Mostly Harmless (The Original)
NOTE: This is the original version of Mostly Harmless, which I rewrote. In the end, some people liked one, some liked the other, so I figured I’d keep ‘em both posted.
"So why do you keep it blond, anyway?” he asked, stabbing a third chunk of syrupy waffle onto his fork and scarfing the whole thing down. It looked like he was building miniature pyramids on his fork, then descending on them like a Goa’uld mothership.
Sam tried not to stare, but she must have, because after he swallowed he spoke again.
“Sorry, I guess that’s a personal question,” he said. “I meant it from a purely anthropological standpoint. I’ve always thought the only reason people dyed their hair was vanity, but you’re not what I’d call vain, so… I was just wondering.” While he’d been speaking, he’d layered another three slices of waffle onto his fork and rolled them around in syrup.
Here’s the ha’tak and here’s the pyramid, open up wide… Where in the hell does he put it, anyway? She pulled her plate a little closer to her, just in case. “It started turning brown when I was about nineteen or twenty.”
Swallow… “So you just didn’t like the change in color?”
“Actually, I didn’t like the change in how people treated me.”
Daniel paused in mid-waffle stabbing to look at her. “It changed how they treated you?”
She smiled wearily. “Appearances matter, Daniel. You know that.”
Daniel stopped eating. Her answer must have captured his attention, because he couldn’t be full yet: he hadn’t even touched her plate. “Yes, that’s true. I’ve just never heard anyone illustrate a direct contrast like that. How did it change?”
She sat back, crossing her arms and wondering if he would understand. Men usually didn’t. Neither did some women. “Well, you know some people are intimidated by intelligence.”
A light went on in his eyes. “Yes, particularly men with intelligent women, or women working in fields traditionally reserved for men.”
“And there’s an unfounded assumption that blonds are not-so-bright,” she added.
He cleared his throat, wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin and put his fork down. “You dye your hair to keep men from realizing you’re smarter than they are?”
She shrugged, unwilling to assume she understood the specific mechanism at work here. “All I know is, men seem to find me more approachable when I’m blond.”
“Why?” he wondered.
She leaned forward so as not to share this with the whole commissary. “I don’t know. I had a friend at the academy who theorized it was because blond hair is associated with youth and naivety. And also, because it’s generally not natural on anyone over twenty-something, being blond indicates you’re someone who’s willing waste time on your appearance.”
He stared at her skeptically, and she could practically see the gears spinning behind the mild glare on his glasses. “Meaning, men prefer women who are either naive or frivolous?”
“That was her theory,” Sam shrugged. “She said the real point of cosmetics and hair dye and all that stuff wasn’t to look better. It was to show that you spend time worrying about your looks. A couple hundred years ago, it was chic for men to worry about their appearances, so they put on powdered wigs and beauty marks. It said they took the time to make themselves gentlemen, fit for the company of other gentlemen. But at some point, beauty got redefined as a way for women to show men they were… harmless. Superfluous. Content to sit around looking pretty, instead of challenging them on any level.”
Daniel gaped. “It’s a… you’re saying, or she was saying, cosmetics are a way for women to show they accept submissive status? And in this scenario, I guess men are so bad at being dominant that they can’t approach a woman who doesn’t make that clear up front?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Honestly, I’m not sure what the deal is. All I know is that when my hair was brown, the only men I attracted were either way older than me or total narcissists. In other words, men who wouldn’t be so easily intimidated by a brighter-than-average young woman.”
“Prettier than average, too,” Daniel observed. “You know, you’re not the only woman I’ve known who looks better when you first wake up than most people do with any amount of effort. Some of these women had trouble getting dates just because men assumed a woman like that was out of their league.”
Daniel never flattered people. No, he just stated extreme compliments like they were simple facts, which was way more thrilling. She felt herself going all gushy, and tried to quash it before the girly glow could reach her face. “Well, for whatever reason, I’ve never exactly had a lot of offers to choose from. I just know it gets worse than usual when my hair is darker.”
