I Did Say I Do
I Did Say I Do
by Meriem Clayton
Summary: Sam must marry Daniel to save his life and prevent a major diplomatic incident. Daniel decides to take advantage of the opportunity handed him.
Category: Drama, Romance
Season: Season 9
Pairing: Daniel/Sam, Jack/Sam
Rating: 13+
Warnings: minor language, sexual situations
Author's Notes: Thanks to my betas, Monica and Jess.
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: 09/07/05
Chapter 1
"I look absolutely ridiculous," Sam moaned, regarding herself in the long mirror in the ornate frame. A peaked headdress, for all the world like the top third of a Christmas tree complete with dangling ball ornaments and strands of something a little like tinsel, was perched precariously on her head. Her long green dress, a little snug on her tall, toned frame, had huge winged shoulder pieces that also had balls dangling from them. She poked her foot free of the yards and yards of hem to reveal shoes that would put an elf to shame, complete with little bells on their curled tips.
Captain Dana Mulder of SG-10 struggled valiantly to say the loyal thing, but her "no, really, you look fine," was punctuated with so much involuntary giggling that it wasn't really helpful.
Colonel Cam Mitchell, lounging in the doorway, made no effort whatsoever to be supportive. Instead, he started singing `Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree.'"
Looking over Cam's shoulder, Dr. Daniel Jackson thought that while it was not the most flattering thing she'd ever had on, Sam, as always, still managed to look very beautiful. It always cut him to the quick to see her unhappy in any way and, trying to be upbeat, he offered, "The outfit isn't that remote from costumes worn by some Balinese dancers during the dancing that accompanies the..."
Teal'c materialized behind him and cut him off. "DanielJackson, I find the Balinese most interesting but I do not think ColonelCarter wants to hear about them right now."
Cam suppressed most of a snigger and said, "You'll only need to wear it for a couple of hours or so and you'll make the local `powers that be,' including your brand new daddy, ecstatic by your respect for local custom. These folks will only trade with people they're related to and, until you pulled that little kid out of the lake and gave them an excuse to adopt you, we weren't getting within a country mile of their naquada."
Daniel had jabbed Cam in the ribs on the word `new,' but it was too late. Sam had been reminded of her late father, a wound that still pained her. Sam said with asperity, "I had a dad, a wonderful dad. Bel Min is NOT my new daddy. Let's not get TOO much into the moment."
Further conversation was forestalled by the arrival behind Cam, Daniel, and Teal'c of two more members of SG-10. A real log jam was developing in the doorway. "Colonel Carter," one of the new arrivals said, "they're asking you to come to the head of the stairs to be ready for your grand entrance."
"If only they'd let me use the lift," she moaned as she shuffled forward, walking normally completely out of the question between the shoes and the headdress that teetered uncertainly with every step. Local women appeared to manage similar get ups, but it wasn't something you picked up in the half an hour she had spent so far decked out like she was waiting for a bunch of presents to be shoved under her skirts. As she passed Daniel, he whispered, "You'll do just fine," and gave her an encouraging smile which she returned warmly. She could always count on him to be there, encouraging her.
The smile was immediately wiped off his face the moment she was past him. He was more than a little worried about the ceremony. Because of the ludicrous styles worn by the locals, some very quaint customs, and the ridiculous name attached to the world by its citizens, the SG teams had frankly been more than a little patronizing in their attitude toward the population of P4D92, otherwise known as Poopoo. Daniel had tried to tell Cam, as the officer in command, that they were too relaxed and oblivious to the real threat Daniel saw, but Cam hadn't been particularly worried.
Daniel had noticed the razor sharp knives on everyone's belts and the prevalence of knife scars on faces and arms. Daniel had noticed how easily people took offense and he had put it all together to conclude this was a culture where saving face was very, very important, where very little provocation was required for people to resort to violence to defend their honor. Their hosts had drilled Sam mercilessly for two days about the adoption ceremony which was only supposed to last about ten minutes. It seemed critically important to them that she have every detail down perfectly. Daniel hadn't been able to get a straight answer as to what would happen if she flubbed any. He sighed. She hated any of them being protective of her but he couldn't help himself. He cared way too much and far more than anyone had ever guessed.
Daniel was incredibly tense through the entire proceedings, moving his lips silently along with her responses and holding his breath every time she had some ritual move to make. At the end of the ten minute ceremony, he found he needed to mop sweat off his forehead, but Sam was still in good standing with her new family.
A party was the remaining hurdle to surmount. Fortunately for Sam, who could barely move in her finery, she was only expected to sit on a high stool next to Bel Min and receive the guests without having to circulate. She didn't speak the local language and was confined to an increasingly frozen and pained smile as her only response to the congratulations Daniel translated for her from the endless line of well-wishers filing past. Each of them clutched a mug with pictures of childbirth painted on it in unsettling verisimilitude and filled with a spiked fruit punch. A servant with a tray full of mugs stood slightly behind Sam and saw to it she never ran out of drink. The custom was for Sam to conclude her interaction with each of the guests by clicking her mug with theirs and taking a sip. The problem was that there were so very many sips.
It was apparently inappropriate for Daniel in his role as translator to drink anything. He actually started to take a mug off the tray and had his hand slapped. As a result, he was in the unenviable position of rapidly becoming the only totally sober person in the room. The stuff appeared to be very potent. The locals had developed something of a tolerance for it but he noticed that Cam and Teal'c and the members of SG-10, despite barely sipping a mug out of politeness, were all mildly tipsy. Sam was on her way to being totally wasted. Given his relative inability to tolerate strong drink, he was now grateful no one had let him have any. Sam was clearly not going to make it out of the reception hall unaided. He moved unobtrusively closer to her and began to support her. She leaned back against him gratefully and it sent a pang of longing through him.
When the party ended, Sam slumped bonelessly against him. He put his arm around her waist, easing her off the stool and unto her feet, braced against his side. Bel Min took his eyes off the cleavage of the extremely buxom woman he had been flirting with ponderously for the past few minutes to say pugnaciously to Daniel, "Where are you taking her?" It was unclear to Daniel what his problem was. Before he could seek clarification, Bel Min's wife, Kil Min Bei, a tall woman with iron grey hair and a determined look on her face, marched past them, grabbed Bel Min's friend by the hair, spun her around, put her foot on her ample backside, and pushed her hard. The victim flew across the polished floor and sprawled in an ungainly heap. Moments later, she was back on her feet and lunging toward her assailant with a dagger in her hands. A deadly serious cat fight began and the preposterous clothes weren't funny any more.
Daniel half-dragged Sam from the room as quickly as possible, completely ignored by the few remaining guests and members of Sam's new family, who were in a circle around the two battling women, calling encouragement and, it appeared, possibly making bets. They negotiated the halls with some difficulty. Sam's headdress fell off twice and she tripped over her shoes repeatedly. Finally Daniel took off the headdress, handed it to Sam, and then picked her up and put her over his shoulder. Fortunately she was a happy drunk and thought it was all uproariously funny. She started to sing a Christmas carol, beating out the rhythm on his backside. Although he'd tried to suppress them, he'd had some pretty interesting daydreams over the years about her coming in contact with his backside but they had never involved a scenario like this. He thought wryly, "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it."
When they reached the suite she had used to change, he dropped her on a large divan. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down on top of her, saying coyly, "Oops," and going off into a giggling fit. He struggled to get off of her but every time he peeled one hand off, she'd grab him with another one.
"You look pretty silly, Daniel," she said with distinctly slurred speech.
"I look silly," he repeated. "And you don't?" He had finally captured her wrists, one in each hand, and forced them to the divan on either side of her face.
It was at that moment that there was a huge gasp from the doorway. Bel Min and his wife were standing, staring at them, looking absolutely appalled, with a small multitude gaping behind them. Bel Min pulled the woman to the side and gestured to the two hulking guards behind him. They immediately moved past him into the room, grabbed Daniel, and literally held him up in the air. Daniel was extremely confident of the fighting skills Teal'c and Jack had taught him, but reasoned that fighting back would probably provoke an even bigger diplomatic incident than appeared to have already occurred.
"You have insulted my daughter's honor," Bel Min barked in Jaffa instead of the local tongue. He knew Daniel was far more fluent in Jaffa, used on Poopoo as a trade language. He clearly wanted to make certain that there was no risk of misunderstanding. Standing well over 6'3" with a Dom DeLuise size bulk, he was most impressive. Getting right in Daniel's face, he yelled, spraying him with spittle in the process, "What do you plan on doing about it?"
Daniel tried very hard to maintain his calm. "I'm uncertain as to what I have done to your daughter's honor," he said, also in Jaffa, trying to sound conciliatory and thinking furiously. Could they possibly be that angry because he was alone in the room with her and lying on top of her?
"I asked you a question, Tauri," Bel Min responded, jabbing his chest with a massive finger.
"What you like me to do?" Daniel asked, completely at sea.
"Die or marry her," Bel Min responded, baldly.
Sam was laboriously coming to a sitting position. At least she had stopped laughing, Daniel was relieved to note. "I can't marry Daniel. He's like my brother. That would be...," she groped for the word in Jaffa, beyond her in her state. She gave it up and said, "Icky. Icky. Icky." The mere thought of being married to him being described as icky cut Daniel more than he believed possible. He told himself she was drunk and didn't mean it the way he was taking it.
"That's your final word?" Bel Min said to Sam, soundingquite unhappy.
Daniel realized then that Bel Min had been dead serious in presenting the two options. Bel Min really didn't want to kill him, knowing full well that this would cause a major firestorm with the Tauri but Sam wasn't getting the gravity of the situation at all. She said, triumphantly, "No. My final word is incestuous. It would be incestuous." She smiled, very pleased with herself.
Bel Min shrugged. His wife said, peevishly, "Not in here. The blood will stain the carpet." He jerked his head toward the door and they began to carry Daniel out. He had decided now was the time to quit worrying about a diplomatic incident and kick some ass when it all finally registered with Sam.
"Wait just a minute." She was sounding more sober by the syllable. "Surely, you're not really going to kill him. Believe me. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing."
"That makes virtually no difference," Bel Min said. The point ishehas been seen in your room, scandal enough, and on top of you, my daughter. The honor of my house demands no less."
"How about if we just leave right now? Go back through the Stargate?" Sam offered.
"The adoption is irrevocable. His actions are irrevocable. You must make up your mind immediately. The longer we wait, the more the dishonor grows," Bel Min said implacably.
She threw her hands up in the air and said, still tipsy enough to be rather indiscrete, "What a nightmare. I CAN'T believe this is happening. You leave me no choice. Of course, I'll marry him." She couldn't have sounded more disgusted if she had tried.
"Don't do me any favors," Daniel said. The situation was comic opera but she had been pretty damn insulting as far as he was concerned. Did she have to use words like nightmare and icky when talking about him? Perhaps it would have hurt less if he hadn't wasted way too many hours imaging being married to her. She didn't treat the prospect like marriage to a leper in his fantasies.
Bel Min's wife swung into action immediately. Daniel was escorted briskly to another room to be more appropriately dressed, but not before he heard the impressive string of commands issued. A team of women was assigned to change Sam's clothes. Evidently one did not get married looking like a Christmas tree. Guards were sent to round up the other Tauri to witness the ceremony. A servant was ordered to prepare a nuptial chamber and another to fetch a priest.
Less than two hours later, an odd assortment of people, many rousted from their beds, were assembled in the reception hall. Daniel was completely miserable and lacked the energy to take comfort in the fact that weddings were apparently austere occasions and his outfit was extremely simple by local standards. A pleasant older couple, looking very befuddled, had been pressed into service to act in the place of his parents. When a gong was sounded somewhere, his surrogate parents escorted him to the middle of a circle formed by standing guests. The Tauri were disarmed and under heavy guard on one side of the circle. Cam tried to object to the proceedings and was struck across the mouth. The gong struck again and a very pale, sober but queasy looking Sam was escorted to Daniel by Bel Min and Kil Min Bei.
They stood facing each other, but Daniel refused to look at her. He knew he was being unreasonable but he couldn't help being very hurt. He was also quite angry, more or less at the world in general. Slights by pretty girls and the popular crowd in school when he was young and, he admitted it, the ultimate geek had never healed. He hadn't been a geek since before he ascended but it felt like he hadn't shaken the popular perception of being the last man you would ever think of romantically. Vala's comment, "I haven't been so disappointed since I had sex with Daniel," a real lie if there ever was one, floated into his mind. He was so mired in his unhappy thoughts, he was barely aware of what was going on around him.
The priest came to their side and put Sam's hands in Daniel's. They were each required to repeat vows, offered in Jaffa for the benefit of the visitors, that included "obedience" for Sam. Cam had regained his sang-froid sufficiently by then to audibly snort at that word. The whole sorry affair was even shorter than the adoption ceremony. The local guests were confused, tired, and/or grumpy, the SG personnel were angry, and Sam and Daniel were both very, very unhappy. Daniel was relieved that no one took any photographs but he and Sam did have to sign an impressive looking document before they were escorted to the wedding suite, unceremoniously pushed inside, and the doors locked behind them.
