Contrary to the opinion of everyone who'd decided to oh-so-helpfully warn her when she'd started at the SGC, Cammie knows Daniel Jackson is not, in fact, an unobservant man. She's seen him notice details any 'normal' person would have counted insignificant, stitch together a hundred tiny observations and pull them into one coherent, cohesive whole that would have appeared crazy to anyone who didn't know his magpie propensity to informational hoarding.

No, Daniel notices things all right. It's just hit-and-miss in any given situation, when not dealing with a culture that's been dead for a thousand years at a minimum, as to which details he'll choose to pick up on.

He hadn't noticed when she hauled over a box or two of cooking equipment to stow in their kitchen -- a'ight, a'ight, his kitchen, since he pays the bills and the lease is in his name -- and rearranged all the drawers and cabinets to accomodate it. (Then again, she could probably chalk that up to him not having set foot in his kitchen for anything but beer and to stow the leftovers in longer than she wanted to think about -- really, man can't live on takeout alone, but he's been making a valiant attempt for a long damn time.) He had noticed when she'd started bringing a duffel-bag full of her laundry over on the weekends -- been the one to suggest it; he has a washer/dryer in the unit, while her building's cursed with two of each, coin-op, for a sixty-unit complex, and the laundry room's poorly lit and not behind a security door, which she knows makes him fuss to beat the band -- but he never notices her adding his; she'd gotten tired of his socks and pants and underwear and shirts all having that faint sheen of grunge that only comes from sitting in a pile at the bottom of the closet for weeks before getting washed all together in cold water. (She's still pretty sure he only ever thought to do laundry when he noticed the pile brushing up against the bottoms of his shirts; she distracts him by leaving a few pieces in place, so he'd simply think he'd lost track of time again.) He notices when she tidies the living room, but only because she keeps forgetting his arcane, exacting, and not based on any real system in the world filing system for the books; he never notices that she'd dusted, or that the fingerprints have been wiped off the glass-fronted cabinet he keeps the fragile books in.

Still, she doesn't have words to describe the sound he makes when he wakes up one Wednesday afternoon, which is really their Saturday morning -- and he's up far earlier than he should be, dammit; she'd been counting on him to be out cold for another three hours at least, since it had been a long damn mission -- to find her kneeling in the shower of the master bathroom. She's got on her housekeeping clothes, spandex bike shorts and a sports bra, and she's got scrub-brush to hand, whistling cheerfully (he might snap awake at a heartbeat in the field, but ain't nothing in the world wake him when he's at home) as she tackles the stubborn bit in the corner where all the old soap scum goes to rot.

"Ah," he says -- in the tone she knows damn well; it's the "making sure I'm not really hallucinating" voice, and she always wonders if she's gonna grow it over the years after a few more times of butting her head against plausible vs. implausible -- "Cammie? Why are you scrubbing the shower?"

It's really kind of adorable how sweetly not-with-it he is when he wakes up. She rocks up to her feet (leaves the scrub brush where it was; she'll come back later to finish the job) and dries her hands off on the towel. Which she is rendering down for rags when she's done with it, since that's about all it's fit for. "Needed scrubbin'," she says. "Lemme get out of your way."

She escapes into the kitchen to start up the coffee (had the pot waiting to turn it on when he started showing signs of life) and takes the basket of fresh muffins out from the oven, where they'd been warming. Dozens of mornings with Daniel have made her realize that if the food just appears in front of him before he snaps to, he'll eat it; if she waits until he's climbed the ladder of consciousness, he always protests that he's not hungry. He stumbles into the kitchen a few minutes later and gravitates straight to the brewing coffee; no matter how many times she sees him, pre-sentience, swap the carafe for a mug and swap back when the mug's full, all without missing a drop or seemingly open his eyes, it never fails to amuse her.

She sets the butter and the basket of muffins out in front of him, and he's through two cups of coffee and three muffins before he says, sounding a little more with-it, "So. Ah. You were --"

"Scrubbing the shower," she says, promptly. "Honey, your cleaning service sucks."

"They're the ones the SGC vetted," he says automatically. "And -- Shower. You. Scrubbing."

"You got any idea how gross it is in there?" she counters. "And -- no, what am I saying, of course you don't. You ever even looked in that shower when you got your glasses on?"

He blinks at her. "Why would I wear my glasses into the shower?" She hides the smile and gets up to pour him another refill; he blinks a few more times and finally seems to notice that he was eating. "And -- when did I buy blueberry muffins?"

"Didn't," she says. She brings the carafe back over to the table, nudging his hand out of the way and topping off his cup (and her own, while she's at it -- Daniel has good coffee). "Farmer's market over on Platte had the blueberries nice and fresh this afternoon. Made up a double batch."

"When did you have time?" Blink, blink. He's so damn adorable when he first wakes up that it always makes her want to pinch his cheeks; she's smart enough not to. Or to tell him how adorable he is. "Oh, God, you haven't slept yet, have you."

She waves at the living room couch, where the afghan she'd brought over (one of Gran'ma's hand-knits, and the first time Sam saw it on Daniel's couch she'd choked a bit and turned it into a cough when Daniel'd asked if she was all right) is still spread out. "I caught a couple'a hours. You know I don't sleep right if the sun's up."

