You Can't Always Get What You Want, Part 5

[betacandy]

Continued from Part 4.

SUMMARY: It’s 2005 A.D., and Daniel’s back in Colorado with the Jack, Sam and Teal’c from the now-defunct timline. Now all they have to do is make sure everything in the timeline worked out, and they can take off into the future. How complicated could that possibly get?
CATEGORY: Humor, drama, angst? I’m not sure!
TIME: post-Season 8
SPOILERS: Pretty much anything through the end of S8
WARNINGS: None
RATING: PG-13
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Thanks to my betas, Redbyrd and Tallulah Rasa, both wonderful gen authors whose work I highly recommend.


“Watching the door isn’t going to bring him back any faster,” Sam commented. She spared Jack a glance before returning her attention to Daniel’s notes on the time travel mechanism's instructions. “What are you so worried about?”

Jack shook his head, shifting from one foot to the other as he continued his vigil at the back hatch of the time travel ship. “I shouldn’t have let him go.”

“It couldn’t very well be you or me. Or Teal'c.” Who was sitting on a bench meditating, ignoring them both.

Jack looked over at her with a serious expression. “Something happened on Kheb.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked patiently. She sensed she was going to have to drag every word out of him, one at a time.

“I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “But he was spooked.”

Had she missed something? “He seemed fine to me when he left the ship.”

“Maybe,” he sighed. “But if he’s off his game... I told him he should’ve rested a few hours first.”

They’d come from Kheb back to Earth through the stargate, still in the year 2995 B.C., then grabbed the ship and time traveled to the Egypt of 2005, a month before the original mission back in time to retrieve the ZPM. Daniel and Jack had then struggled with a GPS and Daniel’s imperfect memory of Egyptian geography to find the dig site. During this bewildering forty minute process, the two men had alternated between sarcastic potshots and uttering entire sentences in unison. That was when Teal'c had started meditating, and Sam had started reviewing Daniel’s notes. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she finally asked.

Jack turned an incredulous face on her. “He could get caught.”

She widened her eyes. “And what sort of hideous brutalities do you suppose archaeologists visit upon their captives?”

“Gee. I don't know. They probably call the authorities.”

“And report what? Someone trying to add an artifact to their collection?”

“More like report a suspected terrorist of trying to plant a bomb in their collection,” he retorted. “You think a ZPM’s gonna pass for a fertility statue?”

There was a rap on the hatch, and Jack closed his eyes and thought it open (that was driving Sam insane, not knowing how that worked), bringing a welcome end to the conversation. Daniel stormed past him into the ship, eyes inscrutable behind dark sunglasses. He put his hands on his hips and looked between Sam and Jack. “Why didn’t you tell me that was a University of Chicago team on that dig?”

Sam and Jack blinked at each other.

“Because we don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Jack said slowly, enunciating his words slowly. “Why, what happened?”

Daniel yanked the bandanna off his head and threw it down on the bench. “Oh, nothing much. I had just slipped the ZPM into a box of artifacts when I turned around, and there he was, maybe six feet away.”

“There who was?” Sam asked patiently.

“One of my research partners from way back when,” Daniel snapped, pacing a couple of steps. “It’s a good thing he wasn’t facing my way when I turned around.”

Jack glanced smugly at Sam, as if this proved his earlier point, then turned back to Daniel. “How’d you get past him?”

He took off his sunglasses and tossed them onto the bench. “Fortunately, Steven’s self-absorption is a force of nature.”

“Thank god,” Jack commented.

Daniel notched up his chin and glared. “Oh, thanks for the unwavering confidence in my abilities. I have managed to sneak in and out of much trickier situations than that.”

“I wasn’t saying you couldn’t,” Jack snapped.

“Just ‘thank god’ I didn’t have to?”

“Hey, just because I prefer no complications-”

“-doesn’t mean other people can’t handle them.”

“Exactly! Wait, what are-”

“Oh, for god’s sake!” Sam shouted. They sounded like her father and brother had years ago. “Teal'c’s over there trying to kel’no’reem.”

Jack took a look at Teal'c, sitting in the corner on the floor, eyes closed. “He’s not even hearing us.”

“Indeed I am, O'Neill.”

“Sorry,” Daniel said, turning to face Sam, his back to Jack. “So, the ZPM’s safely planted in the Egypt of 2005 and hopefully on its way to the SGC over the next few weeks. Next stop: Colorado, a month from now?”

She shook her head. “The ship’s not designed to make jumps of less than a couple hundred years. We need to go somewhere in the past and come back on it.”

“Right, I knew that,” Daniel said smoothly.

Jack turned and walked toward the pilot’s chair. “Any suggestions?”

