Daniel/Janet Ficathon: 'Half a Fairytale'
Title: Half a Fairytale
Author:
nikej
Rating: G
Category: Daniel/Janet friendship. And fluff. No, really. FLUFF.
Spoilers: Emancipation, Singularity, I suppose. Set S1.
Disclaimer: The show belongs to a whole lot of people who aren’t me and who, hopefully, will not sue.
Summary: 'In Daniel's regrettably vast expereience, the phrase "It seemed like a good idea at the time" was one of the most unfortunate in the English language.'
This is for
majorsamfan, who asked for piano, pinot, pickles, pantomime, but not PWP, death of major/regular character. Although, to be honest, with prompt words like those, getting character death in might have been a real challenge. ;) Apologies for the lateness!
Author's Notes: Alright, I admit it. My name is Nike, and I Do Panto. Every Christmas. I've been Maid Marion, I've been one half of 'Jack and Jill' and I've played more princesses and faced down more giants than I care to remember. So, when this prompt came my way my mind immediately leapt in that direction, even though I know it's mostly a British thing (as evidenced the first time
chickaboo came along to see my company and declared us all nuts.) I swithered a bit about going with that idea of 'pantomime' or sticking with the more familiar definition, but a quick look at Wikipedia revealed than a few Christmas Pantos have been performed in Chicago recently, and the name of the lead actor? Jon Langford. I took that as a sign. ;)
After that, the bit about pickles and pianos was almost easy. Thanks go to
pantaloonpirate for the quickie beta.
majorsamfan , I hope you enjoy it!
Half a Fairytale
*****************
“And you say this is popular in England?”
Daniel Jackson had to lean close in the gloom of the theatre to reply to the bemused question issuing from the woman next to him. Janet Fraiser, the SGC’s Chief Medical Officer, was seated on his right, her eyes fixed on the brightly-lit stage below and a slightly baffled smile gracing her delicate features. The auditorium was warm and crowded, animated with the eager, hushed voices and fidgety excitement of young children.
Daniel shifted in his seat to bring his mouth closer to Janet’s ear, so as not to disturb the families ranged around them. “Mostly in Britain, yes, but in Ireland, Australia and South Africa as well. I think they even do it in Canada.” She smirked, and Daniel experienced a brief moment of discomfiture. With the amount of double-entendres that had been issuing from the stage in the past half-hour, he mused, he really shouldn’t be surprised. He cleared his throat and continued, “But it’s not unknown over here either. There are records of productions taking place in the States from the early eighteen-hundreds. Although, they may have been slightly different from the current British format. Which is what this is based on.”
“Right.”
There were a few moments of silence, which Janet spent observing the stage, and Daniel spent observing Janet. She was still regarding the whole affair with an air of amused bewilderment, and he decided to keep talking. “In fact, original pantomime was a very popular entertainment in Ancient Greece and Rome. A pantomimos was a solo dancer accompanied by song or music, although the style evolved to become more like the Italian Commedia dell'arte theatrical comedies which used stock characters to teach the audience some sort of moral lesson,” he expanded, warming to the subject. Daniel would be the first to admit that he never could resist a good anthropological explanation, especially when he had a captive audience. “It only came to England around the sixteenth century, and even then it was treated as a sort of low form of opera…”
“Shhh!”
The admonishment came from Cassie, Janet’s recently adopted young daughter, who was leaning around Janet’s petite frame to issue a warning glare at both of them. “You’re distracting me from the story!”
At that moment, the audience was united in uproarious laughter as two large men flounced out into the spotlight bedecked in hideously clashing multicoloured ball-gowns and towering beehive wigs, before turning to berate the sweet-faced young blonde woman standing stage-right, barefoot and clutching a broom.
“Cinder-ell-AAAA!”
“Of course,” he sighed, “it’s changed a little since back then.”
Janet only smiled, and said nothing.
****
In Daniel’s regrettably vast experience, the phrase ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ was one of the most unfortunate in the English language. He’d lost count of the number of times that things he’d done - which has seemed perfectly reasonable and justifiable while he’d been doing them - had landed him in some sort of trouble in the long run. Like the time when he was ten and he’d clambered up onto the roof of his adoptive parents’ garage because he was pretending to be David Livingstone discovering Victoria Falls (David Livingstone, of course, would have had the foresight to bring along equipment for getting back down.) Or the time at twenty when, about to go on a date with a bright, attractive Anthropology freshman, he’d run out of deodorant and thought that an aerosol of air-freshener would work as an acceptable substitute because it was, after all, practically the same thing. (It wasn’t.)
