A/N: It's that time again, the next installment of the 'Birthday Traditions' series is being downloaded from my brain into my computer as fast as I can manage. This one won't be quite as fast as the rest, I'm sorry to say. Crazy things always seem to happen at once, don't they?Shortly before Christmas, I moved back to America with my fiance, and have been busy with all that entails as well as working on my dissertation. And living proof that real life actually can be stranger than fiction (even fanfiction!) I've just learned that I'm pregnant, due September 30. To make a long story short, there was some doubt as to whether I'd ever be able to have children without doing the whole in-vitro thing, so it was an extra shock. My sister is pregant as well, but she's still in London, and from the second I learned I was pregnant all I could think of was 'I want my big sister,' so things have been crazy around here, but in a very, very good way. I have no idea how this is going to affect these stories, but I think it's probably a good thing I've already got them basically planned out anyway. The first two chapters of this one might be a bit on the nauseatingly sweet side. Part of that's probably hormones, but part of it is preparation for next year, when our poor Sam will be without Daniel on their birthday.

Ch 1: Sam and Daniel

Sam and Daniel left the base on Wednesday night, early for both of them, around six. Dressed casually, they went to a nice but quiet restaurant not too far from the base that had a chicken and pasta thing Sam loved and huge burgers Daniel maintained should be used in trade negotiations with other planets.

"So," Daniel said with a smile as they sat down across the table from each other.

"So. Happy Birthday, Daniel."

"Happy Birthday, Sam."

They both started perusing their menus, although they knew exactly what they were going to order as entrees anyway.

Their CO had started the tradition of throwing the two of them a party to celebrate their shared birthday every year, but he always gave it on the Friday or Saturday night closest to their birthday. It was a good plan, since his parties tended to require at least a half day to recover from.

But it left their actually birthdays open for the two of them to have a little tradition of their own, so whenever their birthday was not actually on Friday or Saturday, they had dinner together, alone, and exchanged their gifts to each other.

It was always a calm, quiet evening, basically the exact opposite of Jack O'Neill's birthday parties. Neither would sneak away to the hostess and arrange for the waiters to come out and sing to the other, because they would both only tolerate that kind of behavior from Jack. They would finish the meal with a dessert and quietly tell each other 'Happy Birthday,' and that was it.

Sam had never realized how strangely happy having someone share her birthday would make her. As far as she was concerned, Daniel was her brother in every aspect of the word except for genetically, and one of the things that had brought them close when she had first met him was the discovery that they shared the same birthday. Their CO's joking that they were the 'science twins' had taken on a new level that they both cherished.

Daniel loved it because he had never had a brother or sister and had no family left save those at the SGC, and Sam loved it because although she had a brother and her relationship with her father had improved beyond anything she had ever hoped for, she knew she would never be as close to either of them as she was to the man sitting across the table from her, ordering both their meals because she was too lost in her own thoughts to notice the waitress had returned with their drinks.

She shook herself out of her introspective mood as the waitress collected their menus and left. It wouldn't do to be a lousy dinner companion tonight, even if the reason was because she was so happy Daniel was such a part of her life.

"You okay?" Daniel asked casually.

"Yeah. I'm great. You?"

"Yeah. So, what do you think this year will be? With Jack?"

It was a little game they had started years ago; trying to predict what their CO would do for their party that year. So far neither of them had ever been right, a fact that pleased Sam a lot more than it probably should have.

"I don't know. Last year he mentioned something about clowns," she said teasingly. It was true, but she knew he had been joking.

Daniel got a slightly panicked look on his face.

"Don't worry, Daniel, I told him you don't like clowns."

"Aw, Sam, now he's got one more thing to mock me about..."

"He's had all year to do that and he hasn't brought it up yet, right?" she asked dismissively as their salads were placed in front of them. "Besides, I think he thought I was joking anyway. I don't know. What do you think?"

"Hmm, there's been the kids' party, the 'normal' party that ended up with you kicking his ass at poker..."

Sam smiled fondly at that memory. That had been the year she got Quarks, her cat, as well.

"Then the one at O'Malleys, and the slumber party. Hmm... costume party?" he guessed.

"Somehow I don't really see the Colonel throwing a costume party. But then again, neither of us thought he'd throw us a slumber party either."

"True. I dunno... if it wasn't winter I'd guess a pool party or something. Like a barbecue thing."

"Yeah. It's a bit chilly for that though," Sam agreed gratefully. They all got into quite enough trouble last year in oversized pajamas, she wasn't sure she could handle being around her CO in a swimsuit. "Maybe he'll go back to the little kid's party idea, just do it differently."

"If a singing dinosaur shows up for me, I'm out of there," Daniel said.

Sam laughed and said, "Understood. So, how's the research coming along?"

They chatted comfortably while they ate their meals. Both had become very adept over the years at speaking about highly classified things in public without revealing anything suspicious. Colonel O'Neill couldn't stand when they did it, arguing it could still be dangerous and they were on base for most of their lives anyway when they could speak freely, so when they were off-base they should keep the conversation off-base.

They knew the real reason he hated it when they talked like that though: they used even larger, more technical words than usual so most people wouldn't care to listen in even if they could understand them, and it frustrated the hell out of him. So when they ate alone they liked to take full advantage of the situation and talk about whatever they wanted without being ordered to stop or being made fun of and called 'nerds' or 'geeks.'

