Ficlet: Thanksgiving (Sam/Daniel friendship or more, PG-13)
Genre: Humour
Pairing: Sam/Daniel friendship. More if you are so predisposed.
Minor references to: Emancipation
Season: Whenever, really
Rating: PG-13 for non-graphic adult situations
Word count: 655
Thanks to thraesja , my fabulous beta, who knows just how to make me feel better about the things I've written.
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Daniel swayed to the music as he observed the activity around them. The festival of Lohenia on PN4-K3D was in full swing. The ceremony was roughly equivalent to Thanksgiving in concept, though rather distant in practice.
Open-air tents gleamed with the light of the giant bonfire in the middle of the glade. Around the fire, groups of two to four men circled individual women sitting on tall burnished white stools in the clearing. The women’s flowing dresses draped down, nearly touching the grass.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad planet, except-
“This is great,” said Sam.
Daniel turned to her. She was sitting on a stool before him, her eyes alight with excitement as she watched the men dance.
“I like this planet a lot.”
He rolled his eyes. “You would.”
“What’d you say this festival was for?”
“It’s to celebrate the end of the growing season and their harvested bounty.”
“Bounty, huh?” Her eyes flitted to a point below his waist for a split second. “Not wrong about that.”
“Must you keep doing that?”
“Apparently,” she said with an impossibly gleeful grin. “You’re not dancing.”
This was so not fair. “You know I’ll get you back for this.”
“Oh, come on now, Daniel. Anthropologists do this sort of thing all the time.”
Okay. He might have deserved that.
He stifled a groan as two men outfitted especially for the occasion approached. One puffed out his chest and smiled at Sam. The other put his hands on his hips and swayed back and forth. Daniel cleared his throat and looked away.
“You would like us to join you, yes?” said the second man.
Sam laughed, her eyes moving over their bodies with obvious appreciation. “Well, that’s tempting.”
“We shall feed you,” said the first man, reaching to take the bowl of fruit from Daniel.
He snatched it away. “I can feed her myself.”
Sam gripped the sides of her stool as she leaned backwards with laughter. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said as she recovered. “I appreciate the offer, but we’re fine.”
To prove her point, Daniel held out a grape-like fruit to Sam. She opened her mouth and closed her lips around his fingers as he released the berry.
The second man held his hands out to his sides and spun in a slow circle. “You do not like what you see?”
Subtlety was obviously an art form lost on these guys.
“Oh, it’s not that.” Sam swallowed the fruit and smiled at the man as her eyes again performed a visual exploration of his body. “Trust me.”
“It is most unusual for a woman to only have one dancer,” said the first man.
“Well, I’m a pretty unusual woman.”
“That much,” the second man said, reaching out to finger the sleeve of Sam’s uniform, “Is obvious.”
Daniel picked up another grape thing and raised it toward Sam’s lips. His eyes, though, were locked on the two men. “Bye-bye now.”
“Why, Daniel,” Sam said, as they left. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”
“Just eat the damned berry.”
Sam threw her head back and howled her amusement to the night sky, the stool rocking dangerously as she did. Once she’d stabilized, Daniel dropped the fruit into her open mouth. She looked back at him with a grin that told him she wouldn’t be letting him forget this mission for a long, long, long time.
The music changed to an even livelier tune, and she twirled her finger in a circle. “Let’s see a spin.”
As he grudgingly complied, Daniel caught a glimpse of almost every one of the hundred or so other naked men dancing around their fully-clothed women. Sam gripped the edges of her stool again to steady herself through her latest barrage of laughter. “God, I love this planet!”
“You think it’s funny now? Just wait until Jack and Teal’c show up.”
Sam fell off the stool.
THE END
Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Canadians!