11Disclaimer – I am obviously doing something wrong as I have not been able to put this on my profile. So - I do not make any money from these stories and I do not own any of Stargate SG1 although a little piece of my heart now belongs to Jack O'Neill.
Pete Shanahan was a pretty tolerant guy, but some things were starting to irritate him.
When Sam talked it had been 'Daniel this' and 'Daniel that' and initially he had wondered whether he had cause to be jealous, but he had slowly come to realise that she saw Daniel as a brother. She certainly saw more of him than her real brother and they seemed to have a bond which he could come to accept. Daniel was friendly, but it could be difficult to follow his conversation sometimes as he seemed to assume everyone had a doctorate and could follow his thinking. He and Sam would have a long discussion, of which only half the words made sense and none of the conclusions.
Teal'c was spooky. He lurked, there was no other word for it. Pete decided he was probably being paranoid to think Teal'c lurked around Sam more than anyone else, especially when Pete was around. Knowing the guy was an alien only freaked him out more and he had the nasty feeling that Teal'c could, and would, crack him open like a monkey nut if he so chose. He also watched. Watched Sam closely as if seeking the answer to some question and then watched Pete just as closely, but with a more puzzled air. Pete decided he was probably misinterpreting Jaffa customs when he wondered if Teal'c even liked him. Everyone like Pete, he was easy-going and friendly. Teal'c did not talk much and had an odd way of phrasing things which made him hard to understand, so they had never really had a proper conversation.
After a while, though, it was not the conversations that bothered Pete or the repeated references to Daniel. It was the unspoken words, the references he had no chance of understanding, the shared experiences and camaraderie. Pete had lots of friends and colleagues with whom he shared a beer, but he had no experience of such a close knit team and it bugged him. He wanted all of Sam, not just the bits left over from the SGC, the parts he was allowed to share. He wanted her job to stop when she left the mountain and at a decent hour –he got that sometimes there were emergencies, but this working late for the fun of it or just to finish a piece of research. It made him feel he mattered less than her job, than the latest technological artefact they had found.
But what bothered him the most was the feeling of something hidden. There were clues, the slight pause before she mentioned the general on the rare occasions she said his name, the carefully fixed expression on her face as she did so. At first he thought they had disagreed or even simply did not get on, but that was probably wishful thinking. No, Sam held him in high regard, that much was obvious, but she was very careful to be scrupulously professional with him at all times. It was unnatural, as was the way they never used each other's first name. Pete had been on team night with work buddies and rank was never an issue. OK, so the Air Force was a little different, but he had heard her calling others by first names and nicknames when off the base. But it was always 'the General' or 'General O'Neill' as if that was the way she thought of him in her head.
Pete believed it to begin with, but it began to bug him and make him wonder what they were hiding with all the formality. Even before she left him he had signs of what was really going on. Waking up to her screaming 'Jack' in the grip of a nightmare could be put down to memories of a bad mission and he accepted the excuse. But one night when he thought he heard 'Jack' whispered in a totally different tone he kept it to himself, trying to convince himself he had imagined that soft voice or had dreamt it.
When he met her father he knew it had not gone well, but it was a weird situation and so to be expected. But it bugged him to hear Jack O'Neill call Jacob 'Dad' and it bugged him even more that no one questioned it or thought it unusual. Sam said it was just the General's way and muttered something about it relating to how they had met, but her voice lacked conviction and it was clear she was quite happy with her boss calling her father 'Dad', despite the fact that her fiancé had not been granted that privilege.
It bugged him big time that she did not even bother to ring and tell him her father had died. He had managed to excuse her to Mark when he rang trying to locate her. But emergency or not, a simple phone call would have been the natural thing to do. Surely it was his job to comfort her? To stand at her side through a difficult time?
He made a final effort to show her how much he loved her and to give her everything she wanted. But her reaction to the house had been subdued which he had put down to the stresses of her job and tiredness. So it really bugged him when she threw it all back in his face. It bugged him almost as much as the sight of Jack O'Neill stood next to her at her father's graveside. Stood so close and watching her like a hawk. Almost as much as hearing Mark say how protective of Sam the General had been at the wake.
When they announced the Stargate programme to the nation people had a hard time believing that he, Pete Shanahan, all round good guy, had known about it. He could see their point of view, he was just a cop with no claim to heroic action or fame, but it was irritating to hear the scepticism in their voices.
But what bugged him most of all was hearing the women sigh over pictures and filmed news clips of General Jack O'Neill and the lack of surprise they expressed when it became clear that Colonel Sam Carter had left Pete for him. For Pete had no way to compete and no way to justify everything to himself. He could no longer kid himself that Sam had just been going through a difficult patch after the death of her father or that she didn't know a good thing when she saw it. The General was a hero and had saved the world, indeed the galaxy, more than once. And on top of that he had Sam. That's what bugged Pete the most.