(She's tried everything over the months, too, from blackout curtains to sleeping pills from Dr. Lam, and the only thing that works for her, even a bit, is sacking out on Daniel's couch. Sam's spare bedroom, sometimes in a pinch, but she'd never been able to sleep well when she was alone somewhere, even when it isn't broad daylight, and somewhere along the line her head's decided Daniel's place is safe; if she wants a chance in heaven of catching any sleep at all when they've gotten time-flipped again, here's the only place to do it. God only knew, 'cause she sure don't, and praise to Him for the fact that Daniel doesn't much mind.)

It isn't enough of a distraction, though, because Daniel's still staring at her like she's just announced she kicks puppies. "So you scrub the shower instead?" he splutters, and yeah, this right here is why she waits until he's out cold to do her nesting; he's got funny ideas about what's appropriate and what isn't, and instead of saying "thank you, Cammie" like any sane man would, he's likely to be fussing over her for hours about appropriateness and dignity and really, it all just goes over so much better when he thinks it's the cleaning service taking care of things after all.

"I like cleaning, Daniel," she says, briskly enough that (she hopes) she can head off the lecture on gender roles and women's liberation at the pass. She'll take it from Sam, because she and Sam Carter have been bickering (good-naturedly) about what is and ain't appropriate since the sun got hung in the sky; she won't take it from Daniel and his male academic liberal guilt. "And every time I look at that shower, I feel my momma rising up and threatening to reach across the country and whack me with a wooden spoon for letting it get that bad, so don't you say anything."

"You're not my cleaning lady," he says. He puts the coffee mug down on the table with a bit more force than he needs to, and he's clouded straight up like this is the last thing in the world he wants to do this morning but he's going to keep going until she sees reason. "You're my commanding officer. It's not your job to clean the bathroom."

She ignores the little warm fuzzy feeling she gets whenever she hears him say "commanding officer" instead of "team leader", because she knows full well Daniel Jackson might or might not consider himself part of any team they put him on, but for him to acknowledge someone else's command, well, that's another story entire. "Now, I know we've had the conversation before about how you tellin' me my ways of relaxin' ain't good enough is insulting and demeaning," she says, instead. "So I know I didn't just hear what I thought I just heard."

He splutters. He actually splutters, and she doesn't, doesn't laugh, because if she laughs, he's really going to get huffy. "That's not what I -- I just -- Stop doing that!"

She reaches out to pat his cheek. "You just relax, honey," she says. "I like cleaning. And when we're off-duty, I'm not your commanding officer, I'm your friend, and friends do for each other. And I spend enough damn time over here to be responsible for my fair share of it, since you know half that damn mess is mine." It's not; she might be over here five nights out of every seven when they're on-world, true, but she's on her best behavior. It's not precisely that she's a guest (although she is, in some ways, and she knows he thinks of her as a guest half the time and as an unofficial roommate the other half); it's that she's always been a tender, fussing around in her space and keeping it nice and tidy because she knows that when she doesn't, she's a hopeless slob. And this might not be her apartment, but it's closer to than the box across town she keeps her stuff in; all her happy thoughts of being settled come from within these walls.

Of course, she and Daniel come from entirely different cultures when it comes to guest-duty, which she knows just enough about to know they're butting into; in Daniel's world, a guest shouldn't have to do anything, while in hers, when you're a guest somewhere, you work your tail off to keep from making work for the person you're staying with, and she blesses Sam for all those little hints about how Daniel might look like an American but bleeds desert-tribal blood when you scratch down past the surface. "You just let me fuss," she says. "It soothes me."

He runs a hand through his hair. It's standing on-end from the pillow still, which she has to confess is the most adorable thing in the history of ever. "You, ah," he says, and it's so awkward and heartfelt it makes her heart melt. "You know you don't have to cook or clean or anything to get me to let you spend time over here, right? I mean, you're welcome to stay as much as you want --"

He's never quite questioned why she prefers his couch to the perfectly serviceable (pre-fab, sterile, lonely) apartment she keeps to tone down the worst of the gossip and for the few nights here and there when she can sense she's starting to grate on his nerves, or when she's out on a date and doesn't want to disturb him by coming in at all hours, or when it's just time for her to walk away for a bit before her emotions get more tangled than she's willing to let them get just yet. She's always been able to fob him off with excuses about growing up in a big house with lots of people, hating the quiet that comes from being the only living thing within four walls.

It's completely true, and -- she knows -- it made a hell of a lot of sense to him even before he came home with her for Thanksgiving and saw the war zone that is the Mitchell family clanstead. He'll be the first to call himself a loner, and the last to realize he misses people too, but she's seen the look of relief buried in his eyes when she comes back after a few days of giving him space and solitude, like he'd been worried he'd done something to drive her off or that she'd decided she'd come to her senses after all.

She reaches over and puts her hand on top of his. "I know, baby," she says, trying to hide the way her heart is full up to bursting at how sweetly adorable he is when he's trying to make her feel welcome. He might not understand her -- not at all, not in the least. But he wants her to feel welcomed here, even if he doesn't understand that's what he's doing, and they might not always speak the same language and she might have to do some fancy footwork to keep his feathers from getting ruffled sometimes, but he's hers. And he may never realize why she's made content by doing his laundry and dusting his living room and scrubbing his shower -- not yet, maybe not ever -- but it doesn't matter. She knows. And that's the important part.

So she squeezes his hand tight, and he gives her the helpless look that says he wants to say something, he's just not sure what, and she says, "You can do the dishes." And she goes to finish tending her home.

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