ficpost: "Chocolate Walnut Cookies" Sam/Daniel [backdated]
Title: "Chocolate Walnut Cookies"
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Daniel
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-S3
Summary: Sam can't bake, and Daniel gets a birthday present.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chocolate Walnut Cookies
"You want to what?"
"I said, Sam, let's bake cookies. I found a recipe on the internet for chocolate walnut cookies and they're my favorite."
"Chocolate walnut?" For a minute, Sam looked tempted. Then her wiser self resurfaced. "Daniel, you know I can't bake. That's why last year on your birthday, we ended up convincing Catherine to bake for all of us. And then there was…the brownie incident" -Sam at least had the decency to blush-"from the year before, and the barbeque where…"
"Okay. You can't bake. But I can bake. I think. You just do what I tell you too, and then we can both eat them."
"Tell me again why this is a good idea?"
"Because when we're done, we'll have cookies… and then we can do whatever you want to do." Sam looked unconvinced. "And it's my birthday. You have to be nice to me." Sam considered for a moment. "And I'll make us both coffee."
"Good. You know where it is. I'll… see if I have any ingredients." Daniel measured out several heaping servings of coffee while Sam rather aimlessly searched her kitchen, opening a cupboard now and then, alert and ready, as if she expected to find an enemy lurking therein.
"Always the soldier," muttered Daniel, under his breath.
"If I had flour, where do I think I'd keep it?" asked Sam, either not hearing him or intentionally ignoring the gentle jibe.
"Umm… maybe in a flour canister?"
Sam considered that. "Nope. I don't have one." Daniel sighed and began opening Sam's cupboards for her. He found, to his quiet amusement, that they were all spotless and, for the most part, entirely empty. He discovered a forlorn saltshaker and a plastic bag filled with something that was either flour or cocaine. He sniffed at it uncertainly.
"Oh!" she said. "You found it! The soil sample from P5Z-971. I've been looking for that all week."
"Uh, Sam?"
"Yes?" she said, still shining from the afterglow of a science moment.
"It's flour."
Immediately her face fell. "Oh. Right. It's from Colonel O'Neill. My ‘dry ingredients.'"
"You were baking with Jack?" asked Daniel, his voice dangerously harmless.
She brushed his shoulder lightly. "No, no, not like that. It was two years ago. After the brownie incident… the Colonel said if I ever got the overwhelming urge to be girly again, I should dump that stuff in and not attempt to mix them myself."
Daniel looked at her. "Coffee's ready." As he drank his, he checked the fridge, where half a stick of butter sat forlornly beside a very wilted stalk of celery, a carton of eggs, some cereal, and two unopened bottles of diet soda. He looked a question at Sam, who was taking her turn at looking tolerantly amused.
"I eat out a lot," she answered him.
"I guess so," he said. "Well, you've almost got everything we need to make, oh, half a batch. Not nearly enough, but I suppose we'll make do. Except chocolate. Now I know you have chocolate somewhere. And walnuts."
"Why would I keep walnuts in my kitchen?" she asked.
"There were walnuts in the ‘brownies,' as I recall," he answered.
"That was low. But yes. That was also, as you know, two full years ago. Anything I had then is by now long gone. Unlike some people, I actually empty my refrigerator on occasion."
"Jack doesn't," muttered Daniel.
"I'm not the Colonel, Daniel."
"You know, I noticed that."
They stood in silence for a minute, not looking at each other. Then Sam sighed and said, "I've got chocolate in the living room. Imported. Will hazelnut truffles be okay?"
Daniel thought about that for a minute. "Well, if you don't have baking chocolate, or walnuts, I guess hazelnut truffles will have to do."
"Tell me again why I'm sacrificing my best imported chocolate for this insane project?"
"Because it's my birthday," said Daniel, pouting. "And because you love me." Once he turned on the pout, Sam knew she was a goner. She trotted off to the living room like the obedient soldier she was. Daniel poured himself another cup of coffee and lined up O'Neill's dry ingredients, the half-stick of butter, and an egg on the counter like his foster mother had when she was baking. She usually made things with a lot more components but then, she was a much more competent housewife than Sam would ever be.