“Whatever,” Daniel shrugged with an uncharacteristic lack of interest. Maybe Jack hadn’t been imagining that something had spooked Daniel on Kheb. In fact... maybe all this squabbling with Jack over every little thing was Daniel’s way of keeping him from asking about it. She hoped. Otherwise, they were all in for the science fiction equivalent of a road trip from hell.

“Okay,” Jack drawled irritably. “One side trip to Ancient Greece coming up.”

Sam blinked at a sudden mental image of Bill and Ted nabbing So-crates. Hmm. Time travel phone booth... time travel ship...

Daniel frowned. “We don’t have to go anywhere. Just any... when.”

“So? Anything wrong with when Ancient Greece was?”

Daniel closed his eyes, looking pained. “Do you know when Ancient Greece was?”

Jack shrugged. “Figured I’d just imagine it and bam, there we’d be.”

...two idiots upon whom the future of Earth rests, the comparison continued in Sam’s head.

Daniel muttered something surprisingly obscene under his breath and stalked up to the co-pilot’s seat, putting one hand on the back of it and one on the back of Jack’s chair. “From what I’ve translated, you need to have a fixed idea where you’re going, or you could throw off any calculations you later make from that point of origin. Let’s aim for, say, 500 B.C.”

“What’s at 500 B.C.?”

“A time to stop so we can turn around and come back to next month,” Daniel replied dryly.

Jack shrugged, apparently giving up. He took the ship off the desert floor and up to orbit.

Sam choked on a little snicker. “Too bad. I was kind of hoping to see Ancient Greece. And the Old West. And Bob Ghengis-”

“Don’t,” Daniel said quietly but menacingly, holding up a finger in warning.

She frowned, startled. “Don’t what?” How could anybody hate that movie?

“The stars just did a shimmy,” Jack announced. “Does that mean we’re there?”

“Probably,” Daniel said, turning back around. “Now aim for March, 2005. Around the eighteenth. That should get us back after everything’s done.”

“Wait a second,” Jack said, turning around slowly to look at Daniel. “After what’s done?”

Daniel blinked. “We left to get the ZPM a couple of days after Catherine’s funeral, which was on the twelfth.”

“Catherine?” Jack asked.

“Catherine Langford. One of the most important researchers on the Stargate,” Daniel informed him hurriedly. “If you aim for the eighteenth, we should get there a week or so after we left in my timeline. Assuming everything’s the same as it was in my timeline, except that we didn’t go back in time and instead got the ZPM from the dig in Egypt, then-”

“How will we know?” Sam asked, waving her pencil in the air, like she was interjecting a comment in class.

Daniel stared at her. “Well, when... uh, good question.”

“I thought you guys had this all planned out,” Jack said.

Daniel bristled. “We were kind of busy planning the rebellion.”

“What if we go back to a couple of days before you originally left on the mission?” she suggested. “Then we’ll actually be able to... watch them not leave.” She frowned. It had made sense in her head.

Jack shook his head. “And what? I write my other self a letter and ask if everything turned out the way nature intended?”

Daniel put up a finger, as if he was about to start writing on an invisible chalkboard. “We’re going to have to get into the mountain somehow.”

Jack gaped at him. “How?”

“Well, it’s not like we don’t belong there.” Daniel shuffled over finally and took a seat next to Sam on the bench.

“They log ins and outs, Daniel. If the other SG-1’s already there, they’re not going to let us in, and if the other SG-1’s away and we show up, they’re going to detain us.”

“So...” Daniel shrugged. “We just waltz in a few days after the mission was to start, like I originally suggested, and I’ll say, ‘Hi, I’m the Daniel on that tape you were sent from that dig-’”

“-if it’s already been sent. If it hasn’t, they’re going to think you’re one of those Replicators or a Goa'uld or something.”

Daniel frowned thoughtfully. “What do you suggest?”

“I don’t suggest anything!” Jack rolled his eyes as he spun one of the chairs from the forward section around and took a seat. “You’re the one who wants to break into a high-security military-”

“You’re the one with the expertise!”

“Enough!”

They turned to stare at Teal'c, who was now standing in the back of the ship, glaring at them. “Discuss this like adults,” he ordered.

Jack turned impatiently back to Daniel and spoke in a softer tone. “Yes, I am. And I’m telling you it can’t be done.”

Sam felt an idea starting to form. “Not by us, maybe.”

The guys all turned to stare at her.

“Think about it,” she said, leaning forward and tapping her pencil against Daniel's notes, which lay beside her on the bench. “If there’s someone else we could trust, someone who has access to the mountain, who could reasonably walk in and ask to speak to Jack, they could ask the right questions, and we’d know.”

“General Hammond!” Daniel suggested brightly. Then his face dropped. “No, maybe not.”