Sam said bitterly, "My whole life I've dreamed about my wedding day and that travesty was not it." She plopped on the bed and pulled a pillow into her arms. "Wrong guests, wrong dress, wrong groom."
"It's nice to see such a magnificent demonstration of grace under pressure," Daniel said, surprised that he even had the energy to be sarcastic. "You take the bed and I'll sleep on the divan. I trust you won't mind if I help myself to the quilt." He pulled the comforter out from under her, earning himself a bewildered, hurt look, carried it to the other side of the room, and took his boots off. He laid down, his back to the room, and pulled the quilt over his entire body including his head. He just wanted to hide away for awhile.
Sam said, baffled, "Daniel, are you mad at me?" He had always been there, her kind, sympathetic friend. This was new and she didn't like it at all. "Surely you are as disgusted with this turn of events as I am? I'm your buddy. I must be the last person you'd ever think of in this role."
"Disgusted. Right. Go to sleep Sam," he directed her. "Oh, and you might chew on this. Remember the decision that was made a couple of years ago? Off world marriages are valid on Earth. We have divorce court ahead of us."
He turned his head under the blanket and peeked out at her. She was sitting on the bed, a single tear running down her face, tired and very, very discouraged. He felt like a heel but he just couldn't go over to her and hide how he felt. Not now. Surely in the morning he could be supportive again. Surely.
Chapter 2
Daniel was awake and pacing for hours before the imperious knock came on the double doors. By contrast, Sam had barely stirred. Daniel had been running in mental circles, trying to figure out how to return his relationship with Sam to where it had been before this debacle. He wanted nothing more than for them to go back to Earth, sign whatever required to get an annulment, and then pretend like this had never happened. When he heard the knock, Daniel checked to see that Sam was decently covered. That confirmed, he called out, "Come in."
He heard the lock being turned and then the heavy doors were flung back to reveal Kil Min Bei and a small army of servants. The pleasant expression on her face immediately transformed into a scowl as she took in the room and, in particular, the comforter thrown on the divan. Daniel sucked in his breath. It hadn't occurred to him that there was any need to conceal the fact that they had not slept together. Kil Min Bei emulated her husband by getting right in his face and yelling at him, "You would reject the daughter of this house?"
Once again, blessed with a mist of spittle from one of Sam's angry adoptive parents, Daniel resisted the urge to immediately mop his face. "The daughter of the house is an extraordinarily lovely woman," Daniel murmured. "No sane man would reject her, but she was not well last night. The custom of drinking with well-wishers at the reception required her to drink far more than is normal for her. She was not at all well after we came to the bed chamber."
Kil Min Bei narrowed her eyes. "You are very smooth, are you not sirrah?" she asked. "You looked most unhappy if I recall last night. It might be understandable that our daughter would not be thrilled to be forced to wed a commoner, such as yourself, but you," she stabbed at his chest with her forefinger, apparently another habit shared with her husband, "you should have been altogether thrilled at the chance that brought you such a wife."
The volume of the exchange on Kil Min Bei's side was such that there was no way for Sam to sleep through it. Instead, she had stirred and was sitting up, listening wide-eyed to the conversation. She tried to help the situation, saying, "He has been everything that is courteous, truly."
Kil Min Bei raised her eyebrows, taking in the fact that as Sam sat up and the covers fell away from her, it was clear that she had slept in her clothes. She moderated her tone of voice only slightly in responding to Sam, still quite huffy. "Our honor is not restored by a sham of a marriage and the refusal of this one to give you true proper place as an accepted wife. I suspect you are not totally blameless in this and would request you to think about proper behavior." She turned on her heel and departed from the room, saying "Bel Min waits to discuss the future with you both. Please be quick." As the doors closed, servants moved toward them with their BDUs and breakfast.
Sam and Daniel wanted nothing more than to get dressed and out of there, back to Earth. They dressed hurriedly, their backs to each other, but still blessed with an audience. They were unable to get rid of their helpful entourage who wanted to button their buttons and tie their shoelaces for them. Daniel said to Sam in English, fending off an insistent young woman who didn't think he could buckle his own belt, "This planet needs some public works projects or something to put their excess servant population to work." It was a thin joke but Sam made a half hearted chuckle and Daniel felt slightly encouraged.
When they were ushered into the reception room, they found a tense scene featuring Bel Min and Kil Min Bei glowering at Cam in person and no less than the planet's highest ranking official and Bel Min's first cousin, glowering at him from a hologram. Cam was doing his best to conceal his exasperation but was clearly relieved to see Sam and Daniel. They made respectful greetings to their hosts and the great man himself. Cam then said, carefully and courteously, "Would you grant me leave to speak with my team before we all talk together."
Kil Min Bei looked about to object but Bel Min shook his head and said to his ruler, "Do you give leave, my lord?"
The response was a curt nod and Cam pulled the others to one side. "Can someone give me a clue as to what is going on here? First thing I know, I'm yanked out of bed by a whole crew that looks like it doesn't consume anything but steroids and invited to your wedding. I didn't even know you were looking at silver patterns together. This morning, it's all good except we don't have our weapons and are confined to our rooms. Suddenly the guards troop in, drag everybody else off in one direction and me down here where I have been subjected to withering glares and a tongue lashing about the lack of Tauri honor." He looked at the two of them, his hands on his hips. "Okay, don't be shy. Let's hear it because it had better be good."
Daniel looked at Sam and Sam looked at Daniel. Daniel sighed. "Okay, Mitchell, Sam had a little too much of that punch last night and was smashed. I basically carried her back to the room where she had changed for the ceremony and she pulled me down on her, being goofy. At that point her new parents showed up and decided she had been compromised and either must marry me or watch me die."
"You aren't kidding, I can tell," Cam said, letting loose a whistle. "This is going to make one hell of a story. Landry will NEVER forget this debriefing. But why is everybody so pissy this morning?" He smirked. "You made an honest woman out of her."
"You aren't really taking this seriously, are you?" Daniel said irritated. "Evidently, honor isn't served unless we, ur, act married. When they showed up at our room this morning, it was clear that we hadn't shared a bed."
Cam opened his mouth a couple of times but gave up. He beckoned them to follow him back to the negotiations. Bel Min said, "We will not be satisfied until we know that Daniel Jackson has properly accepted our daughter as his wife."
Cam said, carefully, "Our customs are different than yours. A couple needs to get comfortable with each other first before they can truly be husband and wife." He told this bold faced lie with an untroubled face. Daniel decided he wasn't ever playing poker with the guy.
"Then they can remain here until the getting acquainted period is over," Kil Min Bei said triumphantly, "And," she added spitefully, "your other soldiers will remain here as well as hostages, guaranteeing that nothing foolish is done to try to retrieve them untimely soon."
"It is kind for you to offer your hospitality," Daniel said, "but Colonel Carter is vital to work that is ongoing back on Earth. She is critical to development of the most promising weapon we've found so far against the Ori we've told you of. She's also heavily involved in working on the very technology that you have expressed interest in with respect to our trade negotiations." He winced inside. The last statement was a huge stretch. He rushed ahead, hoping he could lie convincingly, just once. "She must return immediately." Sam, who had been coming up dry for a response, looked at him gratefully.
"And," Cam threw in, "Dr. Jackson is much too modest. He is also critical to important ongoing work." He paused. "I am actually concerned that if they are held here against their will, my government may refuse to sign the trade agreement we have been discussing."
The hologram shrugged. "The trade agreement isn't that important to us and we aren't at all sure we believe in these Ori of yours. I strongly suspect that you want our naquada a lot more than we want what you have to offer. Our honor must be served but I also appreciate the hardship that the absence of key personnel might cause to all of us." He pursed his lips. "I have a proposition. Dr. Carter and Dr. Jackson and yourself may return to Earth but you must take an observer with you and the rest of your party stays here as hostages."
Cam, Daniel, and Sam tag teamed, trying every persuasive skill at their disposal but they got nowhere and, truthfully, the other side had all the cards. It was definitely true that Earth wanted the naquada more than they wanted what Earth had to offer. Poopoo had a population of millions and a technology close to that of Earth. If they chose to hide Teal'c and SG-10, even a full military assault wouldn't locate them. It fact, it was rather amazing that they were even willing to allow any of them to return to Earth rather than just locking Sam and Daniel in a room together indefinitely. Cam later said that he thought they might have thought that getting an observer on Earth would make it worth while. In the end, they had to agree to the proposal. The planetary leader bid a haughty and unfriendly farewell and SG-1 stood around awkwardly with Bel Min and Kil Min Bei until a stunningly beautiful young woman came rushing breathlessly into the reception room and skidded to a halt just inside the door. She then advanced with all proper decorum and made her bow to their hosts. Bel Min turned to Cam with the air of one bestowing a great privilege and said, "Let me introduce Hanna Pel Bei, my wife's cousin. Hanna, this is Colonel Mitchell, Dr. Jackson, and Colonel Jackson."
Daniel was taken aback by the assignment of his last name to Sam. He was surprised that Sam didn't correct Bel Min but realized she was probably past caring at this point and just wanted to leave. Daniel was mystified at why they were meeting this lovely young woman, but joined the others in saying something polite. Bel Min continued, "Hanna will be going back to Earth with you as the observer."
The way in which the observer was going to determine that Daniel had "fully accepted Sam as his wife" had not been discussed. Daniel hadn't really given it any thought yet. Now, looking at this gorgeous girl, all sorts of inappropriate images came to mind. He gave himself a mental shake. There was time for that discussion later. They just needed to get out of here, go back to Earth, and regroup.
The debriefing held with Landry a few hours later definitely lived up to Cam's prediction. Landry stopped Cam three separate times with variations of, "You wouldn't be messing with me here, would you Colonel?" When at last he finished, Landry sat stunned and said, "Let me try to restate this. If Daniel and Sam can't convince their observer that they have a real marriage, Teal'c and SG-10 stay hostages indefinitely on... I can hardly say this ... Poopoo. This young woman who had every male soldier in the gateroom with his tongue down to his socks and is undoubtedly sitting in the cafeteria with far more than the detachment that is supposed to be escorting her, is somehow going to make the determination that Daniel has - what's the term here - truly accepted Sam as his wife." He looked at them all challengingly. "Are you absolutely sure you know what`truly accepted' means? It might be less than the, uh, whole enchilada."
"I think that's actually the case, General, at least in terms of what the observer is going to report. I talked with her for a bit. She blushed several shades of red and said something to the effect that she wanted me to know that she wasn't expecting to see anything," at this point Daniel himself blushed more deeply than he had for years, "well, anything really... personal. They just want to be reassured that we have a real marriage."
"Well ohkeydokey then," Landry said, channeling Jack without realizing it. "I am not content to leave things this way but until we have a better idea, Dr. Jackson and Colonel Carter, you are going to have to put up the pretense of really being married. I think the sham nature of this should be confined to the people in this room and a few other key personnel on a strict need-to-know basis. You never know who this observer might talk to and what might slip. You won't be able to go on missions together."
"Wait a minute, sir," Cam interrupted. "Jackson's a civilian. The regulations aren't absolute. Couldn't we say that this was an experiment or something? Think about the... the Leakey's, hell, Daniel's parents. There have been a lot of very effective husband and wife teams."
"The Leakey's?" Landry asked. "You don't think I know who they are, do you, Mitchell?" he shook his head in some sort of private comment. "Okay, we can say it's an experiment." He muttered to himself, "I must be crazy."
He ran his hands over his head, reflectively. "Colonel Mitchell, I want you to babysit the observer, pretty much 24 X 7, at least the part when she isn't in bed."
Cam looked completely nonplused. "Sir," he was uncharacteristically floundering, "sir, I'm, well, the woman I'm seeing might not understand..."
"That's a personal problem, Colonel," Landry said. Daniel thought he seemed strangely amused.
Cam tried again. "What about when I'm off world?"
Landry laughed to himself. "Perhaps we can get Dr. Lam to take over then."
Cam got a huge smile on his face at that suggestion and quickly made an effort to damp it down. "That would be very, VERY helpful, sir."
"I kind of thought it would," Landry said. Daniel was really intrigued. Why was Cam so delighted by that idea? It was as if he and Landry were speaking in code.
They filed out of the conference room. Landry went his way and Cam said, "I need to go confer with Dr. Lam," and took off.
Sam and Daniel stood awkwardly in the corridor. Daniel got his act together first and said, "Let's go to my office. We need to make some decisions."
He ushered her in ahead of him, closed the door, and leaned on it. She looked at him and said, "I suppose you were referring to where we would live for the moment, your place or mine."
Daniel nodded. "That's certainly the first decision. What do you think?"
Sam suddenly waved two fists in the air and made an argh sound. She then calmed and took a deep breath, smoothing her jacket down. She said, "Sorry. I just want my life back." She looked at him repentantly. "Look, Daniel, I was awfully rude when this all happened. You're a wonderful guy and very attractive. It's just that this isn't how I had my life planned. I was reacting to the situation, not to the thought of you, really."
