In Teal'c's voice: Previously on "Something Other Than Quarks"
The doorbell rang, rescuing her from the distasteful discussion, and she stood to answer it.
"Expecting company?" Jack asked over his shoulder as she casually touched his arm, and ran her fingers up to his shoulder, just for show, of course. It wasn't because she had been looking for excuses to touch his arms for the past seven years. Not at all. That would be weird.
"Probably just a solicitor," she answered.
"Oh good. I was just thinking we could use new windows," Jack quipped as Sam opened the door, and she would have answered him if her heart hadn't been in her throat.
"Dad. General," she greeted the smug looking men on her front porch. "I didn't think you were..."
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," her dad smiled and pulled her into a hug that she absently returned. Why couldn't it have been a window salesman? At least if she had new windows, she would have something out of which to jump.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you, but Jacob insisted," General Hammond informed Sam with a beaming smile. Clearly, he was proud of himself for being in on the secret. Oh god... the secret.
"I wanted to surprise you, and with how things are, you never know when plans can change," her dad explained. "But I thought we could spend your birthday together, have a nice lunch. I'm not totally off-duty, but it's been a while."
"Uhh, yeah, that sounds great. Actually, Mark's here. And the kids so..." Sam pointed over her shoulder toward the living room.
"No kidding?" Jacob asked, pushing his way into her house since she had forgotten to invite him.
"Sir, did you want to..." Sam remembered to invite General Hammond, at least.
"I'd love to, but I have to get back. I just wanted to give Jacob a ride. Happy birthday, Major."
"Thank you, Sir. Really, I appreciate it." Even if the timing was horrible, it was sweet of General Hammond to think about her.
"Jack," she heard her dad over her shoulder sounding a bit surprised as she said her goodbye to General Hammond and scurried into the living room. Belatedly, she wondered if General Hammond had heard it too.
"Jacob, fancy meetin' you here," Jack called rolling his head back on the couch.
"Grandpa!" two noisy voices called, and Sam had a moment to breathe while both kids attached themselves to her dad's arms and legs. She had a moment to make eye contact with Mark. At least he knew that Jacob wasn't supposed to be aware of the marriage. There was still a way to make this work. They just had to bring Mark in on the ruse. So, Mark thought she was married to Jack. Her dad thought Jack was her CO. And Mark thought that their dad thought... crap, what did he think? Oh God, this was never going to work.
"Mark, it's good to see you," Jacob called, walking to the table and squeezing his son's shoulder. "I had no idea you were going to be here."
"Or you would have stayed away, right?" Mark asked, and Sam prayed that was just sarcasm. She hadn't heard anything about them having a tiff, but then she hadn't talked to her dad in a while.
"Well, I suppose it is a special occasion," Jacob excused with a smile. She hoped that meant everything was okay between them. "We can both be here for Sam's birthday."
"Thanks for coming, Dad. Really, it's good to see you," Sam managed again when her dad approached her where she stood behind the couch, trying to regain some semblance of normalcy. Jack had remained mercifully quiet, and was back to his game with a kid on each side of him on the couch, but that in itself was going to raise some questions.
"I wouldn't miss it. If I could help it that is. Are Daniel and..." Jacob's eyes flitted to Mark, as he realized that he couldn't say Teal'c's name without being suspicious. "Is Daniel coming over too?" he asked with a glance toward Jack. Sam followed his eyes with a full turn of her head, and bit the inside of her mouth while she made the quickest decision of her life.
"No, Jack came over to stay with the kids. Mark and I were going to go to lunch. Just the two of us." There's no way her dad would believe that. Who asks their CO to babysit? Then again, who asks their CO to fake a marriage?
"Jack?" Jacob asked with a raised eyebrow, and Sam blinked hard with a grimace. Not 'Jack.' But she couldn't call him anything else in front of Mark who thought that 'Colonel O'Neill' was retired in front of her dad who knew that he wasn't retired.
"Yep. Did you want to come to lunch with us?" she invited knowing that Jack would roll with whatever they had to do to get out of this pickle.
"Without my grandkids?" Jacob seemed a little insulted by the suggestion.
"Well, that was the plan," she had never lied so fluidly in her life, and that was saying something. Mark was still watching from the kitchen table with a smirk that would make even Jack proud. Fortunately, he too was keeping his mouth shut.
"Let 'em come. Then Jack doesn't have to babysit," Jacob argued. "I'm sure he's got better things to do today. Kids, do you want to go to lunch with the old boring grown-ups?"
"No," Michael answered.
"Not really," Ashley answered.
