A Stitch in Time (4/55)
Chapter 4
"I've got an idea."
Daniel groaned and dropped his pen, burying his face in his hands. It was the only alternative to slamming his head against the top of the table. "If it involves ten-pound line and a hook, I'm not interested."
"Ha! No. I have a buddy over in St. Paul who scored some extra tickets to A Prairie Home Companion tonight. Whaddya say?"
"Wow, gee... an entire evening of the blues and gospel music... let me think..."
Jack shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Don't forget the News from Lake Wobegon."
Running away was looking terribly tempting. "Have we ever checked to see if Minnesotans were originally from Earth?"
The colonel rolled his eyes. "Why, 'cause Minnesota Nice just seems too foreign to ya? Well, that's too bad, kiddo, 'cause we can trace our roots back to Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Heck, that's probably why the Asgard like me so well."
"I thought 'O'Neill' was Irish."
"So I had Irish grandparents, so what?"
He sighed. "You've been planning this, haven't you? You didn't just 'happen' to be offered extra tickets, it was part of your reason for dragging me up here, wasn't it?"
"Hey, you study other cultures all the time, Danny, 'bout time you learned more about mine."
"If you can call it 'culture'."
"You have no call to get snippy with me... I'm just tryin-a do my job here."
This time, Daniel really did thump his forehead against the tabletop. "If you quote any more lines from Fargo, I will shove you in a wood chipper myself. And didn't you tell Teal'c you hated that movie?"
Jack shrugged, unperturbed by the threat and deliberately ignoring the question. "Lutheran hospitality. Long goodbyes. Duck-duck-gray-duck. Ice-fishing-though we can't do that this time of year. Honeycrisps, hotdish, lutefisk, pickled salmon, Pronto Pups, cheese curds-"
He moaned. "Okay, okay, it's a culture. An incredibly weird and backward one, but a culture. Happy?"
"Ecstatic." He made a noise of exasperation. "Aw, c'mon Daniel, it'll be fun! I'll admit that I made a few... arrangements after your 'little' accident-"
Daniel glared. "Jack..."
"-But I have been trying to get you to come fishing with me for years now."
"Really? 'Cause the one and only time you asked me to come, I'd just had my appendix taken out," he sniped.
"Well, as stubborn as you are, I figured I had to try to get ya to agree to come up here when you were doped up on medication and couldn't fight back... kinda how I went over your head to get Hammond to order you along this time." Jack grinned. "Not like it's much of a reach to go over your head now, of course."
The glower promising impending doom that he'd perfected on five years' worth of arrogant snakeheads had apparently decreased in effectiveness at the same time the rest of him had been down-sized. "Just because I'm small now, it doesn't mean I can't put up a fight."
"Oh, I don't doubt that at all, Danny," the colonel replied cheerfully.
"Stop calling me that. Just because I look like a four year-old, doesn't mean I want to be treated like a four year-old."
"Sorry. But I wasn't kidding about the buddy in St. Paul. Since we'll be going with him and his wife and their whole clan of screaming brats, you're going to have to remember-"
Daniel sighed. "That I'm the precocious four year-old son of one of your teammates who went missing-in-action last week. The teammate, that is, not the son... although said precocious four year-old would very much like to go into hiding for a while."
"Funny. 'Fraid you're stuck with me, though... and if you behave, we might stop by a Dunn Brothers." When Daniel's brow crinkled in confusion, he added, "That's Minnesota's answer to Starbucks, by the way."
"You're going to let me have coffee?"
"Well, I don't think Doc would kill either one of us if it was something blended like one of those frappy things."
"Frappé," Daniel corrected automatically. He wasn't about to point out that most frappé-style beverages served commercially in the U.S. were not made with instant coffee but espresso, and therefore had more than twice the caffeine a simple cup of his preferred Arabica would have had.
Once plenty of chocolate was added to the mix...
"Okay, fine," he agreed, "but try not to treat me like a kid, okay?"
"Sure thing, Danny! Er, I mean 'Daniel'."
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