"What do you mean that's not allowed?"
Janet tried very hard not to lose her temper. It was Christmas, after all, and even in the most top secret facility on the face of the Earth, good cheer to all men, yadda yadda yadda, was seeping down from the surface into the uniform gray and green world that she lived in for three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. Give or take some down time.
"I mean, *Sergeant*," she said, throwing in extra emphasis on his rank, "that you cannot, absolutely *cannot* hang that... that... "
Janet's pet peeve? Tinsel.
*Shudder*
She hated the stuff.
"You cannot hang that there. It's just not allowed." She crossed her arms and tried to look frightening. Didn't really work because for one thing the Sergeant was twice her height - no exaggeration - and he was, to top it all off, standing on a ladder.
Difficult to look threatening when she was sure she looked like an ant from his perspective.
"Who says?"
"Who says?" Why you little...
"*I* say, Sergeant. And if I ever catch you speaking like that to Major Fraiser again, you'll be cleaning the gate room with a toothbrush between your teeth." Colonel O'Neill came to stand by the doctor, his glare twinning her own.
The Sergeant wobbled on his ladder and despite her irritation, Janet stepped forwards, hands outstretched in case he fell. "No, sir. I'm sorry, ma'am." The boy blushed a little and started to climb down, trails of silver tinsel dangling from his hands. And his hair. And from his pockets. "Just, you know. It's *Christmas*."
What? And he was all of five, was he? Janet thought uncharitably.
"I know, Sergeant." The Colonel sighed. "Get lost, would you? I need to speak to the Doc."
"Yessir. Yes, ma'am. Sorry again, ma'am."
When the young man had left, Janet and Colonel O'Neill breathed a sigh of considerable relief.
"It's been like that all morning," the Colonel said wearily, reaching up to rub his hands across his face.
He was looking particularly tired, too, Janet thought worriedly. She wondered if there was any chance she could convince him to just have a little lie down on one of her nice, comfy infirmary beds and take a nap.
No chance.
"Who else have you rescued from Sergeant Daniels and his tinsel fetish, then?" she asked chattily, leaning a hip against a table.
"So far... three separate civilian scientists, one of whom was threatening Daniels with a fire extinguisher, Carter, Teal'c, Hammond's receptionist and myself."
"He's certainly got around." The wretch. It was funny, until about two days ago, she'd never noticed Sergeant Daniels before and now he was *everywhere*.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with him. He seems to be intent on hanging up tinsel in the most inappropriate places. I've told him to restrict it to the offices and the hallways but I just ripped down a whole load of red stuff from inside the elevators and then there was some tied to the banisters on the stairs..." He shook his head. "I'll be glad when this whole thing is over."
"Amen to that. Um, was there something you needed Colonel?" Janet asked, aware that there were a couple of nurses right behind the Colonel who were eying her suspiciously. Emma and Kate were the gossipy ones, too, and it wouldn't do Janet any good for scuttlebutt to hear that she and Colonel O'Neill were flirting in the infirmary. Even if it wasn't true.
The Colonel frowned suddenly. "I'm sure there was, or why else would I come down here?"
Definitely needed a nap, Janet thought to herself.
"No, really, I'm not kidding. I *so* had a reason..." He clicked his fingers. "Damn. It's completely gone out of my mind."
Emma and Kate raised their eyebrows suggestively at each other as they made one of the infirmary beds. Janet made a mental note to put them on bedpan duty in the New Year.
"Okay, Colonel, why don't you come back when you remember?" she said in a brisk, professional tone of voice.
"Sure, sure. Thanks, Doc."
"My pleasure."
Emma and Kate smirked.
Janet narrowed her eyes.
*
Sam had finally given in and locked her door. It wasn't the noise that was bothering her, precisely - the SGC was a little more 'buzzy' than it usually was- it was the number of people who kept 'dropping by' to 'chat'.
She'd started off being understanding; it *was* Christmas... good will... cheer... fa la la la laa... yadda yadda yadda.