“Why not?” Jack asked.

“For the same reason we can’t just walk into the SGC and expect them to believe we’re who we say we are,” he said, eyes still narrowed as he thought it through. “He didn’t exactly trust the robot versions of us when they turned up.”

“Robot versions?” Sam asked, gaping. He couldn’t possibly expect her to leave that one alone.

“Yes,” Daniel winced.

“Oh, come on, Daniel!” she snickered. “Robot Usses?”

Daniel glared murderously. “Do not start. I’m warning you.”

“Medieval dickweed,” she muttered, meaning it. What was his problem with Bill and Ted?

“Well, what then?” Jack asked mildly, getting back on topic. “Hire a teenager from the mall to go in and say ‘Hi, I’m your local sixteen-year-old Piggly Wiggly clerk doing a report for my civics class; please give me some highly classified details of your operation here’?”

Suddenly, Daniel gaped at him. Intensely. Jack responded by shrugging pointedly.

“We need someone we can trust not to give us away, right?” Daniel asked. “Someone who has a plausible reason to be at the mountain. But not to ask suspicious questions. They could... plant bugs or something. Then we could listen in to confirm events are back on track.”

“The mountain’s shielded.”

“Um,” Sam piped up. “Electro-magnetic shielding, right? I could write a subroutine to let our signal bypass that.”

“And upload it into the base computer how?” Jack asked, eliciting an impressed look from Daniel, until he added: “Cyberfairies?”

She shrugged. “If Daniel gives me his access login, I can create a false user ID to get in. Did the other, uh, me have anything to do with maintaining the base computers?”

Daniel was starting to look excited. “The dialing computer. I don’t know about the rest.”

Sam nodded. “She’ll have left some back doors in there to give herself quick access in case the frontline security got compromised somehow.”

“This could work,” Daniel said, turning back to Jack.

Jack shook his head. “Even assuming you can get somebody inside the mountain to plant the bugs, and Sam can override the computers, the SGC is going to do bug sweeps, Daniel. More than once a day, if some version of me is running the show.”

“Yeah, but would you know what sort of bugs to plant, and where, to go undetected?” Daniel asked him. “In an installation you’re running?”

Jack looked offended for a moment, but then his expression changed to resignation, and he flicked something off the sleeve of his camo shirt. “Yeah,” he answered cautiously. “If the technology’s the same as in my timeline, I know a couple of things. But that’s a big if.”

“Actually not,” Daniel assured him, looking a bit tense. “There’s um... well, it wouldn’t exactly be you.”

Jack looked at Sam. She shrugged. Even Teal'c had opened his eyes and appeared to be listening. Jack raised his eyebrows. “Who, then?”

Daniel shrank into himself just a little. “Well, there’s an Asgard clone of Jack living in Colorado Springs with all his memories and knowledge up to the summer of 2003. He knows the base inside and out, he’d know the technology, and he obviously knows how Jack thinks.”

Jack’s mouth hung open in shock.

Sam pulled herself together. “Asgard?”

“A race of advanced allies,” Daniel explained. “Big fans of Jack. The clone is in a body that’s aged to about seventeen years old. I know he and Jack always tried to avoid each other, but once Jack took over the base, it was his job to keep tabs and make sure the clone was all right and... well, not doing anything like what I’m suggesting we ask him to do.”

Jack finally managed to speak. “You’re saying these alien goobers liked me enough to make a copy? Like - oh, here’s a good magazine article, I’ll run off a copy for Bob?”

Daniel shrugged apologetically. “Not exactly. It’s kind of a long story.”

“Daniel,” Jack cleared his throat. “How many more of me are there out there?”

“That’s it, I swear. Well...” He scratched his head, thinking. “Yeah. That’s it now.”

Jack exhaled loudly and gave his head a short, sharp shake like he was trying to clear static on a radio. “Okay, so you’re saying we talk this clone into going into the mountain under false pretenses and planting some bugs for us.”

Daniel nodded. “Yeah. He should be able to get into your office - Jack’s office - and from there, we ought to be able to hear everything, right?”

Jack cocked his head one way and then the other. “Enough to know if the timeline’s on schedule, I guess.”

“We’re really going to do this?” Sam asked, trying to restrain a grin.

“You love it, don’t you?” Jack snapped playfully.

Who wouldn’t? “Not to mention the bonus of seeing what you looked like at sixteen.”

“Believe me, that’s not a bonus,” Jack retorted.

She turned to Daniel. “I bet he was cute. Not cute-cute, but like hyperactive puppy kinda cute. Right?”

Daniel stared at her. “Do you find hyperactive killer Rottweiller puppies cute?”

“Why, thank you, Daniel,” Jack beamed.