"Here. I found them. Imported Belgian chocolates. And some Hershey's kisses, in case these aren't enough. Daniel, if you weren't my best friend, I would not be sacrificing all my best chocolate for you."
"I know." He paused. "Do you have any vanilla?"
"I've got… vanilla liqueur over in the bar. And I think there's some vanilla-flavored espresso in the coffee cabinet, the stuff you gave me last Christmas."
"Let's add both. I think we'll need the liqueur, and there's no sugar in the house, so we'll have to count on the other stuff being sweet enough."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Daniel wasn't, but he wasn't going to tell Sam that. "It'll be fine. Trust me." She looked askance, but went to the living room to find the liqueur. When she returned, they both gazed at the assembled ingredients. Sam had the vague feeling that something was very wrong; Daniel knew there was. "We need more coffee," he said, and Sam poured them each another mug. "And a mixing bowl."
"A what?"
"A mixing bowl-large, round thing? You use it to mix ingredients in?"
"Never heard of it," she said, and Daniel wasn't sure whether to laugh or slap her. Then he saw her grin. "Kidding! I have one somewhere, I swear." She found a kitchen chair, stood on it, and, teetering, reached into the very highest cupboard where, true to her word, she had stowed a sturdy blue mixing bowl. "My mother's," she said, stepping down carefully.
Daniel was silent for a minute, then took the bowl from her, put it on the counter, and grabbed her hands. "Are you okay? You do know that…"
"I know, Daniel." She didn't let go of him, though. "We should really start mixing stuff. It's late."
Daniel glanced at the clock. "It's only 12:30. We're usually up much later."
"We're usually doing something important."
"Are you implying that cookies aren't important?"
Sam had to admit that Daniel had a point. He told her to melt the chocolate while he mixed the rest of the wet ingredients-the egg, the butter, the coffee, and the liqueur. She didn't have a whisk, so he was using a dinner spoon. Sam was using a frying pan to melt her chocolate, and muttering about the cost and the rarity of said chocolate the whole time. The stove sizzled, and Sam jumped.
"Uh, Daniel?" He looked up. "I don't think it's happy with me."
"Oh, damn! You've turned it up way too high. You'll singe it. And trust me, singed chocolate is not a happy thing."
"I once singed my hair. I was trying to iron it straight for a dance. Dad's idea. I think he was secretly hoping I'd have to get it cut so it would be military length…"
"I like it like this, you know," said Daniel, fluffing it.
"You know, I think I noticed that," she said.
"Here. You mix. I'll see if I can salvage the chocolate. He handed Sam the spoon and she handed him the fork she'd been using to attempt to unstick the burned chocolate from the bottom of the pan. Daniel sighed and turned down the heat. A few minutes later, as he looked up from the pan, he noticed that an increasingly frustrated Sam was covered in cookie dough.
"Daniel, baking just doesn't agree with me. I can mix chemical solutions. I can combine isotopes. I can calculate interstellar distances. But I can't mix cookies for shit."
"You know, I think I noticed that," he said. "It's okay. I'm sure there's still plenty left in the bowl. And the stuff outside the bowl, well, I think we can take care of that." He was careful to remove the chocolate from the heat before he removed the batter from Sam with a gentle finger along her cheek. He popped it in his mouth and tasted it thoughtfully. "Huh. Well, it's different. It'll be better when we put the chocolate in.
Sam noted that Daniel had a speck of chocolate on his nose, and she reached out a finger to dab at it. "Now this is good," she said, when she'd eaten it. "We should've skipped the cookies and just binged on chocolate and coffee. Speaking of which, would you like another cup?"
"Please. I'm exhausted."
"Maybe you should sleep," said Sam gently.
"So should you," he responded.
"Point taken. Can we add the chocolate yet?"
"Yeah," he said, and he brought it over to the counter where they'd been working. He added the chocolate and the dry ingredients, both, to Sam's mother's mixing bowl. "I think I'll stir, if you don't mind." Sam grimaced. "You can find a cookie sheet and-damn. We should have preset the oven. Can you do that?"
"Amazingly, yes. You… mix."
