Way #32 -- Idle Hands
"I don't care if you're bored! The simple fact is that I'm very busy, sir! And--hey. I saw that."
"Saw what?"
Jack gave her a perfectly innocent look.
"Put it back, Colonel. You know I need all of those."
Jack frowned and gazed at the array of strange gadgets spread across Carter's work desk.
"Do I really know that? Considering I have no idea what it is you're actually doing. . ."
"Down." Carter commanded, with a finger pointed to her desk. He dropped the small metal bolt back on the table.
"Thank you."
She immediately returned to whatever it was she was doing, scribbling away in a notebook. Jack watched her messy desk forlornly for a couple minutes, his hands clasped behind his back, knowing she'd see any further attempts to pick things up out of the corner of her eye. He shuffled behind her a little and peered over her shoulder in a stealthy manner, straining to make out her handwriting. A few minutes later Carter gave a weary sigh and held a hand to her temple.
"Don't you have somewhere to be, sir?"
"Uh. Yeah. Why do you think I'm here instead?"
She gave him a sideways look.
"Paperwork due?" she asked in a sympathetic tone.
"Overdue. Long overdue," he gave a brief nod.
"Mm. You really should consider improving your procrastination habits, sir. It only makes things twice as worse."
"Aah," he said, waving it off. "I've been meaning to. Just never got around to it."
Sam rolled her eyes and continued taking her notes.
Fifteen Minutes Later. . .
There was a crash, a bang, and some alarmed scientists shouting. Jack snuck out of Carter's lab quickly, deciding it would be wise for him to become scarce at that particular moment, whistling an innocent tune. He headed down the corridors to his other favorite scientist to annoy. Hopefully he wouldn't be as busy as Carter was. She was just no fun sometimes, such a workaholic. . .
Pushing the door open, Jack sang,
"Oh, Danny?"
Nobody answered and he came into the room, glancing about curiously, as it was oddly quiet in here.
"Daniel? You alive?"
Jack's gaze finally fell upon Daniel's desk, and the pieces fell into place.
"Ah. Great. There goes plan B for procrastination."
Dr. Jackson was in his chair, face-down on his desk and dead asleep next to the piles of files and books. His glasses hung askew on his face. Jack came forward a little.
"Poor guy. Just doesn't know when to quit, does he?"
He plucked the glasses off his sleeping friend's face, folded them up and put them down on the desk next to him. He poked around the files and books for a few moments to check out what Daniel had been doing. Ah. It was all Greek to him. Literally-- most of the books were on Greek. Or written in Greek, it appeared. Hm. He picked up a capped ball-point pen and stuck it between his teeth. Pretty dull project, it looked like.
Jack plopped down in a rolling chair next to Daniel's desk, and slowly spun the chair in a circle with his foot.
"Maybe you got the right idea, huh? Being unconscious is a pretty good excuse to not do anything."
Jack amused himself for a few minutes spinning his chair in circles, and stopping to watch the walls spin from the leftover dizziness. Then he scootched the chair closer to the desk and started poking through Daniel's drawers. Not much to look at. Stapler, thumb-tacks, paperclips, scraps of paper, a Phillips screw-driver, some loose change, some sort of rock, a Goa'uld information device, a yellow pencil. . . mm. Jack slid the drawer shut.
Chewing on the cap-end of the pen, Jack regarded the sleeping Daniel next to him.
"I gotta say, Danny, you're not doing much to help me out here."
The anthropologist was dead asleep, head pillowed in his folded hands, mouth slightly agape, blond hair ruffled from a long day's work. There was no way Jack would get a response out of him.
"Daniel. Hey. Hey." Jack snapped his fingers a few times in front of him.
"Yoo-hoo, Danny-boy," he said, waving a hand in the air above him. Jack smirked. Yep. He was totally out of it. That boy could probably sleep through an earthquake.
Jack gave a sad sigh, tapping the pen against his teeth.
"Looks like I'll have to go back to work if I can't think of somethin' else to do here."
He pondered this a moment, thoughtfully nibbling the pen-tip. A thought struck the man and he smiled a little. Slowly he took the pen from his mouth and gazed at it. Then his gaze fell upon the dozing archeologist.
The innocent, defenseless archeologist.
Jack gave an evil little cackle as he uncapped the pen and scootched a tad closer to his sleeping friend.
An Unknown Block of Time Later . . .
Daniel's neck was sore. That was the first thing he became conscious of.
His eye twitched and he winced, wondering why his neck hurt so much. His breathing was a little wheezy and difficult, too. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps he was waking up at the bottom of some Goa'uld cell after being hit with a zat-gun. That had happened to him far too many times than he preferred.
But then he woke up a little more and recognized the gentle tick-tock of the clock on the wall, and remembered where he was. SGC, his office. Unless the Goa'uld had installed analog clocks in their cells, of course.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the blurry image of his desk. His face was mashed into some papers, quite literally, and one of his nostrils was flattened into the desk, explaining the trouble with breathing. He inhaled a deep breath and leaned up in his chair, blinking. A couple pieces of paper remained stuck to the side of his face, glued there firmly from a little dried drool. He groaned a little and peeled them off.
Putting the pages back on the desk and finding his glasses, he put them back on and glanced around the room. He did a double-take on the fluffy grey object in the corner of his eyes, which turned out to be Jack's ducked head. The man was leaned over in concentration, in a chair near Daniel.
