A/N: I promise that Jacob will come around eventually. But before that... there's this. Also, I got bored while editing this one, and I wrote it. So I cut up the big conversation/fight and skipped to the most important parts. Believe me, it's a lot easier and more fun to read this way. I hope it doesn't confuse anybody - just think of the breaks as scene changes and it should make sense.

Ch 34

Jack snatched up his phone quickly as soon as it rang. He was so bored with his paperwork that whatever it was, he was sure it would be better than doing what he was supposed to be doing. "Hello, you've reached Colonel O'Neill's office, also known as Mount Paperwork-more, the black hole of the SGC where time expands and paperwork will bury you alive, the place where…"

"Colonel O'Neill, I'd like to see you in my office," Hammond interrupted in a very serious tone.

"The place where memos go to die…"

"NOW, Colonel."

"Sorry, sir. I'm on my way."

As Jack headed up to the General's office, he wasn't sure if he'd been granted a reprieve or not - Hammond sounded very serious. Since there hadn't been any incoming wormholes, Jack knew there wasn't an off-world related emergency, so he didn't know what to expect.

He knocked on the door frame. Hammond was at his desk. "Colonel, please have a seat." Jack entered, feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable without the rest of his team there with him.

Jacob Carter was sitting in one of the chairs facing Hammond's desk. "Jacob? Everything… okay?"

"Sit, Colonel," Hammond repeated. Jack sat down carefully, looking back and forth between the two men. "First, let me say that this is not an official investigation."

"Um, okay."

"Yet."

"I'm being investigated? For what?"

"You're not being investigated."

"You're investigating investigating me, though?"

"I wouldn't put it like that, but I suppose you can."

"For what? Sir?"

"Your relationship with Major Carter has… raised some questions."

Jack turned to Jacob. He knew the guy had been grumpy and had started to figure out why, but he certainly wasn't expecting him to take such a serious action as to report them to Hammond.

"Shouldn't Carter be here for this?" Jack asked.

"We're not making any formal accusations against either of you at this time, Jack," Hammond said, his tone and expression showing that while he was taking Jacob's concern seriously, he also really didn't want to have to be doing this.

"Still… I mean… she should be here." If for no other reason than the fact that she'd say all kinds of things to her father that Jack wouldn't dare, he thought.

"That may very well be the next step, Colonel, but for the moment we just want to talk to you. Get comfortable. This could take a while."

As Jack fiddled with his cuffs, he couldn't help but think that he'd never longed for an office overstuffed with paperwork so much in his whole life.

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"How-come you stopped dwiving?" Danny called from the backseat.

Sam sighed as she rummaged for her wallet. "Because the nice police officer would be very upset if I hadn't."

"Wow, wook at all dose wights, Sam! Wook! Bwue and wed!"

"Yeah, lovely," Sam muttered, rolling down her window as the traffic officer that pulled her over approached.

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"… Are you now or have you ever had an inappropriate physical relationship with Major Carter?"

"No sir," Jack said immediately, glad that Hammond had specifically said 'physical.' Leaving the word out or asking about feelings would have required lots of rationalizing or hedging around the truth, or just flat-out lying. He recognized that Hammond was being deliberate in his word choice and was grateful for small favors.

"Thank you, Colonel. I think that answers all our questions."

"Oh come on, George, what about the phone call I overheard?" Jacob objected.

"All right, Jake, calm down. Colonel O'Neill, did you and Major Carter share a bed last night?"

Jack groaned. "Okay, technically, yes, but…"

Hammond sighed. "Jack, what the hell were you think…"

"Nothing, sir, it was an accident and nothing happened, I swear. Daniel was between us and…"

"All right. Take it from the top, Colonel. Jacob, hold all responses until he's finished."

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Sam sighed with relief as she rolled up her window. Putting on quite an impressive "I'm so distracted and frazzled with a toddler in the backseat, please, please give me a break" act, she'd managed to get off with a warning - no speeding ticket. This time. Being in a car not licensed to herself had raised some questions, but her Air Force credentials - and imitating Danny's helpless puppy look - had been enough to convince the officer that she was driving a friend and fellow officer's car.

She turned to Daniel and said, "You did not see that." He gave her a confused look. "All right, you saw it. But we don't need to mention it to anybody, right?"

"Why?"

"Because… it'll be more fun if we keep it just as a secret between you and me, right?"

"Why?"

"It just…" It occurred to Sam that the more she talked about it the more he might want to tell someone else - specifically Jack - about it. So she decided to drop it, distract him as much as possible, and hope for the best. Rummaging in the diaper bag, she pulled out one of the remaining cookies and offered it to him with a big smile. "Hey, Danny, want a cookie?"

"Yeah cookie gimme cookie!" He strained forward in his car seat.

"Remember, no telling Jack about meeting the nice police man, okay?"

"Cookie! Sam cookie!"

She handed it to him, smiling when he took a huge bite. "There. Hopefully that'll work," she said to herself as she started the truck again. "After that lead foot remark, if Jack finds out about this he'll never let me live it down."

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"So, you expect me to believe that two adults used to going without sleep for long periods of time in the field couldn't outlast a two and a half year old boy?" Jacob asked skeptically.

"Yup."

"And you just happened to be washing the sheets on your spare bed in the middle of the night?"

