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Jack sighed and threw down his scissors.
Damn! Another busted-up snowflake. He eyed the paper with an ire he normally reserved for Goa’uld, as though his fiery gaze could melt the flimsy creation to a puddle like the snow it unsuccessfully emulated. The unfortunate thing was that he had to admit that it was leaps better than his previous attempts. Well, he’d at least managed to keep it in one piece this time. Low bar.
Jack sipped his beer and took in the underwhelming paper glory. It looked more like a boxy, lopsided hexagon with holes poked through it than a snowflake, and it was nothing in comparison to those perfect pictures of Christmas cheer and childhood Carter kept churning out. See, she knew how it was done! There was a precision to her cuts, some thoughtfulness to her designs— a thoughtfulness that, in this case, Jack lacked.
Carter saw him frowning and shot him a sheepish smile as she cut a small slit into her own folded sheet. “That’s not bad, sir.”
“Ah, don’t flatter me, Carter.”
“No, it’s nice!” she insisted with a laugh. Then, she added with a smirk, “Reminds me of how my baby niece used to draw stop signs.”
A snort came from Daniel’s side of the couch. Traitor. Jack shot him a dirty look. “Oh, like you’re one to talk.”
Daniel gave him a patented innocent look, his wide eyes twinkling with a snarky mischief that betrayed his façade. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Nor have you produced any flurries of Christmas cheer to write home about. I see no snowflakes over there, Dr. Jackson. Just a lot of sad paper shreds.”
“Well, unlike you, I at least have the excuse that I’ve never done it before.”
“Well, neither has Teal’c and look at him.”
As though to punctuate the sentence, Teal’c unfolded his paper snowflake, and, dammit, it was one of the best Jack had ever seen.
Daniel’s lips pursed in a pout. “Well, that’s not… wow.”
“Thank you, Daniel Jackson.”
“Come on, guys. It’s just basic geometry,” Sam interjected brightly. “When you fold the paper up, you’re finding a way to create a six-fold rotational symmetry while also accounting for the reflectional symmetries that snowflakes naturally demonstrate. Knowing that, all you have to do is just— y’know, make a pattern.”
Jack stared, and Daniel gave an awkward cough before saying, “Right. That’s… all you have to do.”
She chuckled. “I’m just messing with you. It's not hard once you know the right tricks, and Cassie showed me how a couple weeks ago. Here. You just have to fold it like this.”
The boys watched her intensely as she demonstrated the proper technique. Soon, armed with the secret generational knowledge of Christmas decoration-making, they were off to the races and churning out snowflakes like nobody’s business. They were making a mess, they knew. There were enough snowflakes to fuel an entire blizzard, and those thousands of tiny byproduct scraps that littered every surface around them would inevitably be a pain in the neck to clean up, but at that moment, as he watched his teammates laugh and smile, Jack couldn’t seem to bring himself to care.
Ah, heck. What did it matter? He was with his friends. It was Christmas. That was enough. He would be by their side no matter what, come rain or shine or paper flurries.