"This is sick, Sir. Really sick."
"What's the fun of being off-duty, Carter, if you can't do something just a little sick?" Colonel Jack O'Neill guided the car on the country road with a wicked grin on his face.
"Um… kicking back, taking a break, having fun?!" Daniel Jackson, SG-1's personal geek gripped the back of Jack's seat convulsively as the Colonel pulled off the main road onto a badly paved smaller one. He and Captain Samantha Carter exchanged dismayed looks from where they sat in the back seat.
"Like you or Carter would know what fun means," Jack snorted, disregarding Daniel's protest, "You guys are workaholics."
"Jack!" Daniel complained, putting a bit of whine into his voice. He quickly shoved his glasses up his nose before clutching at the Colonel's seat again.
"Colonel, I want to go back to work now," Sam chimed in, peeking past the co-pilot's chair to see the sudden drop that was ahead of them.
"See, what I mean? 'Sides, it's just a little hill," Jack chided, "where's your sense of adventure?"
"Left it back at the Mountain," Daniel chattered, referring to Cheyenne Mountain, the Air-Force instillation at which the team worked.
"That is impossible, Danieljackson," said the fourth passenger in the station wagon solemnly, "A sense of adventure is not something that can possibly be misplaced or forgotten. It is not a physical object able to be removed from one's presence."
Teal'c, as the co-pilot was called, was not of Earth. The gold brand on his forehead declared this, but even more effectively did his inability to comprehend his human friends' humor and figures of speech.
"Daniel was being figurative, Teal'c," Jack explained patiently.
"Ah," Teal'c said. He would have liked to say more, but at this point, Jack, ignoring all protests and pleading from the backseat, sped up and coasted down the frighteningly steep and narrow mountain.
The screams and threats from the back made conversation impossible, as did Jack's loud whooping with delight at the roller-coaster-like drop. Teal'c alone was silent, one eyebrow held aloft as he curiously studied the strange behavior of his human companions. His sole reaction to the terrifying movements of the car was to grip his seat a little tighter than usual; otherwise, he did nothing to show that he felt any of this was out of the ordinary.
As soon as the car had come to a complete stop, slamming all its occupants against their restraints in an almost dangerous fashion, Teal'c spoke up.
"I do not see, O'Neill, how this unnecessary risking of your lives can be considered fun," the Jaffa announced.
"By most people it isn't," Daniel told him, glaring murderously at the back of Jack's head. His hands were still shaking. There were no guard rails on this road and the road wasn't even supposed to be used anymore, much less at top speed. He had seen his life flash before his eyes.
"The high, Teal'c," Jack said cheerfully, "It's the high. People enjoy the thrill that adrenaline rushing through their system gives them."
"Do you not get enough of that on our missions?" Teal'c inquired curiously.
"Yeah, Sir, I agree," Sam said in a barely civil tone, "We're not exactly thrill-deprived, you know. Personally, I could have dealt without this particular rush."
"C'mon! Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Left it at the Mountain," Sam and Daniel chorused.
"Okay, okay. Your sense of fun, then."
"It's on vacation," Sam said icily.
"And to most people that isn't fun," Daniel repeated. He looked like he was seriously considering taking a swipe at Jack.
Jack decided it was time to mollify the highly irate scientists before they decided to gang up on him. "Ice-cream?" he offered, giving his friends a placating smile through the review mirror.
Daniel looked like he was softening (the man couldn't stay mad for any length of time), but Sam refused to be bought off that easily.
She frowned, still glaring at her superior officer. "I think I left my stomach somewhere several feet up, Sir. Permission to go up and retrieve it?"
"Fine by me," Jack shrugged. He turned to look at her wickedly. "But then you'd have to come down again. And you know I just can't resist going down that hill at anything less than 80 miles per hour."
Daniel looked sick and Sam looked like she was having second thoughts about the wisdom of using sarcasm on Jack. "Never mind," she backed down weakly, "I'll just settle for the ice-cream."
Jack smirked and released the break. "I know a little place several miles up the road. You'll like it. It's quiet, totally boring, and not fun."
"Jack," Daniel sighed from the back seat, "You're so dead."
"Do it for the thrill, Danny. Do it for the thrill."