Scotch Isn't the Answer
Scotch Isn't the Answer
by Queen Annae
Title: Scotch Isn't the Answer
Author: Queen Annae
Email: QueenAn_nae@hotmail.com
Category: Angst, Holiday, Romance, Series
Holiday: Christmas
Season: any Season
Pairing: other pairing
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Summary: Hammond finds someone at the SGC Christmas Party that he didn't expect.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Hammond sat at the bar in O'Malley's. He'd taken a break from watching the entertainment his group had put together for the Christmas party. He was using the line at the bar in the banquet room as an excuse to get out of the room.
"What'll it be, General?" The bartender asked.
"Scotch. Straight."
"Be right back."
The bartender sat the drink down in front of Hammond. Jack O'Neill slid onto the stool next to him and waved the bartender over. "I'll have the same." Indicating he wanted whatever the General was drinking.
"Someone send you to find me Jack?"
"Nope."
"Then why are you out here?"
"To get a drink."
Hammond was still looking at the drink in front of him. "I have to go back in there, don't I?"
"Any reason you don't want to?"
"Who invited her?"
"Well, Major Davis is always invited and it would have looked strange to the President to invite the Major and not her."
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"
"Not all the time."
Hammond took a sip of his drink. "Guess it wouldn't have looked right. But she didn't have to come. There is a party every night in December in Washington. She could have gone to one of them."
"She does have friends here, sir."
"OK, so if I give you those two points will you tell me who the hell let her and Ferretti do that number?"
"Oh."
Hammond looked for the first time at O'Neill. "You got something to say Jack then spit it out."
O'Neill thought about it for a moment. "Is it that she's here or that she looks great that's bothering you?"
"Both...plus that performance on stage with Ferretti."
"I warned you. Mac's full of hidden talents and surprises."
"Yeah." He finished his drink. Hammond looked for the bartender and motioned for him to get him another one.
"Sir?"
"What Jack?"
"Look, you need to come back to the party. I'm sure Mac will find an excuse to leave if I ask her to. She'll understand."
"Good. Then I can drop a few more notches in her mind."
"General. I don't know what happened between you and Mac. I'm not sure I want to know. All I know is that she would never do anything to hurt you. I'm sure she came here in the spirit of the season. I'm also sure she would leave in the same spirit."
"She's way too good for me."
O'Neill chuckled.
"Something funny Jack?" Hammond snapped back as he played with his new drink.
"Only that about a week after you two went your separate ways she called me."
Hammond looked over at O'Neill.
"She wanted to know if you were OK."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her that you were doing as expected...keeping it inside. Then she told me that maybe it was better that you two had ended it. She said that you were way too good for her."
"Yeah, sure. You know Jack; I've dated a few women over the last few years. Not a lot, but enough. Maggie was a breath of fresh air. She was bright, challenging and honest. It seemed to work when she was in DC and I was here. Then she was here and under my command. She almost died. In order to do my job, I pulled so far back from her that when her TDY was over there wasn't a relationship to go back to anymore."
He sipped some of the drink. Jack waited for him to continue, drinking some of the Scotch in his own glass.
"Then everything just went to hell. She was ready to resume the relationship and I couldn't find my feelings for her. When she was hurt on that last mission and I had to stop her traveling through the gate I expected her to yell at me, demand that I reinstate her, even trade on our relationship."
"She didn't do it, did she?"
Hammond shook his head. "No. She accepted it. I felt like I had taken something that she loved from her. I use to enjoy watching her go through the gate. At least I did until she started getting hurt as often as you did. After three months she was still in awe of it all. Even when things went wrong she still looked forward to the next mission. I took that from her. I put limits on a woman that had no limits."
"You are being too hard on yourself."
"Maybe...but I kept finding her at night, in the briefing room, looking at the gate. Then she told me of the offer the President made her."
"To work on projects other than us."
He nodded.
"Did you ever ask her what she wanted?"
Hammond finished his drink and asked for another. When the bartender came back with the bottle Jack put his hand over his glass. One scotch was enough for him.
"No. I didn't. I didn't want her to have to give up anything for me. She'd given up enough over the years."
"Maybe you should have asked her."
"No. I knew she would have passed on the job to try and put our relationship back together."
"Shouldn't she have had that chance?"
"Not if I didn't love her."
O'Neill was worried. Nothing was further from his mind than the thought that the General didn't love Mac. Every thing the General had done this night had screamed that he still had feelings for Mac. Had O'Neill misjudged him that much?
"But you did love her. You loved her enough to let her find a new life for herself to replace the one that you thought you had taken from her."
Hammond downed the scotch and asked for another but didn't comment.
"Did you ever think that maybe the reason that Mac didn't argue with you was because she was ready to move on to another life...a life with you?"
"Why? What could I offer her?"
O'Neill now understood.
"Mac loves you. Still does if I am reading her tonight. You love her. That's all Mac has ever wanted...someone to love her. Not the soldier, not the mediator, not the negotiator, not the persona that she puts out there, she wants someone to love the warm, caring and if you don't mind me saying, incredibly sexy woman that she is."
"Too much water under the bridge. I watched her up there with Ferretti. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She's up there, on the stage, doing "Santa Baby" in a dress that couldn't have accented her figure better if it had been painted on her. How Ferretti kept a straight face through it beats me. She's lost weight, brightened up and looks incredible. Seems like dumping me was a good for her."
"She dumped you?"
"Sort of. We've split up a few times over the years, taken breaks in the relationship, whatever they call it now...she got tired of it when I didn't try to talk her out of taking on the new projects. She asked me how long I expected her to wait for me to make up my mind. I told her that I had."
O'Neill waited.
"And I told her that I wasn't sure we had a future together."
"And she got mad and blew a gasket."
"You know the woman well."
"Mac was scared, wanted reassurance and you said the one thing that would push her over the edge."
"I believe she said something along the lines of that there was no sense in her wasting her time if I didn't think it would work."
Hammond downed the rest of the drink and got up from the stool. "That's pretty much what happened."
"You still love her?"
Hammond turned to O'Neill. "What do you think?"
O'Neill finished his drink and followed the General back into the party.
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