AU: Part of my Lost and Found universe. Jack celebrates his birthday for the first time after Samantha and Grace come through the mirror. Takes place after he returns from Antarctica before the Epilogue of Lost and Found.

Posted on 20th October 2023 - Happy Birthday Jack O'Neill.


Happy Birthday Daddy!

Running my hands over Samantha's rounded stomach, I felt the warmth and tingling sensation of our baby girl waking up. Using my hands, I sent her a good morning message and received one of my own in return. The morning sky had barely started to change colour which meant two things were about to happen. One, my alarm would go off signalling the start of my day and two, Gracie would crash our bed with the homemade card and bag of gifts I knew she had.

"Happy Birthday, husband." Sam murmured, a smile touching her lips though her eyes were still closed.

"Thank you, wife." I whispered back before kissing her shoulder and sweeping my hands across my baby one more time. There was nothing I loved more than waking up to Sam in my bed pregnant with my child.

"Hmmm, I love when you talk to her. Makes me all tingly, and…" Sam mumbled in a hazy voice, her last words disappearing in a gasp when she pressed backwards. Without any more words, she stretched her leg over the top of mine to encourage an even better morning. Despite her thirty plus weeks of pregnancy, she was still remarkably flexible.

With my lips on her neck, I murmured, "Probably not a good idea. Grace will be awake soon." So far, we had kept these things to evenings once Grace was asleep since she was normally an early riser.

"We'll have to be quiet then, reckon you can do that, General?" She jabbed at my inability to keep a level head during our couplings. Since coming back from Antarctica, my sensitivity to Ancient technology and people had increased exponentially. Hugging Grace filled the room with a golden glow as did other activities since Sam's pregnancy with a mini-Ancient. With Teal'c's assistance, I had perfected the art of meditation which allowed me to spend time with Charlie and control some of the shininess when emotions ran high. It was times like that that I longed for my old ability to keep things locked away. It was a work in progress.

"Can't promise you anything, but I'll try." I responded as we came together on a sigh. As always, the new sensations caused me to want drive home immediately, though with practice, I was less like a horny teenager these days and more like my old self. After a while, Sam started moving with me, the small breathy noises telling me she was enjoying this wake up as much as I was.

Soon enough the sound of small feet running from her bedroom to the bathroom heralded the imminent arrival of Grace. Neither of us wanted to stop.

"Jack. Please, she'll be here soon and… oh…" Sam pleaded with me to do my thing, one of her hands in my hair, the other gripping the cotton sheets.

"It's OK, I got you." I murmured, placing my hand on her lower stomach, my little finger resting gently over her nerve centre. While I continued my movements, I funnelled a little tingly warmth through my hand focusing on her pleasure while whispering how much I loved her. Almost immediately, I felt her tense and convulse.

"Oh God, Jack. Jack… So good… so… ohoh…" She moaned, tittering on the edge of oblivion, giving me my cue to turn her slightly into the mattress so that I could get better leverage making her whimper from the added pressure of my hand.

"Shhh, she'll hear you." I cajoled, working hard to keep my own voice under control. The sensations travelling through her and into me were amazing, as evidenced by the golden aura surrounding us.

Keeping my hand on her stomach, I barely managed two heavy thrusts before we were both shuddering through our releases. The door opened just as I dropped back to the bed. We were still curled around each other and out of breath as the glow faded.

"Good morning! Happy Birthday Daddy!" Grace bellowed happily ignorant of what had just happened before bounding over then climbing up and kneeling on the end of the bed still wearing her pink and purple sparkly unicorn pyjamas.

"Morning Munchkin." I responded with a smile while I continued to caress Sam's stomach under the bedcovers.

She smiled and thrust a brightly coloured bag at me. "I can give you this now." She had been trying to give it to me everyday for the past week, but Sam had waylaid her every time explaining and reexplaining when my actual birthday was. Having not properly celebrated the day in almost a decade, it felt strange to have someone so excited that I was getting older.

Giving Grace a sly look, I added, "Are you sure it's my birthday? I think it's your birthday."

Grace shook her head, brown-golden curls bobbing around her shoulders. "It's your birthday! You were in the cold sleep for mine." My face dropped when she reminded me of that, though she did not appear to be unhappy about it. Sam threaded her fingers through mine and squeezed. She knew I struggled with missing almost four months of our new life together. Especially since it wasn't all smooth sailing.

"Didn't you get the memo?" Sam responded to take my mind off my melancholy, the dreamy look still on her face as she rolled onto her back making me ridiculously proud of myself. I smiled at her as we both sat up against the headboard. Grace immediately crawled up to sit between us then relinquished hold of the bag.

"Can I say good morning to my sister?" Gracie asked with all the innocence of a child.

