Daniel has some ancient tomes spread on their bed. Janet tries to hand him a glass of wine.
"Not around the books," he says, handing it back to her without even looking at it, or her.
She leaves with both glasses of wine and comes back a half hour later, "You're going to get me pregnant again," she says decidedly.
"You don't get to decide that," he says, not even closing his books.
"The hell I don't," she says, "It's my body."
"Yeah, well it's my sperm, so I get a say, too," he says, moving the books onto the safety of his nightstand.
"I want a kid," she says with stubbornness he's never seen in her before. He remembers her first husband. The one that she'd left because he refused to give her a kid.
"We can have a kid. A kid who really need us. A kid who isn't going to make your life miserable for two years."
"Right, the baby is why I'm miserable," Janet says with an eye roll.
And Daniel panics for the first time. "You're miserable?" he asks with real concern. It's the kind of concern he used to show her when they first started dating, and it makes her collapse into tears.
He pulls her into his chest, "God, Janet, we'll have a baby every year, just please don't be miserable."
She laughs, and pulls away from him. "It's not really about kids."
He just looks at her, puzzled.
"You're a really good father," she accuses.
"Ok, your words are nice, the tone… not so much."
"Yes, you're a linguist, so you can figure that out."
"Although I'm apparently clueless about what we've been fighting about for months," he says looking pained.
"Daniel, you remember when we first started dating… all those conversations over wine, I miss that."
"Ok," Daniel says biting his lip.
"I mean, you'll drop anything if the kid needs something, but if it's me?"
He doesn't say a word.
And she's pretty sure she's ended this relationship between them. Fighting about a lie wasn't working, but maybe honesty isn't either.
"I'm sorry, I'm a shitty husband."
"You're not a shitty husband," she says.
"I am, my wife is 'miserable'," he says with a mixture of despair and anger which is particularly hard to take.
"I'm sorry I said that," she says.
"I'm not. Apparently that's the only way to get my attention," he says.
"Ok, how about I do better at telling you when I have a problem before it gets really huge, and you do a better job spending time with me."
"Ok," Daniel agrees.
"And I'm not miserable," she insists.
"So, maybe we could have the wine now?" he asks.
"We could, if I hadn't thrown the bottle at the wall downstairs," she says.
"What?" he says in shock.
"I cleaned it up," she says.
He shakes his head, "Babe, what have I done to you?"
"Orange juice?" she asks.
"It's almost like wine," he agrees, standing up.
He turns when he is almost at the door and looks back at his wife, "We're going to be ok, aren't we? I mean… someday?"
Janet bites her lips. She doesn't want to lie. Not when the truth has just worked out so good for her. "I hope so."
The Next Day
Daniel stands at the doorway of the infirmary with his arms crossed in that self-hug. He waits silently until she is done with the patient.
"Lunch?" he asks as nervous as when he asked her on a first date.
They haven't had lunch together since their clandestine meetings at his apartment before they got married, and those didn't actually involve lunch. But she knows this isn't what he means. Sex has never been a problem between them. If they communicated as well with words as they did with their bodies, they wouldn't have anything to worry about.
"You want to go off base?" Daniel asks.
Janet shakes her head. By the time they get through all the security half their time would be gone. "I've got to be back in an hour, the mess is fine."
He nods, and they start walking down the hall next to one another.
"How is your translation going?" she asks.
He pauses, unwilling to answer.
And the cracks have been their relationship for a long time, but he didn't know how deep it was until now. And now, with the glue on the crack is still wet, he's terrified to touch it.
"You're allowed to talk about your work, Daniel," she says.
"I'm just now allowed to do it," he mutters.
She freezes in the hall of the SGC, and says, "Go back to work," in an ice cold voice.
"It's our lunch hour."
"And you'd rather be reading Goa'uld," she says.
"I'm here."
"And I need you to want to be here."
And it sucks that the glue failed and the cracks are still there. And it sucks that they're still fighting. But at least they're fighting about real things now.
And he goes back to his office to substitute coffee for lunch. And she grabs handfuls of chocolate chips out of her desk.
