"Are you speaking about yourself with the royal 'we' these days, Daniel? You do seem to be alone here. I kind of like the use of the royal we. It warns everyone that you're a royal pain." Jack crossed his arms and looked him in a distinctly unfriendly way.
"I'm here too," Sam said as she came around the house.
"You two nitwits actually thought I'd sneak out the back," Jack said. "Don't flatter yourself. I don't have any trouble telling you to your face to go away."
"We're not going away, Jack, so you might as well step aside and let us in," Daniel said, still calm. The emotions Jack was projecting were complex. He yearned for them but there was a thick layer of fear and hurt dominating everything else.
"Please Jack," Daniel said and he stepped forward and put his hand on his friend's shoulder. He didn't know if he had any ability at all to project emotion but he mentally pushed all the caring and concern he felt toward Jack. Jack shook him off but he stepped aside as requested.
"Do you want a beer?" Jack asked. "I'm having one, maybe two." Without waiting for a response he went to the kitchen and came back with four bottles. There was already a bottle opener and a couple of empties sitting on the coffee table. He handed them each their bottle and sat in the one armchair. Daniel looked at Sam. He thought the couch was too far away to get the read he needed on what Jack was feeling. He shoved the bottles to one side and sat down on the heavy coffee table. Sam perched on the arm of Jack's chair.
"How about some respect for personal space here," Jack said.
They ignored him. Sam said, "Jack, you haven't been yourself. You've been avoiding dealing with the change in our relationship and lashing out instead, being pretty rotten to both of us."
"Puleese," Jack said. "Don't be such a baby."
"Or a girl?" Daniel asked. He was still searching for the rhythm involved with making the right statements to provoke a telling emotion. He couldn't read thoughts, after all, and it didn't help to get emotions if you didn't know their object.
The emotional response to the reference to his insulting comments about Daniel was surprise and embarrassment. Good, he hadn't meant it. However, the spoken response was, "If the apron fits, wear it."
"Something else is going on with you, Jack," Sam said shrewdly, searching his face. "Something else that has nothing to do with us." Ah, Sam had hit on something. "Is it the job?" No, Daniel could tell, that wasn't it.
Daniel looked at Jack's face and was suddenly struck by how much he had aged in the past few months. He'd been too upset to really key in on that in their one encounter in the elevator. Jack looked tired, very tired. He had been lean, but now he was almost gaunt. "You're sick," he stated, flatly.
"Of you! Just leave -- both of you. You can take your beers with you. Never say I'm not a generous host." He didn't want them to go, but he was afraid. It was thick and black and palpable.
Sam took one of his hands and Daniel the other. Jack tried to pull his hands away but not as hard as he could have if he had meant his words. This man was still a fighting force to be reckoned with. Sam said softly, "Jack, we'll never be together as lovers but I do love you. We were a team for years and in my heart, we're still a team. You and me and Daniel and Teal'c. We faced death so many ways and we won because we didn't face it alone. Please don't shut us out."
"Okay," he said with a slight smile. "If you're going to refuse to go away and the two of you insist on sitting on top of me, let's move to the couch. This is just weird looking at Danny here amid the beer bottles. And I got to have a hand free. It's too hard to drink beer like this."
They relocated to the couch, one on each side of him. Sam took his hand again but Daniel laid his arm across the back of the couch just above his shoulders.
"We could have a three-way," Jack suggested, his face settled in its usual inscrutable lines.
"Give up on it, Jack. You're not scaring us off," Sam said laughing.
Jack sighed, closed his eyes, and dropped his head. The three sat for several minutes in a silence broken only by the swish of a car passing by outside and the ticking of an overloud clock that became increasingly irritating.
Daniel realized that there was something else that needed to be made plain. "Maybe you're afraid of being pitied. This thing has you running like physical danger never did because you're afraid of people putting you in another category with little kids and old people. You don't want people to treat you differently, keep things from you, make your decisions for you. Well, you should know I don't pity you. I'm too scared of you to pity you."
