A/N: Thanks all, you continue to make me feel all glowy inside (not in the evil Goa'uld way though, so that's good). Here we have the long-awaited, obligatory shower scene for everyone who's been waiting for it - of course I had to make it more silly than steamy...
Ch 6: Helping Hands
Daniel and Teal'c followed a very irked Dr. Fraiser to Jack's quarters. Daniel thought she was overreacting a little bit... they'd probably just fallen asleep watching television. There was no need for all three of them to barge in there before Daniel even got a chance to go to the bathroom or have some coffee... but when Janet was like this it was best to be on her side.
They filed into the small room and Daniel had to restrain himself from laughing out loud. Jack was sleeping exactly as they'd found him when Loki dropped him back in his bedroom... on his stomach, ass in the air. Then Daniel remembered Sam was under there too, although you couldn't really see her at the moment, so she was probably being thoroughly squashed, and he said quickly, "Hey, Jack, wake up!"
"Colonel!" Janet said firmly, rolling the TV cart out of the way and moving to the side of the bed.
"O'Neill," Teal'c said quietly, and, as always, something in Teal'c's voice woke him up.
He lifted his head and croaked, "Teal'c?"
"O'Neill, you appear to be damaging Major Carter," Teal'c reprimanded.
"Wha... huh?"
He tried to sit up but couldn't get enough leverage to bring them both to a sitting position, so he rolled onto his back. The movement woke up Sam and she jerked like she was afraid she was falling. Daniel had to laugh as they both looked similarly bewildered for several moments. He imagined how many things they were probably trying to figure out: why they were sleeping together, why they were stuck together, why everyone was looking at them like that, and why Janet looked so unhappy. Daniel watched all of these things slowly click into place and was surprised when Jack got there before Sam – she was always a slow waker.
"Want to tell me who gave you permission to leave the VIP room?" Janet asked once they looked coherent enough to answer.
"You never said we couldn't," Sam pointed out, but Daniel could tell she was embarrassed.
"All right, well... now that everyone's awake I want you all back in the VIP room in ten minutes, is that clear?"
Jack and Sam both nodded, and Daniel lost the battle he was having with himself and burst out laughing. "What?" Jack growled at him.
"Sorry... you guys just look like you're having a bed-head competition or something."
"Yeah, like yours is so much better," Jack retorted, running a hand through his hair that only made it stick out even more.
"Ten minutes," Janet repeated, nudging Daniel towards the door.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Janet took in the sight of her two hard-to-keep-track-of patients as they shuffled into the VIP room, still looking half-asleep. Daniel had made a good point earlier – if you tried to go by their hair, both of them looked like they had been mildly electrocuted. Sam had a pillow line on her right cheek too, and Janet was surprised Hammond hadn't told the Colonel to shave yesterday – today his stubble was even worse. They were both very wrinkled from sleeping in their clothes, but the Colonel's back and knees didn't seem to be bothering him, so that was good.
"Coffee," Sam said by way of a greeting.
They plopped into their chair as Janet brought them mugs and Daniel reluctantly relinquished his grip on the carafe to Sam.
"Rough night?" Daniel asked with just a hint of a suggestive tone, but with the carefully innocent look that would let him get away with it.
They shot him eerily similar looks and didn't bother to answer. Janet checked Daniel and Teal'c's vitals while they waited for breakfast to arrive, and finally said, "Okay, your first assignment after breakfast is to shower. All of you."
They all looked surprised, but she held up her hand firmly. "I know you don't want to while you're stuck like that but it's either that or I'm tying air fresheners around all of your necks. Now, after that, Daniel and Teal'c will spend the day with me in the lab, and Jack and Sam, you can work out of Sam's lab, but only until five o'clock and you take a fifteen minute break every hour and a half."
She fully expected Sam to object to the limited schedule, and she did in fact open her mouth to object but then she stopped and nodded, surprising Janet by saying, "Fine."
Janet gave Jack and Sam an especially smug smile and said, "I'll have your breakfast waiting for you. Before you do any of that, General Hammond would like to see you."
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Daniel and Teal'c went with Jack and Sam even though they hadn't been ordered. Daniel felt like he and Teal'c might be needed to corroborate their story that nothing untoward had been taking place when Jack and Sam had gone off by themselves last night... even Daniel had to admit that the circumstantial evidence against them looked bad. Daniel also knew that Hammond was on their side - he needed to address what had happened but really wanted to let them convince him that there was absolutely nothing going on between Jack and Sam. He was right - Jack and Sam stood patiently through Hammond railing at them for a few minutes about how they insisted on making things much more difficult and complicated than they had to be, yadda yadda yadda... Then he finished, and it was over. He waved them away, remembering something at the last minute.
