Jack sighed, he was bored. Daniel was working on the computer in the study and Teal'c was doing something in the lounge. The Colonel was reluctant to go and see what he was actually doing. In truth Jack O'Neill had been restless for several days. *It may,* he mused, *have something to do with a certain blonde haired astrophysicist sleeping next door.* Several weeks ago Jack's house had been attacked by an un-known assailant, a few days later Sam's house had also been attacked. Luckily both were out during the attacks which raised the question whether the assailant was trying to scare the members of SG-1 or whether they were truly trying to hurt them.
No-one seemed to be able to find any evidence to suggest who the attackers may have been although Jack was positive NID had something to do with it. The General however didn't seem to agree and Sam had pointed out that although NID were a pain in the ass they weren't really likely to try to blow up members of the SGC. Jack had then suggested that the Tok'ra were behind it which only served to earn him a stern look from his superior. He hadn't really believed it was the Tok'ra but anything to annoy the snake-heads. Sam had then pointed out her father was 'one of those snakeheads' to which Jack had pointed out that Tok'ra Spice was also one of them. Tok'ra Spice was the nick name given to Anise/Freya to which Sam had sniggered and mentioned something about 'animal magnetism'.
Surveillance was set up at all members of SG-1's houses but some how Daniel's property still managed to have it's door kicked in, his rooms smashed up a bit and his laptop broken without anyone seeing a thing. This was when General Hammond had an idea;
~~~~~"I feel it necessary for the members of SG-1 to relocate inside of the base's security area, there is a newly developed property ready and waiting." the General sat at his desk with his fingers linked resting on the table top in typical Hammond position. "Sir?" asked Sam, her forehead creased in a frown. "Live together?" asked Jack, Teal'c merely cocked his eyebrow. "I believe that is what the General means" he spoke in his usual calm voice. "As in all of us, in one house?" asked Daniel looking for confirmation. "I know it seems a little extreme Doctor but I deem it necessary for your own safety, at least until we can determine who perpetrated those attacks." Jack looked sideways at his 2IC, This, he thought, should be interesting.~~~~~
And now Jack was restless, he heard the kettle being switched on in the kitchen below. It was a nice enough house, if not a bit small for 2 men, 1 woman and a Jaffa. It had 4 reasonably sized bedrooms upstairs, two bathrooms and a study which Daniel and Sam had insisted on having. Downstairs there was a lounge, a kitchen, a dining room and a room Daniel had taken to calling the 'parlour'. No-one was really sure why he'd started calling it that, secretly Jack thought Daniel liked to think of himself as the upper-class scholar and having a 'parlour' sounded pretty upper-class. However the name had stuck and now everyone called it the parlour. There was also quite a large garden with a large lawn that Jack would meticulously mow, there was nothing quite like the relaxation of pushing around a large lawn-mower in the summer sun.
As we know Teal'c was doing god-knows-what in the lounge, Daniel was translating something (which jack believed he had already translated once, he had a suspicion Daniel thought translating was 'fun') and had the study covered in papers, parchments and heavy dusty books which made Jack's eyes hurt just looking at their covers.
Unfortunately these were two of Jacks favourite rooms, both had a TV and he knew there were things on he wanted to watch, damned if he could remember what though. So in protest he'd taken up residence on the stairs. He was lying with his head against the edge of the top step and his knees were bent with his feet resting on a step further down. His eyes were closed until he felt a nudge at his foot. Prising his eyes open he saw Sam standing at his feet with two cups in her hands. Silently she handed him one and sat down beside him. He scooted closer to the wall to make room.
"Why are you on the stairs?" she asked before sipping her coffee. Jack shrugged, "Daniel has covered the study and Teal'c is. well not sure I want to know what he's doing in there." Sam narrowed her eyes and Jack tipped his head to indicate a pale white plastic bag at few steps down from where they were sitting. "Don't tell me you can't see what's in the bag?" Sam squinted a bit and Jack watched as they suddenly became very wide. "Oh. That's umm. Why would he need those?" Jack rolled his eyes, "You tell me; after all you're the only women in this house." A smirk formed on Sam's face, "What makes you so sure it would be with a woman anyway?" Jack screwed up his eyes and groaned, "Now that was an image I could have done without" Sam sniggered.
