A/N: So, this is the part of the story where the sap factor is extremely high... and not the kind of sap that got them all stuck together in the first place, either.

The end's a bit cruel, I know, but I'll have the next bit done as fast as possible.

Ch 7: Closer

Between the increased comfort level of Carter's lab and the strictly-enforced work schedule Fraiser was really being a Nazi about, Jack and Sam actually made it through two days of working without trying to kill each other. Everyone was suitably impressed and surprised with this feat.

The VIP quarters had quickly starting being referred to as 'SG-1's room,' and so far Daniel and Teal'c had not cottoned on to the fact that most people were humming the theme song from 'The Odd Couple' whenever they passed them in the halls. True, Teal'c probably didn't know that song, and Daniel hardly ever watched anything besides The History Channel... but still.

After so many days of living in a fish bowl though, all four of them were getting very tired of it. When Janet brought them their dinner (she was trying to have food brought to them from nearby restaurants as much as possible to keep them somewhat happy,) all four of them started campaigning with her.

"Come on, Doc, we can all go to my house... somebody can drop us off there and pick us up in the morning..."

"And what if someone stops by?" Janet asked. "Who's going to answer the door? You and Sam or Daniel and Teal'c?"

"Who's going to 'stop by' the Colonel's house?" Sam asked.

"Well... since any groceries he might have had are undoubtedly spoiled now, I know you'd give in and order food..."

"You and Cassie could come over too and handle any door-answering that might arise," Jack bargained.

Janet sighed and finally said, "I'll think about it. If you're still like this by the weekend... maybe."

They contented themselves with her response, for now, and dug into their dinner.

Afterwards, Jack asked if Sam wanted to play a game of chess, which they had begun doing to pass some of the time in the evenings.

"It's not fair," she insisted. "I end up playing against my own strategies because the pieces on my side of the board are yours..."

"I'll play," Daniel offered. "Teal'c and me against you guys."

"Excellent," Jack said.

What began as a friendly team game quickly degenerated into a loud shouting match between all four of them. Tension was already high between them all, and it was bound to happen sooner or later, even if the final straw that broke all their backs was a simple game. Teams for chess, especially when all four players considered themselves master strategists, was not one of the better ideas of all time.

Hammond was finally called by a scared guard to come settle the matter, as Dr. Fraiser had gone home for the evening, and he was shocked to find that the team he had so recently been praising for their mature handling of a difficult situation was shouting at each other and throwing chess pieces and popcorn around.

"STAND DOWN!" he bellowed from the doorway. Everyone froze, even the two un-enlisted members of SG-1. Hammond made them clean up the mess they had made, which turned out to be punishment enough since it was a difficult task considering their stuck positions, especially for Carter and O'Neill. Feeling like he was watching his grandchildren, he stood there with his arms crossed, frowning at all of them.

They never could find one of the bishops. He finally let them stop looking and sent them all to bed early, although he realized on his way back to his office that from the looks that flashed across his two officers' faces they might not have considered that much of a punishment. He sighed deeply and hoped they resolved this situation quickly.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

That night, Sam couldn't sleep. SG-1 had all quickly reconciled, so that wasn't the reason. And Daniel wasn't even snoring quite as loudly as he usually did (they had discovered last night that if Teal'c sort of propped Daniel on his side the sound was almost cut in half). Jack had been awake for a while, but based on his breathing now she was fairly certain he was asleep too.

In her head, she was running through the data she'd collected that day. She knew she was missing something – hell, they all were, that much was obvious, since they weren't much closer to finding a solution than they had been days ago... but she had that feeling now, that she was getting close if she could just make some connection...

"Colonel?" she tried whispering. "Are you awake?"

No response from the gently-snoring lump. She ran her fingers along the arm that was stuck to her until he woke up. "I was sleeping," he mumbled unnecessarily.

"I know... I'm sorry, but... I can't sleep."

"Count naquada reactors or something," he suggested, yawning into her shoulder.

She smiled at the suggestion and said, "I really, really, really need to go check something in my lab. Please?"

He made a growly noise and said, "I could easily point out here that Fraiser said that's a no-no."

"Please?"

"Okay, but when you're done we go get some cake," he said, surprising her. She really thought he'd say no, or it would take a lot more arguing.

"Thank you!"

