If you overlooked his total messiness, life with Daniel Jackson was like a romance novel. He made the most fabulous gourmet dinners. He let Sam act as a sous-chief on occasion, but mostly he liked to have her sit with a glass of wine and tell her about her day while he chopped this and stirred that. Daniel was a wonderful listener, quite an accomplishment for someone who was capable of running on as much as he was.
He decided to make a real campaign of expanding her culinary borders. Despite some of the strange things she had eaten on missions, at home she was purely white bread. Not for Daniel well known ethic cuisines like Italian or Chinese. They had Turkish food, Persian food, Egyptian food, Caribbean food, and Nigerian food. She actually liked most of it. Part of her enjoyment stemmed from the fact that he had a story about that part of the world to go with the food. He made her feel almost as if she was in communion with some pleasant group of villagers somewhere, whom she had never met, but who had connected with Daniel.
Daniel did expect her to help him with the post dinner clean up. That should have been a downer since he was the kind of cook who got a huge number of things dirty cooking even the simplest meal. Instead, there was flicking soap suds from the hand washing at each other, towel snapping, and laughing arguments about the best way to load the dishwasher. The latter resulted in the conduct of quasi-scientific tests. Each of them insisted that the results the other obtained were not reproducible and, therefore, had no experimental validity.
He gave Sam massages that, depending on how he decided to play it, either made her bones melt and left her feeling as if she could just pour herself into bed, OR, made her so hot, she couldn't sleep for hours. He paid her the sweetest compliments. They were never trite and obvious. Instead, they were celebrations of her just as she was, unique. What captured the thinking part of her more than anything else was the way he read to her as she lay in bed, cuddled against him, his hand playing with her hair. Her body, on the other hand, was stuck on the massages.
Cassie introduced the one faintly sour note during the next few weeks. The doorbell rang insistently mid-day on the second Saturday of their marriage. Daniel looked up from the bag of groceries he was unpacking and said to Sam who was kneeling in the living room, dusting baseboards, – Daniel took cold showers and ran longer and longer distances while she cleaned almost compulsively – "I'll get it."
Sam got up anyway, glad of a respite from baseboards and really curious as to who it might be. She was right behind him and saw the huge smile take over his face the minute he opened the door and saw Cassie. "Cassie!" he greeted her enthusiastically and hugged her. She didn't hug him back. In fact, she merely endured his hug, standing stiffly until he stopped.
"Come on in," he said, looking at her with concern.
She preceded him into the house as he called to Sam, "Sam, honey, it's Cassie!"
"I'm right here," she said from behind him and swallowed Cassie up in a huge hug, one she did return.
They moved on into the living room and Sam sat down on the couch and patted the cushion next to her for Cassie to take a seat. "You should have called. We might not have been here," she told her.
Cassie sat but looked anything but relaxed. "I DID call," she said very pointedly. "This is the residence of Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson. We're sorry we are not here to take your call?" she recited in a singsong voice. She glared at Daniel. "What's up with that?"
Sam grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "I'm sorry you had to hear that way, Cass. I have tried to call you several times, never got through to you. It wasn't something I wanted to leave on an answering machine."
"WHAT was something you didn't want to leave on an answering machine?" Before anyone answered her, she looked down at the hand gripping hers and gasped. "Is that a… a wedding ring?"
Daniel bit his lip. "Your Aunt Sam and I were married a little less than two weeks ago."
"And no one saw fit to tell me," she stated rather than asked. They had both been braced, expecting to hear something along those lines. After all, it was pretty much a weekly occurrence for someone to show up irked that they hadn't been told. They hadn't been able to reach George Hammond either and were rather expecting to see him soon under similar, if less emotionally charged, circumstances. They were totally unprepared for the accusation that followed it. "What…did…you…do…to…her?" she asked Daniel.
"What do you think I did?" Daniel asked, completely baffled.
"I need to talk to Aunt Sam privately," Cassie said, uncomfortably.
Partial comprehension dawned on Sam. "Daniel knows all about Jack," she said gently.
"Really," Cassie said and she sounded a little confused now herself. "You were in love with him for years. Years! Finally you were together. It was like a dream come true. Something had to have happened for you to suddenly be with another man."
"Oh Cass," Sam sighed. That would teach her to discuss something like this with someone who was still a little immature. She had just been desperate for anyone with whom to share her initial euphoria. "Jack and I weren't working out but we hadn't officially ended it. I didn't have a good opportunity to talk with you and really didn't want to anyway until it was all resolved."
"Daniel didn't do something to break you up?" she said.
"Daniel hasn't done anything but be wonderful and supportive," Sam said, smiling warmly in his direction.