"Uhn. Jack," Daniel muttered, still a little woozy from his nap. The man replied but didn't look up.
"Hey Dan."
"What time issit?" Daniel slurred, trying to turn to see the wall clock, but unable to get his sore neck to go the right angle.
"Mm. 'Round 300."
"Oh." Daniel peered down at Jack. The Colonel had a black pen and was slowly sketching something.
"What'reyou doing?"
"Drawing."
"Oh." Daniel reached up and massaged his temples, then his neck.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Not sure. It's been about an hour since I came in."
Daniel grumbled. "Great. I knew this whole switching-to-decaf thing would never work . . ."
Daniel paused as he took his hand away from his neck, seeing something funny out of the corner of his eye, and stared at his hand. It was covered in black ink doodles. His eye followed them all the way down his arm, and to his other arm where Jack was leaning. The Colonel was busy sketching something on Daniel's bicep.
"Uh . . . Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you drawing on me?"
"Yep."
Daniel stared, a little puzzled.
"Why?"
"You know what they say about idle hands, Daniel."
Daniel thought a moment and replied, "Are the Devil's workshop?"
"I was bored," Jack supplied.
Daniel frowned.
"And you were asleep," Jack added.
"I thought this waking-up craziness of yours only extended to off-world occasions."
"I never actually made that specification," Jack explained.
"Ah. I see."
Daniel watched him drawing for a little bit.
"Does this mean I should be concerned about nighttime visitations at my apartment?"
"I wouldn't rule it out if I were you."
"Jack."
"Hm?"
"Can I have my arm back now?"
"Oh. Yeah, sure."
Jack let go and Daniel leaned up in his chair, gazing down at his arms. Doodles wandered from his fingertips to his biceps, and possibly higher, crowding his skin in all sorts of detail, like some freak had gone insane with a tattoo needle.
"You like?" Jack asked cheerfully.
"Um . . ." He examined them more closely. Something about the cartoon-style Goa'ulds was very disturbing. Trying to make them look cutesy somehow only made them more scary looking. Smiley-faces and random phrases ("Jack was here", "Spacemonkey", "Geeks R Us") speckled him along with lumpy looking animals and flowers, and other totally random junk. Jack had traced around Daniel's pulse-point on one arm, drawn an arrow pointing to it, and labeled it "Caffeine IV Drip Inserts Here".
Daniel looked up at Jack and said evenly,
"I think I'm gonna go take a shower."
"Aaaw. Don't you want to show em' off for a while first? You've got more tattoos than a drunken sailor."
"Not particularly."
The two of them glanced up as they heard a voice.
"Daniel, I didn't hear back from you, I was wondering if you got those files sent up--"
Carter stopped talking as she came around the bend and into the office.
"--to me. Uh. Colonel." Sam blinked, looking from Jack to Daniel and back to Jack again.
"I'm sorry, didn't mean to interrupt anything. Uh. What exactly . . ."
She looked at Daniel again, who wrinkled his nose in distaste.
"Is that?" She nodded in Daniel's direction. Then she added on.
"I mean . . . the . . ."
"Skin art?" Daniel supplied.
"Er. Yeah," Sam smiled.
"Don't ask me. I didn't do it," Daniel answered. They both looked at Jack. The older man smiled indulgently at the pair of them.
"Sometimes, guys, I just have to draw. There's no use fighting it."
"So you used Daniel as your sketchbook?" Sam asked, in an almost curious voice, looking back at Daniel to further examine the work.
Jack corrected her, almost sounding hurt,
"Not sketchbook. Canvas."
Sam smirked and came closer, staring at Daniel, or rather, Daniel's skin. Daniel gave her a very concerned look as she stared.
"Why are you looking at my nose like that?" he asked suspiciously.
"Just wanted to see. Sorry."
Daniel narrowed his eyes and shot Jack an accusing look.
"You drew on my face?"
Jack winced. "Er. That was a surprise for later."
Daniel leaned way back in his chair and gave an exasperated sigh.
"Great. I fall asleep on my desk for an hour and you manage to completely coat every square inch of exposed skin with Bic art. Did you draw on my ankles, too? Where the heck else should I check?"
Jack glanced quickly towards the opposite side of the room, lips twitching, as he tried to hold a neutral expression. Daniel leaned forward again in his chair and Jack's eyes snapped back to his, but not quite fast enough for Daniel to miss the look.
"What." He glanced to Sam for a clue-- she mirrored Jack's muffled expression.
"What? That was supposed to be sarcasm! Jack!"
"I didn't do anything," Jack responded automatically, and then amended,
"Uh. I mean, what're you talking about?"
"You know what! Where else did you draw?!"
"I didn't! I swear! That's it!"
"Sam!"
"Hey! I had nothing to do with this, Daniel, don't look at me."
Sam backed up a little.
"In fact I think I'm gonna leave you two to work this out. I don't need those files that badly, uh, I can send somebody over for them later--"
"Jack, do you swear? There's absolutely nowhere else."
"I do! I swear. That's all."
Daniel stared at him, but Jack didn't waver from his statement.
"All right. Fine. I'm going to shower now."
"Need any help?" Jack offered congenially.
"I think I'll be fine, thanks."
Daniel left. When the door of his office clicked shut, Jack let a sneaky smirk appear on his face, and whistled an innocent tune.
