By the time Sam got back out to the porch, with four sweaty-cold beers dangling from her hands, Daniel was the only one still out there. He smiled at her, the endearingly ingenuous smile that only graced his lips when he had a nice buzz going, and took two of the bottles from her hand. He twisted the top off of one of them, and drew a long, deep pull from the bottle as Sam was straddling her chair and asking, "Where did the General and Pete go?"
Daniel made an "mmm," sound around his mouthful of beer and waved the bottle in a skyward direction. Sam watched Daniel's throat as he swallowed, and thought to herself that if the General had been abducted by the Asgard again and taken Pete along with him, he was officially a dead man.
Daniel finally licked his lips and said, "The roof. Jack's showing off his telescope."
Sam said, "Oh." She was very tempted to lean back in her chair and look up toward the rooftop observation platform, but she seriously doubted that she'd be able to see them from where she was. Also, she'd had a couple of beers herself, and would undoubtedly tip her chair right over, which would probably make Daniel laugh at her. She managed to restrain herself, but her eyes still flickered upward a little, uneasily.
"Don't worry," Daniel said. "I'm sure Jack won't shove him off the roof. The body would get in the way when he's mowing the lawn." Daniel made another contented little noise around a mouthful of beer, slid his bottle onto the table, and slumped down in his big adirondack deck chair. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone and he had his shirtsleeves rolled up; underneath the table, one of his feet bumped against her ankle, and he tapped there a couple of times with his bare toes. She wondered if he'd looked like this in college: skinnier maybe, more awkward, but this same brand of rumpled sprawl and easy smile, at least on those nights when he'd let himself be dragged away from his studies, had a few drinks with his peers.
She thought about what she'd been like in college -- single-minded, driven, already wearing a uniform, and hauling around a mountain-sized chip on her shoulder -- and she grimaced, putting those thoughts out of her mind.
Which left her with nothing to think about except the General and Pete, alone on the roof, which was almost too terrifying to contemplate. She looked back to Daniel instead, hoping for blessed distraction. He was squinting at her, and rotating his beer bottle in little increments with the tips of his fingers. His toes tapped against her ankle again, then rested there, cool and solid.
"What were you thinking about?" Daniel asked. He let go of the bottle and wiped his condensation-wet fingers against his jeans.
"College," she said, with a little shrug. "What were *you* thinking about?"
"Latin," he said, with suspicious promptness. She gave him the eye until he capitulated, waved a hand dismissively and amended, "Okay, maybe not Latin. It's possible I might've been thinking about the frescos from P8X-214."
Sam waggled her eyebrows at him in the most lascivious manner possible, and said, "The ones with the giant phallic symbols, huh? Something you want to tell me about, Doctor Jackson?"
He smiled again, wide and loose, and threw back another mouthful of beer. "You know," he said, after a moment, "I think Jack actually likes Pete, believe it or not." He looked so cute and half-soused that Sam excused the rapid change of subject; plus, he'd distracted her by making her think about Pete again, and how Pete's life was presently in mortal danger.
Sam was busy craning her neck, keeping an eye out for bodies falling from the sky; otherwise, she would've given Daniel a funny look. Instead she just said, "I think you've probably had too much to drink. It's making you talk crazy."
He chuckled, and the sound kind of echoed down into his beer bottle and bounced around in there before coming out again. "He's glad to see you happy, Sam," Daniel insisted. "We all are. Well, mostly me. But everybody else, too."
"Huh?" She dropped her chin so fast that it made her head spin a little, and she thought that maybe she should slow down on the beer. With that in mind, she pushed her half-full bottle into Daniel's hands and said, "What do you mean, mostly you?" She gave him the eye until he took a drink from her bottle, and then another from his.