"Oh," she said in a tiny voice. They sat quietly for a moment. At last she raised her eyes to Daniel. "I owe you an apology, I guess. I had Uncle Jack and Aunt Sam married in my head a long time ago. That feels so right and this just seems …wrong." She sighed. "Ever since my mother died, I want things to stay where they are. Be where I left them sort of. Does that make sense?" she asked, pleading for understanding.
"Sure," Daniel said. Sam knew that Cassie had hurt him, but he was being an adult about it. He stood and came over to the couch. "Can I have a real hug now?" he asked her.
She nodded and got up quickly to give him the kind of hug he had given her. The next day, after she had left, Daniel said, "We have got to get ahold of George Hammond and anyone else we may offend by leaving discovery of our marriage to chance." Sam emphatically agreed. Three variations of this scene already were more than enough.
There was no danger of anyone at Cheyenne Mountain being out of the loop. Sam was surprised by the amount of jealousy and envy she encountered. She'd had blinders on all those years. She hadn't seen Daniel as sexy and it hadn't occurred to her that anybody but alien babes, who had an admitted heavy Daniel yen – Vala, the Destroyer of Worlds, Hathor, and Sha're to name just a few -- were particularly into him. She was getting an earful as she lingered at the table in the cafeteria with Carolyn, Dr. Bay DeBarr, another of the physicians on staff, and Hanna.
Daniel and Cam were just walking out together, off to separate meetings. Sam scowled slightly when Daniel stopped to chat briefly with Liz MacDuff. When she turned back to her companions, Hanna said, gently, "All his sexual energy is directed toward you Colonel Carter. There is nothing to fear."
Bay jokingly fanned her face. "Do you suppose I could get caught in the backlash?" She grinned at Sam and said, "You get tired of him, Sam, just send him my way."
"Can't have him," Sam said lightly and then noticed Carolyn's shrewd eyes assessing that comment.
Bay was facing the door and made a further observation as Daniel ended his conversation and walked out. "Seems to me he's gotten spiffier somehow since you guys got married."
"I started doing his laundry," Sam explained. "He didn't know what fabric softener was or that you should take permanent press out of the dryer while it's still warm before it gets wrinkles deeply embedded. Then there are what I call the 'geek pockets.'"
"What are those, pray tell?" Bay asked, amused.
"You know when you put a pen, tip side down, in your shirt pocket without the cap on? It makes this awful blotch at the bottom of the pocket. Daniel had a whole sack of those in his closet that I found when we were moving him to our place," she confided.
"You can fix those?" Carolyn asked incredulously. "I had this boyfriend in medical school who kept making geek pockets."
"Nobody can. I don't care what those infomercials on stain removal say," Sam said sadly. "BUT I can prevent him from not noticing and cycling them through the laundry and wearing them again."
"How about getting things pink or purple from washing stuff like underwear with deeply colored sweatshirts?" Carolyn asked, still walking down a laundry memory lane with her old beau.
"There was some of that and," Sam lowered her voice dramatically, "some briefs with HUGE holes in them where he had just never gotten around to buying new underwear."
Bay was staring off into middle space, clearly imagining Daniel in underwear with strategically placed holes. Sam suddenly felt like a really bad person for literally airing his dirty laundry in public. She blushed and said, "I can't believe I just told you all that. You have to promise you won't tell anyone."
Bay said, "Hey Carolyn and I have that whole Hippocratic oath thing going and you, my friend, are definitely love sick and in need of treatment, hence a patient." She stood up. "Hey this has been real. Anytime you want to share descriptions of the yummy Dr. Daniel Jackson's underwear, believe me, I'm there." She waved and walked off.
Sam looked back at Carolyn who was looking at her with real interest. Hanna's presence was clearly inhibiting something she had on her mind because she started to speak and then immediately bit off her words after a sidewise glance at the lovely observer. The next day when Hanna was with Daniel, Carolyn ran into her in a hallway. "Sam," she asked, getting directly to the point, "you are either the best actress outside of Hollywood or you are falling in love with Daniel."
Sam sucked her breath in, shocked by such upfront honesty. "That's crazy," she finally said.
"Look, Sam," Carolyn said, "I know I'm butting in but I know you've figured Cam and I out by now. I want you to think twice about going on missions with a man you are romantically involved with. There are reasons for those rules. Quite frankly, I don't want my boy friend's lovely ass threatened because you and Daniel are distracted by each other." Her tone stayed calm and pleasant but there was steel in those brown eyes.
"You need not worry, Dr Lam," Sam said stiffly. "Daniel and I are NOT lovers, if that is really any of your business. If my team's commanding office wants to discuss this with me, that's his prerogative but I don't think his girlfriend, his SECRET girlfriend who doesn't even want the general public to know about it, has any basis for sticking an oar in." She finished with, "Good day," and turned on her heel and left.
