A/N: As always, thanks for the reviews.


Chapter 8 - Peachy

The next morning the rain was gone and they quietly made their way back to where they thought the gate might be. There was still a slight tension ebbing at the corners of their minds from the night before, but over the past 8 years, they'd both become experts at hiding their feelings and pretending things hadn't happened. The rain over night had put the fires from the day before out, but now the crater was just a big pit of mud.

"Peachy."

O'Neill had to chuckle at his 2IC's assessment – she had said the exact thing he was about to just as he had opened his mouth to say it. "Well, it might make it a bit easier to move some of the dirt out of the way."

They found a couple of almost flat pieces of metal among some of the debris, which they started to use as small shovels. The mud was soft enough that they could scoop it away fairly easily with their improvised tools. After working for a few hours on the hillside they thought might hold their ticket home, O'Neill got a little too carried away flinging away one of his scoopfuls of mud and splattered some on Carter. It wasn't much, just about a handful of muck hit her in the shoulder and splattered a bit on her face, but she glared at him just the same.

"Oops. Sorry Carter." the sheepish response was immediate. He quickly turned back to the mud at his feet before she could see the grin he couldn't hold back.

After about 20 seconds of furiously digging at the mud, trying to avoid the face he was sure she was making at him, he was caught completely off guard when he felt a much larger scoop of mud splash across his back.

"Oops."

He slowly turned around. Big blue eyes looked at him innocently. "Sorry sir. The mud's a little slippery, I lost the grip on my shovel for a second there." He had to hand it to her – she managed to keep from smiling as she said it.

"It's ok, Carter, things like that happen sometimes." He turned away with a smirk that made her realize just what a mistake she had just made.

As soon as she turned back to her work – Splat! A huge clump of mud found it's way across her upper back. As she turned to protest, a smaller blob hit her in the stomach. Not expecting the double attack, she took a half-step backwards, slipped and fell, immersing her entire backside in the goop.

O'Neill was doubled over, howling with laughter. She just lay there in shock as he tried to talk around big gasping breaths. "Sorr... Car..." Another fit of laughter took control. "Dint mean..." He slapped his thigh and pointed at her. "Can't believe... fell..."

After a couple of minutes he was finally able to get control of his laughter and breathing. Seeing that she was still sitting in the muck, glaring at him, he knew his choices were either, A. Run like hell before she got up and killed him, or B. Try to make amends and start by helping her up. He looked at her again. She had her 'Don't fuck with me, I can take out a platoon of Jaffa by myself today' look she tended to get once a month – the look that he'd even seen Teal'c cringe at once or twice. He swallowed hard and felt his knees go weak, oh yeah, he was in trouble. Seeing as option A. would mean he would probably have to remain in hiding until they were rescued, he didn't think that was the way to go. He screwed up his courage, walked over and reached out his hand for her.

He braced himself in case she tried to pull him down into the mud with her, but that would have been cliché and deep down, he knew Carter was above that sort of thing. She graciously accepted his hand and carefully regained her footing. As soon as she was standing and he had let go of her hand, her other hand immediately came up and smeared a concealed blob of the muck over his face. He was so caught off guard that the slight push she gave as she did it caused him to slip. He instinctively reached out and grabbed her as he went down, bringing her with him. Yeah, stupid clichés – no matter how much he hated them, they always reared their ugly head. They both burst out laughing, getting rid of any trace of discomfort that might have still been hanging around since the previous night.

After calming down and catching their breath, they managed to get up and tried to wipe away the bigger clumps of mud, but it was no use, they were both covered from head to toe, the sticky muck seeping into places they really didn't want to think about. And with the sun high in the sky, they were going to just keep getting more uncomfortable as they dried. In their scouting trip yesterday, they had found a small lake just past the opposite side of the clearing that the crater was in. They headed over there to try to clean up. After scanning the area around the lake for any danger, O'Neill turned to Carter, "Hey, why don't you go first, I'll wait over behind those boulders and give you some privacy. Keep your radio nearby."

"Thank you, sir." She wasn't about to object, it was, after all, his fault they were in their present state.

Luckily, her clothes from yesterday had dried by the fire and she had them in her pack, so she was able to clean up and get more comfortable. After she was finished she went to retrieve the General to let him know he could get cleaned up.

As she rounded the boulder, she saw him looking in the sky over the tall hills to the west with his binoculars. "Anything interesting, sir?"

"Weird looking bird out there – take a look." He tossed her the binoculars. She spent some time looking at the creature. It was pretty far away and even with the magnification, it was hard to see it with the glare of the sun starting to get in the way.

He continued, "It's a big, honkin' thing and looks almost like it's got four legs."

She continued to look some more. "It does look like that's the case. Of course, we are on a different planet, so the evolutionary process here could make it possible. Just because we haven't seen a four-legged bird before doesn't mean they couldn't exist."

O'Neill got up and headed to the lake to go wash himself off. After a few minutes, Carter remembered she'd left her radio on a rock jutting out into the lake and started to head back to get it before he started his bath, but stopped in her tracks.

She stood there motionless, gaping at the site before her, relieved that he didn't realize she was watching him. He had already stripped off his muddy clothes and was washing them out in the water, completely naked at this point. With his left side to her, she could revel in his well toned profile, thoroughly and unabashedly enjoying the view. She thought to herself, 'Sweet!' Then she shook her head at that statement she had picked up from him and started yet another conversation with herself, 'You've been hanging around him far too long, for crying out loud.'

'No, ya think?'

'Doh!'

'Yeah, definitely too long.'