A/N: Thanks for all the warm wishes everybody. There was another storm last night, which translates into faster updates for you guys, because my dogs kept me awake most of the night. It doesn't look like this story is going to be as funny as the others, it's going to be more shippy though, definitely. Jack's gifts in this chapter were originally written for BT4, but I moved it to this one... I know I had a reason at the time but I can't remember it now. Ah well. Enjoy.

Ch 2: The Set-Up

Jack O'Neill couldn't believe he was nervous as he set about putting his plan into motion that Friday. This was ridiculous. It was just another party... although it did have the potential to go catastrophically wrong on a much larger scale than any of the previous ones he'd thrown for Carter and Daniel over the years.

Still, he was never one to back down from a challenge. With Teal'c beside him, as calm as ever, he headed into Carter's lab, where Daniel was working quietly in the corner on some old notebook SG4 had brought back, and Carter was typing up a report about some doohickey or other.

To hide his nervousness, he overcompensated, clapping his hands together loudly as he entered the lab and saying, "Good evening, kiddoes, the working day is done!"

Both looked over from their work and then looked at the clock. "Yup. It's five already, campers. Come on, we're all going straight to my house this year."

"Right from work?" Carter asked doubtfully. Of course they knew they were having their party that night, but she had planned on going home, showering, and changing first.

"Yup. Right from work. Cassie's probably already over at my house and Janet's leaving as soon as she finishes patching up Siler. Come on now, no dawdling. Teal'c and I are not above carrying you both out of here."

His enthusiasm overcame their suspicions as to what he was planning and they both quickly got to stopping points in their work and followed he and Teal'c to the elevators, exchanging confused looks.

"Are you sure we're dressed appropriately, sir?"

"Nope, but don't you worry about that, Carter. We'll just stop in the locker room, you guys can change into your civvies and grab your bags, and we'll be off."

When he was in this mood, Daniel and Sam both knew it was best to just keep quiet and go along with him. Which they did. Fifteen minutes later the four of them were piled into his truck on the way to his house. Daniel was trying to get Teal'c to tell them what was going on.

Teal'c was pretending not to hear him. Finally, he switched tactics and simply turned Jack's radio on rather loudly to drown out the constant stream of questions from the back seat of the car.

Cassie, as Jack had predicted, was already at his house when they arrived. She hugged both Sam and Daniel as everyone filed into the house. Sam looked at her goddaughter in mild confusion, as Cassie was pretty dressed up, wearing big strappy shoes, a short black skirt, and a sparkly purple top.

"Going clubbing later?" Jack asked, eyeing the length of her skirt with obvious distaste. Sam smiled, always unable to find his overprotective attitude towards Cassie anything less than endearing.

"I have a date later, if you must know," Cassie said absently.

A familiar scratching at the back door demanded Jack's attention and he quickly crossed the living room to let his puppy in. "Hey, Maggie, long time no see!" he greeted enthusiastically as she launched herself at him happily. The puppy Sam had given him for his birthday was now at that awkward baby-deer stage where she was mainly long gangly legs, big feet, and a lolling puppy-dog smile.

After bounding around him happily for several moments, Maggie realized there were other people there, hey, people she knew! She hurried over to greet them all, paying particular attention to Sam, who got jumped on enthusiastically. She knelt down to pet the puppy, trying to avoid being licked in the face.

Jack let his puppy go wild for several moments and finally said, "Sit, Maggie." The puppy looked at him with a face that plainly said 'why?' but sat anyway. However, her tail was wagging so enthusiastically that she quickly got back to her feet, pressing against Sam like a cat. Everyone knew where she'd learned that trick.

"She must smell Quarks," Cassie commented as Sam continued to give the puppy the attention she was demanding.

"Sit, Maggie," she said quietly as she stood up and brushed herself off. The puppy sat, looking up at her attentively but not moving a muscle.

"Oh fer cryin out loud," Jack muttered as he went to answer the knock on the door, which turned out, just as he'd expected, to be Janet Fraiser. They went back into the living room, where Maggie was still receiving most of the attention.

It was an ongoing joke between all of them that Maggie listened to Sam much better than she listened to Jack. Jack and Sam both agreed it was because she had bonded to Sam first; Sam had the puppy at her house for a day and night before she gave him to Jack that year for his birthday. Also, Maggie identified Sam as her best friend's 'mom.'

