Ch 13: Daddy's back

"Carter!" Jack hissed as the sounds of her entire family flocking to the front hallway became louder and louder. "Please tell me that is not your dad."

"GRAMPA'S HERE!" a bunch of little voices yelled.

"Ohfercryinoutloud," Jack groaned.

"He's probably wearing a coat," Carter said reasonably.

"I know," Jack moaned, burying his face in his hands. He couldn't believe his bad luck. After all the times he'd been on the brink of death at the hands of a half dozen system lords and various other alien entities, he was about to be killed by Carter's dad. On Christmas Day at that.

"You go out first," he whispered quickly, trying to push her towards the door.

She struggled against him, trying to get around him. "YOU go first!" she insisted.

"Carter, this is going to look so bad, he's gonna kill me," Jack insisted as he continued trying to push her towards the door and she continued trying to push him towards the door. It was a pretty even match since they barely had room to move and it was pitch black.

"He's going to kill ME!" Carter countered.

"You go out first and hug him and while he's distracted I'll run out to my truck."

"Your truck is behind four other cars!" Carter reminded him.

"Carter! For once could you please not remember every single detail..." He realized they were getting kind of loud, whisper-yelling again. Luckily, the other twenty-ish people just outside the door were drowning out the sounds of their scuffle.

"Please," he said, trying to speak directly into her ear but only getting a mouthful of her hair instead. He spit it out, spluttering.

"Ew, you just spit on me!" Carter said, wiping off her face.

"How come your hair tastes like coconuts?" Jack asked curiously.

He was pretty sure she was dying to scream at this point. As that wasn't an option, she settled for shoving him towards the door. Hard.

He instinctively grabbed her for balance and his back hit the door a second before it was opened. He had a momentary view of Jacob standing there with his hand on the knob and his coat in his other hand before he was flat on his back, staring up at the light, with a lot of curious and amused faces looking down at him.

With Carter right on top of him, of course, his arms around her and their legs all tangled together. Yup. He was soooo gonna die today.

"Hi, Dad," he and Carter both said at the same time. She looked down at him and glared. Yeah, yeah. He gave her the 'what do you expect, I'm an idiot' look and let his head fall back against the hard wood floor. It made a loud thunk. All right, Thor, old buddy, he thought. Anytime you wanna beam me out of here... even if it's just to scrub Asgard toilets.

Come to think of it, did the Asgard even have toilets? Soooo not the time to ponder alien bathroom habits.

For several incredibly long seconds (really, Carter should make sure her house wasn't on some space-time continuum vortex or something, these were like the longest seconds ever) nobody moved or said anything. Jack tried desperately to think of something, anything, to say.

He glanced at Jacob, whose eyes were closed, and he had a pretty good idea he was hiding his 'other half' from the rest of his family at the moment. Or maybe Selmak had taken over to keep him in control. No telling.

"Hide and seek," he finally blurted out as Carter finally got off of him. She brushed herself off and hauled him to his feet. He winced as his knee popped loudly. Definitely way too old for a holiday with all of the Carters, he decided.

"You know, guys, when I told you to get a room, I meant one slightly larger than the closet," Chris said.

Everyone, even the kids who had no idea what that meant, burst into laughter. Everyone except Jacob, that is.

"Chris," Jack said, locating him in the crowd. "We were playing hide and seek. Tell them."

"I don't know what you're talking about, we weren't playing hide and seek, were we guys?" he asked the kids.

"No," they all chorused. "We were up in the playroom deciding which Christmas songs to sing after dinner and practicing," Julia said.

Jack groaned. "Okay, but earlier, we were playing..." He met Chris's eyes desperately and Chris nodded, pushing through the crowd and clapping him on the back again.

"Just giving you a hard time. Ah, I guess nobody found you to tell you the game was over. I didn't think you'd stay hidden for that long. Sorry, Jack."

Jack looked at Jacob cautiously. Next to him, Carter was doing the same, biting her lip and trying to gauge how upset her dad was.