Or that time over a year and a lifetime ago when it had seemed a really good idea to stand up in front of a half-empty room of academics and UFO-nuts and give a lecture about how aliens had built the Great Pyramids. And look where that had landed him.
Cassie smiled and clapped and laughed as one of the Ugly Sisters emptied a bucket of confetti copiously over the front row of the stalls, and Daniel smiled indulgently. When he’d overheard Dr. Reilly (Classical Civilizations) chatting to Dr. Faithful (Botany) in one of the labs last week about taking his kids along to the community centre to see a pantomime the Colorado Springs Amateur Theatrical Society was putting on for the first time, he’d naturally been swayed by his own inclinations and his familiarity with Reilly’s field to assume that the older man was talking about exactly the kind of ancient Greek performance he’d just been expounding upon to Janet. Reilly had been surprised, certainly, when Daniel had approached him to see if he could procure some extra tickets, but Daniel had put that down to the general belief among the lower corridors of Cheyenne Mountain that Dr. Jackson lived entirely within the four walls of his office, eating and sleeping at his desk in between fanatical studying of huge texts filled with ancient scripts, shuffling out of the darkness occasionally only to partake in an off-world jaunt with the rest of SG-1 (who were all rumoured to lead vastly more exciting lives than he did, incidentally.)
The man had blinked rapidly a few times, nodded carefully at Daniel’s explanation that it was rare to find an example of the genre being performed and that he’d be interested from an academic point of view, and finally agreed to see about finding tickets for him and the rest of his team (whom Daniel in fact knew to have off-duty lives at least as generally boring as his.) It was, therefore, something of a surprise when he arrived at work three days later to find four pantomime tickets bearing the legend Cinderella (in appropriately sparkly text) sitting squarely in the middle of his desk. It took him only a few minutes to realise his mistake, and remember from months spent on sabbatical at universities in England the chaotic mix of slapstick, song, fairytale and quite extraordinary innuendo that flourished up and down the country during the Christmas season under the same name. (The risqué jokes, of course, were meant to keep the adults amused while passing harmlessly over the heads of the younger audience. Daniel had his doubts about this theory.) It did not, if he remembered correctly, include an awful lot of enlightening classical drama, but did often contain two people in a horse costume.
All of which left him in a bit of a pickle, to be frank. On mentioning his theatre plan to Jack O’Neill the day before, he’d already met with considerable resistance (“If I wanted to spend my Saturday evening watching some guy in a toga dance, Daniel, I’d hop a plane to Vegas. At least Caesar’s Palace has beer.”) and he’d been relying on Sam Carter to persuade the colonel, since she was more open to ‘that culture stuff’ and still in the frame of mind that anything that could be considered ‘team bonding’ was a good idea. Besides that, Daniel had noticed, O’Neill seemed to take less perverse pleasure in disagreeing with her just for the sake of being difficult than he did with him. Teal’c was pretty much up for anything once, as long as they could find him a decent hat to wear outside. He was not, however, convinced that Sam’s good nature could be prevailed upon far enough to spend an evening with four grown men at a kid’s show listening to Jack mock Daniel mercilessly for the mix up and fielding perplexed questions from Teal’c; and indeed when he dropped in on her to confess the misunderstanding, she very graciously begged off.
Somewhat unwilling to go back to Reilly and admit his confusion - or the fact that he’d thought it perfectly reasonable the guy would take his children to an evening of Ancient Greek mime - Daniel was stuck with three extra tickets and the option either to go alone or pretend he’d been too sick to attend when Reilly inevitably asked him how he’d enjoyed himself. Sam had been the one who’d come up with the idea of approaching Dr. Fraiser.
“I’m sure Cassie’d love it,” she’d said enthusiastically. “Janet says she’s big on fairytales. God knows she’s got a wall of Disney movies besides the TV at home. It’ll give her a chance to experience something new from Earth too: I don’t think she’s been to the theatre yet. And I’ll bet Janet wouldn’t say no to a night out either.”
