Title: The Asgard Don't Wear Pants

Word Count: ~1,400

Notes/Disclaimers: I own nothing, and am making no money! Also, many thanks to my beta Sophia_Sol, who informed me that it was amusing, really it was, but... would General Hammond really do something like that? And then, when I replied that I'd thought O'Neill would have been funnier but it really had to be a General, stared at me with quirked eyebrow until my last remaining neurons fired.

* * *

Knock.

General O'Neill glanced at his watch. Ah. He took his time clearing away his papers and settling himself comfortably into his chair. Hands folded comfortably in front of him, he called out, "Yeah?"

There was a pause, and he could practically hear the knocker trying to decide if "yeah?" was an acceptable substitute for the more standard "enter". He'd be deciding that "yeah" passed muster – this was Crazy General O'Neill, after all – in three... two... one...

Senior Airman Joshua Roberts, newly transferred to SGC, entered the room, and marched to a position three paces from and centered in front of the desk that O'Neill still couldn't help but think of as Hammond's. Roberts's uniform had the almost excessively crisp look that all new recruits shared, from the day of their transfer to the day they finally realised that people serving on the planet's front lines are generally acknowledged to have more important uses for their time than keeping their boots perfectly polished.

"Sir, Airman Roberts reports as ordered!" The young man snapped a salute, almost trembling with the need to make a good first impression.

O'Neill had to fight not to roll his eye. "At ease, Airman." He waited for Robert's to drop the salute and settle into parade rest before continuing, "So. You wanted to report a breach of conduct, right?"

Roberts nodded. "Yessir!"

"So?" he prompted.

Beads of sweat were staring to form on the Airman's forehead. "It concerns Captain Harkness, sir! I have reason to believe he is, he's, well, he's a homosexual, sir!"

O'Neill leaned back in (Hammond's) chair, and raised one thoughtful eyebrow. "Well. That's a heck of a thing to say. You have any evidence?"

"Sir, I witnessed Captain Harkness, ah, kissing a member of the delegation from Great Britain. A male member. Sir! "

O'Neill tilted his head. "You know, they tell me Europeans are like that. Kissing's just like saying 'hello'. Probably the British guy started it, and Harkness was just being polite."

"It was a Welsh man, sir, and there was a little much... tongue, for that, sir."

"Trick of the light, I'm sure," said O'Neill, expression unreadable.

"And last week he was flirting with Sergeant Siler, sir! In front of everyone!"

O'Neill shrugged, face completely deadpan. "Well, who hasn't wanted to flirt with Sergeant Siler on occasion?" The airman's jaw dropped, and O'Neill sighed. Note to self: request that next batch of recruits come with sense of humour pre-installed. "That was a joke, Airman. Look, Harkness is just an outgoing kind of guy. It's easy to mistake that sort of thing for flirting."

"Sir!" The young airman was now literally trembling, with barely controlled righteous indignation. "Just yesterday I personally witnessed the Captain inform Teal'c that he'd like to – that he'd – well, it was obscene! And then he pinched Major Feretti's–"

"Airman." He didn't raise his voice, but there was something about the tone that cut Roberts's tirade off mid-word, and drained the blood from the young man's face.

"Sir?" the airman asked, looking suddenly uneasy.

O'Neill leaned forward in his chair. "Airman, I want you to listen carefully when I tell you this: I honestly do not care. Do you understand me? So far as I'm concerned, no one's asked, and he's never told, which makes him a good old-fashioned heterosexual type of guy. And I haven't seen or heard a damn thing to make me think any different."

"Sir."

And, oh, O'Neill knew that tone of voice. He used it often enough, back in the day. Where 'back in the day' meant 'almost every day right up until he'd become The Man'. It meant, "Sir, from where I'm standing you're acting completely insane, but either a) I respect you too much to say so or b) it would be suicidal of me to say so at this juncture, so I'll just say 'sir' as a place-holder until you explain what the hell's going on."

