Intervention
Intervention
by E.M. Bonner
Summary: The UST between Jack and Sam is driving all of SG-1 crazy. Daniel does something about it.
Category: Action/Adventure, Humor, Romance
Season: Season 4
Pairing: Jack/Sam
Rating: 13+
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story was created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 08/13/06
Daniel Jackson woke from a sound sleep to the sharp pain caused by his commanding officer tripping over the rune stones sitting between the open tent flap and his sleeping bag, and landing palm first on Daniel's stomach. His first thought, for the umpteenth time, was to curse idiotic, counter-productive Air Force regulations in Goa'uld, Aramaic, Greek, and Pyrotian. When he was ready to return to English, he addressed his midnight visitor, who had by then picked himself up to a squatting position.
"Jack, what are you doing here?" he asked irritably. If SG-1 had been under attack, or in any other kind of danger requiring immediate action, Jack, or more likely Teal'c, who he saw was still out on watch, would simply have whispered to him from outside the tent in that tone that instantly woke all of them.
"Oh, nothin'. Just a little restless. Felt like going for a walk, visit the neighbors..."
"Jack, it's still raining," Daniel said with exasperation. It had been raining for the last two days, and the only place they could get dry was in their tents. Well, he had been dry until Jack came in, fell on him, and proceeded to continue to drip all over him. They had been searching this uninhabited world for the naquadah promised by the rune stones they had found in a long-abandoned village, but had yet to locate the mine. Only a crazy man would leave the comfort of his tent in the few hours a day that they were allowed out of the downpour. A crazy man, or Colonel Jack O'Neill, who was being slowly driven to irrational behavior by his unrequited lust for Major Samantha Carter.
Jack was speaking again, saying absolutely nothing of importance, and Daniel, tired and irritated, tuned him out.
The unrequited lust, which just as clearly also afflicted Major Doctor Samantha Carter, was the direct, stupid, unnecessary, and starting-to-get-dangerous result of Air Force regulations prohibiting "fraternization" between officers in the same chain of command. The Air Force, Daniel had concluded, was obsessed with sex. Superiors and subordinates could love each other, hate each other, share just about any kind of off-duty activity that was legal in the relevant jurisdiction with each other, so long as they did not engage in any form of sexual contact with each other. Which was why Jack, for the third time in a month, had fled his own tent in the wee hours of the morning to escape the tension that was periodically spiraling out of control between him and Sam.
It hadn't always been like this. Oh, the attraction between the two of them had been apparent since ... well since at least P3A577, when Sam had been kidnapped, freed, and then won a duel with the local warlord who had tried to own her, but by the time they knew each other well enough to let their respective guards down enough to relate to each other as people rather than officers, terror and suffering and tragedy and Tok'ra possession had blunted their physical reactions. In the wake of gross insubordination and impending global cataclysm and his own apparent death in the explosive destruction of Apophis and Klorel's ships, SG-1 had clung to each other, spending most of their off-duty time together, instead of just the occasional outing of the year before. The bonds among the four of them grew, reaching out, sometimes, to encompass Janet and Cassie, but beyond that, no one else really understood what they did; what they faced; what they lived with having done. SG-1 against the universe. Over time, Sam and Jack's love for each other had grown too, but somehow it had never been out of balance, never overshadowed the quiet intensity of his own intellectually focused friendship with Sam, Teal'c's devotion to Jack, or any of the other unique relationships within the team. They were all deeply comfortable with each other, trusting each other in a way that made the things they didn't understand about each other irrelevant.
