DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no money, just some fluffy fun.....
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Squeaky Clean
By ncruuk
"Anyone seen Major Carter?" asked General Hammond, looking around the briefing room at the weary faces of SG1 and Doctor Fraiser and Lieutenant Hailey. For the CMO and him, it had been a long 30 hours as they had tiptoed the fine line between saving the world and blowing up the Solar System. For Jennifer Hailey it had been another eye popping experience. For SG1, it had been a long 68 hours, with their original mission ending in the first five seconds on PX7-6X5 when they'd been captured by an unscheduled Goa'uld. After a rather intense yet unusually painless imprisonment, they'd escaped and returned in a rush to the SGC, just in time to land in the middle of their crisis. As Mondays went, they were entitled to think it had been a bad one, since it was now stretching into Thursday.
"She said something about a shower..." observed Daniel helpfully, looking startled when all eyes suddenly turned and looked at him intently.
"Guys?" he pleaded, wondering what he'd said wrong.
"Shower as in 'I'm just going to wash off the mud from the mission from hell' shower or shower as in 'I'm just gonna stand under hot water til the tank's empty' shower?" asked Jack, dropping the pen he'd been fiddling with.
"Uh, there's a difference?" asked Daniel, taking off his glasses and cleaning them in an attempt to diffuse his nerves.
"Sir?" asked Janet politely, turning to look towards General Hammond, who understood perfectly.
"Dismissed - go find Major Carter Doctor..."
"Yes Sir..." scrabbling to her feet, Janet headed off, unsurprised to see Jack and Teal'c follow her, not bothering to wait for a dismissal.
"Uh, General?" asked Daniel, on behalf of the equally confused Hailey.
"The SGC doesn't run out of hot water son..." elaborated Hammond kindly, gathering his papers and heading back to his office. They'd call him when they'd found Sam...and officially, the less he knew about the next thirty minutes or so the better, although as honorary god father to the talented blonde, he couldn't be happier.
As days went, thought Sam Carter profoundly, even adjusting for normal SGC chaos, Monday was probably not a good day. In fact, given that she was debating this point with herself in the very early hours of Thursday morning, it was safe to declare it a good week (because the world didn't end), but a crap Monday (she got imprisoned by some minor power mad horny teenage Goa'uld god wannabe....again). Now, standing in the shower, hands resting on her knees, head bowed forwards, all she could do was focus on the blissfully hot water as it pounded against her lower back...scrap that, it had been a crap week...but Friday could turn out alright…
She'd got used to being classed, despite her protestations, as the base (and, during crises like the one they'd just had, sometimes planet) genius, expected to drop everything and produce, at a moment's notice, the solution to some random alien nightmare that, if not fixed by her, would end humanity as certainly Colorado liked to know it. She'd even got used to stepping through the gate and getting imprisoned, the thought no longer holding any serious thoughts of permanency or incarceration threat - they would escape, they always did. Amazingly, she'd also got used to returning to the SGC and being sucked into a situation which, whilst she had no experience, knowledge or involvement in, she was expected to solve in moments whilst others had spent days finding the solution impossible. Despite all that, Monday was still surreal....although the Goa'uld was so clichéd it was painful....
*some hours earlier....*
"Colonel, we have a problem..." came General Hammond's voice over the speakers as the weary, mucky and battered SG1 tramped down the ramp, all joy and delight at managing to avoid injury vanishing in a moment.
"No hello, glad you're alive Sir?" quipped Jack, removing his grimy ball-cap to rub his dirty forehead with an equally greasy hand.
"Hello, glad to have you back alive Jack, Major Carter..." ignoring Jack, Hammond started reading from a piece of paper. Jack soon lost interest as his boss stumbled over scientific jargon and measurements, only to suddenly become very interested when he felt a P90 being thrust at his stomach, accompanied a second later by the whumping sound of a pack dropping to the floor.
"Hailey thought you'd think it would mean 22 hours?" finished Hammond, looking back up from the paper to see his preferred scientific genius rapidly stripping off as much field kit as she could in preparation for sprinting up the stairs to the gate control room.
"Hailey? Where'd that figure come from?" called out Carter, frantically thinking through scenarios as her kit was gradually either dropped to the floor or pressed to her dumbstruck teammates. Even Teal'c looked bemused at her behaviour, although was drawing reassurance from Hammond's unsurprised participation in the conversation.
"I thought 44 and halved it..." explained the nervous Lieutenant, leaning across to the microphone from where she sat at the computer.
"Ah...McKay's advice?" asked Sam distractedly as she fought to remove a jammed webbing strap from its buckle, only for Teal'c to helpfully cut it with her field knife.
"Yes Ma'am..."
"44 hours to what?" asked Jack, finally finding his tongue.
"The end of the Solar System..." explained Carter in much the same way she'd tell him the Yankees had lost - with no emotion whatsoever, before sprinting (making the Marine on number 2 gun very happy - if they lived to Saturday, he was $500 up having picked 'the end of the universe as we know it' as the one thing to make Carter do something more than jog through the SGC) to the control room, missing Jack's question
"Does that include Pluto?" only to earn him a hard look from Daniel.
"What? It was demoted from a planet to a pluton last week...."
"What do you think Major?" asked Hammond, his nervousness decreasing with every page of data that Carter scanned. Hailey was good, but Carter was better...and had experience with these things.
"That in 14 hours it doesn't matter..." mumbled Sam, turning her back on the General in order to look at some models Hailey had done.
"How does this wipe out the entire Solar System?" asked Daniel quietly, struggling, given the potted exchanges between Hammond and Carter, to work out what was happening.