And she'd been polite to the first ten or so people that had dropped by. She'd made conversation without tapping her fingers impatiently. She'd wished everyone well, asked after people's families, their vacation plans, the size of their damn Christmas trees.
Then it had just got ridiculous.
Firstly, a Sergeant by the name of Daniels had insisted on bedecking her lab with the most hideous examples of tinsel she'd ever in her life seen. Seriously. Tinsel, if it was present at all, belonged on Christmas trees but Daniels either didn't know this or he didn't care. He'd taped a whole bunch of the stuff over her doorway that was a hideous combination of red, green and blue.
It was unreal.
When the Colonel had shooed the guy away - and she had been so close to kissing him for just that - Sam had settled back in to get some work done. It was still Monday after all and she always did her paperwork on a Monday, when her brain was fresh from the weekend. At least, that was the theory. In reality she tended to be working at the weekend anyway so, if anything, she was even more tired on a Monday.
Still, it was a routine and Sam liked the odd routine in her life. Made up for the all the extraordinary things she did on a day-to-day basis.
The next interruption had come from a cadet who'd been dared by his friends to come into her lab with a sprig of mistletoe.
She'd narrowed her eyes and he'd run off, trembling with fear.
Okay, that wasn't what happened. Sam had been very brusque and Major-ish with him, told him he ought to have better things to do with his time and didn't he know how lucky he was to be working in the SGC in the first place? The boy had stammered and stuttered and apologised and then, unluckily for him, Colonel O'Neill had made a return trip past her lab and had confiscated the mistletoe.
Heh heh heh.
Pity he hadn't used it to his advantage though.
Never mind.
It wasn't just the real people who were bothering her. She was getting dirty e-mails from McKay, too, and she didn't know *how* they were getting through the system. There was a particularly disturbing one with an image of himself wearing only clumps of strategically placed tinsel.
Gold tinsel.
Curious, Sam had leaned a little closer to the screen to discover if that really was McKay's body or if he'd just superimposed his head upon it.
At which point, General Hammond had dropped by on his weekly base check-up.
Suffice to say, Sam wasn't having a good morning.
*
Jonas prodded it with a fork.
"What is it?"
"It is... a larger form of Jell-O," Teal'c responded, almost in the same awed tones as Jonas.
"Wow."
They marvelled in its presence as it wobbled and glowed a beautiful orange color in the commissary lighting.
"I am surprised Sergeant Daniels has not ornamented it yet," Teal'c added.
"Give him a moment and I'm sure he will," Jonas said dryly, propping his head upon his fist and studying the gelatinous mass with interest. "So, does it come in other shapes? I mean, this sort of effect is nice and all..."
"At Cassandra Fraiser's birthday party, some years ago, there was a Jell-O in the shape of a fish."
"Really?"
"It was most impressive."
Jonas could easily imagine. Having first become acquainted with Jell-O on Earth, he had experimented in his rooms with boiling water and some Jell-O cubes but never quite achieved the correct consistency. This was partly because on two occasions, he had been called away by the klaxons blaring out demands and on another occasion Major Carter wanted to teach him lock-picking. He was sure if he sat down and worked at it he could one day achieved the magnificence that the SGC cooks had prepared for a special treat.
"Guys?"
Both Teal'c and Jonas looked up to see one of the cooks looking down at them.
"Can I...?" The man gestured to the Jell-O. "I need to put it back in the fridge."
"Oh, sure, sure." Mentally, Jonas said goodbye to the Jell-O mountain and the two aliens watched as it wobbled away on its special silver platter.
Jonas sighed and went back to staring at the table. "Is it always like this?"
"Like what, Jonas Quinn?"
"Kind of... boring."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "You are bored already?"
"No, no, no," he said hurriedly. "I mean, usually... things are pretty hectic around here. I've noticed a certain lack of work going on at the moment."
"It is the silly season," Teal'c said with great assurance.
Jonas blinked at him. "The silly season," he repeated.
"Christmas."