That comfort had extended to physical contact. Of course, Teal'c didn't touch any human much, unless they were injured and needed assistance; it was his physical presence that comforted. But the humans of the team, he and Jack and Sam, had no such barriers and touched each other all the time. A hand on the shoulder; a hand on the arm; a hug; to support, to comfort, to reassure, to connect, to know that they were really alive. There wasn't anything sexual about any of it. They watched movies and sporting events from the comfort of Jack's oddly-squishy couch: Sam leaning back against him, with her feet in Jack's lap. When Jack had gotten skewered and infected by the time capsule that he hadn't realized held a whole living race, and Sam had basically killed Jack by ordering Teal'c to keep firing his staff weapon into the device, they had sat through the night in the infirmary, he and Sam each holding one of Jack's hands while Teal'c stood watch, and talked through their individual guilts until everyone was OK. When he had gone through his screaming, heart-stopping night terrors phase, after kicking his addiction to Shyla's sarcophagus, Jack and Sam had taken turns sitting with him after he woke, bolting upright, drenched with sweat, and had held him while he came back from his personal hell. When Sam went through her getting-burned-or-shocked-by-the-alien-technology-just-before-getting-it-to-do-her-bidding phase, he and Jack had made a ritual of rubbing aloe vera gel on her damaged skin every four hours, so it would heal in time for her to get burned or zapped by the next piece of alien technology. Air Force regulations did not technically prohibit any of this, because there was nothing sexual about it. And if anyone noticed that, on most nights of their down-time, some combination of the four of them, often all four of them, were sleeping at Jack's house (which had three whole bedrooms, compared to everyone else's one), no one had ever said anything that made its way back to him.
Time had passed; more aliens had tried to destroy Earth and been stopped by SG-1; and Sam had gotten more alien technology on-line. Daniel was never sure if they were losing the battle or winning it. The only thing he was sure of was that SG-1 was his family. And then Something Happened. He still didn't know what it was, but whatever had happened had reawakened Jack and Sam to the attraction that had always been between them, and it had quickly turned into an intense, uneasy, and clearly mutual desire. They touched each other rarely now, and avoided each others eyes, even as they determinedly refused to change any of their other habits, on duty or off.
The four of them had always rotated tent-sharing for fairness' sake, because Teal'c took up more space than the rest of them, and, according to his teammates, Daniel snored like a lawnmower (when he wasn't doing the night-terrors thing, which he really thought he was over now). Jack and Sam were much more inoffensive tentmates, with Jack having only the occasional thrashing, mumbling nightmare, and Sam tending to be a restless sleeper, turning from side to side frequently (which was probably nightmares as well). So every third mission, Jack and Sam slept together in a tent. Before Whatever Happened, he had occasionally poked his head inside Sam and Jack's tent to find that they were spooned around each other, or one was sleeping with their head on the other's shoulder. Now, the available eight inches between them was so 'too close' that Jack had started to flee into the night. It wasn't right; it was, at the very least, impairing everyone's sleep well, at least his sleep and Jack's sleep, and Sam's sleep, because he could see her working by flashlight half the night and he really needed to do something about it. But first, he needed to talk to Teal'c.
*********************************
Two days later, after talking to Teal'c and re-thinking his plan a dozen times, Daniel decided it was now or never. Sam was spending her down-time in her lab, testing a new modification to the naquadah reactor that she'd come up with, but he and Teal'c had managed to drag her away to Jack's for pizza shortly after 2300. They had finished all of the pepperoni, and two-thirds of the veggie combination by the time the Rockies lost to the Giants in the 11th inning. Daniel got up before anyone else could think about moving, turned the TV off, and seated himself across from Teal'c in the other armchair, the one that nobody used. It was unusual enough to get everyone's attention, despite the general level of team exhaustion.
Daniel and Teal'c looked at each other, as if gathering strength for an upcoming battle, then turned to face Sam and Jack on the couch.
Daniel began, awkwardly. "If you two won't talk about this, we will. You love each other. You've loved each other for at least three years, maybe more. You're in love with each other. And it's never been a problem, or interfered with either of you carrying out the mission. We've watched each of you send the other off to die, or leave the other to some nightmare horror, and it's nearly killed you, but you've done it, and you keep doing it. But the last few months, you've had this..." He'd struggled for hours over what to call it. 'Rampaging lust' sounded rude. 'Desire' was both too vague and somehow too personal. "...this unresolved sexual tension between you, and it's driving all four of us crazy. If you don't...resolve it, it's going to distract you into screwing something up, and then we're all going to be in real trouble."
Jack and Sam sat staring at him, mouths slightly open. They were, he thought, not shocked at what he said, but that he was saying it. Teal'c took advantage of their stunned silence.
