A/N: Okay, once again, I'm not sure this is the ending. I wrote this very fast and it's sort of nice as a happy ending, but while writing this one I thought it would be funny if there was this thing when they all got home, between Pete, Sam, Jack, and Maggie (the dog). I won't elaborate on it here, but I think I'm going to go ahead and do it.

Thanks for the responses. A couple of quick answers:

t-sport, thank you! As I have it planned, I'm going to skip Season 9 so I don't end up contradicting something that happens on the show, and just do a vague, non-specific future story (which I've never done before).

lynnmichelle: I am so terribly sorry to have put such a damper on your day! Please don't hold it against me forever;).

JohnnyQ:You have nothing to worry about.

Finally, I would really like everyone's opinion on this: next year's story, I had planned to have it set just beforeThreads, so we could actually have some Pete/Jack interaction, and all kinds of stuff like that. However, it seems to me that most people would rather have Pete disappear between 7 and 8, which I'm not opposed to after thinking about it for a while. So, which would people rather get? I think it would be funnier to let Pete come to a party and see just how much of an outsider he is (and would always be).

Ch 8: Disney Always Means a Happy Ending

Sam was up before Daniel the next morning. After everyone had finally left their room to go to sleep, Daniel had demanded to know what had happened with Jack, and they had stayed up incredibly late talking about it. During that time, Daniel had also mentioned that he told Janet everything he knew up to that point about any and all birthday kissing that had ever happened between Jack and Sam. Angry at first that Daniel had just volunteered such classified information out of nowhere, she calmed down when he pointed out that after he knew, she was the only one who didn't, and that hardly seemed fair.

"Well, that explains the look she gave me when I came back into the room and she said I looked flushed and suggested taking my temperature," Sam had commented. She debated ringing Janet's room to get her opinion about everything, but it was very late already, and they could always talk on the plane ride home or some time later.

When Daniel and Sam were so tired that they were finding decidedly non-funny things (like the shadow created by Daniel's Mouseketeer hat sitting atop his bedside lamp) to be incredibly amusing, they went to sleep.

So it was that Sam was up before Daniel the next morning, having ordered a wake-up call after Jack told her about the Princess breakfast for Teal'c. But if anyone asked, it was for Cassie. The Colonel had been most emphatic on that point.

"Daniel, you have to get up, we've got reservations at Cinderella's castle in an hour and a half," Sam said sternly.

Daniel groaned and pulled his pillow over his ears. Well, quite the role reversal this morning, Sam thought as she answered the knocking on the door. She expected it to be their CO, checking to make sure they were up. She was taken by surprise as she opened the door to a huge, already dressed in his Disney duds, grinning Teal'c.

"Major Carter, Daniel Jackson, are you preparing for breakfast? O'Neill has informed me that..."

"Teal'c, I know. I'm up but Daniel's being a bit of a slow-poke this morning..."

"Daniel Jackson, you must get up!" Teal'c said loudly, pushing past Sam and throwing himself at Daniel.

Daniel yelped and objected, "I may never get up again, Teal'c!"

As Teal'c got off of Daniel, Colonel O'Neill hurried into the room. "Hey, is T..." he started, sounding out of breath. "Teal'c! I told you to call their room and see if they were up."

"I chose to call on them instead, O'Neill," Teal'c replied calmly. "And it is a good thing I did, as Major Carter was having trouble encouraging Daniel Jackson to get out of bed when I arrived."

As he said this, Daniel got out of bed and stalked into the bathroom, muttering about 'rude awakenings' as he slammed the door.

"All right, you've seen that they're up, let's go back to our room and let them get ready."

"First we must check on Dr. Fraiser and Cassandra," Teal'c said quickly, hurrying past them and down the hall.

"Crap, I've gotta make sure he doesn't break either one of them, they're so little... we'll come back in an hour, okay?"

"Yes, sir," Sam said, amused with the entire situation. Obviously the Colonel's Princess breakfast idea had been perfect.

Jack turned to go, glanced back at her with a grin, said, "Nice jammies," and hurried down the hall after Teal'c.

Sam looked down and groaned. She was wearing Alice in Wonderland pajamas that had turned out to be one of the many things Cassie and Teal'c bought yesterday. The boxer shorts had a pattern of teacups and white rabbits, while the top was a camisole with a picture of the famous tea party scene with the caption, "We're all mad here."

"Well, it's not like it's not true," she muttered as she shut the door and went to go make sure Teal'c hadn't done any serious damage to Daniel.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

They were almost asked to leave the Magic Kingdom. Teal'c was a bit too thrilled to finally locate Belle, the last Princess he needed in his autograph book. He scared the poor girl quite a bit, but Daniel, smooth talker that he was, managed to calm everyone down, and even got her to take a picture with Teal'c and Cassie, to commemorate the completion of their 'Disney in a Day' game – Janet had convinced them that although it was technically the next morning, they were well under the 24 hour mark, especially considering the hours the park was closed and the fact that they hadn't even started their 'hunt' until after lunch.

