Oh Christmas Tree

Summary: He supposed it would be mean to ask Carter to go home, and though he really did want to spend his Christmas with her, he'd really rather not spend it with her new fiancée. He'd really rather not.

~For Amy~

Jack winced as he heard the doorbell ringing. There was only one person left to join his failure of a Christmas party, if you could even call it a party. Two people, actually, but Jack liked to ignore the…other person. He would be more than happy to pretend that Sam's guest wasn't coming.

But that good old doorbell rang again, and Jack decided he'd better go and answer it. He supposed it would be mean to ask Carter to go home, and though he really did want to spend his Christmas with her, he'd really rather not spend it with her new fiancée. He'd really rather not.

But now Daniel and Teal'c were looking at him, one with that little Zoolander pout and the other with that fiendish eyebrow, and Jack figured that if he didn't get up, his friends would begin to realize something was up, if they hadn't realized already. And they probably had. They were Daniel and Teal'c, after all.

"Do you want me to get it?" Cassie asked, half-jogging into the room. She had been busy decorating the living room and wouldn't let anyone in till she had done. Consequently, Jack, Daniel and Teal'c had spent the last three quarters of an hour sitting in his kitchen facing the refrigerator.

Jack hadn't noticed before tonight, but his refrigerator wasn't exactly white. It was an off-white, mother-of-pearl shade. Interesting. Far more interesting than Carter and her fiancée. More interesting than Christmas itself, even.

Right, Carter and her fiancée. Shanahan. At the door.

Jack got up with a smile he knew must have looked completely fake and answered the door.

"Hi Jack," Pete grinned as seized Jack's hand and shook it hard. Jack frowned. Was he just trying to prove that he was as strong as him? Seriously! What kind of person shook hands as though they were gutting a seven foot fish…or whale? Pete's other hand stayed firmly on the small of his fiancée's back. Showing his ownership. He might as well have undone his fly and peed on her. Jack tried not to look too disgusted.

"Hi Pete," Jack grimaced back and invited him sourly into the house. He looked at the willowy wonder next to the dope and the grimace fell from his face. Damn it! Why did Carter always turn his legs to jello, make his heart stop, and transform him into a walking, talking cliché? Stupid Carter. Stupid Shanahan, holding stupid Carter's waist and shaking hands like a fish-gutter.

"Merry Christmas, sir," Sam said with a small smile, and wriggled a little in her fiancée's grasp. Ha! He knew she mustn't like it. Samantha Carter was not a woman to be owned, particularly not by a potato-faced fish hook. Jack wondered briefly where the 'potato face' had come from, but decided he liked it, and shelved it in his brain under "Insults for Carter's fiancée."

"Come in," he said too loudly, and then coughed. He turned around to look at Daniel, who merely shrugged back at him. Carter and Shanahan smiled and walked through the door. Jack smiled as he watched Sam wriggle out of her fiancée's grasp as he disgustingly made a big deal of letting her go through the door before him. Spineless chivalry was pointless when you were dealing with a woman who could break your neck in seven ways. Then again, why not be chivalrous? If she could break your neck for not waiting for her…

Jack wished she had broken his neck. Then again, he wished she had waited for him. Instead of going of and shacking up with potato hook, the fish face. Wait…that wasn't right. Potato fish the…ah, something. The point was, she didn't wait for him, even though they had that unspoken agreement. Even though he had thought she loved him with every part of her, like he had for her. Bleurgh. It wasn't important. She was clearly happy to marry fish boy, and there was nothing Jack was going to do to stop her. It was her choice.

Ok, wrong way, go back. Now was not the time to be dwelling on his non-relationship with Carter. Particularly with fish-boy so close. And with her looking like that. Jack pretended to himself that she had dressed up for him. Well, to be honest, for most people it wasn't exactly dressed up. It was pretty, but casual. But it was blue. Carter knew very well that Jack loved her in blue! And…if she didn't, well she should. She looked hot in blue. And Jack liked it. And there were plenty of times she was completely able to read his mind so he decided that now must be one of them and so she had worn blue just to please him.

And then he realized that he was slowly but surely going insane.

Jack watched Carter and her fiancée (was that a bit of bile in the back of his throat there, when he thought 'fiancée'?) greet Daniel and Teal'c. Daniel looked happy to see them, but uncomfortable with Pete, and Teal'c, never one to play charades, greeted Sam warmly and raised one judging eyebrow at potato man. Jack grinned. At least he had Teal'c to represent. He mentally high-fived his alien friend.