“So you need to aim for a couple of days before the mission where we went back in time,” Daniel said to him, apparently tired of small talk. “But you don’t want to go back any further than that, because we were right in the middle of fighting... um, Anubis and... well, it just wouldn’t be a good time to...” He snickered softly. “...to, uh, send in the clones. So, March tenth or so.”

“Okay.” Jack turned back to the front of the ship and did whatever it was he did that made it go.

Every once in a while something made Daniel think of Anubis, and it hit him all over again: I brought him to Oma. But each time the shock hit, it faded more quickly that the last, as he grew numb to it. He'd grown numb to a lot of things over the past five years.

Jack landed the little cloaked ship in his own backyard in 2005. So to speak. Daniel watched through the viewport as Jack picked the lock and let himself in through the back door. Everything looked the way he remembered it so far - except blurrier, due to his glasses being long lost. A couple of minutes later, Jack came back to the door and waved them in. It was mid-afternoon - on what day, they hadn’t yet established - so presumably the real Jack was at the mountain.

The real Jack. The very thought sent a little jolt through Daniel. Home. The friends he remembered, the apartment he’d last lived in - all so close and yet so far. He should've hated the thought of seeing the people he'd lost in Ancient Egypt, the way they'd been before those last six months of hell in Egypt. He wasn't sure these people would seem any more familiar than his current traveling partners, and that should've made him physically ache.

But he found himself strangely pleased to be back.

Daniel stepped through the back door into Jack’s house. It smelled faintly of electrically heated air and fireplace embers. The same furniture, the same beige walls. The nostalgia should have crippled him, but instead he felt peace. It made no sense.

“Daniel?” Jack called from the dining area. “Looks like I missed the target by a few days.”

Daniel walked over to see Jack looking at a pile of newspapers on the table. “What’s it say?”

“March sixth.”

“You sure that’s current?”

“It is,” Sam called. Daniel and Jack turned to see standing down there in the sunken den, holding a remote in front of the glowing television. “I found CNN.”

Daniel sighed and shrugged at Jack. “Actually, I’m amazed you were able to pinpoint it that close. Okay, this is... fine. We may just have to cool our heels for a few days.”

“While they fight Anubis?” Jack asked.

Daniel forced himself to nod and say a casual, “Yep.” If he didn’t think about it, he couldn’t react to it.

Jack was still watching him. “Where exactly is everybody?”

“Uh,” Daniel murmured. “We must have been in the middle of... okay, Teal'c should be on or near Dakara with Bra’tac and the rebel Jaffa right now. Sam and I...” He broke off, realizing.

Jack raised his eyebrows.

Well, they were going to find out sooner or later. “Sam is back at the base by now. Jack’s there, too.”

“And you?” Jack asked meaningfully.

He made certain he didn’t look at Sam, but he could feel her listening. “I’m either being held by a Replicator... or I’m already dead.”

“Oh, god,” Sam said anyway, looking devastated. She shut off the television and put the remote down on the couch.

Daniel looked at her apologetically. For not the first time, he wished he hadn’t laid all that about the Replicator on her. “It’s okay,” he said lamely.

“’Okay’ is not a very high standard with you,” Jack muttered. He gestured toward Sam and himself. “Do they know your situation?”

Daniel nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then they’ll be keeping long hours,” Jack surmised. “Right?”

Daniel stared at him. “With Anubis plotting to destroy all life in the galaxy, I would assume so.”

Jack narrowed his eyes slightly. “Well, let’s not waste time here. You guys pack up some basic stuff: food, supplies. I’m going to grab some clothes. Daniel, where-”

“End of the hall,” Daniel pointed.

Jack nodded and dashed off to the bedroom.

Sam and Teal'c turned to Daniel. He sighed and beckoned for them to follow him to the garage, where they snatched some basic camping supplies, carefully arranging everything to hide the theft.

On their way back, they met Jack on his way back from the bedroom. He extended his hand to Daniel, a slightly reflective object danging between his fingers. Daniel stepped forward until he could see... “Glasses?”

“Yep,” Jack said. “Found ‘em in the spare room. They don’t seem to be my prescription.”

Daniel tried them on, and the world came into relatively sharp, clear focus, although he thought maybe his prescription had changed over the past five years. “Whoa. Yeah, I remember now. I lost these a couple of years ago. Never did find out what happened to them.”

“How’d they end up here?” Jack asked mildly.

Daniel shrugged, then thought harder. “It was probably the time we all came over along with Cassie and Janet to celebrate... uh, the end of a mission. Anyway, I accidentally double-dosed on painkillers between the entree and dessert, and thought my apple pie was trying to crawl off my plate. Janet was ready to kill me. She...” He chuckled at the memory. ”She took over the guestroom and turned it into a makeshift infirmary for the night.”

