Chapter 3
Daniel stood tentatively in
the doorway of the infirmary, with a small stack of magazines in his arms. He had decided to visit Jack before heading
home to get ready for his night out with Sam.
Sam had left earlier, most likely to prepare for the evening, and had
asked Daniel to give Jack her sincerest get-well wishes. Daniel grinned inwardly as he spotted Jack
lying on top of the bed with his right leg outstretched, looking bored as hell
doing a crossword puzzle.
“Jack?”
Jack, appearing a bit
relieved to have been pulled from the tedium of the puzzle, turned his head
toward the doorway.
“Daniel?” he asked
expectantly, raising his eyebrows.
Daniel entered the infirmary
and walked over to Jack’s bedside.
“I … ah … um …” he began
hesitantly.
Jack raised his eyebrows
higher.
“I wanted to see how you were
doing, so … how are you doing?”
“Oh … better. Aside from the fact that I need a fistful of
Aspirin every few hours, and that I’m bored as hell … better,” he answered sarcastically.
“Oh,” Daniel answered,
averting his eyes. “I figured that was
the case. I mean, crossword puzzles
aren’t exactly your speed.”
Jack stared at him.
“Excuse me?”
“W-well, I mean they’re more
of a … intellectual activity,” Daniel finished with a slight grin on his face.
“Are you saying I’m stupid??”
Jack protested.
“N-no …” Daniel replied, his
eyes darting away from Jack. “… It’s
just that you’ve never really come across as ‘book smart.’”
“In other words, I’m stupid,”
Jack retorted.
Daniel rolled his eyes
heavenward and sighed.
“No, Jack, you’re not
stupid. God, I’m sorry I even brought it
up,” he spat out, starting to sound annoyed.
Daniel’s eyes moved down to
the magazines he was holding.
“Well, anyway, I thought you
might like to read these,” he said, as he held the magazines in front of
Jack. “Um … there’s some copies of National
Geographic, Smithsonian …”
“I thought I wasn’t ‘book
smart,’” Jack deadpanned.
“I’m just trying to help,”
Daniel said impatiently.
Jack shrugged.
“Well … I appreciate your
efforts,” he said weakly as he accepted the magazines.
Daniel’s brow wrinkled in
confusion.
“Um … you’re welcome,” he
said slowly.
Jack thumbed through the
magazines with minimal interest until he happened upon the last two.
“Sports Illustrated?”
he asked curiously as he held them up in front of Daniel.
“Oh, yeah … I get that, too,”
Daniel replied carefully as a faint blush crept across his cheeks.
Jack raised his eyebrows
thoughtfully.
“Huh. Didn’t think you were … you know … that type
of guy,” he trailed off.
“There are a few things you
don’t know about me, Jack,” Daniel nodded.
Jack stared at him for a few seconds, and then
merely shrugged.
“Well… I think I’ll hold on
to these,” he said quietly, setting them on top of the small table on the other
side of his bed.
Daniel nodded, and then his
eyes widened in realization.
“Oh … ah … Sam said to tell
you that she hopes you’re back on your feet soon”.
Jack blinked.
“Why couldn’t she tell me
herself?”
“She left about an hour ago,”
Daniel replied without missing a beat.
“I guess she’s getting ready for tonight.”
Daniel felt his cheeks grow
hot.
“What’s tonight?”
Daniel nervously scratched at
the back of his neck, and then raked his hand through his hair. Jack was not usually one to pry like this,
but being laid up with an injury while everyone else was on stand down must
have been taking its toll on him.
“She’s meeting with an old
friend from college and her fiancé.
They’re meeting at some club downtown … and I’m going with her.”
Daniel winced slightly and
looked away as he finished the last part of his reply. He was sure Jack would have something to say
about that.
Jack looked at him, a bit
surprised.
“Daniel … well, sounds like
fun. Are you sure you’re up to that?”
Daniel furrowed his brow in
confusion.
