AN: Here we go again... reviews are appreciated!

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Jessa4865
Spoilers: Anything, especially Urgo, but set before Season Eight cause I like General Hammond in charge and Jack on SG-1.
Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just taking them out for some fun. I'll put them back when I'm done. Promise.
AN: Most of the stuff Carter says would bore the crap out of normal humans. Acknowledging that does not mean that Jack is stupid, for the record.

Chapter One

We were gathered around a table in the mess, enjoying a rare few moments of downtime. Teal'c and I were already working through our second helpings of dessert when Carter and Daniel finally showed up. I'd sent Daniel to drag Carter out of her lab because more often than not when I went to get her, something wound up broken and I wound up on the receiving end of a very unhappy glare, and then neither of us was in the mood for whatever I'd gone to get her for. Daniel was better at negotiating with her - proven by the fact that he'd successfully dragged her from her latest super-conducting plasma-generating something or other.

I stuck a huge bite of pie in my mouth and vowed not to say anything that would reveal that I hadn't been listening to a word of what she said in the briefing. I usually paid attention to at least some of it, but I'd been up late watching a Simpsons marathon and Carter had been particularly boring and she'd buttoned up her jacket, leaving me with absolutely nothing worth looking at. Luckily, it was Teal'c who caught me sleeping and carefully woke me without alerting anyone else.

It's not that I don't like listening to her. It's just that most of the stuff she talks about would confuse most PhD astrophysicists, which I am not. I took a physics class. When I was sixteen. It was fine. I just wouldn't make a career out of it. I certainly wouldn't listen to it if I didn't have to.

And would if be too much for her to talk about something else from time to time? I wouldn't even mind if she told me about cleaning out her gutters once in a while. But no, with Carter, it's always shop talk. And I don't mean shop like motorcycle shop talk. Hell, if she started telling me about fixing her bike, I'd be all ears. That would actually be ridiculously hot, considering that I have to work with her, not that it would be at all bad. Instead I'm always on the other end of things that I think she starts explaining just to get me to leave her alone. There have even been times when I thought she was making stuff up altogether because every once in a while, if I stick around and let her talk for more than fifteen seconds, her babble dies off and she abruptly goes back to whatever she was doing.

She smiled brightly at me as she placed her dessert on the table and took her seat next to me. I forgot entirely about the techno-babble transgressions and smiled back, like the idiot I was. I loved how she made me feel like a lovesick teenager. It'd been a long time since someone could make me smile by pretending not to be looking at me.

"So how goes the thingamajiggy studying?"

Carter bit back a grin, pretending not to be amused by my words. "Good, sir." She stuffed a giant spoonful of pie in her mouth and didn't even bother spouting off about anything scientific.

"Teal'c, I could use your help in translating some of the artifacts SG-7 brought back with them. The dialect is close to several that I recognize, but you might have better luck. I think the artifacts might even pre-date Egyptian-" Leave it to Daniel to take Carter's silence as an invitation to fill the air with his own inane scientific chatter.

I glanced at Carter, who was trying to fight back a smile. At least when she starts inadvertently lecturing me, she's still hot. And honestly, Carter's science, on occasion, involves blowing things up and exciting stuff. Frighteningly, I'd actually rather listen to Carter - and as much as I'd love to tell her that and see how happy that would make her, I couldn't possibly explain that it's just because she's Carter and therefore inherently more interesting than anyone else in the world.

So I was tuning Daniel out and trying to surreptitiously watch Carter thoroughly enjoying her dessert. That, of course, led me to think of approximately a million things she and I could have done with whipped cream that would have been a lot more fun than mutually ignoring Daniel. I watched the fork travel back and forth between her plate and her mouth and occasionally, I caught a glimpse of her tongue, which prompted me to close my eyes and think about a whole other list of things I shouldn't have been thinking about. When I opened my eyes again, I'd catch the intense stare in her eyes and realize that she was doing it on purpose. I'd be dumbfounded for a moment and then look at my own ignored plate for a moment and then I'd hear the scraping of her fork and I'd have to look and the whole thing would repeat itself.

I wanted to know how, exactly, Daniel and Teal'c could be sitting there, mere inches away, while Carter purposely tried to seduce me, and not notice a damn thing. Well, they might have noticed. Teal'c, at least, kept his eyes carefully schooled on Daniel's face the entire time. Daniel, on the other hand, only noticed that I wasn't listening to him.

On one of the trips across her face, my eyes realized she was giggling. Undoubtedly at me. Teal'c had turned to face me, as had Daniel. I looked around, willing my face not to turn red. "What?"

Daniel threw his fork on his plate, horribly insulted that I didn't find his blather as entertaining as Carter and whipped cream. "You're not listening to me at all, are you?"

I couldn't look at Carter because I knew she was trying not to laugh and watching her trying not to laugh would make me laugh. "Carter's not listening either!"

