"So, uhm, how angry was Hammond about not getting the trinium from PXY-887?"

     Jack offered up an almost smile, sipped his beer, then shrugged.  "Not so."

     "Not?"  Daniel's eyebrows lifted, and so did the question in his voice.  He leaned in, cupped his beer bottle in his hands, and Jack figured he was trying to cover that it wasn't even half gone.  Either that or warming it to what he considered a drinkable temp.  And some people though Daniel was cultured.

     Spinning the last of the Negra Modelo in his bottle, Jack started thinking about a second maybe.

     "It's the Pentagon who's not going to be happy," Carter said, giving words to what Jack knew but hadn't planned to say.  Then she dug in with chopsticks to finish the last of the dim sum.

     Watching her eat--she went picky on a lot of things, but she could pack in Chinese like no one he'd ever met--Jack nodded.  "Yeah, Hammond's fine with not boneing the Salish."

     "Boneing?" Teal'c asked, head lifting and Jack almost wished he hadn't brought up the phrase because now Teal'c would be waiting to pull it out at the next most inappropriate moment.  Too many years as a First Prime had left some distinct sadistic tendencies, but Jack figured they ought to be happy Teal'c only let them out in verbal form.

     "Yeah, Boneing.  Screwing over.  Sticking it--"

     "Sir, you going to eat the rest of the sweet and sour?"

     "Go for it, Carter."  Jack gestured to the coffee table and the take-out boxes, most of them empty.  Teal'c was still looking things over, picking up a box, glancing inside, setting it away, and Jack had no idea what the guy was looking for.  Maybe the fortune cookies--Teal'c took his dessert seriously.  But Jack didn't much care.

     With his team here at his house--Teal'c perched on the couch next to him, sitting forward on the edge of the cushion, Daniel and Carter on the floor, both of them cross-legged--he had extra hands to open his beer, and pain meds took the edge off everything, even that hole in his arm.  And they had the satisfaction of a good day's work.  No dead always ranked high on his list of good days.

     "So, who is it at the Pentagon who makes these culturally incorrect decisions anyway?" Daniel asked, and it'd sound academic curiosity if his voice didn't have that edge of contempt.  "About stealing from other worlds being okay so long as they don't know we're doing it."

     "People, Daniel.  No one we'll ever meet, if we're lucky, and that reminds me, we need a code word."

     "Code word, sir?"

     Daniel pushed his slipping glasses back into place.  "And we need this because...?"

     Jack nodded.  "Because."

     "Because?" Daniel swatted the word back, his head tipping, eyes going big with interest and eyebrows lifting then falling as if somehow that would get him a faster answer.

     Raising a hand, the good one with his beer since the other was in a sling thanks to a trinium arrow through it, Jack gestured in a vague circle.  "Yeah, because...because."

     He stressed the last word, and Daniel frowned at that, then his expression cleared and he nodded, understanding satisfied. "Ah--because."

     That settled, Daniel shifted back to making the Olympic rings on the coffee table with the condensation off his bottle, and Jack hoped that wasn't the only use Daniel considered suitable for a good Mexican beer.

     Carter picked up her bottle, but didn't drink, and she hadn't gotten to the next page with them.  "Because because, sir?"

     "Yeah, because, Carter."

     "I'm not--"

     "Daniel walked in with one of those gill faces today--"

     "I guess they kind of are, aren't they," Daniel said, mulling the idea like he might a young but interesting wine, and Carter shot him a look that said he'd better not pull anyone off topic.  But Jack was on a roll.

     "And I wasn't sure who to shoot.  Almost shot everyone, just in case.  I mean who do you not shoot when you've got aliens who can look like anyone."

     Carter nodded.  She'd heard this already in the official debriefing about the day's events and the aliens from PXY-887, so she didn't need a recap in this unofficial one.

     "But you didn't," she said, staying focused.

     "Because," Daniel repeated, and he had that faint amused glint in his eyes, but was straight faced, innocent as pie.  As if.