“Up to what?”
“You know … going to a club,
with drinking and dancing and everything.
It’s only been two weeks since that goa’uld … well, you know …”
Daniel sighed, annoyed.
“Jack, Doctor Fraiser cleared
me for active duty. I can handle a
little excitement.”
Jack shrugged, and then turned
back toward Daniel.
“What about the other part?”
“What other part?” Daniel
asked curiously.
“Well, going out with Carter
on a date … Daniel, you’re still married to Sha’re. Doesn’t that bother you a bit? It’s almost as if you’re – “
“Cheating on her?” Daniel
finished quietly, averting his eyes.
“Well …” Jack started,
searching for words. “…Yeah?”
Daniel looked up at Jack as a
little smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“Jack, I can’t really talk
about this. I don’t think you’d
understand what I’m thinking. But, let
me assure you that I’m fine with this whole idea. Sam wanted some company and I’d do anything
to help her out. She’s my best friend.”
“I thought I was your best friend,” Jack replied in
a mock hurt tone.
Daniel shook his head and
grinned.
“You’re both my best
friends,” he conceded.
“You can’t have more than one
best friend,” Jack snorted.
“Sam’s a best friend in a
different way than you are,” Daniel blurted out, blushing a bit.
Jack’s eyebrows flew up.
“Oh.”
He took a few minutes to
figure out what Daniel meant by that statement.
“I wish I knew what that
means.”
“You don’t have to know what
means,” Daniel assured him, still blushing.
Jack furrowed his brow in
confusion as Daniel looked nervously down at his watch.
“Oh. It’s
“Have fun,” Jack nodded.
Daniel smiled and nodded as
he left Jack’s side and made his way toward the door.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Jack
called out.
Daniel turned back toward
Jack and looked at him curiously.
“You’re not going like that,
are you?” he asked.
Daniel looked down at the
plaid shirt, chinos and blue ski jacket he was wearing.
“Oh … no, I’m definitely
going to change before we go.”
Jack grinned and gave him a
thumbs-up.
Daniel was about to head back
out the door when Jack stopped him again.
“You wouldn’t happen to have
any extra copies of the Swimsuit Issue, would you?” he asked, holding up one of
the copies of Sports Illustrated.
“No, I don’t, Jack. And if I did, I wouldn’t let you have them,”
he grinned wickedly before he made his way out of the infirmary.
Jack snorted and picked up
one of the magazines.
*********************************************
Sam hummed to herself as she
showered. Strangely enough, she was
actually getting excited about meeting Meredith. Normally, she would almost dread it, but with
Daniel accompanying her, things might actually turn out okay. She giggled when she thought what Meri would
think when she saw Sam with Daniel.
She turned off the water,
dried herself off and began to blow her hair dry. She checked the clock on the wall and
realized it was
She had her outfit all picked
out: a light salmon-colored, floral georgette dress which fell to just below
her knees, with a wrap-style bodice and a sash at the waist. She had bought it a few years earlier, and it
had sat in her closet the whole time.
Admittedly, it was a very pretty dress, and she was glad she finally had
an excuse to wear it. The material was
very light, which was perfect for a warm, summer night such as this. She slipped on a pair of pink, sandal styled,
sling back shoes before heading back into the bathroom to work on her hair and
makeup.
Sam was never one to wear a
lot of makeup. She often thought that
anything more than lipstick and mascara was overkill. She painted her lips with a pinkish rose-colored
lipstick and added some light eye makeup.
Her hair was easy to do. She had
had short hair since before she entered the Air Force, and it was never a
hassle to style. She brushed her long, blonde
bangs over to the side of her face, and held them in place with a light mist of
hairspray. A couple of quick sprays of
her favorite, light, floral and citrus scented perfume, and she was finished.
She now had about twenty
minutes until she was going to meet Daniel.
