"Is this a new form of meditation like Tai Kwan-Do?" a deep voice asked from the doorway.
Daniel hypothesized that he hadn't sensed Teal'c's presence because he was almost at the back of the lab and Teal'c was just inside the door. Moderately embarrassed, he decided to immediately change the subject. "I'm glad you stopped by T. We want to ask you over to dinner on Wednesday. Jack's coming."
"If O'Neill is coming this, I do not understand. As I informed you, when I requested of O'Neill that he at least talk with you, he was most emphatic." Teal'c had tried to intercede after Daniel had shared with him his difficulties in getting Jack to take his calls. "I have not seen the cows skating home on the ice as of yet."
"It's rather amazing," Daniel agreed. "Sam is very pleased and so am I. Can you come?"
"I will be there with small musical devices attached to my person," Teal'c said in a polite tone of voice.
"That's wonderful," Daniel said. "Come hungry. I'm planning on making a lot of food."
"And I will bring Guinness."
"Thanks, Teal'c," Daniel said. Jaffa custom required that Teal'c show up with something. That something had become Guinness years before. Then Jack had become a less frequent part of their get togethers and the Guinness reserve grew in Sam and Daniel's individual refrigerators, but no one wanted to say anything to Teal'c.
As the morning wore on, Daniel missed Sam more and more. It was like this every day but, today, it seemed more acute. He had faint misgivings that their empathic abilities could turn out to be a little like the bracelets that had bound him to Vala. Misgivings or not, by 10:00, he ran out of self-discipline and went to her lab. It was crowded with several other scientists gathered around a piece of newly recovered Ancient technology. He smiled perfunctorily at everyone and pulled his wife out into the hall, mercifully empty at the moment.
"We've got to get better at this, Daniel. You wouldn't believe the amount of jealousy, arrogance, and smugness there is in that room from people I always thought were quite civil," Sam said with a shake of her head.
Daniel confined himself to a sympathetic look and inarticulate sound of agreement and pulled her along the corridor to a sort of janitorial closet he had scouted before going to her lab. He had been afraid her place would be as full of colleagues as his was at the moment and he really needed to be in private with her. He waited until the hall was empty again and then yanked the closet door open, pulled her inside with him, and closed the door. "What a relief. I can't feel anyone but you," he breathed.
"It's bad, isn't it?"
"Sam, it's horrible. People I thought were friendly hate me or each other or they're miserably unhappy about something. Not everyone and not to the same degree, but if I can't learn to dial this down, I just don't know. I faked a cold so I could stay yards away from people most of the time and avoid sensing their feelings."
Daniel couldn't see her at all. The closet defined pitch black. He could smell her, a clean smell with a little lemon thrown in, maybe from her shampoo. He could feel her lithe body against him, the skin soft, but the body firm except where she pressed against his chest. He could sense her beginning to desire him and his own need for her grew immediately. "Oh, Sam, if you weren't in this with me, I don't know what I'd do."
She ran her hands up his arms to find his face and pulled his head down to her. They began to kiss and were swamped with each other's sensations. That was when the door was jerked open and they broke apart to see Cam Mitchell and Dr. Carolyn Lam framed against the corridor light. "Good morning all," Cam said. He tried half-heartedly to suppress his laughter, but burst into a huge guffaw within moments.
Daniel couldn't resist Cam's good humor. He smiled back. "My wife and I were mostly done with our inventory of the cleaning supplies and would be glad to allow the two of you to take over. I think all that was left was checking out the Lysol."
He towed Sam out of the closet. She was blushing and laughing at the same time as was Carolyn. Cam said, "We had a make out closet in high school, but it wasn't half this nice."
Carolyn said, "There was the darkroom – I was on the yearbook staff – but it reeked."
Sam and Daniel exchanged glances. Sam said, "Two little geeks here. I didn't even know about make out closets. You?" she asked Daniel.
"I don't think I kissed anyone anywhere, in or out of a closet, in high school," Daniel laughed.
"My handsome late bloomer," Sam said and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
They stood there for a moment before General Landry's voice came from behind them. "Have we had some sort of spill or something?"
"No, sir," Cam answered. "We were all just curious about what was in here."
Landry looked at the four faces. Sam was blushing. Daniel looked like he had a little lipstick on the corner of his mouth. Mitchell and his daughter both looked strained, struggling to master their expressions. "Carry on," he finally said and strolled away.
As soon as he was truly around the corner, they all burst out in laughter. "We certainly can't keep meeting like this," Cam said.
Daniel was finding it therapeutic to take refuge in cooking and went all out to prepare for Wednesday's dinner. The emotional drain at the Mountain wasn't letting up. He had discovered that most of the time, Mitchell was something like an aspirin. He'd go hang out with him for a short time and the man's good nature and lack of an agenda served as a restorative.
Sam was considerably tenser than Daniel at this point. Carolyn and Sam had had lunch together Monday and Tuesday to discuss the wedding festivities, recruiting their friend, Bay, to help the second day. There was now an impressive checklist of activities that the women had divided between themselves to prepare for the renewal of vows ceremony and reception. The cost for all this planning efficiency was Sam soaking up a couple of healthy doses of Carolyn's suppressed trauma with respect to marriage. "For Cam's sake, hers, and my own," Sam had sighed to him, "I've got to help that woman get rid of her demons."
"My sake too, honey," Daniel reminded her. "If you're unhappy than so am I, now more than ever."
As fallout from the wedding planning, Daniel had discovered he suddenly had a number of action items, most of which were fine with him, but he had balked at being asked to pick out a band for the reception. "Sam, that's on the extravagant side, isn't it?" he asked when they discussed it Tuesday evening.
"I've got some money from Dad's estate. I want this to be special. It's the only wedding I'm going to have." Sam narrowed her eyes at him. "It's not the money Daniel. Come clean."
