A/N: Yes, Sunstorm, I was wondering if anybody would mention the LOTR DVD thing. I thought I could sneak it by because nobody mentioned the Indiana Jones DVD from BT4, and those only came out about a year ago. Ah well, it's hard thinking of gifts for everybody to give them each year! Although to be honest it's kind of flattering that people are paying that much attention to these things!

This story is not going to be as long as that last monster turned out to be, I think we're looking at around six or seven chapters (but I think it's probably the shippiest thing I've ever done, I'm a bit surprised at myself!) Thanks so much for all the thoughtful reviews and congratulations, it really makes my day when I can take a break from grading papers with sentences like "Hamlet is a tragedy because almost everybody dies at the end" and read your lovely reviews instead.

Ch 4: Dancing around the issue

Jack looked around his living room happily, feeling that the party was going well. Everyone seemed to be mingling and relaxing together well, which was always risky when you took people who worked together but typically didn't socialize together and put them all in a social situation. But Daniel and Sam were both very popular around the SGC, not that either of them realized what strong fan bases they both had among the rest of the SGC personnel.

So everyone had been very eager to come when he had invited everyone not on-duty or off-world to the party. The food was good, and the alcohol was helping everyone relax but so far nobody had gotten so drunk as to embarrass themselves in front of Hammond. Grogan as DJ had been a really good find, Jack decided. The kid knew what he was doing.

Lieutenant Hailey, Carter's little protege, had tipped him off when he'd invited her to the party to the fact that Grogan's family owned a couple of night clubs and he had experience playing DJ and hosting parties. Jack had asked if he'd be interested and Grogan had immediately said yes, borrowed some equipment from one of his parents' places, and was currently playing a very wide variety of music so that hopefully everyone could find something they liked.

"Maggie, stay," Jack said quietly. The puppy at his side had been inspecting everyone and everything all night, and made several trips in and out to his backyard with the people milling out on the deck, but after people had really started dancing, he'd been having a bit of trouble keeping her from tripping Carter up, because as the guest of honor, people had been asking her to dance pretty much nonstop since Grogan had fired up his little machine.

Jack was glad she was enjoying herself so much, but was finding out that his earlier statement about the 'distraction' being a failure was 100 percenttrue. Even when he tried to pay attention to something else, his eyes kept automatically finding her wherever she happened to be. The only thing that had actually worked so far had been talking to the two Generals, and even that was starting to lose its effectiveness.

Currently, Jack was standing in a small group with Teal'c, Jacob, and General Hammond. As Jacob didn't know most of the guests very well, he had been sticking close to General Hammond for most of the night. The group of men were watching the birthday boy and girl happily. Grogan was apparently in a swing music kind of mood, because for the past three songs Sam had been trying to teach Daniel how to dance to it properly, a task that was made more difficult than usual by the fact that Daniel was having trouble keeping his sequined top hat on his head while following Sam's instructions.

"Major Carter is a very skilled dancer, General Carter," Teal'c commented. "I would not have expected that of her."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Jacob said. "That was her mother - I can't count the number of times I came home and they'd rearranged the living room furniture. Mark and Sam would both be dancing around with her, they always looked so happy. I'm glad to see she still enjoys it so much."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

They watched as Daniel stood on Carter's feet, making them both crack up. Carter pushed Daniel aside, patting his chest comfortingly, and grabbed Janet, apparently feeling if Daniel could be shown the move properly he'd have better luck. She and Janet danced around for a while. Both of them were quite good, Jack couldn't help but notice. Then Carter pulled Daniel back into the mix and stepped back, to 'watch' and help teach. But after only a couple of seconds, she left them dancing with each other and made her way over to where Jack and the rest were all standing.

"Very smooth move there, Carter," Jack told her quietly, meaning the way she'd manipulated Daniel and Janet.

"Thank you, sir," she said with a grin, her face flushed from dancing, turning her attention to Teal'c. "Come on, Teal'c," she said suddenly, grabbing both his hands hopefully.

Jack took a sip of his beer, watching curiously to see who would win this battle. He figured it was a toss-up. Carter could be pretty hard to refuse, but he just couldn't picture Teal'c swing dancing.

"Major Carter, I will gladly die for you in battle, but I will not dance with you," Teal'c said, bowing slightly. Smooth one, Jack thought appreciatively.

