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Cheyenne Mountain is a small base. Rumors get started – and blown out of proportion – easily, rapidly, and frequently. Sam is particularly good at not putting any stock in what she hears. And she hears a lot.
There aren't that many women on the base. Yet. She hopes that will change as the program grows older. But in the meantime, it's like a little social club: the girls of the SGC. And boy can those girls talk.
She knows the guys on her team. Or, she likes to think she does. Really, what's it been? A few months? She's been on some missions with them, they've seen and done some things. But that doesn't mean she knows them.
When the rumors start about the colonel and Daniel she mostly chalks it up to shop talk but part of her starts to wonder.
The do have an interesting sort of bond. They don't seem to like each other much some of the time and yet they have this weird ability to get one another.
She wouldn't have chalked the colonel up as gay – not having had a wife and son. She wouldn't have even said bisexual. But what does she really know? This is the modern military and not everything is as it seems. Besides is there really a "gay guy type"? Stereotypes notwithstanding, she thinks they probably come in all shapes, sizes, temperaments and personalities.
There was the thing with Kynthia, but can she use that to determine anything when Colonel O'Neill had been drugged?
She can sort of see it with Daniel, though. Like maybe he's not gay but he doesn't really matter what gender the potential partner is. She thinks for him it's probably more about the connection than it is about anything else.
So, she watches them. For the next several missions, she scrutinizes their every move until, finally, the colonel turns to her with exasperation. "What are you looking for, Captain?"
She's so shocked that he's noticed her perusal of him – while he helped Daniel sort through his pack for something, she'd missed exactly what they were looking for – and so she sputters for a moment. "Um, nothing. Sir."
"I'm not buying what you're selling, Carter. What's on your mind?"
She wants to ask, she doesn’t to ask, technically she can't ask. So she begs off. And it's weeks again before it comes up.
In the commissary, Daniel makes an offhand remark about an evening at the colonel's house the night before. Sam is immediately confronted by the mental images of the two men locked in a passionate embrace. And still, with a few more weeks of knowing him under her belt, she is no closer to reconciling that image with the one she is confronted with day to day.
This goes on for months. She starts to think there really is something between Daniel and the colonel. They spend a lot of time together off base. They communicate with an eerie sort of telepathy. They get each other's jokes despite the gross differences in their senses of humor.
And then one day, over lunch, the colonel is talking about a woman he met at a bar and how he might take her out. Daniel has walked up behind him and Sam's doing everything she can to get the colonel to stop talking before Daniel overhears but it doesn't happen.
Daniel, however, just sits down and jumps into the conversation.
"You mean that redhead from last night? Not your type."
"What the hell do you know about it?" the colonel grouses good-naturedly.
"She's easy. And you're a lot of things, Jack, but you're not the easy-lay kind."
Sam gapes, though she tries not to.
"Sorry, Sam. I didn't think about offending you." Daniel takes a bit of his sandwich.
"You didn't," she assures him, trying to cover her incredulity.
"Carter here wonders why I'm talking about a woman in front of my boyfriend."
Sam, who had been taking a sip of water, chokes. It takes her a moment to look at him but when she does, he's grinning.
"Right?"
"Uh--" she's at a loss for words.
"What the hell are you talking about, Jack?"
"The rumor mill has been working overtime and it seems like you and I are an item. Carter bought it."
Daniel, for his part, laughs. "I had no idea. How long have we been together?"
"Who knows?" Jack says with a slow, wide grin. "I think it depends on who you ask. You got a theory, captain?"
"I... sir... I..."
His grin widens. "Assumptions, Carter. You know what they say."
She does. And she feels every bit of the embarrassment that comes from incorrect assumption. Not just because she was wrong, but because she's been called out for speculating on her CO's sex life. In fact, she's a little relieved. Because the truth is, she finds him insanely attractive. And, while nothing could or would ever come of the little crush she was harboring, it was kind of nice to know her crush wasn't a taken man.
Then he shifts her frame of reference. "Honestly, Carter, you're more my type," he says with a wink. He picks up his tray, stacks it at the trash area, and leaves the commissary.
"You really thought... me and Jack?" Daniel's laughter draws the attention of the marines two tables over while she's still reeling from that last off-handed comment.
"It's not funny," she says, because she's embarrassed, not because it's not funny. It actually kind of is.
"Actually," Daniel says, sobering, "you really are Jack's type."
"Oh no," she says, quickly gathering the refuse from her lunch. "I'm not going to become the next grist for the rumor mill."
"Too late," he says and tosses a wink in her direction. He goes back to his sandwich leaving her standing there, gaping like a fish out of water. She doesn't want to know, she tells herself as she throws away her trash. She really doesn't want to know.