“But don’t they freak anyway when they get past the surface and realize how smart you are?”
“It’s happened,” she admitted. “I think the theory is ‘cast a big net’.”
“And catch guys like Jonas Hanson?” he said acerbically.
She winced. “Gotta catch a whole lot of guppies to get a sea bass.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” he insisted, returning to his breakfast. “Like, going where there actually are sea bass, and casting a line.”
She frowned. “Did Colonel O’Neill ask you to go fishing again?”
“Yeah, we’re going in two weeks,” he said, then winced and pressed a hand against his abdomen, somewhere below table level. “Ow. Must’ve eaten too fast.”
Ya think? “So, if you’ve got all the answers, what’s your big secret to finding a woman who really appreciates you for who you are?”
He cracked a little bit of a smile, but still looked pained. “Something to do with a mastadge and the Eye of Ra, as I recall.”
She smiled back. She was pretty sure that was the first time since Sha’re’s death she’d seen him refer to her without having to leave the room immediately afterwards. “So you don’t have a solution that works on Earth people, either.”
“Well, no,” he acknowledged, finally moving his hand away from his stomach and looking more relaxed. “But I don’t think women have that hang-up so much. At least, I’ve never felt the need to hide who I am around them.”
Suddenly, it hit her. She didn’t often get insights like this about people, but this one was coming through loud and clear. Her smile turned sneaky as she said, “Oh, really?”
He blinked at her suspiciously. “What?”
“You don’t feel the need to hide anything about yourself?”
“No,” he drawled.
“What’s your very best physical feature, Daniel? The one the whole team and Janet agreed on at your birthday party last year.”
He frowned. “My eyes?”
“Your eyes,” she confirmed. “And what’s that in front of them? Big pieces of glaring glass and distracting frames!”
“I don’t wear glasses to hide my eyes!” he snapped irritably. “Hello? Near-sighted!”
She leaned forward for the pounce. “Hello? Contact lenses. Didn’t Colonel O’Neill tell you he’d feel a lot better taking you into combat if you didn’t have something that could break into shards right next to your eyeballs?”
“I’m used to the glasses,” he retorted. “Contacts are uncomfortable.”
“When have you ever worn them?” she demanded.
“College,” he answered. “For about six months. Never did get used to them.”
“And what did people think of you without glasses? Your friends, the ones who were used to seeing you with them.”
He rolled his best feature and mumbled something.
“What was that?”
Glowering at the table, he replied, “They seemed to think I looked better without.”
“Right,” she muttered, knowing firsthand how she’d reacted the first time she’d seen him without glasses. “Let me guess. They went on and on about how intense your eyes are, and how cute your whole face becomes when you take off the glasses.”
He looked down and let out a sort of abbreviated laugh of disgust or astonishment.
She knew she was right. “Face it, Daniel. You wear glasses because it makes people underestimate you, and then they’re more comfortable around you.”
“I don’t make people uncomfortable!”
“You know what I meant,” she said. “You intimidate them.”
“Well, if my intellect is so intimidating,” he said, “how does wearing glasses help? I might as well tattoo my PhD’s on my forehead.”
“Because all your intelligence shows in your eyes,” she said, deciding it was strategically time to drop the big one. “Not to mention your smoldering good looks.”
He stared at her, face scrunched like she’d just related an inappropriate bathroom story. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she laughed. “And it’s not just your eyes. What about those bulky clothes you wear? You had some nice muscle tone before you ever came to the SGC.”
“Not for looks!” he hissed, literally squirming in his seat. “Digs require a lot of hard physical labor, and if you don’t keep in shape for them, those first few weeks on a new one are pure hell.”
She ignored him and leaned in even closer. “You. Use. Hair gel. Yep, that’s right. Wiggle out of that one.”