And they go back to work.
A Week Later
"Ty wants to go ice-skating," Jack announces, looking at his wife.
"Ok, see you guys later," she says while cooking dinner, with Hannah, who is really too big to be held, on her hip.
"Can you do it?" he asks.
She gives him a "You've got to be kidding look" that only a Carter can pull off.
"I'd take over this," he says, waving his hand before taking his daughter out of her hands.
"I've seen you on the grill, I'm not trusting you on a stove. Besides, I don't know how to skate."
He blinks at her in surprise, "Ok, well can dad take him?"
"You really think dad is the right age to be falling all over the ice?"
Jack sighs, "I don't want to."
"What are you talking about? You love skating."
"I like hockey, Sam, hockey, and I have the feeling that that is not exactly what we're going to be doing here."
"Of course not, he's seven, and it's his first time skating. You're going to be spending all of your time trying to keep him off his bum."
"Sam," he says, rolling his eyes in an effort to shake the image of his son figure skating.
"Jack, take your son skating, and smile when he asks for help with his figure eights."
Jack sighs, and grumbles under his breath as he walks out of the room, but he sounds quite excited when he calls to his son, "Grab your coat, kid. Daddy gets to take you skating, 'cause Mommy's too busy cooking."
-0-0-0-
"Mommy!" Ty says, bursting into the house.
"Did you have fun?" she asks.
"Yep, and I'm a hockey player now," Ty says.
Sam shoots her husband a quick glare over her son's forehead, but says, "You ready for dinner."
"Daddy bought me pizza at the skating ring when we were talking to all the hockey dads."
Sam's eyebrows shot up at little higher at this information.
"You better go take that defrosting bath that we talked about, bud," Jack says, following his son upstairs.
-0-0-0-
"So, Jack, how exactly did you talk our son into playing hockey?"
"I had nothing to do with that," Jack says, his eyes excited with the prospect.
"Right, so he left here a figure skater, and returned as a hockey player, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you were canoodling with the 'hockey dads'."
"That happened after. Look, Sam, I've said for a long time that I am perfectly fine with whatever our son decides to grow up to be. And I'll admit that I wasn't that excited to watch my son do figure eights. But I went there, and I held his hands while he skated backward around the rink. And he looks over at a hockey practice that is going on, and he's fascinated by it. And he stands there and watches. And it's the six-to-nine-year-old team, and the coach comes over and asks if he'd like to join. I think we're probably too late, and they're already in the middle of a season. But it was their first practice. And I think most of the other kids probably know how to skate, but half of the kids are pushing around these miniature walkers, and the other half are falling on their butts. So I go to sign him up. And then we find out that it conflicts with ballet. And I think, well that's it, but he chooses hockey over ballet."
"Probably because you were making that face," she says, glaring at her husband.
"I swear, I did not do anything in front of the kid. When I said that I was ok with whatever he decided to be, I meant it. He doesn't have to make choices to make me happy. But am I happy that my son chose hockey of ballet? Sure, I'll go ahead and admit it."
Sam glares at him.
"But not for the reason you think. I can't help him and Emma practice their plies. I can't sew them their little outfits, at least without getting blood from my fingers all over them. But hockey, I can play that with my son. I can give him advice on how to improve. I can help him gear up if he needs it."
"You can watch them do ballet, that's all you really need to do," Sam protests.
"Right, and that's ok. But Ty and I have less of a connection than I have with the girls, and sharing hockey, that might help us make up some of what we're missing."
"Ty likes you."
"I missed his first three years."
"Yeah, well, you weren't Emma's dad for the first three years either."
"I know, but she had a dad. Ty didn't," Jack says somberly.
"Jack, he's forgiven you for that," she says, wrapping an arm around her husband.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it never happened," he says.
"Ok, you guys can have your boy time, but Ty is still going to help Emma with her ballet sometimes."
"Unless I can get her to play hockey too," he says with an impish grin.
"Jack, you just told me you didn't influence our son!" she says chasing after him, but he's already darted into the room where there girls are sleeping to 'check on them'. He's not afraid of using his children as shields.