AU: Sam's time missing onboard the Prometheus drives Jack to distraction, setting them on a course they have denied themselves for years. Set in Season 7 after 7.13 Grace, but before 7.16 Death Knell.
Prequel to Lost and Found.
Chapter Summary: It's the first day back at base after their weekend together, can they keep a lid on things?
Chapter 5: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Monday morning, 19th January 2004
Looking out the window of my office, I noticed Doctor Jackson and Teal'c walk in. Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter were still not here despite the briefing being due to begin in less than five minutes. Not more than a minute later, Jack walked in sporting a relatively serious looking limp. I guessed he had injured his knee again. It was not often that I had the opportunity to quietly observe my officers. If I were in the room, they would not relax enough for me to get a read on them. Silently, I watched Jack walk to the coffee pot and pour not one, but two cups of coffee – one with sugar and one without. Since Daniel already had one and Teal'c didn't drink coffee, the only person that second coffee could be for was Major Carter. The unusually absent Major Carter. Interesting. Standing from my desk with the mission folders and one last check of my watch, I walked to the door and opened it.
"Good morning SG-1." I said loudly, "Colonel, where is Major Carter?" I asked. He shrugged slightly before answering, though I had a pretty good idea that he knew exactly where she was.
"Good morning, General." He responded with a little more cheer than he normally would on a Monday. "Carter's water pipes froze and burst, she had to wait for a tradesman." He replied without missing a beat, though he did take a rather large sip of his coffee after his performance. So, this was how they were playing it.
"It hasn't been that cold Jack." Daniel said to him.
"Cold enough space monkey." Jack countered, following another overly large sip of coffee. Hiding my internal smirk, I passed out the files just as Major Carter walked in the room still with slightly wet hair.
"Good morning, Sir - sorry I am late. I had to wait for…"
"A tradesman..." Daniel added helpfully, "…for your burst water pipes." He finished this time with a smirk the size of Texas.
"Ah yeah, how did you know?"
"I told them, Carter." Jack replied, handing her the coffee without saying anything. She took it without a sideways glance, as if she had been practicing.
"Thank you." She replied, omitting the cursory sir that she would normally always include – and should considering his rank – without even so much as a flinch from the Colonel. At least she didn't call him Jack I mused.
"Let's get this started, shall we?" I stated, taking my seat, and watching out of the corner of my eye as Jack winced when he bent his knee. "Do you need to visit the infirmary, Colonel?"
"No, Sir. It's nothing, just a fall on the ice yesterday." He replied, keeping up the frozen theme from his Major.
"If you're sure, Son."
"I am. It'll come good by the end of the day."
"Hmmm. Good. Just don't lift anything too heavy, Jack." I countered. The look on his face was priceless and told me immediately that his injury was probably not the result of ice-skating. Major Carter was doing a great job of staring at her boots through the table.
After knowing what my two best officers had been through for Earth over the years and what they were sacrificing in the name of duty and honour, without so much as a whisper of impropriety despite the rumours, I felt I could cut them some slack. The strategy of 'don't ask, don't tell' had served the situation between these two well for the last seven years, and I saw no reason why anything should change. As long as they remained professional and kept whatever developments that had occurred away from the base and any off-world missions, I could continue to look the other way. Deployments of this length of time were uncommon. Relationships and bonds between team members were bound to occur the longer a team was together, and I could hardly single these two out when the majority of SG teams boasted similar bonds, and in some cases personal relationships, within their ranks.
Opening my folder, I began the briefing. "PZ8-475 is a forested moon orbiting a red giant not unlike Jupiter."
"Endor." Teal'c added with a small smile. The Colonel and Major gave each other amused sideways glances at his answer.
"Thank you, Teal'c." I replied, shaking my head before I looked at Daniel. "Doctor Jackson." I waved for him to begin the briefing with what SG-12 had discovered on the moon.
"Thank you General. PZ8-475 has some ruins around three klicks from the Stargate that SG-12 believed may have been Furling in origin."
"Ewoks." Teal'c added again, this time earning a snort from Major Carter, which she covered with a quietly muttered 'sorry sir' and another amused smirk from Colonel O'Neill.
"Teal'c, do you want to give this presentation?" Doctor Jackson asked, a small smile on his face as well.
"I do not Daniel Jackson." He replied with an identical smile, his fingers steepled in front of him. "I know not of this moon Daniel Jackson; I am merely suggesting a more appropriate naming convention."
"Hear, hear T. It's better than PZ8-yada-yada." O'Neill added with a flourish of his hand.
"475, Sir." Major Carter piped up, this time adding his honorific.
"Yeah, that. PZ8-457... 75… 475." He stumbled, likely on purpose because I knew for a fact that Colonel O'Neill was a lot smarter than he pretended to be. Another sideways glance at Major Carter who was stifling a giggle was no doubt the reason for his stumble. Lord have mercy, I thought, things had definitely evolved since Friday when a clearly distressed Colonel O'Neill frantically left this base in what I could only describe as a tizz.
"Are you guys done?" Doctor Jackson complained.
