Sam was in for a pleasant surprise when she came home. Worn out and still a little sore from her leg wound, she arrived at her house to find the table beautifully set, the wine in the fridge, fresh roses in a vase and the toothsome smell of delicious cooking filling the kitchen.
"Hello?" she called out, uncertainly.
"It's me," said Pete, greeting her in the hallway.
"Hi!" Sam said, smiling in surprise. "I thought you couldn't come down this week?"
Pete shrugged. "I managed to get a day off," he explained, wrapping his arms around her. "You sounded tired on the phone; I thought a little surprise was in order."
Sam shrugged. "It's been a bit of a rough week," she said noncommittally, not really wanting to talk about work. "I'm pretty exhausted; I was going to order take-out."
"Well, now you don't have to," Pete assured her, kissing her on the forehead. "Let me pour you a glass of wine."
"Actually, I really fancy a shower," Sam said. "And I've got a report I could do with finishing…"
"Do you have to do work now?"
"The General wants it by tomorrow," Sam explained reluctantly.
"Well, you can drink and type at the same time," Pete suggested. "But not for too long; dinner will be ready soon."
"Okay," Sam said, stepping out of his arms. "I'll be done in a bit."
~* ~ *~
"Feeling a little better now?" Pete asked her later, when they were sat eating the dinner he'd made. Sam nodded; despite herself, she had to admit that it was good - although not quite as good as a Jack O'Neill barbeque special.
"You want some salad with that?" he offered.
"Please," she nodded. "Oh - but no tomato."
"So, how is the top-secret facility?" Pete asked, watching her with a smile.
"Actually, it's not quite so top-secret at the moment," she continued, playing with her fork. "There's a camera crew coming in to make some sort of documentary; they start filming tomorrow."
"A documentary, huh?" Pete said. "Where are they going to show that? The Sci-fi channel?"
"Oh, it's still classified," Sam explained with a smile. "Only a few people will actually get to see it."
"You think so? Strikes me that sooner or later the secret will get out into the public, and then EVERYONE will get to see it."
Sam shifted nervously. "I hope not," she said uncomfortably. "I don't like the idea of all those people staring at me."
"Why not? What have you got to worry about?"
She shrugged, feeling a little foolish. "I don't know; I just worry about how I'll look on camera - what I'll say - if people will be judging me."
"Hey - no one's going to judge you," Pete assured her.
"But people do," she protested. "They're always looking for some mistake or fault to pick at. I mean, what if they think I'm boring, or - or pretentious? What if they don't like me?" she finished defensively. She knew she wouldn't come across as funny - she just didn't have that knack of making people laugh like the Colonel did. She had a terrible feeling that she was just going to come across as dull.
Pete smiled at her tenderly. "Sam, listen to me," he said, taking her hand. "You're a beautiful, intelligent woman with a great mind; just remember that. You're gorgeous - the camera will adore you. And so will everybody else."
Pete squeezed her hand, and Sam managed a weak smile. He was right. Of course he was.
"Well, I'd better get on with this clearing up," she said into the silence.
"Oh, don't worry, I'll do it," Pete offered, getting up and starting to clear away the dishes. "You just relax."
Sam smiled. There were some perks to a relationship, after all. "I'll put the coffee on," she said.
"It was nice," she said, making conversation and coffee at the same time. "Really good."
"What, the cooking, or the surprise?" Pete asked, stacking the dishwasher.
"Both," Sam replied. "I didn't know you could cook."
"Well, I'm a man of hidden talents," Pete joked.
"Including cleaning up," Sam noted, spooning sugar into the coffee. She'd heaped two spoonfuls in before she realised what she was doing.
"Uh - how do you want your coffee?" she asked Pete.
"Oh, just as it is," Pete replied. "Black without sugar is fine."
Dang. She stared at the worktop. Two black coffees, one now sullied with two generous spoonfuls of sugar. What the hey, she thought, adding milk to the adulterated one and stirring as if she'd meant to do that all along. She could take it sweet just for today.
~* ~ *~
Already feeling nervous, Sam tried to remember Pete's advice as she drove into work the next morning; the trouble was she wasn't quite as convinced of her own appeal as he was. And Bregman making everything sound so brave and heroic wasn't helping, either. Faced with the six billion people of the planet Earth, she became cripplingly self-conscious and tongue-tied, and she left the interview with a tangible sense of relief.
Unspeakably thankful to be away from the cameras at last, Sam spent the rest of the day happily tinkering with SG-13's Gou'uld probe and running some errands around the Base. Upon returning to the lab, she half-heard, half-sensed the presence of another figure in the room.
"Sir?" she hazarded.
The guilty face of Colonel Jack O'Neill appeared around the corner of the bench. Sam crossed the room and stood in front of him, her arms folded.
"I wouldn't play with that if I was you, sir," she said.
O'Neill turned the highly expensive piece of lab equipment upside down and shook it slightly.
"Why not?" he asked innocently.
"It's worth two point four million dollars," she told him.
"Sweet!"
"And it's radioactive."
She grinned as he hastily put the thing down and turned to face her. It wasn't radioactive, of course, and he knew that as well as she did, but this was how the game was played.
"You wanna get some coffee?" he asked.
"I can't, sir," she replied with regret. "I've got some work I really need to finish."
"Can't it wait until tomorrow?" Jack asked.
"It's some technical specs of that probe SG-13 sent back," she explained. "I should really get it done…"
"Carter, you work too hard," he told her. "Take a break - let the other eggheads fiddle with it."
"It's kinda important, though," she protested, but without much conviction.
