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“Let’s see...” Cameron Mitchell set the box he’d been carrying down on the desk and crossed back over to where Sam was standing just inside the door of his new office. “...Jacob, Jack, John, Jonas, George...well, sort of...is it just me, or are you seeing a pattern here? All the men in the firm have names with a ‘J’ sound. Makes me feel left out.”
Sam laughed. “You forgot about Daniel and TC.”
Cam frowned and scratched his head, plumbing his memory. He’d met so many people just on the first trip up from the parking garage that they were all starting to blur together in his mind. “Daniel...is that the guy that people keep asking me if I’m his brother?”
“That would be him.”
Mitchell nodded, pointing towards the door and by default everything on the other side of it. “Who was that one chick, anyway? With the gene pool comment?”
An expression of aggravated amusement crossed her face. “That would be Vala Maldoran, one of Daniel’s more...colorful clients.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Colorful?”
“Well, they met when she stole his car, then when the case went to court, she specifically requested him as her defense...”
“No...”
“Yep,” she nodded. “Oh, and then there was the time she handcuffed herself to him and conveniently lost the key. No one’s quite sure why Daniel keeps taking her cases, but--”
“I’ll tell you why: she’s hot, and from the look of things, she’s hot for him too.” Sam shot him a look at that, and he grinned. “Jealous?”
She snorted and folded her arms across her chest. “Please--if I got jealous every time someone was attracted to Daniel, I’d have to shoot half the firm.”
“Right,” Cam chuckled. “Anyway, back to my point about the names around here: TC doesn’t count, ‘cause that dude’s practically from another planet anyway, and Daniel’s last name is Jackson, so...”
“So?”
“I’m just thinking maybe I ought to change mine, to fit in a little better,” Cam grinned as he ushered her out and closed the door behind them. “What do you think? ‘Jonathan’ maybe?”
“That’s Jack’s full name.”
“Damn.”
~+~+~+~
“It was fairly impressive,” Daniel admitted to Jonas and John. The three of them were hanging out in the hallway watching the new guy move in. “Mitchell’s testimony pretty much made the case. Between the evidence he’d gathered on Anubis beforehand and the accident...we couldn’t have done it without him. To put it mildly, the Denver PD and the DA’s office were ecstatic. The DA was considerably less pleased to discover Jack had offered Mitchell a job here.”
“I can imagine,” John agreed. “Probably wanted to kill him for stealing their new star right out from under their noses.”
“Basically, yep.”
It had been three months since the case wrapped that had finally taken down Gould and Associates, over a year since Jim Anubis, one of the firm’s senior partners, had rigged Mitchell’s brakes to fail, almost killing the man who had finally rolled up his sleeves and dug deep enough to find the evidence to tie them to the local mafia. Needless to say, when Cam had presented his case to Jack and asked for help in pushing it through the courts, he’d earned himself an open invitation to join Carter, Hammond and O’Neill.
“I heard a rumor that Jack’s planning to retire, and move Mitchell right up to senior partner,” Jonas put in. “Think it’s true?”
“Passing over Daniel, Sam and TC? Nah,” John shook his head. “I never buy the rumor mill. I mean, look at some of the crap that was going around when I joined the firm. Or hell, even after!”
“You mean like the one where you’re Jack’s distant cousin, otherwise he would never have hired such a reckless maverick?” Daniel asked, amused.
“Yeah, like that. Who started that one, anyway?”
“McKay, I think.”
“Why that...” John was speechless with anger for a moment. “That little weasel. He’s given me nothing but grief since I got here--what did I ever do to him?”
“He’s jealous. Of you and Judge Weir,” Jonas suggested.
Sheppard stared at the paralegal, surprised. “McKay has a thing for Weir?”
Daniel snorted. “He has a thing for you. He just won’t admit it to himself because his ego’s too fragile to handle the idea that he might be attracted to a man.”
“Funny, ‘fragile’ isn’t the word I’d use for McKay’s ego,” John shot back. “What about...?” He made a gesture roughly indicative of breasts, namely a certain fellow junior partner’s breasts.
“Sam?” Daniel shrugged. “That’s just wounded pride, I think--it’s pretty much common knowledge that Rodney McKay is the one man Sam assiduously avoids.”
“I heard she wasn’t too keen on Mitchell either, at first,” Sheppard ruminated, peering down the otherwise empty hallway in the direction Mitchell and Carter had gone, heading back to the parking garage for another load. “Though that seems to have changed, obviously...”