"Mostly me," he repeated. "For awhile there I thought that... you know." He waved one of the bottles at her, then at the sky, and it reminded her of the way he'd attempted to communicate with the very large monkeys -- who'd turned out to be no more intelligent than your average very large monkeys -- on P4C-629. Weird hand gestures and strange body language that hadn't made any more sense to the rest of SG-1 than they'd made to the monkeys. The General still hadn't let him live it down, and that had been eight months ago, back when the General was still a Colonel.
"I really don't know," Sam said, and didn't feel the slightest bit guilty over the fact that she was, maybe, possibly, actively trying to get Daniel drunk.
It was working, anyway. Daniel shifted in his chair, leaned over the table in a conspiratorial fashion and said, "I thought that maybe you'd end up with Jack." His voice was low, confiding. And okay, maybe Sam felt a little bit guilty, just a little, because if the General were there he would've cut Daniel off two beers ago.
Sam leaned in, too, and said, "Honestly? I thought maybe I would, too. Will. I don't know." She huffed out a frustrated breath and leaned back in her chair, wishing she hadn't given away her beer because now she had nothing to do with her hands except stare down at her own fingers and examine the slightly chipped nailpolish there. After a long, silent minute of Daniel watching her and her pretending not to notice, she finally said, "I feel like one day I'll have to choose, and I don't know how."
When she finally looked up, Daniel was leaning back in his chair again, still watching her with those big soft eyes, all sympathy and understanding. He said, "Maybe it isn't your choice to make, Sam."
She opened her mouth to answer, but she could already hear Pete and the General coming around the side of the house again, having descended -- both sounding whole and healthy -- from their trip to the rooftop. Pete was saying, "--handcuffed to this six-foot guy in drag for the past six hours, and finally they had to just cut them off." It wasn't a story Sam had heard before, but the General was actually laughing at it, and both men were grinning when they arrived at the table.
Pete slid into the chair next to Sam's, where he'd been sitting before, and slid a casual hand down her back, beaming and obviously pleased with himself.
The General leaned over Daniel from behind, plucked the half-empty beer bottle from Daniel's hands and murmured, "Geez, Daniel, slow down." He snagged the other bottle, the one Sam had brought out for him, and pushed it over to the end of the table, out of Daniel's reach. "You're trying to get him drunk again," Jack accused, narrowing his eyes in Sam's direction.
Sam beamed a toothy smile that made Daniel smile back, and she said, "Only a little, sir."
Jack snorted into the beer bottle then polished off the drink inside, setting the empty down on the table with the rest of their collection for the night. He put a hand on Daniel's shoulder and squeezed before letting go and sliding into his own seat. "Daniel," he said, "I don't want you hanging around with that Sam Carter anymore. She's a bad influence."
Daniel had his head tipped back and his eyes closed, like he was stargazing but only wanted to see the ones bright enough to shine through his eyelids. He grinned up at the constellations and said, "Aw, come on, dad. Tomorrow she's going to teach me how to make homemade cherry bombs and nuclear reactors."
Pete said, "In that case, I think she's grounded for the weekend." He put his hand over hers on the table and said, "Sammy, you ready to get going?"
She smiled at him, too, because smiling was fun and she'd maybe had a little too much beer herself. "Yeah, I guess it's getting late. Anyway, I don't want to be around when Daniel starts reciting bawdy limericks in Etruscan." She stood and picked up the jacket that was slung over the back of her chair, offering no protest when Pete took it from her hands and held it as she slid it on. "I'll see you guys Monday," she said.
The General smiled at her with a warm expression that looked something like approval, and Daniel opened his eyes and gave them a little wave. Pete's hand curved warm around her elbow as they walked down the steps and across the lawn to Pete's car.
When Sam paused at the passenger-side door and looked back, Jack and Daniel were still on the porch, both leaning over the table, heads together in conspiracy, muttering about something. Daniel's fingers were tapping against the table and Jack covered the over-active digits with his own palm, to still them.
Jack's face softened. Daniel smiled and turned his hand over.
Sam thought, oh. Then she climbed into the car and went home with Pete.