They had just smoothed the Belle situation over and returned to their breakfast when Jack innocently asked, "Was Belle even really a princess? I don't think she was..."

Apparently to Teal'c, this was right up there with insulting Master Bray'tac. Jack jumped behind Sam and quickly started apologizing over her shoulder, "Sorry, T, didn't realize you were so into Disney... and I'm obviously remembering wrong, of course you would know better than I would about... everything Disney."

"Very well, O'Neill," Teal'c said.

Jack decided to watch his back that day anyway, just in case all was not truly forgiven. Never underestimate that damn Jaffa revenge thing, after all.

After breakfast, they headed to Downtown Disney, which turned out to be a big shopping and entertainment area. Because apparently there wasn't enough of that in the parks themselves. Nonetheless, Jack noticed that Sam was smiling an awful lot on the way there, but every time he caught her at it she tried very hard to put the 'proper USAF Major' face back on. She was hiding something all right.

Jack dutifully followed his large group around as they went in shops that didn't seem all that extraordinary to him. They watched a glass-blower at a place called Arribas... something or other, he'd already forgotten, but nobody bought anything because they didn't want to risk it breaking on the flight home. Jack decided he'd keep his eye out for something for Hammond, as a thank you for letting them all off for the weekend. He knew it hadn't been an easy thing for him to do, especially letting Carter and Daniel go for the whole week.

After a few other stores, Jack thought it unlikely that he'd find anything suitable for Major General George Hammond at Disney World. Oh well, he could always get him a bottle of his favorite scotch when he got home, or something like that.

As he followed everyone into a store called Basin, he was instantly overwhelmed with tons of conflicting perfumey smells. Daniel pushed past him, out the door, sneezing, his eyes already watering from the various smells. Teal'c went out to wait with him as well, leaving Jack alone with Cassie, Janet, and Sam, who all seemed to be moving around at three or four times their normal speed, smelling various things and calling out things like 'Oh, this one would be good for you, Jan!' from across the store.

The only store Jack had ever been in that was remotely like this one was called Bath and Body Works, and he had to be dragged in by Cassie on that occasion. If he recalled correctly, it had taken forever to drag just Cassie out of that store, and this one was about twelve times as big, and Sam and Janet were there as well. This was the only reason Jack was bravely remaining with them, rather than running off with Daniel and Teal'c to the golf store he had spotted across the street. He figured if he didn't stay there and remind them that time was indeed, still passing, they might very well miss their flight that evening.

He continued to let his mind wander as he waited by the door, until he heard his 2IC's voice call, "Hey, Cassie, grab a couple more bombs, will you?"

Well, now that wasn't right in so many ways, Jack just had to check it out. He finally located his 2IC and asked, "Bombs, Carter? Don't think they'll let you on the plane with those."

She looked confused for a split second, then grinned and tossed a round, blue cellophane-wrapped thing at him. He caught it automatically and looked down at it, reading the label. "What's a bath bomb?"

"You drop it in and it fizzes and stuff," she explained.

"Oh. So um... when do we get to the stores I'm supposed to like?" he asked.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry... Cassie! Janet! We're done!" she called loudly, heading to the cash register. Jack watched, amazed, as Cassie and Janet started making their way up to the register as well.

"How did you do that?" Jack whispered. "I tried that once, shopping with Cassie, and she almost beat me to death with a shoe."

Sam laughed and said, "Yeah, but that's because Cassie's got you wrapped around her little finger and she's known it for a looooong time."

"Hmm." Jack aborted the conversation as the teenager in question and her mother (keeper of sharp needles) approached. "I really wasn't trying to rush you, Carter," Jack added quietly.

"I know, but we can get stuff like this anywhere," Sam said with a shrug.

"Um, Jack, I think Daniel wants you," Cassie interrupted, tapping Jack on the shoulder and pointing at the window, where Daniel was waving at him frantically. And Teal'c was nowhere in sight.

"Oh crap. I'll meet you guys out front..." he called, hurrying out of the store. "What's up, Daniel?"

"Teal'c... we, ah, we went in there..." Daniel pointed to the entrance to another store called 'World of Disney,' which, Jack quickly noticed, claimed to be the largest Disney store in the world.

"Oh great," Jack muttered.

"Yeah. He won't come out. He doesn't believe me about airline luggage restrictions either..."