"Aw... okay, fair enough," Carter said, turning to her CO.

"Oh no," Jack said, taking a step back away from her automatically.

"It's my birthday," she pointed out, giving him such an openly hopeful look that he wondered if maybe he would suddenly be able to dance just because he now kind of wanted to. He opened his mouth, intending to stall by refusing, when the music changed anyway and he didn't have to. "Ah, I better take Maggie out," he said quickly, scooping up his dog and hurrying outside before she could give him another one of those looks.

As he worked his way towards the crowded deck, he could hear the group he had just left laughing and knew they were probably laughing at his hasty retreat. Ah well, he didn't care. Everyone was having a good time, that was the important thing.

By the time he snuck back inside with Maggie at his heels, Carter was dancing with her dad. When that song ended, Jack grabbed one of the microphones Grogan had for the karaoke (man the kid came prepared) and tapped it loudly. Definitely on. Several people groaned at the static sound it produced and he spoke into it.

"Sorry. Everyone gather round for a minute..." He caught Teal'c and Cassie's eyes and they nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. "My favorite part of the evening is always the cake and well, it's my house and I say it's time for cake!"

He stopped while everyone laughed. "So... would the birthday boy and girl please come up here..."

Sam and Daniel wove their way up to him, looking a little embarrassed.

"I know we already sang to you guys once, but there are two of you so we're going to do it again," he continued as Teal'c brought in the huge cake. Since there were so many people this year, Jack had got a much bigger cake than normal and had both their names put on it. The sparklers were already set up but not lit.

Teal'c set the cake down in front of Jack and said, "O'Neill, I believe it is customary for you to give a brief speech at this time."

Jack looked at him in surprise and said, "No, sorry, no idea what you're talking about..." but everyone else had already taken it up and was demanding a speech as well.

"I'll get you later, big guy," Jack promised, making sure to speak into the microphone so everyone could hear.

He paused for them to laugh again and looked at Sam and Daniel, who both looked even more embarrassed than usual at the thought that he might make a speech about them. He smiled at them both and said, "All right, fine. Now, last time I tried to give a speech Thor whisked me away, so anytime you're ready buddy," he said, looking up at the ceiling hopefully. Everyone laughed. "All right, guess not. He's not around anyway, he declined my invitation. Some intergalactic emergency or something..."

Everyone laughed, and he could tell Carter was itching to ask if he'd really invited Thor or not. He had, but that wasn't the point. He stepped between Sam and Daniel and smiled at them both. "All right, all joking aside, you guys know I'm not one for speeches... which I think is part of the reason the four of us were put together on SG1 in the first place, so these two chatterboxes could balance out Teal'c and I, who are the more strong, silent, humble, modest type... but I digress..." More pause for laughter. Hey, this speech stuff wasn't so hard.

Teal'c started lighting all the sparklers.

"Anyway," he continued, suddenly getting an idea. "I started calling Carter and Daniel 'the science twins' long before I knew they actually do have the same birthday, and I'm more proud of both of them than I know how to say. So... thank you all for coming and helping us celebrate the birthday of my very beautiful and intelligent astrophysicist..."

He shocked Carter and everyone else in the room by tugging her to him and kissing her on the cheek.

"AND," he continued in a louder voice, because that had set the whole room off. "My equally beautiful and intelligent archaeologist," he added, grabbing Daniel and kissing him on the cheek as well, but in (he hoped) a much more manly and certainly less affectionate way than he had done with Carter.

Daniel made it even funnier by trying to get away from him. The crowd burst into laughter and a few whistles and cheers, and Carter and Daniel were both blushing like mad and Daniel was scrubbing his cheek where Jack had kissed him. "So, let's get the singing done with so we can eat this cake!" Jack declared, passing the microphone back to Grogan and waving his arms like a choir director dramatically as everyone began singing.

As he lead the singing, he glanced over at Carter, who was still looking shocked at the way he'd managed to get away with that in front of everyone. He winked at her discreetly and she suddenly overcame her embarrassment and he recognized the challenging sparkle in her eye with some trepidation. Uh-oh. She was going to get back at him for that, he was sure of it. Ah well, whatever she came up with, he decided as she and Daniel leaned over the cake to blow out all the sparklers as the song ended, it was probably going to be a whole lot of fun.