"Oh, don't even put this on me! This is between you guys."

I couldn't help but glare at her while Carter innocently went back to her pie. As innocently as she could while her leg suddenly pressed against mine. I yelped. I stared. The tablecloths weren't that long and there were a lot of other people present. She had one hell of a nerve.

She pulled back, dropping her fork in favor of her finger to smear the last bit of whipped cream across her lips. "Sorry, I thought that was Daniel's leg."

Teal'c suddenly redoubled his effort to eat his pie without seeing anything although I was pretty sure he was grinning. Daniel, however, was still staring at me with his arms crossed against his chest. "Don't you have anything to say? An apology? An explanation? A denial?"

I motioned at Carter, who had taken to stealing whipped cream off Teal'c's plate with her finger and then licking it off. Teal'c cast a sidelong glance at her and promptly ignored her. Daniel didn't seem to notice. "Do you see this?"

Daniel shrugged. "What? The four of us eat together most of the time."

And there was her leg again. Daniel was sitting across from her. I was sitting next to her. There was no way that she was going for Daniel, not that I'd ever really bought that. I abruptly pushed back from the table, irritated that Carter was getting to me. Usually it was the other way around, and I was quickly realizing why it upset her so much. "Daniel, you are a red-blooded American male. Don't tell me that you are completely unaffected by the notion of Carter and whipped cream." I couldn't believe I'd been so bold. Neither could Carter, apparently, because she'd stopped her seductive attempt mid-lick. Even Teal'c was staring at me.

Daniel glanced at Carter, a strange look passing over his face when he actually saw her licking at the whipped cream that was melting down her finger. Then he looked back at me and shrugged. "Well, she's not really my type, Jack." His expression turned slightly disgusted as he shoved his pie away from him. "Actually, she's like my sister. I'm not really hungry anymore."

I saw Teal'c was shaking his head disapprovingly. When I glanced back at Carter, her head was hanging and her face was red. I felt bad. In the interest of not making an ass out of myself, I'd made an ass out of myself and embarrassed everyone at the table. And if I were to be honest, I had to admit I didn't really want Carter to ever stop her extremely rare flirtatious efforts.

I was about to apologize to everyone when they all suddenly stood up. I was staring at Carter's legs, realizing I'd had a precious opportunity to touch them and missed it. I shook my head and resigned myself to the fact that it would be months or years before Carter ever took it upon herself to tease me again. "Where's everybody going?" And I did mean everybody - every single person in the room was heading for the door.

Carter pointed at the flashing lights. "Where do you think, sir?"

I realized I'd been so lost in my thoughts that I'd actually blocked out the wail of the unauthorized off-world activation alarm. Wow. She'd really thrown me for a loop. She grinned at me. "You coming, sir?" Once again mortified, I fell in step beside her as we ran for the control room.

Just as we ducked inside, we heard the booming voice. "This is Togar. I require your assistance."

Togar? Why did that name sound familiar? I glanced at Carter.

"Urgo, sir."

"Ah." I stared warily at the iris. "Wasn't he a million times more advanced than us?"

Carter shrugged. "Apparently." I could tell, years later, that it still bugged her that someone had stolen her memories.

General Hammond spoke into the microphone. "What type of assistance do you need?"

"We are under attack by the Goa'uld. Will you help us? Urgo indicated that you often fight the Goa'uld and win."

I shrugged at Hammond and then checked with Carter. She bit her lip for a moment before she turned to the general. "Sir, if they are under attack and we help them, they might be willing to share some of their technology with us."

I crossed my arms and sighed. "Or he might use us and then send us back with our memories wiped."

"Or he might use us and then send us back with our memories wiped, sir." I grinned as Carter parroted my words. She repeated what I said far more infrequently than she flirted with me.

General Hammond looked at me, probably wondering why I was so damn happy. Then he focused on Carter. "Do you think their technology is advanced enough to merit putting SG teams at risk?"

I couldn't help but stick my nose in. "Sir, is it ever really a bad thing to kill off a Goa'uld?"

Carter cleared her throat and ignored me. "We don't really know anything about their technology besides that it's much more advanced than ours. Certainly their ability to implant a device in the human brain without any physical trauma, in addition to removing it, would be a marvel for the medical profession. The networking capabilities of their chips are also quite a few years beyond our own and their uh-" She glanced at me. "Memory uh-" Another glance. "Wiping, for lack of a better word-" I beamed happily. "Technology would be extremely useful for covert operations."

Hammond nodded thoughtfully. "So you recommend that we help, Major?"

Carter grinned cheekily at me. "Sir, is it ever really a bad thing to kill off a Goa'uld?"

I was smiling so hard I thought my face would break.

"Very well, you have a go." Hammond glanced back and forth between us. "And when you get back, you're taking down time. Far, far, far away from one another."

I could have sworn Carter was giggling as we walked out.