"So, it was a very good thing that I came to help you with your homework," Chekov softly assured Cassie after two hours of extensive physic-ing. "You understand the equations now."
"I'm so sorry about lying to you, but I wanted you and Mom to have some time together," Cassie explained to her physics tutor.
"End never justifies the means, remember that. Your mother and I…. there is nothing between us, so don't do this again. Call me if you need help. Don't use it as a false pretense to bring me here. If you do, I will be angry, as your mother will be uncomfortable. I don't desire that. Anyway I should leave, it's supposed to snow later tonight and I fear it will be more than they predicted."
He said his goodbyes, and then open the door to discover… snow.
Not a great deal of snow. Not an inch or two or four… but enough so the ground was white. With the hard earned experience after a tour in Siberia, he could tell that he needed to leave now or else he'd be trapped in Dr. Fraiser's house for the duration. Then he'd have to deal with O'Neill and his obscene interest in Janet Fraiser's virtue.
And if he had forced to stay at the house overnight with Samantha Carter at the house, O'Neill would be foaming at the mouth. Mishka, despoiler of SGC Shield maidens.
Bah! Perhaps, he'd get more respect.
He left then, and began the drive back to the mountain, where hopefully, O'Neill hadn't pissed off an intergalactic superpower as he wished for sleep. Knowing O'Neill, he had pissed off somebody, as he had done that five or six times already.
However, time for happier thoughts. The one thing Misha liked about the Americans was their roads. They were proud of them, so they kept them in good condition. Oh, and he appreciated their radio stations as his secret vice was The Beatles.
"Let's all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your Mother was born, though she was born a long, long time ago," he sang along with Paul.
The roads were slick so he kept his speed down. Yes, it would take him longer to get back to the Mountain, however better in one piece than many. He slowed down, put on his hazards as he saw a car sliding on a particular icy patch.
Afterwards, he wasn't sure what happened. When the first gentle tap on his rear bumper turned into a sideways scrape and then escalated into a series of varying impacts. Instead of counting the number of impacts, he focused on relaxing.
Oh, and praying.
Hopefully, God would forgive him the expletives. Because he feared that he'd be having a face to face meeting in a few minutes.
"Did you tell Colonel Chekov that you lied to him?" Janet questioned her daughter.
Cassie nodded her head.
"And?" was her next prompt.
"He told me that he had guessed, but he wished to give me my Christmas present. It's a necklace that represents the binary stars that orbited Hanka," Cassie explained. She hesitantly brought out the box and pushed it towards Janet. "Misha thought I might like having part of my home world with me as he feels similar when he's in America, that everything is familiar yet not. He wears his family's St. Andrew's cross because it's part of his homeland."
Janet opened the box, inspected the necklace and then shook her head.
"It's beautiful, but don't ever lie to him again. Don't take advantage of the fact that he's willing to help you with your homework."
Her daughter nodded her head.
"Go to your room, and make sure tomorrow you write a nice thank you note," Janet informed her wayward daughter.
That done, the miscreant sent to bed early, Janet decided it was time for a girl's night with Samantha Carter.
"Got the wine?" she pleaded with Samantha.
"Only if you tell me what's really happening with you and Colonel Chekov," Sam requested, even as she held the bottle out of Janet's tiny reach.
Damn it, sometimes it really sucked that she was besties with the 5'9 Samantha. She should just kick her in her kneecaps and take back her wine. Problem was that she might drop the bottle. Then Janet would have a sore foot and no wine.
"Let's change in our pajamas and have a slumber party if you want to talk about boys."
When at last there was silence, Chekov opened his eyes. There was a car on his car's hood. A van rested in what was once his backseat and when he turned to the right, there was a young woman driver who appeared in hysterics. He couldn't blame her as her children were sobbing.
His air bag had inflated/deflated sometime during the pile up, but he couldn't recall when. Gingerly, he removed himself from the car, declared the US Government issued car a complete and total waste with a sincere hope that the bill would be sent to the taxpayers of that great country, the US of A, instead of him. Chekov managed to crawl over his car to the young lady. She was struggling to open her car door, so he knocked on her window. In response, she pointed over his head, toward the left so he turned to face a gas tanker. It was on its side.
"It's leaking," the van driver informed Chekov whose ears were ringing so badly that it took him a moment to decipher him. "We've got to get her and her kids out of the car. I've called the police, they're coming, but we've got to get everyone away from that goddamn tanker."
Naturally, because he was in the US of A, Land of the Free, the NRA and the Mouthy O'Neill, he hadn't brought his Spetsnaz machete with him as there was too much potential for trouble. Well, if his car keys didn't work to break a window, maybe he could use his elbow.
"We better hurry, as it looks like the two of us are the only drivers that can get out of their cars."
He tapped on the window and motioned for her to move as far away as possible and raised his elbow. Hopefully, he'd succeed in breaking the window, not his elbow.
Samantha and Janet were sitting on Janet's king sized bed. It was ludicrously large for her, but when Janet had bought it, she had decided on a king size bed in the misguided hopes that there would be somebody (male) sleeping on the left side in her future.
"I think Chekov was interested in me," Janet admitted. "When he's not Colonel Chekoving, he's actually rather… sweet."
Sam did not voice his disagreement, but still she couldn't prevent herself from mouthing the word, "SWEET?"
