paradisalogs | On First Dates and Interesting Occurrences

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On First Dates and Interesting Occurrences

Who: Sam Carter, Jack O'Neill...and a surprise guest.
What: Being away from military regulations = first date time.
When: Evening
Where: Sam's room.
Rating: PG-13.

But he was, just the tiniest bit, nervous tonight. Then again, this was far more important in certain ways than, say, conducting a bombing run in an F-16 or disabling a Super Ha'tak with an F-302. He was good at those, highly experienced. He knew the potential outcomes. This? Wasn't those things. In some hard-to-define way it was more important, at least to him.

He had found casual clothes, at least. That was the easy part. Then he had tried to find a picnic basket, several items of food, and a bottle of wine. He was quite pleased with the wine, a '69. She'd get that tiny reference. They'd never actually seen each other out of uniform when it wasn't work-related. He'd seen her in a skirt. Once. When he'd pretended to resign. And that had been interrupted by the rest of the gang.

Well, this wasn't then. It was far better. And also less on the 'uncertainty' thing. He stepped up to her door, adjusting the collar on his jacket. And then he knocked on her door.

One way or the other, one of the best adventures he'd ever had was about to start.

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Sam had managed to get herself a light blue colored blouse and a comfortable pair of jeans. Her room was still pretty plainly set up, nothing extra in there aside from the clothes she'd gathered and put in a dresser. It was completely unlike Sam, sadly, which he'd notice as she walked over to the door and opened it up with a smile for him.

"You look good dressed in civvies." Was her first comment as she saw him, grinning. "I like it."

He grinned, then shook his head from side to side.

"Well, sort of. I try. This has to be the first time we've been in civvies where nothing is going wrong. Speaking of things going right, you look...so very beautiful."

He stepped in, holding the basket.

"And I have been successful in scrounging. I am a successful scrounger." He said it in an attempt to make her laugh, with added theatrical pride.

Sam's cheeks reddened a bit at the compliment, stepping aside for him to come all the way inside. She grinned at the sight of the basket, he really had scrounged up a bit for them tonight. And he did get a laugh out of her for it, too.

"It looks fantastic. Tonight's already off to a good start. Make yourself comfortable anywhere. It's not much to look at yet but it's comfortable." She missed her bookcases and her laptop, all her research notes too.

He put the basket on the table, lifting the lid.

"Oh, it has you in it. All it needs. Granted, kinda weird not seeing you surrounded by metal and blinking lights."

He started pulling out the various parts of the meal. Plates, cutlery, carefully wrapped wine glasses.

"Let's see what we've got here," he said, pulling out a tupperware bowl. "Salad, and I found two dressings." He picked a plastic bottle out of the basket. "Also this. There's leaves on the bottle but I can't read the language so it's either salad dressing or lettuce-flavoured soda."

"After that, some potato salad, liberated from the kitchen, and some freshly-cooked chicken. Did that part myself. And, for dessert? Fresh strawberries."

He pulled out the wine bottle and offered it to her. "Also wine."

Sam looked a bit more than surprised at everything he'd gathered. And he had even cooked the chicken himself. She could cook but she preferred to make easier dishes whenever she did. Chemistry, astrophysics, programming a dialing program for an alien device, that was all easy. Cooking... not so much.

"I love strawberries. You thought of everything haven't you?" She asked looking over the wine, choking back a laugh as she spotted the year. Oh yes, she caught that. "I heard this was a good year."

"Well," he said, taking the bottle back and starting to uncork it, "I tried. I hear women like when you make the effort."

He popped the cork and started pouring two glasses.

"And yeah, I hear that, too."

"Oh yes, they definitely do. Although, you haven't had to make much effort over the years to catch my attention." She smiled and watched him open the wine. It had been awhile since she'd had any wine and '69 was indeed a good year, mission puns and all.

While he did that, Sam set everything up nicely for them within easy reach. And nabbed one strawberry early, she couldn't help herself. He was distracted with the wine.

"Yeah, but I think I'm going to anyways. Pretty sure it's the right idea since you'll keep me on my toes."

He handed her the first full glass, then raised his in a toast.

"So, let's see. To us sounds a bit...cliche. What do you think?"

"A little bit but I think we're allowed to be cliched." Sam smiled as she took it and raised her glass up to his, thinking over what they could toast to. Right now, cliche was pretty much mandatory but she gave it a shot.

"We could toast to a semi-quiet stay here in Paradisa, so far." Okay so, things had already been a little crazy here but no more so than back on Earth. This was all manageable.

"That works," he said, clinking glasses with her.

"To the two of us and a relatively quiet time, rare as diamonds."

He paused after drinking, grinning at her.

"Speaking of glittering things, have I mentioned lately that I'm kinda keen on your eyes?"

Sam took a small drink and savored the taste. Oh yes, definitely a good wine and a good year with the best of company. Could she ask for anything more now? No, she really couldn't. She didn't even mind how bare her room seemed. It didn't seem quite so plain now, sharing dinner with Jack.

"I think you've mentioned it once." Sam said with a grin. "I don't mind hearing it again though, especially from you."

