"This is not my fault!" Daniel hissed.
"Yes, it is."
"I told you - the Xrvigs don't even have a word for 'team'! They do everything within family units. So when I called us a team, they just assumed..."
"Oh, great. So we're all married instead," Sam snarled, deliberately resting her icy feet on Daniel's bare leg.
He yelped and squirmed. "No! Not married, Sam. Family."
"And the family that sleeps together, gets mineral rights together," Jack snarked. He tried to tug an edge of the blanket towards him, but Teal'c's grip was immovable.
"Would you care to rephrase that? Sir?"
Jack hastily flapped his hands in apology, only to receive twin howls of protest in return as he let in an extra draft of cold air. "Sorry, sorry," he muttered. "Just thinking of how much fun Frasier is going to have when she hears about this. Pretty sure she's going to win the pool."
"It's just a ritual, okay?" Daniel grumbled. "We spend the night in this room -"
"This subterranean, freezing closet, without any of our gear," Sam corrected coldly. "Not to mention our boots. Or our pants!"
"We spend one night in relative discomfort," Daniel snapped. "It proves to the Xrvigs that we're a family unit. And they put us here because it's the entrance to the mines we've been asking about! It's symbolic. Just like the family thing."
"You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your relatives," Jack sighed. He gave up on Teal'c's side of the blanket. Trying to steal some of Sam's would be tantamount to suicide, so he tried to appropriate part of Daniel's instead.
Daniel eyed him and said sweetly, "Keep that up, Jack, and I will tell the Xrvigs that we're married. All four of us."
Jack hastily let go.
"Really, you guys," Daniel added with exasperation. "Would it kill you to pretend to be family, for just a couple of hours?"
"Look, it's not that I'm really arguing with the sentiment," Sam tried. "I do think of you guys as family, I do." She shifted a little closer to Teal'c, wondering if his symbiote was anything like a hot water bottle. "But this whole prove-we're-family thing is just -"
"I must disagree with you, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c interjected.
Daniel raised his brows with surprise. Teal'c had been remarkably quiet throughout all the squabbling, even for him, and he'd hoped that the Jaffa had taken refuge from all the nonsense in the peacefulness of kel no reem. "Really, Teal'c? What about?"
"No subterfuge is necessary. I do, indeed, look upon you all as family."
Daniel blinked. "Oh. Well. Thank you, Teal'c," he said. "That's - that means a lot to me, and to Sam and Jack, too."
"It certainly does," Sam agreed heartily.
"Course it does," Jack said, giving Teal'c an affectionate slap on the arm and surreptitiously trying to tug on the blanket again.
"Were you not my family," Teal'c continued with unruffled calm, "I would have hurled all three of you to the floor long ago, and spent the night alone in this bed in relative comfort."
Jack carefully released his grip on the blanket. Sam edged an inch or two back. Daniel licked his lips, and stopped squirming.
Teal'c nodded at each of them in turn and closed his eyes again.
When the Xrvig leader arrived in the morning, surrounded by the family members that made up the ruling council, she found the three human members of SG-1 piled in a sleeping heap around the serene, upright Jaffa.
"Such a cute family," she cooed.
Teal'c could not quite suppress the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth as he looked down at his sleeping friends. "Indeed."
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Ten for the Team
by Fig NewtonKapitel Bemerkung:
The team has to act as a family to gain mineral rights. It's amazing how often Teal'c pwns the rest of the team, even when cuddling is involved.Site Navigation
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