"Now," he continued, as Roberts fixed his eyes at a point just over the General's left shoulder, "we both know that you could take this up over my head. Maybe you could make it stick, maybe you couldn't, but either way it'd be a heck of a lot of trouble for Harkness. Might even get him kicked out of the Force, which would be a crying shame because it's really hard to hire a dishonourably discharged officer on as a civilian contractor. Which is what I'd have to do. Wanna know why?"

"Sir," said Roborts, and this time it meant, "I understand that you're not actually asking a question, so there's no real need for me to actually give an answer".

O'Neill grinned, anticipating the coming moments with a certain amount of pleasure. "First, because Jack Harkness has more gate experience than anyone but, well, myself and SG-1. There's almost no one in the world that this military has invested more money into training – and the IOA's been riding my ass about our budget lately. Plus, hey, the money's totally been worth it. The man's been presumed dead more times than Daniel Jackson – he's got a hell of a knack for coming back alive.

"Second, because he's got this freaky talent for making wild-yet-oddly-accurate guesses about what alien gadgets can do. Things like, 'I dunno, sir, it just looked like a trans-dimensional communications array to me'. This makes him pretty popular with the science geeks. Kicking him out leaves me with a horde of angry civilians who really do not understand how to follow orders. And I'm just not in the mood for that.

"And third, because the Asgard don't wear pants."

O'Neill leaned back in his chair, and took a moment to appreciate the series of expressions that crossed Senior Airman Robert's face.

"I... sir?"

"The Asgard don't wear pants," O'Neill repeated, enjoying himself now. "The Tok'ra are snakes that live in people's heads- sure, they say all their hosts are willing, and I personally pretend to believe that only 'cause there's no real way to check for sure. The Tollan think we're basically monkeys playing with fire, and when you mention 'security clearance' and keeping secrets for the greater good, they act like you just suggested eating babies. The Orbanians train up these special genius kids, then lobotomise 'em so they can share the knowledge around. The Unas almost ate Jackson before he managed to talk them into an allience.

"That's just the people we're still talking to. On the list of 'not actually our enemies, but I'm probably not going to send them a Christmas card', we're also got the Taldor, whose justice system is basically, 'whoops, stole a loaf of bread, it's life on the planet Hell for you!', the A't'trr, who spiked me through the chest and almost destroyed the whole planet before we – and when I say we, I here mean 'Carter' - realised they were sentient and found a way to have a little chat with them. Hell, the Altairians replaced SG-1, myself included, with robots - and couldn't understand why that upset us ever so slightly."

O'Neill stared at the kid, who was looking a bit shell-shocked. "And that's not even touching on our many and excruciatingly bizarre enemies. Are you getting this? Seriously, give me some kind of sign – a nod, a twitch, something. Because I'd hate to have gone through all the work of making a speech, only to have to turn around and make it again."

The Airman hesitated. "I... I'm getting it, sir, but I'm not certain I understand your point."

O'Neill rolled his eyes. "Look – none of those people were evil. I mean, a little evil sometimes, yeah, but not evil evil. If you've got a few hours to waste, go ask Jackson for his opinions on relative morality. They're obnoxious, yes, stuck up, annoying, and have really strange moral codes, but they're not evil. Just weird. And if we stopped talking to all the weird people in the galaxy, we'd get pretty lonely down here. So if you can't handle Captain Harkness, well. How the hell do you think you're ever going to be able to handle being on a gate team?"

Roberts's eyes widened, and then he nodded slowly. "I... I think I understand, sir."

"Good. Then I'm ever-so-glad we had this little conversation. Dismissed."

Roberts saluted, and held the gesture until O'Neill reluctantly returned it, before booking it out of the room as fast as military courtesy would let him.

General O'Neill allowed himself one small laugh in the privacy of the office that he might, some day, be able to think of as 'his'. Hammond had been right – every now and then, it was a whole lot of fun to be the General.