She and Quarks had hit it off right away, much to everyone's amusement. The strange situation had made Sam and Jack the brunt of a lot of jokes and teasing from the rest of their friends since the arrival of "Magnet O'Neill," as Teal'c had insisted on addressing the puppy for the first three months of her existence. Only after Jack had finally convinced Teal'c that she would never respond to such a long name had Teal'c begun to call her "Magnet" instead, but he never shortened her name to "Maggie" as everyone else did most of the time.

Jack complained about his puppy constantly, she was always getting into things and making messes, and she loved to chew up his shoes and had even chewed up a few of the railings on his deck. But he wasn't fooling anyone. He loved his dog ridiculously and treated her like a human. That, plus the fact that Sam had given her to him and named her, and the fact that Sam was obviously Magnet's favorite human on the planet next to her 'dad,' had given the rest of SG1, and Janet and Cassie in particular, plenty of things to tease the two of them about.

They both dismissed most of their friends' gentle joking about the strange 'joint custody' arrangement the dog seemed to be under, as it had proved easier on everybody for Magnet to stay at Sam's house with Quarks when they were all off-world. Cassie took care of them both so it just made sense for them to be in the same place. Plus they both behaved better when they were together, because they entertained each other and didn't get as bored while Cassie was at school. Only Cassie was brave enough to make jokes like, "So, strange little family you guys are making." And even Cassie didn't have the guts to say something like that to both of them at the same time.

Suddenly Jack clapped his hands together, getting everyone's attention. "Sorry guys but we're on a tight schedule this evening so I need the birthday boy and girl on the couch right now for presents and everybody else... you know what to do."

Daniel and Sam obediently sat down in the middle of the couch. Maggie jumped up between them and settled herself against Sam, laying down but watching all the action with great interest. Sam pet her absently while everyone set gifts in front of the two of them.

"All right, get going, we don't have all night," Jack instructed.

Daniel and Sam started opening their gifts quickly, wondering why they were being rushed so much. Cassie and Janet had given them each gift cards to their favorite restaurants. "Not very original, sorry," Cassie apologized as Daniel and Sam hugged them and thanked them.

"This is great, it doesn't have to be original," Sam objected.

"Exactly, a relaxing dinner off-base is a very special gift," Daniel assured her.

Teal'c handed them each a package. Sam's was 'The Matrix' trilogy and Daniel's was 'Lord of the Rings.'

"Wow, thanks, Teal'c!" Daniel said happily as Sam hugged him round the neck and kissed him on the cheek. "These'll keep team movie night interesting for a long time!"

"Indeed they will, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, pleased his gifts were appreciated. One of his favorite things about Earth culture was the abundance of films available for entertainment.

"Okay, now, let's..."

"Jack," Cassie said in a warning tone.

"Oh, right." Jack hurried to the closet and grabbed two large, flat, rather heavy boxes. He was especially proud of his gifts for them this year but he knew they would slow things down a lot and they had a lot to do to get ready. He checked the tags and gave each box to the appropriate person, sitting down on the coffee table across from them to watch them open.

Sam glanced at Daniel, biting her lip, and looked at everyone else. It was obvious that the rest of the room knew exactly what was inside those boxes. "It ah... it's from all of us," he said quickly, running a hand through his hair.

"No it's not, don't be modest, Colonel," Janet insisted. "You did those by yourself."

"Everyone helped me," he insisted. "With the er... collecting of the... the things. You'll see."

Now not having a clue what to expect, Sam and Daniel opened their gifts slowly at the same time and looked up at Jack in surprise together, twin looks of astonishment on their faces. He'd made them photo albums.

They were very similar but not identical; each one had been tailored for its owner. The large leather albums had obviously taken him a long time to put together.

"None of us have seen those things, so you'd better make room on that couch!" Janet called firmly. "We had no idea what he was up to, demanding we scrounge up pictures of any and all of you all year long, haunting the SGC for pictures, calling..."

"I didn't haunt," Jack objected self-consciously from his perch on the coffee table.

Janet, Cassie, and Teal'c had already surrounded Sam and Daniel so they could look at the albums with them. Sam nudged Janet further along the couch and then looked at Jack pointedly until he got the hint and moved to the empty space she'd created on the couch, between herself and Daniel. Magnet, feeling it was silly for everybody to be sitting so close on her couch, got off and started inspecting the piles of discarded wrapping paper casually.

Now with five people on the couch, it was quite crowded, but that was good if they all wanted to be able to see the pictures.

Sam scooted back over to Jack until he had a scientist pressed against each side of his body. He wrapped an arm around both of them, squeezing Sam's shoulder lightly. They started going through the albums. A lot of the pictures were from their various parties over the years. Neither Sam nor Daniel had ever realized so many pictures were being taken.

