Originally posted by Mandysg1
A telephone in the night – shattering the calm before the dawn as thoroughly as a naquadria bomb at a Langarran League of Nations meeting.
‘Lord Bulwer Lytton would be proud,’ she thought, dragging herself toward the offending object as it continued its offensive noise. Behind her, on the other side of the bed, the other occupant let go of her with a heavy, sleepy reluctance, and offered a very small, very profane comment in a tone best described as a whimper, before she heard the soft floomph of a pillow being pulled over a head.
‘House rules – your phone, you answer it,' she thought, rolling her eyes in the dark as she snagged the shrilling cell off the nightstand.
“Whaaat?” she groaned into the middle of another voice making comments that definitely didn’t equate to hello.
“ – the right number. It’s not Colonel Carter’s home number. This isn’t the Colorado Springs area code, and she shouldn’t have – “
“Doctor Lee, why the hell are you calling me at 0330?” she growled, falling back to the rucked bedclothes. “And then not even talking to me!”
Silence answered from the phone, an improbable combination of groan and snicker from the other side of the bed.
“I can tell you that.”
Worried and flustered from the phone, sleepily snide from the other side of the bed.
‘And I know exactly which explanation I actually want to hear,’ she thought.
“Dr. Lee?” she prompted.
“Colonel Carter? Is that you?”
“Nooooo, it’s grumpy Mrs. Counting-Sheep,” the voice from the other side of the bed suggested in tones acid enough to etch glass. “Who d’you expect to be awake and all happy about it at this time of night?”
“Yes, Dr. Lee. It’s Colonel Carter,” she said, with a snort. “What’s going on?”
“Well, uh, Walter gave us this number, and we didn’t know if it was yours and – “
“Dr. Lee. Chief Harriman never gave out a private phone number in his life. I don’t know where you got this number, but you’re talking to me now, and you’d better start making sense, or I’m going back to sleep. After I turn the cell phone off.”
“…the Colonel is cranky tonight…” from the other side of the bed.
Sam reached out blind and thumped the pillow-topped lump of covers gently, but making her intent unmistakable, too.
A snicker arose from the other side of the bed.
“Dr. Lee? Start talking,” Sam ordered.
And still he paused, clearing his throat.
“Well, I’m sorry to wake you up and all, Colonel, but I have bit of a situation here, and I’d really feel better if you’d come and take a look.”
“What situation, Dr. Lee?”
“Um, One of the new officers, on Colonel Reynolds’ VR remediation list?”
“I know the list. What about the officer?”
“Well, he’s a pilot, one of the F-302 pilots from Antarctica.“
“You’re calling me at 0330 to tell me we have a new officer from the battle over Antarctica on Colonel Reynolds’ VR Remediation list?”
“Yes… No! No – that’s not why I’m calling! He’s in the chair, and, um – “
“Um, what?”
“Um, he’s… um, he’s doing a Teal’c.”
“’Doing a Teal’c’? What does that mean?” Sam complained.
“…huge, dark and intimidating?” the voice from the other side of the bed suggested. “Wants a forehead tattoo. Soooo not US Air Force.”
“Is there someone else there with you, Colonel Carter?”
She made a face though no one involved in this multipart conversation could see it, including herself.
“If the question were any of your business, Dr. Lee, I might answer it. Now what do you mean by saying he’s doing a Teal’c?”
“Oh, um, sorry. I just thought – “
“Dr. Lee.”
“Um, sorry. It is 3:30 in the morning, you know.”
The huddle of covers on the other side of the bed quaked, violently, and began disassembling itself, comforter and blankets erupting here and there, as it informed her “…if you don’t yell at him soon, Carter, I’m gonna…”
“Dr. Lee!” she snapped in desperation, trying not to laugh out loud.
“What? Oh – well, Captain Mitchell’s interface with the VR chair is proving to be much more thorough than usual. Apparently, his physiological profile is extremely close to Dr. Jackson’s, and – “
“…bet they’re different right now…”
Sam snorted, thinking how much alcohol Sarah had let Daniel have before they poured him into bed for her. Dr. Gardner swore he didn’t get hangovers; The three relatively sober fourths of SG-1 wondered if she’d find out different, this time. Cassie had alternated between highly amused and high dudgeon that they’d do such a thing. Which visibly amused even Teal’c.
“Oh, yeah,” she chuckled, squeezing the hand that had decided to roost on her hip under the tumbled covers.
“Colonel Carter?”
“Go on, Dr. Lee,” she prompted, rubbing that warm hand, then lacing her fingers down through his.
“Well, like Teal’c in the first scenario of the training games, Captain Mitchell has, um, taken over the system, and he’s influencing the VR scenario. Um – strongly.”
“Is he in any danger?” Sam asked, grimacing as Dr. Lee’s words switched on an instant headache in her skull, and she remembered she was running on 1.5 hours of sleep here.
“Well, no, not like Teal’c. I mean, nobody’s been shooting at him, everything that comes up he gets out of - in the most ridiculous ways, actually - and he hasn’t died in the simulation, or anything."
“I sense a ‘but’,” Sam groaned, really not wanting to hear whatever was coming next, then sighing as the mattress shifted, and a warm hand slid up her shoulder to knead gently at the nape of her neck. The hand on her thigh came up and around to pull her gently back against another body, tucking her against his warmth and taking her with him as he leaned back into the pillows.
“Yeah – we can’t get him out of the chair. And things are getting… stranger… all the time in his scenario.”
“’Stranger,’” Sam echoed as a long arm hugged her close, eased her head to a broad shoulder.
“And stranger. Very, very strange. Please, Colonel Carter, we need you here – “
“…y’know, only I should get to whine at you like that…” that voice suggested against her free ear.
And she agreed silently, squeezing his hand.
“Dr. Lee, what happened with the auto disconnect? Surely your team has – “
“It didn’t work. Somehow – somebody forgot to initialize the system, and – “
“And that means it’s literally worthless, and you can’t disconnect the Captain remotely. He has to do it himself.”
Dr. Lee sighed in patent relief. “You see the situation. Thank God.”
“Well, no, I don’t. Not really. Have you inserted the disconnect messages into his VR simulation? Told him to disconnect?”
“Um, yes…”
“And why didn’t it work?”
“He just turns the messages into incidents in his scenario. He made the first one into some alien criminal from one of Dr. Jackson’s mission reports. The second one he turned into a communication device, and used it to send Dr. Jackson and the alien criminal to another galaxy. Then he turned the third one into an entire hostile alien race in that galaxy, and annoyed them into vowing to invade our galaxy.”
“Ambitious little bugger, isn’t he?” her bedmate suggested in her ear.
“Overachieving isn’t always a good thing,” Sam agreed.
“There is somebody there with you!” Dr. Lee exclaimed. “Colonel Carter, this is a classified matter – “
“Dr. Lee! My husband’s security clearance ranks mine.!”
“Your – uh – Colonel – uh – still Carter?”
“Yes, still Colonel Carter. Keep Captain Mitchell alive, Dr. Lee. I’ll be there… later today.”
“But – “
“No buts,” Jack snapped into the cell phone he’d abruptly appropriated. “Later, Bill.”
Dr. Lee’s squawked “General O’Neill!!!!” ended in a beep as the cell phone was summarily switched off.
‘At least he won’t hear me laughing,’ Sam thought, doing just that as Jack calmly tossed the thing off the bed, somewhere, to land with a little thump in the deeply padded carpet, and pulled her body back into the curve of his.
“And now, back to what we were doing before we were so rudely interrupted,” he grumbled, and settled his face comfortably into her hair. “Go back to sleep, Colonel Carter. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam chuckled, and closed her eyes.
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