She hadn’t, and the smile she’d given him when he’d stopped in at her office to suggest it had really made the whole business worth the hassle. Cassie was very fond of him, she’d reminded him in a voice that gently chastised him for letting his contact with the girl they’d rescued lag a little in the past few weeks. She’d be delighted when she found out he wanted to treat her. “And she loves Cinderella, to boot. She’s fascinated by ‘Earth stories’, as she puts it. It’s funny to watch her, you know,” Janet had continued, and Daniel had detected a hint of sadness in the wistful tone of her voice. “She’s at that age when other kids are growing out of fairytales, and it’s like she’s running to catch up.” In that moment, he’d been honestly pleased that he’d gotten tickets for the wrong thing entirely - he didn’t know Janet terribly well outside the infirmary, but he liked her, he admired her devotion to her new daughter, and he was glad to be able to take a little of the responsibility of unexpected parenthood to a girl who’d lost a whole world from her shoulders, if just for an evening.
Teal’c, surprisingly, had still wanted to come.
****
Away to his right Cassie gasped with enchantment as the Fairy Godmother waved her wand on stage and some fancy pyrotechnics heralded the moment when Cinderella was transformed from rags to riches. When the smoke cleared, the girl before them was clad in a glittering royal-blue ball-gown, blonde tresses swept elaborately up and away from her face, sparkling shoes on her feet. Cassie sighed, enraptured. “She looks a little like Sam,” she observed contentedly.
“I’d love to see Sam in that dress,” Janet murmured wryly. Daniel grinned at her. “You’d be surprised.” She turned to look at him, amused and curious, and held his eyes for a few moments. When it became clear he wasn’t planning to explain, she huffed out a laugh and turned her attention back to the tale unfolding below. Against all considerations for personal safety, he resolved to give her a full description of their friend’s encounter with Shavadi attire at the earliest opportunity. As Daniel settled back into his chair to watch the remainder of the performance, he reflected that he was enjoying himself considerably more than he’d expected, and he wore a warm smile on his face for the rest of the show.
Observing him from his seat to the left, Teal’c delicately chose not to mention it.
****
After the show was over, the wicked stepmother vanquished and the happily-ever-after secured, they bundled a tired but chatty Cassandra into the back of the car and took the short drive to Cheyenne Mountain to drop off Teal’c. They were only required to detour once, for pie, as the continual mention of pumpkins had proved too much for the big Jaffa and he was hungry.
Pulling up into the driveway of Janet’s house, Daniel idled the car while she organised herself and Cassandra, who was dozing off in the back seat. As she manoeuvred the sleepy girl towards the house, Janet leaned down and knocked lightly on the driver’s-side window. Daniel rolled it down, expecting a quick thank-you and good night from the doctor, but she surprised him by quietly inviting him inside. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee,” she laughed, “and I think I owe you.” She smiled kindly, and Daniel turned off the engine.
“Just go through to the living room,” she instructed, gesturing to the right as the entered the hall, “I’ll just be a minute getting this one up to bed. Put the kettle on, if you like. Say goodnight, sweetheart.” This last was directed at Cassandra, who mumbled “’Night, Daniel. I liked the play” and gifted him with a swift, affectionate hug, which he returned, before she was bustled upstairs by her mother. Daniel, by now as used to following Janet’s orders as she was to giving him them, proceeded through to the kitchen. He couldn’t quite remember where Janet kept the coffee, or the mugs - slightly abashed, he attributed this to the fact that he hadn’t been over here in a while - so settled for sticking some water on to boil as he’d been told. A few minutes later Janet materialized and shoo-ed him through to the adjoining living room, where he set himself down on the sofa until she appeared carrying a cup of coffee and a glass of white wine. Catching his mock-inquisitive glance as she handed him his mug, she laughed and shrugged unapologetically. “Helps me wind down after a long day,” she replied to his unvoiced question. “I’d have offered you something, but you’re driving, and we all know what you’re like after a sniff of a beer, Daniel Jackson.” The grin that his affronted expression provoked was positively wicked. He couldn’t really argue.
Janet sighed and settled back into the cushions as he took a sip of his coffee. They sat in companiable silence for a while, and Daniel surprised himself with how easy he felt, here in her company, in her house, late in the evening and away from the usual surroundings of the infirmary or the rest of his wayward team. Janet broke the quiet first, drawing her feet up onto the sofa beside her and leaning her wine-glass on one knee. “Thanks for tonight, Daniel,” she said softly. “Cassie had a great time, she really did. She’s been looking forward to it all day.”