When Jack had got up to use the toilet Sam had shifted to a more comfortable position on the stairs and now sat sideways with her knees pressed against the opposite wall and her feet dangling out from underneath them, her back resting against the opposite wall and the cup on the stair above. She was now effectively blocking the stairs and Jack was forced to do a Teal'c impression and raise an eyebrow. Sam shrugged and patted the stair for him to come and take his place. He did but this time draped his legs over Sam's who gave a smile and shifted herself a bit to get comfy. The Colonel laid back again with his head sideways and talked to Sam who had her head propped on her hand. After ten or so minutes they fell into a comfortable silence and Jack found himself wondering if he was going to fall asleep and what would happen to certain parts of his anatomy if he was to fall asleep with his legs resting over hers. He suddenly felt a hand push his legs over and the comfortable warmth that was Sam's legs move out from underneath him.
"Carter?" he asked, opening one eye he was finding he felt extremely disappointed that she'd gotten up and was missing the contact already. "Back in a minute Sir, I was just going to get a book" Sam stood up and brushed off her civilian jeans and turned to go down the stairs. Jack concentrated very hard on not looking at certain parts of her, silently cursing and praising her for wearing those jeans. After a few minutes in which Jack was straining his ears waiting for the creak of the stair which would announce his friend's arrival, Sam appeared at the bottom holding a different sort of book to the one Jack had imagined. He was thinking along the lines of 'An extremely boring and complex theory on something extremely boring and complex' by S.O. Boring. He was however confronted with a small paperback edition of 'Carpe Jugulum' by Terry Pratchett. Jack raised his eyebrow and his legs in order to let Sam settle back down into her original position.
"Terry Pratchett, Carter?" Sam nodded, "Carpe Jugulum? Seize the neck?" Again another nod, "Yes Sir and may I say you've been revising your Latin." Jack shook his head slowly, "Ok then." "And Sir I was thinking." "Your point?" Sam rolled her eyes but couldn't help smiling, "I was thinking that if we're all living together maybe, when we're off duty, you should just call me Sam.?" she asked tentatively, she and Jack and a very complicated and precarious dynamic and she couldn't help wondering if she just sent it spiralling into the no-go zone. To her consternation her CO nodded, "If you agree to call me Jack and not 'Sir'" Sam nodded, "I could probably stretch to that."
She wriggled into an almost slouching position and opened the fiction book to the place where her bookmark, an old receipt, marked her page. "Read it to me" said Jack without opening his now closed eyes; he'd lain back down on the stair again. "Sorry?" "I'm bored, read it to me" What Jack wouldn't reveal is that he couldn't care less what she was reading; he just loved the sound of her voice. If he was poetic, which he wasn't, then he would have said something about it sounded like a melting honey or some such nonsense.
*Which of course is absurd,* he thought, *how can anyone's voice sound like melting honey? What does melting honey sound like anyway? Can honey even melt? It'd be like saying 'she laughs like a drain', how can anyone possibly sound like a drain?*
Shaking his head from the rather ridiculous thoughts he focused on what Sam was saying. "Ok" Her eyes left his face and moved down to the book.
"In her own cottage a few miles away," she started speaking in the slow and clear voice she'd learnt from giving lectures over the years, "the witch Agnes Nitt" "Witch?" interrupted the man lying across her legs. "Yes a witch, do you want me to read this to you?" "Yup" "Then stop interrupting" Jack gave a sloppy mock salute and Sam went back to her reading, "The witch Agnes Nitt was in two minds about her new pointy hat. Agnes was generally in two minds about anything. As she tucked in her hair and observed herself critically in the mirror she sang a song. She sang in harmony. Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr Blue Bird and other forest creatures and then there's nothing for it but a flamethrower." Here Jack snorted with laughter, "What kind of book is that?" he asked "A very good and funny one, it'll have even you in stitches." Sam continued reading, stopping every few minutes as Jack laughed or while she explained something.