"Yeah, well, whatever," Daniel said dismissively. "Where do you want to live?"
The upshot was that Daniel went home, threw a few things in a suitcase, and had presented himself at Sam's within an hour after she got home. When he carried the suitcase in, he followed her up the stairs and then stood uncertainly in the hall. "Where do you want me to put this?" he asked.
"Do you think we dare have separate rooms?" Sam asked, tiredly.
He smacked his forehead. "I didn't think about that. I suppose not. But we slept next to each other on missions. It doesn't mean anything."
"Right," she said. "Right."
That night, when the ersatz Dr. and Dr.Colonel Jackson crawled into bed, Daniel found it impossible to drift off. He preferred to sleep in the nude and that sure wasn't going to work. The room was stuffy, by his standards, and he thought about getting up and throwing all the windows open as he normally did, but just knew that would not be a success. Each of them was as far on their side of the bed as they could get and he, who preferred to sleep smack in the middle of the bed, felt like he was about to fall out. He was miserable but then Sam said, "Good night, Daniel. Sleep well."
"Okay," he thought, "this could be worse." Suddenly, he realized something. He'd been here and done this before. His marriage to Sha're had NOT started out as a marriage of choice. They'd been putting up a faade at first too and look how that had turned out. Was it possible that being thrown together like this, that pretending something, could lead to something real? Perhaps a plan was in order.
Chapter 3
Sam woke slowly, feeling groggy but also uneasy, although unsure why. Then her foggy brain noticed that she was not alone in her bedroom. It had been such a long time since she had been involved with anyone, she panicked for a moment. Thoughts of an intruder raced through her mind as she forced open a gritty eye. Whoa. There was the side of a man's very nicely muscled naked chest immediately in her field of view, tapering down to impressive abs. Her eyes moved up over the admittedly yummy, if confusing sight, to Daniel's face. Her eyes flew open and suddenly she remembered everything.
He noticed her stirring and turned his head to smile at her. "Good morning, Colonel Doctor Carter."
She smiled back. It was impossible to resist that sweet smile, reflected in his clear blue eyes, no matter how crazy the situation. She stretched and asked, "You don't suppose I need to start going by Dr. Samantha Jackson, do you?"
"That would freak people out." He laughed and tousled her hair. "You are not the kind of woman who takes her husband's name."
That was an interesting insight into his image of her. "I'm not, uh?" she asked, sitting up as he stood up. She saw that he was wearing running shorts and couldn't help but notice a very nicely muscled pair of legs. It had been quite a long time since she'd seen his legs. For that matter, she couldn't remember ever actually having seen them. He wasn't a shorts wearer, not at least when he was around her. He leaned over to tie his shoes and her attention was drawn to another pleasing part of his anatomy. This sharing a bedroom with a coworker certainly put images into your head that would be a little unsettling in the workplace. Then she thought, "Need to adjust your thinking, Sam. For the time being this particular co-worker is your husband."
As he was pulling on a t-shirt, she asked, "What's up? It's," she shuddered, looking at the clock, "before 6:00 AM."
"I'm going for a run. You want to come with?" he asked.
She responded, laughing, "I promised myself at the Academy that I was not doing exercise voluntarily in pre-dawn hours ever again." She picked up a pillow and hugged it. "You seem to have had an attitude adjustment during the night. Tell me how I can get so happy about this mess too."
He turned and looked at her, regarding her seriously. "I don't know Sam. I didn't sleep for hours last night, thinking about everything. I guess I'm probably running on about 3 hours of sleep right now. What works for me is to worry a problem to death and then go to sleep. When I wake up, it often just falls into place. When I woke up this morning, I thought, `What's so bad about spending a little more time than usual with one of my oldest friends?' Sure, there'll be some awkward parts but our circumstances are better than Teal'c's and SG-10. That should be our focus. Getting them released." He reached down and touched her shoulder a moment. "Go back to sleep for another hour or so. We don't need to be at the Mountain before 8:00."
She lay back down but didn't go back to sleep. He returned from his run and entered quietly, apparently believing that she was asleep. He shed his t-shirt and his socks and shoes, dropping them where he stood. They were going to have some problems with general messiness; she could tell. That thought was immediately wiped away when he removed his shorts - thank God his back was to her - and she watched him bare-assed, padding into the bathroom. Some women went for chests, but she had always been particularly taken by male posteriors. "Oh... my... God," she thought, "that is one prime piece of real estate." She pulled the covers over her head to prevent any more inadvertent Peeping Tom behavior and stayed that way until he came back out of the shower, dressed, and left the bedroom.
When she came downstairs, he gave her a second good morning. She searched his face and couldn't tell if he realized he'd started the day by flashing her. She blushed and he looked at her curiously. "You, um, need to be more careful about, um," she stopped.
"Yes?" he asked, waiting patiently, his coffee half way to his lips.
"About taking off your clothes. I, um, wasn't asleep. Just now. I wasn't asleep." She blushed again, feeling like an inexperienced school girl.
"Oh," was all he said, his expression a curious mix of embarrassment and what looked suspiciously like a smirk. "I made some coffee," he said, waving in the direction of the pot. Sam filled a mug and stood, leaning against the counter, sipping it. Daniel cleared his throat and said, his eyes on his coffee as he swirled it in the mug, "It occurs to me we need to map out our strategy for work. If the general public isn't supposed to know this isn't a real marriage, we need to think about what we would be doing if we HAD impulsively married someone we were head over heels about." He looked up and studied her speculatively. "Just imagine I'm, oh I don't know, Jack. How would you be acting?"
"Jack!! I'd be staying home. Even in his new position, you could still argue I'm in his chain of command," she protested. Where was he getting this from?
"I meant hypothetically, Sam," he said patiently. "Okay. Make it someone else. I've noticed from your DVD collection that you are a big MacGyver fan. He looks a hell of a lot like Jack, but he's safe in terms of regs. So, imagine that instead of being married to me, you're married to MacGyver."
She rolled her eyes and then suddenly was struck with the thought that if he was trying to imagine how he would act, he must be thinking about his lost wife, about Sha're, and feeling sad. She answered in a much different tone of voice than had been on the tip of her tongue a moment before, "I guess you can't help but think about Sha're."
He laughed a little. "Actually Sha're and I had exactly the situation you and I do. It wasn't a marriage by choice and we weren't sleeping together at first, just keeping up appearances. I'll have to use someone else. I was actually trying to decide between Julia Roberts and Liz MacDuff."
"You mean Dr. Elizabeth MacDuff? The new scientist that Walter introduced us to in the cafeteria? Why her?" Sam asked a trifle belligerently, Daniel's choice of a much younger woman making her feel a little over the hill.
"Sam, surely you didn't miss how young and pretty and, how I do I say this, well put together she is?" Daniel said, regarding her over the top of his coffee. He put the mug down suddenly and stood up. "Our method acting techniques are actually our own business, but, however we motivate ourselves, we do need to act like professionals who are trying mightily to control themselves but not always succeeding. Longing gazes. Occasional touching when we think no one is looking, that sort of thing. Maybe getting caught out kissing once or twice, especially if we can time that when our observer will see it." He walked over to Sam and took her mug out of her unresisting hand. "So, I think we'd better practice a couple of times. We wouldn't want the awkwardness of a first kiss where someone might see it, right?
It made sense, but it was 7:15 in the morning. She wasn't even fully caffeinated yet. She felt about as romantic as a bus ticket to Terre Haute. She wrinkled up her face. "Now?" she said, not trying to hide her lack of enthusiasm.
He was undaunted. "We need to do it before we go to work. Think about MacGyver - or whomever else you came up with. You can do it, Sam."
She closed her eyes. For just a moment, she thought she heard a tiny sigh. She didn't think of MacGyver. What she actually found herself thinking about was Daniel vanishing into the bathroom, good old naked Daniel. They kept standing there and Daniel didn't do anything. What was he waiting for? They needed to get to the Mountain. She kept working the image of Daniel's backside and was more and more impatient. He moved closer and she felt his warm breath on her face. She opened her eyes ever so slightly and peeked at him. He was looking at her from out of half-closed eyes. His strong, warm hand came up and cupped her cheek and then he brought his lips within a micron of her own and hovered there. Time to get this over with. She took a fistful of his shirt and tugged. He completed the kiss then, gently, skillfully. He refrained from using his tongue and she was, curiously, a little disappointed. It was a good kiss but it was so, well, respectful.
"Daniel, I don't think that kiss would convince anyone we were newly married. It was too damn polite," she said, starting to break away.
"Demonstrate how you think I should be kissing you," he said, a note of challenge in his voice.
"Is that a dare?" she asked, laughing. "Okay. You ready?" He nodded. She wound an arm around his neck and ruffled the short hair at the nape. She slipped the other arm around his waist and then, as if her hand had a will of its own, a little lower. She covered his mouth with her own and teased his lips with her tongue. When he gave her an opening, she slipped her tongue inside. He laughed a little into her mouth and then his tongue answered hers. They were kissing hard and deep now and it was surprisingly good. He was the one that broke it off. He put his hands on her hips and set her away from him.
"I get the point, Sam," he said, grinning. "You ready to leave?" He walked off to pick up his knapsack and his jacket as if they had been discussing how to work the coffeemaker. She felt slightly miffed that he hadn't seemed that moved by what she thought was a damn fine kissing effort on her part.
The day was a disaster at the base. She didn't get anything at all accomplished because every five minutes someone else popped their head in to offer congratulations and pump her for information. There were a ton of questions, several of them things she and Daniel hadn't thought to dream up answers for such as why she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. She seriously considered printing up pamphlets, including a FAQ section. It would have two parts: the questions people actually asked and the questions they weren't asking but were hinting at answers for. "Are you pregnant?" fit into that second list. People wanted to know what she and Daniel wanted for wedding gifts. She found this excessively awkward and imagined the administrative nightmare of keeping everyone's presents straight and making sure they were all returned to the correct people after it was announced that they weren't really married.
About 10:00 Hanna showed up with Cam. She greeted Sam quietly and didn't say much, but her eyes were moving constantly. She was obviously very much fascinated with everything Tauri. She spent the rest of the morning, sitting quietly on a stool and watching. Since Sam was writing a report, there wasn't much to see and it started feeling really creepy to Sam. She was relieved when lunch time arrived and they went to meet Daniel in the cafeteria. Daniel surprised her by playing footsy under the table. Sam noticed a faint smile on Hanna's face while it was going on so maybe it wasn't a totally bad idea. His approval rating went down when he spotted Dr. MacDuff on the way out of the cafeteria and greeted her as if it was Liz he had been kissing that morning, not Sam, or so it seemed to her anyway. Hanna went off to spend the afternoon staring at Daniel and she felt like he deserved it.
Shortly after arriving home, she strolled into the kitchen to find Daniel, bending over, rummaging in the refrigerator. Was she ever going to be able to see him bending over without flashing on this morning? It muted her slight irritation with him from lunch time. "Not much to eat in here," he said, glancing up at her. "Want to go to the grocery store?"
"If I bought food and brought it home, then I'd have to cook it," she said. "That seems like a complete no win proposition to me."
He looked at her intrigued. "So what, pray tell, do you do to keep from starving to death?"
She shrugged. "I eat a big lunch at work. In the evening, I drink a can of Slimfast or pick up some takeout on my way home."
He gave up on the refrigerator and started going through the pantry shelves. "I don't know about this," he said, and pulled out a package of DingDongs. "And they have an expiration date from two months ago," he said and dropped them in the trash basket.
"What do you think you're doing, mister?" Sam said, playfully. "I'll have you know I'm proud of my bad eating habits." She retrieved the DingDongs from where they were nestled in some junk mail and stroked them lovingly, saying, "Nice DingDongs."
"You don't really want those," Daniel said, chuckling. "I'm going to the store and get some groceries and make you a meal you'll never forget." He tried to take them from her hand. She held them away teasingly.
The next thing she knew he was chasing her around the downstairs, both of them laughing, trying to recapture the DingDongs. He finally caught up with her in the dusky living room and they started wrestling. This was her absolute favorite turn on and it seemed strange to be doing it with Daniel. Friendly wrestling with a guy she was involved with was programmed to end in a hot make out session, if not something more, and that sure wasn't going to happen with Daniel, was it? She managed to get away from him and they struggled for a moment before they were down on the rug again. They had stopped laughing. It was still fun, but had become somehow more intense.
One moment she was looking into his blue eyes, inches away from her, searching for a hold, and the next thing she knew, he was being hauled off her and punched in the face. Daniel was in great shape and knew how to fight but had been totally blindsided. He was sprawled on his back and starting to get up when the assailant grabbed him and punched him again. This time he gave better than he got and, in moments, had the other man pinned against the floor, his arm forced back and up to make him cooperate.
"Daniel," Sam said, distraught. "It's my brother. It's Mark. Let him up."
