AN: Daniel gets blamed for things that weren't his fault. After The First Commandment.
Dammit Daniel! Why did Hanson have to be older than her? Jack wondered to himself as he sat down to eat his pie. Sara was a few years younger than he was, but nothing to raise any eyebrows. It wasn't like he had a thing for younger women or subordinates, for that matter. But he could see himself having a thing for her. He didn't . But he could. It was still weird to him to even be looking at himself in relation to anyone other than his wife. Ex-wife, he reminded himself. Not like it mattered anyway; Carter was way off limits according to the UCMJ Article 134. He hadn't looked it up or anything, but it sounded about right. This was great news for her. Her, with the shiny face and bright smile that could actually blind you if you saw it when you were in a bad mood. She didn't need some messed up asshole like Jonas Hanson. Or him. Yeah, maybe she liked to fix problems, but that was never going to work out for her, no matter how many pointed glances Daniel gave him over his shoulder while Carter prattled on about her "type." She needed someone to marvel at the world with her. Someone like Daniel who understood almost everything she said and made her more like herself with every conversation they had. Sure, Jack could hold his own with her, but he didn't get off on it, the way she seemed to. She was too damn cute though when she got all worked up about quarks or whatever the flavor of the day was.
Dammit, Jack! This was inconvenient. Time to start expanding the social circle if this is where his brain was ready to take him. He was a simple guy, and that's exactly how he preferred to keep his personal life too—not complex, not complicated, not intriguing, not controversial. He was into honest, straightforward, no subterfuge. He had enough of that on the job. He needed real, if he needed anything at all. What he did not need was any interest in a junior officer with big blue eyes and bouncy blonde hair and all the enthusiasm of a brand new puppy. That was a trap if ever there was one. Luckily for him, she seemed to be entirely focused on the job. Not that it was a healthy habit for someone as tightly wound as her, but it did ensure she wouldn't notice if he slipped up now and then. But he wouldn't . He couldn't , since there was no way he was going to think about this anymore. Nope. Moving on. Maybe he'd try going out tonight. He could be a downright congenial bastard if he tried. That sounded like lots and lots of work though. And the game was on tonight. It could wait.
Geez Daniel! There Sam was just going about her business, bonding with her new teammate. Sure, she knew the Colonel was right behind them, but it hadn't hit her then that their discussion about the kind of man Jonas was would hold any parallels to the kind of man that the Colonel was. Paired with that awful incident when she was infected by the virus from the Land of Light, she was considering crawling inside a hole and dying rather than reporting for duty tomorrow.
God, this is embarrassing! Not that she had anything to be embarrassed about. Other than the locker room incident, which was totally out of her control, she hadn't done anything or hinted at anything inappropriate. If anything, the Colonel had done a little flirting in an attempt to make her feel better, but that was just his way. No one else had probably even noticed the similarities between Jonas and Colonel O'Neill. She was notorious for reading too much into things. Social interaction had never been her biggest strength. People came with too many variables to be predictable. Oddly, that's why the idea of having a "type" had always appealed to her. You knew what you were getting. Yeah, she usually went for older guys. They didn't care that she was completely out of touch with her generation's trends or speech patterns. In high school, all of the kids her age had mothers, which made it difficult to relate. She had grown up fast. Not only that, she was too busy for proper socialization, preferring to focus on her education and then her career. A steady AP course load to graduate early in high school didn't leave a lot of time for Prom.
It's none of their business. She reminded herself. She didn't have to share her personal life with her team. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but she didn't have to. And she wasn't going to. Being the only woman on the team automatically put her in a position of needing to prove herself. At least that's how she felt. The Colonel had covered well by saying he only disliked scientists, but she wasn't quite sure she believed him yet. She wasn't going to give any of them any ammunition to see her as weak or unfit. That meant leaving her personal life at home. Not getting too close. She could do that.