Title: Rules for Keeping your Civvie
Author: tresa_cho
Rating: G
Fandom: The Sentinel/Stargate SG-1
Spoilers: The Sentinel: all seasons, SG-1: s1-4

Summary: Jack and Jim meet in a bar one night.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be mine. If were mine, would be making buttloads of money.



Jim Ellison swirled his glass, watching the ice circle in the water. The music in the bar ebbed and flowed around him. He let his ears adjust the noise level lower, so that he could start to pick out the white noise of discussion from the patrons. He came to bars like this to train his sense of hearing and smell. He was finally to the point where he could sit in one for hours without getting overwhelmed by the smell of booze and smoke. Now he just had to work on his hearing.

At the table behind him, two men sat and nursed cool beers out of cans. They were talking about accounting. The booth of giggling girls off to his left was talking about the latest college gossip. At the far end of the bar, some old coot was flirting shamelessly with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. She was enjoying it, though, laughing and giggling coyly.

“Damn linguist…”

Jim raised an eyebrow and cast a surreptitious glance in the direction of the grumble. It had been sub-vocalized, and Jim took a moment to mentally pat himself on the back that he had detected it through everyone else’s chatter. A long, lean man sat a few seats down from Jim at the bar, one hand cupped around a tonic. His other hand fisted in his graying brown hair.

“Five more minutes, he says… Meaning-of-life stuff, he says…”

Jim smothered a smirk behind his hand and stood, grasping his glass. He meandered slowly over to the man and sat down beside him. As he did, his eyes caught a glare of light reflecting off metal around the man’s neck. Dogtags. The man was military.

“Sorry, couldn’t help but overhear. You’re having problems with a linguist?” Jim leaned on the bar. The man glanced at him in surprise.

“Overhear? I didn’t say anything.” Brown eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Sub-vocalization. Your lips still move. I did some time in the Army Rangers. Jim Ellison, Cascade PD.” Jim held out his hand.

“Colonel Jack O’Neill, Air Force.” Jack took the offered hand and shook firmly.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir.” Jim had to stop himself from snapping to attention.

“Drop the ‘sir’. I’m on weekend leave.” Jack waved his hand absently. He stared morosely into his tumbler. “Linguist, archeologist, humanitarian, all-around-general civilian.”

“Ah, civilians. You have a civilian partner?” Jim cautiously approached the conversation. He knew better than anyone how secret some military ops could be. Jack tipped his glass back.

“Yea, you could say that. Or you could say I have someone on my team with a ‘Maim Me’ sign stuck on his back.”

“Or ‘Kidnap Me’.”

“Or ‘Torture Me’.”

“Should have rules for keeping civilians,” Jim noted, signaling the barkeep for another water. Jack grunted agreement, leaning back and stretching like a dog getting up from a nap.

“Yea, like don’t ever let him touch anything. Even if it sparkles with ancient culture or whatever,” Jack growled. “It might open a door or set off a trap.” Jim snorted. It sounded like something Sandburg would do.

“Don’t ever tell him to stay put -- ” Jim started. Jack picked up.

“He won’t listen.” Jack lifted his head and stared at Jim. Jim smirked in response. Jack offered, “Archeologist?”

“Anthropologist,” Jim corrected. Jack waved his hand absently.

“Same difference. It all goes under that humanities, culturalist mumbo-jumbo. If you give them something more than a million years old to look at, it’ll keep ‘em for hours,” Jack groused.

“That can be a good thing, sometimes it keeps them out of your hair,” Jim pointed out. Jack nodded his agreement. “But you don’t want to them too excited, then they don’t think straight.”

“Yea, oh, and don’t ever let them get their hands on ‘meaning-of-life’ stuff. They might risk their life for it,” Jack grumbled. He shook his head. “So not worth it.” He lifted his tumbler up and slammed it down with a clink. “And make sure he’s armed.”

“Corollary: Make sure he knows how to use it,” Jim added. “He’s no good if he can’t take the safety off.” Jim glared darkly into his water.

“Already working on that one,” Jack said. “One hour of shooting in the gallery a week. He can hit the target now.”

“How long have you been practicing?”

“Five weeks.” Jack and Jim shared a laugh. “One time he emptied his M9 without actually hitting anything. I told him that was it, and he needed to learn how to shoot.”

“Emptied it?” Jim’s eyes went wide. Jack shrugged, his military façade sliding into place. Jim didn’t press his curiosity. Covert Ops were covert for a reason. Jack signaled for another to ease the silence.

“Don’t smile at him if he’s pissed,” Jack suggested. “He won’t throw things at you, can’t waste the ancient crockery, but he will make your life miserable.”

“Do you routinely smile at people when they’re angry at you?” Jim grinned. Jack rolled his shoulders.

“Defense mechanism. Besides, it just gets them angrier. Which amuses me more. I don’t react well to people yelling at me.”