“Cassie and Janet?” Sam asked.

Daniel stared at her, feeling his heart thud dully. “Oh, that’s a long story.”

“Painkillers?” Jack said in a disgusted tone as he headed for the door. “I don’t even want to know.”

Jack was pretty happy with their supplies haul from General Jack’s house, but Daniel and Sam still needed some normal clothes. So did Teal'c - but that was going to require a shopping trip, as nothing at General Jack’s had even approached fitting him, despite the man’s apparent tendency to buy clothes about two sizes too big. Freak.

They stopped by Colonel Sam’s house - which Dr. Sam couldn’t believe she owned - and grabbed more stuff. Clothes and toiletries, an old laptop, and tons of junk in the garage she and he together figured might make surveillance bugs the sweeps would miss. Jack had been reluctant to take it, but she swore the other Sam would never miss any of it, and Daniel had shrugged cautious agreement with that assessment. Nor, she claimed, would the other Sam miss the enormous stack of bills she took from the “emergency cash stash”.

According to Daniel, so far everything looked like the timeline he remembered.

Then they’d flown to Daniel’s and parked the ship in a clearing in a little wooded area nearby. Teal’c had to stay behind because neither chain mail armor nor Middle Eastern robes seemed inconspicuous enough for a quarter-mile dash through suburban Colorado Springs. Daniel had explained something about a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the resulting attitudes toward Middle Easterners. Jack was still trying to wrap his head around the idea the Twin Towers were gone.

In t-shirts and camo pants, Jack and Sam followed Daniel across the street, into the townhome complex, and to his ground level unit. Once again, Jack applied his lockpicking skills while Daniel babbled about having moved into this place after a Goa'uld blew up something outside his last place.

“A Goa'uld not only infiltrated Earth, but your house?” Jack asked in a dumbfounded tone as he got the door open.

“Well, the host was an old friend,” Daniel shrugged.

Jack felt a shiver and decided he didn't want to know.

They entered the foyer of the townhome, and Daniel stopped dead. “Okay,” he said calmly.

Jack looked around. “It’s huge. And yet, you’ve managed to fill every square inch.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agreed, not moving.

“I think we’ve got supplies covered,” Jack said. “Why don’t you grab some clothes and stuff?”

“Right,” Daniel said, still not moving. He reached out toward something on the dining room table, then withdrew his hand.

“What?” Jack asked, stepping over toward him. It was a piece of paper on the table. A note. In familiar handwriting. “Is that...”

“Jack,” Daniel finished for him, and there was a gravity in his voice, an energy Jack had never heard before. Strangely, it hit him like a dull kick in the belly, and gave him an unpleasant epiphany.

Daniel was never going to be his friend like that. And he really, really could have been.

But.. things being as they were, he couldn’t even ask it of him. So he accepted it without another thought, and pushed aside the surprising surge of disappointment. “What’s he say?”

“He says he stopped by to feed my fish before he remembered I don’t have them anymore,” Daniel answered, sounding confused.

General Jack sure was full of shit.

“I don’t get it,” Daniel murmured. “They have no reason to think I’m coming back.” He trailed off, looking at Jack.

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Maybe the fact that you’ve returned from the dead three times before?”

Daniel sighed. “Yeah, but this... this really should’ve been the one.” He stopped, watching Sam look miserable as she walked around looking at all the doodads in his living room. “Well. I’m going to see if I can find an outfit or something, but the other me will notice if anything much is missing. I know that sounds impossible with all this stuff, but if anything is so much as moved...”

Sam hastily put back a little box she’d picked up from the sofa table.

“Actually,” Daniel amended, waving a finger at Sam and the box, “he’ll just think it was Jack. In fact, Jack probably already moved everything when he was here, so have at it. I just don’t think we should take anything.”

“Not even like a...” Jack shrugged, “...bottle of gourmet pasta sauce?”

Daniel whirled on him, eyes slightly wide in surprise. “What?”

Jack shrugged. “Box of potato flakes?”

“You said gourmet pasta sauce.”

“I picked a random food article, Daniel. Some big significance I’m not aware of?”

Daniel looked away, toward the window. “It’s a... I used to have everybody over for dinner sometimes. Once I bought this really expensive pasta sauce, and then Jack wouldn’t eat any other pasta sauce else after that.” He smiled. “It got to be an inside joke.”

At that level of coincidence, Jack felt another little shiver down his spine. “Huh.”

“Yeah.” Daniel headed off to what had once been his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

“Stopped by to feed his fish?” Sam commented, and it took Jack a second to figure out she’d backtracked topics to General Jack’s little visit.

He looked back at her warily.

She shrugged. “He just wanted to be here. Then he had to give himself an excuse.”

