"What's wrong with you?"

Jack looked over at Daniel, frowning. Of course, he'd been frowning when the younger man walked into his office, which had made Daniel ask the question in the first place, so it didn't even phase the archeologist.

"What?"

"You look like you have a headache, Jack," Daniel said as he walked over and sat down. He'd really just wanted to take a break from translations he was doing, and thought Jack would be a good distraction. He normally was, after all.

"Not a headache," Jack said, rubbing his forehead. "Just an ache..."

"In your head?"

"Yeah."

"Where I'm from, we call that a headache. Take some aspirin, it'll go away."

Jack scowled.

"It doesn't really hurt, Daniel, and I already took some – nothing doing, and it's still there. It doesn't hurt, though. It just aches... like an old injury throbs sometimes on a cold morning..."

Daniel had enough scars that he knew what that felt like. He shrugged.

"Do I dare suggest you go talk to Janet about it?"

The frown deepened.

"There's nothing wrong with me. She'd just shine her light in my eyes and poke me with a needle."

Yup, that's what she'd do, that was for sure.

"Is it killing you?"

"No, just driving me nuts..."

He gestured over to Jaffer, who was sprawled on the leather sofa that was along the far wall. The black lab had an expression that almost matched Jack's. An intense look that plainly said something was distracting him. Of course, Daniel knew the lab and the Colonel well, and they were both easily distracted anyways. This was a little different, though.

"Maybe there's a noise you can't hear that's hurting your ears and giving you the headache," Daniel suggested.

"I thought about that," Jack said, surprising Daniel. "So we went with Sam up to the surface when she left for her meeting with Ogerman and Moore on that radar-looking thing, but it still hurt."

"Oggemen." Daniel corrected, absently.

"Whatever."

"You should go see Janet, then. Maybe it's something in the air."

"Do you have a headache?"

"No, I feel fine."

"Then it's probably not something in the air."

Oh. Another good point.

"Well, then, I guess you have to live with it, huh?"

Jack scowled.

"Did you need something, Daniel?"

"Just a distraction. Thanks."

Jack shook his head.

"Anytime."

"What are you guys doing for dinner tonight? Anything?"

"You'd have to ask Sam. I don't have any plans as far as I know. Why?"

"Sally wanted me to ask."

Jack looked at his watch. It was getting close to five, and time to leave – if he could find Sam and drag her away from the radar thing that SG-2 had wheedled out of a group of people living on PHW221. The eggheads from NORAD had been excited about it, but of course non of them had figured out how to use it yet, so eventually, they'd ended up calling in Sam to figure it out for them.

"I'm going to go find Sam. I'll ask her."

"You sure you're okay?" Daniel asked. The frown looked even more intense than before.

"Yeah."

"Let me know about dinner as soon as you can."

"I will."

Daniel left Jack's office and O'Neill looked over at Jaffer, who looked back at him.

"Let's go get Sam and go home. Maybe it's the lighting that's hurting my head."

Jaffer snorted, and followed Jack when he headed for the door.

&&

NORAD was an interesting complex of halls and offices and a couple large radar rooms. It also held a lot of laboratories, but Jack rarely went into them. The place was nowhere near as classified as the SGC was – no place on Earth was as classified as the SGC was – but there were still a fair number of armed guards roaming the place. None of them stopped Jack, though. He and Jaffer were well known, and with Jack in uniform there was no reason not to assume he had business there.

Which he did. More or less.

He walked into the lab that he'd left Sam in earlier, and saw she was still there, and was still talking to Lieutenant Oggemen, who was hunched over an odd-looking thingamajig that SG-2 had found a few days earlier. No one knew exactly what it was, but Sam suspected it was some kind of radar system, so they were all excited at NORAD, and had asked her to come figure it out for them.

She looked up when Jack and Jaffer walked into the lab, and smiled. Even with the headache – which he thought was getting worse – Jack couldn't help but smile back. God, she was so perfect.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked as Jack walked over with Jaffer beside him. The black lab wagged his tail and stuck his nose in Sam's hand, clearly asking for attention, which she was more than willing to give him.

"I have a headache."

"Still?"

He'd mentioned his head was aching earlier – sometime around lunch.

"Yeah. Are you about ready to go?"

Sam looked over at the Lieutenant, who shrugged. It was pretty obvious they weren't going to figure the device out that day, anyways, so she might as well leave.

"Yes, I'd say we-"

"Hey, Major Carter!"

Sam turned, and Jack scowled. Still fully half the people on the base called Sam Major Carter – even though she'd been Major O'Neill for all of three and a half weeks, now. Of course, the other day he'd called her 'Carter', too, so he was as guilty as the rest of them. But it was still annoying when someone forgot.

A couple of eggheads came into the lab, looking excited and puzzled at the same time. Jack sighed.

"We were wondering if you'd come take a look at this hologram device we pulled out of those two ships?"

"What two ships?" Jack asked, knowing he really didn't want to know the answer, but knowing he should be asking, since it was his job to know.

"A couple of one-man ships landed close by here today. They were empty, so we've pretty much decided they were on remote control or something," One of the scientists told Jack, who started rubbing his forehead. "There was a device on one, though, that's really interesting. It seems it's some kind of hologram that shows a-"

"Ehh!" Jack held his hand up to stop the man. He'd already heard more than he cared to hear. Find the guys running the remote controls and Jack would be interested. He didn't care about the toys left behind. He didn't feel like caring about anything just then.

Sam shook her head, sympathizing. Jack looked like he felt awful.

"I'll take a look at it tomorrow, Will," she told the scientist. "It's late, and I'm ready to go home."

The scientist nodded, although he was obviously disappointed. Jack turned and headed for the door, and Sam gave the young man a smile.

"You know where I live, right?"

Will nodded.

"Bring it over tonight, and I'll take a look." Sam had a fairly well equipped lab at the house, and she wasn't afraid to use it.

"Thanks, Major. What time?"

"Anytime after seven."

"I'll be there."

Sam turned and headed for the door, catching up to Jack easily, since he wasn't walking too quickly so she'd have a chance to catch up.

"You feeling okay?"

"Just my head..."

"Did you eat?"

"No."

"Well, we'll get you home, and you can take a nap while I make dinner. Maybe that'll help get rid of the headache."

"Daniel wants to know if we want to have dinner with him and Sally."

"I don't think you'd make very good company."

"No."

"I'll call when we get home."

"Thanks, Sam."

She smiled, and slid her arm around his waist as they walked out into the sunlight and headed for the truck.