“I suggest not calling him a hippie,” Jim offered. Jack rolled his eyes.

“Or four-eyes. Oh, and make sure you always have sun block. And one of those cloths to clean eyeglasses with… Oh, and tissues. Lots of tissues.”

“Your geek has allergies?”

“You could say that.”

“Mine’s into all that organic stuff, meditation and natural harmony and whatever. I don’t think he has allergies, he’s too healthy. Except when he really gets into a subject. Then he forgets to eat. And sleep.”

“I can’t count the times I’ve found him slumped over his desk using a textbook as a pillow. There are days when I bring him a sandwich and have to sit with him till he finishes it so that he won’t pass out on a mission.” Jack shook his head.

“Don’t let him near strange women,” Jim growled, shuddering as he remembered Alex and the achingly close-call.

“Oh, do not even get me started on strange women. Bad news all around. Especially ones who are addicted to Goa- er, gold…dust.”

“Golden?” Jim helped.

“Yea, that. Or ones who want to marry him. Or ones who want to own his soul, or ones who want him for his DNA to start a new family of psychopaths.”

Jim had a feeling Jack could have gone on a lot longer, but he cut himself off. That was quite a string of women. He wondered vaguely what exactly Jack O’Neill did for the military. While on that vein… “Don’t let him take food from strangers.” An instance with a particular pizza came to mind. Jack’s face went all pinched, and Jim could have sworn he heard ‘marriage cake’, but Jack was muttering incoherently around it and he couldn’t be sure. “Don’t let him go undercover. Ever.”

Jack gave him an incredulous look. “You let him go undercover? What were you thinking?”

“Obviously I wasn’t. I have since learned my lesson, don’t worry.” Jim shook his head. “We should be writing these down.”

“Yea, and then send them to our civvies.”

“So they can make our life miserable? I don’t think so. I value my… well… everything.”

Jack reached his hands behind his head and smiled. “Sure would be nice to see his face turn red though.”

“See who’s face turn red?”

Jack rocked forward, elbows slapping against the bar top. He whirled. Jim turned to see Sandburg grinning wildly at him. Standing at his elbow was a taller, broad-shouldered man with glasses and brown hair.

“Jim! You’ll never guess who I met!” Sandburg looked like he had just been given tenure. “This guy,” he gestured emphatically with his hands, “is not only an archeologist, but he speaks twenty six different languages, and knows everything there is to know about ancient cultures.” Jim cast a glance at Jack and found the other’s anthropologist was talking excitedly about Sandburg. Sandburg leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially, “Jim, this guy thought the pyramids were built by aliens!”

“Crazy.” Jim encouraged quietly, amused.

“Yea, yea, he thought the Great Pyramids were giant landing pads for huge alien space ships to land on earth and kidnap humans. How crazy is that?”

“Yea, crazy,” Jim said. Jack was fending off his geek with a bored look. “What exactly are you guys doin’ in Cascade?” Jim asked, trying to rescue Jack.

Jack looked like he was going to answer, but the man standing at his back supplied, “Researching Ancient artifacts.” Jim blinked, wondering why his subconscious had capitalized ‘ancient’. Something about the emphasis in the way he said the word…

“Why is the military interested in ancient artifacts?” Jim asked. Jack gave him a pained look. Jim shrugged sheepishly.

“Er. That’s uh, classified,” the man with the glasses said slowly. It didn’t seem like he was quite all there, or perhaps his brain just worked too fast for his mouth to catch up. Jack stood and pushed a twenty at the barkeep. The man tipped his head in acknowledgment and went back to wiping down glasses. The man in glasses stepped back to let Jack stand, and glanced at the ground before looking quickly back up at Jack.

“We should get going.” Jack held out his hand. “Pleasure meeting with you.”

“Same.” Jim stood and shook Jack’s hand. Sandburg and alien-guy hugged rather enthusiastically, both grinning like idiots when they pulled apart.

“I’ll hook you up sometime,” alien-guy said. Sandburg nodded excitedly. Jack raised an eyebrow, but alien-guy just smiled sweetly. Jack caught Jim’s eye. Waddya gonna do?

Jack escorted his alien-guy out with a hand pressed lightly to the small of the man’s back. Sandburg turned to Jim. “He offered to get me access to databases that most researchers haven’t seen yet. I can’t wait to get back and see what he’s got to offer.”

“That’s great, Chief. More exciting cultural stuff for you.” Jim grabbed his coat from the back of the chair and handed the barkeep a twenty. “So what exactly did two talk about?”

“Oh, just how crazy it can be to work with cops and military. Sometimes it feels like you need a rulebook just to work together.”

Jim grinned and ruffled Sandburg’s hair. “Yea. Rulebook.”

Tags: crossover, fic, sg-1, ts
feelin': annoyed
hearing': the sentinel