He stared at her, looking absolutely miserable. “So I try to look nice. So what? One minute you say I’m hiding my beautiful eyes and Adonis-like body, and the next minute you’re complaining I try to make my hair look better. Which is it?”
“What you’re trying to hide, Daniel,” she said softly, “is the fact that you’re not just a harmless academic.”
“Tell that to the next round of Jaffa we run into.”
“Next to Jaffa, we’re all wimps,” she said. “But when you go off this base and go home at night, you’re someone who can not only defend himself. You’re someone who could beat the crap out of an awful lot of people, if you wanted to.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly, then looked away.
“The glasses suggest you’re more into matters of the mind than the body,” she said. “The bulky clothes hide the evidence to the contrary.”
“Okay,” he finally said. “Maybe by continuing to present myself the way I always have, I’m hiding the fact that I’ve evolved somewhat over the years. I don’t think that’s unusual.”
She shook her head in agreement.
“Let’s put your theory, or your friend’s theory, to test with an independent third party,” Daniel suggested. “You think you and I are trying to hide how devestatingly smart and strong we are under hair dye and glasses-” the sarcasm was literally dripping from his fangs, here “-so what do you think Jack’s hiding, and how’s he hiding it?”
“I haven’t thought about him,” she admitted.
“Let’s think together,” he suggested. “He doesn’t try to hide his age.”
“No,” she agreed.
“Except…” Daniel trailed off, frowning into space. “That whole Simpsons thing.”
She gave him a long moment, but he didn’t follow up. “What whole Simpsons thing?”
“Well, he… he does try to make himself appear harmless, doesn’t he?” he finally continued. “He acts like Homer Simpson and plays dumb. And the grey hair might make people who don’t know him underestimate his physical skills, assume he’s past his prime.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, when he still has the reflexes of a cat.”
“And that whole yelling his head off when he’s injured thing?” Daniel scoffed. “That’s a Special Ops trick for luring the enemy into thinking you’re more out of commission than you really are. And he’s really much more sensitive than he lets on.”
“Sensitive?” she echoed, not buying that one. She had a very high opinion of Jack O’Neill on many levels, but his name and the word sensitive didn’t belong in the same sentence.”
“Trust me,” Daniel said. “He’s very aware of emotional nuances. Remember Thor’s Hammer? He knew it had to be me who blew the thing up, or else I might have gone on resenting the decision. And even if I hadn’t, Teal’c would have wondered if I did.”
She thought that one over for a moment. “Huh. That does make sense.”
Daniel nodded, but then he winced again, his hand going back to his abdomen. Right side. “Maybe you’d better head to the infirmary,” she suggested. “You look kind of pale.”
“I’m fine. I gotta run. Jack asked me to meet him at eight o'clock and explain Buddhism to him.”
She frowned. “Buddhism?”
“Yeah, after our little visit to Camp Mother Nature,” he clarified, rubbing his abdomen again. “Oma Desala and all that. Apparently stirred up some latent philosophical - mmmph - curiosity.”
“Daniel, where’s the pain, exactly?”
“I’m fine,” he said, standing up. “If it doesn’t get better by the time I’m done with Jack - which should take about five minutes - I’ll see about it.”
She was too focused on where his hand had been when he stood up to answer: lower right side. “Daniel, that’s your appendix. I’m going to call Janet right now.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “I’ve had it before. It always goes away.”
Maybe. But he looked green. “If you say so,” she said doubtfully.
He tried to look reassuring, and did a fair job. “It’s perfectly harmless.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, like us?”
“No, really harmless. It’s not dying its hair or wearing glasses or pretending to be stupider than it really is. It’s just… flaring up a little. I’ll be fine.”
She gave up trying to convince him and decided on another course of action. “Okay. Hey, let me know how much intelligence and sensitivity Colonel O’Neill displays during your Buddhism lecture.”