Daniel smiled. “I’m glad she enjoyed it,” he said, and meant it. Janet tucked a lose strand of hair behind one ear and offered a slightly self-conscious smile of her own. “It was nice to get out myself, as well. I mean, besides just me and Cass and Sam.” She frowned a little, but then seemed to recover, teasing, “I can’t remember the last time I was escorted to the theatre by two handsome young men.” Daniel feigned offence. “You can’t possibly be putting me in the same age bracket as Teal’c,” he said indignantly, “he’s got a good, what, fifty years on me?” Janet laughed in acknowledgment, “Ah, he’s still handsome.”
Daniel huffed. “Well, he seemed to have a good night, anyway.”
She grinned. “That he did. Although I’m not sure he had the first idea what was going on. When those two ugly sisters came tramping on stage in their ball-gowns and sang ‘Man, I Feel Like a Woman’? I think I laughed harder at his face than I did at them.” They both snickered. “Really?” Daniel chuckled. “I thought it was Pickles the Pantomime Cow that finally cracked him in the end.” Janet giggled.
“It was a little…different, though,” she continued. “It’s certainly different from anything a guy’s ever taken me out to see before.” Daniel looked over at her quickly, and she coloured a little as she heard the implication in her words, swallowing a mouthful of her wine to cover her embarrassment. Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated.
It hadn’t been a date, that much was certain. They’d had Cassie and Teal’c along for a start, and it was just to a kids’ show by a local am-dram company. There hadn’t been any dinner, or a lot of conversation, or anything remotely date-like about it. And he knew Janet knew that, of course, and that it wasn’t really what she’d meant by her words. Daniel was married and set on a quest to find his missing wife by whatever means possible, and Janet was still adapting to life as a sudden, single mother, and they worked together every day, and even though they knew each other better than they had the day he’d first been carted into her infirmary, they still didn’t know each other very well, at all.
But at the end of the day, he couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed tonight far more than he’d thought he would, and that a large part of that had been because of her. He’d liked spending time in her company - he always had, even when she was just berating him sternly to be more careful while stitching him up or sticking needles in him. And now they were ensconced in her living-room while the night moved on outside, talking contentedly about nothing very much at all; and he’d only come in, he realised belatedly, not for a cup of coffee, but because he wasn’t quite ready to see tonight end and go blithely back to the old routine at work on Monday, where she was a colleague whom he saw when he needed fixing, or occasionally when he visited her daughter. He wanted to change that. He could have a real friendship with this woman, he knew, outside the confines of Cheyenne Mountain; wanted a friendship with her. It might take a while, but he’d like to know her better. And that was as far as he was going to pursue that thought, for now, while he was tired and comfortable.
Janet didn’t look quite as comfortable anymore, though, and Daniel guessed she probably thought she’d misstepped with her remark. That, he could change right now. “Well, I aim to provide new, cultural experiences for all, on every occasion.” He wrinkled his brow and feigned concern. “Hold on, does that mean you were my date, or Teal’c’s?
She burst out laughing, and Daniel knew it was more from relief than his question’s being particularly funny. Her uneasiness washed away, and she rolled her eyes as she took another sip of wine. Daniel couldn’t resist pushing a mite further. “Although, I must say, I think you’re extremely hard to please. If going along to watch men in drag dance, with your teenage daughter and an ex-alien foot-soldier in tow, isn’t your idea of a perfect date, I don’t know what is.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “The romance of the situation was almost overwhelming.” They were both laughing now, and Janet shook her head in amusement just as she was interrupted by a yawn. She stretched, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand and waggling her near-empty wine-glass with the other. “Give me a nice dinner, a couple of glasses of pinot grigio, and a little jazz piano any day.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Daniel joked, draining his coffee mug and taking her obvious tiredness as his cue to leave. “I think I’d better be heading off.”
“Mmm,” Janet assented, rising from the couch to collect his mug and he swung his jacket on and picked up his car keys from the coffee table. “It has been a long day.” She cocked her head in the direction of the clock in the opposite wall. “Besides,” she added with a mischievous smirk, “it’s nearly midnight. Wouldn’t want your car turning into a pumpkin half-way up the mountain road.”
“That we would not,” he agreed, heading for the door. “Although given the engine trouble I’ve been having lately, it might be an improvement.” Janet followed him to the porch, where he turned impulsively and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She looked a tad surprised, but not displeased, and she smiled at him as she stepped back into the hallway. “Goodnight, Daniel,” she said gently.
“Goodnight,” he replied, “and tell Sleeping Beauty upstairs I’m glad she had a good time.”
Janet grinned as she moved to close the front door, and as Daniel walked back toward the car he heard her call after him, “Now that, Doctor Jackson, is another story all together.”