"Are you sure?" Sam knew he'd met Mark a handful of times but Mark wasn't a particularly memorable looking man and had cut his hair in a buzz and lost 40 pounds since the last time Daniel had seen him. Daniel asked. "What's his deal?"
"Hey, I'm here," Mark said, mouth ground against the floor. "I can talk for myself."
"Well, then, talk," Daniel said, easing up almost completely.
"I was in town on business and decided to drop by to see my sister. I came up the front walk and saw her struggling with some man in a dark room. What was I supposed to think?"
Daniel got off him, got to his feet, and offered him a hand. Mark took it and they stood, staring at each other. Sam took one good look at Daniel's face and ran to the kitchen for the first aid kit. "Daniel, you're bleeding," she said. Taking his hand, she pulled him away from his staring match with her brother to the couch. "Sit down and let me patch you up. I'm so sorry." She began to work tenderly on cleaning up his face.
Mark said, begrudgingly, "I guess I owe you an apology. You're Sam's teammate, Dr. Jackson, right? What the hell were you guys doing?"
They looked at each other. Sam said, "Daniel wanted my DingDongs."
Mark said sternly to Daniel, "If she doesn't want to give you her DingDongs buddy, that's her call."
Sam looked at him dumbfounded for a moment and then realized what he thought she had said. "No. It wasn't that. He really wanted to take some real DingDongs away from me." She pointed at the squashed package on the floor. She turned to Daniel. "When we were little kids, we had a special meaning for DingDongs. I don't know how it got started."
Daniel started to laugh. It was a small laugh at first, but grew and grew until he was hugging his sides and laughing so hard tears were running down his face. It would have been impossible to resist even if there hadn't been anything to laugh about. All of them were shrieking with laughter when Cam and Hanna walked in the door Mark had left wide open in his haste to rescue his sister.
Cam grinned at the spectacle in front of him and said, "I gotta ask. What is so funny?" He then got a good look at Daniel and said, "And what the hell happened to you?"
Daniel tried to answer a couple of times but couldn't really complete sentences. Then Sam tried but wasn't any more successful. It was Mark who finally said, "I was protecting my sister because I misunderstood something I saw through the window. They were actually just having fun."
Hanna said, approvingly, "This is very, very good. Having, how you say, vigorous fun is very, very good."
Mark looked at her as if she was crazy. The others were utterly stunned for another reason. Sam said, "You speak English."
"Of course. When your people first made contact, we asked for information to learn your language. I have been studying."
Cam said, "And you just didn't feel like sharing this information? Why did you let me translate for you all day?"
She looked upset. "This was rude? On my world, it would be impolite to be so ungrateful to you for your efforts as to stop you once you started."
Mark interrupted. "On your world???"
Three faces looked at him appalled at their carelessness. "Her English is obviously a little shaky," Cam said easily. "You meant `in your world,' right?" he said to her, "like in your circumstances, your environment."
Hanna had been told of the need for discretion and it was clear from her expression that her transgression was dawning on her now. "Oh, yes, very much. I am so very, very, very sorry to make such a terrible mistake."
Mark said, "Listen, you should hear my Spanish. The word for pregnant sounds like the English word for embarrass. I really got myself in a pack of trouble with that once." He extended his hand and took hers and shook it. She, clearly bewildered, suffered the gesture. "I'm Mark Carter, Sam's brother."
Cam said, "I'm Cam Mitchell. I'm on Sam's team with her now. And this is a guest of the Air Force from an area near one of our remote bases in the South Pacific, Miss Hanna Bei."
Hanna said, "I am happy to meet you, brother of Colonel Dr. Jackson."
Mark said, "I'm sorry. I'm Sam's brother, not Dr. Jackson's."
Hanna nodded, "Exactly. Colonel Dr. Jackson, not Dr. Jackson."
Sam put a hand on Mark's arm. "Mark, Daniel and I got married yesterday." She hadn't planned on telling him at all, but Hanna was standing right there. She'd just have to leave him believing it since there was no plausible explanation for why she and Daniel would make something like that up.
Mark looked down at her hand. "Sam, is this all part of some crazy reality show or something?" He sounded half serious. "You aren't even wearing a ring."
Sam looked at Daniel. "That came up several times today."
He shook his head. "I started counting. I was asked about the ring 10 times and there were 11 other occasions when people looked at my hand so pointedly that they might as well of asked."
"Look, Mark. It was a very spur of the moment thing. There was nowhere to get rings that we would have wanted to have so we decided to wait until this weekend. Don't worry. We will both be clearly marked off limits within a matter of days," Daniel said.
Mark dropped back on the couch and said, "Wow." He shook his head and repeated it, "Wow."
Sam decided it was time to get this group up and moving. "How about we all go out to dinner? And Mark we insist you stay here tonight instead of going to a hotel."
Mark nodded and then returned to a couple more repeats of "Wow," before he could be pried off the couch and loaded up into the car.
That night, Daniel and Sam were a little less careful about being all the way on their individual sides of the bed. The wrestling had broken down the shyness about casual contact. Sam felt rather special. Her brother hadn't always acted like she was all that important to him and yet tonight he had jumped in to defend her. Daniel had been just wonderful at dinner, putting Mark at ease, paying her compliments, and heading Hanna off masterfully several times when she started to veer down paths of weirdness. Sam had noticed Cam sitting back after the first few minutes and watching Daniel like he was some sort of floor show. It was rather amazing how well Daniel was handling the whole thing. She resolved that tomorrow she'd try to take a leaf from his book and make this as much fun as possible for as long as it had to last.
Chapter 4
When Daniel came back from his run Saturday morning, Sam appeared to be asleep. Still he did the little strip tease that he was sure she had seen more than once and that appeared to be putting a few ideas in her head that advanced his cause. When he finished showering and dressing, she still had the covers over her head. He hated to wake her but they were facing a very daunting to do list for the weekend. There was the typical end of the week lick and a promise cleaning and laundry, several errands, starting with buying wedding rings, and, finally, lugging most of Daniel's clothes and many of his personal effects over to Sam's. It looked like their fake marriage would have to last at least long enough to celebrate a one month anniversary. They had to move on and take care of the things that people living together, let alone married people, had to have in place.
It intrigued him that they had both come to the conclusion that this marriage might be continuing for awhile based on opposite interpretations of the same evidence from the day before. On Friday, Sam and Daniel sat down with Hanna and asked for their report card. "You Tauri like to do this status thing a great deal," she observed, leaning back in the visitor chair in Daniel's office and looking at Daniel seated behind the desk and Sam perched on its edge. "With us, it is more `is it done and as it should be?' If not, it is nothing."
Daniel responded, "That is why it is most kind of you to try to give us an indication of how we are doing so that we know that we are not miscommunicating and that you are seeing everything you need to see."
She laughed. "Acting as if I had agreed to something I have not is a well worn diplomatic ploy, Dr. Jackson." She then leaned forward and looked at both of them very directly. "Know this. I do not believe you have a true marriage yet but I sense love. I sense lust. I even sense commitment. I am getting sufficient contact and opportunities to monitor what is happening."
Sam asked, "May I know what sorts of things you would have to see? We are living together. We are known as husband and wife. You did say that you didn't expect to actually see... anything... you know, anything conjugal in person."
Daniel added on, "You're not waiting for Sam to be pregnant are you?" Sam went white and gasped.
Hanna looked concerned and reached out to touch her arm. "I know you are frightened of being a mother. This is not expected. Do not worry." She considered them for a moment and unexpectedly said, "I shall ask that one of the hostages be released to show appreciation for your efforts so far." Teal'c was back on Earth less than two hours later, after only 4 days of captivity.
As soon as they were alone, Sam said, "She's a real fruitcake. We could be at this forever. She thinks she can read minds but she is way off. Commitment and..and..and love? I'm afraid, get that AFRAID, of being a mother? How can we possibly convince her of anything when she's depending on pulling stuff out of the ether. This could go on indefinitely or end tomorrow. There's no predicting it." Daniel made no comment, just grimaced and sighed although he was very intrigued that she had left lust off the list when she repeated Hanna's characterization. It could have just been because she was groping for words, but he really believed he had been making some progress in the area of stirring up some desire in Sam.
Later Daniel was riding a bicycle in the gym as if he was Lance Armstrong and couldn't stand to disappoint his fans. Cam discovered him there and said, "This work better for you than cold showers?" Daniel looked around nervously and Cam said, "Just you and me." Daniel put his head back down and kept pedaling furiously. "Do you mind pulling that puppy over to the side a minute and giving me your attention," Cam asked.
Daniel straightened up and took his feet off the pedals. "What can I do for you Mitchell?" he asked, sounding a little remote.
"I annoyed you with the cold shower comment, eh? It's just you're not dating anyone right now and you are living with a very attractive woman. There's got to be some ... shall we say pressure ... involved." Daniel made a dismissive gesture. "I just wanted to get your read on something. Carolyn, ur, Dr. Lam, thinks that Hanna may be some sort of empath." Cam got the briefest slash of a strange expression when he said Carolyn's name.
Daniel was a little surprised. "Your Dr. Lam believes in that sort of thing?" he asked watching Cam carefully. He had a pet theory brewing. He decided to act like it was true and see if it startled an admission out of Cam. He crowed and jabbed Cam in the ribs. "Damn, I was right. I'm the empath." He chortled to himself.
Cam said, looking at him dubiously. "You want to share?"
"That whole weird thing with Landry in our debrief. Your face when you say her name. Your reaction to my saying `your Dr. Lam.' You're pretty good, but you couldn't hide it all. It was subtle, but it was there. You and Carolyn have been playing doctor." He nodded, projecting strong self-satisfaction. "Yup, definitely."
Cam crossed his arms and looked at him in disbelief. "You are off the wall basing anything on evidence that flimsy." Suddenly, he grinned widely, "And you are so right."
"You're a lucky man," Daniel said, sincerely. "To get back to your question, Hanna has been making my hair stand on end on occasion. She is extremely insightful and has even called one thing about Sam that I hadn't realized until I started thinking about it after she said it." He had no intention of being more specific. Sam's fear of motherhood was a private matter. "It's something that Sam hasn't even admitted to herself so it appears that Hanna's picking up something more than surface thoughts." He knew when Hanna said, "Love, lust, and commitment," she was getting his emotions and probably not Sam's. If she had been getting all three emotions from both of them, she'd be on her way back through the gate, wouldn't she? He did have some hope he had been starting to stir up a little of the lust. He was struck by another thought. "What makes Carolyn think she's an empath?" he asked curiously.
Cam said, "First time she met Caro, Hanna said, `I'm not interested in your man and he's not interested in me.' I was still translating for her at that point. I translated it into `Don't worry about me. I'm not planning on making trouble.' She was sniggering and when I realized she actually spoke English, it was obvious why."
"You thought Carolyn would go nonlinear if she suspected you had been talking about her with Hanna," Daniel observed. "You must have eventually told her."
"It's just a damn good thing she has a high clearance, Daniel," Cam said, shaking his head. "Caro eventually gets everything she wants from me." He looked seriously at Daniel and added, "Keep our relationship to yourself, okay. She's skittish about dealing with people's reactions to us and still holding back on where we're going." He sighed mightily. "Damn it, Jackson, I'm anxious to quit sneaking around. I'm really into the lady." The two men parted, each thinking private thoughts about secrets and how to convince the women they loved to commit to them all the way.
Now, Daniel went downstairs and whipped up a tasty breakfast to get this Saturday morning started off right. He had stopped at the grocery store the preceding evening, unable to bear living in a virtually food-free house, or at least food as he defined it, any longer. Nothing looked like a tray so he struggled up the stairs, feeling like a waiter, with a plate of scrambled eggs with cheese and chives, fried apples, and two steaming hot popovers balanced on his arm, a mug of coffee in one hand and a glass of juice in the other. He managed to get into the bedroom without spilling anything and arranged it all on the bedside table.
"Sam, wake up," he said, pulling the covers back so he could see her face and speaking directly into her ear. He massaged more than shook her shoulder and she stirred and rolled over to open her eyes slowly and smile into his face. "I've got some breakfast here for you." She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position and he put a couple of pillows behind her back. "We don't seem to have any kind of a tray..." he gestured rather helplessly.
She reached over and took a big swig of the orange juice. "I'll manage." Then she did something that convinced him she had been awake earlier. "This was so sweet of you," she said a little breathlessly and leaned over to where he sat next to her on the bed and gave him a kiss. He was pretty sure that her intent had been just a quick brush on the lips but he saw it coming and reached up and put his hand on the back of her head so she couldn't pull away too fast. She started to kiss him more enthusiastically. They had been doing enough fake kissing to establish their marital status for audiences that it had become automatic to kiss him back, he thought. As soon as she started to respond, he broke away. He stood up quickly and said, "Enjoy your breakfast. We need to get up and get to work."
