Morning Call

We call each other every morning.

Sam had just sat down with a bagel and her morning coffee when the phone rang beside her.

She picked it up without taking her eyes off the paper she was reading. "Sir?"

"Ooh, good guess. How'd you know it was me?" Somehow he always managed to make that sound funny - even after several months of morning calls.

She hadn't exactly been lying about the 'calling each other every morning' bit, although they certainly didn't do it to co-ordinate their fatigues and it wasn't quite every morning.

It was a pleasurable habit which she and the Colonel had picked up following Daniel's…departure.

"Sleep well, sir?"

"Yes, indeedy." He sounded chirpy. Daniel would have been wont to mutter 'disgustingly so' - but only after at least two cups of coffee. "You?"

Apart from dreaming that they hadn't been able to find a solution for the problem with the exploding Stargate… "Yeah."

"Excellent. So, what do you think we should do to haze Jonas?"

He'd been on this thread since the decision to accept Jonas onto SG-1. If he was going to take Jonas Quinn on SG-1, then he sure as hell wasn't going to make it easy.

Sam nibbled a bagel thoughtfully, "He's already been going rounds in the gym against Teal'c, you know."

"Teal'c said. It was how he was trying to get an 'in' on the team."

"You gotta give him high marks for persistence."

"Do I? Okay, okay. He's as stubborn as Daniel. Hopefully not as pig-headed, though."

Sam smiled briefly. At least they were mentioning Daniel now. Even if the memory hurt a little. "There are few people as one-track minded as Daniel, sir."

"You got pretty close sometimes."

"You always jerked me out of it, sir."

"Yeah, why was that, Carter?"

"Because you'd have had me up on charges of insubordination faster than I could explain my theory if I kept talking," she countered.

"You think so?"

"At least to begin with."

"Hey, that was a long time ago. Things were…different."

Which was one way of describing more than five years of working together.

"So…any ideas?"

"You threw me unprepared through the wormhole that first time."

"He's already been through the wormhole once."

"I'm pretty sure Kawalsky spiked my water bottle."

"Um…no comment."

"Ferretti admitted to swapping my replacement fatigues with ones two sizes too small."

"He did?" There was a silence - probably as he decided whether to decry all knowledge or to admit to it. Or else he was imagining her in too-small fatigues.

"Lucky for me we didn't stay over night."

"Lucky," he echoed, dryly. Okay, so the situation wasn't one that anyone would really call 'lucky'. They'd had dinner with the Abydonians, gone to see the Cartouche, and returned to find that Apophis had taken Sha're and Ska'ara.

"Bad phrasing."

"Very bad, Carter." There was a pause. Then, "So...hazing..."

Sam smiled, "Colonel, I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee this morning."

"So I should call back when you've begun on your second cup?"

"Maybe you should call in once we get in to work," Sam murmured.

There was the musical sounds of the Colonel's cellphone ringing in the background. "Hold that thought - and do not hang up!"

With a roll of her eyes, she held onto the phone and took another bite of the bagel.

The Colonel's conversation - what she could hear of it - was a series of 'yes, sir's with a 'I'll call Major Carter and inform her, sir' tacked on the end.

Her ears pricked, and a moment later he picked up the phone. "Long-range satellite just picked up an incoming ship to the system."

It wouldn't be the Asgard - they knew how to approach Earth in cloaked mode. "Goa'uld?"

"A mothership."

Sam swore silently to herself. It seemed that Anubis had come after them sooner than they'd thought. Maybe the Asgard defeat of Osiris hadn't been as successful as they'd thought. "Code red?"

"I'll see you in at work. Oh, and it's green today."

"Yes, sir." Sam knew he could hear the grin in her voice in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Colonel O'Neill was like that. He almost always managed to bring a smile to her face - or at least lighten the tension of the situation.

And there would be tension at the situation. And then some.

She hung up the phone, took another bite of bagel and went to get changed.

It was another day at the office.

*