"Jack, I didn't expect to see you here," he finally said with a very forced smile.

"I uh... huh?" Jack said very eloquently, looking at Carter for an explanation as Jacob took his time hanging up his coat in the closet.

She shrugged and gave him the 'I have no idea what's going on with him' look. Usually it was in reference to Daniel.

"Dinner!" Emily said suddenly. Jack looked at her gratefully. "Dinner's ready! We don't want it to get cold, do we? Everyone go get cleaned up," she said, sweeping the children nearest her in the direction of the nearest bathroom.

The kids all obviously wanted to stay and see what was happening, but their parents gradually moved them away until Jack was left alone with Carter and Jacob. Jack watched the last children head upstairs and really, really wished he was with them. Wincing at the pain in his neck and left shoulder from the fall, he slowly stepped behind Carter, trying to keep her between him and her father.

"Dad, I'm glad you came. I wasn't expecting you!" Carter said in a really, really too-cheerful voice.

"Obviously," Jacob said.

"Um, Dad, I know that probably didn't look very good but..."

"Sam," he said, sighing deeply. "It took a lot for me to get leave to come here. When I finally got here I had to convince one of the few Airmen on duty at the base to drive me out here in the snow. I haven't seen the rest of these guys in a very long time. I don't want to do this right now."

He walked past them, heading in the direction of the dining room.

Jack turned to Carter. Her eyes were filled with tears she was trying to hide by looking down. "Maybe he'll calm down during dinner," Jack suggested quietly, looking at her sadly.

"My Dad?" she asked, rolling her eyes, which were still bright with tears, and lifting her head to look him in the eye.

"Well... those kids are pretty distracting. And entertaining. Maybe they'll cheer him up. Take his mind off it," he said optimistically. "I mean, he's got to believe Chris... he just needs to calm down."

"I don't know," she said doubtfully.

"Look, if it were General Hammond, I'd be worried," he said, stepping closer to speak quietly in case they were overheard. "But your dad doesn't know anything about the Zay'tarc thing... does he?"

"I don't know, I don't know," Carter said, running a hand through her hair. "He might. Martouf had sent him a message saying I was a Zay'tarc, so I'm sure when he found out I wasn't he would try to find out exactly what had happened. Plus the Tok'ra aren't really into keeping secrets, so..."

"Oh no," Jack said quietly.

"What?" Carter asked, her eyes going wide.

"Anise. Freya. Whichever. I bet anything she told him all about it."

"Why would she do that?"

"Because she er... she came onto me. When we were locked up in those rooms. And she didn't... wasn't too happy when I kicked her out. So after she heard the... what we said, I'm guessing she was..."

"Crap," Carter said. "So Dad probably does know about that, and then the first time I see him since then we fall out of a coat closet together. Great."

Chris hurried over to them, looking over his shoulder suspiciously.

"Hey, guys. Look, I'm going to try to calm Dad down, okay, Sam? I'm going to get him to sit at the kids' table during dinner. I'll sit with him. The kids will be all charming and in between that I'll explain in better detail about the hide and seek stuff. And about the pipe breaking and all. Okay?"

"Thanks, Chris," Sam said gratefully. "But I'm not sure if that'll be enough."

"Yeah, I kind of got the feeling you already know each other," he said, directing that at Jack.

Jack nodded. "We've worked together."

"Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense. Well, ah... I'll do what I can. Emily and I both think it would be best if you guys avoided him for a while, till he calms down. Remember that time Jamie broke his windshield?" He added with a grin.

"Yeah, somehow I don't think this is the same, Chris. He's not just upset because he thinks Colonel O'Neill and I... whatever. He's upset because he's an Air Force General and he knows the Colonel is my CO. Chris, if he reports this, especially given his rank and the fact that he's my father, he could ruin both our careers."

"He's not going to do that," Jack said firmly.

"He could," Carter said.

"He's not," Jack insisted.