"You believe that you cannot consummate your love physically because your Air Force regulations prohibit it. I do not understand. I have observed a number of occasions on which each of you has violated other Air Force regulations, when following them would have had severe negative consequences. On each such occasion, your actions have been successful in saving innocent lives or advancing the fight against the Goa'uld. Yet you blindly obey this particular regulation that is clearly causing you harm. You have both made a valiant attempt to perform your duties, unaffected, over the past weeks, but DanielJackson and I believe that your attempt is failing. I do not say this lightly. I believe your duty requires you to do what you know is right, regardless of your Air Force regulations."
Teal'c was manipulating them better than he ever could. If anyone else had tried it, he would have zatted them himself, but he and Teal'c both genuinely believed what they were saying. If Jack and Sam didn't end up in bed together, to do a helluva lot more than just sleep, and very soon, the tension was going to have serious detrimental consequences. Splitting up SG-1, the only other option that conformed to Air Force regulations, was unthinkable. The planet couldn't afford it.
Sam put her face in her hands and rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Looking off somewhere over the TV set, she asked quietly, "What if it doesn't work?"
"What if what doesn't work?" Daniel challenged her. "You and Jack? Of course it will work. It's been working for years." He was not so naive that he didn't know she might be talking about the sex itself, which was equally ridiculous. He'd watched how they touched each other, how they knew each other's bodies. It might not be immediately perfect, but with the care they took of each other, he was sure it would be good, and get better. Somehow, he just couldn't say that part out loud. "Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter? That's been working for years, too. It's only when you...when there's unresolved sexual tension that you stop reading each other properly. And once you're ...resolving it...regularly," he added, to make sure they understood that no one was talking about a one time thing, as if that would solve anything for a couple so totally in love with each other, "it'll go back to being a complete non-issue. Trust me."
Jack's unusual reticence ended. He laid his hand on Sam's shoulder and, when she turned to look at him, he said, firmly, "it would work." The connection between them palpable and clear, but Teal'c and Daniel heard the conditional tense. They got up as quietly as they could and retired to the two spare bedrooms, hoping that Jack and Sam would work it out before morning. ******************************
Jack and Sam did not work it out before morning, or the next day, or the day after that. They had clearly talked, because the emotional strain between them was palpably reduced and some of the missing casual touches had returned. But physically, they were both still strung like taught wires. Daniel tried to talk to Sam before they went back on duty, cornering her while they were doing laundry. He even, shyly, somewhat obliquely, shared with her his observations of why he was sure the sex would be really, really good. She was still resistant. She wasn't just an officer, she was an Air Force brat, and the most by-the-book of all of them. Then Jack brushed by them in the tight quarters of the laundry room, on his way to turn the steaks on the backyard grill, and Daniel could feel Sam's reaction, and see Jack's on his face.
"You have to fix this, guys," he said intently. "Please."
****************************** After "The Conversation" as Daniel thought of it, they'd had two missions back-to-back, then three days of downtime when he and Teal'c had pointedly gone off to visit an exhibit on Norse explorers that was visiting the university museum in Boulder. When they returned, it was clear that Sam and Jack hadn't resolved anything.
Then General Hammond sent SG-1 off to P2J586, on the latest installment of the endless naquadah hunt. The planet was completely devoid of vegetation, a stark, rocky wind-blasted topography that reminded Daniel of Bryce Canyon, but without the conifers and juniper. He never would have expected to find life on such a world, but the universe seemed continually determined to surprise them. Following readings to the strongest naquadah deposits, they found foot-high silicon-based arthropods, who mined for food, and built amazing rock dwellings high on the interior walls of caves several miles from the Stargate. The hard-carapaced natives also etched extraordinary artwork on the walls of their caverns. Although Daniel couldn't communicate with them on any kind of a detailed level, due to lack of similar vocal apparati, it was clear from their representative artwork, and from watching them use complex tools, that they were sentient. It was equally clear from both their body language and the sounds they were making that they didn't want his team to either stick around or continue towards the naquadah. After he talked Jack out of continuing on despite the arthropods' objections, he could hardly ignore his own logic and stay to try to study them, so the team turned back in the other direction, to chase down the second-strongest naquadah reading. They were passing not far from the Stargate when it activated.
