Celebrity Mole

"Leg."

"No."

"Arm."

"No."

"Neck."

"Nope."

"The back of your neck."

"Not that I know of."

"Wrist?"

"Nada."

"The other one?"

"Nothing there, either."

"C'mon, Carter, just tell me already!"

They'd reached the door that led into the briefing room, where their team meeting had been scheduled with General Hammond. Carter turned to the Colonel. "I am not going to tell you, sir. Now, can we just drop it?"

O'Neill narrowed his eyes. Frowning, he regarded her steadily for two, three beats. Then he took a deep breath, pointed at her feet, and said, "Ankle."

The Major rolled her eyes. Head shaking, she shoved past him and headed towards her customary seat near the middle of the table, facing the blast glass.

The Colonel circled the table, considering. He chose the seat directly across from her.

"Sir." She tried her best to sound like his mother. She had set down her mission file and was preparing the handouts she'd written about the planet they were scheduled to visit.

"Knees."

"There's only one of them—it—sir."

"So?"

"So it can only be on one."

"Only one of what?" Daniel asked. He walked to the table and sat down next to Sam. Looking with interest between his two team mates, he asked again, "Only one of what?"

"Mole."

"Oh, good grief, Jack—are you still going on about that?" Daniel flopped backwards in his seat with an air of weariness that reflected exactly how many times they'd already had this conversation. "I mean—she doesn't want to tell us. Can't you just leave it at that?"

"Can I?" The Colonel thought about it, leaning back in his chair, fingering a pen. Abruptly, he made his decision, snapping back forward towards the table and leaning himself over, grinning. "Thing is, I don't think I can."

"There seem to be a great many things that you cannot do, O'Neill." Teal'c had arrived. He stalked silently past the General's chair and rounded to the Colonel's side of the table. Withdrawing the chair, he sat with his customary controlled manner. "Which of them are we discussing at this time?"

"His inability to stop asking Sam where her mole is." Daniel ran a hand through his hair, then leaned his weight on one arm, his chin on his fist. "She doesn't want to say."

"I can understand that," Teal'c nodded, one eyebrow raised knowingly. "As I would prefer that one such as O'Neill not know the location in which I had such a mark."

Jack turned to him, suspicious. "T—are you saying that you know where it is?"

"Where what is, O'Neill?"

"Carter's mole."

"Indeed, I do."

"Teal'c! You promised you wouldn't say anything." Sam jumped forward in her seat, hands flat and tight on the table in front or her. "Remember? You promised."

Teal'c lifted the corner of his mouth, regarding the Major with superior eyes. "I merely promised you that I would not divulge the location of this mark. I never stated implicitly that I would not infer that I was aware of the vicinity in which the mark existed."

"Well, you knew it existed—we all knew it existed." Daniel flipped open his mission file, rifling through the pages. "Sam told us it existed."

"Yeah, but knowing it's there doesn't help unless you know where in there the there is." The Colonel gestured vaguely at Carter.

"Help, who, sir? Help me keep some vestige of my dignity, or help you get a new weapon to torture me with?"

"I don't torture you." The Colonel shook his head.

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do, sir." Carter's voice had taken on a rough edge—much as it did whenever Siler got too close to one of her winkie blinkie arrays with his big wrench.

"No, I don't." The Colonel tried to portray 'innocence', but only succeeded in portraying 'slightly guilty—but kinda sorry about it'. "When have I ever tortured you?"

"Shall I list them off, sir?"

"List away, Major."

"Nareem, tank top wound, blue dress, bad leg-setting skills, getting Tok'ra'ed, Martouf, whacking General Hammond upside the head while you guys were all Hathored up, and then there was that whole Jonas thing—"

O'Neill cast her a look of unveiled amazement. "I have never—"

"Oh, please, Colonel, you live on this stuff."

"What does he live on?" General Hammond had arrived. He entered from his office door, crossed to his chair, and sat, scooting in before opening the folder on the table in front of him. "As far as I can tell, he lives on Fruit Loops and audacity, but I might be wrong."