After the warm (and cold) greeting the company descended into an awkward silence. Sam didn't seem comfortable with the fact that she had brought Pete to the SG1 Christmas shindig, and with good reason. No one had ever brought someone to the Christmas party. Every year, it was the same get together. Jack, Daniel, Carter, Teal'c, Cassie and Janet, sitting around the Doc's fireplace, singing Christmas carols and eating Janet's fabulous cooking.

It was their first Christmas without the Doc. They hadn't really organized the thing at all, but Cassie had insisted they carry on the tradition. Sam offered to hold the gathering, but with Pete around all the time, and all that wedding stuff everywhere, Jack thought he might just pass out if he spent more than ten minutes in her love nest. So he had offered to have the party at his house. For some reason, everyone had thought it a great idea, even though they knew Jack wouldn't decorate or attempt cooking anything. Actually, they were probably grateful for that knowledge. Beer and ash-steak weren't exactly considered a Christmas feast.

But Cassie had taken control of the whole event, much to everyone's relief. They were all worried that the teenager would have a horrible Christmas, being with a bunch of middle age soldiers instead of with her friends. But she hadn't worried about missing skanky teen Christmas drunk-fests and she hadn't seemed depressed at all about her first Christmas without her Earth-mother. She acted just like her mother would have acted. It made them all proud.

"It's finished!" Cassie threw some life back into the slowly moulding group of uncomfortable adults. "Hi Sam," she said and gave her a hug. 'Hi Pete," she said with only slightly less audible enthusiasm. Clearly Cassie actually liked Sam's new fiancée. Well, there had to be one, at least.

That wasn't fair, Jack thought to himself, irritably. He really had no right to dislike Pete. He had let the proverbial boat sail along time ago. It was just that he assumed Sam was going to end up marrying someone who actually deserved her. Wasn't that why he gave up himself? So that she'd have someone who could love her. Who was good for her. And Pete…well, he wasn't exactly Jack's idea of a prince charming. Although if Jack did have a fully developed idea of a prince charming, he might just have to reassess his goals in life. Jack wondered vaguely whether Daniel had an exact idea of prince charming.

That being said (Daniel's feelings on Prince Charming aside), Pete's lack of…ruggedness made him neither unable to love Sam nor bad for her. He was obviously making her happy, at least happier than she would have been with Jack. Yep, that would have been a happy ending and a half. Oops, look at that – Colonel Carter and General O'Neill have broken the fraternization regulations. Oh well, off the team for one, court martial for the other. What's that? The Goa'uld are attacking in vast numbers? But oh no! Some civilian idiot is running the SGC and the only person capable of finding a way to stop them is off the team for playing tonsil hockey (amongst other things) with her C.O. Oh dear. What shall we do now? …Kaboom…

Yep – Sam was definitely looking for that kind of happily ever after.

Back in the present, the sane, Cassie was looking over her adult friends with the same contemptuous glare her earth mother would have given them, if she was alive. Yikes. Definitely time to follow orders.

"We're coming, Cassie," Sam said, smiling. Jack felt a twinge in his stomach, knowing that Carter was thinking the same thing he did. He smiled at her and she smirked back. Pete furrowed his eyebrows next to Sam and she immediately stopped her head. Damn it. Why couldn't he even have platonic moments with Sam?

SG1 and Pete followed Cassie into the living room.

"Woaw," Daniel whispered.

Woaw was exactly the right word. Cassie had transformed the living room into some kind of glitter nightmare. If he wasn't so blinded by the sparkles he would have had a heart attack thinking about he clean-up operation the next morning. Sam smiled at him again. Jack gritted his teeth. She could read his mind.

"This is really something," Pete said appreciatively. Jack grimaced back. He caught Cassie looking at him out the corner of his eyes and smiled. Cassie raised a far too Teal'c-like eyebrow and rolled her eyes. Crap. He was definitely in trouble if even the kid knew what he was thinking.

"So…where are the presents?" Jack asked. Sam laughed. Cassie's conspiratory face fell. "What? No presents?" he asked, trying his best to put on that puppy dog face that Cassie used to laugh at as a little girl. Cassie didn't smile.

"Mom used to get the tree…" she said, uncomfortably.

And all of a sudden the awkwardness in the room melted into sadness. Janet's one great tradition, far and beyond the food and the decorations was finding the tree. It was a Frasier tradition, going back generations, she had said. Every year two of them, usually her and Jack, wandered through the woods near Janet's house to find the perfect tree. Every year, they'd come back to find Cassie had made a ridiculous amount of decorations out of potato chip packets she'd put in the oven. Her collection was well into the hundreds now.

