AUTHOR: Matt, July 2003
SUMMARY: His favourite waste of time. Fluffy, sappy, and I make no apologies!
RATING: PG
SEASON/SPOILERS: none/slight for D & C
DISCLAIMER: These characters are the property of MGM, Gekko, et al.
THANKS TO: Deanie, for the very quick beta!
He's decided there's nothing better than to watch her play with her doohickeys. He can stand in the doorway for hours, or at least until an SF passes him in the corridor and then he has to act as though he's visiting her for a reason. Even then, however, he normally has some excuse and asking her to explain something to him gives him as much delight as just watching her. If anything, the pleasure is heightened because she's looking at him and usually smiling.
She's busy today, so absorbed in her work that she's not noticed him yet though he thinks he's been leaning against the doorway for over ten minutes. He doesn't want to lift his arm to look at his watch because then she might just catch sight of him out the corner of her eye, sudden movement and all that. Whatever she's doing to the black box on the counter looks tricky and he doesn’t want to distract her. It’s not that he’d not love to distract her of course, but the way in which he’d like to do that is against the regs.
And that’s the thing really. Watching her is an enormous waste of time, but it’s all that he can do given the circumstances. There’s paperwork he could be doing, loads of paperwork, but if life was different he’d be doing a lot more than watch the woman he loves as she works. Being able to watch her makes life bearable and gives him something to hold onto when it all gets too much. He can’t allow himself this luxury off world so he takes the opportunities when he can.
He thinks she feels the same, but then she’d never be in this position; watching him as he struggles to compile a complete report for the general. But still, she was the one who worked out exactly why they weren’t zaythingies, so that has to mean something. Either that or she can read him like a book, and he doesn’t want to think about the implications of that. One, it might mean that this thing that they have is one-sided or, two, she knows him too well and he’s lost this air of mystery he likes to keep around him.
She’s made some kind of a breakthrough in her investigation of the box and he smiles at her muttered exclamation of, “Yes!” If she’s happy then so is he and he never wants it any other way. If she’s not happy then it affects the whole team thing, or so he tries to tell himself. He has a nagging suspicion though that the team dynamic plays second to the ache inside that appears whenever she’s upset.
“I think I’ve finally got it, Sir,” she says quietly.
He walks into the room, hands in pockets. “Nice going, Carter. What is it?”
She launches into a detailed explanation of what exactly the box does, most of which begins to fly over his head within the first sentence. He understands more of what she says than he ever lets on, but he came to the conclusion long ago that he was not as scientifically-minded as either her or Daniel. She’s smiling up at him though and that’s what counts here. Whatever it is, it’s made her happy and he can live with that.
Finally he cuts her off with a raised hand and does his customary protest. She stops and tells him simply that it will help with their meager supply of naquadah and he’s satisfied with that.
“Good,” he tells her, “because I’m hungry.”
“Sorry, Sir,” she replies grinning. “I thought I might have been finished a bit sooner, but, well,” she shrugs, “it was a little more difficult than anticipated.”
“That’s okay.” And it is, really. Because he got to waste time by watching her work, and that’s just fine by him.
FINIS