Luckily, Teal'c at his most discreet was still pretty easy to locate when he was out in public on Earth. Teal'c in his Disney gear, including the giant ridiculous purple hat, was a piece of cake. Large Jaffa cake. Heh. Jaffa cakes. Jack decided he should introduce Teal'c to Jaffa cakes when they got home. He might think it was funny now. If he'd given them to him when they first met, Teal'c probably would have thought Jack was trying to make him into a cannibal or something.

"Jack?" Daniel prompted.

"Oh, right. Listen, Teal'c, we don't want to keep the ladies waiting, now do we?" Jack tried.

"Do not let Major Carter in here, O'Neill, I am purchasing a gift for her."

"Yeah? What're you getting?" Jack asked.

"She stated her favorite movie as a child was 'Peter Pan,' and when we arrived she was wearing a Tinkerbell shirt. This is pixie dust, O'Neill," he said reverently, showing him the little glass bottle he was holding. To Jack, it looked more like it was filled with glittery powder than anything else, but if the Jaffa tells you it's pixie dust, it's pixie dust.

"Okay... what does it do?"

"You put it on, think of a happy thought, and it enables you to fly," Teal'c informed him.

Jack turned to Daniel, who was just as speechless as he was. They had a silent 'you tell him,' 'no you tell him' argument for several minutes, and finally Daniel groaned and said, "All right, fine. Um, Teal'c, you know that dust won't really make Sam able to fly, don't you?"

"Of course, Daniel Jackson. It is merely a child's story. This is still a good gift for Major Carter, is it not?"

"Yeah, great gift, Teal'c!" Jack said, clapping him on the shoulder, pleased that there wasn't going to be an even bigger public scene about crushing Teal'c's imagination or something equally horrible than they were already making simply by being there.

"Okay, meet us in front of that bath bomb store when you're done paying," Jack said quickly, hurrying out to meet Janet, Sam, and Cassie before they all ended up separated.

Reunited, the group moved on to a giant candy store. Janet insisted on keeping all the candy Cassie, Daniel, and Jack bought, telling them they couldn't have it until after lunch. Jack grumbled at being lumped in with the 'children,' then Daniel grumbled that Jack had lumped him in with Cassie as 'the children' then Cassie pointed out that she wasn't a child anymore...

Sam put a stop to it by leading them into a magic shop, where they watched a magician doing tricks for a while. Jack bought a deck of trick cards, hoping that if he didn't bust them out for a while everyone else would have forgotten about them. Or he could always use them on Hammond... maybe Thor...

Teal'c bought some juggling balls, which made Jack laugh and wink. Everyone else tried to find out why, but neither would say.

"Oh, the next store is one of the ones I was talking about before, sir," Sam said with a slightly nervous smile.

"Cool."

Cassie, who also knew what store Sam was talking about, decided it would be good if the rest of them disappeared for a bit. Putting on her best whiny voice, she said, "I don't want to go in there, it'll be so boring. Let's go down to DisneyQuest, Jack and Sam can meet us there."

"What's DisneyQuest?" Daniel asked.

"Indoor Interactive Theme Park," Cassie explained.

"What's DisneyQuest?" Jack repeated.

Cassie laughed and translated, "Really, really cool arcade."

"Sweet."

"Yeah. Come on, Mom, I bet they have the dancing game and you still seem to be under the misguided impression you can beat me..."

"All right," Janet agreed. "I'll go down there with you, but Daniel and Teal'c might not want to..."

"Teal'c, I'm sure they'll have some Star Wars games... and Daniel, you can take on the winner out of me and Mom..."

"I don't think so..." Daniel started, embarrassed.

"Fine, you can watch and hold our stuff then, come on!" Cassie looped her arm through his and practically dragged him off. Janet and Teal'c glanced at Sam and Jack, shrugged, and hurried off after them.

"Geez, Carter, what the hell kind of store are you taking me to?" Jack finally asked.

Blushing slightly, she turned him around and pointed. Sosa Family Cigars.

"Cigars? Cool! Wait, how did you know I like cigars?"

Blushing even more, she shrugged and said, "My dad likes them."

"And that explains... nothing," Jack said as he held the door open and they went inside. He inhaled the familiar scent as they entered the store. This was very cool. Very un-Disney.

"Well, I don't really know much about cigars, but I wanted to get some for my dad for a gift once, right after he became a... an ambassador," she said quickly, noticing that one of the employees was coming over to speak to them. "So I knew he couldn't really get them anymore but I didn't know what kind to get, so I asked General Hammond. He said I should talk to you because you smoke them and he doesn't, but that if I wanted to know my dad's own personal preferences, he thought he could help me out. I guess I just never brought it up."

"Oh. Cool. Do you remember which kind your dad liked? I can probably help you pick out something similar here if you want."

"Yeah, I think so..."