"When he's not in the mountain, he's a totally different person. He speaks five different languages, can teach Physics to Cassie in a way that she can understand it and… he loves The Beatles." The last was slowly admitted as though Chekov had confessed to a great crime against humanity.
"The Beatles as in John Lennon Beatles?" Sam asked.
"No, the order of Coleoptera Beatles. Yes, the George Harrison Beatles Beatles. Chekov's also very funny. You had one of the SG4 Slammers at the holiday party, didn't you? He deliberately got most of the SGC personnel drunk. Him and Volkov."
Colonel Volkov was now in high demand at parties due to his bartending skills at creating the very potent drinks known as SG4 Soviet Slammers.
"I refuse to admit drinking that concoction on the grounds that it may incriminate me," Samantha demurred.
"I had four, and he offered to drive me home because I was tipsy. We had danced at the party and I believed that he was interested, so I kissed him once we were alone here. Then offered to take him to bed because… that-way-we-would-be-the-same-height-if-we-were-in-bed…" Janet blurted out that last word and then covered her face.
After a long pause, Sam asked, "You offered to take him to bed so you two could be the same height?"
"It's very difficult to kiss a man who is almost foot taller than you. I understand that you don't have that problem as all of your extraterrestrial boyfriends have been manageable height wise, but he is almost a foot taller than me … I … he turned me down, Sam. Told me that I was drunk so he wouldn't take advantage of me. Since then it's been awkward between us. He tried talking to me about it, twice, but he mentioned his wife, Sam. Both times. Sam, both times! The. Wife. Gets. Mentioned."
"He's married?" Sam yelped.
"He's a widower. A little over five years, but… it's just… he's so sincere about his late wife, and… respectable… and I was a drunken little slut who wanted to be the same height as him in… in bed. He believed that I was acting as though he had shamed me. Instead of the other way around. I made an ass of myself and…"
Long pause and Samantha let her decide when to continue the conversation. "He doesn't even tell me when he's in town. He pops in, shows up in my office and then leaves without any notice… he asked me to call him Mishka, which is apparently extremely personal…. Mishka is the first guy that has been possibly interested in me that readily accepts that Cassie and I are a packaged deal and I screwed it up by drunkenly propositioning him."
More silence.
"I mean, every time he wants to talk about what happened between us, he mentions HER. I was the first woman he's kissed since his wife died. I mean, yet he doesn't even tell me when he's in town or when he's leaving, Sam. If he's interested, the signals he's sending aren't telling me that he is."
"Janet, maybe he doesn't know what you want. He's male. He's Russian," Sam explained. "Why don't you invite take him out to dinner and let it just be the two of you. You two can hash it out. How is he at kissing?"
Janet smiled and motioned for Sam to pour the wine.
"Shy. Surprisingly so. He told me later… that he was worried that he had forgotten how it was done," admitted Janet.
Sam smiled and Janet tilted her head. "What?"
"He's a romantic," Sam laughed. "Colonel Chekov, of the pointing finger and the threatening eyebrows, is a secret romantic. Go, have dinner with him, clear the air."
A long pause and then Sam offered a helpful comment, "Just don't let him bartend."
General Hammond's phone rang and it took a moment or three for him to find the handset.
"Hammond," he barked as it was his work phone. The caller ID said it was Paul Davis, so he really didn't need to be Suzy Sunshine as it was never good news when Davis called at 3 am. Especially as he was meeting with Paul at 9am.
"General, I'm sorry to wake you. It's three am, and the Pentagon just received confirmation that the car Colonel Chekov was utilizing was identified in the wreckage of multi-car pileup on 25 that occurred earlier this evening. There were twenty seven cars, multiple tractor trailers and a fuel tanker involved. Well, that's what the police department believes as the tanker exploded and it's been a real mess with the scene. Please tell me, has Colonel Chekov contacted you?" Davis asked.
Hammond sat up in his bed and collected his thoughts. "No, I haven't talked to him since yesterday afternoon. Major, what's the issue? Was Chekov badly hurt?"
"We can't locate Chekov and we can't ping his phone. One of the drivers says that Chekov assisted her and her family out of the car, but nobody can truly confirm that they've seen him since. The driver's sure it's him as he gave her his jacket for her youngest son. The police have confirmed that Chekov's ID and his wallet were in the coat pocket. I've spoken to Colonel Volkov and he hasn't heard from Chekov either. Volkov's taken his team to the site of the accident to see if they can find him."
"What else aren't you telling me?" Hammond asked.
"They're bringing in search and rescue dogs, just to confirm that they didn't overlook any victims. The scene is pretty bad, General."
"I imagine if there was a fire. Which way was he driving? Towards the base?"
"Yes," Davis agreed. "We've sent out his picture to the local hospitals and the police departments, but we haven't gotten a hit."
"I'll make a few phone calls. I'll call you in a few minutes," Hammond assured Major Davis. He disconnected the phone, then dialed Janet Fraiser's home number. "Hello, Dr. Fraiser? I'm sorry to bother you at this ungodly hour, but I know Colonel Chekov had planned on helping Cassandra with her physics homework last night. By any chance, did he stay because of the weather?"
It was a white lie, as he knew Chekov had left Fraiser's house to return to the mountain.
He got the answer he feared, and he quickly explained the situation to Dr. Fraiser.
"If he calls you, have him call me," he requested. "Please. Also, do you have his medical records in case we need to identify him?"