"Oh, people?"
All four members of SG-1 stopped in the doorway to his office and turned back to him.
"If Fraiser hasn't made it an order already, I'll be glad to do it. Go shower. Please."
They all mumbled their assent and left, discreetly trying to smell themselves.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
The Doc finally caught onto the fact that they were all stalling with their breakfast. Teal'c and Jack just about broke their record for pancake eating, and Daniel and Carter put a serious dent in Colorado's coffee supply. Eventually, Fraiser figured out what they were up to and cleared away the table, put her hands on her hips, and firmly ordered, "Showers. Now."
She marched them down to the locker room and kicked out a very amused-looking SG9, who left with choruses of, "Don't forget to wash behind each other's ears," and "Share your rubber duckies now."
Janet made sure they all had everything they needed and then left them alone, but they knew she'd find out about it if they tried to get around it. Daniel and Teal'c went down to the farthest stall, not wanting to look each other in the eyes. "Hey, at least we're not them, right?" Daniel finally muttered as they started taking off their clothes.
"Indeed. The easiest way to accomplish this task would be to take turns, Daniel Jackson. You may go first."
"Um, thanks."
"I will render assistance where necessary."
"Right," Daniel said uncomfortably as he switched on the water.
At that point, Jack couldn't hear them anymore, and finally had to deal with his own situation. "Since we have to leave our shirts on let's leave our underwear on too, sir," Carter suggested logically.
"Fine. But could you stop calling me 'sir' for cryin out loud? I mean, I agree you probably should when we're around other people but in situations like this it's just weird."
"I'll try to remember."
"Good. I don't like Teal'c and Danny's strategy though, I think we should both, you know, just try to take care of ourselves at the same time."
"Okay."
They stepped into their stall and Carter flipped on the water, spraying him directly in the face. He spluttered and yelled, "Carter!"
"Sorry," she apologized, tilting the shower head a bit.
"You guys okay?" Daniel called loudly from the other end of the room.
"Yes!" Carter called back.
Jack had no trouble running his manly-smelling bar of soap all over himself with one arm, and tried to get as much into his shirt as he could as well, hoping to sort of wash that as he wore it. Since Carter had two free hands, she seemed to be doing all right on her own too, although Jack tried very hard not to pay attention to what she was doing.
Things were going better than he had expected until she bent over unexpectedly, bringing him hunched over her from behind. He was so surprised that he dropped his soap and it went skittering off down the row of stalls.
"Jesus, Carter!"
"Sorry," she apologized again. "I kind of forgot..."
"That I was there? That's what every man wants to hear when he's showering with a woman."
"Colonel."
"Sorry."
"O'Neill, we have found your soap!" Teal'c called.
"Slide it back down here, big guy!" Jack called back.
"Eww, Jack could you please not call Teal'c 'big guy' when we're all naked?" Daniel requested.
"We're NOT naked!" Jack and Sam both yelled.
"I am returning your soap now," Teal'c warned, a split second before it shot at their legs.
Taken by surprise, Carter tried to jump out of its way – it was coming at them kind of fast. Jumping while attached to someone else who wasn't jumping, while in the shower, proved not to be her smartest moment. They ended up crashing loudly and painfully to the floor, their unstuck halves tangled up nicely.
"Ewww, this is so disgusting. Get up, quick, sir!" Carter yelped, trying a push-up maneuver to get herself off the nasty locker-room shower floor.
"I'm trying!"
"Do you know how many germs are probably on this floor?"
"Yeah we're going to get dirtier from our shower than we already were. I'm working on it, Major..." Knees creaking, he managed to get to his feet, dragging her with him. "Sorry, I keep on squashing you today," he apologized. "Where the hell did the soap go?"
"Do you really want to use that soap after it's been all over the floor in here?" she asked reasonably as they looked around for it. In their fall, it had disappeared, probably off in the opposite direction from Daniel and Teal'c, or something.
"I guess not," Jack conceded, although he didn't really get that. Soap was soap – wasn't it always clean?
"Is everyone okay over there?" Daniel called hesitantly.
"Yes!" they called back impatiently.
"Sorry... geez, you try to care," Daniel said, ostensibly to Teal'c, but loudly enough that Jack could still hear him.
"I need that soap though - I wasn't done and now I need to redo all the parts I already did after touching that gross floor."
"Hang on, I'm almost done and you can use mine," Carter offered.
Jack looked at the pink poofy sponge thing she was using and the gooey pink stuff in the bottle next to her and said, "I'll smell like a girl!"
"You're already in close enough proximity to it in the shower I doubt it'll make that much of a difference," she said, sounding unconcerned. "But suit yourself."