"Christmas is a silly season?"
"That is what I have observed."
"Oh." Jonas wondered if Teal'c had got this particular observance off of the Colonel. It certainly sounded like something the Colonel would say.
He looked around the commissary at the decorations - shiny, metallic-coloured plastic things mostly, and then there were these foil string things in different colours that Sergeant Daniels had stuck everywhere. Jonas even had some in his quarters but how the Sergeant had done it without him being aware of it was beyond him.
"Do you think it's safe to go back yet?"
"I do not, Jonas Quinn."
Jonas sighed. He'd had to leave his quarters an hour or so ago because women kept coming in with some kind of leafy plant and then expecting him to kiss them. He'd felt sure it was some trick by Colonel O'Neill, who was forever thinking up things to embarrass him. But, as he'd later found out, that hadn't been the case.
Apparently Teal'c had been having the same problem and when Jonas had met up with him in corridor Teal'c had explained that the plant was called 'mistletoe' and it was apparently an Earth tradition.
This went a long way to confirming Jonas's fear that humans were just a little unstable.
"Now?" he asked again, impatiently.
"No."
"How about now?"
"Jonas Quinn, be silent."
*
Hammond gasped as he pulled open his top drawer. "I don't believe it."
"Sir?"
"That damn Sergeant..." He pulled out the trails of tinsel furiously and waved them in the air. "How the *hell* did he get in here is what I want to know?"
"I... I don't know, sir."
General Hammond looked up to see that his receptionist, a previously sedate young woman, was trying very hard not to laugh. "You dare," he warned.
She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. "No, sir."
George's mouth twitched and he shook his head, losing any inclination to string up a certain Sergeant. It was Christmas after all. "Put it somewhere suitable, Walsh."
"Yessir." She reached across the desk and grasped the armful of green and red tinsel. Trails of it slithered down her uniform and onto the floor but she apparently didn't notice.
"Dismissed."
Mouth trembling, she managed to get out a suitably respectful, "Yes, sir," before she turned her back on him and escaped.
He distinctly heard a giggle through the now closed door.
Hammond sighed.
The door swung open and George wasn't really surprised to see that it was Colonel O'Neill. "Sorry to barge in on you, sir..." he began, as was increasingly his custom.
"Colonel? Something wrong?"
"Yes."
Hammond waited, eyebrows raised. "Well, son, what is it?"
He watched as Colonel O'Neill frowned, raised a hand into the air, and then paused. "Ah, hell."
"Colonel?"
"I've forgotten. This has happened to me twice today." Looking a little sheepish, Jack stuck his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry to waste your time, sir."
General Hammond smiled benevolently and shifting some files from his in-tray onto his desk. "That's all right, Colonel. It's not as if much work is getting done today."
The Colonel rolled his eyes. "Sergeant Daniels?"
"You too?"
"You wouldn't believe what I've confiscated from the base personnel, sir."
He winced. "I'm sure I would, Colonel."
"It's all Daniels' fault, sir. Maybe you should have a word with him?"
Hammond felt a little guilty for agreeing with him. Moral was, after all, very important in a base, particularly one with as many fatalities as this one. "Do you know where he works, Colonel?"
"Er... no, sir. I thought you would."
Hammond paused. "Wasn't he one of yours?"
"No, sir. I thought you selected him."
"No, no, there was no Daniels in the batch I oversaw."
It dawned on them both at exactly the same time.
*
'Daniels' didn't look like he was enjoying the brig, Jack decided.
Gleefully.
"Has he said anything yet?"
He jumped and half turned to look at his 2IC. She raised her eyebrows at him expectantly and he recalled that she'd asked him a question.
For the time being, Jack was blaming his strange forgetfulness on the alien in the brig.
He leaned back on his heels. "No."
Carter came to stand next to him and he resisted the urge to put his arm about her shoulders. "Who do you think he is?" she whispered.
Daniels shifted on his bed, crossing his ankles and twiddling his fingers on his stomach.
"Or what?" he added to her question.
