Really not sure where I'm going with this! Reviews are très welcome :)
Chapter One
"Jacob, are you implying that I'm not good for your daughter?"
"UNSCHEDULED OFFWORLD ACTIVATION!" the klaxons blared across the base. It was 0300 and now nobody was sleeping. Contrary to popular belief, the workers of the SGC were not always consummate professionals, and were even less so at the wee hours of the morning. That was the reason that while Colonel Jack O'Neill was heading to level 24 to see what the fuss was about, a lowly, frustrated and sleep deprived lieutenant was opening the door to his quarters and bellowing "would somebody, please shut that damn noise off!"
O'Neill had seen a lot of strangeness over the last few years, and knew what it was like to be that frustrated and sleep deprived. So he waved cheerily at the lieutenant, who, even exhausted and close to tears, visibly shrank back at the sight of a superior officer.
By the time he reached the control room, O'Neill was in a positively excellent mood, quite ready to face whatever was coming through the gate. The iris was already open and General Hammond was making his way down to the gate room, and when Jack arrived, was asking their visitor if he wanted Sam to be called.
Jacob shook his head. "And if you wouldn't mind, George, I'd prefer you didn't tell her I visited. I just need to speak with Jack, here, for a moment."
If Hammond was surprised it didn't show. The last time Jacob had shown up like this and asked to speak to Jack he'd nearly killed him. It had been a good thing Jacob had insisted on leaving the base before they got down to business: his exclamations of "WHAT?! Anise was telling the truth?! You're in love with my daughter?!" could have drawn some suspicion.
Jack looked to the General for some kind of protection, but Hammond just smiled at him in a fatherly manner and then left them to it.
There was a tense silence. "So, Jacob. Er, General Carter, sir. Lunch?"
"I've been thinking about what you asked me," Jacob told him as they settled into chairs in the commissary. "Maybe I spoke too soon when I said no."
"Even the second time?" And third, fourth, fifth, ninth times? Jack wasn't too sure what he was hearing.
"Yes, Jack. I suppose your... persistence... had something to do with me changing my mind." He leaned towards Jack suddenly and told him "you have to remember though, Jack, me saying yes in no way means that she will." Then from his pocket he produced a small box, which he passed across the table to Jack. "This was her mother's. Take good care of it."
Jack didn't look inside the box before he tucked it into his BDUs; he did that later, alone in his quarters. That was where he kept it, away from the intimacy of his home life and hers, where work could remind him of why he couldn't give it to her just yet, but where it could, on the bad days, remind him that someday, he might be able to.
Months passed. More Goa'uld popped up. Jack got snaked and tortured and when he came back, the stricken look he saw now and again in Sam's eyes when she looked at him reminded him how she still cared. But Jack knew that when the shit really hit the fan, he couldn't be objective when it came to her anymore; he couldn't be her lover and her commanding officer. So, the ring got gradually more buried in his bedside drawer, along with his feelings.
Then, one day, Carter had hummed in the elevator. Jack had asked polite questions and hidden his morbid curiosity, then hidden in the bathroom until he stopped feeling queasy. And now, here he was, standing outside her door with the ring in his pocket, finally having made a decision.
Pete gave me this.