In Time: Fixing Things

[not_a_zatarc]

Title: Fixing Things
Summary: Procedures, plums, and explanations.
Timeframe: AU, Any
Characters/Pairing: Established Sam/Jack and Daniel/Janet
Genre: Fluff, Family, Humor
Rating: T

Comments

[thothmes]

Of course Jack would do this for Sam. Anything to spare her, and he knows it's more of a deal for women.

I agree that at this point, Daniel would not tease about such a thing. Not while Jack's still sore. Still, I bet a few days later:

The fruit basket was huge, and seemed to consist mostly of pomegranates and figs in a willow basket and enclosed in a cloud of shiny clear cellophane gathered and cinched at the top with swirls of shiny curling silver ribbon. There was a card in a crisp white envelope, labeled simply "Jack" in Daniel's familiar handwriting.

Jack looked at the fruit basket, and at Daniel, who was looking all too innocent with a side of smug.

"Aren't pomegranates and figs-"

"Used as symbols of fertility in Ancient Near Eastern art. Yes!" said Daniel, now seeming smug, with a side of no-longer-convincing innocent.

Jack picked up the envelope. If he'd been handling a live Goa'uld symbiote, he could not have been more gingerly.

"Just open it, Jack" urged Daniel. The smile he graced Jack with made the corners of his eyes crinkle, and Jack's suspicions were multiplying exponentially, or so his wife would have said, he was sure. It was a math thing, and Sam was all about the math.

He pulled the flap open from where it had been tucked in lieu of sealing, and pulled out the card. It was a cartoon from that guy with the science cartoons that Sam and Daniel liked. Somebody Larson. A good Minnesotan name that. His strip was called...no, not Farscape...The Far Side. That was it. A dog was leaning his head out of the back window of a car not yet in gear to tell another dog with eager cheerfulness "I'm going to the vet to get tutored!" Inside it the preprinted sentiment read simply "Get well soon!" and Daniel had scrawled his name.

Jack glared at the fruit basket. Pomegranates. Dark mission figs, looking uncomfortably similar to miniature models of what his "man parts" had looked like just a few days ago, in all their colorful glory. And were those walnuts? Jack stared at Daniel balefully.

Daniel was lost in the moment, fully enjoying his little joke, so it took him a moment to notice that Jack was not the only one glaring at him. Sam, who could only see the back of the card, was continuing to bounce Hannah on her hip and looked merely puzzled, but Janet, from her vantage point just behind the couch, had gotten to see the card when Jack had, and her mouth had taken on a harder-than-trinium line. The last time Daniel had seen his wife look at anyone that way, Jack had ended up sitting very gingerly for a week and mumbling things about "honkin' big needles the size of turkey basters!" from time to time.

He was so dead.

Jack was careful not to smile. He saw no reason to soften Janet's wrath. Instead, he sighed bravely.

"I suppose your wife told you about the swelling, so you thought the figs would be funny," he said with dryly martyred sarcasm.

At this Sam looked at Daniel with grave disappointment in her eyes.

Janet had heard enough. Her cheeks were flaming. She had thought that Daniel had asked out of legitimate concern for his friend, and was mortified that her little breach of patient confidentiality had been found out, by the patient no less! She seized her husband firmly by the elbow.

"We're leaving now!" she said firmly, and in spite of the fact that Daniel stood nearly a head taller, and outweighed her by some fifty pounds, there was not a person in the room who doubted that Janet would win if it came down to a tug of war. Daniel went meekly and in a state of dread.

As soon as the door closed behind the stiffly walking pair, Jack eagerly pulled the ribbon off, and spread the cellophane. Seizing a sweet dark fig just softening at the peak of ripeness, he bit into it, and hummed in delight. He'd gotten very fond of figs while he was stationed at Incirlik, and the were only rarely available in the grocery stores of Colorado Springs...

"You are a devious and an evil man, Jack O'Neill," said his wife.

"And you love me for it," he replied, and handed her a fig.

[not_a_zatarc]

LOL! Oooh, Daniel's gonna geeeeeet iiiiiit! *snickers* XD