You're A Rarity
Cam pinched the bridge of his nose as he stood in line in the mess hall, waiting for freshly made coffee. It was apparently a tired day in Stargate Command because the line was very long and very slow. He was considering asking for the environmental crew to do a check of the ventilation systems, make sure everyone was getting enough oxygen, and he was hoping Dr. Lee's robots from P3Q-712 weren't silently taking over the base with sleeping gas.
"You're Colonel Mitchell," the young airman, her nametag read Rivera, standing in front of him suddenly exclaimed. "You're in command. And a colonel. We should let you…"
He put one finger over his lips to silence her, hoping he wouldn't have to make it an order. "Please don't announce to everyone that I should skip the line," he said in a low voice to keep her attention. "I can wait."
"But we're just airmen," she said, gesturing at her friends in line ahead of her. "You're a colonel."
"Everyone in the Air Force is an airman," he said with a shrug, "from generals to airmen basic. There's enough coffee for all of us. Don't worry about it, Airman Rivera. What department do you work in?"
"I've only been here a week, sir, and I'm not sure where I'll end up but I've been working in Sergeant Siler's workshop."
"And do you like it? He's kind of legendary for his workplace injuries so I hope you haven't been injured too."
She said she hadn't, and that she loved working under him.
Her friends had noticed who she was talking to and, after a confused minute of refusing to cut them in line too, Cam talked to them about where they worked in Cheyenne Mountain and how they liked it. By the time he got his coffee, he was more tired but felt better about things as he told them to keep up the good work.
"You're good at that," a familiar voice said from behind him.
He turned to face Carolyn and squinted in confusion. "Good at what?"
"Making the people under your command feel important." She accepted her own mug of hot water from the airman behind the counter and let him lead the way to the condiment bar where the creamers, sweeteners, and teas were kept. "I was watching you talk to them from over there and they passed me on their way out. They were talking about how cool it was that you wouldn't skip the line and that you asked about them. Apparently you're a rarity among your kind."
Cam made a face as he stirred what probably counted as too much sugar into his coffee, but he'd decided that the caffeine hit needed a sugar boost before he fell asleep and drooled on the pile of reports on his temporary desk. "They get moved around a lot, but that's no reason they can't be acknowledged. Anyway, Dr. Lam, I did see on a schedule, which I think I've since misplaced, that the CMO is supposed to give me the twice-weekly medical report so… that's not on your schedule for now, is it?"
She snapped a plastic lid on her tea so it wouldn't spill and nodded. "In half an hour. I was just going to drink my tea first. To be clear, I usually do come to the command office for it."
"Switch it to yours and start now with taking a break together?"
Carolyn agreed to that, waiting while he used the intercom line in the mess hall to contact his secretary and tell her where he'd be. She hid a laugh behind her cup when he added that any unannounced people at his office could be funneled through Daniel's office. "How long do you think these reports usually take?" she asked as they got on the elevator.
"Hopefully a very long time," he laughed. "I'm tired and I need a break."
"I did drop off your library books," she said, blowing on her tea through the little air hole in the lid once the doors closed before anyone else got on. "I even took them to the desk to make sure they got scanned back in and… maybe you'll be proud of me for this, I got a library card while I was there. I didn't check out anything because I didn't have time to figure things out but… I'm a member now."
"I am proud of you for that," he grinned. "I like libraries, they're very relaxing. Don't tell Jackson I said that. I'll never hear the end of it."
Carolyn promised his secret was safe with her. "Maybe you can show me all the secrets sometime. I haven't used a library regularly for relaxation since college."
"I can do that. Next time we have the same day off?"
"It's a date." Carolyn wished a little that the floor would swallow her up after saying that but settled for the rescue of the doors opening to let on two other SGC staff.
Cam left the infirmary two hours later, having drawn out the report until Sergeant Siler came in with singed skin all down the left side of his face. Airman Rivera had accompanied him and she still looked thrilled to be there despite the injury to her boss, more so when Cam asked her about what sort of accident caused the injury. Actually leaving after that, he made a beeline for Daniel's lab.
"I have a few minutes before my next briefing and if Landry's aide sees me early, he'll remember something I'm supposed to do," he said to explain his sudden appearance after Daniel almost knocked over a stack of books.
"Aw, and did Dr. Lam actually want to do her work?" Daniel said with a smirk.
"Siler managed to singe half his face," Cam sighed, allowing himself to wonder if Carolyn wouldn't have dawdled longer over her tea had Siler not shown up. "She kind of had to do her work, didn't she?"
"Too bad. For me too, since now you're here bothering me."
He rolled his eyes and sat down on a stool beside the lab table. "I haven't done anything to bother you."
Daniel reached over and plucked the brittle comb Cam was examining out of his hands. "Do you know what this is?"
"A comb?" he guessed.
"A bone comb," he clarified.
"So? Didn't they use whalebones and antlers to make combs?"
"They did, and I'm impressed that you know that. But this comb was found at a sacrificial temple in Guatemala. It's made out of human femur."
Cam gave an involuntary shiver. "You act like it's bad that I touched it but you've got it lying on your lab table like a paperweight."
Daniel put it back on the stack of papers it had, in fact, been holding down. "Just a fact I thought you'd appreciate," he said with a shrug.
He leaned back on the stool, spinning it with one foot until he'd gone around three times and faced Daniel again. "And you're trying to keep me from touching your stuff."
