He said as much to Sam, one night when they were up late at her house, working. Sometimes it was easier to lug everything they needed off base, than to put up with the constant interruptions, or worse, "Didn't I tell you people to get some sleep?" from Landry or Cam, or from Jack, who had been known to call four times in an hour. Damn unlimited nights and weekends.
Sam didn't reply, just told Daniel to get the ice cream out of the freezer.
Their laptops and piles of books and charts and two external hard drives were squashed onto her kitchen table, because the one in the dining room was full. It was colder here, with the draft from the back door, and the lack of elbow room made Daniel cranky. He said that, too.
"Come on, can't we move them?"
"No," Sam said around a mouthful of brownie.
"Don't they make carrying cases?"
"They do. I just don't have one. Could I convince you to make more coffee?"
Daniel sighed and got up. He needed some, too. "We could just put something on top of them."
"No."
He wandered into the other room to stretch his legs while the coffeemaker gurgled. "Take pictures and reassemble them later?"
"No! No pictures!"
Well, that sounded more vehement than necessary. Daniel studied the half-completed puzzles, the leftover pieces lying on top of them, the boxes with glossy photographs. Jack's was a forest of little green aliens; Sam's was a sci-fi cityscape, the kind that made her grumble her way through movies; picking out puzzles to taunt each other was apparently part of the game.
The cityscape was winning. It also had at least a dozen pieces right next to where it looked like they would go, but not yet inserted.
Daniel choked back a laugh. "You cheat!" he called, with as much censure as he could manage at two-thirty in the morning, with a sugar high and a caffeine craving.
"Is the coffee ready yet?" she asked.
He allowed himself a quiet chuckle, thinking that he might give Jack some surreptitious help (Would she notice? Did he care?) but deciding the last place he wanted to be was in the middle of this. It was just slightly ahead of being tied to a chair, unable to cover his ears while Vala mocked him for days on end.
"You don't want pictures so you can cheat when Jack's not here!"
Sam appeared in the doorway with two cups of coffee, and a smile that said he was cute when he was oblivious. "Daniel. Of course I cheat."
He would never get it. Never.
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