***
End
Author:
nikej
Rating: G
Category: Daniel/Janet friendship. And fluff. No, really. FLUFF.
Spoilers: Emancipation, Singularity, I suppose. Set S1.
Disclaimer: The show belongs to a whole lot of people who aren’t me and who, hopefully, will not sue.
Summary: 'In Daniel's regrettably vast expereience, the phrase "It seemed like a good idea at the time" was one of the most unfortunate in the English language.'
This is for
majorsamfan, who asked for piano, pinot, pickles, pantomime, but not PWP, death of major/regular character. Although, to be honest, with prompt words like those, getting character death in might have been a real challenge. ;) Apologies for the lateness!
Author's Notes: Alright, I admit it. My name is Nike, and I Do Panto. Every Christmas. I've been Maid Marion, I've been one half of 'Jack and Jill' and I've played more princesses and faced down more giants than I care to remember. So, when this prompt came my way my mind immediately leapt in that direction, even though I know it's mostly a British thing (as evidenced the first time
chickaboo came along to see my company and declared us all nuts.) I swithered a bit about going with that idea of 'pantomime' or sticking with the more familiar definition, but a quick look at Wikipedia revealed than a few Christmas Pantos have been performed in Chicago recently, and the name of the lead actor? Jon Langford. I took that as a sign. ;)
After that, the bit about pickles and pianos was almost easy. Thanks go to
pantaloonpirate for the quickie beta.
majorsamfan , I hope you enjoy it!
Half a Fairytale
*****************
“And you say this is popular in England?”
Daniel Jackson had to lean close in the gloom of the theatre to reply to the bemused question issuing from the woman next to him. Janet Fraiser, the SGC’s Chief Medical Officer, was seated on his right, her eyes fixed on the brightly-lit stage below and a slightly baffled smile gracing her delicate features. The auditorium was warm and crowded, animated with the eager, hushed voices and fidgety excitement of young children.
Daniel shifted in his seat to bring his mouth closer to Janet’s ear, so as not to disturb the families ranged around them. “Mostly in Britain, yes, but in Ireland, Australia and South Africa as well. I think they even do it in Canada.” She smirked, and Daniel experienced a brief moment of discomfiture. With the amount of double-entendres that had been issuing from the stage in the past half-hour, he mused, he really shouldn’t be surprised. He cleared his throat and continued, “But it’s not unknown over here either. There are records of productions taking place in the States from the early eighteen-hundreds. Although, they may have been slightly different from the current British format. Which is what this is based on.”
“Right.”
There were a few moments of silence, which Janet spent observing the stage, and Daniel spent observing Janet. She was still regarding the whole affair with an air of amused bewilderment, and he decided to keep talking. “In fact, original pantomime was a very popular entertainment in Ancient Greece and Rome. A pantomimos was a solo dancer accompanied by song or music, although the style evolved to become more like the Italian Commedia dell'arte theatrical comedies which used stock characters to teach the audience some sort of moral lesson,” he expanded, warming to the subject. Daniel would be the first to admit that he never could resist a good anthropological explanation, especially when he had a captive audience. “It only came to England around the sixteenth century, and even then it was treated as a sort of low form of opera…”
“Shhh!”
The admonishment came from Cassie, Janet’s recently adopted young daughter, who was leaning around Janet’s petite frame to issue a warning glare at both of them. “You’re distracting me from the story!”
At that moment, the audience was united in uproarious laughter as two large men flounced out into the spotlight bedecked in hideously clashing multicoloured ball-gowns and towering beehive wigs, before turning to berate the sweet-faced young blonde woman standing stage-right, barefoot and clutching a broom.
“Cinder-ell-AAAA!”
“Of course,” he sighed, “it’s changed a little since back then.”
Janet only smiled, and said nothing.
****
In Daniel’s regrettably vast experience, the phrase ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ was one of the most unfortunate in the English language. He’d lost count of the number of times that things he’d done - which has seemed perfectly reasonable and justifiable while he’d been doing them - had landed him in some sort of trouble in the long run. Like the time when he was ten and he’d clambered up onto the roof of his adoptive parents’ garage because he was pretending to be David Livingstone discovering Victoria Falls (David Livingstone, of course, would have had the foresight to bring along equipment for getting back down.) Or the time at twenty when, about to go on a date with a bright, attractive Anthropology freshman, he’d run out of deodorant and thought that an aerosol of air-freshener would work as an acceptable substitute because it was, after all, practically the same thing. (It wasn’t.)
