AN: This chapter is a little bit shorter than I expected, as anyone who's read my livejournal knows. Sorry. At least I still got something up this week, which I wasn't sure I was going to.

"So, have you guys started thinking about names, yet?" Daniel asked, poking through a box of veggies with chopsticks.

"No, not really," Jack said. "I mean, we don't even know if it's gonna be a boy or a girl, yet." He speared a piece of chicken with a fork and shoveled it into his mouth. The geek had tried to get him to use chopsticks as 'part of the experience' when the food had arrived, and only the threat of extra physical training had shut him up. Jack had tried chopsticks when he was stationed in Okinawa; he thought maybe they were part of the reason the Japanese had lost World War II.

"Actually, I've got some ideas," Sam said.

He looked up at her, sitting directly across from him. "There's a surprise. Such as?"

"Well, I was thinking maybe Dorothy if it's a girl." Sam took a sip of her water. "It was my mother's name. Or, I've always liked Grace, Hope, Faith, those kinds of names." She popped another bite in her mouth.

"Dorothy's good," Jack said. "Mary's big in my family. Grandmother, two aunts, three cousins, all named Mary."

"Irish Catholic family, I'm assuming?" Janet said.

"Oh, yeah." Irish Catholic family, Irish Catholic neighborhood, Irish Catholic everything—though one of his aunts (not named Mary) had married an Italian Catholic, just for variety.

"So, do they know about," Daniel waved his chopsticks in Sam's direction, "this?"

Jack took a bite of chicken, chewed, and swallowed. Alas, they were still waiting for an answer. "Not yet. I'll probably mention it in this year's Christmas card, or something."

"Jack!" Daniel's voice rose in exasperation. "You can't just send them a card with that kind of news—you should at least give them a call and tell them in person."

"Why?" Jack asked. Daniel was probably right—it was an annoying habit of his—but that didn't mean he had to admit it.

"Because they're your family," Daniel said slowly, as if talking to a three year old. As if that were all the answer that was needed.

Come to think of it, Jack seemed to recall from his personnel jacket that the archaeologist had been orphaned at a young age, and didn't have a family besides Sha're. Which meant he probably didn't have that great an idea just what kinds of problems families could get into, and why sometimes limiting communications to Christmas cards was a very good thing. "And?" Jack said, raising an eyebrow.

Daniel spluttered a bit, and Janet cut in before he could come up with an answer. "So, Sam, have you told your dad and brother yet?"

Sam winced and studied her plate, which suddenly seemed interesting enough to consume her whole attention. "Not yet," she said. "I'm going to call Dad, tell him I need to talk with him in person. Hopefully, he'll come here, but if he doesn't want to I'll go visit him. This isn't the kind of stuff I want to tell him over the phone."

"Would Jack be going with you?" Daniel asked.

"God, no," Sam said, horrified. She glanced at him. "No offense, Jack, but that would be throwing fuel on the fire. And … neither of you are very tactful. I don't want to introduce you to Dad until he's had a chance to calm down."

"Ah." Jack said, relieved. Of course, he'd do whatever she needed, but it was … good she didn't need him for that.

"Will not your father be proud that your child will have a great warrior for a father?" Teal'c asked, raising an eyebrow. Jack shook his head internally at the sheer amount of food on the Jaffa's plate.

"Well, ordinarily the fact that Jack's an Air Force officer would be a plus, yeah," Sam said, tilting her head to the side. "But before the Stargate program, he was in covert operations, which Dad doesn't consider the greatest character reference—too much spy work, too many questionable missions, that sort of thing. Jonas was in covert operations, and Dad didn't like him at all. If he were a pilot, that might help." She shook her head. "But even if he had been a pilot … my Dad's been a career officer all his life. He doesn't approve of women in the military in the abstract, in large part because he thinks that there's too much risk of fraternization, which is bad for discipline and easily exploited."

"Fraternization?" Daniel frowned. "What does that mean in this context, exactly?"

"An unprofessional relationship," Jack said. "One that causes or could cause favoritism." He grimaced. "Like sleeping with someone you command. Basically, they don't wanna have people get so close to those they command that they hesitate to send 'em out into hazardous situations."

"They also don't want situations where someone might receive preferential treatment due to a personal relationship," Sam added. "Or where others in the unit could assume someone's getting preferential treatment—it's bad for both discipline and morale." She reached for the sweet and sour pork container for a second helping.

"Sexual harassment can be a problem, too," Janet said. "Not that it is, in itself, fraternization, but keeping one under control can help with the other."

"I guess that makes sense," Daniel said, "but you can't regulate people's feelings with laws. What do you do if you fall in love with someone and a relationship would be fraternization?"

"Transfer," Sam said. "It's only a problem if it's with someone in the same chain of command. Besides, military assignments don't tend to last more than a few years, anyway."

"They do have dispensations, sometimes, for special cases," Janet put in. "If it's just an office job and the couple wouldn't be directly supervising each other, particularly if they're married, they can sometimes get a dispensation."

"Okay." Daniel nodded, "I get all that. But what … happened to the two of you," he waved a hand in their direction, "wasn't fraternization because you were under alien influence."

"Yes, but we can't tell Dad that," Sam said, rather patiently, Jack thought. "He's going to assume we were having an illicit affair and got caught red-handed. He'll be disappointed and angry with me, and he'll be furious with Jack for leading me astray and jeopardizing my career."

"You haven't talked much about him, and I didn't think you were in contact with him," Janet said. "Are you sure he'll know Jack was your CO?" After a day of moving, they were all on a first-name basis.

"Oh, yeah," Sam said. "Trust me, he keeps tabs on my career. It took me years, after I graduated from the Academy, to convince him I didn't want him to arrange assignments for me, that I wanted to earn my own way through the ranks and not depend on his influence."

"Captain Carter, you said he disapproves of fraternization and the resulting favoritism," Teal'c said, frowning, as he reached for one of the cartons.

"Oh, fraternization and the Good Ol' Boys network are different," Jack said, watching in some disbelief as Teal'c dished out a second helping, almost as huge as the first. "Don't ask me how, but they are." He dug back into his food. He'd thought they'd ordered plenty for leftovers, but at the rate the alien was going through the food, they wouldn't have any. Oh, well. They'd know better next time.

"So, basically, he's going to kill Jack?" Daniel said, looking back and forth between Jack and Sam.

"Yup."

"Pretty much."