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Sam had only been working for about half an hour when Jack started snoring softly again. She laughed quietly – the lab wasn't pitch black or anything but it certainly wasn't all that dark. He was sitting up in a chair with another person on top of him, using her shoulder for a pillow, and he was sound asleep. Well, if he was comfortable there... she squeezed his arm briefly and kept working.

Some time later, Jack jerked awake, realizing they were both slumped uncomfortably over the desk. "Not one of your better habits to start spreading," he said as he sat up, pulling his sleeping 2IC with him. He rubbed her arm, surprised at how chilled she was, and said, "Come on, wake up."

"Sorry," she mumbled sleepily as they got to their feet clumsily.

"That's okay, Carter, I'll give you a rain check on the cake, okay," he said lightly as they stumbled back to their room barely awake.

It seemed to Sam like barely any time had passed before Daniel was trying to shake them awake in the morning. She was so tired...

"Make him go away," Jack mumbled.

Sam swatted at Daniel half-heartedly without opening her eyes. "Tell Janet we're sleeping late."

"She's not going to like that," Daniel warned.

"Then she can come try to drag us both out of bed herself," Jack said, kicking half-heartedly at the direction of Daniel's voice.

Daniel got off the edge of their bed and said in a childish voice, "Teal'c, why are mommy and daddy so grumpy in the mornings?"

"Daniel Jackson, when they wake up they will seek retribution," Teal'c warned as they went to meet Janet.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Sam woke up... tingly. It took her a few sleepy moments to figure out why, then she realized it was probably because there was a very interesting combination of scratchy stubble and surprisingly soft lips exploring her neck and the super-sensitive area behind her ear. She suppressed a shiver and cleared her throat. As much as she hated to have to do it... "Colonel? You better be asleep."

The low chuckle directly into her ear told her otherwise. "Sorry, Carter... I was when I started, I swear."

"Hmm," she said, just because it seemed like she really should say something, although for the life of her she didn't know what she was supposed to say... this type of situation wasn't exactly covered in basic training.

"Feels like you should shave again today," she finally said, reaching back and finding his cheek with her palm, hoping he'd take that to mean she wasn't mad, just doing what they had to do.

"I hate that electric thing," he grumbled. He couldn't very well shave with his left hand without needing a transfusion, and he had adamantly refused Fraiser's offer of having one of the nurses do it for him, so he'd borrowed Daniel's hi-tech electric-with-the-lotion thing a couple of times, but he didn't like it much. It tugged, and the lotion smelled funny.

"Besides," he continued suddenly, now sounding fully awake. The playful tone told her she was in trouble. "I'm already out of uniform anyway, who's going to care about a little stubble?"

"You know I meant bec-aaaaaaaaiiiiiiiee..."

The previously-quiet room was suddenly filled with shrieks and giggles as she tried to squirm away from him and he tickled all the skin he could reach with his chin. And here she had hoped to make it through her military career without anybody finding out how ticklish she was... she thought absently as she continued the futile attempt to get away from a man she had practically been welded to for the better part of a week.

"Well, I can see you're both wide awake now," a mildly-amused but mostly-annoyed female voice finally said over all the laughing.

Jack and Sam both froze and craned their necks up awkwardly from where Jack had essentially pinned her to the bed. Sam knew her cheeks were bright pink and she was trying to catch her breath. Janet was right by the side of their bed, looking like she'd just discovered her kids were playing hooky. Behind her, Teal'c was actually smiling, and Daniel's mouth was wide open – he was in trouble if there were any bugs flying around.

"Jan..." Sam offered, still a little giggly but trying to catch her breath. "This isn't what it looks like..."

"Hmm, and what, pretell, is it that you think this looks like, Sam?" Janet asked conversationally.

Well, that sobered Sam right up. She mumbled an apology, quickly seconded by Jack, and promised to report to her lab in less than half an hour, dressed, fed, watered, ready to go.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Later that afternoon, Daniel and Teal'c were working on translating Goa'uld texts brought back from SG-8. It was an excellent assignment for them in their current positions, and they were glad that they were no longer serving non-stop as the SGC's largest guinea pigs, although their work was still frequently interrupted when one of the scientists believed they had a big breakthrough.

This afternoon, however, they were lucky to get in a solid three hours of work before someone came running into Daniel's office with some new solution to put on their hands.