Or that time over a year and a lifetime ago when it had seemed a really good idea to stand up in front of a half-empty room of academics and UFO-nuts and give a lecture about how aliens had built the Great Pyramids. And look where that had landed him.
Cassie smiled and clapped and laughed as one of the Ugly Sisters emptied a bucket of confetti copiously over the front row of the stalls, and Daniel smiled indulgently. When he’d overheard Dr. Reilly (Classical Civilizations) chatting to Dr. Faithful (Botany) in one of the labs last week about taking his kids along to the community centre to see a pantomime the Colorado Springs Amateur Theatrical Society was putting on for the first time, he’d naturally been swayed by his own inclinations and his familiarity with Reilly’s field to assume that the older man was talking about exactly the kind of ancient Greek performance he’d just been expounding upon to Janet. Reilly had been surprised, certainly, when Daniel had approached him to see if he could procure some extra tickets, but Daniel had put that down to the general belief among the lower corridors of Cheyenne Mountain that Dr. Jackson lived entirely within the four walls of his office, eating and sleeping at his desk in between fanatical studying of huge texts filled with ancient scripts, shuffling out of the darkness occasionally only to partake in an off-world jaunt with the rest of SG-1 (who were all rumoured to lead vastly more exciting lives than he did, incidentally.)
The man had blinked rapidly a few times, nodded carefully at Daniel’s explanation that it was rare to find an example of the genre being performed and that he’d be interested from an academic point of view, and finally agreed to see about finding tickets for him and the rest of his team (whom Daniel in fact knew to have off-duty lives at least as generally boring as his.) It was, therefore, something of a surprise when he arrived at work three days later to find four pantomime tickets bearing the legend Cinderella (in appropriately sparkly text) sitting squarely in the middle of his desk. It took him only a few minutes to realise his mistake, and remember from months spent on sabbatical at universities in England the chaotic mix of slapstick, song, fairytale and quite extraordinary innuendo that flourished up and down the country during the Christmas season under the same name. (The risqué jokes, of course, were meant to keep the adults amused while passing harmlessly over the heads of the younger audience. Daniel had his doubts about this theory.) It did not, if he remembered correctly, include an awful lot of enlightening classical drama, but did often contain two people in a horse costume.
All of which left him in a bit of a pickle, to be frank. On mentioning his theatre plan to Jack O’Neill the day before, he’d already met with considerable resistance (“If I wanted to spend my Saturday evening watching some guy in a toga dance, Daniel, I’d hop a plane to Vegas. At least Caesar’s Palace has beer.”) and he’d been relying on Sam Carter to persuade the colonel, since she was more open to ‘that culture stuff’ and still in the frame of mind that anything that could be considered ‘team bonding’ was a good idea. Besides that, Daniel had noticed, O’Neill seemed to take less perverse pleasure in disagreeing with her just for the sake of being difficult than he did with him. Teal’c was pretty much up for anything once, as long as they could find him a decent hat to wear outside. He was not, however, convinced that Sam’s good nature could be prevailed upon far enough to spend an evening with four grown men at a kid’s show listening to Jack mock Daniel mercilessly for the mix up and fielding perplexed questions from Teal’c; and indeed when he dropped in on her to confess the misunderstanding, she very graciously begged off.
Somewhat unwilling to go back to Reilly and admit his confusion - or the fact that he’d thought it perfectly reasonable the guy would take his children to an evening of Ancient Greek mime - Daniel was stuck with three extra tickets and the option either to go alone or pretend he’d been too sick to attend when Reilly inevitably asked him how he’d enjoyed himself. Sam had been the one who’d come up with the idea of approaching Dr. Fraiser.
“I’m sure Cassie’d love it,” she’d said enthusiastically. “Janet says she’s big on fairytales. God knows she’s got a wall of Disney movies besides the TV at home. It’ll give her a chance to experience something new from Earth too: I don’t think she’s been to the theatre yet. And I’ll bet Janet wouldn’t say no to a night out either.”
