrifice your happiness for the good of the country, too."
Again, I turned my face toward the window, and in the glass spotted Joe's reflection. He looked more than concerned now, I realized. He looked downright worried. Why? I was the one who should be worrying: about some unsavory reputation, or one of my friends, following me across the country, about how I was going to be able to get on with my life, trapped by the memory of interstellar travel and that illicit kiss. I should be worried, not this stranger.
"If you get on that plane, what's going to happen?" he asked, softly, pleadingly. "I don't know. You don't know. But I know what won't happen."
"How do you know?" I asked sullenly. "Got a crystal ball in your pocket?"
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Yeah. Yeah I do, okay? You won't ever see him again... this 'Jack' guy. You won't ever be happy. And even if you do find someone else... wherever you're going... it won't be the same. It'll never be as good as it could have been. You know that. Right?"
My breath steamed on the cold glass. "Yeah," I murmured.
"Good. Now get up, call your commander, and tell him you've made a terrible mistake. And make sure you add that you're not coming back unless something can be worked out with you and your commanding officer."
Joe's insistent, demanding demeanor almost made me want to laugh. In a way, it reminded me of myself: wanting the universe to change to fit my needs, and to have changed five minutes ago, dammit. I looked away from the window, back at him. "What makes you think they want me that bad?"
He blinked. "Who wouldn't?" he asked, genuinely incredulous.
I blushed, still surprised - but someone not displeased - that the kid hadn't even tried to get my phone number. In fact, he was trying to hook me up with another man. Suddenly suspicious of his motives, I checked my watch. "Well, considering my plane started boarding fifteen minutes ago, I don't suppose I really have that much of a choice."
Joe grinned. It was a flat-out, full-fledged, wild and crazy grin, the likes of which I'd never seen on O'Neill. "Great," he enthused.
"'Great'? Were you trying to stall me?"
He scoffed at that, but his scoff was vague and unconvincing, and so was the way he went quickly to his feet. "Now how could I have done that? I don't even know you. For crying out loud, you've never met me before in your life, right?"
Slowly, maintaining eye contact, I also rose. "Right..." In my peripheries, I could see another jet gearing up on the runway, guessed it was the one I should have been on, and thanked my lucky stars that I'd arranged to have the majority of my stuff shipped out later on. Of course, there were still three suitcases full of clothes and personal effects heading for the east coast that I'd probably never see again...
I gathered up the trash, crumpling my napkin and stuffing it into the empty cup.
"Good luck getting your stuff back from D.C.," said Joe.
I chuckled - he'd read my mind - and then...
I froze.
Okay, so I'd joked about it earlier, but how had he known where I'd been headed?
True, I'd been standing over by Gate 227 for a few minutes, but I was taking a connecting flight out of Chicago to cut costs. There was nothing on the monitor that would have given him even the remotest idea that my final destination was Washington, D.C.
"How did you...?" I began, looking up.
He was gone.
* * *
I watched her from around the corner, observing with just a hint of a smile as she looked around the surrounding tables wildly, expression a mask of confusion. Yeah. She'd think about that for a few days, contemplate it over the course of a few nights: that strange guy in the airport named Joe. What had his problem been? How had he known?
And then, eventually, she'd forget all about it.
She'd told me so.
I shrank back, further down the hallway. Yeah, so our pasts and futures were all sorta predestined, self-fulfilling prophecies and all that, and I knew she'd never managed to find Strange Joe again... but I didn't want to tempt fate any more than I already was. In fact, it might be a good idea if I took the opportunity to go somewhere private and...
I turned... and swerved crazily to one side, narrowly avoiding a collision with a man on a Mission, capital M. The black and blue blur - black jacket, blue jeans - didn't seem to notice or care that he'd almost run directly into me. In fact, as I watched, he broke into a stuttering jog, edging between and around the other oblivious airport patrons, headed straight past the concessions area toward Gate 227.
Smiling, I backed further down the hall.
For some inexplicable reason, the man in the jacket glanced over his right shoulder as he passed the large windows, and the tables clustered underneath. Maybe it was a close-flying plane that caught his eye... but somehow, I doubted it. Because seeing a plane when you're at an airport doesn't cause you to freeze in place like he did, mindless of the bodies swarming around him.
I stealthy cut across the hallway, backing towards the restroom but giving myself a wider view as I did so. From my new position against the other wall, I could see Sam Carter, purse slung across her shoulder, standing in the threshold of the enclave. Staring. Not quite catatonic again, but afraid to say the name she wanted to say. Afraid she'd be wrong for the second time that day.
In the end, he made the first move. From a distance, I couldn't make out what he yelled at her before pulling her against him, but I knew all the same. He'd told me himself.
"Sam! What the hell are you doing?"
She was stiff and unresponsive for a second... but only that. Then she seemed to soften, raising her hands to touch him, as though still doubtful of his corporeality, and then cautiously sliding her arms around his neck as her eyes drifted shut. Resignation and relief drifted across her face in concert. She was stuck with this man... she knew it... and frankly, she wasn't all that upset about it.
Jack O'Neill only held her all the tighter. "Hammond almost didn't tell me," he was saying, his voice shaking in rage and fear. "I thought I'd missed you..."
Succumbing to another ecstatic grin, I shoved my hands into my pockets... and felt cold metal against my fingertips.
Whoops.
My crystal ball, for lack of a better turn, really had to be returned to the SGC before either the General or the Asgard rep noticed that it was missing, that some sap had taken an unauthorized sojourn a couple of decades into his own past. On the other hand, who did I really think was I kidding? They'd probably known it was gone before I even took it. Which meant, at the very least, the heavy threat of demotion and a very, very unhappy General Davis.
Not that it mattered much. Not in the long run. From a fairly young age, I'd heard all the stories about how they almost hadn't made it, about how my parents being in love hadn't been allowed, about how Mom had quite nearly transferred back to the Pentagon... how she would have left, if some strange guy named Joe hadn't made her see the error of her ways... and hadn't stalled her, making her miss her flight, giving Dad a chance to catch up.
Of course, when I first heard the tale - from Teal'c, no less - I'd still been sufficiently immature that I found the whole thing decidedly yucky. But, eventually, I changed my mind. And saw how important it was that I take the risk. It hadn't just been some random stranger in the airport. It had been ME, using a piece of time-travel technology the Asgard had leant to Doctor Frasier - Doctor Cassandra Frasier - for study.
I don't know if either of them have ever put it together. They've certainly had the time to figure it out, but I don't know about opportunity. After all, Mom's still working in the Astrophysics department, and even in his old age Dad is still Thor's favorite human. Maybe it hasn't really occurred to them that I really am my father's son, and not just around the eyes.
Screw the regs.
I duck into the men's bathroom, close myself into a stall, and activate the little time thingy I 'borrowed' from a certain Asgard accomplice. And yes, in this case, 'thingy' IS the technical term.
I'm gone, back to my own time - the year is currently 2024 - with an inconspicuous pop, sizzle, and twinkle of blue light. Back to the SGC. Back to certain punishment. Back to getting together with the folks... 'Remember that guy in the airport, Mom? I know you remembered him when you and Dad named me Joseph. Ever think that was a coincidence?
It wasn't.'
A guy could get used to being his own namesake.
The End