A couple of hours later, they were still stuck in the very first item on their list, the clean up. Daniel was trudging downstairs, carrying a can of cleanser and a sponge and had paused on the landing, just where he could see Sam in the living room below but she really couldn't see him. It had occurred to him that maybe he should go back and get the toilet brush. He couldn't remember if her downstairs half bath had its own or not. As he was pondering, he noticed that Sam was holding some of his dirty socks in one hand and a pair of boxers in the other, her arms extended full length and her head turned slightly away as if they were dead rodents. She looked ready to do battle. He heard a light rap on the front door and then the door swinging open. She didn't appear to notice, intent as she was on his sins of sloppiness. He assumed it was Cam, mercifully sans Hanna, who had said something about stopping by briefly before he went out to the Mountain to pick Hanna up. Sam evidently made the same assumption because she didn't postpone his scolding even though she had an audience. "Daniel," she called out to him loudly, her tone of voice very parent to child, "would you mind telling me WHY your underwear was in the middle of the coffee table?"
He was shocked to see that the man who came in from the vestibule wasn't Cam; it was Jack. Sam had her back to him and continued on. "Daniel Jackson, this leaving everything where you take if off or quit using it has got to stop. I find myself wondering if I'm married to an archeologist or one of the Three Little Piggies, maybe all three of them." He still didn't answer and she looked disgusted. She lowered her voice, talking more to herself even than the teammate she mistakenly thought to be behind her. "Midden heaps everywhere. Next to his side of the bed, on the sink in the bathroom, next to where he drinks his coffee. I won't even ask him how his boxers got down here. I bet HE doesn't know."
Daniel bit his lip. It was his firm belief that to win Sam he had to drive the man standing in the living room out of her head. He hated to see her suffer though and he was afraid she was about to feel some real pain when she had to confront the man she wished she had married while living with the man she actually had.
He craned to try to see Jack's expression in reaction to the revelation dropped from Sam's lips. Jack had been incommunicado all week, off fishing, and couldn't possibly know either the official line or the real story about Sam and him. They had been receiving daily video showing that SG-10 was doing quite well and, actually, having a rather luxurious vacation. With Teal'c released, SG-10 kicking back and not minding captivity that much, it seemed like it would be making too much of the inconvenience to Sam and Daniel to consider this a full blown crisis. Landry hadn't thought it was worth having Jack hunted down in the wilds of Minnesota to inform him.
Daniel was hoping to see happiness mingled with shock on Jack's face in response to the thought that his two close friends had gotten together and maybe found some joy. Instead, hurt was quite plain. Damn, he had really been hoping that Jack had gotten over whatever he felt for Sam. Jack schooled his face to neutrality, cleared his throat, and said, very dryly, "I guess my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail."
Sam whirled to look at him, dropped the boxers, and put her hand to her throat. "My God, Jack! What are you doing here?"
Daniel went softly back upstairs, feeling like a jerk and deciding Sam deserved the courtesy of a little time alone with Jack. He put the cleaning supplies under the bathroom sink and stood looking at himself in the mirror. The man he saw was not that unattractive and, damn it, a lot younger. Surely that counted for something. He heard Sam calling him. He stuffed his shirt in more tidily and met her on the stairs coming up. "Jack's here," she said without preamble. "Please come downstairs and provide reinforcements."
"I don't get it," Daniel said, feeling rather stupid.
"Daniel, from the moment he walked in, it's been sarcastic put downs and wise ass comments. I haven't been able to get a word in edgewise to explain to him that we aren't really married in the truest sense of the word. I'd like your support giving him the message."
He grabbed her hand and said, calmly, "Come on. Let's get it over with." Inside he was ecstatic. She wanted his support with Jack. He wanted nothing more than for Sam to need him, to depend on him when things weren't going well.
Jack was lounging on the sofa, leaning back, looking remote and disengaged. When they entered the living room, Jack looked up with sardonic expression twisting his mouth and no real warmth at home in his eyes. "Well, if it isn't the happy bridegroom. I'd say, `Let me be the first to congratulate you,' but obviously the ship left port on that opportunity days ago."
Daniel thought, hopefully, "Maybe he's just offended that we didn't tell him."
He sat down with Sam beside him and said without sarcasm, "It's good to see you too, Jack. How was the fishing."
"My pole probably didn't been getting as much use as yours in the past week," Jack said crudely. Sam was still holding Daniel's hand and gripped it so tightly it hurt.
"Jack, I wish you would let us explain some things to you. I would also request that you lay off the innuendo around Sam." Daniel was perfectly calm but his eyes were very cold.
There was knock on the door and a cheery voice called out, "Hello. Sam? Daniel? Can we come in?"
Sam closed her eyes for just a second and shuddered ever so slightly. Daniel gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and got up to go to the door. "Carolyn, Hanna, come on in," he greeted the two women, ushering them into the living room. After he made introductions, he asked, "I thought Mitchell was going to pick you guys up at the Mountain?"
"Change of plans," Carolyn said. "I hope you don't mind but he suggested that we meet him here. His car is having problems. His neighbor was coming this way and is going to drop him off here."
Daniel noticed that Hanna seemed upset. She was looking back and forth between Jack and Sam in a concerned manner. Jack stood abruptly and announced, "As much as I would love to stay around and say hi to Mitchell, I need to be on my way."
Sam caught at his sleeve. "Jack, we need to talk to you."
Jack shook her off. "Really. Well I'll give you a call when I have time to chat." Sam watched him leave, making a sort of helpless gesture with her hands as if she could pull him back.
Hanna said gently, "Dr. Carter, I imagine he is a good man but he is not feeling things that are helpful for you right now." Sam clearly didn't know what to say to that and neither did Daniel.
After Cam arrived and they all took off on whatever errand they had in mind, Sam collapsed against Daniel. "Give me a hug," she said in a muffled voice. "I can't believe how much we apparently hurt him. I feel really beaten up. Do you suppose he'll contact us this weekend? I can't stand that I've made him so unhappy."
"I know, Sam," Daniel said soothingly, wrapping his arms around her and resting his cheek on her hair. "I know."
The jewelry store didn't really restore their spirits. The jeweler kept trying to push engagement rings on them that cost thousands of dollars. He was clearly implying that Daniel was a cad who was depriving the woman he loved of her rightful due. He was disgusted with Sam because, instead of appropriately acquisitive behavior, she was shoulder to shoulder with Daniel the whole way in his firm but polite insistence that they were not interested in purchasing an engagement ring.
As they walked out, Daniel said, "I need to go by the bank next."
Sam was confused. "You're not thinking we need joint checking accounts are you? Because..."
"There's something that I just realized I really need to do. Trust me, huh?" he requested, reaching out and grazing her cheek with his knuckles.
"If you put it that way," she said. "Lead on."
When they arrived at the bank, Daniel asked to be admitted to his safety deposit box. Sam fiddled around with the pens at the little marble table outside the teller's windows and read the various posted literature. At last he was back, looking happier than he had up to now in this difficult morning. "What's going on," Sam demanded.
"Let's go by my apartment next," he said instead of giving her a straight answer. "I know we planned to do all the shopping first but we're just a mile or so away from it now."
When they got inside Daniel's apartment, Daniel could see Sam looking at the overall theme of complete messiness with new eyes. He just knew he would remain a project for her in this area, however long they were together. He quickly gathered everything on the sofa and dropped it behind that piece of furniture and then pulled her down to the newly cleared seat. "Sam, there's something I want to ask you to do and I don't want you to take it the wrong way," he started out.
"Yeah," she said warily.
"It's crazy to buy an engagement ring in our circumstances," he said slowly, "but I think you should have something to wear. I don't want anyone to think that I'm anything but proud of you." He pulled something out of his pocket and said, "Give me your hand." He slid a magnificent rose gold ring with a large sapphire on her hand above her new wedding ring.
"Daniel!" she exclaimed. "This is absolutely gorgeous. This was what was in your safety deposit box?"
He nodded and fingered the stone. "It was my mother's. Fortunately, considering that a lot of my stuff was lost to me when Jack came back and told them I died o Abydos and then later when I ascended, I had this in a safety deposit box that no one knew about. Sam, for as long as this lasts, I would really be honored if you would wear it."
She held her hand out for a moment admiring the ring but then pulled it back hastily and removed the ring. "Daniel, it just wouldn't be right. You need to save this for the woman you fall in love with and marry."
"I wouldn't fall for any woman who thought the ring was somehow devalued by your wearing it under these circumstances," he said quietly and put the ring back on her finger.
She looked at him with tears welling up in her eyes. "You are so terrific. You've been an absolute brick through this whole thing. I just..."
Suddenly she was kissing him. It was a sweet kiss of gratitude and appreciation, tender rather than passionate. He accepted it and returned it in kind, but broke away quickly. In the few opening salvos of his campaign, he had figured out that hard to get was the only way to go and that a dare or a challenge worked much better than aggressive behavior on his part if he could just do something to get her mind running along the right lines first. He wasn't all that comfortable with his attempt to play her but he kept telling himself that he would make her so happy if she was just his.
Mentally crossing his fingers, he said, awkwardly. "It's just that you said it would be incestuous. A nightmare."
Sam snorted. "You're not still mad at me about that? I apologized."
Daniel gave her a small, sad smile. "It's not that. It's just that I'm afraid that if we kiss for very long that it'll start seeming perverse to you. That you'll get disgusted."
"Really," she stated, starting to sound aggravated, "I'm not going to freak out."
"You think that," Daniel said, hoping he wasn't overplaying his hand, "but how can you be sure?"
"Trust me, okay?" she said and without waiting for a response, she moved to his lap and pulled him into another kiss. This one was something else altogether. It wasn't tender or respectful. Her mouth was hot and active on his. After a minute, he answered the invitation of her tongue and slid into her mouth with his own. She sucked at it avidly. One hand was twined around his neck and running through his hair. The other slipped under his t-shirt and ran over his chest. He held back a little, but then groaned and began to touch her. She didn't object to anything, not to kneading her backside, not to caressing her breasts. Daniel couldn't remember ever being this turned on in his entire life.
She pulled back a little although her hands continued to roam and asked, "Are there clean sheets, reasonably clean anyway, on your bed?"
He shut his eyes and summoned every ounce of self-discipline he possessed. "That's going a lot farther than making out. Are you sure you really want to do that? That you won't really, really regret it later?" She stilled for a moment and looked at him, her face flushed and her eyes hot. Daniel wanted nothing more than to pick up her and carry her tohis bed, a bed withreasonably clean sheets, thank you very much. However, although he had a plan, he couldn't achieve his final goal, as much as he believed it would make her happy in the long run, by making her actively miserable in the meantime. Daniel held his breath and waited for her answer. Chapter 5
"Oh somebody help me," Sam thought to herself. Inches away from her face were the most wonderful lips that had been doing the most delicious things to her mouth. She didn't think she had ever wanted anything more than to have Daniel pick her up and carry her into the bedroom. She honestly wouldn't have cared if there weren't any sheets on the bed at all - hadn't really cared when she asked the question about them in the first place.
But he was so right in calling a halt. She'd loved him as a dear friend for years and she still wanted him as a dear friend when this marriage was over. She wasn't nave enough to think that if they slept together while they were "married," they could go back to their former friendship. She'd have to be sure she wouldn't mind continuing to be his lover and either hiding it from Landry and Mitchell, and taking a chance with her career, or facing not being on the same team with him.
She took several deep breaths. Okay, that wasn't really helping at all. She still wanted him so much she ached. A couple more deep breaths. Think of something distinctly unromantic. Think about his dirty socks. That was helping some. Finally she was enough in command of herself to look him in the eyes. She didn't have to say anything though. Daniel said, very softly, "You've decided we're moving too fast, haven't you?"
Sam gave a tiny nod. "You are unbelievable. You kiss unbelievably well for starters." Just for a moment she weakened and started to move toward him again.
He put his finger on her lips. "No, Sam," he warned, "think."
She kissed his finger and laughed a little. "And unbelievably wise, considerate, and understanding. I don't think I've ever, even ONCE, had another guy I was involved with be this good to me," she said, adding in her head, especially including a certain general.
"We're involved then, Sam?" he asked, cocking his head and looked at her questioningly, a slight smile on his face.
"We're involved," she agreed. "That's why we have to stop now. We need to be really sure that we're ready to go to that level. Hell, Daniel, less than a week ago, I couldn't conceive of really kissing you and I've had your tongue down my throat for the past quarter hour or more." That was an unwise thing to say because the heat started all over again. "Smelly socks, Sam, smelly socks," she chanted the mantra in her head.
She turned and cuddled against him, her head on his shoulder. Daniel smoothed her hair and said, "So what does this mean, Sam? What do you want to do?"
"Thanks so much for letting me decide instead of pushing me to follow your agenda," she said gratefully. "I don't see any harm in a kiss here and there, even some making out, but I want us to think about what kind of relationship we want to have after the marriage is over before we do anything beyond that."
"Makes perfect sense to me," Daniel said. He stood up, lifting her with him as if she didn't weigh anything and setting her on her feet. "Let's put those boxes together we brought and gather up my stuff."