She hadn’t, and the smile she’d given him when he’d stopped in at her office to suggest it had really made the whole business worth the hassle. Cassie was very fond of him, she’d reminded him in a voice that gently chastised him for letting his contact with the girl they’d rescued lag a little in the past few weeks. She’d be delighted when she found out he wanted to treat her. “And she loves Cinderella, to boot. She’s fascinated by ‘Earth stories’, as she puts it. It’s funny to watch her, you know,” Janet had continued, and Daniel had detected a hint of sadness in the wistful tone of her voice. “She’s at that age when other kids are growing out of fairytales, and it’s like she’s running to catch up.” In that moment, he’d been honestly pleased that he’d gotten tickets for the wrong thing entirely - he didn’t know Janet terribly well outside the infirmary, but he liked her, he admired her devotion to her new daughter, and he was glad to be able to take a little of the responsibility of unexpected parenthood to a girl who’d lost a whole world from her shoulders, if just for an evening.
Teal’c, surprisingly, had still wanted to come.
****
Away to his right Cassie gasped with enchantment as the Fairy Godmother waved her wand on stage and some fancy pyrotechnics heralded the moment when Cinderella was transformed from rags to riches. When the smoke cleared, the girl before them was clad in a glittering royal-blue ball-gown, blonde tresses swept elaborately up and away from her face, sparkling shoes on her feet. Cassie sighed, enraptured. “She looks a little like Sam,” she observed contentedly.
“I’d love to see Sam in that dress,” Janet murmured wryly. Daniel grinned at her. “You’d be surprised.” She turned to look at him, amused and curious, and held his eyes for a few moments. When it became clear he wasn’t planning to explain, she huffed out a laugh and turned her attention back to the tale unfolding below. Against all considerations for personal safety, he resolved to give her a full description of their friend’s encounter with Shavadi attire at the earliest opportunity. As Daniel settled back into his chair to watch the remainder of the performance, he reflected that he was enjoying himself considerably more than he’d expected, and he wore a warm smile on his face for the rest of the show.
Observing him from his seat to the left, Teal’c delicately chose not to mention it.
****
After the show was over, the wicked stepmother vanquished and the happily-ever-after secured, they bundled a tired but chatty Cassandra into the back of the car and took the short drive to Cheyenne Mountain to drop off Teal’c. They were only required to detour once, for pie, as the continual mention of pumpkins had proved too much for the big Jaffa and he was hungry.
Pulling up into the driveway of Janet’s house, Daniel idled the car while she organised herself and Cassandra, who was dozing off in the back seat. As she manoeuvred the sleepy girl towards the house, Janet leaned down and knocked lightly on the driver’s-side window. Daniel rolled it down, expecting a quick thank-you and good night from the doctor, but she surprised him by quietly inviting him inside. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee,” she laughed, “and I think I owe you.” She smiled kindly, and Daniel turned off the engine.
“Just go through to the living room,” she instructed, gesturing to the right as the entered the hall, “I’ll just be a minute getting this one up to bed. Put the kettle on, if you like. Say goodnight, sweetheart.” This last was directed at Cassandra, who mumbled “’Night, Daniel. I liked the play” and gifted him with a swift, affectionate hug, which he returned, before she was bustled upstairs by her mother. Daniel, by now as used to following Janet’s orders as she was to giving him them, proceeded through to the kitchen. He couldn’t quite remember where Janet kept the coffee, or the mugs - slightly abashed, he attributed this to the fact that he hadn’t been over here in a while - so settled for sticking some water on to boil as he’d been told. A few minutes later Janet materialized and shoo-ed him through to the adjoining living room, where he set himself down on the sofa until she appeared carrying a cup of coffee and a glass of white wine. Catching his mock-inquisitive glance as she handed him his mug, she laughed and shrugged unapologetically. “Helps me wind down after a long day,” she replied to his unvoiced question. “I’d have offered you something, but you’re driving, and we all know what you’re like after a sniff of a beer, Daniel Jackson.” The grin that his affronted expression provoked was positively wicked. He couldn’t really argue.
Janet sighed and settled back into the cushions as he took a sip of his coffee. They sat in companiable silence for a while, and Daniel surprised himself with how easy he felt, here in her company, in her house, late in the evening and away from the usual surroundings of the infirmary or the rest of his wayward team. Janet broke the quiet first, drawing her feet up onto the sofa beside her and leaning her wine-glass on one knee. “Thanks for tonight, Daniel,” she said softly. “Cassie had a great time, she really did. She’s been looking forward to it all day.”
