Chapter 6 – 1969

"Well that's enough background, time to move things along," Jack said, pausing for a moment. "As I said earlier Sam and I have been married for almost three years but according to our marriage certificate we have been married since August 7th… 1969."

"Oh, you didn't," Daniel said shaking his head.

"Oh, but we did," Jack replied smiling, reaching out for Sam's hand. "It was the sixties, what better time for us to get married. In fact, that actually made it a lot easier for us, we happened to find a little place where the minister was able to have us married in no time at all; it was in that small town we stopped in a few days into our trip," Jack finished, trying to see if they remembered.

"Yea, we remember," Daniel said answering for both himself and Teal'c. "We had our lunch and then split up and walked around the town to stretch our legs, apparently that wasn't all that you two did," he finished with a smile.

"We walked by a small chapel," Sam started to say, "And I mentioned to Jack that if we had a marriage certificate that was dated before we were in the same chain of command that they, Hammond and the Air Force, might accept it and let us be together. So we got married thinking that if it didn't work then we would just destroy the document and go back to work as usual."

"By this point we had realized each other's mutual feelings we just not simply disappear one day and that this might finally give us the opportunity to be together and still do the jobs that we love so much. Sure, it was definitely a bit extreme: we had only known each other for a few years and had never had the opportunity to go on a date, much less even talk about what was going on between us but…" Sam trailed off.

"We took a page from my book and decided to do things a little backwards," Jack said, picking up where Sam had left off. "If it worked out then we could do the whole get-to-know each other bit after getting married, and if it didn't work out then we really had done anything out of line. I mean what were they going to do, have us court-martialed? They wouldn't be able to do that without revealing at least a little bit of the program and then there was the fact that we hadn't actually done anything against regulations. Heck, we didn't even kiss after we got married: just had the minister skip over that part during the ceremony," Jack finished, still sounding upset about that fact.

"Anyways," Sam said, eyeing Jack, "After we returned home Jack had decided to approach Hammond about the situation after he paid him back for the money that we borrowed."

Seeing his cue, Jack began to speak, "When I first mentioned it to him, Hammond was actually somewhat relieved. As it turns out he had actually put a few things in motion just in case. Although he didn't know when, he knew that at some point we would be traveling back to 1969 and was actually counting on us getting married. Once he handed Sam that note and we left on the mission he immediately called up the President and, hypothetically of course, worked out the details."

"He actually seemed to be happier that we noticed his hint about looking out for an opportunity than about us actually getting married," Jack finished, shaking his head.

"There was however a few stipulations that the Air Force insisted on," Sam said. "They were going to be using us as a test case, so to speak, on whether or not the fraternization regulations were needed at our base: they were starting to see the unique work that we do changes the atmosphere and interactions of everyone on the base and were curious to see if a change in those regulations would cause any difference in the base operation."

"So," Sam continued on, "We had to keep our entire relationship, and definitely our marriage, a secret. We have also been subject to additional scrutiny and reviews by not only General Hammond, but the Joint Chiefs as well."

"As it turns out, they finally decided that us being married was actually beneficial to the command and told us a while ago that we were free to finally make our relationship public knowledge," Jack finished looking rather smug.

For a few minutes everyone was quiet, Jack and Sam exchanged a quick look and Jack had just looked at his watch when Daniel finally spoke up, "Wait a minute, you just said 'a while ago', exactly how long ago was that?"

"Umm," Jack said, fiddling with his watch, "Just after the Za'tarc incident, so what was that, about a year ago? We were forced to admit our feelings so they went ahead and gave us their permission."

"A YEAR! You could have told us a year ago and you didn't, why not?" Daniel yelled, more hurt than mad.

"What were we going to say, 'oh by the way, we've been married for a couple of years now, want to go get something to eat?' it's not exactly something you can just bring up, not to mention the fact that we had gotten use to it all and the timing never seemed right…" Jack trailed off unsure of what else to say.

"I'll tell you what guys," Sam started, looking at both Daniel and Teal'c, who had remained unsurprisingly quiet. "Now that this is out there we are going to need to have a proper wedding ceremony and we would love for you guys to be the best men, after all there is no way Jack could have just one."

Daniel just sat there shocked while Teal'c replied for the both of them, "It would be our honor."

"Great," Jack said standing up, "Now that that has been settled, it's been a long day, and we're going to have another long one tomorrow with it being the last day of training, what do ya say we get out here and get a beer… my treat," he finished raising his eyebrows, motioning to the doors

"I'm in," was the unanimous reply from all three as they got up to leave.

The End

There I finally finished it, and to think it took me all of a minute to think up this story and more words than I had expected to write it all… anyways, I hope that you liked it!