He glared at her as he left, and she grinned back. As soon as he was gone, she jumped up and ran to the commissary phone to send Janet up to Daniel’s lab with a medical team.
"So why do you keep it blond, anyway?” he asked, stabbing a third chunk of syrupy waffle onto his fork and scarfing the whole thing down. It looked like he was building miniature pyramids on his fork, then descending on them like a Goa’uld mothership.
Sam tried not to stare, but she must have, because after he swallowed he spoke again.
“Sorry, I guess that’s a personal question,” he said. “I meant it from a purely anthropological standpoint. I’ve always thought the only reason people dyed their hair was vanity, but you’re not what I’d call vain, so… I was just wondering.” While he’d been speaking, he’d layered another three slices of waffle onto his fork and rolled them around in syrup.
Here’s the ha’tak and here’s the pyramid, open up wide… Where in the hell does he put it, anyway? She pulled her plate a little closer to her, just in case. “It started turning brown when I was about nineteen or twenty.”
Swallow… “So you just didn’t like the change in color?”
“Actually, I didn’t like the change in how people treated me.”
Daniel paused in mid-waffle stabbing to look at her. “It changed how they treated you?”
She smiled wearily. “Appearances matter, Daniel. You know that.”
Daniel stopped eating. Her answer must have captured his attention, because he couldn’t be full yet: he hadn’t even touched her plate. “Yes, that’s true. I’ve just never heard anyone illustrate a direct contrast like that. How did it change?”
She sat back, crossing her arms and wondering if he would understand. Men usually didn’t. Neither did some women. “Well, you know some people are intimidated by intelligence.”
A light went on in his eyes. “Yes, particularly men with intelligent women, or women working in fields traditionally reserved for men.”
“And there’s an unfounded assumption that blonds are not-so-bright,” she added.
He cleared his throat, wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin and put his fork down. “You dye your hair to keep men from realizing you’re smarter than they are?”
She shrugged, unwilling to assume she understood the specific mechanism at work here. “All I know is, men seem to find me more approachable when I’m blond.”
“Why?” he wondered.
She leaned forward so as not to share this with the whole commissary. “I don’t know. I had a friend at the academy who theorized it was because blond hair is associated with youth and naivety. And also, because it’s generally not natural on anyone over twenty-something, being blond indicates you’re someone who’s willing waste time on your appearance.”
He stared at her skeptically, and she could practically see the gears spinning behind the mild glare on his glasses. “Meaning, men prefer women who are either naive or frivolous?”
“That was her theory,” Sam shrugged. “She said the real point of cosmetics and hair dye and all that stuff wasn’t to look better. It was to show that you spend time worrying about your looks. A couple hundred years ago, it was chic for men to worry about their appearances, so they put on powdered wigs and beauty marks. It said they took the time to make themselves gentlemen, fit for the company of other gentlemen. But at some point, beauty got redefined as a way for women to show men they were… harmless. Superfluous. Content to sit around looking pretty, instead of challenging them on any level.”
Daniel gaped. “It’s a… you’re saying, or she was saying, cosmetics are a way for women to show they accept submissive status? And in this scenario, I guess men are so bad at being dominant that they can’t approach a woman who doesn’t make that clear up front?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Honestly, I’m not sure what the deal is. All I know is that when my hair was brown, the only men I attracted were either way older than me or total narcissists. In other words, men who wouldn’t be so easily intimidated by a brighter-than-average young woman.”
“Prettier than average, too,” Daniel observed. “You know, you’re not the only woman I’ve known who looks better when you first wake up than most people do with any amount of effort. Some of these women had trouble getting dates just because men assumed a woman like that was out of their league.”
Daniel never flattered people. No, he just stated extreme compliments like they were simple facts, which was way more thrilling. She felt herself going all gushy, and tried to quash it before the girly glow could reach her face. “Well, for whatever reason, I’ve never exactly had a lot of offers to choose from. I just know it gets worse than usual when my hair is darker.”