They worked really diligently for about an hour. There wasn't really that much quality stuff. When you keep dying and people keep getting rid of most of your belongings, it sort of dims your ardor for feathering your nest, Sam thought. When they had gone through his apartment after he ascended the first time, it had had a lot more settled, more furnished feeling. The time consuming part was deciding what made sense to bring. The two things he really cared about bringing were his books and a very nice set of kitchen equipment. He had individual pans that cost more than all the pans Sam owned altogether. Clothes were a matter of indifference to him so they ended up with Daniel packing up his books and his kitchen and Sam doing everything else.
In his closet she found a pair of black leather pants. She got an instant mental image of Daniel wearing them and was having trouble imagining where and why he would ever have acquired them. She walked out to the kitchen, holding them behind her back. "Daniel, have you been riding motorcycles?"
"No," he said absently, his attention focused on carefully wrapping something whose purpose was a complete mystery to Sam. She could have believed it was an instrument of torture but then all kitchen equipment was an instrument of torture for her, one way or the other.
"How about dancing in clubs?"
"I CAN dance, Sam. I stopped being a complete geek a long time ago," he answered still focusing on the wrapping but paying her a little more mind than before.
"Then," she said, producing the pants from behind her back with a flourish, "what would these be about?"
"Oh," he said and made a face. "You found THOSE leather pants."
"Yes...." she said and waited him out.
"It was when I was spending some time with Sarah after she got de-Gou'alded. We were just walking along the street being sort of silly and she saw these in a shop window. There was a bet involved. It's a long story," he returned to fiercely concentrating on his kitchen utensils.
"You're not going to tell me?" she asked, burning with curiosity and jealousy.
"Nope."
"Even if I tickle it out of you?" With that threat, she tossed the pants over a kitchen chair and moved in from behind.
He finally captured each of her hands in one of his and, imitating Jack's voice, ordered, "Now stop that, Colonel."
Her face fell at the reminder of Jack. "Oh, Daniel. What are we going to do about Jack?"
"You're really worried about him?" Daniel said. He put his arms around her and pulled her back to lean against him.'
"We hurt him. I hurt him. He had a right to expect to be told."
"He wasn't available to be told," Daniel said.
"Well, then, he had a right to expect me to wait until I did tell him before I did anything," she corrected herself, sighing deeply.
"What aren't you telling me," he said very quietly.
"Don't you dare tell anyone or let on to him that I told you this," she said turning to look at him. "You promise?"
"I promise."
"Well, when I was in Washington, Jack and I spent some time together. He checked it out. I really can't be considered under his command any more in a way that would make a relationship between the two of us against the regulations." Daniel raised an eyebrow. "I know I said differently a couple of days ago but that was just to get you off that track." She scrubbed her face with her hands. "So there we were, trying to decide what we wanted to do with that information. Be careful what you ask for, Daniel, they say, because you might get it." She laughed, rather bitterly. "Actually it was a lot like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Daniel was left completely at sea. He had watched a couple of episodes with her, enough to vaguely know the characters, and he was not getting it. "You're Buffy? Jack's Angel? Or maybe Riley - the uniform and all."
"No. Actually it's more I'm Cordelia, Buffy's self-involved friend, and he's Wesley."
"Sam," Daniel objected. "I'm not all that into the show but I can't see a match there at all, for either one of you - you're certainly not self-involved -- but particularly between Jack and the brilliant, dorky geek Wesley. Now I could kind of be Wesley..."
"I can't believe we stopped in the middle of this very serious conversation to get into Buffy in such detail." She shook her head. "We belong together, Daniel, because no one else in the known universe really wants to have the conversations we want to have." He smiled at her sweetly and said, "I won't argue with you."
"What I meant was the relationship. They were very hot for each other all one season. Finally after wanting it for months, they kiss and they're like well that was one huge disappointment. And that's the end of that."
"So kissing Jack didn't work?" Daniel prompted.
"He kisses just fine but the earth didn't move, you know? I mean I spent years thinking that if I had Jack I would be totally happy. He kisses me and it's just a kiss. I pulled back and looked at him and he was just a man. A terrific man but I had this blinding revelation that the time for us to be together had come and gone." Daniel didn't pepper her with questions. She could tell he wanted to but he was being so great about this, letting her tell it at her own pace.
She rested her face on his shoulder and put her arms around him. "It wasn't very pleasant after that. He ... well ... it isn't like he tried to force me or anything but he was pretty persistent about not wanting to accept my no. Nothing at all like the way you just handled things. We left it that we'd think about it some more." They stayed there silently for a few beats.
At last Daniel said, "Under the circumstances, it might be best for you to see him without me. He won't want to talk about this with me as an audience."
"Would you drive me over there?" she asked. "Wait for me?"
"Okay," he agreed just like that. No argument and no qualifications. She absolutely couldn't believe what a gem she had here in this man. She'd known he was special but she hadn't begin to really guess.
Sam broke away from him, wanting to move on to something else. Her eyes fell on the pants. She walked over and picked them up. She came back toward him, deliberately putting a lot of strut in her walk. "I would give anything to see you in these."
"Anything?" he asked, taking her playful cue. "Really anything?"
"Well not completely anything but name your terms."
"You want me to put them on like right now?" he asked.
"Yeah, right now."
He considered that with exaggerated thoughtfulness. Finally, he said, with great deliberation, "Then you have to not say anything about how messy I am for 24 hours."
"Daniel, I don't think I can do that," she responded doubtfully.
"If you don't to see me in the pants..." he shot back.
"I don't mean I don't want to. I mean I don't know if I am physically able to," she said mournfully. "How about if I promise to try really hard?"
"Good enough." He held out his hand for the pants. When he got them, he started to leave.
"Where are you going?" she asked, grabbing his arm.
"I'm not changing in front of you," he said. "It would spoil the dramatic effect."
She pouted, but let go of his arm. She leaned against the counter, thinking to herself, "How could I not have known how much fun we could have if we just started thinking outside the best friend box?" She became impatient when he was gone for several minutes. "You make the audience wait too long," she called out to him, "and they go from anticipation to being pissed. Good performers know better than to piss off their audiences."
There was no response. "Axel Rose didn't even make people wait this long," she yelled a few moments later, knowing he would be completely clueless about the fabled late starts to Guns `n Roses concerts that had led to destructive riots." She was a little surprised that she knew about them. "I may have to start a riot in here," she warned.
A moment later, Daniel came back into the kitchen. Her mouth watered just looking at him. "Looking good," she said, proud that she was able to sound matter of fact. "But," she said, "You haven't REALLY shown me what they look like until you walk away from me."
He tilted his head and looked at her over the top of his glasses. "You wouldn't be treating me like a sex object here, would you Colonel?"
She blushed a little and walked up to him. "You'd never be JUST a sex object and I will respect you all day long but, Daniel," she asked very softly and brushed a quick kiss across his lips, "please walk away for me."
"How can I resist a request like that?" he asked and he walked away from her.
They were both very weary after running their other errands and hauling all the boxes home, needing two trips to get them all there. Her kitchen didn't have an inch of cabinet space left when they got all the pots and pans and myriad other pieces of equipment stowed. There were books in stacks on the floor next to the existing book cases. She was glad neither one of them had a large wardrobe. The closet space turned out to be the only thing that wasn't stressed.
They were draped over two easy chairs, just staring at each other in exhaustion. Daniel said, "Look at you, Sam. Are you sure you want to go ahead and try to deal with Jack tonight?"
"It isn't going to get any easier," she said. "I think the faster I do it the better it will make him feel -- you know, that I cared enough to try to keep him from being misinformed about this for very long."
"Sam," he leveled a very direct look at her. "It's not a real marriage but it's not exactly a platonic relationship either. In fact, there's a pretty fine line as to the difference as far as how he would see it." They both thought about the black leather pants and the aftermath of his modeling them for her.
She let out a long, shaky breath. "I know." She stood up. "Let's do it now."
"You don't want to change, get something more special on?"
"Daniel, I'm not going over there to seduce him. If I don't look all that good to him, all the better," she responded, a little irritated, although it was more with the situation than with him.
"Sam," he remonstrated gently, "you have no real idea of your effect on men, do you? You're seductive in BDUs." He got up too, took his car keys out of his pocket, and led the way out of the house.
Bolstered by Daniel's presence in the car, Sam squared her shoulders and rang Jack's doorbell. He'd sold his house when he went to DC and then turned right around and bought a small condo, ostensibly for investment purposes, although he didn't have a tenant in it. He had discovered that he really liked coming back to Colorado at least once a month. It had almost as much of a draw for him as Minnesota, although Sam was the only one to whom he had let that admission slip.
Jack took a while getting to the door. Finally, the door opened. Jack looked her up and down and then past her out into the street. "Daniel going to let you come in the house?" he asked, waving at Daniel, his expression making it clear that it was closer to flipping him off than communicating any friendliness.
"I asked him to bring me over here, Jack," she answered, levelly. "He has absolutely no problems with me talking to you. Let's go inside, okay?"
He looked out toward the road again. "Didn't it seem a little strange to him that you wanted to talk to me alone?"
"It seemed to both of us that you were directing your anger over the wedding at him more than me. We thought this might be easier." She really hoped he bought that. Perhaps she shouldn't have told Daniel, but she had so needed his support.
He made a sweeping gesture for her to proceed him. When they were seated opposite each other in the small greatroom, he said, "Well, talk."
"Jack, you don't have all the information about our marriage and there are some things you need to know. What exactly do you think you know, anyway and how did you find out?"
"I ran into Walter in a 7-11," Jack said. "It was a little like a drive by shooting only you were the "perp" and you weren't there. He said you guys got some sort of wild hair on a mission and got married in an alien ceremony. Then the aliens took offense at something and took SG-10 and Teal'c hostage to be held until the observer they sent is persuaded we are honorable."
"There's almost all a lie. I had to marry Daniel to keep them from killing him," Sam said. "In order to trade with us, there had to be some sort of a family tie so I agreed to let the royal family adopt me. Then Daniel and I got caught in something that looked compromising to them and honor demanded that he marry me or they would have to kill him. Evidently, for the honor debt to be met, it has to be a real marriage. They keep talking about the insult if Daniel doesn't `truly accept me' as his wife. So they let us come back here but they kept the hostages to ensure that we behaved appropriately. Hanna's job is to watch us and decide when we've met the terms of true acceptance. Landry decided not to tell much of anyone the full story because of the observer. If people knew all of that, there'd be crazy gossip. It would be very awkward for Daniel and me and much harder for us to paint the picture we want the observer to see."
Jack's only reaction to her story was to blink once or twice. They sat in silence. "Okay," he said at last. "Ooookay. So, your life is just on hold until this observer can be convinced that you have a real marriage?"
"Sort of, yeah," she said, not entirely sure what he was driving at.
"When it's over, we can pick up where we were?" he asked, looking at her with virtually no expression on his face although she could see the hope hiding in his eyes.
"Jack, there's nothing to pick up other than a long standing friendship. I told you in DC that there wasn't going to be anything else."
"Damn it," he yelled at her, standing up and kicking the coffee table over. He clinched his fists at his sides and unclenched them before saying, at a reduced but still strident decibel level, "You said you'd think about it."
"You wouldn't settle for anything else, Jack," she said, shrinking back a little from his vehemence. She had been going to tell him that something was developing between her and Daniel but suddenly she realized that he could well feel that it was his responsibility to inform Mitchell and Landry that they really shouldn't be on the same team. In this frame of mind, he wouldn't be in any mood to cut them any slack.
Jack dropped back in his chair. He was breathing a little heavily. "Just go, Sam. Now." She started to speak and he cut her off. "Now," he barked and pointed at the door.
"I'm really sorry, Jack," she said, tears running down her face. "I really care about you and I never wanted to hurt you."
"Now," he hissed between his teeth and she walked quickly out of the house and then ran down the front walk. Daniel was out of the car, leaning against the car door, and she ran right into his arms.
"Was it bad, honey?" he asked.
Something in her thrilled to hear him call her honey. She couldn't remember him previously using any lover like endearments with her, although the way he said "Colonel Doctor" made it seem an endearment at times. "Yeah, it was pretty ugly. I really hurt him, Daniel."
Daniel looked toward the silent house. "I can't imagine anything worse than loosing the hope of being with you," he said in such a low voice that she wasn't sure she had heard him correctly.
He walked her around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. They were quiet all the way home. She flipped the television on and sat in front of it for two hours, absorbing absolutely nothing. Daniel finally walked over and flipped it off. "Daniel, I was watching that," she protested.
"It was an infomercial about kitchen knives," he said. "I am absolutely dead positive you were not watching it." He pulled her to her feet. "I know something that is very soothing. I saw my dad do it for my mom a few times after her mother died."
He steered her toward the stairs and patted her lightly on the bottom and said, "Go upstairs and get undressed and in bed. I'll be up in a minute."