"Chain reaction apparently...we go, the moon flies off and hits something, which blows up and throws something...." explained Janet quietly, having joined SG1 in the Control Room when it became apparent that they weren't going to make it to the infirmary for a medical. It's amazing what impending oblivion did to protocols...
"Ah..." Daniel's sidebar had managed to ensure he missed something important with Carter, Hammond and Hailey.
"...rebuild it in situ," finished Carter, wiping her mucky face with the back of her equally mucky hand (why couldn't despotic Goa'uld tyrants clean out their prisons once in a while?), not looking forward to what she was about to do.
"You sure Major?"
"It's the only solution Sir, but will take me most of the time available…."
"Can't anyone help?"
"Pass me things yes, but there isn't much space down there..."
"And there's no one else?" The solution sounded so simple – rebuild a computer, reload a program and oblivion was avoided – why hadn't someone thought of that 10 hours ago wondered Hammond, only for the answer to be immediately provided by Sam.
"It took me 2 months to build it Sir...I'm really not sure even I can rebuild it in 13 hours..." admitted Sam honestly, only for Janet, who had a better clue what was happening, to interrupt.
"You'll have to shower first Major..." Holding up her hand to forestall any protests from Sam or Jennifer she continued practically, "... the amount of naquaddah in the soil samples the MALP recorded before your jump would suggest your muddy fingers..."
"...are capable of shorting something as I change it...damn..." Running her hands through her hair in frustration, Sam grabbed a clipboard with a load of data at it and thrust it at Teal'c.
"You're coming with me Teal'c..." she explained hastily, getting a nod of dismissal from Hammond before she rushed off, the patient Jaffa obediently following in her wake.....
...which, thought Sam idly, as she continued to enjoy being able to feel nothing except the bone warming massage of the hot water as it pounded on her back, was how she'd ended up having a rather speedy yet surreal shower, trying to get all the metallic soil off her body as Teal'c, with his back dutifully turned, recorded all the items she called out as needing for the rebuild, his deep rumbling voice echoing around the empty locker room when he recited the list back to her as she toweled herself vaguely dry before pulling on a clean set of BDUs and running through the corridors to save the world....again.
"We'll be right out here Doc..." explained Jack, leaning against the wall by the entrance to the locker room, Daniel and Teal'c stopping with him, their purpose clear - as long as Janet was in the locker room, no one else would be going in - the guys had the arguments already defeated, be it with rank, diplomacy or sheer physical bulk.
"Thanks Jack..."
"Don't mention it..." declared Jack, literally. 'Don't ask, don't tell' was a complex minefield for a CO like Jack, despite how happy he was for Sam and Janet. Smiling in thanks, Janet slipped into the steamy locker room, immediately locating her lover's open locker and, fortunately for them all, no one else around.
'Why does this always have to happen right before my downtime?' grumbled Sam, still lost in the sensations of her shower, content to stand there enjoying the hot water until there was no more - it was the only way she knew of to really recover from these grueling, never ending days. 'Why can't I get the crap beat out of me and then do an epic techno miracle when I've just had some restful leave? Why...'
Sam's inner monologue was brought to a sudden halt when her view, which had previously been of the white tile floor of the shower, was intruded on...by a pair of small, familiar, bare feet.
"Hey..." muttered Janet, just loud enough to be heard over the shower, threading her fingers into Sam's wet hair, guiding her lover's face up to look at her. noticing as she did, with a clinician's gaze, that Sam's face showed heavy smudges of exhaustion and that the blonde had been far too tired to even bother taking off her dog tags which now splashed wetly back against Sam's chest.
"Hey..." repeated Sam, looking at her lover in confusion. Why was Janet having a shower with her?
"You're crashing sweetie..." explained Janet kindly, guiding her pruning lover out of the shower and wrapping them both in big towels which she'd snagged from the infirmary's special 'fluffy' store, rather than relying on the coarser locker room issued ones, leaving the shower running - someone else could worry about it later.
"Huh?" blinking, Sam let her lover towel her dry before pulling a t shirt over her head to prevent a chill being caught, before Janet began efficiently toweling herself dry and redressing in the scrubs and lab coat she had removed a moment earlier.
"You tired and sore?"
"Yeah..." agreed Sam, watching Janet's every move as if it were the first time she'd ever seen someone get dressed.
"Hammond's gonna send you home for a rest once the briefing's done..."
"Briefing....oh!" Suddenly, Sam's bemused and overworked brain reassembled itself as she realised what had happened.
"You want a hand?" asked Janet, recognising the 'eureka' moment but choosing to ignore it for the moment, more concerned about getting Sam back into some clean and warm clothes.
"Mmm...I haven't done this for ages..." observed Sam, meekly submitting to Janet's intervention when it came to putting on socks and boots.
"Daniel's confused..." explained Janet, tying the last of the laces, reminded Sam that the only two other times this had happened had both been whilst Daniel was ascended.
"Ah...I'll explain..."
"Jack probably already has...ready?" asked Janet, holding out her hand to her lover who gratefully took it to help her stand before automatically letting go since they were still on base, a fact it would have helped if she'd remembered sooner.
"Ready..." Flashing a brilliant yet weary smile at Janet, Sam headed for the door, bracing herself for the teasing that would come.
"You squeaky clean Carter?"
"Yes Sir...sorry sir..."
"Just as long as you left me some hot water...."
"Yes Sir, it's already running for you Sir..." confirmed Sam, nodding her head back towards the locker room with the still running shower before heading towards the briefing room to apologize to General Hammond for losing track of time.
"Doctor Fraiser?"
"Yes Teal'c?" asked Janet, as the four of them set off following in Carter's weary wake.
"What part of Major Carter 'squeaks' when she is clean?"
The End