     Still puzzled, Carter glanced at him.  "Because why?"

     "Not why, just because," Jack said, starting to lose patience.  Sometimes Carter had so much smart in her head she forgot a square could be just some lines, not a geometric shape. Of course, for Daniel, a square could be a letter, or a word, or a reference on a map to a lost civilization, or a chance to lecture on symbolic imagery and its meaning throughout history, so maybe Carter's kind of smart wasn't all that complex after all.

     She shook her head, looked down, and Teal'c put down the box of whatever it was he'd been looking into.  "You must explain yourself, O'Neill.  Because is not a sufficient answer."

     "Worked for Daniel."

     "So Daniel told you not to shoot him...because?" Carter left the question hanging with a hopeful nudge.

     Jack drained the last of his beer, decided he'd better skip a second if the world was making this little sense.  "No, I didn't shoot him because.  I asked him how did I know it was him."

     "And I said because," Daniel said, as if that explained everything, and it pretty much did for Jack.

     Carter glanced at Teal'c who looked back at her, his frown deepening.  Carter's frown deepened, too, and no one should look that unhappy after this much good Cantonese.

     "Because?" Carter repeated, face still tight with worrying this.  "That's all you needed to know Daniel was Daniel, not an alien mimic?"

     Jack glanced at Daniel, wanted him to pick-up the slack here, but Daniel just stared back as if this was Jack's fault for bringing it up, so he had to sort it out as well.  Great, here at home it was all 'let the team leader handle things,' so why didn't he get that off-world, too?

     Shaking his head, Jack put down his empty bottle. "Carter, what's an alien going to do if it's trying to pass for Daniel and you ask, is it really you?"

     "Well--?" Her face scrunched up and he could just about see her ticking through options, so he cut it short for her.

     "The alien's gonna say something reasonable and logical.  Right?  And that's not going to sound like Daniel, is it?"

     "Have I just been insulted?"

     "I believe you have, Daniel Jackson."

     Jack glanced at the man next to him on the floor.  Daniel had sprawled back on his elbows with the careless grace half a beer gave him.  "Hey, least you weren't shot."

     Still looking for this to make sense, Carter asked, "So, you knew it was Daniel, sir, because he didn't give you a reasonable, logical answer?  He just said because?"

     "You you, Carter?" he said, reminding her of that little conversation they'd had with Daniel with aliens loose on the base and Daniel already so focused on other ideas that they'd barely been able to get him to identify himself as himself.  Oh, yeah, that back and forth had just reeked of logic and reason.

     She nodded.  "I see your point, sir."

     Sitting up, Daniel glanced between them, eyes going dark with his pupils blown like they did when his attention had been caught.  "Are you implying I'm somehow vague with my answers?  Or less than reasonable?"

     Jack noticed that he didn't push on the logical--the man knew how to pick his battle ground.  "No, Daniel.  I'm saying if my brain's starting to hurt, trying to figure out what the hell, it's got to be you talking."

     Daniel's chin lifted and he arched an eyebrow.  "Ah, so, we don't need a code word after all."

     "No, we do."

     "Why?  Because worked fine--you just admitted it, said you'd know one of my answers anywhere.  I'm sure you have the same lack of logic in any other explanations for why you'd know the rest of your team."

     Ah, so that's where the logical was going to come into this--if I'm not, you're not either.  So there.

     Jack turned to his second for support.  "See, Carter.  Three sentences and headache coming on."

     "You're counting my sentences?" Daniel asked, faced scrunched.

     "Sir, I don't think that you deciding it was Daniel because he said because is actually a very good reason."

     "That's why we need that code word."

     Daniel wasn't giving.  He folded his hands around his beer again, took up that too-patient look of a professor stuck with the remedial class.  "And so we're back to--why?  We can't return to PXY-887, not if they bury their Stargate, so no more aliens who pretend to be spirits.  Sam, do you think they actually changed shape and made people disappear, or was that all illusion?  A form of hypnosis maybe?"