She dutifully climbed the stairs, taking the steps one at a time in a very deliberate way as if she were a small child just gaining confidence in the activity. She took off her clothes, decided to defer her shower until the morning, brushed her teeth, and put on pajamas. Until this week, she had routinely slept in the nude when she was at home. In her dully minute, where she was so busy beating herself up for hurting Jack, for not handling things better, she took a moment to wonder idly if she'd be sleeping nude again any time soon.
Daniel arrived a moment later, carrying a book. He went in the bathroom and grabbed her hair brush. "Okay," he said, "part one is I brush your hair." He sat on the bed and she sat in front of him, his legs around her but far enough away that he could wield the brush. She had never known before that having someone brush your hair could feel so heavenly.
When he stopped, she protested. "We have to stop part 1 so we can do part 2," he explained. He took off his shoes and socks and his jeans and got in bed in his boxers and t-shirt and positioned her to lean against him. Then he picked up the book and began to read to her in a beautifully modulated, hypnotic voice. She fell asleep mesmerized by the story of the love of Annie and Er-Tom, floating above her cares, and it was all Daniel and all good.
Chapter 6
Life was very pleasant at the Carter-Jackson residence, marred only by the growing sexual tension. They were careful to never get as close to being carried away again as they had at Daniel's apartment. The black leather pants stayed prudently in the closet.
If you overlooked his total messiness, life with Daniel Jackson was like a romance novel. He made the most fabulous gourmet dinners. He let Sam act as a sous-chief on occasion, but mostly he liked to have her sit with a glass of wine and tell her about her day while he chopped this and stirred that. Daniel was a wonderful listener, quite an accomplishment for someone who was capable of running on as much as he was.
He decided to make a real campaign of expanding her culinary borders. Despite some of the strange things she had eaten on missions, at home she was purely white bread. Not for Daniel well known ethic cuisines like Italian or Chinese. They had Turkish food, Persian food, Egyptian food, Caribbean food, and Nigerian food. She actually liked most of it. Part of her enjoyment stemmed from the fact that he had a story about that part of the world to go with the food. He made her feel almost as if she was in communion with some pleasant group of villagers somewhere, whom she had never met, but who had connected with Daniel.
Daniel did expect her to help him with the post dinner clean up. That should have been a downer since he was the kind of cook who got a huge number of things dirty cooking even the simplest meal. Instead, there was flicking soap suds from the hand washing at each other, towel snapping, and laughing arguments about the best way to load the dishwasher. The latter resulted in the conduct of quasi-scientific tests. Each of them insisted that the results the other obtained were not reproducible and, therefore, had no experimental validity.
He gave Sam massages that, depending on how he decided to play it, either made her bones melt and left her feeling as if she could just pour herself into bed, OR, made her so hot, she couldn't sleep for hours. He paid her the sweetest compliments. They were never trite and obvious. Instead, they were celebrations of her just as she was, unique. What captured the thinking part of her more than anything else was the way he read to her as she lay in bed, cuddled against him, his hand playing with her hair. Her body, on the other hand, was stuck on the massages.
Cassie introduced the one faintly sour note during the next few weeks. The doorbell rang insistently mid-day on the second Saturday of their marriage. Daniel looked up from the bag of groceries he was unpacking and said to Sam who was kneeling in the living room, dusting baseboards, - Daniel took cold showers and ran longer and longer distances while she cleaned almost compulsively - "I'll get it."
Sam got up anyway, glad of a respite from baseboards and really curious as to who it might be. She was right behind him and saw the huge smile take over his face the minute he opened the door and saw Cassie. "Cassie!" he greeted her enthusiastically and hugged her. She didn't hug him back. In fact, she merely endured his hug, standing stiffly until he stopped.
"Come on in," he said, looking at her with concern.
She preceded him into the house as he called to Sam, "Sam, honey, it's Cassie!"
"I'm right here," she said from behind him and swallowed Cassie up in a huge hug, one she did return.
They moved on into the living room and Sam sat down on the couch and patted the cushion next to her for Cassie to take a seat. "You should have called. We might not have been here," she told her.
Cassie sat but looked anything but relaxed. "I DID call," she said very pointedly. "This is the residence of Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson. We're sorry we are not here to take your call?" she recited in a singsong voice. She glared at Daniel. "What's up with that?"
Sam grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "I'm sorry you had to hear that way, Cass. I have tried to call you several times, never got through to you. It wasn't something I wanted to leave on an answering machine."
"WHAT was something you didn't want to leave on an answering machine?" Before anyone answered her, she looked down at the hand gripping hers and gasped. "Is that a... a wedding ring?"
Daniel bit his lip. "Your Aunt Sam and I were married a little less than two weeks ago."
"And no one saw fit to tell me," she stated rather than asked. They had both been braced, expecting to hear something along those lines. After all, it was pretty much a weekly occurrence for someone to show up irked that they hadn't been told. They hadn't been able to reach George Hammond either and were rather expecting to see him soon under similar, if less emotionally charged, circumstances. They were totally unprepared for the accusation that followed it. "What...did...you...do...to...her?" she asked Daniel.
"What do you think I did?" Daniel asked, completely baffled.
"I need to talk to Aunt Sam privately," Cassie said, uncomfortably.
Partial comprehension dawned on Sam. "Daniel knows all about Jack," she said gently.
"Really," Cassie said and she sounded a little confused now herself. "You were in love with him for years. Years! Finally you were together. It was like a dream come true. Something had to have happened for you to suddenly be with another man."
"Oh Cass," Sam sighed. That would teach her to discuss something like this with someone who was still a little immature. She had just been desperate for anyone with whom to share her initial euphoria. "Jack and I weren't working out but we hadn't officially ended it. I didn't have a good opportunity to talk with you and really didn't want to anyway until it was all resolved."
"Daniel didn't do something to break you up?" she said.
"Daniel hasn't done anything but be wonderful and supportive," Sam said, smiling warmly in his direction.
"Oh," she said in a tiny voice. They sat quietly for a moment. At last she raised her eyes to Daniel. "I owe you an apology, I guess. I had Uncle Jack and Aunt Sam married in my head a long time ago. That feels so right and this just seems ...wrong." She sighed. "Ever since my mother died, I want things to stay where they are. Be where I left them sort of. Does that make sense?" she asked, pleading for understanding.
"Sure," Daniel said. Sam knew that Cassie had hurt him, but he was being an adult about it. He stood and came over to the couch. "Can I have a real hug now?" he asked her.
She nodded and got up quickly to give him the kind of hug he had given her. The next day, after she had left, Daniel said, "We have got to get ahold of George Hammond and anyone else we may offend by leaving discovery of our marriage to chance." Sam emphatically agreed. Three variations of this scene already were more than enough.
There was no danger of anyone at Cheyenne Mountain being out of the loop. Sam was surprised by the amount of jealousy and envy she encountered. She'd had blinders on all those years. She hadn't seen Daniel as sexy and it hadn't occurred to her that anybody but alien babes, who had an admitted heavy Daniel yen - Vala, the Destroyer of Worlds, Hathor, and Sha're to name just a few -- were particularly into him. She was getting an earful as she lingered at the table in the cafeteria with Carolyn, Dr. Bay DeBarr, another of the physicians on staff, and Hanna.
Daniel and Cam were just walking out together, off to separate meetings. Sam scowled slightly when Daniel stopped to chat briefly with Liz MacDuff. When she turned back to her companions, Hanna said, gently, "All his sexual energy is directed toward you Colonel Carter. There is nothing to fear."
Bay jokingly fanned her face. "Do you suppose I could get caught in the backlash?" She grinned at Sam and said, "You get tired of him, Sam, just send him my way."
"Can't have him," Sam said lightly and then noticed Carolyn's shrewd eyes assessing that comment.
Bay was facing the door and made a further observation as Daniel ended his conversation and walked out. "Seems to me he's gotten spiffier somehow since you guys got married."
"I started doing his laundry," Sam explained. "He didn't know what fabric softener was or that you should take permanent press out of the dryer while it's still warm before it gets wrinkles deeply embedded. Then there are what I call the `geek pockets.'"
"What are those, pray tell?" Bay asked, amused.
"You know when you put a pen, tip side down, in your shirt pocket without the cap on? It makes this awful blotch at the bottom of the pocket. Daniel had a whole sack of those in his closet that I found when we were moving him to our place," she confided.
"You can fix those?" Carolyn asked incredulously. "I had this boyfriend in medical school who kept making geek pockets."
"Nobody can. I don't care what those infomercials on stain removal say," Sam said sadly. "BUT I can prevent him from not noticing and cycling them through the laundry and wearing them again."
"How about getting things pink or purple from washing stuff like underwear with deeply colored sweatshirts?" Carolyn asked, still walking down a laundry memory lane with her old beau.
"There was some of that and," Sam lowered her voice dramatically, "some briefs with HUGE holes in them where he had just never gotten around to buying new underwear."
Bay was staring off into middle space, clearly imagining Daniel in underwear with strategically placed holes. Sam suddenly felt like a really bad person for literally airing his dirty laundry in public. She blushed and said, "I can't believe I just told you all that. You have to promise you won't tell anyone."
Bay said, "Hey Carolyn and I have that whole Hippocratic oath thing going and you, my friend, are definitely love sick and in need of treatment, hence a patient." She stood up. "Hey this has been real. Anytime you want to share descriptions of the yummy Dr. Daniel Jackson's underwear, believe me, I'm there." She waved and walked off.
Sam looked back at Carolyn who was looking at her with real interest. Hanna's presence was clearly inhibiting something she had on her mind because she started to speak and then immediately bit off her words after a sidewise glance at the lovely observer. The next day when Hanna was with Daniel, Carolyn ran into her in a hallway. "Sam," she asked, getting directly to the point, "you are either the best actress outside of Hollywood or you are falling in love with Daniel."
Sam sucked her breath in, shocked by such upfront honesty. "That's crazy," she finally said.
"Look, Sam," Carolyn said, "I know I'm butting in but I know you've figured Cam and I out by now. I want you to think twice about going on missions with a man you are romantically involved with. There are reasons for those rules. Quite frankly, I don't want my boy friend's lovely ass threatened because you and Daniel are distracted by each other." Her tone stayed calm and pleasant but there was steel in those brown eyes.
"You need not worry, Dr Lam," Sam said stiffly. "Daniel and I are NOT lovers, if that is really any of your business. If my team's commanding office wants to discuss this with me, that's his prerogative but I don't think his girlfriend, his SECRET girlfriend who doesn't even want the general public to know about it, has any basis for sticking an oar in." She finished with, "Good day," and turned on her heel and left.
She remembered a saying, "Better be hanged as a sheep as lamb," or something like that meaning that everybody thinks you're doing something and you're getting in trouble for it, maybe you should go ahead and do it - be the sheep they think you are instead of the innocent lamb. By the end of a month, she had decided to tell Daniel that she was very comfortable with the notion of making love within their marriage because she welcomed the idea that they would continue as lovers after it ended. She frankly was pretty sure it was too late anyway. It would require brain surgery to remove all the moments she had already shared with Daniel from her brain.
Sam was so confident of the outcome of this conversation that she bought some ruinously expensive perfume and a diaphanous nightgown that she knew would be more provocative than if she were naked.
Sam insisted on taking care of their Saturday night meal. Daniel tried not to show it but she could see the apprehension in his eyes. "Don't worry, sweetheart," she said soothingly. "I won't try to actually cook anything myself." She added ruefully, "We never got around to getting the batteries replaced in the smoke alarms last weekend."
Daniel started to protest and she put her hand lightly on his mouth. "You do twice as much as I do. I practically had to wrestle you to the floor to get your laundry away from you." She couldn't resist further clarification. "That is the laundry that was actually in your possession as opposed to draped all over various pieces of furniture."
Sam returned with carry out from an Ethiopian restaurant. She had researched to find a cuisine that was expected to be eaten with your hands. That seemed like it could be a lot more erotic than chopsticks or a knife and fork. As she had hoped, watching her suck things off her fingers had a definite impact on her delectable husband. They progressed to feeding each other. "Daniel," she said huskily, "there's something I want to tell you."
He cocked an eyebrow and smiled slightly. "I'm listening," he replied softly.
"I've thought about the decision we agreed we had to make before our relationship progressed physically. We agreed that we didn't want to do anything unless we were comfortable with what that would mean for us after the marriage was over."
He nodded. "We've been having so much fun. I can't imagine anything better than adding another dimension of pleasure to what we have going or that it would be any problem for that to continue after."
She didn't see the enthusiastic response on his face she was expecting. Instead, he said, "So you want to have sex for the pleasure, for an added dimension of fun?"
He sounded hurt, strangely hurt. "Yeeesss," she drew out slowly.
"I don't," he answered baldly and stood up and walked out of the dining room.
She sat gaping at the empty doorway through which he had disappeared. What had just happened here? It mattered too much to get on her high horse in response. She rose hastily and went looking for him. She found him looking out the window at the swirling snow. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and pleaded, "Help me understand."