“But don’t they freak anyway when they get past the surface and realize how smart you are?”
“It’s happened,” she admitted. “I think the theory is ‘cast a big net’.”
“And catch guys like Jonas Hanson?” he said acerbically.
She winced. “Gotta catch a whole lot of guppies to get a sea bass.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” he insisted, returning to his breakfast. “Like, going where there actually are sea bass, and casting a line.”
She frowned. “Did Colonel O’Neill ask you to go fishing again?”
“Yeah, we’re going in two weeks,” he said, then winced and pressed a hand against his abdomen, somewhere below table level. “Ow. Must’ve eaten too fast.”
Ya think? “So, if you’ve got all the answers, what’s your big secret to finding a woman who really appreciates you for who you are?”
He cracked a little bit of a smile, but still looked pained. “Something to do with a mastadge and the Eye of Ra, as I recall.”
She smiled back. She was pretty sure that was the first time since Sha’re’s death she’d seen him refer to her without having to leave the room immediately afterwards. “So you don’t have a solution that works on Earth people, either.”
“Well, no,” he acknowledged, finally moving his hand away from his stomach and looking more relaxed. “But I don’t think women have that hang-up so much. At least, I’ve never felt the need to hide who I am around them.”
Suddenly, it hit her. She didn’t often get insights like this about people, but this one was coming through loud and clear. Her smile turned sneaky as she said, “Oh, really?”
He blinked at her suspiciously. “What?”
“You don’t feel the need to hide anything about yourself?”
“No,” he drawled.
“What’s your very best physical feature, Daniel? The one the whole team and Janet agreed on at your birthday party last year.”
He frowned. “My eyes?”
“Your eyes,” she confirmed. “And what’s that in front of them? Big pieces of glaring glass and distracting frames!”
“I don’t wear glasses to hide my eyes!” he snapped irritably. “Hello? Near-sighted!”
She leaned forward for the pounce. “Hello? Contact lenses. Didn’t Colonel O’Neill tell you he’d feel a lot better taking you into combat if you didn’t have something that could break into shards right next to your eyeballs?”
“I’m used to the glasses,” he retorted. “Contacts are uncomfortable.”
“When have you ever worn them?” she demanded.
“College,” he answered. “For about six months. Never did get used to them.”
“And what did people think of you without glasses? Your friends, the ones who were used to seeing you with them.”
He rolled his best feature and mumbled something.
“What was that?”
Glowering at the table, he replied, “They seemed to think I looked better without.”
“Right,” she muttered, knowing firsthand how she’d reacted the first time she’d seen him without glasses. “Let me guess. They went on and on about how intense your eyes are, and how cute your whole face becomes when you take off the glasses.”
He looked down and let out a sort of abbreviated laugh of disgust or astonishment.
She knew she was right. “Face it, Daniel. You wear glasses because it makes people underestimate you, and then they’re more comfortable around you.”
“I don’t make people uncomfortable!”
“You know what I meant,” she said. “You intimidate them.”
“Well, if my intellect is so intimidating,” he said, “how does wearing glasses help? I might as well tattoo my PhD’s on my forehead.”
“Because all your intelligence shows in your eyes,” she said, deciding it was strategically time to drop the big one. “Not to mention your smoldering good looks.”
He stared at her, face scrunched like she’d just related an inappropriate bathroom story. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she laughed. “And it’s not just your eyes. What about those bulky clothes you wear? You had some nice muscle tone before you ever came to the SGC.”
“Not for looks!” he hissed, literally squirming in his seat. “Digs require a lot of hard physical labor, and if you don’t keep in shape for them, those first few weeks on a new one are pure hell.”
She ignored him and leaned in even closer. “You. Use. Hair gel. Yep, that’s right. Wiggle out of that one.”
He stared at her, looking absolutely miserable. “So I try to look nice. So what? One minute you say I’m hiding my beautiful eyes and Adonis-like body, and the next minute you’re complaining I try to make my hair look better. Which is it?”