"Quite." She sighed and leaned into him a little.
Suddenly, Jack noticed something.
Something odd.
His arm.
He could have sworn...
He could have *sworn* he'd resisted the urge to put his arm about her.
But there it was.
His arm.
Around her.
Carter was staring at him, blue eyes blinking slowly. She looked a little panicked.
Jack knew exactly how she felt.
Very, very slowly and very, very carefully, Jack pulled his arm away from her. Maybe if he didn't say anything, if she didn't say anything, they could just... forget... that it had happened.
They stood side by side, very silent, staring at the bars of the brig with fixed expressions on their faces. Jack tried very hard not to think about the warmth of her body. *Very* hard.
Daniels twiddled his thumbs again.
"Holy shit!" Jack exclaimed, looking, in horror, at the fingers that were now fiddling with the ends of her hair. He yanked his hand away and looked at it like it was on fire.
"Sir?"
"Not a word," he snapped, putting his hands into his pocket. "Carter, go back to your lab."
She swallowed, her eyes lowering. "Yes, sir."
He winced. Okay, he hadn't wanted to sound quite so harsh. "Major?"
She didn't turn around and her back was tensed. "It's okay, sir." She knocked on the door and was let out.
Jack swore quietly to himself.
Daniels twiddled his thumbs.
The next time Jack blinked, he was walking along the corridor. Which corridor he didn't know because he seemed to have blacked out for a moment.
Instead of being seriously freaked out by this realization, Jack seemed to be experiencing a rare and unprecedented moment of calm. His feet were moving swiftly, his knees weren't giving him any problems and he seemed to have a purpose.
What that purpose was, Jack didn't know.
And he was okay with that.
She was standing by her laptop, absently prodding her keyboard. She looked a little red about the eyes.
"Sam?"
Her head shot up, eyes wide. "S.. s.. sir?"
He walked into the room, came to stand right by her and she turned to look up at him.
Suddenly, Jack had a very good idea about his 'purpose'. His eyes flicked from hers to her lips and back again.
Sam's mouth parted and a soft 'oh' filled the air.
She knew too.
They both smiled slightly as their heads moved towards each other agonisingly slowly. "Alien influence," he whispered, moments before their lips brushed.
"Alien influence," she agreed, then stepped into him, against him, and wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, pulling his mouth down hard against hers.
After that, they didn't say anything. Nothing coherent, anyway.
*
"What's going on?" Janet asked as she walked towards the brig.
"The alien..." The SFs were looking from one to the other, hands in their ruffled hair, completely confused.
"What about him?" Adrenaline starting to rise, Janet went to look in the grated window of the brig. "I can't see him."
"He's... he's not there. No one's come out, Doctor. Not while we've been here. Colonel O'Neill left only five minutes ago and then we just looked inside and... he'd gone."
"Open the door," she ordered. She pointed to an airman walking along the corridor behind her. "You, sound the alarm."
"Yes, ma'am."
One SF swiped his card through the security system and the other went through first, weapon raised, with Janet following him closely behind.
The brig in which the alien had presumably been housed was empty. The lock was still in place, intact and the bars were still live, according to the electricity control.
"Can you turn that off?" she said, pointing to the control.
"I'm not sure I'm supposed to, ma'am."
"There's something on the bed. Do it," she said forcefully, approaching the bars and peering through. She couldn't quite make it out - something silver, glinting on the mattress.
The SF dialled the code into the machine and the locks pulled back. Janet pushed through the doors and went straight to the bed, much to the protests of the SFs.
Janet pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped one on. Picking up the chain of the dog tags, Janet examined the ID and read aloud the name inscribed upon the metal, "Jack Daniels."
"Funny name," one of the SFs said.
Oh yeah. Really funny.
Janet had an awful suspicion....
Daniel had always known she hated tinsel.
The End
Story Notes: A/N: With thanks to - Emry, Mel and Sandy. And it's their fault that the Great Tinsel Debate began. Blame them.
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 ]