When he'd finished, he slumped onto the floor, leaning against Sam's clean but empty cabinets. In a minute, she joined on the floor, mug of coffee firmly in hand. She leaned her head against his shoulder and they sat like that, not talking, until the ping of the oven told them that it was hot enough.
Daniel scooped dough onto the cookie sheet, and Sam opened the oven to let him slide the sheet inside. He set a timer for ten minutes, and Sam said, "Great! Now, we can clean up."
Daniel looked at the drops of batter on the countertop, the chocolate stuck to a frying pan, the flour that had spilled on the floor, and the eggshell that was congealing to the cutting board he'd rested it on. "You clean. I'll make more coffee. We're almost out."
The smoke told them the cookies were done a full minute before the timer did. Waving away smoke, Sam raced to the oven with a cloth towel-Daniel's mention of "potholders" only got a blank stare-as if she were used to things like this. Wincing from the heat, she removed the blackened cookies. They stared at them forlornly. Perhaps they'd been edible a minute before, but now they were quite clearly not. "I told you I can't bake."
"I know."
"A waste of perfectly good chocolate."
"I know."
"Maybe it's not our fault. Maybe the stuff the Colonel gave me was bad."
"That would be like Jack, wouldn't it?"
"It's okay, Daniel."
Daniel sighed. "I know. I'm sorry; I should never have suggested this."
"No, no… it's okay. It was a good idea. It would have worked if I hadn't been such a crap housewife."
"Sam, I don't want you to be a housewife. You're a soldier, not a cook. It wasn't a good idea, and I'm sorry."
"Don't be. We had fun, didn't we?"
Daniel looked at the now spotless kitchen, at the ruined cookies, and at the dollop of chocolate that still hung from Sam's chin and smiled slightly. He moved across the kitchen, took her face in his hands, and licked the chocolate off. Sam grinned. "I think we need more coffee," she said. "And then you can open your birthday present."
Fifteen minutes later, Daniel was sitting on Sam's couch again, untying the ribbon on Sam's small, red and white package. When he'd torn the paper off, he sat stunned for a moment. Then he smiled. Then he laughed. "You bought me chocolate walnut cookies."
Sam grinned and kissed him. "Yeah. I know that they're your favorite."
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Daniel
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-S3
Summary: Sam can't bake, and Daniel gets a birthday present.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chocolate Walnut Cookies
"You want to what?"
"I said, Sam, let's bake cookies. I found a recipe on the internet for chocolate walnut cookies and they're my favorite."
"Chocolate walnut?" For a minute, Sam looked tempted. Then her wiser self resurfaced. "Daniel, you know I can't bake. That's why last year on your birthday, we ended up convincing Catherine to bake for all of us. And then there was…the brownie incident" -Sam at least had the decency to blush-"from the year before, and the barbeque where…"
"Okay. You can't bake. But I can bake. I think. You just do what I tell you too, and then we can both eat them."
"Tell me again why this is a good idea?"
"Because when we're done, we'll have cookies… and then we can do whatever you want to do." Sam looked unconvinced. "And it's my birthday. You have to be nice to me." Sam considered for a moment. "And I'll make us both coffee."
"Good. You know where it is. I'll… see if I have any ingredients." Daniel measured out several heaping servings of coffee while Sam rather aimlessly searched her kitchen, opening a cupboard now and then, alert and ready, as if she expected to find an enemy lurking therein.
"Always the soldier," muttered Daniel, under his breath.
"If I had flour, where do I think I'd keep it?" asked Sam, either not hearing him or intentionally ignoring the gentle jibe.
"Umm… maybe in a flour canister?"
Sam considered that. "Nope. I don't have one." Daniel sighed and began opening Sam's cupboards for her. He found, to his quiet amusement, that they were all spotless and, for the most part, entirely empty. He discovered a forlorn saltshaker and a plastic bag filled with something that was either flour or cocaine. He sniffed at it uncertainly.
"Oh!" she said. "You found it! The soil sample from P5Z-971. I've been looking for that all week."
"Uh, Sam?"
"Yes?" she said, still shining from the afterglow of a science moment.
"It's flour."
Immediately her face fell. "Oh. Right. It's from Colonel O'Neill. My ‘dry ingredients.'"