"Ah, not just yet she's still asleep." Sam replied very quickly then gave me a look that said the opposite was actually the case, but considering what we had just done, she would want a shower before letting our daughter get too close. I could not help the smirk that grew in response.

"OK." Grace replied, then dove into the bag to grab the first item. "Uncle Teal'c helped me make this for you. It's a cup, see the heart and the flower. I drawed those by myself." The cup was a misshapen pottery creation, no doubt made on the turning wheel that was still in storage on level 17. The heart was purple, and the flower was yellow, currently her two favourite colours. "It's for your desk at work." She stated, then dove back into the bag, "Here are your pencils and a ruler and a hi-iter…"

"Highlighter." Sam corrected. I looked at her and saw the smirk. Why would I need a highlighter? As if she could read my mind, she added jovially, "Perhaps to highlight interesting things in Daniel's books." I grinned broadly. Oh, I could just imagine how that would go, particularly if the book was an ancient text of some kind. I could not help the ensuing laugh imagining the exasperated look on the archaeologists' face if I did that to one of his books.

"You are evil. I knew there was a reason I loved you." I said, as I leaned over Grace's head to give my wife a kiss. The more time I spent with her, the more I realised that she was the same woman I fell in love with. She might not be military, but she still had all the same traits, only she applied them differently. She could still outshoot me and, according to Kawalsky, would be able to kick my arse if she weren't pregnant.

"Just one?" She clarified. I shook my head, still smiling, and focussed back on Gracie and the cup which now also held a handmade paper daisy and some crayons. I could just imagine the phone call I would get from Hammond if I submitted a report in green crayon. May I would just to see what happened.

"What are these?" I asked when I drew a small book of what looked like tickets out of the bag. They were made from dark blue cardboard with white paper bearing 'Happy Birthday' and 'Greatest Dad' stuck to them. I had to smile because I remembered Charlie giving me something similar one year for Fathers' Day.

"Oh! These are ticktics. Tickicks…" She grumbled. "Tickets." She finally got the word out. "They have things on them for you to get from me. See!" She pointed to the first one that said 'Good for one hug from Gracie', the name Gracie written in her curly 'pretty writing'.

"I'll turn that one in now." I told her and held my arms out. She giggled and threw herself at me, squeezing with as much strength as her little arms could. When she moved away, she went to take the ticket out of the book.

"Oh, no. That's mine. I might want another hug."

"No, Daddy. It's good for one hug. See." She pointed to the wording.

"That was a practice hug. I might need a bit more practice, what do you think Mummy?" I asked Samantha as she yawned into the back of her hand.

"Oh, yes. You definitely need more practice. Lots of practice with lots of things." She agreed with a raise of her eyebrow.

Leaning in to kiss her hair, I whispered in her ear, "I'll practice with you as much as you want later." She blushed and bit her lip. Gracie was having a sleepover with Janet and Cassie tonight, a situation we were planning on taking advantage of. Once the baby was here, we'd have even less time to ourselves.

"You better. I don't know how much longer I'll want you 'practicing' certain things." She responded with air quotes. Admittedly, I was astonished we were still doing anything. Sara hadn't been interested beyond the end of the second trimester. For Sam to be staring down thirty-four weeks and still jumping my bones a few nights per week was surprising, not that I was complaining.

Turning back to the little book, Grace continued to flip through the tickets and explained what each one was for – hiking with Grace, breakfast made by Grace, watching hockey with Grace, a visit to the park with Grace and snorkelling with Grace. Wait? Snorkelling? Sure, we had lakes and reservoirs, but the thought of breathing underwater was just wrong. Memories of how those Iraqi bastards used water to torture me flashed through mind. Then I looked at Samantha and instantly flashed back to my Sam drowning in a downed Ha'tak. The terror and dread on my face must have been visible because Sam stopped chuckling as she rested her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

"Jack?" She looked at me with understanding in her eyes. When I blinked my way out of my stupor, I saw Gracie looking at me with the same expression. It was as if she could sense that something was wrong.

"It's OK Daddy, we can just go fishing in the lakes." She said, then smiled before she dove back into the bag for a squeezy ball emblazoned with Best Dad while chattering about how I could use the ball at work if I had a bad day.

We spent another ten minutes going through the bag getting out an assortment of things, some Grace said were for work and others than had to stay home under pain of withheld hugs. Eventually Sam eased herself out of bed in favour of having a shower while I went to the kitchen and supervised Grace making peanut butter toast with way more peanut butter than was strictly necessary.

By the time Sam came out to the kitchen, there was a pile of haphazardly 'peanut buttered' toast, tea, coffee, and juice. We ate, talked, and laughed around the table the same way I did with Sara and Charlie all those years ago. It was a sharp contrast to the way my birthday had been previously, and I suddenly found that I was looking forward to birthday's being about more than just getting older.

"What are you thinking, Jack?" Sam asked me out of the blue before taking a bite of her toast.