     "Well, the energy required to actually shift matter and--"

     "How do you remember all those numbers for the places we go and still you're not good at math?" Jack said, butting in and staring at Daniel as he spoke, and he knew he sounded like he was bitching, but he was actually going for distraction here.

     Daniel blinked at him.  "Uh, some of us have good memories, Jack.  Which brings up the added question of do you really think you'd even remember a code word?"

     Jack grinned, then said, "Didn't hear you mention math skills in there.  And, what, you think we've had those blue crystals and now gill faces and that's the quota on alien invasion look-alike contests?"

     "Indeed, mimicry is a common strategy for both defense and offense even among the indigenous species of animal life on this world."

     Jack turned to stare at Teal'c as he tried to process that mouthful, then he shot Daniel a hard look.  "I thought I told you no more nature programs?"

     Lifting his hands, Daniel looked ready to surrender.  Yeah, an as if there, too.

     "It was called The Camouflage Instinct so I thought it might have some military information that'd interest Teal'c."

     "Did it?"

     "Well--uh, no.  But the footage of--"

     "See.  Never trust those guide thingies."  Jack glanced over to Teal'c, and that twist of the man's wide mouth could be called a smirk on anyone else.  "Mindless sex and violence, that'll tell you everything about life with the Tau'ri."

     "Well, we had a pretty good dose of the violence part.  Not much sex."  Daniel blew into his beer bottle, made it resonate with a low hollow note.  Then he frowned.  "Y'know, maybe that's a good thing."

     "Gill faces--you becha."

     "Sir, that's disgusting.  But if we have a code word, how would we know to use it?  We'd have to suspect a replacement.  An invasion."

     Ah, trust Carter to get them all back to the subject; woman had Jack Russell terrier in her somewhere.  Daniel you could divert--and maybe he'd get back to the topic, or maybe he'd find the diversion so much more diverting, he'd stay with you.

     "We could use gill face as the code word--or code words?"  Daniel offered, swapping a bright-eyed glance with Carter and Jack could see the snickers starting.

     "Oh, like that's a phrase you can work into conversation."

     "We just did.  But why would it have to be worked into anything?"

     Jack went for a harsh command stare that might put a stop to Daniel's whys tonight, but Daniel answered back with his eyebrows lifted and his expression open as if he really wanted to hear an answer and wasn't trying to back anyone into a verbal corner.  Oh, yeah.  Right.  Sure.  Jack shook his head.

     "Because, Daniel."

     "Because...because?"

     Okay, that wasn't a smirk, but Daniel's mouth twitched before he got it smothered and holy hell was lighting up his eyes.  Carter muffled something into her beer that might have been a choked laugh.  That's what he got for picking smart for his team.

     Just in case, he glanced over at Teal'c to see if he was also mocking his leader, but the Jaffa had long ago mastered iron control--Jack would pretty much bet that any Jaffa who didn't, didn't live that long.  He looked back at Daniel who was not giving much away now, but where Teal'c went for stoic, the more vague Daniel looked the more you had to worry.

     Before Jack could put a sock into another because getting added onto because because, Daniel said, "My vote is that because worked, so if you want a code word, use that."

     "Daniel, where did you ever get the idea this is a democracy?"

     "Is that not the law of the land?  A fundamental principle?  One person one vote?" Teal'c asked.

     Mouth flattening, Jack shot another glare over to Daniel, who had fixated with sudden intensity on the condensation he'd left on the coffee table, his mouth pursed and a frown tight between his eyebrows, as if the water rings were tricky inscriptions.

     "Daniel?" Jack said, drawing the word out long and slow--just like the fuse for his temper.

     Chin kept down, Daniel's stare lifted and he looked over the tops of his glasses, which had slipped again.  Jack used those glasses like a barometer--the more they slipped, the less sleep Daniel had had the night before.  Or the more beer he'd had right now.  The man did not look tired, or any kind of drunk, but Jack could read faint guilt under the defiance; he so knew just how bad an influence he was.  But he didn't repent.

