You know, if… if we were a couple, if she finally realised that I have I have a Y chromosome (I still think sometimes that she just sees me as the sister Jacob didn't have the time to give her), we would have a lot of fun… I mean, come on, can you see Jack in a Museum, actually enjoying himself? Sam and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY last year during a rare vacation when I got most of my memories back, mostly as a means of therapy, especially after I remembered what that bastard Gamekeeper subjected us both to, and it was a lot of fun… eventually.

Sam enjoyed it. I know she did. She wouldn't stop talking, and she has such a beautiful laugh when she gets to use it… which sadly, she doesn't much in our line of work.

It would be different, that much I know, if we got together. There are living arrangements for one… and… Oh for crying out loud… I'm a single thirty-nine year old man fantasising about the practicalities of a relationship. Jack claims that my apparent neurosis is down to a deep-seated need to get laid, but, to be honest with you, I think the man was pulling my leg. For someone without a steady girlfriend, who still dreams about being man enough to patch things up with his ex-wife, he really is obsessed with smut. Sometimes, it's like it's his lifelong ambition to make me glow brighter than Rudolph's nose. That poor reindeer. What has Santa been injecting him with?

Would it really be all bad? Maybe it would be, and Sam's really clever and she's probably seen that… that's why she won't even look at me twice… not in that way. There's a reason, other than the regs why she and Jack aren't a 'them' yet; chiefly that it would cause the end of the world. Oh yeah. Don't think I didn't make the connection. No 'me', those two being a 'them'… That's one more reason why I'm glad they aren't together – for some reason, I like living too much right now.

We're friends… we're friends… we're nothing more than friends.

'… not in that way'

Damn… 'not in that way'. Those words are still ringing in my ears. I asked her when she and SG-1 had found me on Vis Uban a year ago whether there had been something between us. What else could I have said or even thought being faced with such an overwhelmingly beautiful woman who appeared to think the world of me, and who was a damn sight better at persuading me to come home than Jack had been (seriously… that man…)?

She pretty much shot me down by saying that we were just really, really good friends. Typical me. I actually thought it was a euphemism and she was just being polite. Maybe we had casual sex. Well, I know that we didn't now, but I didn't then. Then, I just saw her, and how she spoke so passionately to get me to come home again.

Passionately? God, she's as stubborn as I am, if not more…

You know, I'm going to have to tell her. I can't ignore it any more. If she wants to ignore me, then I, quite possibly her second in the stubbornness stakes at the SGC, can ignore her back. Yeah, screw up the team dynamics… Seriously, we are going to have to have a little discussion about it, a very mature discussion about it, and hopefully, we're mature enough people and good enough friends for it not to damage our present relationship…


Well, I get up, knowing that she's in her lab right now, having no fun at all with a device SG-3 brought back from their recent travels, and throw the rest of my dinner away. Doctor Brightman said I should eat regularly and properly. Well, obviously, she doesn't know how we do things around here… how I do things… Or maybe Janet's haunting the Infirmary and telling her to be extra hard on me for ignoring her when she was around.

I'd give anything to have her dig into me about my caffeine intake now.

So anyway, I leave the Commissary, get intercepted by Jack, who is so insistent on telling me about that damned NHL game he watched the other night… so I give him a long-winded explanation about what I've got to do right now… involving words like 'linguistic variation' and 'Homeric last-first' and the guy zones out before offering to resume his gripping account to poor Siler.

Maybe I should have just told him the truth, and then I would be on the way to the Infirmary to get stitches, if he hadn't managed to kill me then and there. It's for the best. He would definitely kill me. The whole Sam issue is a sore spot for him. Pfft, he should try being me.

So… I make it to Sam's lab, or the adjacent wall at least, and then I lose my bottle. What do I tell her? I didn't even bring her any coffee… ok, she does have a new coffee maker, and a lovely selection of different blends that make me wish I could marry her right away and spend the rest of our days appreciating the different coffees, but that's beside the point. It's the concept, the principle if you will, of bringing her a cup to alleviate her tension.

God, I'm such a boob.

Anyway, sans coffee still, I watch her from the doorway, hard at work. She looks as though she's finishing though, which means that we could go for lunch in about half an hour, or she's going to pour a mug of cold coffee on my head for what I'm about to tell her.

She looks up and catches me looking at her, her breathtaking eyes catching the light. Sam has nice eyes. They're like her – beautiful, dangerous and inquistive, ever changing according to the situation, but never without sympathy (unless your name happens to be Robert Kinsey or… ooh, Adrian Conrad… damn, what I wouldn't do to zat both of them repeatedly right now). Ok, so she's not going to throw something at me for apparently stalking her. No, she's never done that. She's nice.

She stretches and I try not to think about her arms, or her neck, or any other part of her body, and she asks with a smile, a hand still on her neck, "Daniel?"

She has a lovely smile as well… and I don't want to gloat, but it seems like she uses them for me. When did I last see her smile at Jack? I meant a real smile… not a sarcastic or a polite one. I realise she's waiting for me to talk and I clear my throat and say quietly,

"Um, just watching you work…"

She shoots me her patented 'I'm not buying that' look, which, if I was in her place and was faced with an insecure, neurotic Archaeologist who apparently openly stalks his best friend, I would use… many, many times. She then relaxs, apparently buying it, or just accepting it for the moment, and she asks,

"How are you feeling?"

That's a question I'm thoroughly sick of now, along with its cousin 'how are you doing?' and it's maiden Aunt 'how's the afterlife?', but coming from her, I don't really mind. You see, for an entire year, random people keep coming up to me as though it was unusual for someone to be found naked on a planet, the victim of an Ancient college boy prank. Well, alright, I guess I shouldn't be annoyed about it. I did kind of die, didn't I?

Well anyway, I reply with a shrug, pushing my glasses up my nose (damn, these things… I need new glasses. These keep on getting so damn loose even though I keep on tightening them… stupid American made screws…), "Ok, I guess. How are you? How's the work with the device going?"

She says with a groan, "Remind me to go back in time to either shoot the twit who designed it, or to never get my doctorate."

Not good apparently.

"Ouch, that sounds bad."

"What have you been up to?"

Um, well, you see… having stupid male fantasies about my best friend, and wishing that Jack wasn't in between us. Yeah, right, like I'm going to tell her that.

"Uh, not much. Just sampled the culinary delights of the Commissary. Do you want some coffee?"

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back with a groan, in a way I vaguely recognise as my own – yeah, like I can patent my expressions of exasperation although I think Jack could, seeing as they're usually directed at him – and she then looks at me with the most mischievous of smiles and asks, standing up,

"How about we take my new coffeemaker for a spin?"

I smile back and ask with what I hope is a matching smile, "I've got a better idea – why don't we do a run to Starbucks? Jack's always moaning about us not doing anything exciting in our lunch breaks."

Well, relatively exciting seeing as we're all single. The Man should probably consider renaming the SGC 'the Cheyenne Mountain Singles Club'. It would work, it really would… or maybe not. It would give some else for that rat bastard Kinsey to pull us on, not that he really is in a position to do that these days after the President accepted his resignation.

Anywho, her grin grows wider and she says, linking arms with me, "Sure, come on, let's go sign out. I can never resist that cute smile you get when you mention Starbucks…"

She called me cute! Ok, it was my smile, apparently, but still… it's a part of me. I do my utter best to be nonchalant as I smile at her as we leave, my cheeks heating up, and my stomach does a series of flips, in a good way for once and not because of the Commissary brand food that I unfortunately ingested earlier… well, I was bored. I sure as hell am not now. I'm going to Starbucks… with Sam.