But without Janet, no one had gotten the tree. And suddenly everyone was filled with grief.

"I'll find us a tree," Pete said, gallantly. For a second Jack felt sorry for him. How was he supposed to know the history? How could he know that instead of saving the day he was just making everyone else feel worse? It wasn't just finding a tree. It was finding the perfect tree. Like Janet would.

Sam put her hand on her fiancée's arm. "General O'Neill usually goes," she said.

"Oh," Pete said happily. "Then we'll go together. Two of us, just like tradition, right?"

If Jack hadn't already thought of seven ways to severely hurt the fish face, he might have found Pete's attention to detail touching. Sam must have told him about the tradition after all. But it wasn't his tradition. It was their's, and although he knew he was being petulant in thinking that, he knew that everyone else there thought the same. The awkward silence had set over the room again.

"I'll go," Sam said. Cassie nodded. Carter was the closest thing Cassie had to a mother now. It was right that she went with him.

And for the first time that night, thinking of Carter didn't make him uncomfortable as all hell. The two of them being alone together wasn't about them. It was about Cassie. And that was ok.

"She's done an amazing job," Sam said, about five minutes into their walk. Sure it wasn't about them, but the whole 'being alone together' thing was still just a little awkward. Particularly with her wearing blue.

"I know," Jack said, nodding. "Did you see that room?"

"It's really something," Sam said, glowing. Jack couldn't help but smile at her face, at her pride. Ah crap. Wrong way again, O'Neill.

"Yeah," he said, trying not to sound happy.

"That's gonna be one hell of a clean up, sir," she said.

"You read my mind," Jack said. Damn. A smile crept through his sturdy, Rambo façade.

"I can help, if you like," she said. "You know me and organizing." If he could see her face properly in the dark, he was sure it would be blushing.

The thought made him wish he was grumpy again. When he was grumpy he was less likely to imagine her lips on his. Which he was doing right now. Where was Pete the fish-spud when he needed him?

"Are you ok?" Carter asked, stopping.

Crap again. Carter was too damned good at reading him.

"Fine," he said. "This is just…different." Different was an understatement. Fish face and no Doc. What a great trade off. It made him wish for the old days. When Janet tried to sing Christmas carols and ended up making Daniel howl like a dog from earache. When Sam used to laugh at him with her generous eyes and look furtively if not hopelessly at him from under the mistletoe.

"I know what you mean, sir," Sam said. "It's not the same without Janet."

Jack resisted the urge to hold her. Damn damn damn. Stupid Carter, stupid being alone with her. Stupid Shanahan, stupid regs, stupid Frasier. He missed her too. Like hell. And none of them had ever spoken about it, just like they never spoke about anything, just bottled it up and left it in a room to die.

"I miss her too," he said, for once saying what he thought. What he meant to say.

"Cassie's so strong," Carter said.

"She's lucky to have you."

"You too," Sam said. "You know she loves you."

Jack felt Sam tighten.

"I shouldn't have brought Pete tonight," she said. Jack wondered how she had moved so quickly from Cassie to herself. He pushed the segue theme of 'love' out of his head. No need to draw stupid conclusions.

"I invited both of you," Jack said.

"I know," Sam said, quietly, guiltily. She sat down. Jack followed her, trying not to groan at the ache in his knees.

Awkward again. Too many conflicting thoughts but all the same emotion. Grief. Grief for Janet, mostly. Grief for Cassie. And grief for each other. For what they had lost in each other.

"Come here," Jack said and put an arm around her. It seemed the right thing to do. Fiancées could be damned to hell for all he cared. Carter was unhappy and he was going to comfort her. That's what he was there for. That's what he would always be there for.

A leaf fell on Sam's face. Jack picked it off.

"The perfect tree," Sam said looking up. They were sitting under that tree. The one they both knew Janet would have picked.

"For Janet," Jack said.

"And Cassie."

They cut down the tree, almost ceremoniously, gathering the extra pine needles to scatter around the living room, just as Janet would have. It was therapeutic manual work, and they both felt all the better for it.

"We should get back," Carter said, quietly, but not guiltily.

"Yeah," Jack said, and picked up the tree. Knees! Gah – knee pain. He groaned and put the tree back down on the grass.

Carter laughed. Damn it. The one time he groaned.

"Let me help you, sir," she said, with a grin. That was low. Emphasizing his age and everything.

"Merry Christmas, Sam," he said, his whole mind on that beautiful smile.

"Merry Christmas…Jack."

fin