"Saving the world important?" he inquired.
"Well - no, not quite," she admitted.
"There'll be cake," he tempted.
Sam grinned. Sooner or later, in Jack O'Neill's world, it all came down to cake.
"I should…" she began. But the Colonel was giving her that grin of his, more tempting than any amount of sweet sugar dessert.
"I guess you're right," she resigned.
"So - coffee, then?"
Sam hesitated, all too aware that Jack O'Neill cups of coffee - and the conversations that went with them - could last well over half an hour. Her watch said it was almost five o'clock already. But it ought to be possible to share a cup of coffee that only lasted ten minutes, shouldn't it? All in all, she wouldn't be THAT late.
"Coffee it is, then, sir," she agreed, falling into step beside him as they headed to the Commissary.
"So, how's it coming with that probe thing?" he asked her, loading a tray with cake and blue Jell-o and desserts.
"Slowly but surely," she said, putting two coffees on the tray and adding milk to one. "It was fairly mangled when they brought it in."
"You'll figure it out," he said confidently as they took a table. "Just give it some time."
She smiled. "We're trying to rig it up to a computer so we can see what's in the memory crystals," she explained, helping him empty four sachets of sugar into his coffee mug.
"Fascinating," he said, deadpan. She grinned.
"It would be if we could get anything out of it," she said, helping herself to the coconut flakes on the top of his cake. He didn't like them much, but she couldn't get enough of them, so it made sense to share. "Apparently SG-13 dropped a wall on it."
"They don't pull their punches," Jack agreed. "Any progress with the transporter beam I asked for?" he went on.
"Sir, we can't make a transporter beam," she explained with a smile.
"Why not?" he asked. "They have one on Star Trek."
She chuckled. "Star Trek is a TV show," she said, starting on the pie. "Theoretically, a transporter beam just isn't possible."
"The Asgard have them," he pointed out, taking a forkful of pie himself.
"Well, I'd love to know how they make it work," she said with a shrug. "It defies the Heisenberg uncertainty principle."
"The what-na?" he asked, reaching out to take another bit of pie just as she took her fork away. Turn-based pie eating, a habit of years.
"Well, you know about wave-particle duality?" she said, beginning an explanation of the uncertainty principle that was to lead, eventually, to a discussion about animal cruelty based on Schrödinger's "cat-in-a-box" experiment.
"Forget physics," Jack protested. "You're gonna have one confused kitten when you open that box. It doesn't know if it's dead or alive!"
Sam laughed, and leaned forward. "It's not a real cat," she confided.
"I knew that," Jack said, and they both grinned at each other.
"So did you talk about all this physics stuff in your interview?" he asked her.
"A little," she said with a shrug. "They want to talk to me again tomorrow, although I can't imagine why."
"Well, Carter, I'm sure most men would happily sit and watch you talk for hours," he said, examining the dregs in his coffee mug.
"You think?" she asked uncertainly.
"Sure," he told her. "Some of them might even be listening to what you're saying," he added with a smile. She grinned back.
"Like you, you mean, sir," she teased,
"I always listen to what you say, Carter," he assured her, poker- faced.
"No, you don't," she said. "You drift off into a little world of your own. I've seen you do it."
He looked shifty, and leaned forward conspiratorially. "What gives it away?" he asked.
"You get this grin on your face that means you're not thinking about physics."
"Careful, Major," he warned jovially, with just a trace of his Colonel face. She grinned.
"Bregman said I looked tense," she went on, picking at the cake crumbs.
"Well, the whole population of the world could very well see this film thing at some point," he said. "I'd say that's reason enough for feeling a little nervous."
"That's what I thought. I was fine until he said 'Meet the six billion people of the planet Earth' and then I just froze. I mean, what are you supposed to say to that?"
Jack thought about this for a moment. "Howdy folks, how ya doin?" he suggested with a shrug. She chuckled.
"See, I can't do that," she said. "I can't seem to relax. I always worry about how I'm going to look and what people are going to think of me."
"Carter, forgive me if this sounds a little corny," he said, playing self-consciously with his coffee mug. "But your most attractive feature really is your personality. And there's not a lot of people that can be said for."
"You really think that?" she asked, surprised.
"Sure," he said, meeting her gaze. "And that sort of - shines through," he finished with a shrug. This was uncomfortable territory for him.
"But don't you think it's likely that out of six billion people, there's going to be at least a few who don't like me?"
"Well, yeah," he agreed. "But if they don't like YOU, they're probably not worth knowing."
She blushed a little, and smiled. Somehow, she seemed to be feeling a lot better about the interview now; probably because it was over, she reasoned.
Sam glanced at her watch, and her eyebrows shot upwards in surprise. It was gone half past five already. So much for a quick cup of coffee; but then, after six years, she ought to have known that Jack O'Neill conversations didn't come in small sizes. They only came in Long or Extra Long and Convoluted.
"Wow, it's getting late, I'd better go," she said, feeling slightly guilty at walking out on him; if it wasn't for the fact that she'd stranded Pete at home and told him she wouldn't be late, she would probably have stayed for another half an hour.
"Walk you to the parking lot?" he offered, ever the gentleman.
"Thanks," she said with a smile.
"And take it easy, remember," he reminded her. "You deserve a bit of a break."
She grinned again. It would be nice to just forget about work and relax for a change. She'd go home, take a bath, and be wined, dined, treated to a movie and generally pampered all evening. And it was obviously that which was making her feel so special and appreciated right now. It must be.
~~~> Hope ya enjoyed :) luv Gen xx
Attribution by Gen
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