"Okay. I can't dance. I seriously doubt whether I have any rhythm. I get in trouble trying to clap along when people start doing that in time to music."
"It's not lack of coordination or grace, Daniel," she said. She crossed the kitchen to him, slid her arms around his waist and nuzzled his neck. "It's a beautiful thing watching you fight and you have real panache when you fire a P90."
He looked at her quizzically. "Is this typical military love talk?"
"We military types don't like to waste a lot of time on talk," she corrected him. She kissed him intimately and rubbed against him. He picked her up, set her on the counter, and proceeded to show that he knew how to not talk as well.
He had hoped that was the end of the dancing discussion but the last thing she said to him, just as he was falling asleep, was "Think dancing lessons." Daniel had a strange dream in which there was a little creature pirouetting all over the room in a tutu. It informed him that its name was Dangermouse and the two of them were going to learn to dance the Macarena together. He woke up in a cold sweat which meant Sam awakened as well. He pulled her into a warm embrace and drifted back off to sleep mumbling, "Don't want to dance with rodents."
Wednesday evening, Teal'c arrived punctually with the promised Guinness. "Things smell quite good DanielJackson," he said, sniffing the air appreciatively. Daniel waved him toward the appetizers and took his drink order. Things were quite pleasant for awhile, but as the minutes ticked away and the appetizers dwindled, there was still no Jack.
"I warned you about the cows who are not skating," Teal'c said gravely.
The doorbell rang and Daniel jumped up, gave Teal'c a "see?" look and went to the door. It was an unapologetic Jack who thrust a bottle of wine at Daniel and entered to greet Teal'c enthusiastically. The meal came off without a hitch, but the conversation was about nothing in particular. Daniel and Sam served Baked Alaska and coffee for dessert. Even when there were just little puddles of ice cream and crumbs of cakes left on their plates, there had still been nothing important discussed. Daniel looked at Sam and she gave him a tiny nod.
"Sam and I would like to talk with both of you about a sort of second wedding and reception we're doing. It's tentatively scheduled in three months. Mitchell and Teal'c were our only close friends at the first one and it was, well, not close to what Sam had always dreamed about."
Sam took over. "We wanted to ask both of you to consider being part of the wedding party as groomsmen." Daniel and Sam had talked about asking Jack one on one but had concluded that it was important for all of them that he did this and they needed to work every angle they could to give him no chance but to say yes.
"I am greatly honored. Will I be able to wear a hat?" Teal'c asked. Sam and Daniel nodded. "If so, I accept."
Jack was still gawking at both of them. "Did I not say something about little steps? Getting used to you two in little steps?"
"You have three months, Jack. You could walk to Denver by then." Daniel said, mildly. He could tell that Jack was very conflicted but there was definitely great pleasure at the invitation.
"Let me think about it, okay?" Jack leaned back. "You know, Sara and I did the same thing, had a second ceremony with a reception."
"Really? How did that come to pass?" Daniel asked. He was fascinated by the emotions surfacing in Jack's mind.
"We were engaged, I was going through training for special ops, and we had a wedding all planned for two weeks after the end of my training. Then they decided to deploy us early. We drove to Vegas and got married in a wedding chapel with just Hank Landry and his ex-wife as witnesses. So after I came back, she wanted the whole enchilada. We had a band at the reception, the whole thing. We were actually a pretty good pair on the dance floor."
Sam said, "Daniel and I really need dance lessons. I want a band at our reception and neither one of us can dance really." Daniel sensed there was more going on in her mind than the question alone suggested. He appreciated her little lie to make it less like he was some hopeless geek holding her back. "It's really embarrassing to think about going to some class somewhere. Anyway it might be kind of hard to work into our schedule."
Jack said, "I'd teach you, but we'd need a woman who can dance too." They all considered the problem.
"We could ask around," Daniel said. "Say, to get back to what we were talking about before, I'm curious, are you still in touch with Sara?"
"Some years I get Christmas cards which is how I know she moved here. Strangest thing but I actually thought I saw her at a 7-11 a month ago. Then yesterday, when I was on the highway, I was almost positive she went by in a car.
"Maybe you should give her a call sometime," Daniel suggested. That got a very interesting reaction emotionally and no expression at all on the surface.
Sam refilled everyone's coffee and they chatted further about the wedding plans. Sam and Daniel began giving Jack very pointed looks which he studiously ignored. At last Teal'c said, "If you do not tell me what is going on, I will have to come to my own conclusions."
"T?" Jack said.
"They keep looking at you as if you are supposed to say something but you do not," was Teal'c's implacable response.
"What conclusion would you be coming to on our own?" Jack asked.
"I was considering the possibility that you have decided that you are a woman trapped in a man's body and you are having a sex change operation."
Teal'c deliberately provocative answer caused Jack to spew coffee and Daniel and Sam to explode in laughter. After some mopping up of the coffee and glaring by Jack, they all settled back into their places and just looked at each other.
"Okay, okay," Jack said, begrudgingly. "I have cancer related to a lump in my arm. It's been removed but I am going to need four months of chemotherapy followed by a month or so of radiation treatments."
"I feared that you were ill, O'Neill," Teal'c said. "This is not as bad as my worst fears. There is a treatment that has a chance of curing you. I was afraid that you would be under a death sentence."
Jack was clearly surprised. "What made you think I was ill?"
"Many things, but most of all the way you were acting toward your friends," Teal'c responded. Jack ducked his head, acknowledging the gentle chiding.
"You know that we are all here with you in this fight," Teal'c continued. He stood and went around the table. Jack stood in response and Teal'c hugged him. Sam and Daniel were on their feet too. They joined in embracing Jack. The team was together again and, for once, Jack let himself be loved.