Once a Flyboy...
"Ooooohkay..." Doctor Jackson leaned back in his chair at the briefing table and drawled. He was using his best 'the military are ignoramuses' voice, and as always his best was very good. "Who gave them to him, Sam?"
Carter had the grace to blush - not that he could see it, as he was seated at the table and she was underneath it. "It just seemed the perfect Secret Santa present."
"Absolutely. I know you people are rather unbalanced on the subject. I can make allowances. Once a flyboy always a flyboy, as we see rather too often, and all the more so once they're promoted." He sighed. "I really should know better than to expect the gravity of his position to make a difference."
Teal'c quirked an eloquent eyebrow. "It would appear to be a human custom to let the inner child out on occasion."
They both looked up at him in silence, even though Carter had to peek out from under the table to do so.
"I have this from a great authority."
"Let me guess," Daniel said. "The great Colonel O'Neill."
"Not at all, it was Doctor Frasier." Teal'c inclined his head a little. "Though I believe she was referring to O'Neill at the time."
"How remarkable. And Sam, there's one of them on the stairs when you've finished getting underfoot."
The glare in his direction, as she scrambled to her feet, would have scorched a naquadah reactor, but of course he remained annoyingly unscorched.
"Stop complaining and help me, then! Come on, Daniel, the planetary VIPs will be back any minute and he wants them all back in his office, can't you -?"
"I don't think so. Yours was the inspiration," Daniel shrugged, "yours can be the perspiration. You were the one told to gather them up by... the rather pissed-off Colonel O'Neill." He smiled sweetly at her. "Oh, and you missed the other one -"
"In the trash bin," Teal'c observed gravely. "I believe you call it a hole in one."
"Only in golf," Daniel swung his chair around Carter, then reached over her and plucked the small paper airplane out of the trash, long fingers smoothing out its crumpled nose. "In the Air Force it would normally be called - what, Sam?"
"A crash," she snapped.
"Crash number seventeen, to be precise, and only... three hundred and forty eight to go before his Paper-Airplane-A-Day desk diary gives out."
She huffed. It was hard to argue with the fact that the daily Flight of the Deskbound Fleet was becoming rather less amusing each day, but even harder to imagine saying so to a superior officer, no matter how disconcerting his inner child could become.
So, trained tactician that she was, she attacked. "Maybe I should remind you, Doctor Let's-Be-Serious-Adults Jackson, about the Mysteries of the Ancients pop-up book you keep in with your academic library?"
He gazed at here with almost Asgaardian - and utterly provoking - serenity. "I keep them to amuse Cassie. And visiting aliens." He paused. "And Jack."
"Just because the colonel's mad at me..."
"Face it, Sam," Daniel drew back his hand, and sent the crumpled little plane into drunken, cork-screwed flight towards the doorway, "you screwed up as Santa."
"Too right she did," a new voice from the doorway made her jump a little - they all turned to look at their Colonel, who was still looking grumpy, growly... and who determinedly ignored the plane, its nose now stuck at a decidedly manic angle in his hair.
Carter sighed. Nothing like a high-ranking, highly-trained, deadly Black Ops senior officer to show the world how to sulk over someone else getting the present he wanted - but after all, the colonel could have bought his own, after she'd given the Paper-Airplane-A-Day desk diary to Hammond.
He just didn't like General Inner Flyboy having more fun... for the next three hundred and forty eight days.
-the end-