She sat on the couch and nervously thumbed through one of her magazines,
humming a bit. For a moment, she stopped
and looked down at herself, hard-pressed to remember the last time she’d gotten
so dressed up.
She realized again how excited
she seemed to be, and it was an almost childlike excitement. Sam giggled at the thought. What am
I so excited about? It’s only Daniel, she thought to herself.
Only Daniel.
******************************************************
Meanwhile, Daniel had spent
quite a bit of time getting ready himself.
He’d showered and shaved, and quickly rummaged through his
wardrobe. He didn’t have very much to
choose from. He did have a few nice
things to wear, but he’d never been to a club before and he thought he’d dress
for comfort.
He quickly surveyed himself
in the mirror, and was about to leave when the sound of an urgent knock
resounded outside his apartment. Daniel
rolled his eyes and snorted as he checked the peephole and saw his neighbor
down the hall, Marlene Watson. He
reluctantly opened the door and forced a smile.
“Doctor Jackson,” she smiled,
holding up a couple of magazines. “These
were delivered to my apartment by mistake.”
Daniel nodded grimly.
“I’ll have to have a talk
with the mailman again,” he said dryly as he took the magazines from her.
Marlene grinned. This incident had happened more than once in
the short time that he’d lived there, and Daniel couldn’t understand why the
mailman couldn’t tell the difference between the numbers 401-C and 411-E. He was lucky that Marlene was nice enough to
bring the magazines to him. She was 23
years old, and married to a volunteer fire fighter. She was a sweet girl, but she seemed to be a
bit too overbearing for Daniel’s tastes.
“Thanks, Marlene,” he
nodded. “I have to get going. I was just on my way out the door –“
“Oh? Are you going to give
another lecture, professor?” she said cutely as she noticed his blue-and-white
plaid shirt, khaki pants and blue tweed jacket.
Daniel blushed.
“Ah … no, I’m meeting a
friend at a club downtown,” he answered stupidly, wondering why he was
volunteering this information to his nosy neighbor.
“You mean you have a date?”
she asked, her eyes widened.
“You might say that,” Daniel
nodded as he desperately searched around the room for his keys so he could get
the hell out of there.
“Normally, I hate to pry,”
she began. Then, why are you? Daniel thought to himself.
“But, may I make a
suggestion? Your clothes are all
wrong. You’re going to a club, not to
some colloquium with a bunch of old, stuffy, tenured professors!” she
exclaimed.
Daniel shut his eyes and
sighed.
“Okay. Whatever,” he replied. “Can we talk about this later?” Later
meaning never?
“No,” she insisted, making
her way toward his bedroom closet. “If
you want to win a girl over, you have to do much better than that. Don’t you have any different clothes?”
Daniel rolled his eyes
heavenward. He couldn’t believe he was
letting this girl get away with giving him fashion tips. Maybe he was too nice. On the other hand, he wasn’t acting nearly as
fast as he could to get rid of her because his mind was reeling with thoughts
of meeting Sam, and how well the evening might turn out if he played his cards
right.
Marlene flung Daniel’s closet
open, and found a few nice dress shirts and pairs of pants. Once he returned to Earth after his year on
“Where did you get these?”
“Oh, uh … they were a gift,”
he said, blushing.
She pulled out a dark gray
Hugo Boss shirt, and a black pair of Dockers.
“These would be perfect,” she
grinned.
Daniel looked down at the
shirt and pants. He was about to
protest, but then he thought about what he’d actually look like in them, and
what Sam might think to see him dressed like that.
“Okay, I’ll change into
these, and then will you leave?” he nearly whined. He hated when his voice did that.
“We’ll see,” she replied.
Daniel reluctantly sauntered
toward the bathroom and closed the door.
A couple of minutes later, he emerged, looking sleek and sophisticated
in the darker colors.
Marlene let out a low
whistle, which made Daniel turn bright crimson.
“Almost perfect,” she
declared.
“’Almost’?” Daniel asked
curiously.
She walked right up to him.