Jack thought about it, and decided he could cope with having some sentimental behavior associated with him by proxy. “He knows Daniel’s not dead. Or not staying dead.”

“Or he’s just in denial,” she suggested pragmatically.

Jack nodded. But he knew.

“Like the rest of us,” she muttered, almost too quietly to be heard.

“How do you mean?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Well, it's the end of the world as you and I knew it.”

“And I feel fine,” Jack added.

She nodded, lowering her lashes a little and withdrawing.

“Not really,” he said. “I didn't have a lot left to miss, you know?”

“I didn't either,” she shrugged. “My father was dead. My career was a total disappointment. My love life... I'm just going to miss my brother and his kids. Even if I only got out to see them once or twice a year. He was... there were things I could tell him I couldn't tell anyone else.”

Ouch. “I'm sorry,” he offered up lamely. She looked at him with an expression he couldn't quite name - sort of beseeching. Did she want him to be her confidant? Oh, no, there was no way he could fill that role. And Daniel wasn't that open to any of them. “Have you tried Teal'c? He seems like a guy a person could really talk to?”

She smiled wryly and turned back to Daniel's stuff.

In the end, they settled on Holiday Inn. Literally. The currently unused sundeck on the roof had provided the perfect parking space.

Jack landed the cloaked ship on the roof of the motel, which Sam promised would be able to support the weight of the “surprisingly light” little ship. Then he and Sam went into the motel to make arrangements. They’d both cleaned themselves up a bit with some disposable handiwipes Sam had found, then put on clean clothes, so he was reasonably confident they wouldn’t be thrown out by security.

“May I see your I.D.?” asked the clerk behind the counter as she booked their suite. She looked about thirteen - all fresh-faced smiles and freckles.

Sam started twitching beside him, but Jack raised his eyebrows at the clerk in what he hoped was a politely baffled expression. “We’re paying cash in advance.”

She looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, but the computer won’t let me book the room without filling in a drivers’ license or passport number.”

Jack aimed for a mildly distressed look and leaned his elbows on the counter, bringing him a bit closer to her height level, and to her. “Well, I don’t have a passport,” he said, glancing at her nametag, “and the fact is, Lynn, I got my wallet stolen last week, and I still haven’t gotten my replacement license yet. Nor any of my credit cards. That’s why we’re paying in cash.” He lowered his voice again, conspiratorially. “You can’t imagine what a pain in the ass it’s been.”

Lynn smiled again, a little wink-nudge of secrets shared, and looked back at the computer. “Oh. Well, maybe I can just make something up.”

“I would really appreciate it,” Jack said with what he hoped came off as deeply sincere gratitude. Her smile widened in response, and she blushed as she finished up booking their suite. A minute later, they had their keys and were on the way to get Daniel and Teal'c.

“That’s not going to work every time,” he commented softly, staring at a brochure as they walked. “We’ll see if the real ‘complimentary continental breakfast’ looks half this good.”

Sam huffed in disgust and shook her head. “I’m not sure I wanted to see that.”

Jack frowned at the brochure again. The donuts looked a little greasy, but-

“Not that,” she hissed, glaring at him. “You! You just shamlessly manipulated that girl.”

Jack blinked at her, trying to figure out her point. “Yeah? And? How exactly did you think all this sneaking around was going to work?”

“Oh, please!” she snapped. “I thought you were going to have sex with her on the counter!”

“Whoa!” Jack half-shouted, taken aback. He ignored the curious passersby and stopped and turned to glare at Sam. “No need to get crass about it. I played her. She played me back. No harm, no foul.”

“She did not play you back!”

“Yes, she did!”

“You made her put her job on the line!”

“She wanted to do it.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Why would she want to risk her job?”

Jack suddenly had a feeling he knew where this was coming from, and where it was going. “Because it’s fun?” he suggested. “It’s not half as insane as the kind of risks we’ve been taking lately, which you consider delightful entertainment.”

”What we were doing was important!” she hissed, and started walking again. “Breaking the rules to give some charmer a room hardly compares.”

Jack admirably managed not to preen over her use of the word “charmer” in describing him. “Maybe her job isn’t as important to her as yours was to you. You’ve never even borrowed a paper clip from work, have you?”

She ignored that one. “You used flirtation to get her to do what you wanted.”

Yep, he was right about where this was going. He took a breath. “That’s what people do, Sam. It’s more fun than talking like computers. It doesn’t have to mean anything. In fact, it’s usually best when it doesn’t.”

They got to the door, and both of them grabbed the handle and pulled at the same time, which resulted in Sam exiting smoothly while the door hit Jack’s foot and sent a shudder up his leg. On the other side of the door, she gave him a hurt look. “And the other day, back on the puddle jumper? When you were flirting with me?”

