The Pentangular Gate

Daniel took one last furtive look down the hall before he closed the door behind him with no small measure of relief. He looked around the darkened office he was conscripting for his own use, briefly considered turning the lights on, and then rejected the idea. Lights on in Jack’s office might lead to suspicion. Granted, when he couldn’t be found in either his own office or the mess, it wouldn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out his hiding place. But his fellow scientists were mostly too intimidated by Colonel O’Neill to actually brave the lions den. Which should buy him at least a couple of hours of peace and quiet before someone asked Sam to track him down.

Daniel gratefully sat behind Jack’s tidy desk. He eyed the towering stack of papers in Jack’s inbox. Maybe all those jokes about Jack avoiding paperwork weren’t entirely unjustified. Then he noted the equally tall stack in the outbox and revised his opinion. Maybe the Air Force just generated a lot of paperwork. Daniel made a mental note to go easy on Jack about filing reports for a few weeks.

He nudged Jack’s laptop out of the way and leaned down to retrieve his own from the bag at his feet, only to find it filled with yellow legal pads, artifacts, two books on the history of Mesopotamia, several empty coffee cups, and no computer. Crap, he must have forgotten it in his haste to escape his 'minions' (Jack's word, not his) incessant interruptions. Daniel’s eyes roamed the room as he considered calling Teal’c and asking the Jaffa to retrieve it for him, but his eyes landed on Jack’s laptop instead. Perfect, he thought. Jack wouldn’t mind if he used it to get some work done. It wasn’t as if the Colonel was using it right now anyway.

Half an hour later, Daniel automatically clicked on the bookmarks tab in search of a reference and was momentarily disorientated to find his favorite linguistic link in the wrong spot. Then he remembered that he was on Jack’s computer, and was happily flattered that Jack cared enough to have this simple site at the ready. Following a hunch, he scanned the list further and found another website he himself used on a frequent basis - Center for Astrophysics - to try to understand Sam’s reports.

Feeling vaguely guilty, Daniel checked the other links and found two more bookmarks they had in common, the link to Cassie’s blog and the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. Then he stumbled across a site that he never expected to find in Jack’s computer and was certainly not in his own browser. It was innocently labeled ‘My Scores.’ Daniel clicked on the link, hoping to get some insider information he could use to win back some money he’d lost to Jack last week, and stared in puzzlement at the page it opened. It was a website for dating advice; the page it opened to in particular was about the hazards of dating a coworker.

Daniel’s mind automatically flitted to Sam, but no, that ship had sailed a long time ago. Then why did Jack need this site? The only other person he flirted with on a regular basis was…oh. Daniel smiled softly to himself. Jack’s just looking at the wrong site. Leaving the title the same, Daniel switched the link to one that actually was on his own browser. Then he closed up shop, went back to his own office, and sat back to wait.