Daniel smiled. “I’m glad she enjoyed it,” he said, and meant it. Janet tucked a lose strand of hair behind one ear and offered a slightly self-conscious smile of her own. “It was nice to get out myself, as well. I mean, besides just me and Cass and Sam.” She frowned a little, but then seemed to recover, teasing, “I can’t remember the last time I was escorted to the theatre by two handsome young men.” Daniel feigned offence. “You can’t possibly be putting me in the same age bracket as Teal’c,” he said indignantly, “he’s got a good, what, fifty years on me?” Janet laughed in acknowledgment, “Ah, he’s still handsome.”
Daniel huffed. “Well, he seemed to have a good night, anyway.”
She grinned. “That he did. Although I’m not sure he had the first idea what was going on. When those two ugly sisters came tramping on stage in their ball-gowns and sang ‘Man, I Feel Like a Woman’? I think I laughed harder at his face than I did at them.” They both snickered. “Really?” Daniel chuckled. “I thought it was Pickles the Pantomime Cow that finally cracked him in the end.” Janet giggled.
“It was a little…different, though,” she continued. “It’s certainly different from anything a guy’s ever taken me out to see before.” Daniel looked over at her quickly, and she coloured a little as she heard the implication in her words, swallowing a mouthful of her wine to cover her embarrassment. Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated.
It hadn’t been a date, that much was certain. They’d had Cassie and Teal’c along for a start, and it was just to a kids’ show by a local am-dram company. There hadn’t been any dinner, or a lot of conversation, or anything remotely date-like about it. And he knew Janet knew that, of course, and that it wasn’t really what she’d meant by her words. Daniel was married and set on a quest to find his missing wife by whatever means possible, and Janet was still adapting to life as a sudden, single mother, and they worked together every day, and even though they knew each other better than they had the day he’d first been carted into her infirmary, they still didn’t know each other very well, at all.
But at the end of the day, he couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed tonight far more than he’d thought he would, and that a large part of that had been because of her. He’d liked spending time in her company - he always had, even when she was just berating him sternly to be more careful while stitching him up or sticking needles in him. And now they were ensconced in her living-room while the night moved on outside, talking contentedly about nothing very much at all; and he’d only come in, he realised belatedly, not for a cup of coffee, but because he wasn’t quite ready to see tonight end and go blithely back to the old routine at work on Monday, where she was a colleague whom he saw when he needed fixing, or occasionally when he visited her daughter. He wanted to change that. He could have a real friendship with this woman, he knew, outside the confines of Cheyenne Mountain; wanted a friendship with her. It might take a while, but he’d like to know her better. And that was as far as he was going to pursue that thought, for now, while he was tired and comfortable.
Janet didn’t look quite as comfortable anymore, though, and Daniel guessed she probably thought she’d misstepped with her remark. That, he could change right now. “Well, I aim to provide new, cultural experiences for all, on every occasion.” He wrinkled his brow and feigned concern. “Hold on, does that mean you were my date, or Teal’c’s?
She burst out laughing, and Daniel knew it was more from relief than his question’s being particularly funny. Her uneasiness washed away, and she rolled her eyes as she took another sip of wine. Daniel couldn’t resist pushing a mite further. “Although, I must say, I think you’re extremely hard to please. If going along to watch men in drag dance, with your teenage daughter and an ex-alien foot-soldier in tow, isn’t your idea of a perfect date, I don’t know what is.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “The romance of the situation was almost overwhelming.” They were both laughing now, and Janet shook her head in amusement just as she was interrupted by a yawn. She stretched, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand and waggling her near-empty wine-glass with the other. “Give me a nice dinner, a couple of glasses of pinot grigio, and a little jazz piano any day.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Daniel joked, draining his coffee mug and taking her obvious tiredness as his cue to leave. “I think I’d better be heading off.”
“Mmm,” Janet assented, rising from the couch to collect his mug and he swung his jacket on and picked up his car keys from the coffee table. “It has been a long day.” She cocked her head in the direction of the clock in the opposite wall. “Besides,” she added with a mischievous smirk, “it’s nearly midnight. Wouldn’t want your car turning into a pumpkin half-way up the mountain road.”
“That we would not,” he agreed, heading for the door. “Although given the engine trouble I’ve been having lately, it might be an improvement.” Janet followed him to the porch, where he turned impulsively and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She looked a tad surprised, but not displeased, and she smiled at him as she stepped back into the hallway. “Goodnight, Daniel,” she said gently.
“Goodnight,” he replied, “and tell Sleeping Beauty upstairs I’m glad she had a good time.”
Janet grinned as she moved to close the front door, and as Daniel walked back toward the car he heard her call after him, “Now that, Doctor Jackson, is another story all together.”
***
End