I smiled and ran my hair through her bobbed hair. "How much I have missed this. How much I love you and Grace. How I never could have had this with my Sam." I told her honestly. As much as I had loved Sam with all my heart, all we could ever have had was an illicit affair that would have eventually ended both our careers. With my advancement to Brigadier General, I had discovered the stop loss order on my file which would have kept me in Sam's chain of command as long as she worked at the SGC.

"You still miss her."

"Yeah, but not for the reasons you think." I responded and thought about how I could explain to Samantha what Sam had given me. Hope, a reason to go on, trust, loyalty. "You remember how much of a mess I was in the early days." She nodded since her Jack had experienced the same events. "I came back from Abydos in a better place than when I left, but after a year I had began to fall back into old habits. Drinking, brooding, looking for a way out. I even took up smoking again."

"You had no one to keep you on straight and narrow." I shook my head.

"Sam challenged me as a commander. Things happened on missions that wouldn't have with a full male team, not that I ever regretted having her with us. I had to adjust my thinking in ways I had never done before." I explained. Memories of blue dresses and the effects of special teas flittered through my memory. Dipping my finger into my cup to scoop out a piece of coffee ground that missed the filter, I contemplated my next words.

"When we were stranded in Antarctica. She was breaking under the strain, and I ordered her to carry on, to leave me and find help. She didn't. She was content to die with me rather than traverse what she thought was frozen wasteland looking for help. That was when I started to fall for her. Two weeks later, she turned up on my doorstep with a birthday gift, my first since I lost Charlie."

"What was it, Daddy?" Grace asked. I hadn't even realised that she was taking in everything I was saying.

"A T-Shirt that read 'Antarctica. Been there, done that, got this shirt'." I answered with a ruffle of her hair while she sucked orange juice through a multi coloured straw. Sam laughed out loud, her eyes lighting up.

"I saw photos of Daddy wearing that shirt." Gracie piped up around a mouthful of toast and juice.

"Grace Jacqueline O'Neill. What have I said about eating and talking at the same time?" Sam berated our daughter. Huh! I'd never heard her full name before. Somehow, I had gone eight months without knowing that, granted, I had been in stasis for four of those months. It suited her and it didn't escape my notice that it was the feminine version of Jack rather than Jonathan. She innocently looked up still with cheeks full like a squirrel then grinned, making me fall even more in love with her. She was simply adorable. A perfect blend of me and Samantha.

"You got him the same one?" I asked when I managed to drag my eyes away from my little girl, astonished at how some things were the same and others so different.

"Sure did! I couldn't resist, and you were so grumpy with your broken leg. Drove me crazy in my lab." She replied with a smirk. I laughed at the memory of me tormenting Sam. That was when I started doing my paperwork in her lab instead of my office.

"After that, every year, she gave me something small that referenced one of our missions. It made an otherwise painful celebration just that little bit better." I said with a smile just as I checked my watch. "Ah, for crying out loud, I'm late."

"It's your birthday, you're allowed to be late." Sam added with a sip of her tea. She would be on base a little later.

"The SGC doesn't stop just because it's commander gets a year older." I replied, knocking back the rest of my coffee, and taking my plate to the sink. I'd have to shower on base. It was a BDU kind of day and I had a set of those in my locker anyway. I started cleaning my dishes when Sam wrapped her arms around my waist, her pronounced bump pressing into my back.

"Go. I'll do this and see you in an hour or so."

"You sure?" I asked receiving a nod and a smile in return. "What did I do to deserve you?" I asked as I turned around to hold her.

"Don't get used to it. It's your birthday, now get going flyboy." She replied cheekily, shooing me out of the kitchen.

Ten minutes later saw me walking out of the door and getting into the truck. The first thing I did was wind down my window to benefit from the good weather. As I fastened my seatbelt, I heard Gracie call out. She was running up to the side of the truck carrying my purple and yellow cup, her small hands clutched around it to stop its contents from spilling out. Stepping up onto the sideboard, she poked her head through the window.

"You forgot this, Daddy." She said thrusting my gift through the window with one hand while she held on to the door with the other hand. "And this." She added as she gave me the squeezy ball. "Happy Birthday." She said with a huge smile followed by kiss on my cheek. My heart filled with complete joy, a feeling I never thought I'd experience again.

"Thank you, Angel. You take care of your Mum and your sister, ya hear."

"Ya, sure you betcha, General Daddy!" She sing-songed with a mock salute that made me laugh, before jumping down and skipping back to Samantha. I smiled at my wife as she waved with one hand, the other resting on her stomach. Smiling broadly, I slipped on my sunglasses and reversed the truck out of the driveway before waving to my family and driving to work ready to tackle whatever issues lay ahead, preferably with green crayon. I smiled all the way to base.

Life was good. No. Life was great.