"You were baking with Jack?" asked Daniel, his voice dangerously harmless.
She brushed his shoulder lightly. "No, no, not like that. It was two years ago. After the brownie incident… the Colonel said if I ever got the overwhelming urge to be girly again, I should dump that stuff in and not attempt to mix them myself."
Daniel looked at her. "Coffee's ready." As he drank his, he checked the fridge, where half a stick of butter sat forlornly beside a very wilted stalk of celery, a carton of eggs, some cereal, and two unopened bottles of diet soda. He looked a question at Sam, who was taking her turn at looking tolerantly amused.
"I eat out a lot," she answered him.
"I guess so," he said. "Well, you've almost got everything we need to make, oh, half a batch. Not nearly enough, but I suppose we'll make do. Except chocolate. Now I know you have chocolate somewhere. And walnuts."
"Why would I keep walnuts in my kitchen?" she asked.
"There were walnuts in the ‘brownies,' as I recall," he answered.
"That was low. But yes. That was also, as you know, two full years ago. Anything I had then is by now long gone. Unlike some people, I actually empty my refrigerator on occasion."
"Jack doesn't," muttered Daniel.
"I'm not the Colonel, Daniel."
"You know, I noticed that."
They stood in silence for a minute, not looking at each other. Then Sam sighed and said, "I've got chocolate in the living room. Imported. Will hazelnut truffles be okay?"
Daniel thought about that for a minute. "Well, if you don't have baking chocolate, or walnuts, I guess hazelnut truffles will have to do."
"Tell me again why I'm sacrificing my best imported chocolate for this insane project?"
"Because it's my birthday," said Daniel, pouting. "And because you love me." Once he turned on the pout, Sam knew she was a goner. She trotted off to the living room like the obedient soldier she was. Daniel poured himself another cup of coffee and lined up O'Neill's dry ingredients, the half-stick of butter, and an egg on the counter like his foster mother had when she was baking. She usually made things with a lot more components but then, she was a much more competent housewife than Sam would ever be.
"Here. I found them. Imported Belgian chocolates. And some Hershey's kisses, in case these aren't enough. Daniel, if you weren't my best friend, I would not be sacrificing all my best chocolate for you."
"I know." He paused. "Do you have any vanilla?"
"I've got… vanilla liqueur over in the bar. And I think there's some vanilla-flavored espresso in the coffee cabinet, the stuff you gave me last Christmas."
"Let's add both. I think we'll need the liqueur, and there's no sugar in the house, so we'll have to count on the other stuff being sweet enough."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Daniel wasn't, but he wasn't going to tell Sam that. "It'll be fine. Trust me." She looked askance, but went to the living room to find the liqueur. When she returned, they both gazed at the assembled ingredients. Sam had the vague feeling that something was very wrong; Daniel knew there was. "We need more coffee," he said, and Sam poured them each another mug. "And a mixing bowl."
"A what?"
"A mixing bowl-large, round thing? You use it to mix ingredients in?"
"Never heard of it," she said, and Daniel wasn't sure whether to laugh or slap her. Then he saw her grin. "Kidding! I have one somewhere, I swear." She found a kitchen chair, stood on it, and, teetering, reached into the very highest cupboard where, true to her word, she had stowed a sturdy blue mixing bowl. "My mother's," she said, stepping down carefully.
Daniel was silent for a minute, then took the bowl from her, put it on the counter, and grabbed her hands. "Are you okay? You do know that…"
"I know, Daniel." She didn't let go of him, though. "We should really start mixing stuff. It's late."
Daniel glanced at the clock. "It's only 12:30. We're usually up much later."
"We're usually doing something important."
"Are you implying that cookies aren't important?"
Sam had to admit that Daniel had a point. He told her to melt the chocolate while he mixed the rest of the wet ingredients-the egg, the butter, the coffee, and the liqueur. She didn't have a whisk, so he was using a dinner spoon. Sam was using a frying pan to melt her chocolate, and muttering about the cost and the rarity of said chocolate the whole time. The stove sizzled, and Sam jumped.
"Uh, Daniel?" He looked up. "I don't think it's happy with me."