"Well, that's too bad. I want to see you," Jacob told them.
"But I wanna stay with Uncle Jack," Ashley persisted, leaning her head onto his shoulder. Sam was so careful to keep her face impassive at the girl's slip, but she bit her tongue anyway. Her dad had noticed, and pulled a face at the familiar title.
"Oh, come on," Jack chided the kids. "You should go hang out with your grandpa. He's way funner than I am."
Sam wasn't sure if she could get in trouble for telling her CO to shut up while he was pretending to be her husband who was pretending to be her CO, but she was about to find out if he kept this up. The last thing she needed was her dad spending two hours with kids who couldn't keep quiet.
"All right, kids," Mark interjected finally, and made the horrible decision for all of them. "We're all going to lunch. Get your shoes and coats please. I have the van. We can all ride together."
"Good idea," Sam answered, having no other option. Her dad was still appraising her where they stood behind the couch, and throwing suspicious glances toward Jack.
"Yes, the Carters seem to be generally chock full of good ideas and plans," Jack answered as he hefted himself off the couch. Then approaching Sam, he asked with a pointing finger, "Can I see you in the..." he stopped to look around at her open concept house and all of the ears he needed to avoid. "Somewhere else?"
Wordlessly, she led him, opening the back door, and they stepped around the corner into the yard. There was no way she was going to lead him into the bedroom with her dad watching.
"I am going to need you to tell me in really small words what the hell is going on. I'll have you know that I happen to be very attached to all of my appendages," he told her in a frantic whisper. He had played it cool until this very moment, but now he was showcasing his appendages from shoulder to toes with a manic wave of his hand, "and if your dad gets the wrong idea about this, I have a feeling they won't be attached for very long."
"You scared?" she tried for a joke.
"A little, yeah. One... what am I supposed to call you?" he asked with waving hands.
"Go with 'Carter.' It'll make sense to my dad. And Mark knows that my dad doesn't know about our... marriage. You've gotta be 'Jack.' Colonel doesn't work if you're retired and 'Sir' is just too kinky."
Jack scoffed.
"So, Mark isn't going to say anything to your dad?" he asked leaning on the goal net he had set up in her backyard.
"I don't think so."
"And your dad isn't going to wonder why I'm hanging around?"
"I think he might have some ideas already," she told him quietly. The panic drained from his features, replaced with a discriminating curiosity.
"Such as?" he pressed her, straightening up and crossing his arms at her.
"He knows that I... well, let's just say that outside of being confused about the logistics he probably wouldn't be surprised if Mark did tell him."
"Might I ask, why the heck not?"
"I haven't said anything to him if that's what you're worried about. I just know that he knows."
"Knows what, exactly?" Jack pressed her, and now he was just making her angry with his digging into things that needed to be left buried. Preferably, in a room somewhere.
"Do we really need to do this," she gestured between them, "right now?"
"Apparently, we do," his voice was bled dry of the interrogative tone, and the frantic whisper was back. "Because I'm having lunch with my in-laws. Now what the hell does your dad think is going on? Really, outside the farce."
Sam's pettiness hit her all at once and she deflated when she realized the position she had forced on him. Yes, he had agreed, but not to this.
"He knows I care about you," she told him quietly not meeting his eyes. It wasn't everything, but it was close.
"And that's it?"
"And he knows that you did too," she finished. "From the Za'tarc test."
"Okay. So, we move to plan B. I can work with that," he answered more calmly than she had seen him since before that ring of her doorbell.
"Okay," she replied and turned to lead him back into the house. Apparently, that's all the response she was going to get to the semi-confession she had just made. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time in a long time. It didn't escape her notice that he hadn't returned her confession.
"You should have told me," he chastised her instead. "If I had known it was your birthday, I would have at least gotten my wife a cake."
Sam stopped, turning back to him with a grateful smile for injecting some normalcy while knowing that they were getting ready to walk into the most uncomfortable lunch of her life. Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her chin on his shoulder. He hugged her too, and it was enough to calm her for what lay ahead.
"I'm really sorry I got you into this," she told him before she dropped an impulsive kiss to his neck.
"No sweat, Carter. I'll just add an extra day to that fishing trip for every family member that arrives."
Jack steeled himself for whatever was about to happen, as he followed Carter up her back steps toward the door, but Mark was there, pushing out to the back yard.
"Sam, can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked. She looked a little nervous, but he was her brother. She was going to have to deal with this on her own.
"See ya in a minute," Jack told her with a gently reassuring squeeze of her arm, and made his way into the house.
