He didn't really wake up but he smiled in his sleep and her energy level doubled. Sam felt like she could face anything. It was fortunate she was in that frame of mind because it was about to be tested. She had just brought the paper in and was about to make coffee when there was a knock on the door. Curious as to who it could possibly be she went to the door quickly and opened it to find a middle aged woman in pink and aqua sweets with a small dog on a leash. The moment Sam opened the door, the woman starting talking. "Hi, I'm Merilee McGovern. Daryl and I live just two doors down, the brown Tudor you know with the RV in the driveway."
Sam smiled politely. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Samantha Carter."
Merilee continued, "Anyway, I was out walking Napoleon and I saw you get the paper. Daryl always says 'There's no time like the present' so I thought I should just come right over and introduce myself and welcome you to the neighborhood." She paused and Sam had an uncomfortable feeling she was expecting to be invited in. It was just too early in the morning and she needed coffee first before getting chummy with a complete stranger.
Sam said, "That was certainly very friendly of you. This seems like such a nice neighborhood that way."
Merilee nodded vigorously, "Very 'diverse.'" For some reason, she had verbal quotation marks around that word. "Your housemate will be comfortable here. Actually, if he isn't in a relationship at the moment, there is this lovely young man who lives with his mother just over on Windmere Way that I'd be glad to introduce him to."
Sam was struggling to follow all this. "Do you, I mean, how do you, why do you .."
Merilee chuckled. "Oh my gaydar works very well. I mean, heterosexual men once they get in their late thirties have a tendency to let themselves go a little but gay men, well, let me just say that the buff physique on your housemate is what you would expect. And the two times I saw him, he was very well dressed."
Sam thought almost irrelevantly, "That's what I get for taking Daniel shopping. I set him up for a neighbor to think he's gay?" Sam asked, "So you didn't he was like my … " and she found he couldn't figure out the word to supply. Lover seemed a little tacky for polite conversation. Boyfriend seemed sort of kid like. They weren't engaged. While she was mulling that over, Merilee said, "He's so much younger than you, it just didn't occur to me."
Sam found herself thinking of the lyrics that said something about getting hit with someone's best shot but while she was still reeling, strong arms went around her middle and she was pulled back against a warm body. Daniel said with a somewhat affectedly smarmy edge to his voice, "Good morning, darling." When she looked around at him, he kissed her very thoroughly.
Merilee didn't seem to be the least bit taken aback by her obvious misjudgment. "My, I certainly got that wrong," she giggled. Noticing that Daniel seemed to be about ready to drag Sam into the house and have his way with her, Merilee winked broadly at Sam and said, "I'll just let you get back to whatever you were doing. See you later." She pulled Napoleon so hard as she took off down the walk that the poor dog could barely keep up.
"I bet she's on her way to call everyone in the neighborhood she knows," Sam said as they closed the door. She pried Daniel's arms off her and walked into the kitchen. "What a walking tribute to stereotypes she was." She pulled the coffee pot out and almost broke it putting it down so hard in the sink. "Just a little heavy on the territory marking there, weren't you Daniel. I feel something like a tree Napoleon's visited recently."
Daniel said, laughing a little, "I thought she deserved to be discomforted a little for being so wrong about everything and for that little pot shot she took at you."
"Didn't work, did it?" Sam said. "I wonder if anything gets through to that woman. I can just imagine what Daryl's like."
Daniel drew her into his arms again. "You're not letting that statement about you being older than I am bother you, are you? Please don't. Someone like Merilee will always find something. I can imagine her greeting to any new neighbors who happened to be in an interracial marriage, have a foreign accent, or be handicapped." Sam didn't answer. She was still upset.
Daniel tried a different tack. "Or maybe this has all caused you to doubt me. Maybe you need some more proof that I'm very hetero." She looked at him askance. "Tell you what. I've got an hour or so available. Let me give you another demonstration." He lifted her against him and set to work.
The day still had not run out of awkward moments. They had decided their first home improvement project would be to remove the wallpaper with little pink fishes on it that was in the first floor powder room. Neither of them liked wallpaper and Sam had a particular dislike for wallpaper themed to go with the purpose of the room. Fish in the bathroom or fruit in the kitchen just didn't work for her. They had bought a book on how to do it and set out for Home Depot to get supplies.
Home Depot was more fun than it should have been. They ended up going off task and wandering around, getting ideas for other rooms, being a little silly about it after awhile with really over the top things that neither of them would ever seriously contemplate like mirrors on the ceiling. Sam was looking at a piece of mirror tile with sort of gold veins running through it and Daniel was whispering suggestions in her ear as to what the consequences of that might be if they used it in the bedroom, when they heard Jack's voice.