After roughly 15 minutes, 30 pages, several complaints of numb bums and insistences that she didn't want to move despite said numb bum Daniel appeared at the top of the stairs. A strange smirk adorned his face as he observed his two team members, "Bed time story Jack?" "Too right" he replied. "Computer's free if you want it Sam" "I'm quite comfy here thanks," Jack snorted, "Except for that fact that everything lower than the bottom of my spine is completely numb." "Can I get passed?" Daniel asked seeing that neither of the stairs occupants were catching the hint that he thought was pretty obvious. Sam made a sideways motion with her hand clearly indicating that Daniel was free to pass. "Are you going to move?" He asked, "Nope" replied Jack, "Don't think I could if I tried." Added Sam cheerfully. Daniel contemplated his options. They were;
1) Attempt to step over the lump, fall and break his neck.
2) Hold onto the banister and swing over the top of them, fall and break his neck.
3) Step on one of them, get pushed off, fall and break his neck.
Deciding that if he was going to fall and break his neck he might as well have fun doing it, picked option number two. He placed his hands on the banisters on both sides of the stairs and swung his legs over the two bodies landing cat-like on the stair below them. He noticed that Sam had her eyes firmly shut and Jack looked slightly annoyed. "I don't think there was any need for that Danny-boy" Daniel rolled his eyes, a thing he seemed to do a lot around the sarcastic Colonel and made his way down to the bottom of the stairs and walked to the door of the lounge.
"Wait!" called Sam. "Aww Sam," came a whining voice, "you ruined it." The use of the first name didn't go unnoticed by the doctor. "Ruined what?" he asked. "I wouldn't go in there if I were you." "And why not?" "Teal'c is in there" Sam confirmed. "Yeah." "Take a look in the bag" Daniel hesitated, he wasn't sure he liked the undertone of amusement in Jack's voice. However curiosity got the better of him and he opened the mouth of the bag slowly and then shut it quickly when he saw the contents. "And they belong to Teal'c?" "Uh huh" "Our Teal'c? Big coloured Jaffa, gold thing on his head, likes to raise one eyebrow." "That's him" replied Jack, the low ceiling was concealing his face from Daniel and his position in the Hallway but he could hear the smirk which currently resided on the other man's face.
"Well, what's he going to do with them?" Here Sam snorted and replied, "Oh come on Daniel, surely it hasn't been that long?" Jack suppressed a sudden urge to giggle; he briefly wondered if Sam had spiked his coffee. Daniel meanwhile was blushing and made an 'ahem' noise. Sam controlled herself enough to apologise and explain that maybe she'd been hanging around Colonel O'Neill to long. To which Jack had replied that it was more likely to be her taste in fictional reading. Sam hit him on the leg and Jack pulled the book out of her hands and hit her on the head with it.
Neither noticed Daniel wander into the kitchen to leave them flirting in peace.
Story Notes: AUTHOR NOTES: Just a piece of sillyness I wrote when i was sitting on the stairs, drinking tea and reading Terry Pratchett... Also I wrote this a long time ago. I like my writing up until I post it when I decide I don't think it's good enough so if it's bad... err well blame... someone else... Oh and I have no beta (any offers?) so mistakes are inevitable..
Just had another thought.. excuse the awful paragraphing but when i copied it into the email it looked nasty as big blocks of text and I know it makes my eyes hurt trying to read things like that so I seperated it into paragraphs where there shouldn't be paragraphs... make sense?
FEEDBACK: Pretty please, send to... child_of_a_goddess@hotmail.com (just make sure to put 'feedback' in the subject line otherwise I might delete by accident)
Just had another thought.. excuse the awful paragraphing but when i copied it into the email it looked nasty as big blocks of text and I know it makes my eyes hurt trying to read things like that so I seperated it into paragraphs where there shouldn't be paragraphs... make sense?
FEEDBACK: Pretty please, send to... child_of_a_goddess@hotmail.com (just make sure to put 'feedback' in the subject line otherwise I might delete by accident)
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]