"Doctor, continue please." I interrupted before it got further out of hand. I had to hide my own smirk with my practiced General face. It never failed to amaze me how Teal'c's love of Star Wars permeated all facets of his life here on Earth, and how he had managed to consistently engage three self-professed non-sci-fi loving people in his antics. He had certainly come a long way since walking through the Gate as a defector seven years ago.
"Thank you General. The writing found matched one of the four languages we found at the Heliopolis ruins on PB2-908 and the text studied by Sam on the planet where Jack visited with Maybourne."
"Pfft, visited is not the word I would use, Space Monkey."
"OK." Daniel huffed, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose under his glasses. "One of the many planets where Jack nearly killed Maybourne." Daniel corrected as he stood and dimmed the lights for his presentation.
As usual, Jack zoned out during my briefing. Right up until Sam's hand disappeared under the table. The look on his face and how his fingers pressed hard into the table top when his hand was not clenched in a fist suggested some sort of shenanigans that I personally did not want to put any thought into. That was until the end of the briefing when I was forced to put two and two together when Jack would not stand even after being dismissed, and Sam quickly hid her left hand in her pocket. Oh my God. Thankfully the lights were dim enough for General Hammond to hopefully not notice what had been going on under the table.
They had been different this morning right from the start. The coffee hand off. No customary 'Sir' at the end of her 'Thank you'. Plus, the whole frozen pipes and falling on the ice stories were just ridiculous. Sam had installed a home engineered type of insulation on all the external pipes at her house to prevent any freezing. I knew this because she did the same on every one of my apartments and Jack's house. Besides, there was no way it had been cold enough for normal water pipes to freeze, let alone what Jack referred to as the Carter-fied pipes. As for Jack's 'fall on the ice' story, I found it highly unlikely that he went to any of the ice-skating facilities by himself. Ice skating had been one of things he had loved to do with Charlie, which meant that you wouldn't get him within 100 yards of any place where you could do that activity unless he was dragged by a member of SG-1 or Cassie. Even then, he would complain to no end and attempt sit on the side lines.
Sitting at SG-1's normal table in the mess, I took a tentative sip from my coffee mug to test the heat before taking an even bigger gulp when it proved to be OK. I was half way through my cup when Teal'c appeared.
"Greetings Daniel Jackson."
"Oh, hey Teal'c. I forgot to ask before the briefing, how was your weekend?" I asked, frowning at the white porcelain bottom of my cup. Why did coffee never last?
"It was most enjoyable. I watched Star Wars Episodes 1 and 2 in preparation for Episode 3."
"Errr, haven't you seen both of those at least 20 times each?" I asked, already knowing the answer because I had been there for most of them. I guess that explained his Star Wars anecdotes in the briefing. It was a well-known phenomenon that Teal'c never just watched two Star Wars movies. He would have watched 4, 5, and 6 before watching 1 and 2.
"Indeed."
"And isn't Episode 3 still at least a year away from release?"
"It is." He replied, looking decidedly disappointed with George Lucas' decision to delay release in favour of making story changes.
How did I know that? Well, it seemed that not much got under the skin of our beloved Jaffa except production delays of his favourite movie saga. Not that the delays worried me that much since I knew I would be seeing the new movie with Teal'c at least 10 times at the cinema once it was released. This time though, I would be sure to drag Jack and Sam along with us. It's not like either of them would watch the movie anyway. I just hoped they would keep things G rated in the back row now that I was certain things had progressed. Speaking of Jack and Sam, I looked up.
"So… frozen things." I said with a lift my eyebrow and a knowing look at my Jaffa friend. "Are you thinking what I am thinking or is my brain just fried from all the coffee?" I asked with a wave of my empty cup, being careful not to be too obvious in the packed commissary at 0900 on a Monday morning.
"I believe your brain is perfectly adequate, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c said with a small knowing smile.
"At least I know it's not just me."
"Indeed." He replied. Teal'c had always been more observant that most people, so I was not surprised that he had picked up on the change in our friends' demeanours as well. There hadn't been any of the standard awkwardness that had plagued them for years. Looking back at Teal'c, I smiled, and he nodded.
"Wow."
"Indeed." Teal'c responded and then smiled himself, the first real smile I had seen from him that wasn't his standard subtle smirk. I was happy for them, truly happy. I just hoped that they didn't create problems for themselves by being too comfortable with each other. After years of dancing the line and being overly careful, one little innocent slip up could bring everything down around them. As if Teal'c knew what I was thinking, he spoke up again. "I will speak with O'Neill."
"Probably a good idea, T." I replied, knowing that Jack would get all 'mind your own business' if I was the one to draw that short straw again. If we had noticed, there was a good chance that General Hammond and Janet had also noticed, which could be very very bad for the both of them.
A/N: One of my favourite fanfic'ers (this is now a word) is Abydosorphan. One of their one-shots is from the point of view of Carter during a briefing getting a little hands on with her CO under the table. Personally one of my favourites. As a shout out to this fic, I have added a section from Daniel's POV noticing something between Jack and Sam while presenting his briefing, because after their weekend together, does anyone really think they could keep their hands to themselves? As for the Star Wars themes, I could not resist.