He automatically scoped out the walkway and the parking lot below before answering. “That was as far as I planned on taking it.”

The hurt look turned shuttered. “Yeah. Well, it’s not like I thought you were really interested in me.”

Jack thought a moment, then said in an upbeat tone, “I’d be interested in your body.” He gave her a will that do? shrug.

She glared at him when she mounted the stairs to the roof, but he saw a glimmer of humor in the look. “So, if you weren’t interested in taking it any further, why did you try to turn me off to Daniel?”

He started up the stairs behind her. “Oh, that’s a guy thing. Just because we’re not going for it doesn’t mean we want to watch some other guy get it right under our nose. Ez. Noses.”

She scoffed. “And men say women are ’complicated’.”

“We’re not complicated,” Jack said in a defensive tone. “We’re juvenile.”

Sam stopped on the roof. “I stand corrected. Wanna open her up?”

Jack blinked at her, then realized she was talking about the cloaked ship. He used his funky Ancient brain powers to open up the ship’s hatch, and it looked just like that Star Trek movie where the lit doorway to nothing opened up in mid-air over a park. Great: he was living in a sci-fi movie.

They stepped inside. Daniel and Teal'c had come toward the back of the ship to meet them. Daniel was just about to speak when Sam spun around toward Jack and asked curiously, “So then why’d you kiss me back?”

Teal'c blinked in a distinctly non-plussed sort of way. Daniel slid his eyes over toward Teal'c furtively, frowning slightly.

Jack shrugged. “Hey, I’m easy. If you’d bought me dinner, I’d have given you a lap dance and a strip tease.”

Daniel muttered, “I’m going up front now.”

Sam took off the denim jacket she'd ripped off from her other self's house and dropped it on the bench. “Hey, Daniel, good news. From now on, any sign of trouble, and Jack will sleep with one of the local girls to get us out of it.”

“Oh, good,” Daniel deadpanned as he kept right on walking toward the front. “Does that mean you guys got the room, because there’s really no other part of this conversation I want to-”

“We got the room,” Jack cut in.

Daniel turned around and started back toward them. “In that case, let’s go.” He reached for his ratty bag of crap he’d been carrying since they left Egypt the first time, and Sam watched his ass when he bent over.

Suddenly Jack realized something, and smiled at Sam. “I know why you kissed me, you know,” he said smugly, like he’d thought of if days ago. “It was supposed to make Daniel jealous.”

“Right,” Daniel sighed, dropping his bag, turning around and starting back toward the front.

Sam’s mouth dropped open. “How was that supposed to work, Sherlock? He never would’ve even found out if I hadn’t just brought it up!”

“Which you just did, in front of him,” Jack pointed out.

“I told you days ago, I’m not interested in any of you!” she retorted. “No offense, Teal'c.”

“None taken, Samantha.”

“Oh, right,” Jack mocked. “First you tell me you’re into Daniel, then you say that was a lie. Then you hit on him and find out he’s not into you, and then you say you’re out of the game.”

“Hey, Teal'c,” Daniel called out from the front. “Wanna finish your gin lesson?”

“I find this exchange most intriguing,” Teal'c replied, taking a seat where he could watch Jack and Sam clearly.

“I was a little confused at first,” she admitted. “But that’s all behind us now.”

“You were checking out his ass!”

“Well, who wouldn’t?” she snapped. “In fact, so were you.”

Jack gaped at her. “That is so not true!”

“It so is!” she crowed. “You know, I’m thinking when you were trying to tell me he was gay, that was just wishful thinking on your part!”

Daniel strode quickly back from the cockpit and started rifling through his bag again.

“Right,” Jack replied with dripping sarcasm. “You caught me. Daniel... darling... I must confess I find you devastatingly... armed. Whoa. Easy.” He raised his hands slowly, and Sam followed his lead.

Daniel kept the zat trained on them as he said in a very pleasant tone, “Here’s an option. We take our stuff and go into the motel room. We turn on the TV, maybe order some food. Take the night off and relax. And then I might even get to take my first shower in five years instead of standing around listening to the two of you!”

Jack tried not to make too big a production of wiping Daniel’s spittle off the front of his shirt.

Teal'c spoke up. “Daniel, if they do not comply, I will assist you in rendering them unconscious and restraining them.”

“That's okay,” Sam managed nervously, eyes fixed on the zat. “We could just shut up. Let’s go.”

The Human Dictionary was still cheerfully explaining to Teal'c all the various possible uses of the phrase “take off” - as in take the night off, the plane takes off, a take-off on a concept, and take off clothes - when Jack unlocked the motel room and they stepped inside, one by one. At that point, Daniel stopped in mid-lecture. The room was surprisingly bright and cheerful looking. Clean, too, by all appearances. A little sparkly bathroom right by the entrance foyer, two big California King beds, and a mini-fridge and dinette set beside the doors to the balcony on the far end.