"The best sex isn't sex for pleasure, Sam," he said, staring out into the dark. "The best sex is because you want a way to be as close as possible, as one as possible, with the other person. Of course, you're also very turned on, but it's not just lust."
"You're saying that the best sex goes with love," she restated. "Okay, I won't argue with that. Does that mean, we can't have sex without it?"
"I don't know, Sam," he finally said.
"When are you going to know?" she asked flatly, breaking contact with him and walking away.
He said, again, "I don't know, Sam."
"So we wait until either you find yourself ready for sex without love or you decide you're in love with me."
He turned to look at her. "How about until you decide you're in love with me? It's a two way thing."
"Are you in love with me, Daniel?" she asked uncertainly.
"Are you in love with me, Sam?" he countered. They looked at each other for a long time. Then Daniel shook his head, looking disgusted. He closed the distance between Sam and himself and cupped her face in his hand. "Forgive me, Sam," he said softly. "I hope this doesn't seem like rejection. If I did what I wanted, I would have you on the floor right here with your pants around your ankles in the next 30 seconds. But it has to feel right. I have to know I'm not doing something that would be hurtful to you in the long run and I worry about the long run for us of sex just for the fun of it. I'm really grateful that I had the good sense to stop us in my apartment." He kissed her on the forehead with exquisite tenderness. "Now," he said, "I made this chocolate thing while you were out running errands and getting dinner. You have to come and eat some or my feelings will be hurt."
Daniel poured on the charm for the rest of the evening and she almost felt like she had hallucinated their entire conversation. Almost. Actually, she lay awake virtually the entire night, trying to decide what she wanted to do about it. She asked herself if she was in love with him. She eventually concluded that if this wasn't love, it was so close to it that she didn't know how to tell the difference.
The fly in the ointment was that he didn't appear to love her, not like a wife, not romantically, or surely he wouldn't have held back. "Is it really surprising?" she reflected. He had done so many lovely things for her and she had just taken. There were a few loads of laundry to her credit column but that looked awfully flimsy next to his contributions. Somewhere around 4:00 AM, she decided that there was no help for it. She would just have to woo him with romantic gestures, but mainly seduce him. Maybe if she made him really happy physically, love would follow. Great peace came with that decision and she immediately fell asleep.
Chapter 7
Good Daniel and Bad Daniel were duking it out in his head. Good Daniel was the one who had made him stop Sam and ask her if she was sure when she was about to give herself to him in his apartment. Good Daniel had eventually become so uncomfortable with his plotting that he had risen up and objected mightily. "What kind of a man are you?" Good Daniel had demanded, as Daniel pursued his plan of rousing desire in Sam, establishing a healthy physical relationship, and using it to make her fall in love with him. Daniel couldn't give a satisfactory answer and eventually had capitulated to Good Daniel's demands, turning Sam down because she wanted him, but didn't love him.
Bad Daniel was howling in anguish, hopping up and down and hissing, "Fool. You bloody fool," at him. "She WANTS you. What could be wrong with that? She's your wife after all."
Miraculously, when he had pulled back from trying to seduce Sam, she had taken up the gauntlet and now she was trying to seduce him. He was lying in bed, pondering the absolutely stunning event that had just occurred and trying to get Good Daniel and Bad Daniel to shut up long enough that he could process it.
The weather was terrible. There was heavy snow and ice and it was bitterly cold. Sam had begged him the night before to think of the risk involved and forgo running this once. Daniel had been forced to agree and mentally resigned himself to an extra cold shower. She had been, he thought, inordinately pleased and now he knew why. He'd still been sleeping when her alarm went off. It had roused him slightly, enough to feel the bed rise when she got out of it. He assumed she was making a trip to the bathroom for mundane purposes when she stunned him. She got to the spot he usually used for his post running strip tease and, with her back to him, had pulled her pajama bottoms off. The top was long and covered most of her backside but he could still see long, lovely legs. She pulled her top off then and he saw her sweet dimpled rump and the lovely curve of her back. She leaned over to pick up her pajamas and, for just a moment, he saw his wife's beautiful breasts for the first time. He barely stifled an audible gasp, stuffing his fist in his mouth. He was sure she had heard it. Hadn't he stood in the same spot, stripping for her for weeks?
Now, for an encore, his sweet wife was downstairs, to his considerable trepidation, trying to cook him breakfast. He could smell the coffee. So far he didn't smell anything burned. He was REALLY hoping she had decided on something like yogurt and fruit and some of those lovely croissants from the bakery they patronized. He heard her steps on the stairs and some clinking of silverware and knew he was about to find out. He settled back in the bed, closed his eyes, and produced some deep, even breathing.
She gently shook his shoulder and then leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Daniel, honey," she breathed in his ear, "breakfast."
He rolled over and smiled, trying for groggy. "Sam," he yawned, "what time is it?"
"It's about 6:30," she responded, settling down on the bed next to him.
"How long have you been up?" he asked unbelieving. Sam's mode of operation was to wait until the last moment before they had to leave for work and then speed dress.
"An hour or so. I couldn't sleep," she said. Daniel thought, "That's what happens to most people when they have their alarm clocks go off," but he didn't voice the thought out loud.
"Mmmm. Do I smell something?" he asked, leveraging himself to a sitting position.
"I thought I'd bring you some breakfast," she said and lifted an actual tray, a new purchase for sure, off the bedside table and set it down on his lap.
"What do we have here?" he asked, inventorying the tray. There were two large mugs of steaming coffee, one with just the right amount of cream, some juice, strawberries and cream, and croissants, lovely croissants. "Have you eaten?"
She scooted up to lean against the headboard next to him. "I thought we could share," she said. She picked up the black coffee and sipped.
He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her cheek. "Thanks, honey. I really love these croissants."
"I know," she said happily. "Can I have a strawberry?" She put her hand on his thigh under the covers and squeezed.
He picked one up and plopped it in her mouth. Her hand was moving up his thigh. "Maybe you could return the favor," he requested a bit huskily. She gave him one and then slowly, languorously, licked the cream off her fingers.
He picked up a croissant and decided maybe they needed to talk about something that would provide some verbal cold water. Her hand was continuing to move up his thigh. He knew he should remove it, but Bad Daniel was in the saddle at the moment. "I think we're going to have to call a plumber for the half bath downstairs," he announced. "It started to overflow on me again last night and I had to turn the water off."
"I think it's much more fun to turn things on, don't you?" she asked with blatant innuendo, her hand now as far as it could go before they got in serious trouble.
"Sam, what are you doing?" he asked. He trapped her hand in his.
"Having breakfast," she answered innocently. She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips, grabbing a croissant, and going off to the bathroom with her mug.
When he went into his knapsack mid-morning to pull out a book he had brought from home, his hand encountered a large envelope. He pulled it out and turned it over. It wasn't addressed but for whom else would it be intended hidden in his knapsack? He opened it up and saw that he was participating in a Hallmark moment. The front of the card showed Pooh Bear with a pot of honey and said "Honey..." The message on the inside said "You make my day." It was signed "Your `Annie,'" the reference to the romance he had been reading her quite plain.
There was a huge lump in his throat. He wasn't sure what it meant but it seemed like something more than lust. It had to be. He looked up to see Cam and Hanna at the door. "Jackson?" Cam said, his greeting tinged with a little concern. Daniel imagined that he probably did look a trifle overcome.
"Hey, Mitchell, Hanna, good morning."
"Hanna wanted to come by and visit you for a bit," Cam said. "You prepped for the mission tomorrow?"
"Sure," Daniel said and gestured Hanna to a chair as Cam took himself off. He decided there was one way to get an answer to his questions about Sam. He knew damn well they weren't fooling Hanna. Why not take advantage of the resource? He pulled his desk chair around so he was right next to her. "Hanna, I gotta ask you something."
I may not be able to answer you but I will try."
"Here's the thing," Daniel started, searching for words. "The other day, several weeks ago I guess, you said that you were picking up lust, love, and commitment from us. Was that actually just from me? Was any part of that from Sam?"
Hanna chuckled softly. "What took you so long to ask?" She sobered immediately, knowing it was deadly serious to him. "At that time, I sensed lust from both of you, but the love was faint in Colonel Carter and the commitment was all yours."
Daniel kicked himself mentally. He'd been happier when he didn't know for sure. "Thanks," he said, heavily and started to stand up.
"Wait a minute," Hanna said. "I said `at that time.' Are you interested in what I picked up, say yesterday?"
He looked at her, uncertain. Surely she wouldn't tease. He closed his eyes like a man waiting for the knife to fall but hoping that Robespierre would have a last minute change of heart. "Okay, sure."
"Yesterday," she said, "the love was coming from both of you, very strongly."
His heart sang in his chest. He decided to push his luck. "What about commitment?"
"Where there was none before, now I sense something, something new and still confusing for her."
Daniel whooped loudly and pulled her up into a hug. He whirled her around in an exuberant circle and then gave her a big hug. "Thanks," he said simply at last, beaming at her.
That evening, he was sitting at his laptop, trying to get caught up on editing an in-house paper for which a colleague, a brilliant but, paradoxically, inarticulate linguist, had requested help. His attention insisted on wandering and a grin kept stealing over his face. Sam LOVED him. She was his wife. She wanted him like he wanted her. His first impulse had been to run to her lab and drag her into a broom closet or the like. The next had been to run to her lab and drag her home. Fortunately, there had been a mini-emergency and he had made a quick trip to help SG-9 on P8G890 when a valuable artifact they were recovering had unexpectedly started to crumble. By the time he was back, he realized that their first time together should be very special. Ever since then all sorts of salacious scenarios had been jostling each other in his brain.
Despite his general happiness, his neck was killing him and he periodically stopped to rub it ineffectually. Then he felt a warm, soft pressure against his back. Sam was standing behind him. She reached down and started to knead his shoulders and his neck. She wasn't an expert but she was definitely succeeding in making him feel better. His head was nestled between her breasts as she leaned forward. He looked up into her lovely face. "Mmmm, honey, that does feel good," he told her.
"I'm glad you like it," she answered, smiling a little tentatively at him. "I'm not as good at this as you are."
"Oh, I don't know about that," he disagreed. He loved the way she was making him feel. One hand had strayed from his shoulder to glide over his chest and inside his flannel shirt.
"Sam," he asked. "Would you mind changing positions?"
"What do you mean?" she said, willing but unsure of what he wanted.
He pulled her around in front of him and positioned her so she was straddling his lap. "Do it from the front."
She continued to knead him neck, her mouth inches from his own, her eyes searching his. "Sam," he said, the weeks of self-control suddenly too much to bear any longer.
"Ummmm," she responded and removed his glasses. "I don't think you need those. I'm definitely inside your focal length anyway."
"There's something I want to tell you."
"I called the plumber," she said. "I came home early to meet him. The bathroom's fixed."
"You don't have to try so hard, honey," he said, cupping her cheek.
"That's what you have to tell me?" she demanded softly.
"Be still, Sam," he ordered and put a finger on her mouth. "I was hoping to do this with some grand romantic gesture, something you'd never forget but I've waited years and I can't wait another minute."
Hope and fear mingled in her beautiful blue eyes. She licked her lips and he groaned a little. "Do you have any idea how damn sexy that is?" he asked, running a thumb over her lips.
"That's it?" she said.
"Sam, you have to be quiet," he said, softly laughing. "Promise me you'll be quiet."
"Okay, okay, so what is it?"
"Colonel Doctor Samantha Carter," he said solemnly, "Doctor Daniel Jackson is head over heals in love with you and would like to respectfully request, hell abjectly beg, for you to consent to allow him to make love to you."
Her eyes filled with tears and she put her hand over her mouth. His heart sank. Could he have been so wrong about Hanna's abilities. "I'm sorry, Sam, just..." he started to say when she cut him off with a kiss. Not just any kiss. A very suggestive kiss. When at last she took her mouth away, he gaped at her. "I thought you were upset there for a minute," he said.
"Silly, silly, Danny," she said, fondly. "For years, huh? Why didn't you say something? Do something? Think of all the wild, passionate sex we've missed out on?"
That wasn't quite what he wanted to hear and she looked suddenly contrite. "You do know that I love you, Daniel. You do know that, right?"
"I thought so," he answered and then she kissed him again. "Now I know," he said a moment later. "You do know this is going to present problems for the mission tomorrow?"
"Forget that," Sam admonished him. "That's not happening in this chapter. Take me upstairs and make wild, Gypsy love to me." He stood in one fluid movement and shifted her into his arms.
He addressed the large stuffed dog on the floor next to the couch. "I am now carrying my beautiful bride upstairs to our bed where I'm going to do things to her that you are too young to witness. You may hear her scream," he paused to look at Sam. "I don't even know. Are you a screamer?"
"Oh yes," she said throatily. "You don't mind?"
"Not at all," he said shifting her closer. He returned to the stuffed dog and amended his statement, "When you hear her scream, do not be alarmed. We won't be down until morning, so hold the fort."
He carried Sam upstairs and the poor stuffed dog got a very uncertain night's sleep, what with all the screaming.
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