Carter grinned, ducking her head to hide it as best she could from the Colonel. O'Neill glared at her from behind his raised file. He glanced at the General, ascertained that their CO was involved with the report in front of him, and then turned his own folder sidewise, creating a wall between his own seat and Hammond's. "I don't torture you. It's good-natured teasing."

"Whatever." Sam's eyes rolled towards the ceiling, and she let out a long-suffering sigh. "You keep thinking those happy thoughts, sir."

The Colonel looked genuinely taken aback. "Aren't we a bit snarky today?"

Sam simply fumed.

Hammond glanced around at the team. "I seem to be sensing a bit of a rift here. Are we sure that you're all capable of behaving yourselves off world today?"

"I am, General Hammond. You have no need to doubt my ability to conduct myself with honor." Teal'c inclined his head.

"Me too, General. I'm not like these two." Daniel raised his hand with a half-hearted motion, then, seeing the look on Sam's face, used it to push the glasses up on his nose.

A long pause punctuated Daniel. A long, long pause. Sam quirked her mouth to one side, puckering her lips.

Daniel tried to rectify the situation. "I mean—not that they're constantly misbehaving, which couldn't be further from the truth—they just like to tease each other—you know, friendly banter. Between co-workers. Who work together."

Hammond scowled, his bald head pivoted between the Colonel and the Major. "Somehow, I would have expected that the two of you would be more circumspect—comporting yourselves as officers of this great nation's Air Force."

"Yes, sir." Sam ducked her head, and Daniel, just looking at her, knew that soon, he would hurt somewhere.

"Sorry, General." Jack glared at the archaeologist, too.

"Then, let's get this briefing going." Hammond removed the first page in the file. "Now, which planet was this again?"

Daniel started the introductory phase of the briefing, standing up at the appropriate time and crossing to the monitor to explain some video the MALP had taken of some carvings.

The Colonel's attention was on his second in command, however. He could see her throat, her face, and her hands, from where she sat. Everything else was covered up with BDUs. Ankles? She'd told him 'no', but she wasn't above lying, was she?

Casually, he yawned, holding his pen between two fingers. At the zenith of his yawn, both arms outstretched, he dropped the pen. He shrugged self-deprecatingly, then leaned over to pick up the pen. He ducked his head under the table, trying to see if her ankles were visible or if she'd covered them up with socks. It was dark under there, so he scooted his chair forward, burrowing himself farther underneath. He could just make out hems of pant legs, tops of shoes, and then she moved, and the swivel post of her chair hid her crossed legs.

Well, crap.

He scooted sideways, waggling his butt in the chair to edge it over further, but just when he got to the point where he could see something, she stretched her legs out in front of her.

Son of a gun.

He waggled the other way, but Daniel's shadow fell across her from that vantage point, and he still couldn't see anything clearly.

Double crap. Something caught the corner of his eye, and he reached for it. Hey, at least he'd found his pen.

He headed backwards out from under the table, scooting his chair with his heels, bent at the waist. He thought he'd cleared the edge and started to sit up, but ended up bonking the back of his head on the underside of the table with a decided 'thud'.

"Colonel—are you all right?"

Jack rubbed the back of his head, shoved himself the rest of the way out, and sat up, grimacing. "Yep—fine. Thanks, sir."

Daniel spoke from the monitor. "That's a great way to lose IQ points, Jack."

"Nobody asked you, Daniel."

"What were you doing under the table, sir?" Carter managed to look both triumphant and sympathetic.

"Pen." Jack held up his pen. "Dropped it."

"And this had nothing to do with—" She raised her eyebrows skeptically.

"Nothing at all, Major."

Hammond cleared his throat. "Yes, well. People." He gestured towards the file. "I think that Dr. Jackson has a little more information to gather before I give a go on this mission, so why don't you finish with your team meeting, and bring me the results of further analysis later on today?" He stood, and Carter and O'Neill stood, too. The General looked at each of them in turn. "I would hope that the rest of this meeting progresses with better results."