“What you’re trying to hide, Daniel,” she said softly, “is the fact that you’re not just a harmless academic.”
“Tell that to the next round of Jaffa we run into.”
“Next to Jaffa, we’re all wimps,” she said. “But when you go off this base and go home at night, you’re someone who can not only defend himself. You’re someone who could beat the crap out of an awful lot of people, if you wanted to.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly, then looked away.
“The glasses suggest you’re more into matters of the mind than the body,” she said. “The bulky clothes hide the evidence to the contrary.”
“Okay,” he finally said. “Maybe by continuing to present myself the way I always have, I’m hiding the fact that I’ve evolved somewhat over the years. I don’t think that’s unusual.”
She shook her head in agreement.
“Let’s put your theory, or your friend’s theory, to test with an independent third party,” Daniel suggested. “You think you and I are trying to hide how devestatingly smart and strong we are under hair dye and glasses-” the sarcasm was literally dripping from his fangs, here “-so what do you think Jack’s hiding, and how’s he hiding it?”
“I haven’t thought about him,” she admitted.
“Let’s think together,” he suggested. “He doesn’t try to hide his age.”
“No,” she agreed.
“Except…” Daniel trailed off, frowning into space. “That whole Simpsons thing.”
She gave him a long moment, but he didn’t follow up. “What whole Simpsons thing?”
“Well, he… he does try to make himself appear harmless, doesn’t he?” he finally continued. “He acts like Homer Simpson and plays dumb. And the grey hair might make people who don’t know him underestimate his physical skills, assume he’s past his prime.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, when he still has the reflexes of a cat.”
“And that whole yelling his head off when he’s injured thing?” Daniel scoffed. “That’s a Special Ops trick for luring the enemy into thinking you’re more out of commission than you really are. And he’s really much more sensitive than he lets on.”
“Sensitive?” she echoed, not buying that one. She had a very high opinion of Jack O’Neill on many levels, but his name and the word sensitive didn’t belong in the same sentence.”
“Trust me,” Daniel said. “He’s very aware of emotional nuances. Remember Thor’s Hammer? He knew it had to be me who blew the thing up, or else I might have gone on resenting the decision. And even if I hadn’t, Teal’c would have wondered if I did.”
She thought that one over for a moment. “Huh. That does make sense.”
Daniel nodded, but then he winced again, his hand going back to his abdomen. Right side. “Maybe you’d better head to the infirmary,” she suggested. “You look kind of pale.”
“I’m fine. I gotta run. Jack asked me to meet him at eight o'clock and explain Buddhism to him.”
She frowned. “Buddhism?”
“Yeah, after our little visit to Camp Mother Nature,” he clarified, rubbing his abdomen again. “Oma Desala and all that. Apparently stirred up some latent philosophical - mmmph - curiosity.”
“Daniel, where’s the pain, exactly?”
“I’m fine,” he said, standing up. “If it doesn’t get better by the time I’m done with Jack - which should take about five minutes - I’ll see about it.”
She was too focused on where his hand had been when he stood up to answer: lower right side. “Daniel, that’s your appendix. I’m going to call Janet right now.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “I’ve had it before. It always goes away.”
Maybe. But he looked green. “If you say so,” she said doubtfully.
He tried to look reassuring, and did a fair job. “It’s perfectly harmless.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, like us?”
“No, really harmless. It’s not dying its hair or wearing glasses or pretending to be stupider than it really is. It’s just… flaring up a little. I’ll be fine.”
She gave up trying to convince him and decided on another course of action. “Okay. Hey, let me know how much intelligence and sensitivity Colonel O’Neill displays during your Buddhism lecture.”
He glared at her as he left, and she grinned back. As soon as he was gone, she jumped up and ran to the commissary phone to send Janet up to Daniel’s lab with a medical team.