Am I Blue?

"So, Carter." O'Neill watched her from across the table. They had been in the commissary for around fifteen minutes, and he was curious about something.

"Yes, sir?" She paused, her spoon midway to her mouth.

"Why blue?"

She looked down at her green BDUs, and then back up at him. Her eyes narrowed in confusion. "Why blue what?"

"Jell-O." He motioned with his fork towards her spoon. "Why do you always eat blue Jell-O?"

"I don't always eat blue Jell-O."

"Yeah, you do."

"No I don't." She looked down at the parfait dish on her tray, scowling. "Do I?"

Teal'c looked over at her from the virtual buffet on his tray. He nodded slightly, a faint smile on his lips. "You do indeed consume only gelatin that is azure in color, Major Carter."

"See?" O'Neill jerked his head toward the Jaffa. "Told ya."

Carter put down her spoon and glared at the Jell-O still left in the dish. "I don't know. I guess I didn't realize."

"So it's subconscious." The Colonel raised his eyebrows at her. "You eat subconscious Jell-O."

"Subconscious Jell-O." Sam tried to follow the Colonel's reasoning, a feat which was complicated by the fact that the Colonel didn't reason like normal people.

"Your Jell-O choice. Not knowing why you choose as you choose means you don't choose consciously, therefore, it's subconscious."

"No, I choose after thinking about it, so the choice is made knowingly."

"So you do select the color each time." O'Neill raised his cup of coffee and peered inside. He found a floating bit of schmutz and dabbed it out with a finger. "You just always select blue."

"I guess."

"So the question remains." He took a sip of his coffee. "Why blue?"

"I don't know."

Daniel appeared behind the Colonel, carrying a sandwich and cup of coffee on a tray. He sat next to Jack, across from Teal'c. Sam sat next to Teal'c and across from the Colonel. It was how they always sat, at the table that they always occupied.

"What don't you know, Sam?" Always a little behind, their Danny-boy.

"Why blue?" She was still frowning at her tray.

"Why are you blue? Could it be because you're a thirty-something unmarried, undersexed career military woman who seems to constantly lose romantic prospects to either death or catastrophic destruction of planets, and whose only friends appear to be a brotherly archaeologist, an alien, and her off-limits superior officer?"

Three pairs of eyes stared at him. Daniel absently shook down four sugar packets and tore off the tops, pouring them all at once into his coffee. He noted the silence only when he looked up from his stirring. His eyes widened behind his glasses. "What?"

"Jell-O, you nit." O'Neill motioned towards the parfait dish in front of Carter with his coffee cup. "Blue Jell-O."

Daniel's eyebrows steepled. "Oh. Whoops. Sorry, Sam."

Sam's expression told him he wasn't forgiven. After a few tries which had ended up in squeaks, she loudly whispered, "Undersexed?"

Daniel's stirring paused. "As far as I know, at least. Or am I wrong?"

"What do you know about it?"

"Sam, we spend what—twenty hours of the day together? Usually more. When have you had the time to run on out for a fling?"

"I fail to see what this has to do with my choice of Jell-O flavor." She picked up her spoon again.

"It's really more color than flavor—except for the citrus ones, don't they kinda all taste alike?" The Colonel reinserted himself into the conversation.

"They do indeed." Teal'c opined. "Jell-O is nothing more than processed and sweetened collagen harvested from the bones and hooves of deceased farm animals. Any other flavors purported in evidence by the manufacturers are entirely indistinguishable one from another."

The Colonel paused in his attentions to a doughnut. "And that's why we don't take you to McDonald's, T."

"Yeah." Daniel pushed his glasses up on his nose. "I don't want to know what's in those fries."

"Nature's bounty is unmatched in healthful quality and flavorful appeal by your Tau'ri food of convenience." Teal'c raised a banana and broke the peel open. "There is no allure in pieces of potatoes that have been immersed in boiling vats of lard."

"You eat pizza." Daniel argued. "Pizza's considered junk food, too."

"The Tau'ri are somewhat short-sighted in their views concerning pizza. Pizza embodies the perfect amalgamation of bread, vegetables, and meats, liberally treated with a topping of calcium-rich cheese. It is something of a portable, healthful feast, is it not?"

"Sure." O'Neill frowned. "Take all the fun out of it for me."

"I was not aware that food was supposed to be fun, Colonel O'Neill. Fruits, vegetables, and breads offer the body those quantities of nourishment not found in other foods that you enjoy consuming. Food such as cake and pastries are abounding in fat and sugar, substances neither healthful, nor beneficial."

"And yet you eat meat." Daniel pointed out.

"Animals proteins are part of the natural cycle of death and life. Boiling down their bones to make colorful dessert foods is not." The banana disappeared into Teal'c's enormous mouth.

"You're sucking the joy out of my life, Teal'c." O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "Do you mind?"

Around his banana, Teal'c managed to inter, "Indeed, I do not."

"Yes, well." Daniel motioned back to where Sam sat, spoon in hand, staring fixedly at her Jell-O. "None of this answers the initial question, which was, why blue?"

"You said it was because I was undersexed." Sam glared at Daniel from beneath her eyelashes.

"Geez, Sam." Daniel rolled his eyes. "I said I was sorry."