A group of ten Jaffa, bearing the symbol of Apophis, emerged from the Stargate, six of them carrying a large, unfamiliar, and obviously very heavy device suspended from poles.
"Aw, and here I thought we were gonna set a record. Four straight missions with no snakeheads." Jack grumbled quietly in their hiding place behind some of the larger boulders.
"I've never seen anything like the device they're carrying, Teal'c. Do you know what it is?" Sam asked.
Teal'c waited until the serpent guards had passed their position, heading in the general direction of the naquadah readings, before responding. "I have never seen precisely such a device before, MajorCarter, but certain of the components are familiar. The bottom one is what I believe you would refer to as a shaped explosive charge."
"If they set off a shaped charge in the vicinity of a large enough deposit of naquadah, the resulting explosion could cause major shifts in the planet's tectonic plates." Sam was clearly disturbed by the idea.
"OK, so we should leave now, and get back through the Stargate before anything goes boom," Jack observed, in the tone that was an invitation to talk him out of excessive caution.
"No, sir. I think we need to get a look at the whole device, find out what it's capable of." Sam started the talking-him-out-of-it.
"And find out exactly what Apophis is planning to do with it." Daniel added.
"I agree, O'Neill." Teal'c made it unanimous. "We must be able to evaluate any new potential weapon that Apophis has acquired.
"OK, campers. I guess we're off to see the wizard."
SG-1 let the serpent guards get almost out of sight before they started to follow across the surface of the barren world. The Jaffa seemed to think the planet was uninhabited, or at least uninhabited by anything that could be a threat to them, because even the four with staff weapons weren't bothering to look around. More than a mile from the Stargate, the Jaffa entered another complex of caves. SG-1 cached their field packs behind an outcropping in a dark corner near the entrance, and carefully, silently, shadowed the Jaffa down the labyrinth of internal paths. The caves were much hotter than the desolate surface of the planet, and the team periodically passed what appeared to be natural geothermal vents. They ended up in a space about five meters across, with a hole in the middle. The serpent guards carefully lowered their burden into the hole, suspending it on the carry poles, which reached past the edges. Then two of the Jaffa knelt down and began to manipulate the controls of the device.
Jack shook his head and gave the 'stay down' hand signal to the team. The odds were not great, and shooting energy weapons around powerful explosives when you didn't know how they were triggered was generally a bad idea. Most Jaffa were perfectly willing to die for their gods, but they had never seen Jaffa blow themselves up on purpose in a non-combat situation. The rest of SG-1 obediently stayed put. After a few minutes, the two Jaffa technicians finished their task, and the entire group left the cavern and headed towards the entrance to the caves, never noticing their observers.
When he was sure the serpent guards were gone, Jack stood up slowly. Sam ran to the center of the cavern and knelt down by the hole. The device had Goa'uld writing all over it.
"Daniel," she called. He was beside her immediately, with Teal'c coming up on the other side of him. They both began to read the surface of the object, while Sam carefully explored how its component parts fit together.
"Uh, Sam...this thing is some kind of terraforming machine." Daniel kept reading.
"Terraforming?" asked Jack, not stepping away from his surveillance position by the cavern opening. "Like turning a hunk of rock into a garden paradise."
"I have heard of these devices, O'Neill. As I explained to you when you questioned the similarity of many Goa'uld-occupied worlds, the system lords transform uninhabitable worlds with naquadah deposits into ones that can sustain agriculture, and therefore enable a slave workforce to feed themselves."
Sam and Daniel explored the device, first the top, then, leaning into the pit, the sides, as far down as they could reach. "Careful," Daniel exhaled. "This fissure goes down hundreds of feet." The heat was even more intense over the fissure, and he and Sam and Teal'c had stripped off their BDU jackets. Everyone was really starting to sweat.