"Fine, I'll use it. But don't tell anybody."
"Believe me, I'm not going to be telling anybody about this lovely experience," she responded, handing him the soapy pink thing.
He took it, eyed it skeptically for a few moments, and sighed. This should have been so much fun, under different circumstances...
"Aren't you guys done yet?" Daniel asked, poking his head through their curtain.
"Daniel!" Carter objected, trying to cover her chest from him. Jack had to laugh, because in addition to the tee-shirt, his own arm was already across it anyway.
"What? You're practically fully dressed, Sam..." Daniel turned his attention to Jack and smirked, "Nice... poof."
"It's not mine, smart-ass," Jack said. He wanted to drop it but doubted Carter would be too happy with him if he did. "Get the hell out of here, Daniel, you don't have to wait for us."
"I don't know, Teal'c, do you think we can trust them alone in the shower together? Last time they went off alone together we had to form a search party..."
Daniel got the poof in his face for that remark. He caught it and threw it back to Carter.
"Daniel Jackson, leave them alone, my towel is slipping and I wish to get dressed," Teal'c's disembodied voice said from nearby.
Daniel shot them another smirk and disappeared. "I'm going to get him for this," Jack muttered. "What do I do with this poof thing?"
"Here, switch places with me and I'll rinse it out. I need to get all this soap out of my shirt anyway."
Jack made the mistake of glancing down at her when she was under the shower spray, and he wasn't sure whether it was the fact that he didn't have anything else to keep himself busy, or knowing that Daniel and Teal'c were gone, but he suddenly became much less aware of all the strange circumstances surrounding them and much more aware of the simple fact that they were showering together.
"Um, Colonel? Still there?"
"What? Yeah. What?" Very smooth, O'Neill, he told himself.
"I need to get my shampoo..."
"Oh, right." He helped her balance while she got it, and said, "I guess I need help getting mine open."
"Where is it?"
"Over there..."
"Just use mine, it's already open and right here. Give me your hand."
Ignoring the fact that his 2IC was suddenly bossing him around, he snaked his free arm under hers and held out his hand obediently. She squeezed about three times as much shampoo as he normally used into his hand and he peered at it curiously, resting his chin on her shoulder so he could see his own hand. "It's... purple," he finally said.
She was squirming a lot, and said, "You're tickling me – when was the last time you shaved?"
"That would be the morning before we left for that lovely planet of alien super-glue," he answered.
"Oh."
He stood up straight again and started shampooing his hair awkwardly with one hand, leaning back out of the way as much as he could while Carter attacked her own hair.
Rinsing that much shampoo out of his hair, while she tried to rinse hers too, was not easy. They both had their eyes closed so it was hard to stay balanced and relatively out of each other's way. They ended up with a lot of shampoo in their eyes, although Jack had to admit it did smell pretty nice, even if it was purple. Jack finally finished and stepped out of the spray, reaching back and adjusting the shower head so it was just hitting her.
"Thanks," she called.
"Yeah... you've got some more back here..." He ran his hand through the back of her hair to try to help her get the suds out. She didn't object, so he kept doing it. Just being neighborly, he thought, rolling his eyes and trying to help her get the suds out of her tee-shirt.
Several minutes later, it occurred to him that she was squeaky clean and he was still touching her hair. "Um, Colonel," she prompted, which he assumed was the politest way possible of telling him to cut it out.
"Right. Umm, I'm just going to turn the cold water on now..." he said casually, reaching behind him for the proper knob.
"Yeah, good idea," she agreed.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Sam's teeth were chattering by the time they got out of the shower. She was glad though, because it kept them occupied with getting as dry as possible as quickly as possible, and they could pretend like the weird and awkward thing in the shower never happened. They made their way over to the bench where their fresh underwear and pants were and she stopped, looking down at the folded piles of clothes and trying to figure out the best way to do this.
"You go first, then I'll go," Jack ordered.
"Kay..." She was glad she had two hands – it was difficult, but she managed to hold a towel around her waist with one hand and wriggle out of her wet underwear with the other.
Getting the dry pair up was a bit trickier but she finally managed, then grabbed a new completely dry towel and wrapped it around her waist as well to catch some of the moisture from her tee-shirt. They had already wrung their shirts out but they were still really wet.
"Okay, go ahead," she finally said, then spent the next five minutes pretending her CO was not wriggling into fresh boxers a few inches behind her.
As they struggled into their fresh sweatpants (all four of them were wearing sweatpants for the elastic waistbands, and flip-flops as well, which made one-handed dressing much easier), he said casually, "You know, Carter, you're like a guy."