"Oh, damn! You've turned it up way too high. You'll singe it. And trust me, singed chocolate is not a happy thing."
"I once singed my hair. I was trying to iron it straight for a dance. Dad's idea. I think he was secretly hoping I'd have to get it cut so it would be military length…"
"I like it like this, you know," said Daniel, fluffing it.
"You know, I think I noticed that," she said.
"Here. You mix. I'll see if I can salvage the chocolate. He handed Sam the spoon and she handed him the fork she'd been using to attempt to unstick the burned chocolate from the bottom of the pan. Daniel sighed and turned down the heat. A few minutes later, as he looked up from the pan, he noticed that an increasingly frustrated Sam was covered in cookie dough.
"Daniel, baking just doesn't agree with me. I can mix chemical solutions. I can combine isotopes. I can calculate interstellar distances. But I can't mix cookies for shit."
"You know, I think I noticed that," he said. "It's okay. I'm sure there's still plenty left in the bowl. And the stuff outside the bowl, well, I think we can take care of that." He was careful to remove the chocolate from the heat before he removed the batter from Sam with a gentle finger along her cheek. He popped it in his mouth and tasted it thoughtfully. "Huh. Well, it's different. It'll be better when we put the chocolate in.
Sam noted that Daniel had a speck of chocolate on his nose, and she reached out a finger to dab at it. "Now this is good," she said, when she'd eaten it. "We should've skipped the cookies and just binged on chocolate and coffee. Speaking of which, would you like another cup?"
"Please. I'm exhausted."
"Maybe you should sleep," said Sam gently.
"So should you," he responded.
"Point taken. Can we add the chocolate yet?"
"Yeah," he said, and he brought it over to the counter where they'd been working. He added the chocolate and the dry ingredients, both, to Sam's mother's mixing bowl. "I think I'll stir, if you don't mind." Sam grimaced. "You can find a cookie sheet and-damn. We should have preset the oven. Can you do that?"
"Amazingly, yes. You… mix."
When he'd finished, he slumped onto the floor, leaning against Sam's clean but empty cabinets. In a minute, she joined on the floor, mug of coffee firmly in hand. She leaned her head against his shoulder and they sat like that, not talking, until the ping of the oven told them that it was hot enough.
Daniel scooped dough onto the cookie sheet, and Sam opened the oven to let him slide the sheet inside. He set a timer for ten minutes, and Sam said, "Great! Now, we can clean up."
Daniel looked at the drops of batter on the countertop, the chocolate stuck to a frying pan, the flour that had spilled on the floor, and the eggshell that was congealing to the cutting board he'd rested it on. "You clean. I'll make more coffee. We're almost out."
The smoke told them the cookies were done a full minute before the timer did. Waving away smoke, Sam raced to the oven with a cloth towel-Daniel's mention of "potholders" only got a blank stare-as if she were used to things like this. Wincing from the heat, she removed the blackened cookies. They stared at them forlornly. Perhaps they'd been edible a minute before, but now they were quite clearly not. "I told you I can't bake."
"I know."
"A waste of perfectly good chocolate."
"I know."
"Maybe it's not our fault. Maybe the stuff the Colonel gave me was bad."
"That would be like Jack, wouldn't it?"
"It's okay, Daniel."
Daniel sighed. "I know. I'm sorry; I should never have suggested this."
"No, no… it's okay. It was a good idea. It would have worked if I hadn't been such a crap housewife."
"Sam, I don't want you to be a housewife. You're a soldier, not a cook. It wasn't a good idea, and I'm sorry."
"Don't be. We had fun, didn't we?"
Daniel looked at the now spotless kitchen, at the ruined cookies, and at the dollop of chocolate that still hung from Sam's chin and smiled slightly. He moved across the kitchen, took her face in his hands, and licked the chocolate off. Sam grinned. "I think we need more coffee," she said. "And then you can open your birthday present."
Fifteen minutes later, Daniel was sitting on Sam's couch again, untying the ribbon on Sam's small, red and white package. When he'd torn the paper off, he sat stunned for a moment. Then he smiled. Then he laughed. "You bought me chocolate walnut cookies."
Sam grinned and kissed him. "Yeah. I know that they're your favorite."