Jack snorted, "You're not afraid of me Daniel. Actually, I don't think you're afraid of much, not for yourself anyway." He picked up Daniel's full bottle from the coffee table and then Sam's and held them up, shaking his head. "You two are real party animals." He swapped his empty bottle for the second beer he'd brought out with him.
"Quit stalling," Daniel said.
"Maybe I should make you guess what the disease is," he said with a glint in his eye. "If you're right, I'll show you my medical records. If you're wrong, you get to fork over my copay."
"Maybe we should both jump you and pummel you into submission," Sam said.
"Okay, already. Here's the thing. It's the big C," Jack said.
Sam made a small gasping sound, "Could there be a mistake?" she asked but without any real hope.
"Nope. They took a lump out of my arm right after you told me you were married to Daniel. I had found out about it the week before. They thought they got it all and there wasn't any need for chemo or radiation. This time, there's going to have to be both. About four months for the entire chemo part. I decided I'd rather do it here in Colorado. The radiation treatments are just another month and I should be able to manage them after I return to duty."
"Did they give you any odds," Daniel asked.
"Not good ones." He bite his lip, "Really bad ones, actually. It's like the bookmakers are all cozying up to the cancer and I'm the underdog."
"Oh Jack," Sam said bereft, "Landry must have told you that the last time I tried to use the Goa'uld healer, it didn't work. It actually made things worse. Ever since I failed with Daniel…"
"He did. I was still thinking about asking you to try, but it seemed to make more sense to try the chemo and radiation first and only resort to the healing device if that fails. I also asked Landry about contacting the Asgard on my behalf. He told me how he'd already sent a message when the Ori popped up and so far there's been no answer."
"Right and now we can't turn to the Tok'ra either," Daniel said, dispiritedly, stating the obvious.
They all sat considering the perfectly good options not available to them. Then Sam said, "Were you planning on just crawling back to this condo and being really sick all by yourself after your treatments?"
"What else would you suggest?" Jack asked. "I don't want to hire some stranger. I'm not that into people you know."
Daniel said, impulsively, "We've got a guest room that only gets used once in a blue moon for Cassie. Stay with us, particularly if treatment makes you very sick at all."
Sam agreed immediately. She wasn't upset with Daniel for not checking with her. "Look, you'd be doing us a favor. It's a good half an hour drive over here and I don't want to be wasting time on it a couple of times a day." He gave her a funny look. "You don't think you could keep us away, do you?"
Daniel could tell Jack was feeling crowded. "We can talk about that later. I think it's time for a rip roaring game of miniature golf."
They both looked at Daniel with their mouths open. "I don't play golf," Jack said patiently. "I mean I have hit golf balls into the event horizon with Teal'c, but that's a really big hole compared to the cheesy things they give you on golf courses."
"When was that?" Sam asked, sure she would have noticed or heard about it.
"My little secret," Jack said. "Anyway, Daniel you have even less golfing experience than I do."
"Exactly. This gives us an even playing field, right? Nobody's any good at it," he explained.
"Hello. Probably because nobody gives a rat's ass," Jack said.
"It'll be fun," Daniel said enthusiastically. "Mitchell was telling me he and his girl friend went last weekend and had a blast. It'll get us out in the fresh air. No offense Jack, but your place has this definite stale beer aroma." Daniel stood up. "You want to drive or shall we?"
"Since I don't have the foggiest idea where a miniature golf course might be, that would be you."
Jack chuckled as they exited the condo and had to walk a block. "You really did thought I'd try to duck out or something didn't you?"
"You taught us to be prepared for anything in a combat situation," Daniel said.
As Sam was getting in the driver's seat, Jack raised his eyebrows. "It's her car, Jack," Daniel said, a trifle exasperated.
Jack caught Daniel's arm as Daniel grabbed the door handle. "You know, Daniel, I don't really think you're a girl although you are almost pretty enough."