After they had finished eating, as they waited for their desserts, they both pulled out the gift they had been concealing for each other. Sam handed Daniel a shirt box, and he handed her a small box.

"Before you open it, I ah, may have gone a little bit overboard this year, but it's something I really want us to do, and... well, I think you'll like it," Sam said somewhat nervously.

Daniel looked at her in surprise. "Wow. Okay. Um, that's kind of scary. You go first."

She raised an eyebrow at him but he smiled encouragingly. "Um, I got this on P2X592, the extended excavation I did with SG15?"

She nodded to show she remembered as she started to unwrap the small, relatively flat box slowly. Daniel had been ecstatic about that whole trip and had stayed nearly a month, although the rest of SG1 had only popped in a couple of times for quick check-ups. "The Celtic people," Sam remembered.

"Yeah. Anyway, uh, I'll explain it more after you open it, but... Hammond might not be too pleased to know I negotiated an unauthorized trade for it so..."

"So we'll just keep it to ourselves," Sam supplied with a smile as she opened the box. "Oh, Daniel," she said quietly. "It's beautiful."

She flashed him a brilliant smile and looked back down at the necklace that was sparkling up at her. It was silvery, but reflected so much more light than any of earth's metals that she knew it was probably made of trinium, which went a long way towards explaining why Daniel wanted its origins kept secret from Hammond.

The chain was very long and thin and a piece of artwork all by itself, but the intricate looping knotwork at its apex is what drew her attention first. She vaguely remembered that Celtic knots were thought to have many meanings, but most of those had been lost throughout history. Hanging from the middle of the knotwork was a small dropped stone, bright blue, like the December birth stone on Earth.

The entire thing was so delicate she wondered how a culture whose weaponry was little more than blunt axes and bows and arrows could have produced it. At the same time, she knew that if it was made of trinium as she suspected, the thin chains would be nearly impossible to break. That thought prompted her to ask, "What does it mean?"

He grinned and said, "Can't a guy give a girl a necklace without it meaning anything?"

"Any guy, yes. You, no. What does it mean, Daniel?"

"Well, the first thing that attracted me to it was the color of the stone. It... reminded me of your eyes," he admitted sheepishly.

"Funny, it reminds me of yours," she replied.

"Anyway," he continued. "As you know, Celtic knots have many meanings, mostly having to do with eternity and what not, but nobody really knows what most of the different designs are for. However, the woman who makes these still remembers exactly what they all stand for. And when she saw me looking at this one, she told me."

"What does it mean?"

"Well, it's sort of the same thing about eternal life and eternal bonds between people that you normally find, but what not many people realize is that the different er, connections, I guess you'd say, between the knots, mean different things. They can represent different kinds of relationships, different kinds of love, all that. They have one for everything really, husband and wife, father and daughter, mother and son... this one is brother and sister. Specifically, as you can tell it's a pretty feminine design, it's meant to be from a brother to a sister. And the part in the middle, right there..." he leaned over and pointed. "It's for twins. Uh, as you know the... Celtic people traditionally were at war a lot, so this was a way they had to... remind each other of permanent bonds, when people might get... split apart. I just... I wanted there to be a physical reminder of how important you are to me, in case anything ever... happens... to either of us."

"Daniel Jackson, I can't believe you're making me cry in a restaurant, on my birthday," Sam finally said, trying to sound mad at him but failing miserably. She smiled as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She reached across the table, squeezed his hand, and carefully lifted the necklace out of its box to put it on. She looked at it in mild confusion. "Where's the clasp?"

"Oh, I'll help you. It doesn't have one," he explained, coming over to her and taking it from her. Making sure it was faced the proper direction, he looped it over her head three times, the chain was so long, until it rested at the normal height for a necklace. "It doesn't have one because they don't believe in breaking the unity of the necklace, and it goes around three times because, well, you already know the historical significance of the number three."

She nodded, looking down at it, and hugged him tightly before he could go back to his seat. "Thank you. It's beautiful," she repeated. "But the meaning behind it is the most important thing. Open yours now."

He sat back down and opened the box. He pulled out the tee-shirt inside with a laugh. "Toy Story?"

"I was going to get Mickey but I saw that one instead, and for some reason, it reminded me of you and the Colonel," she explained. Daniel looked at the shirt and shook his head. Buzz Lightyear and Woody... he didn't want to think too much about the analogy. "Open the envelope," Sam said impatiently.

He picked up the envelope that had been resting on top of the shirt and opened it, quickly pulling out its contents and breaking into a huge grin.

"We're going to Disney World?" he asked.

"Yup," she said with a grin. "Remember when we talked about how you never got to go, because your parents were always on digs... well, I figured you're never too old, right, and I haven't been since I was really little either and... they're five day passes but there's not a specific date, so whenever we get enough vacation time we can actually use, we can just go."

"You and me at Disney World."

"And I promise we don't have to spend the whole time at Epcot," she said.

He laughed and said, "Thanks, Sam. This is perfect. It's the same sort of thing, isn't it? As the necklace? Creating ties..."

"Don't make me cry again, Daniel," she warned as their dessert arrived.