Jack sits in the all but deserted Commissary pushing around the last few bites of his cake and watching Sam spoon out a cube of electric blue jell-o from the dish on her own tray. He's seen her eat this almost daily for three years. It's one of the Carter Constants, like that she's more likely to be in her lab than at home or that she'll say anywhere between 50 and 300 "Sirs" in a single day, and that's only counting the ones directed at him. Jack leans in over the table, having decided to indulge his curiosity, "What is it about the blue, Carter?" He dings his fork against her glass dish.

She puts the spoon in her mouth gracefully and smiles around it, shrugging. She withdraws the spoon and swallows, looking back at him. "I like it, Sir."

"So I have observed," he says. "Is it blueberry?"

"Blue raspberry."

"There are blue raspberries?"

She laughs. "No, Sir."

"Then, I ask you, why is it blue?"

"Because, way back when, companies wanted to sell raspberry flavored food but people didn't want to eat the dangerous dye associated with the raspberry flavor color, so they started using blue. It's a much longer and more scientific story than that, but I'll spare you." She winks.

"What a gift. Is it my birthday?" He pokes his fork into a few cubes in her dish and pulls it to his mouth before her swat lands against his wrist. "Yoink."

"Sir! You got cake in my jell-o!" She lifts the dish and spoons half of its contents onto his plate.

"You got jell-o on my cake," he mumbles through a mouth filled with probably too much jell-o. He smiles sheepishly as he manages to chew and swallow the pilfered treat. "To be honest, Carter, I'm not getting the raspberry."

Sam laughs and raises her hands with a shrug. "I don't know what to tell you, sir."

He prods at the jell-o she dumped on his plate and scoops another cube into his mouth. He lets it settle on his tongue and do that sort of melty thing jell-o does when it encounters warmth. He sucks in his cheek and studies the bright blue, then redirects his gaze to Sam's eyes, which are glowing a much more natural but no less stunning shade of blue. He swallows hard. "I do love the color, though."

"It's very enticing, Sir."

"Yes, it is," he says, helplessly grinning like a fool.