"Jack's right," Chris said. "Just calm down and go eat, Sam. We'll sort this out." Chris gave her a big grin and squeezed her hand quickly before going back towards all the noise.

Jack decided, as he took another large bite of mashed potatoes, that if this was going to be his last meal, he could have done a lot worse. Everything was great, and nobody in the jam-packed dining room seemed remotely upset about the fact that he had tumbled not-so-gracefully out of the closet with their sister half an hour before. Of course, he had no idea how Chris was doing with Jacob in the meantime, but there wasn't much he could do about that now.

Jack glanced to his right, where Carter was moving the food around on her plate but not eating. Karen, on Carter's other side, squeezed her arm and said quietly, "Sam, done is done. It's going to be okay."

She smiled at them both and turned her attention back to Caroline. They were discussing baby names for the newest Carter. Jamie, Nigel, and Emily spent most of the meal telling Jack and John embarrassing stories about the rest of the Carter clan, obviously trying to remind their sister that she wasn't the only one who'd been caught in an unusual situation.

By the end of the meal, it seemed to have worked. She still didn't eat more than three bites, but she was at least listening and smiling, occasionally even adding a few details to their various stories.

After dinner was cleared away, everyone took their dessert into the living room so the whole family could be together. People grabbed seats wherever possible and made seats out of the floor, coffee table, fireplace, etc. Jack found himself perched on the cold bricks of the fireplace, Sydney and Rory on either side of him, several of the other kids on the floor in front of him.

His back wasn't too fond of the seat, but he wasn't about to try to squeeze himself on the couch next to Carter and Nigel. Jacob hadn't glared at him or anything, and was speaking perfectly amicably to Carter every time they ran into each other, but he didn't want to push it. Right now, Jacob was pretty much pretending he couldn't see Jack, and Jack was taking his cue from Jacob.

As the kids finished their desserts, they started to get very excited about something. "What's goin on?" Jack asked, nudging Sydney.

"We're gonna sing Christmas songs. We always do," she said.

"Yeah and we gotta stand here, so you gotta find another seat unless you're gonna sing with us," Rory said. "Are you?" he added hopefully.

"Ah, no," Jack said quickly, getting up to take his plate into the kitchen. Jacob, he failed to notice, was doing the same thing. They bumped into each other in the doorway.

"Sorry, go ahead," Jack mumbled.

"No, no, you were here first, by all means," Jacob said, much too politely.

"Please, Jake..."

"Grampa!" Gwen called. "Uncle Jack!"

They both turned to look at her. She was covering her mouth with her hand, giggling. Kieran, right next to her, was pointing above their heads.

"Crap," Jack muttered, wincing and glancing up. Yup. That damn mistletoe again. He was going to have to ask Daniel if it was possible the mistletoe thing was masterminded by some Goa'uld or something. It just wasn't working for him.

He glanced at Jacob, who looked like if Jack came one step closer he might snap his neck, witnesses or no.

Jack shrugged, deciding the best way to deal with the situation was to play to the crowd and go completely overboard. "Jacob!" he said happily, with all the enthusiasm he could muster. "Merry Christmas!"

Jacob actually looked more scared than Jack had ever seen him. Jack grabbed him in a manly hug and kissed both his cheeks with a very unnecessarily loud smacking sound. The crowd went wild, even crazier than they had done earlier that day when Carter had kissed him. He took an exaggerated bow and made his exit to the kitchen. Well, in case he was planning to plead insanity with Jacob, he had some good evidence for it now, he thought as he threw his paper plate in the trash can.

Jacob waited until he was clear of the trash can before he approached it himself. "That was one for each of you," Jack offered.

Jacob finally shook his head, chuckling. "Jack... sometimes you scare me."

"Thank you," Jack said with a winning grin, heading back out the kitchen. He paused and turned to clarify. "So, we're okay?"

"Yeah, we're okay," Jacob assured him.

"Wow. Didn't realize I was such a good kisser," Jack said with a smirk, hurrying back into the crowded living room before Jacob could manage to get the last word in.