"I don't think we're close enough to any naquadah deposits for the device to use them as a power source, but some kind of energy transfer mechanism is continuing to extend from the bottom. It ... may even be trying to draw energy from the magma. But to seed an entire planet with carbon-based nucleogenic particles..." Sam stopped talking as she activated what was obviously the display of a timing device.
"However the device functions, it appears that it is going to detonate in approximately twenty-three minutes," Teal'c interjected into the silence.
"So now we get outta here." This time, Jack was not asking to be talked out of it.
"No, sir, you don't understand. If this device detonates, it's going to wipe out all existing life on this planet before it reforms and re-seeds it in Earth's image." Sam knew better than to explain the technical details of how at a time like this.
"There's a thriving civilization here, Jack," Daniel reaffirmed. "We can't just let them be destroyed."
It was clear that there was no way the four of them could move the device back to the Stargate and send it to an uninhabited world.
"Carter, can you disarm this thing?" Jack asked, a dangerous tone in his voice.
"I think so, sir." Carter's voice held almost, but not quite, her usual confidence. The time was just too short to master an unknown technology.
"You've got fourteen minutes. We need to leave eight to run back to the Gate." It was as much as the team commander could responsibly give them. Jack set the alarm on his watch. . "Teal'c. Tools." Sam ordered urgently. The simple pliers, screwdrivers, and other small items she kept in a pouch in her vest had gotten them to the timer display, but she needed the better-stocked kit from her pack. Teal'c moved back towards the entrance of the caverns. Daniel started giving her a running translation of every marking he found, not sure what would be useful. The heat was getting worse, and a minor seismic event showered them all with fine dust particles. Sam inched forward on her stomach dangerously far over the edge. Jack moved towards her.
"I need to reach the glowing panel at the bottom, sir." The import of her statement was clear. Jack lay down behind her on the floor of the cavern and grabbed her waist as she stretched further down the fissure. The contact jolted them both, but before Jack could say 'maybe Daniel should brace you', Sam wrapped her legs around his upper torso and locked her ankles, giving up any contact with the cavern floor so she could reach her objective. Suspended over an un-survivable drop, she resumed work, directing Daniel to parts of the object she couldn't reach form her current position. Shortly after Teal'c returned and started handing her and Daniel tools upon request, she swore softly under her breath.
"We can separate the magma-inducer and the terraforming components from the device," Sam announced, "but the detonator ... has an anti-tampering device which will ...set off the shaped charge if we try to do anything with it." Her breathing was uneven, although whether from her unaccustomed exertions or the position of Jack's face relative to her thigh as he tried to see what she was doing to the device, no one really knew.
"So..." Jack exhaled.
"So we can prevent the ... arthropods from being destroyed, but...there will still be a ... significant explosion."
Jack carefully adjusted his grip on his 2IC so he could look at his watch. They were trying to save a civilization, and were about to get blown up. He groaned unintentionally. He was reacting, in a very specific way, to the feel of the warm slick skin of Carter's stomach under his fingertips where gravity had pulled her t-shirt away. This was so not happening. He couldn't...COULDN'T be reacting to Carter now. "Seven minutes, forty seconds," he announced unsteadily. They shifted position again slightly as she handed an unidentifiable part up to him, and he relayed a tool down to her.
Sam dropped her needle-nosed pliers and swore louder. Jack knew she was thinking that she had to keep it together, or a large number of sentient beings were going to die. Teal'c and Jack passed her a new pair of pliers. Sam and Daniel shifted into high gear - Sam directing Daniel as to what to move and remove from the upper part of the device, Daniel manipulating components he didn't understand, handing them over to Teal'c in exchange for tools as soon as Sam had safely severed their internal connections
They got to the last component they were going to remove. It was low on Daniel's side of the device, and he had to lean dangerously far out to reach it. Teal'c had one hand in the timer, using miniature magnets to keep any internal jarring from bringing the contacts together prematurely. Jack and Sam moved again, shifting around the edge of the fissure so Sam could assist Daniel with one hand. Just when Jack thought everything was back under control, a probe dropped from Sam's slightly trembling fingers and Jack swore silently. Sam's mental acuity was clearly unimpaired -- her deciphering of never-before-seen alien technology up to its usual efficiency. But the dismantling was delicate work, and her body was repeatedly betraying her. Jack couldn't help but think it was his fault.