     "It was one Civil War special.  Teal'c expressed an interest in our political structure, and that's not a nature program."

     Oh, yeah.  Logical conclusion there in, jumping to 'not a nature program' meant Jack wouldn't find out and disapprove of Daniel trying to recruit Teal'c over the geek side.

     Finger pointing to make the point, Jack switched his stare to Teal'c and said, "Trust me--violence and sex.  Stick with it.  Can't go wrong."

     "And that doesn't describe current politics, sir?"

     Okay, Daniel was now officially being a bad influence on Carter, too, if she was coming up with that.  Then he thought back to how she'd always had that much mouth going.

     He looked from her to Daniel, got back two sets of blue eyes going big on him, as if these two were the honor students you could always trust, and not the sneaky types, and he knew them so much better than that.

     "We're not using because."

     "Because?" Carter prompted, and Daniel snickered.

     Biting his lower lip to stop it going to an outright laugh, Daniel kept his eyes down, but then he looked up at Carter.  "I think we have an argument to present to General Hammond next time there's a mission we view as critical."

     "He'll ask why."

     "And we'll just say--"

     "Oh, no you don't.  You will not be saying that to Hammond."

     Twisting on the floor, Daniel stared at Jack, bland as vanilla pudding, and he drew out the word in a way that left Jack thinking it had to be a linguistic thing about knowing how to sound out each letter.  "Why?"

     Jack wet his lips, tried to come up with another word to give them, and maybe he shouldn't have had that beer along with the pain meds, but they weren't Janet's happy pills, just the mostly smiley ones.

     Then he gave up and gave in.

     "Because."  That set off the snickers again.  Lifting his chin, Jack went for staring them all down.  "Because I said so."

     Daniel nodded.  "Didn't you just get done saying how illogical and unreasonable that served as any kind of argument?"

     "There has been sufficient discussion," Teal'c said, and everyone looked at him, and who wouldn't when the guy sounded like he knew the score and then some.  "O'Neill has spoken a phrase that would serve as code words to determine if any among us are not as we seem."

     Jack frowned, a little worried now where this was going.  "What--I said so?"

     Drawing himself up, Teal'c glanced at them all, one-by-one, then offered up with solemn dignity, "Boneing the Salish."

     Carter spit out her beer, which Jack ended up wearing, and Daniel lost it over that, put his head down on his folded arms on the coffee table, and Jack heard the muffled laughter.  Slapping a hand over her mouth, Carter tried to hold it in, but that left her eyes gleamed wicked bright.  And Teal'c, with an eyebrow flying high as if he hadn't expected any of this, deadpanned a glance that said he was above being anything like this juvenile.

     Brushing at his shirt, Jack muttered, "Fine--no code word or words or whatever.  But next time any of you're not you, don't say I didn't tell you so!"

     Eyes tearing, struggling to get some control back, Daniel glanced up.  Carter was grinning like a fool, and even Teal'c sat back on the couch, let slip a satisfied look of enjoying watching the kids misbehave.

     Yeah, good day's work done alright.  Even a better day when he could get the knots out of his people, get them to forget they'd come to close to a permanent vanishing act.  Had also damn near boned a bunch of nice people because of orders, and he'd like to forget that, too.

     Then he looked over, met Daniel's stare, knew himself busted, because Daniel's eyes softened with understanding and gratitude for that fraction of a moment, just long enough that Jack knew.

     But the eyebrows lifted in the next instant, and Daniel's eyes glinted blue and bright as if nothing had just happened.

     Jack lifted a finger at him.  "Oh, don't you start up again."

     As he damn well knew, Daniel couldn't ever leave anything well enough alone.  And he had more ideas for code words--something to top Teal'c now--had to drag Carter back into the act with him, all of them going competitive now, sacrificing their team leader's dignity just to get another laugh.

     And, tonight, Jack was just fine with that.