They turned quickly and moved apart to see Jack and Danny at the end of the aisle. Jack was leaning against the rack on the other side of the aisle looking at them sardonically and Danny had his hands braced on their shopping cart like he was planning on ramming them with it. Jack spoke first, "Well, hello, home improvement shoppers. Planning on a bordello look for your house?" He gestured at the mirror tile.
Sam blushed. "We were just being silly." She quickly tried to redirect the conversation. "Danny, I thought the reason you couldn't spend the weekend with me this weekend was that your team was going out of town for some sort of special tournament."
Danny had the good grace to look uncomfortable and a little sheepish. "It, uh, got cancelled."
Jack behaved like an adult at that point and said to Danny, "I don't think so. I never heard about anything out of town this weekend. You lied to your mother?"
Danny shot him a very resentful look. Clearly he thought Jack should cover for him. "I, well, I guess kind of."
Jack didn't let up. "Did you or didn't you?"
Danny admitted, "Yes I did."
Jack said, "We didn't raise you to lie. Apologize to your mother and plan on spending the next week's free evenings at home with me."
Daniel said, without ever looking up, "I'm sorry Mom."
It was just at that moment that Kathy Jaworski came around the corner. "Hey, hi guys," she greeted them enthusiastically. "It's been forever since I've seen you. I really hoped to do a better job of staying in touch with everyone after we moved out into the country last year and we quit seeing each other at the boy's soccer games."
Everyone but Daniel mumbled some sort of hi back to Kathy. She didn't seem to notice the general tension in the air. "So, how have you been and WHO is this?" she asked noticing Daniel for the first time. "You must be a relative. The resemblance is striking."
Sam collected herself and did the honors, "Kathy this is Dr. Daniel Jackson. Daniel, this is Kathy Jaworski. Her son Kyle was on the team with Danny." Daniel smiled and shook her hand.
"So you're Danny's…" Kathy waited for them to supply the right word.
"Actually I'm Danny's biological father," Daniel said. It sounded awful but what else would he call it?
"Oh," Kathy said. Obviously she felt like she had stepped in something and, unlike Merilee, it did bother her. She, however, made the mistake of trying to dig herself out of it, instead of just getting while the getting was good. "Oh, so this is your first husband?"
It was Sam's turn. "We were never married."
"So you, oh," Kathy stuttered to a stop.
Sam couldn't leave Kathy with a mental image of Danny being illegitimate. "Danny isn't my son biologically. Jack and I adopted him when Danny's real mother couldn't raise him."
Kathy shot a quick look at Daniel which had him more than a little annoyed with Sam. Daniel thought, "Great. Now she thinks I abandoned Danny and his mother somewhere, probably threw them out in the snow."
Sam moved to tie off the bleeding since everyone else seemed to be stunned into silence except Jack who was way too clearly enjoying it. "Well, Kathy," she said energetically looking at Kathy's empty cart. "Don't let us keep you. It looks like you're just getting started. It was great running in to you. Stay in touch." Kathy agreed heartily and took off very rapidly, overjoyed to be leaving the aisle.
"More fun than I've had in Home Depot in years," Jack said.
Danny did not appreciate his father's humor. "This is just stupid. And my being Danny Jackson isn't helping. He looked at Jack, "I've decided I should use my middle name, instead of my last name. If you don't mind, I'm going to start going by Danny O'Neill."
Daniel and Sam were both hurt at not being consulted and Jack also looked discomforted. "This really isn't the place to discuss it, Danny." Seeing that Danny wasn't backing down, Jack said, "Daniel is your father. And it wasn't his fault that he wasn't around."
Daniel was touched that Jack would defend him, given the bad feeling there had been over the past few weeks. He said, "Danny, you have a right to be called whatever you want. Most people would have made your name O'Neill or Carter-O'Neill from the beginning. I really appreciate the fact that your parents didn't make that decision but I think it's your choice now. Jack, if you're comfortable with it, I don't have a problem."
That was almost the end of the most drama in a Home Depot aisle for the week, possibly for the entire month. It caused a clerk who had been just out of sight and heard the whole thing to spend way too much time lurking around aisles listening to conversations over the next few weeks. He kept hoping to luck on another so dramatic conversation but mostly heard people arguing, frequently quite nastily, which was what home improvement seemed to bring out in most marriages. He would have been even more determined to eavesdrop if he could have heard the follow on between Jack, Daniel, and Sam.