He grinned, and even winked.

"I'll bear that in mind," he said, gesturing for her to sit.

"Now, I think we ought to have a seat and start to eat before everything gets cold. Or...colder."

"Good idea." She smiled, giving him a peck on the cheek and took a seat, putting food for them both on the plates and setting her wine glass down beside her plate.

"You know, I can't really think of anything better we could have done for this, tonight." And she really couldn't. A restaurant would be crowded, going bowling or anything like it would be too competitive. This was perfect, just the two of them.

"Neither can I - I mean it's not like we could go out to a restaurant and make small talk. We know all the answers already."

He paused, sitting down, and chuckled.

"It'd be like a weird pantomime show. Thankfully we've managed to avoid it so far."

He picked up the unknown bottle, sniffing at the contents. "Well, it smells like a salad dressing." And he poured some on, and took an experimental bite.

"Ok," he said, coughing and reaching for the wine, "bit of a bite to it."

"I'm sure we can avoid it for awhile." Sam smiled, cutting off a piece of chicken and biting into it. Definitely better than she could cook it, so she was glad that Jack had taken care of that.

The blonde almost choked on her bite when he started coughing at the taste of the salad dressing, smirking behind her hand. It was a little bit worth almost choke to see his face.

"We could water it down a bit, make it more bearable."

He took a healthy sip of wine, getting things back under full control. He carefully moved the salad to the side.

"So," he said, moving on to the chicken himself, "got a parts list yet? I can go shopping for 'em. There's bound to be a technical components-r-us around here somewhere."

He smiled at her, shaking his head.

"Or we can go scrounging."

"Not quite yet, I haven't gotten a computer yet so I'm working on my calculations by hand. It's a bit slower. Especially since I have to increase the size, which means more materials." And all the more risk. The small gate had blown out all the circuits in her house, she didn't want to imagine what it would do here if she made even the slightest mistake.

Sam was pretty glad, otherwise, that she could enjoy her salad without the dressing. If Jack couldn't handle it, she couldn't. Although, she did slide her salad a little closer as an offering to share.

"I'm not sure we could find everything we'll need by scrounging. Orlin's gate was made up of one hundred pounds of pure titanium, two hundred feet of fiber optic cable, seven one-hundred-thousand watt industrial-strength capacitors." That last bit might be infinitely harder to find than the rest.

He fished out the other bottle.

"Ok, this one? Ninety-nine percent sure it's a caesar dressing. It says so on the label."

He paused as he listened to her list of parts.

"Oh, is that all? Hit a couple of garage sales, we'll be fine." He took a bite of her salad. "Not something you can get from the local Radio Shack," he said, in all seriousness.

"Sam, I thought you should--" In true Daniel fashion, he let himself in, attention focused on the book in his hand while the other holds the door open. But when he looks up he blinks, thoughts effectively derailed.

This looks like...

Oh.

He opens his mouth, then closes it. Words failing to get that far. He knows about the thing between them, has known about it for some time. It's a little hard not too, especially considering how close they all are. Still, it's surprising to see them actually acting on it.

"Well," Isn't this awkward. "You certainly picked a fine time."

"Unless someone switched it with some other dressing." Sam grinned and took a bite of chicken. She nodded a bit and thought it over, loath to make any wishes here. Who knew what she'd end up getting, if the castle was as picky as she was told her first day here.

"We'll figure it out." She said and went to take a sip of wine when the door opened. And almost choked when Daniel came in talking, ending up coughing as it went down wrong.

While she recovered her ability to speak and breath normally, she left the 'hello's' to Jack.

For his part, Jack turned slowly, giving Daniel what could only be described as a 'look'.

"We picked a fine time? There this thing, that's called 'knocking'. You do it on a door. Might want to give it a go sometime."

Yes, he sees that look. And he gives one of his own back. How was he supposed to know they were in the middle of a DATE? It's not like anyone told him!

"Sorry, I thought the news of that I not going to fall over and die anytime soon was more important." Because yes, he had only five minutes ago remembered that he hadn't told Sam after worrying her so much about it. He got distracted by the library.

In their defense, how were they supposed to know he wouldn't point out regulations or something similar. She coughs again, finally clearing her wind pipe of wine and nods to Daniel. Time to play peace keeper.

"That's fantastic news, Daniel!" Remembering sooner would have been great but hey! Now none of them have to worry about Daniel dying. Again. Next time, she'll put a 'Do not disturb' sign on her door. Locking it would probably just result in a door being knocked down in worry.

"Wait, I'm missing something," he said, turning from Sam to Daniel, with his standard 'Confused O'Neill' expression on his face.

"Because Daniel dying again sounds like a big deal."

"Nothing important," He's flippant about it now, seeing the threat is all and over with. "I was still connected to Vala when I got here, but everything is fine now."

"Seems being kidnapped by an intern-dimensional castle severed the connection. Lucky me." Nevermind that he did end up passing out before the connection completely dissipated, but that's another story for another time.

"Well, I think I should probably... go now. Let you guys get back to your, dinner." He means date.

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