“Now, that one I can confirm,” Daniel nodded. “Jack told me he had to practically order her to take Mitchell’s statement. He even called her Carter.”
Jonas made understanding noises, but John just frowned. “Okay, maybe I’m still too new around here, but what difference does it make what he calls her?”
“‘Carter’ is what Jack uses to put pressure on Sam,” Jonas explained. “To remind her of her duty to the firm, as a senior partner’s daughter.”
“It’s also rumored that it’s what she asks him to call her in bed if she’s feeling particularly kinky,” Daniel contributed with a wicked twinkle in his eyes.
“In bed, huh? Wonder if that’d work for the rest of us,” Sheppard speculated.
“I wouldn’t risk alienating one of the few judges we have in our pocket to find out, if I were you,” Daniel teased in return.
John shrugged. “Okay, here’s a question then: why? Why did she have to be almost ordered to take his statement?”
“Because,” Daniel stated calmly. “A man in traction isn’t much use to Samantha Carter.”
Sheppard’s eyes widened. “Oh, you mean...”
“Uh huh.”
~+~+~+~
“Everbody’s staring at us,” Cam pointed out in a stage whisper as they once again navigated the corridor leading to his office, carrying the last load from his car.
Sam gave him a wicked smile. “Probably wondering how long it’ll take us to break in the desk.”
“Oh yeah?” Mitchell’s spine straightened, an expression of interest coming into his eyes. “Is that an offer?”
She reached the door and leaned provocatively against it. “Do you want it to be?”
~+~+~+~
The door to Mitchell’s office slammed heavily with the weight of two bodies, and a wicked grin spread across Daniel’s face. “Wait here a second,” he told his two companions before disappearing into his office.
Exchanging curious glances, John and Jonas followed him just in time to see him pick up the phone and press the intercom button for Jack’s office. “Jack? Yeah...they just went in. Should be any minute now.”
“What should be any minute now?” Sheppard asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously as he remembered his own hazing.
Daniel just smiled enigmatically, hanging up the phone and heading back towards the hall. “I think I’ll let Jack answer that--it was his idea.”
Jack met them just outside the door. “Hey. Popcorn?” he asked, offering the bowl.
“You made popcorn?” Jonas asked, bewildered.
“For this show? Hell, yeah.” The senior partner grinned and waggled his eyebrows, holding up a six pack with his other hand. “I brought beer too. C’mon.”
He trotted briskly down the corridor with the three younger men in tow, finally seating himself on the floor across from Mitchell’s door. Sounds were already coming from the office that left little doubt that Sam was performing her usual initiation for a new partner, which made Jonas turn a bright shade of red and John look askance at Daniel, who just held up a shushing finger to his lips and grinned. Jack had a manic look in his eyes as he tossed handfuls of popcorn into his mouth.
Their patience paid off when a loud, sudden crash interrupted the grunting and groaning on the other side of the door, followed by Sam cursing loudly and assorted other bumps, bangs and noises. Over Jack and Daniel’s muffled snickering, they could faintly hear her mutter something in a voice of displeasure, and then Mitchell began to laugh out loud.
After another heartbeat, the door flew open and there she stood, hair in disarray, holding her blouse closed with one hand and with murder in her eyes. “Okay. Whose bright fucking idea was it to saw through the legs on the desk?”
The two men who had previously been in the dark suddenly clued into what had happened and began to laugh right along with the conspirators, who high-fived each other over Jonas’ head. Mitchell appeared behind Sam in the doorway then, equally disheveled as his partner but laughing every bit as hard as their audience.
“Sam...let it go.”
“It’s not funny--”
Cam grinned. “Well, I think it is, and the way I remember it I broke your fall, so...”
Glancing first at him, then at their four smug colleagues, she relented with a sigh. “All right, fine. It was a good joke. But you owe him a new desk.”
“Of course,” Jack shrugged. “Why do you think I got the cheap-ass one to begin with? Next one’ll be better,” he promised Mitchell.
“I’ll drink to that,” the newest junior partner grinned.
Senior partner Jack O’Neill returned it and tossed him one of the two remaining beers. “Welcome aboard, Mitchell.”
“Happy to be here, sir,” Mitchell quipped back, opening his can and raising it in salute. Then, leaning in close so no one but Sam could hear, he whispered, “Next time, floor. Carpet burn seems the lesser evil.”