Then they began the penultimate separation. Sam had cautioned them that, if they dropped this component into the magma below, the resulting eruption would fill the cavern and kill them all. Sam closed her eyes, focused her energy again and severed the last connection. She and Daniel carefully began to slide the container of protomatter away from the main body of the device. At that moment, Jack, unable to remain completely still, moved his head in an unfortunate direction, causing Sam to suddenly push too hard on the protomatter container, thrusting its entire weight into Daniel's unprepared hands. Daniel lost his precarious balance and started to tumble into the pit. At the moment Jack was sure Daniel was actually going to die this time, Teal'c's unoccupied hand snaked down to grab him by the belt. But Teal'c did not have the leverage, without releasing the magnets, to haul his teammate and the thirty pound container up to the floor of the cavern.
Jack's watch alarm beeped. Time had run out. Daniel and Sam had swung too far away from each other for her to help him.
"Jack," Daniel yelled. Jack shifted his left hand to Sam's belt, and tried to grab Daniel with his right. The shift in position brought an unusually enlarged part of his anatomy in sudden contact with a small sharp shard of rock.
"Ow," Jack gasped, missing Daniel altogether. This was so not happening. He had to reach Daniel. He couldn't let go of Carter. Just when he thought he'd really fucked it up completely, Carter managed to grab onto the main body of the device and propel herself far enough back towards Daniel to support one side of the deadly container, and time, which had seemed to slow to a crawl, returned to its normal speed. Jack reached out again, and this time, he and Teal'c were able to return Daniel and the protomatter container to the cavern floor. Then he hauled Carter up, and she grabbed the sample container, into which Teal'c had been placing the smaller removed pieces of the device, and Teal'c grabbed the protomatter container, and the four of them started to run like hell for the Stargate.
***************************
As SG-1 ran down the ramp, Daniel grabbed both Jack and Sam by the collars of their t-shirts. "Fix it!" he yelled, oblivious to the SFs in the gate room and General Hammond and the technicians in the control room. His grip was strong enough that they turned to face him. "Either you fix it now, or I'm resigning from SG-1. I am not going back out there until you fix it." Daniel's voice was softer, but deadly, deadly serious.
"I concur," added Teal'c, glaring. He was not quite aiming his staff weapon at the two officers.
There was a moment of silence in the gate room as Sam and Jack looked at each other. The three humans were all still shaking from the effort of disarming the terraforming device and the subsequent mad run back to the Stargate, but only Daniel and Teal'c were close enough to see the fear in their teammates' eyes. One of them had to make the first move, and neither was willing to do it. And then, suddenly, without even the slightest facial movement, confidence replaced the fear in Sam's eyes. After another long moment, Jack nodded, almost imperceptibly. Then General Hammond entered the gate room, and Sam must have realized the need to get them all out of there fast.
"OK, Daniel. We'll go fix it right now. As soon as Janet clears us. There's no reason why the debriefing can't wait until..." she took a quick glance at her watch, "...1330, is there?" It was not entirely clear to whom her question was addressed.
"No. No way," Daniel objected. It was 1135, and it would take them at least 20 minutes each way to drive to Sam's apartment, which was closest. An hour and five minutes would give them hot, frantic, desperate sex, which was so...not right. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean right this minute. I just meant..." 'before we go off-world again' could be as much as a week, with the length of time they'd been gone on this mission, and the technology they'd brought back, and that might give Jack and Sam too much time to think. "...today. Because it's going to take at least ten hours, maybe twelve. To make sure it's really fixed, you've got to do it the long way." Jack wouldn't understand his reference, but Sam would remember the night when he and Sam had watched some really sappy movie after Jack and Teal'c had left early to add 'mud wrestling' to Teal'c's list of Earth cultural experiences. It was the second anniversary of Sha're's capture by the Goa'uld, and he had had three beers, and cried on Sam's shoulder, and told her about his real honeymoon with Sha're, after Jack and Kawalsky and the other soldiers had returned through the Stargate; when Sha're had told him that, despite the whole pushing-them behind-the-curtains-in-the public-meeting-hall ritual, she believed that a man and woman were not truly married until they had spent an entire night, from dusk to dawn, in private, learning each other's bodies intimately. '..and so we did it the long way,' he'd told Sam, too busy with the tears streaming down his cheeks to be embarrassed. Sam would remember. She remembered everything.