"Excuse me?" she spluttered. So not something you wanted to hear from someone you just took a shower with. And anyway, after two days she had ample proof that despite what the Colonel might say when General Hammond asked, he definitely did not see her as one of the guys.
"No, I mean... I meant to say it this morning after we went to the bathroom..."
"What?"
"Okay, that came out wrong too. What I'm talking about is that you don't have to go to the bathroom a million times a day like a lot of women... Sarah used to make me pull over like every hour when we drove to the cabin... I meant it in a good way, really."
"Oh. Well... thanks then. I guess it comes from so much time in the field." She was still a little flustered, so she decided to be a bit mean. "You're like a woman too, Colonel," she added in a sugary tone.
"WHAT?"
"Well... you smell like one right now anyway," she said, reaching up and patting him on the cheek.
"Ha ha Carter. Can we move onto Phase 2 now, please?"
"Yeah, let's go get the hair dryer."
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
By the time they had their shirts mostly dry from the hair dryer, it seemed like half the morning was gone. Sam was getting really antsy to get to work, and after catching the way-too-fascinated look on Jack's face in the mirror while she tried to put on make-up with him watching and asking, 'What's that for?' every two seconds, she was very tempted to 'forget' that she'd meant to do something about the uncomfortable stools in her lab.
Unfortunately, she couldn't bring herself to be that mean to him. She had thought about the problem a lot during breakfast. The workbenches were way too tall for conventional chairs, but there wasn't enough surface space on the regular desks for her to work efficiently. That left one obvious solution.
"Where are we going?" Jack asked as they headed down a corridor.
"To find Siler. I bet he's in here," Sam answered, going into the MALP room.
"And... why do we need Siler?" he asked.
"You'll see... Siler!"
He popped his head up from between two partially disassembled MALPs and said, "Yes, Major... oh, hi Colonel."
"Mornin,' Sparky."
"I need you to come with us to my lab... and bring two assistants... and torches."
Several of the other technicians looked surprised and mildly scared, but Siler tended to take anything she told him to do like it was completely normal. "Yes, ma'am, I'll be right there."
"Carter, what the hell are you doing?" Jack asked again when they were on their way back to her lab.
"Fixing a problem," she said matter-of-factly.
She eye-balled the difference between her lab table and her little desk that was in the corner and nodded resolutely. When Siler and his team arrived, she said briskly. "Okay. Take everything off of my workbench, flip it over, and cut fifteen inches off all the legs. Try to make them as even as possible, please."
Siler looked at her evenly for a few seconds before she saw his gaze shift to the Colonel's face. She felt her CO shrug, and Siler said, "Yes, ma'am. Come on, guys... be careful with that microscope."
Jack and Sam shuffled back into a corner so they weren't in danger when they started cutting the aluminum table with the torches. Halfway through the procedure, Jack must have figured out why she was having them do this because he squeezed her shoulder and said, "Thank you" directly into her ear.
She was fairly certain he didn't notice the shiver it caused – if he did he didn't mention it.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
"Where are Jack and Sam?" Daniel asked impatiently as they waited for them in the VIP quarters. "Our food's getting cold."
Janet brought them a fresh pitcher of water and caught the tail-end of the question, saying, "They're eating in her lab while Sam works."
"Jack agreed to that?" Daniel asked, shocked.
"Yes, he did. She wasn't able to work most of the morning, so..."
"Most surprising," Teal'c commented, peeling a banana with his teeth so he didn't have to ask anyone for help.
After lunch, Daniel said, "Teal'c, let's go see Jack and Sam. I want to see this for myself."
"As you wish, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c agreed. They strolled down to Sam's lab quickly, Teal'c still eating a cookie from lunch.
Sam's lab door was one of those heavy electronic sliding ones, so it was almost always open, especially if she was in there. They entered the lab and Daniel said, "Whoa." He felt like a giant – everything was a lot lower than it usually was. He spotted Jack and Sam easily enough, sitting in the chair that was usually at her desk. Jack looked a lot more comfortable than he had done yesterday.
Jack was also concentrating so hard on the laptop in front of him (actually, almost to the side of him, so that he and Sam could both look at separate monitors at the same time) that he hadn't even noticed Daniel and Teal'c's presence yet.
Daniel looked at them both curiously. A plate of crumbs was a foot away from Jack, whose eyes were glued to whatever he was doing on the computer. From the little noises the laptop was producing, Daniel guessed he was playing computer chess. Sam's attention was divided between the microscope in front of her and the laptop on their far right.
Finally, Daniel said, "Well, I guess couples that spend a lot of time together do start to look alike."
Jack and Sam finally looked up from their various tasks, both startled to see the rest of their team standing there.
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.