“Mm,” Daniel let out a strangled little whimper, and Jack turned to see a blur moving past him swiftly to the far side of the room. “Oh, god,” Daniel murmured tremulously, staring at one of the beds. “Hard as I’m sure you’ll be, I have so missed you.”

Jack glanced at Sam with a smirk, but she was making busy with her bags. Gear in hand, Jack headed over toward the other side the bed Daniel was giving rapturous smiles to.

“I can’t touch it until I’ve showered,” he said in a dreamy voice. “But this one’s mine, okay?”

“Sure,” Jack shrugged. “I’ll take this side.” He tossed his gear on the bed.

“No!” Daniel cried out, startling him. His expression had switched from blissful to bullheaded in one second flat. “I meant the bed, Jack. The whole bed. I haven’t slept on a mattress in five years. Five. And this could be my last chance again for a very long time.”

Jack crossed his arms. “Daniel, what exactly do you think the sleeping arrangements are going to be here? There are four people and two beds.”

“Teal'c doesn’t sleep,” he grumbled.

Honestly, Jack couldn't recall Charlie ever having been this much of a little shit. “Well, I’m not sharing a bed with Sam!” he snapped.

“No, he’s not,” Sam chipped in.

“Oh, so she gets a bed all to herself just because she’s the girl?” Daniel hissed.

“I don’t think this is exactly the situation the ERA was designed for, Daniel, do you?” Jack asked with what he felt was inestimable calm given the attitude he was getting here.

Daniel glared at Jack and took a couple of steps closer. “I’ll drop and roll all over it right now,” he threatened - and at this distance, Jack knew it wasn’t an idle threat from an aromatic perspective. But there was a principle at stake here.

Jack crossed his arms. “Go for it. I’ve slept in worse.”

Daniel’s frown soured in defeat. “Damn it.”

“I will kel’no’reem on the floor,” Teal'c remarked.

Jack looked back to Daniel. “So, Teal'c gets the floor, Sam gets the other bed...” He raised his eyebrows.

“And I get you,” Daniel said, in a tone just shy of spitting nails. “Wonderful.”

“Hey, asshat,” Jack snapped, “I’m not exactly a hard person to share a bed with. I stay on my side, don’t hog the covers, don’t snore-”

“I know,” he sighed.

“So, quit your bitching and go get your shower,” Jack said. “No, wait.” He stepped back to the living room where he’d left his gear and got out a bottle of Lysol and some paper towels. He headed into the bathroom with them and started spraying and wiping down all the non-porous surfaces.

“You know?” he heard Sam say from the main room.

“Oh, shut up,” Daniel sighed.

“But how do you know?” she demanded in a teasing tone.

“Because we were married,” he snapped. “Okay? We had a great big wedding on the gate ramp, and the president was there with all the joint chiefs of staff, and Jack was really excited because he got the whole set of china he put on his bridal registry and I didn’t catch anything serious from the hookers at my bachelor party. Okay? You happy now?”

Jack managed not to snort out loud, despite the fact that while Daniel was framing him as the bride, he was on his knees scrubbing a bathtub like some 1950’s hausfrau. Okay, so maybe that was a little disturbing.

In the other room, Sam did snort out loud. “Yeah, that was a good one.”

“So you said you had some soap?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, right,” she said, and the sounds of much bag-rifling followed.

Jack was bent over the tub, scrubbing the bottom when he heard Daniel speaking from the bathroom doorway. “It was clean already.”

“It looked clean, Daniel,” he replied without turning around. “Looks and is are two different things.”

“Thank you, Martha Stewart, but it couldn’t possibly be any dirtier than I feel.”

“Well, better the germs you know,” Jack said, straightening up. Or at least, intending to straighten up. His sciatic nerve apparently had more of a hunchback position in mind, and tendered its suggestion by way of a paralyzing twinge.

Daniel appeared beside him immediately, pressing gently on his lower back while he pulled Jack slowly upward by his arm.

“Ow,” Jack complained, but it worked. He carefully moved his back a little to get all the kinks out and, as soon as he was sure he could walk without collapsing in a heap, snapped, “I’m fine,” automatically.

Daniel backed away automatically. And, damn it, at that point Jack just had to stare at him, because it was all so perfectly choreographed, like they’d done it a million times before. “Thanks,” Jack said in a milder tone.

One corner of Daniel’s mouth turned up kind of awkwardly. “Now get the hell out so I can take my shower.”

Jack slapped him on the arm on his way out.

Continue to Part 6.