“You need aftershave.”
Daniel furrowed his brow.
“Ah … I do have aftershave.”
Marlene sniffled.
“Well, I don’t smell
any.”
She reached into her purse
and produced a small bottle of Old Spice.
“This is my husband’s,” she
muttered as she struggled to zipper her purse shut. She splashed an incredible amount of
aftershave onto Daniel’s face until the overpowering fragrance made him wrinkle
his nose …
“ACHOOOO!!”
“What was that?” she asked,
raising an eyebrow in curiosity.
“Allergies,” Daniel muttered,
reaching for a tissue and blowing his nose.
“It happens whenever I travel, encounter a lot of flowers, or smell Old
Spice.”
His quip only made Marlene
grin as her eyes moved toward the top of his head.
“You really need to fix your
hair,” she continued.
“What?” he asked,
dumbfounded.
“I mean, look at it!” she
exclaimed. “It has no style. All it does is hang limply in your face.”
“And…?” Daniel asked as his
brow furrowed in confusion.
He stopped himself as he eyed
Marlene fishing through her purse again, this time producing a small hairbrush.
“Oh, come on, Marlene, please
leave my hair alone,” he sighed.
Daniel tried to bolt from the
room, but Marlene steered him right into the bathroom and began obsessively
brushing Daniel’s hair in an attempt to get it out of his face. She tried in vain to find some hairspray, but
Daniel didn’t seem to have any.
“Hmm … do you have an elastic
band?” she asked.
“Elastic band???” Daniel
asked with a confused look on his face.
“Oh, never mind, I think I
have one,” she muttered as she rummaged through her purse once again. She sighed in relief as she held up a small,
threaded elastic band. She stretched it
around her hand before she made her way back to Daniel.
“Oh, God, you’re not serious,
are you?” he said with an air of impending dread.
“You look so sloppy with your
hair hanging loose. If you’re not going
to cut it, you should at least tie it back,” she pontificated.
With that, she gathered
Daniel’s hair up as best she could and tied it back in a small ponytail. Daniel sighed miserably as she whisked his
glasses off.
“There, now you look trendy
and hip,” she smiled.
“Um, I need those,” he said,
gesturing to his glasses.
“What? You mean you don’t
have contacts?” she asked incredulously.
“No, and I really don’t feel
like tripping over people,” he said sarcastically.
Marlene sighed and handed his
glasses back to him.
“Well, I better let you go,”
she said reluctantly, as it appeared that she was enjoying being his fashion
consultant. “Have fun,” she grinned as
she exited the apartment.
Daniel forced a smile and
waved to her. After the door shut, he
raced back into his bathroom and began splashing water on his face, trying to
get as much of the aftershave off as best he could. When that didn’t seem to work, he resorted to
washing his face again.
Satisfied that the Old Spice
fragrance was all but a memory, he reached behind his head and removed the
elastic band from his hair, shaking it out and running his hands through
it. He checked his watch and realized
that it was
Daniel shook his head
slightly and grinned as he made the drive over to Sam’s house. He couldn’t believe he let Marlene try to
make him over like that. He was aware that
he looked extremely silly with a ponytail, almost like some bohemian type, and
the amount of aftershave she had splashed on him was obscene. It made him wonder if she acted this way with
her husband, or if he freely bathed in aftershave or cologne. He knew Sam would have thought he’d looked
ridiculous, too, and thinking back to Marlene’s remark, he knew that he didn’t
have to win Sam over. They had a special
friendship, and accepted each other for who they were. Although he would have been more comfortable
in the plaid shirt and khakis, he didn’t think that the dress pants and shirt
was a bad choice.
Daniel’s thoughts came to a
standstill as he reached Sam’s house and parked his Ford Explorer out front.
*************************************************************************
Sam looked up from the latest
issue of TV Guide as she heard a
knock on the door.