They knew that all the ones from the first year were screen captures from the video tape, and both marveled at all the work he had obviously done to get them. A lot of the pictures in each one were the same, although they were always arranged slightly differently on the page. But there were a lot of individual ones that were specific to each person.

Sam's, for instance, had a bunch of pictures of Quarks at various ages and with various people, and with Magnet as well. Daniel's had a lot more of just Daniel with one other person, like Daniel talking to Teal'c or Janet, or Daniel and Sam, that he now realized Jack himself must have taken, specifically for the purposes of making this book.

Some of them had been taken from his archives of footage shot off-world, using the same screen-capture technique as the tape from the first birthday. There were lots of pictures from other times throughout the year, events on the base, other holidays, other peoples' birthdays, and just casual get-togethers. Sam's had a few of her dad, and some of them she knew for a fact were from way before he was a Tok'ra. She wondered how on earth he had managed to get any of those.

The huge books contained tons of pictures but they were still only about halfway filled. They flipped through the blank pages quickly and both knew what he was saying: they'd keep filling the books up with this year's memories, and the next, and the next.

Neither Daniel nor Sam had a clue what to say in response to what he had presented them with. Then they both realized he really didn't want either of them to say anything about it, but that was just too damn bad. As soon as they could find something to say they were going to say it.

For the meantime, they both hugged him tightly on the couch, Daniel encompassing Sam in his hug as well so that she was pressed closer to Jack and it made Daniel's hug seem a little more masculine.

"I did it, Teal'c," Jack finally said after a long silence. "I finally rendered our little yapping scientists speechless!" Everyone laughed, but Daniel and Sam still didn't move, and suddenly a large weight was added to the pile as well as Teal'c wrapped his arms around all three of them at once.

"Woa, hey there, buddy we love you too," Daniel said, his breath a bit knocked away as he was crushed between Teal'c's arm and Jack. "Dr. Fraiser, come here," Teal'c said firmly, leaving no room for argument as he pulled the tiny woman into the huge pile of people.

Janet was hugged against Daniel and Sam as well, Cassie was hugging as many of them as she could reach but that was mainly just Daniel and Teal'c. Nobody moved for a long time. Finally, she couldn't help it. Janet started giggling. Soon Sam started giggling as well, then all three men erupted into laughter as well and they stayed on the couch in a laughing heap of tangled arms and limbs until they all needed to breathe.

They broke apart, some wiping their eyes from laughing so hard. "I guess they liked them," Jack said quietly.

Daniel shifted on the couch so he could look his friend in the eye, his album still cradled protectively in his lap. "Jack, this..."

Jack waved his hand dismissively. Sam, who was still curled up against his side and had no intention of moving, watched their interaction with even more fascination and affection than usual.

"No, I know you don't want to hear it but... since when has that ever stopped me from talking, right?" Daniel asked with a smile and a little laugh. "I don't have any family albums or anything like that from when I was a kid. When your parents are on digs constantly, there's not a lot of time for your mom to put together that kind of stuff, and then... well. This means a lot to me, Jack. I know you know that, and I know that's why you did it. Thank you," he said sincerely.

Jack coughed discreetly in his hand, not liking the attention.

"Uh, Jack, we do need to hurry," Cassie said suddenly.

Jack looked at the clock and groaned. "You're right. Okay, you guys get started, you two come with me," he said quickly, pulling Sam and Daniel both to their feet.

He dragged them both by the hands upstairs and into the guest room. "Okay," he said quickly. "Here's the deal. You guys stay in here until I come to get you. I'm actually going to lock you in."

"What!" Daniel and Sam asked in surprise.

"Just to be sure, I don't want your curiosity getting the better of either of you. I'll come get you in about... two hours."

"Two hours!" Sam spluttered.

"Don't worry, you'll be busy. Take showers, relax, whatever, then get changed."

"Into what?" Daniel asked, looking down at himself pointedly. Sam noticed their overnight bags were already in the room. This had clearly been pretty carefully planned out, whatever it was.

"Into the stuff in that closet," Jack said with a smirk. "And if you get done with that..." he pointed to the bed, where his chessboard was already set up.

"Happy birthday!" he called happily as he hurried out of the room. They looked at each other, too surprised to speak, as the unmistakable sounds of a chair being braced against a doorknob filtered through the crack under the door.

"Well, looks like we were wrong again," Sam said quietly.