Four People Talking- Blair and Jim (The Sentinel) & Jack and Daniel (Stargate SG-1)(gen, 1852 words)
Yep, it's been a while... but a couple of the Two People Talking challenges have proven longer and more... well, just more. Like this one, where killedmedead asked for "Jim/Blair vs. Jack/Daniel .. if this is okay? :) If not.. then: Blair and Jack *g"
(And I never actually said the Two People had to be from different fandoms, did I?) So this is Blair and Jim, then Jack and Daniel, then Blair and Jack... in one of the less than sterlingly heroic missions :) For the purposes of the following rather-longer-than-expected double (triple?) dialogue, Jim and Blair are part of the SGC, like that is so unusual in fanfic...)
Gatecrashing
"Jiiiiimmmm...."
"This has got to be a bad dream - Chief, what is this stuff?"
"Healthy, and that's all you need to know."
The Sentinel glowered down at his supposedly inoffensive plate of utterly organic green something, offence oozing from every pore. Blair sighed. "You can't glare it into submission like you did perps, so just... pretend to eat it, okay? And keep your voice down. It's hard enough to pass you off as one of the family who came here willingly -"
"That's because I d-"
"Didn't, I know. Try and look inconspicuous and happy and... spiritual, okay?"
"I'm channeling Naomi as hard as I can, Chief. It's not working."
Blair jabbed a well-placed elbow, sending a blindingly innocent beam at the other guests who - to be fair - were far too into the spirit of the event to have been listening.
Jim was still glaring at his food. "Remind me again why we were roped into this?"
"Because the General and Colonel Jack give the orders." Blair murmured. "You're here to check if there are alien snakes at the ceremony. Daniel's here to work out why the invitations had goa'uld symbols on them. And I'm here because I'm the only person in the whole damn base who can even vaguely look like they were actually invited, and could bring 'friends', to a New Age nuptial melding of souls." He bit into his own unidentifiable fare and went on just as happily, if more thickly. "And Jack and the rest are here because he doesn't trust Daniel and me on our own planet, even with you," he made vague quote signs with his fingers, "to 'look after' us."
All of this being inarguable, Jim just glowered. And sneezed.
"Pity about the incense," his guide added meditatively. "I think my mom learned about myrrh from the bride's mother in the first place... hey, man, just a thought, but since I didn't bring my notebooks, can you try and keep a mental list of everything that annoys you here? We can do the real testing when we get back to the base."
"...Testing?"
Blair just gave another blinding smile and waved a fork at his Sentinel. "That's what they pay me for, remember? This is pretty good, you know, Jim."
"Only if you have Sandburg taste buds," Jim sighed. "I'm hungry."
"I did warn you to eat before we came."
"I did."
"Yeah yeah, I know. Two Wonderwoppa burgers, cheese fries, onion rings and a beer. You can't possibly still be hungry, can - oh, yeah. It's you." Blair chortled under his breath. "Forget I said that."
Ellison turned a less than amused gaze on him. "Did you also warn SG-1 to eat?"
"Nope," Blair said placidly.
"I can see O'Neill from here, and he's still threat-assessing the hell out of his damn salad. He's gonna kill you, Chief."
"Yeah, maybe."
"You pissed at him again?"
"All the time, man, all the time. You know that. That's how we relate."
Jim was all too aware of the deep and meaningful relationship - or battle royale, more like - between the base's 2-I-C and the base's senior anthropologist, and wasn't about to get involved. He stretched out his hearing... and grinned.
"Don't sweat it, Chief. O'Neill isn't happy with you, but he has more than enough on his plate with the rabbitfood... and Jackson."
"What? Daniel will eat anything, you know that."
"Yeah, he's even worse than you." The memory of watching the pair of them with alien eye-of-bloodlice a la carte was enough to dampen even a Sentinel's appetite. "No, Jackson's problem isn't with the food..." He listened for a minute or two, then cracked his first real smile all day. "O'Neill might kill him before he gets to you."
"Jaaaacccck..."
O'Neill woke from a happy daydream of force-feeding Jim's geek with... whatever the brown crap in front of him was, plastered his smile back on, and tried to pay attention to his own geek's irritated hiss.
"Daniel?" He winced again at the sight of Daniel's outfit. Blair had gleefully (not to say maliciously) dressed them all, even if both Jack and Jim had baulked at 'authentic' antediluvian robes and ended up in denim and fake leather ("fake is bad, fake is unnatural, but you can't wear real dead skin, guys, not with that many vegans in the melding party. And be grateful, the groom's sister had an all-nude reception"). Doctor Jackson looked somewhat less at ease as a New (or rather Unbelievably Old) Age mystic than he had as a hippie in 1969, and the flowing patchwork coat covered in what Blair insisted were primeval symbolism really was hard on the eyes.
And Doctor Jackson was getting into the whole primeval esoteric spiritual thing even less than Jack was. Intellectual offence was radiating from him in every direction, so fiercely that the happy shiny believers around them would get karmic heatstroke. "Jack!"
"Daniel..."
His geek glared, then gave in. "How much longer?"
"Till Jim gives the all clear." He lowered his voice to a bare mutter. "Which won't be long, will it, Ellison?"
"You think he's -?"
"Oh yeah, he's listening." Jack might not have Sentinel sight, but he could imagine the agreement in the eyes of the only person here who looked and felt quite as out of place as he did.