"I know," Daniel said, batting his eyes at Jack comically, "but I'm already taken."
By the third hole at the miniature golf course, it was apparent that two highly trained Air Force officers and their heavily coached civilian companion were losing battles and well on their way to total defeat. Military preparedness was failing utterly. They were stymied by a windmill affair at an angle to the initial fairway that provided just a short window of opportunity to get between the revolving blades after you banked off the metal plate straight ahead of the its. A little boy and his sister came up behind them and shifted impatiently. Finally the boy asked, "Do you MIND if we play through?"
They stood back and watched as he and his sister three putted the hole. Daniel looked over at his wife's intent face. "No fair trying to calculate angular momentum or some such thing Sam. That IS what you're doing, right?"
She shrugged, a little embarrassed. "All that expensive training. Might as well use it huh?" She resumed her frowning.
"This is fraking embarrassing," Jack said.
"Fraking?" Daniel asked.
"Try to keep up with pop culture Daniel. It's what all the cool sci fi guys say now," Jack said smugly. "If we could just shoot the motor out, you know, that would solve it."
"I think they would frown on the use of a P90 in the middle of all these little kids," Daniel answered.
"Ya think?"
Sam said, "We have an incorrect basic premise here. We're a team. We're not playing this like a team. I'm going to going to see to it that the two of you get through then one of you has to come back for me." She rubbed her hands together and grabbed the windmill blade to slow it a moment. Daniel hit through. She grabbed it again for Jack. Then Jack returned the favor. They hi-fived. The little boy, just now finishing the hole in front of them said, "I'm reporting you."
"Hey, we let you play through didn't we?" Jack called after him. "No gratitude at all in the younger generation. It's a disgrace." The little sister stuck her tongue out at him and he reciprocated.
"Maybe we've sucked all the pleasure we're going to out of miniature golf," Sam said, steering Jack in the opposite direction from the little boy who was coming back their way with the manager. "Daniel was going to make this wonderful pasta thing he does. Why don't you come over for dinner?"
They were at the car now. "Sam, we've definitely smoked the peace pipe and I really appreciate the invitation for tonight and for during my chemo. But it's going to take some time for me to get used to being around the two of you as a couple and not having it gall me. I just stuck my tongue out at a little girl. I'd like to think that was some kind of response to strain. Let's do this in small steps. Maybe if I get really sick with the treatment, I'll break down and say yes to a little visit but I'm not there yet."
"Here's an idea. We talked about the team. You need to tell T. He should be part of this. How about we ask him to dinner, say Wednesday. Would you be willing to come?" Daniel invited.
"If you promise me Teal'c is absolutely the last person you're going to speak one word to about this."
After they came home, Sam said, "We didn't ask him if he would be in our wedding party. I guess it's too early."
"Definitely, but I never thought we'd get this far. We've got a powerful tool in what we can sense now. What's been running through my mind is a mental image of someone from NID with this power. It makes my blood run cold. We may never be able to tell anyone about this."
"You know what," Sam said. "I just had an intriguing thought. We're like superheroes sort of with special powers. We should have our special superhero costumes. I've already designed yours in my head. It starts with the…"
Daniel put his hand over her mouth, "Enough about the black leather pants. And wait until you see, Colonel Doctor Carter-Jackson, what your superhero costume looks like."
"Oh really?" she asked very interested. "One thing though. It had better not involve a thong because those things are REALLLLY uncomfortable."
"I hadn't really thought about a thong but now that you mention it…"
Suddenly she grabbed his hand, flipped him over her shoulder onto his back, and was sitting straddling him. "
"Say that again," she said.
Instead of answering, he initiated a series of moves that ended with her pinned under him. "Thong," he whispered in her ear.
"Whatever you say," she cooed and pulled his head down into an enthusiastic kiss.
Their first day as empaths at an end, they were not, on balance, unhappy.