She remembered a saying, "Better be hanged as a sheep as lamb," or something like that meaning that everybody thinks you're doing something and you're getting in trouble for it, maybe you should go ahead and do it – be the sheep they think you are instead of the innocent lamb. By the end of a month, she had decided to tell Daniel that she was very comfortable with the notion of making love within their marriage because she welcomed the idea that they would continue as lovers after it ended. She frankly was pretty sure it was too late anyway. It would require brain surgery to remove all the moments she had already shared with Daniel from her brain.
Sam was so confident of the outcome of this conversation that she bought some ruinously expensive perfume and a diaphanous nightgown that she knew would be more provocative than if she were naked.
Sam insisted on taking care of their Saturday night meal. Daniel tried not to show it but she could see the apprehension in his eyes. "Don't worry, sweetheart," she said soothingly. "I won't try to actually cook anything myself." She added ruefully, "We never got around to getting the batteries replaced in the smoke alarms last weekend."
Daniel started to protest and she put her hand lightly on his mouth. "You do twice as much as I do. I practically had to wrestle you to the floor to get your laundry away from you." She couldn't resist further clarification. "That is the laundry that was actually in your possession as opposed to draped all over various pieces of furniture."
Sam returned with carry out from an Ethiopian restaurant. She had researched to find a cuisine that was expected to be eaten with your hands. That seemed like it could be a lot more erotic than chopsticks or a knife and fork. As she had hoped, watching her suck things off her fingers had a definite impact on her delectable husband. They progressed to feeding each other. "Daniel," she said huskily, "there's something I want to tell you."
He cocked an eyebrow and smiled slightly. "I'm listening," he replied softly.
"I've thought about the decision we agreed we had to make before our relationship progressed physically. We agreed that we didn't want to do anything unless we were comfortable with what that would mean for us after the marriage was over."
He nodded. "We've been having so much fun. I can't imagine anything better than adding another dimension of pleasure to what we have going or that it would be any problem for that to continue after."
She didn't see the enthusiastic response on his face she was expecting. Instead, he said, "So you want to have sex for the pleasure, for an added dimension of fun?"
He sounded hurt, strangely hurt. "Yeeesss," she drew out slowly.
"I don't," he answered baldly and stood up and walked out of the dining room.
She sat gaping at the empty doorway through which he had disappeared. What had just happened here? It mattered too much to get on her high horse in response. She rose hastily and went looking for him. She found him looking out the window at the swirling snow. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and pleaded, "Help me understand."
"The best sex isn't sex for pleasure, Sam," he said, staring out into the dark. "The best sex is because you want a way to be as close as possible, as one as possible, with the other person. Of course, you're also very turned on, but it's not just lust."
"You're saying that the best sex goes with love," she restated. "Okay, I won't argue with that. Does that mean, we can't have sex without it?"
"I don't know, Sam," he finally said.
"When are you going to know?" she asked flatly, breaking contact with him and walking away.
He said, again, "I don't know, Sam."
"So we wait until either you find yourself ready for sex without love or you decide you're in love with me."
He turned to look at her. "How about until you decide you're in love with me? It's a two way thing."
"Are you in love with me, Daniel?" she asked uncertainly.
"Are you in love with me, Sam?" he countered. They looked at each other for a long time. Then Daniel shook his head, looking disgusted. He closed the distance between Sam and himself and cupped her face in his hand. "Forgive me, Sam," he said softly. "I hope this doesn't seem like rejection. If I did what I wanted, I would have you on the floor right here with your pants around your ankles in the next 30 seconds. But it has to feel right. I have to know I'm not doing something that would be hurtful to you in the long run and I worry about the long run for us of sex just for the fun of it. I'm really grateful that I had the good sense to stop us in my apartment." He kissed her on the forehead with exquisite tenderness. "Now," he said, "I made this chocolate thing while you were out running errands and getting dinner. You have to come and eat some or my feelings will be hurt."
Daniel poured on the charm for the rest of the evening and she almost felt like she had hallucinated their entire conversation. Almost. Actually, she lay awake virtually the entire night, trying to decide what she wanted to do about it. She asked herself if she was in love with him. She eventually concluded that if this wasn't love, it was so close to it that she didn't know how to tell the difference.
The fly in the ointment was that he didn't appear to love her, not like a wife, not romantically, or surely he wouldn't have held back. "Is it really surprising?" she reflected. He had done so many lovely things for her and she had just taken. There were a few loads of laundry to her credit column but that looked awfully flimsy next to his contributions. Somewhere around 4:00 AM, she decided that there was no help for it. She would just have to woo him with romantic gestures, but mainly seduce him. Maybe if she made him really happy physically, love would follow. Great peace came with that decision and she immediately fell asleep.