It took a long time in the cigar store. They talked to one of the friendly owners, Jack took a while making his own selections, then the two of them helped Sam settle on something for her dad.

"Very cool, Carter," Jack said, smiling at her as they left the store. "I take back all those horrible thoughts I was having when we were in that perfume store."

"It wasn't a perfume store, Colonel," Sam objected mildly.

"Whatever."

"Well, if you liked that one, I think you'll really like this one right next to it..." she directed his attention to the awning and he craned his neck to read the name.

Magnetron Magnetz.

"The entire store is magnets!" she said happily, yanking open the door and waiting for him to go inside. "What?" she asked self-consciously at the look on his face. "It's kind of stupid, isn't it?" she hedged. "I know, I just thought of how you're always joking about magnets being responsible for everything, and with Maggie, you know..." she trailed off.

Jack recovered from the frozen way he was gazing at her and finally realized that she was completely misconstruing his immobility and silence. Which was, all things considered, probably a very good thing. He had always been attracted to her, that was a given that they both knew at this point, and on several occasions had found himself having to very actively fight the urge to crush her to him and kiss her until... well until something happened, he never really let himself think beyond that.

He supposed the fact that just last night, he had kissed her probably had a lot to do with it, but the fact was that at the moment he was finding himself incapable of thinking of anything else. In such a stupid place too. Standing in front of a store that sold magnets? At Disney World? In the middle of the day? When she was wearing mouse ears? He was clearly a seriously disturbed man.

He finally forced his head to clear, or clear enough that he could move and speak without being a danger to anybody's military career, and decided the best course of action was to deny everything. No, he had not been standing there in the middle of the pavement looking catatonic for the past several moments. He grinned and said, "Excellent," in his Mr. Burns voice, and followed Sam into the store, also pointedly ignoring the 'have you finally gone completely nuts' look she was giving him.

Once inside the store, there were plenty of distractions. A store full of magnets actually was quite interesting to him. He figured he probably looked about like Sam, Janet, and Cassie had looked in the bath bomb place, all excited and looking in lots of places at once, but he didn't care. "Oh look!" he pointed and dragged Sam by the elbow over to a bunch of Wizard of Oz refrigerator magnets.

When they finally made their way to the cash register half an hour later, he noticed she was holding something with the front to her chest so he couldn't see what it was. "What's that?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Come on, what is it?"

"You'll see it eventually."

"When?"

"Later."

"I can order you, you know."

"Not at Disney World."

"Hmm... maybe I can't give you an official order, but I think if I tried it, you'd probably answer me anyways," he challenged.

She sighed. "You're right. It's a set of play magnets."

"Huh?"

"Well it's meant to be for children," she said, showing him the package. Ooh, it had some sort of magnet-wand thing, and bunches of different magnets to be picked up and moved around... he reached out for it as he handed over his purchases to the cashiers.

"It's not for you, it's for me," she objected, refusing to turn it over.

"Aw..."

"Actually, it's for my lab," she said pointedly. "You've gotten bored with the other non-dangerous items in there, I figured I needed to get some new toys."

"Still upset that I broke that thing, are ya?" he asked, amused. Obviously she wasn't really upset about it if she was buying him cool new toys to play with, which, as far as he was concerned, was an open invitation for him to come into her lab and play with them. Whether or not she meant them that way, he didn't really care.

"Well, it would have been nice if I'd had a chance to figure out what it was first," she almost-whined (Carter never really whined), but she was laughing.

"I think I learned my lesson from General Hammond about that one anyway," Jack muttered.

She gave him a sceptical look and he said, "Okay, maybe not learned it completely but... he was not a happy camper. He asked me if I knew what 'look and don't touch' meant and why I couldn't seem to grasp the concept when it came to 'tempting things I might find in your lab.' I don't know if he meant it to sound suggestive or not, but I had to bite my tongue pretty hard to keep from laughing or saying something that he really wouldn't have found funny."

Sam blushed slightly as she handed over a few bills to the cashier and grabbed her bag.

Jack smirked as he grabbed his own bag of purchases – his fridge and any other magnetic surface he could find were going to be all dressed up when he got home.

"Well, as of last night I don't seem to remember your tongue being permanently damaged, sir," she said casually as she walked past him out of the store. He stared at the back of her head for several moments. Had she really just said that?

"Colonel? If we go meet everyone now we'll have time to play a few games before we all head over to lunch," she called from the doorway, when he had failed to follow her.

Okay, he wasn't even going to try to sort out all the thoughts that ran through his head at that.

Quickly recovering his equilibrium, he settled his customary smirk in place as he exited the store, and enthusiastically said, "Carter, have I told you how much I LOVE magnets?"

She grinned and they headed off to meet everyone else.