He let that go unanswered and went back to what he had been doing, testing the pens in the cup on his desk to see which ones to throw away and which still worked. It was not the most important thing he could've been doing but it needed done and if Cam could spend time hidden away with Carolyn before hiding in his office, Daniel gave himself a pass on doing something useful. "You know, I never thought I'd be bored enough to wish we were going off-world to have a firefight."
Cam picked up the bone comb again and jabbed it in Daniel's general direction. "Don't tempt fate and bring that on, alright? Just keep those 'it's too quiet' thoughts to yourself while I'm in command."
"I was talking to Jack this morning. He said the IOA and the Air Force want SG-1 to attend a holiday party in D.C. next month. For funding reasons, it would seem to be non-negotiable."
"Why us?" he muttered under his breath.
Daniel shrugged. "The price of being the best? I don't know. Anyway, he said he'll have Walter send along the details."
"Are we the best or do we just get in the most trouble?"
"Aren't they the same thing?" he asked with a smirk.
Cam agreed that they were and got reluctantly to his feet. "Alright, I'd better get back to work. You keep up the good work… doodling or whatever the hell it is you're doing."
Daniel flashed him a thumbs up.
Carolyn went to the mess hall not long before it shifted from serving hot dinner to only serving grab-and-go sandwiches and salads. She tried to miss the meal rush sometimes, because it was awkward sometimes to eat with people she'd seen in varying states of undress and distress as their doctor, but it was also kind of lonely. Two of her staff had come back talking about the surprisingly delicious open-faced turkey sandwich, though, and she couldn't resist. Not sure where she'd eat it, she turned away from the serving stations and tried to make a split-second decision.
Vala appeared suddenly at her elbow. "Please sit with us. I do love testosterone, of course, but the more girls the better. And also," she said, dropping her voice to a whisper as she steered Carolyn toward the corner table where the rest of SG-1 sat, "Cameron's face lit up when you walked in."
She thought she was entirely too old for her face to feel as flushed as it did just then.
With his legendary nonchalance, Teal'c immediately got up and retrieved a fifth chair from an empty table nearby, setting it at the head of the table before gesturing toward the one he'd vacated beside Cam. "Dr. Lam, please."
Carolyn gave the fifth chair a pointed look.
Teal'c sat down.
"I hate you all," Cam muttered as Daniel pretended to be coughing when he was in fact laughing. He shot Carolyn a weary smile when she sat down beside him and mouthed 'not you' at her while Vala was busy stealing the whipped cream off Daniel's pie.
Thievery completed, Vala looked up at her companions. "So Carolyn, you know about these things better than the boys and I suspect that Daniel will be more comfortable if I was influenced by you so… will you go shopping with me? SG-1 has to go to fancy parties in Washington, D.C. or something next month and I have no idea what's appropriate."
Trying to hide her relief that someone she actually counted as a friend was going, she swallowed a forkful of admittedly good turkey and potatoes and nodded. "Sure. I'm supposed to go on that trip so I need to shop too."
"Fabulous!" she exclaimed, getting a faraway look in her eyes as she thought about shopping. "Do you feel better now, Daniel, that I'll be shopping with supervision?"
Daniel took the opportunity of her distraction to steal back his whipped cream, and hers. "Yes. And it's especially good because now I don't have to go with you."
"Do you two just want a vat of whipped cream each or something?" Cam blurted out, vaguely distracted by their antics.
"That sounds awfully naughty, Colonel Mitchell," Vala grinned, "though perhaps you're thinking more of yourself than us."
"Dial the gate. Time to launch you onto some blacklisted planet. Command decision."
Teal'c shook his head. "That would not be wise. It is likely that Vala Mal Doran has more 'friends' on the planets the Tau'ri have blacklisted and that would make her an ideal target to use against Earth."
"Besides, Daniel wouldn't let you do that," Vala said with an overdramatic pout, thinking it best not to argue with Teal'c's unfortunately valid point. "Would you, Daniel?"
He slowly chewed a bit of apple pie and shrugged. "Maybe. It depends."
Cam and Carolyn laughed together at the scowl she gave him and the smile she got in return.
Carolyn ended up relaxing more than she usually did during meals in the mess hall, laughing and talking and teasing as they lingered over their empty plates. She knew that the food service staff liked to clean up fairly quickly after meals and she got the idea that they hesitated to collect the plates, probably because they knew Cam was in command and because even the longest serving staff at SGC was in some kind of awe of SG-1. She wondered if they, SG-1, knew how people saw them. She'd overheard Sergeant Siler telling a group of new arrivals that you never question SG-1 because nothing exists without them and because 'you let your heroes do what they need to do.'
They'd made a family in the larger ecosystem of Stargate Command and, through slow-developing friendships with Teal'c, Vala and Daniel… and whatever was happening between her and Cam, she was finally starting to feel like she fit somewhere. Even though she worried she was being presumptuous thinking of herself as part of it.
Vala linked her arm through Carolyn's as they got up to leave the mess hall. "Want to come watch RuPaul's Drag Race in my quarters and make shopping plans?"
"Sounds fun, I just need to let the infirmary know where I'll be."
Cam waved to her as he stepped back to let them pass. "See you in the morning, Dr. Lam."
"Goodnight, Colonel Mitchell," she said in reply.
"So awkwardly formal," Vala giggled, "it's adorable and a sign of true love if you ask me."
Daniel and Teal'c laughed out loud when Cam and Carolyn shouted her name in unison.