"You do realise," Daniel was still fulminating, so intent on cerebral outrage that he barely noticed the culinary outrage he was eating, "that this whole... so-called 'prehistoric' ceremony and vows are an absolute travesty of genuine Sumerian and earlier religious rites, which have nothing to do with the whole imaginary and scarcely pseudohistorical continent of Mu in any case, and that anyone who argues otherwise -"
"I know."
"- Is a fool. And as for the faux-historical trappings of this so-called retreat, it's clear that they're using the whole thing as an pretext for sloppy abuse of genuine archeological -"
"Daniel, I know. I know. You and Blair have both said so, at mindboggling length. But it's your fault we're here, after all. You were the one who found goa'uld inscriptions on his mom's invitation to the shindig."
"Shindig???" Luckily, Daniel's voice cracked before it got too loud.
"Keep it down, will ya? Were they or weren't they snake writing?"
"Yes, they were, but -"
"And you were the one who said the bride -"
"The bride claims to be a reincarnated princess of ancient Mu, yes. What that actually means is anyone's guess, unless the Ancients actually were that Ancient - but those so-called immemorial ceremonial chants of primal ages she inflicted on us -" For the first time ever, words failed the linguist.
"It wasn't that bad," Jack tried to object.
"Yes it was."
"No it wasn't."
"Was."
"Wasn't... okay, it was."
"Worse, actually."
"And the groom's mother thinks she's reincarnated from ancient aliens." Jack shrugged. "Who - from what she told Blair Sandburg - look more like rejects from Wormhole X-Treme than the Asgaard. Not our problem, except that most of the snakes we meet do look like rejects from Wormhole X, so..."
"Jack, this isn't funny."
"Yeah I know, you're in actual pain. So am I, so is Jim. So both of you do what you gotta to clear up the whole snaky mystery bit, and we can all go home. Or to Wonderburger, Ellison," he muttered at the Sentinel half way across the garden. "Whichever. Whatever Sandburg says, I outrank him."
"You're promising Jim junk food...? That could be seen as deliberately aggravating, at least to his guide."
"Yeah." O'Neill smiled thinly. "Funny about that."
"Well?"
"Nada. Not a sniff of snake, man." Blair looked up at the Colonel. "But plenty of other stinks. And one of them turned out to be another odd reaction from Jim - I think it was the incense. Or maybe the carob in the dessert. Or the hemp hearts. Something made him -"
"Hey, did I ask for the gory details? Save them for the medical. So he's not happy."
"Totally not."
"But you're not doing your usual -" Jack twisted his lips mockingly, "- Mini-Mother-Hen-from-Hell act, so he can't be too badly off."
Blair snorted. "He's over it, pretty much. And hey, my mother hen bit can whup yours any mission, Colonel Mom."
Jack narrowed his eyes, thought about staring his smallest but (along with Daniel) most stubborn subordinate down once and for all... then shrugged it off as another lost cause. "The Pentagon doesn't pay him - or you - or any of us - to be happy, Blair. You get anywhere with the family? Daniel swears that the altar-thing was covered in goa'uld, but translated it as something about believers being craunched and swallowed by pink slathered trash with dirty breath and stinky green mud for slaves, and struck with boilings all over." He paused. "Or boiling a lover."
"...Umm... okay."
"Yeah, great help in the war against the snakes. So, the family -"
"Oh yeah, yeah.... well, no. Moonbeam, that's the bride, she just thought the symbols were pretty, can't remember where she saw them. Lance -"
"Moonbeam and Lance," Jack ran a hand through his hair. "Goddess and crappy alien. God help the universe if they breed."
"They already have, man, three more little reincarnated princesses called Destinii, Eternitii and Infinitii." Blair sniggered at the expression of acute pain crossing his commander's face. "Anyway Lance really wanted Tolkeinesque runes, but went with the flow. I don't think we're gonna ever know, it'll just have to remain one of the Mysteries of the Ancients, man... and yeah," at the look O'Neill gave him, "I know you can't believe I just said that, but c'mon, someone had to."
"Do me a favour, okay? Don't say it in the debrief."
"Nah, I'll let you do the official bad jokes. How did Daniel take it all?"
"Oh... fine. Peachey, even. He fulminated himself into a blinding headache and enough snark to scare off our entire table of ancient souls... and the Marines."
"Four syllables, Colonel? Colour me impressed."
"Colour me about to bust you down to assistant offworld latrine warden, Sandburg."
"Yeah, yeah. I take it the fundamental ancient truths we were being showered with weren't exactly what our military overlords were afraid of?"
"The mission reports for this one are gonna be just so much fun," Jack grumbled.
"So true," Blair nodded, "Colonel Has-to-Read-Them-All."
"Can it. You collect your Sentinel, I'll get my genius, and we're outa here. I'm famished, we all need food and fresh air, and given the total friggin' bust this day has been, the General's paying for something real to eat."
"Hey, cool! I love these military expense accounts, man."
"I know. So does the General." The Colonel smirked, an evil smirk. "And you and Dannyboy, you've both eaten. So you don't get to vote in this vital part of the mission. Tell me, Blair," hooking an arm over the smaller man's shoulder, and seeing Blair's eyes widen with something not unlike horror, "feel up to midnight Wonderburgers all round?"
***