Daniel, she
thought as her heart began to race. She
threw the magazine on the coffee table, picked herself up off the couch, and
crossed the room to answer the door. She
grinned to herself as she pictured Daniel standing in front of her door,
wearing a plaid shirt, chinos and a blue jacket, just as he had when he showed
up in the locker room with Jack and Teal’c as she and Doctor Fraiser were
hunting for DNA samples from Hathor.
As she opened the door, she
felt her heart leap up into her throat.
There stood Daniel, looking a lot different than she’d pictured. He was wearing a dark gray dress shirt, black
pants and a lighter gray blazer. He had
shaved, but there was no strong, overpowering aftershave that she could
smell. On top of that, he was
well-groomed.
“Hi, Sam,” he smiled shyly.
She couldn’t say a word. His smile began to fade, and his brow creased
a bit.
“Oh … uh, sorry,” she said
awkwardly, finally finding her voice.
He looked at her
expectantly. A huge grin spread across
her face.
“Daniel,” she said softly,
sounding like a star struck, young girl, pleasantly surprised to find her idol
standing before her.
Finally she caught herself,
and realized how ridiculous she must look.
“Oh, geez, sorry … um… come
on in,” she gestured, clearing her throat.
Daniel nodded.
“Thanks,” he replied as he
stepped inside Sam’s house.
Sam nodded back as he made
his way to the couch in the living room.
She could feel her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment over the way she
stared at him, moon-faced after she opened the door. She had seen Daniel numerous times in
civvies, but never in clothes like this.
He looked … well … sexy. She
blushed even further at that thought, and suddenly she found it hard to take
her eyes off of him. Damn, he looked
good, even with his longish hair. Oh,
boy was she blushing …
As for Daniel, he was
reluctant to admit to himself that he’d been more than pleasantly surprised
when Sam first opened her door. The
floral dress accented the curves of her body, and really brought out the color
in her face. She looked like she was
full of life; not that she didn’t usually look like that, but the dress brought
it out more. It complemented her
features nicely, and made her look radiant.
When she first opened the door, Daniel might have been looking at a
portrait of Venus. All the times they’d
been together, he only saw Sam in either BDUs or very casual civvies. Now she looked beautiful, dare he say,
sexy.
He blushed furiously as that
thought flashed in his mind. He couldn’t
think that way while he was still married to Sha’re; she was the woman he still
loved, although he wasn’t sure he’d ever find her despite his team members’
insistence to the contrary. It was hard
to think of any woman as sexy at this point, actually, as the last one had
turned out to be a goa’uld who had drugged and seduced him. He tried to push it out of his mind, and for
the most part it had worked, because the number one thought in his mind at this
moment was how beautiful she looked.
“You look great,” he finally
said, a smile dancing upon his lips.
Sam was so flattered that she
could have burst into tears.
“Thanks. I hope you don’t mind me saying that you look
great, too,” she replied.
She smiled upon noticing the
faint blush in Daniel’s cheeks.
“Thanks,” he nodded.
Sam nodded back and pulled
him into a hug. He patted her on the
back and looked at his watch.
“So … what time are we
supposed to meet them?” he asked.
“Oh … um ...” Sam replied, a
bit flustered as she tried to remember the details of the get-together. “Eight.”
Daniel nodded.
“I guess we should grab a
quick bite to eat at O’Malley’s, then.
It’s a while to eight o’clock, but I figure we can pass the time trying
to come up with a good cover story for what we do and how we met, lest that
friend of yours gets really nosy,” Daniel said wryly.
“And she will,” Sam agreed.
“Then we’d better come up
with something good,” Daniel chuckled.
Sam nodded and giggled.
“Okay. So, your car or mine?” she asked once they’d
exited the house and she had locked up.
Daniel held his hand out and
gestured to his Explorer.
Sam grinned and giggled to
herself as Daniel unlocked the truck and they both climbed in.
This should be a night to remember, Sam thought to herself as she glanced over at
Daniel.