"As I already told you, Danny knocked over a cup of coffee I had when Teal'c and I were trying to get him to go to sleep in the guest room. Speaking of which, if you're going to be upset about team members being in the same bed, Teal'c, Daniel, and I were all on that one at the same time, and I guess you want to lodge a complaint against Daniel too, he's been sleeping with Carter for days."

"Don't be ridiculous, he's a toddler."

"My point exactly. Apart from all the Air Force regulations we would never break, if you really think either of us is the sort of person to get up to anything inappropriate with a two year old between us, then we've all got a lot bigger problems than the ones you're trying to cause right now, Jacob."

"I'm not trying to cause problems, I'm trying to protect my daughter!"

Jack snapped. Here they had both been doing the best they could with a difficult situation, and now he was being accused of everything he'd been so careful to avoid. "From what, exactly? Whatever it is, I'm sure she doesn't need it!"

"The hell she doesn't. Maybe you're both just a little too wrapped up in playing house to notice at the moment, Jack, but your careers aren't your own to throw away. Making selfish decisions will not only ruin her career but could put the future of the Stargate program and even the safety of the planet at…"

"Selfish decisions? What the hell are you talking about, Jacob? Every single thing I do is…" He stopped abruptly, interrupting himself. "Look. You're the only one being selfish here, causing problems when things were going just fine until you showed up and started making baseless accusations!"

"Baseless? You call all the stuff I've seen and heard baseless? You were sleeping together!"

"We fell asleep with an entire person between us, for cryin out loud!" Jack countered hotly. "For God's sake, Jacob, there's less space between any two soldiers who've ever shared a tent off-world, which means she's slept closer to me, Daniel, and Teal'c before and it's never been an issue. Just because it was at my house, on a bed, you've got to try to make a huge deal about it."

"Because it is a big deal, Jack! And the fact that neither of you seem to notice or care how much all of this has affected you is an even bigger deal!"

"The only person making anything into a big deal here is you! If you're so concerned about your daughter's career as you claim to be, why the hell are you attacking her reputation and trying to trump up phony charges against her?"

"I'm not trumping up phony charges, I'm registering a legitimate concern…"

"That's bullshit, Jacob, and you know it."

"Gentleman!" General Hammond interrupted, getting to his feet as well, sternly pointing each irate man back into his own seat. "Sit down. I think we've all got a little off track here. Let's all just take a few minutes and calm down before we proceed." They sat down slowly, still glaring daggers at each other.

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After being pulled over, Sam was understandably a little irked as she let them into Jack's house. Danny ran inside ahead of her as she set her things down by the door and flipped on the lights. She stared at the living room in total disbelief - the place was an absolute disaster. "Holy crap."

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Sergeant Harriman interrupted the meeting, standing nervously in the door. "What is it, Sergeant?" Hammond asked. Walter looked at Jacob and Jack and swallowed nervously - they both looked dangerously close to exploding. "Sorry to interrupt, sir. Major Carter's on the phone for Colonel O'Neill."

"She's barely had time to get to your house," Hammond remarked as he picked up the phone and offered it to Jack. "I hope nothing's wrong."

"Oh God," Jack said, realizing that his entire house was basically still torn apart, as it had been in the frantic search for Toppy earlier. He winced and reached for the phone gingerly. "Hey, Carter."

"What happened here? It looks like your house was hit by a tornado!"

"I know. I'm sorry, I forgot. We had already made the fort in the living room and then we were looking for the damn dinosaur so… just leave it, I'll clean it up later. If I get out of here alive."

"What? What's wrong?"

"I'm… it's nothing. I was just joking. You know me and paperwork."

She laughed and said, "Okay, I'll make sure Teal'c checks on you every once in a while to make sure you're not buried under a stack of old memos."

"Funny. Very funny. Bye."

He handed the phone back to General Hammond who, for his part, couldn't help thinking that Jacob had a fair point - that phone call at least had sounded much more like a friendly spousal skirmish than anything CO/2IC related. Still, feelings were one thing. The fact that his 2IC and his 2IC had a whole lot more between them than most people wasn't exactly a newsflash to him.

And, despite everything that had happened in the past few days, he still trusted them not to do anything against official Air Force regulations, and he had to give Jack credit for not filling Sam in on their little meeting. Hammond knew her well enough to know that she would not be pleased with her father, and the resulting phone call would most likely keep them all in there for some time. Sensing that the phone call had only served to rile Jacob up again - and Hammond, with Selmak's help, had been doing an adequate job at diffusing the situation up till now, George decided it would be wise to end this meeting, now.

"Well, thank you for clearing this matter up for us, Colonel," Hammond said, shuffling the papers on his desk quickly. "You're free to go."

"Thank you, sir," Jack said, trying not to look as though he was bolting for the door, when for all intents and purposes, that was exactly what he was doing. He stopped in the doorway and said, "Um, sir, I really shouldn't be penalized for being unable to finish my paperwork on time today, should I? Since I was in this meeting for so long and all…"

Hammond gave a long-suffering sigh and said, "Just… do as much as you can before five. Now get out of here."

"Yes, sir." He couldn't resist ruffling Jacob's feathers just a little bit more, figuring the guy had it coming after stirring up so much trouble. "Jacob, always a pleasure," he said with a winning smile and mock salute on his way out the door.

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