"All right, Daniel. We'll do it the long way," Sam replied softly, with a slight smile. Fortunately, her face was still too red from her exertions for her blush to show.
Jack's eyebrows almost hit his hairline. He was carefully looking at Daniel, not Sam. "Ten or twelve hours..." he began, abruptly cutting off the smartass remark he had undoubtedly been about to make when he realized that General Hammond was not just in the room, but looking at the three of them curiously. "OK, kids, we'd better get a move on then. Drop all the...doohickeys... in Carter's lab, stop by the infirmary, and on to the de-briefing." Teal'c's voice stopped him just as he was breezing by General Hammond.
"O'Neill, do not you think it would be prudent for us to shower before debriefing." All of them, even the Jaffa, were dripping with sweat and covered with small dust particles from the cave where the terraforming device had been.
"Yeah, right, shower first, good idea," Jack said over his shoulder as he finished making his escape from the gate room. Daniel had never seen Jack move so fast without a Jaffa shooting at him. His friend was clearly unnerved, which was great. And given Jack's reaction to 'ten or twelve hours', he hoped the man was headed for a great deal of planning and a very cold shower.
Sam and Teal'c, their arms still full of pieces of the Goa'uld terraforming machine, also made a successful escape from the gate room, but Daniel, despite being unencumbered, somehow got cornered by General Hammond.
"Dr. Jackson, what's got you so upset? What is it so all-fired important to get fixed?"
Daniel closed his eyes and mentally flagellated himself for forgetting that gate room audio was transmitted to the control room. He couldn't lie to General Hammond, but he couldn't tell him what was really happening either. While he believed that, deep down, the General would understand, Air Force regulations were...Air Force regulations, and the General had almost always upheld and enforced them, even when the General personally believed they were wrong.
"General, if I told you that, I'd have to tell you how it got broken. And I can't do that." Daniel let his embarrassment at having precipitated the scene in the gate room, instead of waiting until they hit the locker room, show clearly. "We still have Fifth Amendment rights, don't we?" he added. He wasn't sure if anything he had said or done was against Air Force regulations, but it didn't hurt to know the answer to that question, as a general principle, and if the General misunderstood...
"Son, it's..."
"Sir, it's going to be all right. I'm absolutely certain of that. Please, just trust me. You know Sam can fix anything." The last sentence caused him slight uneasiness. He loved Sam (as a friend), and profoundly respected her abilities to make just about any piece of alien technology do whatever they needed it to do, and her ability to zat a serpent guard on the run at twenty yards or take down a warlord with her bare hands, and even her ability to calm and soothe and reassure an upset or frightened friend, eight years old or eighty. But he really wasn't sure how she was going to handle finally making love to the man she had loved, and denied herself for regulations' sake, for the last three years. What he was absolutely sure of was that once it was finally happening, Jack would make it right. The man was so in love with Sam Carter it was almost silly, and once he had her in his bed, he would adore her and cherish her, in addition to making her toes curl. But he was absolutely certain that by the time they came back to work, with the assurance that they would be having regular sex (or at least as regular as their downtime schedule, over which he had no control, permitted) so that this idiotic tension would never get in the way of the team getting its job done again, everything really would be all right.
His plea convinced the General. "All right, son. I believe you."
"And please don't ask anyone about it at the briefing." Daniel added hurriedly. His agitation was real enough. He wasn't sure Jack and Sam could stand up to questioning at this point.
"If it's that important to you, Dr. Jackson, I won't." said the General, shaking his head slightly before he turned and left the gate room.
End.
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to E.M. Bonner
Heliopolis Main Archive
A Stargate: SG-1 Fanfiction Site
Intervention
by E M BonnerSite Navigation
Support Heliopolis