Danny had left with their cart. He'd had enough family togetherness. Jack approached Sam and Daniel and asked, very quietly. "Has there been anything more to explain what happened to you Daniel?"
Daniel said, "Yeah. One thing. Initially they had ruled out some sort of suspended animation, being frozen you know. But they went back and looked at some data that was collected when we found that ship of people in suspended animation. You remember what I mean?"
Jack agreed, "Your massive case of multiple personalities."
Daniel continued, "Right. It looks like similar or even the same technology might have been used based on some things they saw in my biochemical work up."
Jack asked, "But you don't remember anything else?"
Daniel said, "All that's happened is that I am more and more sure that what I do remember is false, implanted."
Jack nodded then, and hit Daniel on the shoulder. "Whatever it was, at least it didn't seem to have hurt you. They'll figure it out eventually." He waved and walked off.
Sam's irritation with his enjoyment of her discomfort had vanished in that show of support. She said to Daniel, looking after him, "He was pretty great, the way he handled the lying and Danny wanting to change his name. Maybe, there is hope."
Daniel agreed, "It makes me feel better. I really want him back as friend somehow. But Sam, we've got to not queer that by waiting much longer to tell Jack and Danny that we bought the house together and that we are, well, together. What if they find it out some other way."
"I know and I will do it. But you promised me you'd let me handle it alone, at least at first." However when Danny's next weekend with his mother came up, there still haven't been any discussion about the situation. Daniel took Sam for a brief walk out of earshot from Danny and put his foot down. "Either you tell him or I will. We're on borrowed time here and it isn't going to get easier."
Sam didn't get mad. She knew full well it had to be done. She squared her shoulders and started to walk back to the house. "Okay, I'll do it now. But you promised me you'd let me talk to him alone."
Daniel went up to the room they had made his home office and library and tried to bury himself in one of Noam Chomsky's works. Maybe it would have worked if he hadn't been able to hear the rise and fall of their voices, his son's unmistakably angry tones and Sam's increasingly strained attempt to be calm. It was enormously frustrating because while he couldn't hear most of it, he caught a word every once in awhile. Finally, he stood up, preparing to go join them, when the door burst open and Danny came roaring in, trailed by his mother.
"Who the fk do you think you are?" the boy demanded, stopping just inches short of Daniel.
"I take it that you're asking that rhetorically?" Daniel said and then winced at sounding so professorial.
Danny threw his hands in the air and stalked across the room, turning to look furiously at both of them. "I don't need you in my life. I have a father. And I had a mother."
"HAD?" Sam tried to interject but Danny kept going.
"Until you broke up their marriage. Now you're trying to put yourself into my life even though I don't want you. Buying a house with my mother is going a little far don't you think?"
Daniel didn't know where to start. "Broke up their marriage? I was light years from here when their marriage broke up."
"Light years from here in what did you say 'Guatemala?' On top of everything else you can't tell the truth about anything."
"Trying to stay on the subject at hand," Daniel said, beginning to lose the reins of his temper, "you can't hold me responsible for what went wrong in their marriage."
"Oh can't I?" Danny asked belligerently. "You think I didn't hear them arguing and your name coming up, more than once. Maybe you weren't here but she used you as weapon against my dad."
Sam was looking ill. "Danny," she tried one last time, "that isn't what happened. Talk to your dad about it, to Jack. He'll tell you."
"Will he? He doesn't seem that strong on the truth lately either." Danny thrust his hand through his hair and clutched at it just as Daniel sometimes did. Daniel had an incongruous stray thought, "I wonder if he realizes he does that just like me?"
Danny started to attack from another direction, "Mom, are you so what pathetically desperate for sex that you're willing to make a fool over yourself over a," he floundered looking for something appropriately insulting, "a jerk you used to know just because he's younger? He better in bed than my dad?"
Daniel had heard enough. The boy could insult him all day if he chose but he was not going to put up with attacks on the woman he loved from anyone, even his son and hers.
Daniel slammed the heavy book down on the desk next to him. He looked at Danny and it was a different man than the boy had ever seen. For the first time, he looked to Danny like someone who could be dangerous enough to be part of whatever top secret military thing it was his parents had done. Daniel said in a voice notable for the pure steel it packed, "You will not now or ever in the future talk to your mother with so little respect. Is that clear?"
He looked at Danny waiting for a response. Danny was very surprised to hear himself say, "Yes sir." For a moment, he had fathers confused. As rebellious as he had become in recent years, he had never once said anything like this in Jack's presence. He knew he would have drawn exactly the same kind of reprimand if he had.