Daniel barely bothered to look up from the text he was reading, merely going along absently as Teal'c held out their joint hands patiently for the little man in the lab coat. It was Felger this time, and had a turkey baster with him, which was a new one. He squirted something on their hands and said they needed to wait two minutes... Daniel nodded absently and went back to work.

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said after about a minute and a half, sounding about as alarmed as Teal'c ever sounded. Daniel looked at their hands and groaned. Whatever the guy had put on them had made their hands bright blue.

"Come to my office, I'm sure we can fix this... Chloe said this might happen... please don't hurt me, Teal'c..." Felger said quickly, sounding terrified.

They were so preoccupied with their latest problem that they didn't even bother wondering which team was reporting back when the alarm that signaled an incoming wormhole went off when they were halfway to Felger's lab.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

"Dammit, dammit, dammit, why won't you work?" Carter yelled in exasperation, tossing her pencil down on top of the figures she had been scribbling for the past half hour and flipping her microscope off angrily.

"Hey, come on," Jack tried, setting down the doughnut he had been eating and squeezing her shoulder.

"This isn't working..." There was nothing Carter hated more than not being able to figure something out, and every day that they remained stuck together she was considering her fault, although of course she was the only one. Today she had been optimistic about something or other (Jack couldn't quite remember what), and was now almost to the point of frustrated tears when that turned out to be a dead-end as well.

He rubbed her shoulder and arm, trying to calm her down. "You'll figure it out, Carter, you always do... and this isn't even your speciality anyway. Come on, aren't you supposed to be an astrophysicist? There's a roomful of biologists working on this too and they haven't come up with anything either. Fraiser's stumped, the chemistry guys don't know what the hell is going on... you're being way too hard on yourself."

"I don't understand why we're still stuck together..." she said, and he was fairly sure she was crying at this point, just a little bit. He heard the claxons going off and ignored them – in their 'condition' they were no longer required to drop everything and run to see who was knocking at the door. He kept rubbing her arm and let her talk. "The tests show that the substance binds living tissue to other living tissue... that's why nobody got stuck to anything but each other. The bonds it creates are strong enough to go through relatively loose material like cotton... but skin is constantly dying, sloughing off, and being replaced by new skin cells... the ones that were bound by the initial contact should have come off in our sleep days ago... unless it goes much deeper, but then why, why, why hasn't anything foreign shown up in skin samples from other areas of our bodies or bloodwork or..."

"Whoa, how about taking a breath or two," Jack suggested. She nodded and sniffled, quickly wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Relax, Carter. You always think of something. I'm not too worried about being stuck like this forever... and it could be worse..." He felt her relax against him partially and kept talking. "Now, if I was in Teal'c's position, stuck to Daniel for this long, I'd probably be about ready to shoot us both, but it'll be okay... Fraiser's got that conference call with those dermatologist specialist guys tonight, maybe she'll learn something helpful..."

"Maybe," she agreed doubtfully, wiping her eyes again. "I mean I don't think we can be stuck forever... no matter how deep the stuff went eventually we'd shed those skin cells..."

"That's a lovely image too, by the way, Carter," he interrupted.

She half-laughed/half-cried and said, "But it's just not possible that there's no way to get this stuff off... it just doesn't make sense..."

"Come on, don't do this to yourself. You're the one who figured out that the distinction the goop makes is between living and nonliving cells in the first place – that should have been one of the first things the biologists noticed..."

"How'd you know that?" she asked, surprised.

"Well, I was kind of there," he reminded her with a nudge.

"I know that, but... I thought you were playing Spider Solitaire..."

"I was listening too. Enough to know that even though some of the other egg-heads should know more about this stuff than you, you seem to be the only one making any kind of progress other than pissing off Daniel and Teal'c trying all kinds of lame things on their hands... you're doing a great job, Carter, and everybody knows it..."

"Thank you," she said quietly, squeezing the arm that was stuck to her with both hands.

Jack nodded, and internally gave himself a pat on the back for doing his part to cheer her up a bit. He was about to reach for his doughnut again when a familiar (though recently absent) voice that reeked of self-confidence called, "So, Sam, I hear you've got some kind of problem you need help with?" about a split second before Jacob Carter entered his daughter's lab and stumbled upon what had to be the last thing he expected to find.

Or wanted to find, Jack mentally added as he watched the older man's eyes quickly scan the two of them and jump to conclusions the way only an overprotective father can do.