Ashley was sitting on a kitchen chair with her little foot propped up on the seat. Her tongue was poking out and she seemed to be struggling with her shoelace.
"Need a hand with that?" Jack asked her.
"I can do it. I'm 8 now. It just has a knot."
"Oh, well of course you can do it." Jack watched her struggle a few more seconds, yanking at the strings. "Maybe I could just help with the knot, and then you can tie it."
She looked up at him skeptically as if she wasn't quite buying what he was selling, but she was also frustrated which tipped her in his favor.
"Just the knot," she told him. Jack squatted in front of the sparkly sneaker and untangled the strings while Ashley waited impatiently.
"Okay, that's enough," she told him when she could see it was free. It seemed as if all the Carter women were an independent sort. Before she could show off her shoe-tying prowess, Jack heard a door click open down the hall.
Right, Dad was in here. Maybe he should have stayed outside with the brother after all.
"Jack, I was a little surprised to see you here. I didn't know you knew Mark," Jacob commented as he made his way back into the kitchen, presumably from the bathroom, although Jacob's walk down the hall had brought up additional considerations in Jack's mind. Sleeping arrangements. Jacob usually stayed with Sam when he was "in town."
"Uhh, I don't. First time," Jack explained.
"And we played hockey in the backyard," Ashley piped up, obviously catching Jacob up on the most important details.
"Is that so? Who won?" Jacob asked her with a smile.
"Me and Michael did, but it was two against one. Uncle Jack said if he had a goalie as good as me, that he would have won."
"I bet he would have, sweetheart. Maybe we'll play again later. I can be Uncle Jack's goalie," Jacob offered the girl sweetly while somehow still throwing a suspicious glare Jack's way.
"I don't know, Jacob. I might still be at a disadvantage with your decrepit self in my lineup."
"Easy there, Uncle Jack," Jacob warned with a menacing glare, and clearly, the man was not going to let that it wasn't totally unheard of to be "uncle" to somebody's kids if they were close to you, right? Maybe they could spin it that way. Speaking of 'they,' the back door opened to admit the two younger Carters.
"All right kids, ready to go?" Mark called from behind them as he entered the room with Carter. Whatever they had talked about, must have been a doozy because she had that look in her eye like she was about to ask him to go to Plan C.
"You guys go ahead," she told Mark. "I wanna talk to grandpa for a minute." Jack moved to walk out with the others, but she stopped him with a hand on his forearm. "You stay," she nearly ordered him before offering a belated "please," and he complied.
All three of them stood frozen with eyes flitting toward the entryway and back toward their tachycardic triangle of unrelenting silence until the boisterous voices were quieted behind the closed front door. Jack looked sideways down to Carter who was furiously chewing the inside of her bottom lip and refusing to look at anything but the closed front door. Jacob looked expectant, his eyes doing a tick tock between both of them.
"I can't wait to hear this," Jacob finally told her with a smirk, forcing her to look at him.
"I don't really have time to get into it right now, but I need to ask a favor," Sam began nervously with her fingers still digging into Jack's arm.
"I thought you might. What the hell is going on?"
"Mark thinks we're married," she blurted.
"Carter?" Jack asked her. Apparently, this was, in fact, a Plan C situation.
"What?" Jacob asked at the same time with an eyebrow desperately seeking his hairline, and given that it had receded years ago, that was saying something.
"Mark thinks I'm married to Colonel O'Neill," Sam stated more clearly, still clutching at said Colonel's arm.
"No kidding. I wonder what gave him that idea," Jacob wondered, looking more amused than surprised now.
"Like I said, I don't really have time to get into it right now, but I need you to play along. We'll go to lunch. You'll act like you're happy for me, and that'll be that. And I promise, before you have to leave, I'll explain everything."
"George didn't say anything to me. I assume this has nothing to do with the Air Force?" Jacob asked gesturing between his daughter and brand new son-in-law.
"Oy. From your mouth to God's ears," Jack leaned in, finally putting in his two cents. Jack immediately regretted it as it earned a long stare from Jacob, completely devoid of amusement now. Apparently, he was only amused when Carter talked. Finally, Jacob looked away, back to Sam.
"And this is really important to you?" Jacob asked her again.
"Yes. Please, dad," she asked, sounding almost as desperate as that fateful day that she had stopped the elevator to initiate this farce.
"Okay. Then let's go to lunch," Jacob relented.
The trio headed for the front door, walking silently out, single file, and Jack couldn't shake the feeling that it might have been best if he had stayed on the other side of it. Which time? Pick one. At this point, any of them would do.