Daniel wasn't done. "Secondly, you need to get over yourself. You are very important to your mother and, although you probably don't believe it, to me, but you are not the center of the universe. We do things for reasons that have nothing to do with you and this is one of them. Do you understand?"
Again he paused and again, Danny found himself saying, "Yes sir."
Daniel walked over to Sam and took her hand. He looked at her and said, "Sam, I can't see there being more rounds of this. I say we get everything out on the table now." She returned his gaze, still looking very unwell, and nodded. Daniel continued, "When I came back, there was nothing but a deep friendship between your mother and me. In the last few weeks, that's changed. I love her and she loves me."
Danny had a stunned and sickened expression on his face. He raised his hands to his ears and said, "I'm not listening to this any more."
Finally Sam had had enough. She dropped Daniel's hand, marched across the room, and yanked her son's hands down. Holding on to them, she said in a tone of voice that reminded them all that she too had a military background, "You WILL listen just as I've listened to your poison for the last half hour."
Daniel said, "We think enough of you to believe that when you finish growing up, you'll understand and be fair about this. We've decided that we can't let the way you feel now stop us from being together."
Sam was holding Danny's hands but looking back at Daniel. He locked eyes with her and said, "Next weekend, we're flying to Tahoe to get married. You can come with us if you want but we're going anyway."
Sam dropped Danny's hands in shock. Ordinarily such a high handed announcement without discussing it with her beforehand would have infuriated her but she was looking deep into his eyes when he said it. It was as if she was inside his mind for a minute and saw all the love and the pain and the need to move on with their lives. She temporarily forgot Danny was even in the room and went back to Daniel.
"You're sure you want to do this?" she asked almost inaudibly.
Daniel smiled at her, skimmed his knuckles across her cheek and then he kissed her. When he finished, he looked up at Danny. "Get used to it Danny."
Maybe that was the moment at which Danny began to grow up. He and his father stared at each other, not as father and son, but as two men taking each other's measure. Danny didn't understand his own feelings. It seemed like a dozen different emotions were swirling through him. But one of them was a new sensation. For the first time, he felt some real respect for his biological father.
The silence seemed to stretch on for eons. At last Danny looked down and scuffed at the floor with his boots. "I don't want to be there. I'm sorry Mom but I just can't handle it. I guess I want to keep coming for the weekend." He added in a very small voice, "And I'm sorry for what I said, about you being pathetic and all. If I was not your son, I think I would think you were pretty hot actually."
A huge smile broke over Sam's face. "Thanks Danny. I'll take that as a compliment."
Danny said, "If you don't mind, I think I'd like to go home early. I'll go get my bag."
They stood aside to let him pass. He hesitated in the hall and said, "Does my dad know?"
Sam said, "Not yet."
"Mom, you got to tell him. He shouldn't hear this from me or some other way."
Sam dropped her head. "I know, Danny, I know. I've been trying to find a way to tell him. I'll come in when I drive you back."
Daniel shook his head, "WE'LL come in." Sam started to say something but he raised a hand and forestalled her. "I'm through with hiding behind you Sam. Remember that the man was once my best friend. He needs to clear the air with me too."
The discussion with Jack wasn't as bad as it might have been but still ranked up there in each of their top ten lists of the worst experiences of their lives. When all the horrific situations they had been in with SG-1 that it had edged out were considered, that left it firmly in the kick in the gut category.
When they came back home, Sam begged Daniel, "Just hold me in your arms. Don't talk. Don't do anything else. Just hold me." And he did for a very long time.
The next day, when they talked about the trip to Tahoe, Sam told Daniel, "I think going ahead with this now is the right thing to do but I won't feel right about it until we have it blessed by the church." This was a foreign language to Daniel and not one of the 20 plus he had mastered. Sam had been getting up and going to Mass without him almost every Sunday. She had told Daniel that the resumption of her childhood Catholicism was another contributing factor to the split with Jack. Jack didn't care if she went to church but had completely undermined her efforts with Danny, telling him he didn't have to go when she insisted that Danny come with her. Daniel felt some sympathy with Jack. Daniel wasn't a believer and he suspected that there would have been some conflict over this had he been in Jack's shoes. However, he felt that the past 16 years had earned her parental rights with Danny that he didn't have and he had stayed out of the argument that happened every Sunday morning when Danny was visiting his mother. Now he also agreed to her desire to have a religious ceremony later, not seeing the harm in it if it made her happy.