SG-1 waited for him to retreat back into his office before glaring around at each other.

"Jack—really. Pen?" Daniel still stood at the monitor, shaking his head.

"I dropped it."

"On purpose." Teal'c offered.

"Did not."

"I believe you did, O'Neill." The Jaffa regarded the Colonel with thin eyes. "In order to gain visual confirmation of whether or not Major Carter is marked with a mole on her ankle."

O'Neill had the decency not to deny it. "For the record, she's not."

"Oh my gosh—Colonel. This has to stop."

"It can."

"When? When I tell you where it is?"

"Sure. Go right ahead."

"No."

"Side."

"No."

"Armpit."

"No."

He leaned his body almost completely over the table and lowered his head, looked at her intently from beneath his eyebrows. He breathed, then breathed again. Then he licked his lips before saying, "Butt."

"Sir!" Carter stood. "Why is this so important to you?"

"You're the one who brought it up!"

"When?"

"P3X-989. You said it to yourself."

"Myself? I don't—" She shook her head in confusion.

"He's talking about Harlen's planet. When we got robotified. You and your robot were talking about how perfect the robot was--right down to the mole."

The Colonel grinned. "The mole."

"That was like—years ago! I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." She didn't specify to whom she was talking—her statement was really made to the room in general. "And I never promised I'd tell you where my mole was!"

"Ha!" O'Neill stood, too. "Was—or is? You didn't cheat and go out and have it removed, did you?"

"I haven't had anything removed!"

The Colonel grinned. "Then that means you still have it, therefore, your previous statement should have been is—not was."

"Geez! Why do you have to be such a dillhole?"

Silence fell in the room. Teal'c grinned wide, while Daniel put not one, but two hands over his mouth.

O'Neill's eyes flared wide. A smile tickled at the corner of his mouth, which he controlled only with superhuman effort. "That would be Colonel Dillhole to you, Major."

Sam's face lost all color. She tensed her jaw once, then twice, and finally looked O'Neill straight in the eye.

"So you want to know?"

"Yes, I would."

Sam tossed a look over at the General's office. He was sitting at his desk, his back to the window.

"Fine, sir." She shrugged out of her BDU big shirt, then untucked the black t-shirt she wore. Flicking open the buckle of her pants, she unbuttoned, unzipped, and then carefully peeled the right side down so that O'Neill could see her right hip.

There, exactly at the spot where her bone peaked on her hip, was a tiny mole. "Satisfied?"

But the Colonel couldn't talk. His mouth had gone completely dry, and he was having a hard time tearing his gaze away from that—skin—and a peek of something a tad bit frilly—and pink—and—

Crap.

"Colonel?" Sam closed up her pants, hurriedly tucked her shirt back in and closed her belt. "I asked if you were satisfied."

"Um." Was all O'Neill could say.

"Now that you know where my mole is."

"Well." The Colonel finally grit out. He forced his line of sight up even with Carter's face. "Well."

"So now you can stop bothering me about it, sir." Carter gazed at him expectantly.

"I can." The world was slowly righting itself, and he could breathe again.

"Really. You can stop badgering me about my mole."

O'Neill shrugged, splaying his palms wide. "If you say so."

"What, sir?" She crossed her arms across her stomach and skewered him with cool, blue eyes. "If I say what?"

"The mole—that wasn't really much of a mole, was it?"

"Sir?"

"It was tiny—small, little." He gestured towards her hip with a careless hand. "Both itsy and bitsy."

"So?"

"So, all I'm saying is that it was really more of a freckle than a mole."

"A freckle."

"A freckle." The Colonel nodded once, decisively.

Carter busied herself with gathering up her papers, shoving them angrily back into the file folder she'd arrived with. She strode with purposeful steps towards the door. At the threshold she turned and meaningfully skewered the Colonel's eye.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Carter?"

"Freckle you."