"Because you're a regular Don Juan." Sam's eyes narrowed as she continued. "Or Warren Beatty."

"Beatty?" Snorting, O'Neill looked up at Daniel, a half-laugh on his face. "G. Harding, perhaps. Buffett, maybe, but Beatty? I don't think so."

Daniel opened a plastic packet of mayonnaise and prepared to squirt it on his sandwich. "And you can talk—why?"

"Because I'm a stud."

"Yeah—No." Daniel shook his head, squinting. "By definition, studs should have corralled more than one filly in the past five years."

"Oh, this stud has." O'Neill gestured towards himself with a forkful of cake.

It was Daniel's turn to snort. "Yeah, right."

Teal'c gazed at O'Neill steadily. "To my knowledge, Colonel O'Neill has engaged in liaisons twice during our travels through the Chappa'i, Daniel Jackson. Once with Kynthia on Argos, the other with the woman Laira on Edora."

"Teal'c—pshht." O'Neill growled, jerking his head slightly in Carter's direction. "That's in the vault."

"Then why did you enter it into conversation, Colonel O'Neill?"

"I was just shooting the bull, you know?"

Teal'c furrowed his brows. "How do your escapades with women relate to the targeting of male cattle, Colonel O'Neill? And how do any of these topics bring to bear the subject of Major Carter and her subconscious consumption of azure gelatin?"

"They don't." Daniel noted. "So, Sam, why do you?"

"I've already told you that I don't know." It came out harsher than she'd intended.

"So it is subconscious." He was back to peering at her over his glasses.

"Good grief." Sam pushed away from the table and leaned back in her chair. She folded her arms over her abdomen. "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Why not? It's just friendly conversation." Daniel took a sip of his coffee, put the cup down, and reached for more sugar packets. "We're just trying to know you better."

"You know me just fine."

"We're just trying to plumb your depths. Really get to the bottom of things."

"Keep your plumbing out of my depths. I'm not sure where it's been."

"Yeah, Daniel, keep your plumbing to yourself." O'Neill finished off his cake with a flourish and placed his fork on his tray. Taking a last sip of coffee, he rose, setting the empty cup on the table. "I'm done. Let's get back to work."

"I just started." Daniel protested, gesturing to his sandwich. "At least let me eat my lunch."

"I am not yet finished consuming my meal, Colonel O'Neill. Perhaps you should go without us." Teal'c's tray was still around a third full.

But Carter had lost her appetite. "I'm done. I'll go back to the lab with you, sir." She wiped her mouth and hands with a napkin, wadded it up, and deposited it on the tray. Then, rising, she pushed her chair back in and followed the Colonel into the hall.

They walked companionably towards the elevators in silence. The Colonel slid his passcard into the reader and then stepped aside to let Carter precede him into the lift.

As the doors closed, he glanced down at her. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, sir." Her tone told him otherwise.

"Really? 'Cause I coulda sworn that you got a little peeved back there."

She turned to him and gave him a little shrug. "I guess you never get over being the little sister."

"Mark used to tease you?"

"Incessantly."

"I bet you can kick his butt now."

"Undoubtedly." She grinned, then bit her lip. "Uh, sir, you've got—" She pointed at a spot near his lip. "Something. Right there."

"What?" He felt for it, but missed.

She regarded him nervously before reaching up and dabbing at a spot at the corner of his mouth with her finger. "Cake. I think it's cake."

O'Neill grasped her hand and looked at the residue on her finger. "Even better. It's frosting." Without thinking, he brought her finger to his lips and licked it off.

Immediately he released her hand. "Um—yeah. Sorry about that. That was weird."

"It's okay." She took a deep breath, fought the urge to giggle. "I know how you feel about your cake."

"Same way you feel about your blue Jell-O?"

"Hmm." Carter shrugged noncommittally.

"You know why you choose it, don't you?"

The door opened, and she shot out of the elevator, O'Neill following close behind.

"You do know."

"Hmm." She repeated. She swiped her card at the door to her lab and walked through, the Colonel immediately behind her.

"Come on, Carter. Tell me."

She hedged.

"Spill it."

She hesitated, leaning over to peer at the door. Daniel was still no where around.

"Promise you won't tell?"

"It's in the vault." He crossed his heart animatedly.

She took a deep breath, then blurted it out. "It's pretty."

"Pretty."

"Blue Jell-O is pretty. It's the prettiest food on base."

O'Neill's mouth opened, then closed, suspiciously like a fish's.

"There isn't much on base that's pretty. Most everything is gray and green and—well—manly. Blue Jell-O is pretty. So I eat it."

O'Neill stared at her for at least a dozen blinks. "You eat blue Jell-O because it's pretty."

"Yes, sir."

"That's—that's—I don't know what to say to that."

"I can see that, sir."

O'Neill watched as she pulled out the report they'd been going over before lunch, spreading the notes and copies out on her table in preparation for the team briefing they would have shortly. And he suddenly noticed things about her—the faint shimmer in her eyeshadow, the gloss on her lips. Her fingernails were subtly shaded—pink—he noticed. And tiny little stones glimmered in her ears.

A thought occurred to him like a bolt from the blue.

"Geez, Carter, you're such a girl."

Sam stilled and looked up at him. Her pink glossy lips relaxed into a brilliant smile. "Ya think?"