"Honey," Daniel calls, dropping his briefcase on the floor and toeing off his shoes. "I'm home."

Some nights this earns him nothing but silence, when Cammie and JD are downstairs working on something; those are the nights he heads straight back for his office, logs onto the house mainframe, lets them know that he's home. (Some of those nights he's rewarded by his girlfriend and his whatever tumbling out of the elevator and coming to meet him in the kitchen for dinner within minutes of his logging onto the house irc server; some of those nights he shows up in irc to be greeted by them spitting page after page of incomprehensible gibberish at each other and not noticing he's present for quite some time. Those are the nights he microwaves something from the freezer and eats at his desk while he works, looking up every now and then to see if they're still spouting way too many symbols. He's a little worried that he's almost starting to understand some of it.)

He wouldn't mind if tonight were one of those nights; he's got a briefcase full of a problem. (Or rather, he has a briefcase full of documents about the problem; the problem itself, or rather themselves, is sitting in Guest Quarters being incomprehensible and stoic at anyone who tries to talk to them.) But his call gets an answer of "kitchen, baby," and he leaves his briefcase where it's lying and goes to think about something else for a while.

"--telling you," JD is saying, sounding frustrated, when he walks in. "You can't compartmentalize like that. If you don't have natural-language processing you can't have reason, and if you don't have reason you'll never solve the fuzzy logic problem instead of just approximating it. Which won't do anyone any good, we've been able to fake fuzzy logic for a decade and a fucking half --"

"Truce," Cammie says, mildly, and turns around to give Daniel a smile. "Hey, baby. How was your day?"

They're sitting at the kitchen table (of course; in this house, sooner or later, all roads lead to the kitchen table). Both of them have laptops sitting in front of them, but both screensavers are active. (JD's screensaver is a slide show of gay porn stars, each pose more raunchy than the next; Cammie's constantly runs some kind of numbers across the screen, and Daniel's never asked what they are. He's always hoped they hook Cammie's laptop up to the projector when they have to give a presentation.) There's a double handful of books scattered across the table, several of them (Daniel sighs to see) open and spine-up.

Daniel cranes his neck to check the titles, an automatic habit. (Three computer science journals out of MIT; two technical manuals; a romance novel and a treatise on circuit design.) "Kind of terrible, actually," he says, absently. "Again."

It's been the story of his week. The Azhurbundush -- the potential allies du jour -- are possessed of certain botanicals that have the lab teams practically wetting themselves with the implications for medical research, and are completely unwilling to advance negotiations beyond the hello-we're-peaceful-explorers stage. General Napolitano has been getting quieter and quieter as they go, and if there's one thing Daniel knows about the man by now, it's that when the General gets quiet, they're one step away from Defcon 2. He's tried everything; every approach he learned in twenty years of negotiating with the stubbornest of princes, every overture he can guess at from the literature and history the Azhurbundush have been willing to share, every linguistic trick and tactic he can tease out of the bits of their language he's managed to crack. Nothing's working.

"Still no luck?" Cammie asks, full of sympathy. "Is it a talk-it-over thing, or a ignore-it-and-see thing?"

Technically he's not supposed to be sharing any details of his work life with his housemates -- Cammie's clearance long since expired, and technically, JD never had one -- but he gives them bits and snips anyway. He's always thought better out loud, and both of them are excellent listeners. But after the day he's had (sitting across the negotiating table throwing out guess after guess), he's left feeling inadequate and useless, and he's sick of bringing his problems home anyway.

So he smiles. "I've been monopolizing the evening conversation lately," he says, feigning a lightheartedness he doesn't actually feel and knowing they can both see straight through him. "And I don't mean to interrupt your argument. Whatever you were arguing over."

Cammie snorts and pushes her stool back from the kitchen table. She's moving all right today, he notices, with the weather eye he's developed for her warning winces and grimaces. A little too slow, a little too ponderous, a little too much weight on her cane, but 'a little too much' is the new normal and at least her face isn't twisted in pain. "Nothin' important," she says. "Himself just getting ideas again. They never shoulda taught that boy how to read."

"A proper education is the foundation of modern civilization," JD says, blandly. (Daniel suspects him of only doing it to see Daniel snort whatever he's drinking; pity for JD that he isn't drinking anything.) He bounds to his feet, unfolding his legs from beneath him and moving to clear books and electronics off the table. "I read that somewhere."

"Hush, you," Cammie says, quellingly, and limps over to nestle herself briefly into Daniel's arms for his welcome-home kiss. It's one of the bright spots of his day -- sometimes the only bright spot in his days, these days -- and he buries his face in her hair for a minute, breathing in the apples-and-honeysuckle scent of her shampoo. When she pulls away, she's smiling. "Moratorium on the work thing, then," she says. "I'll heat up dinner. Nielson, you put your skinny ass to work and set the table."

JD does, not without claiming a kiss from Daniel of his own, brief and heated. It's odd, Daniel thinks sometimes, how affectionate JD is with him sometimes; he's never been able to figure out the rhyme or reason behind it. Today is one of those days when JD wants to touch, winding an arm around Daniel's waist and pulling him close, and Daniel sighs and surrenders against it, resting his head against JD's bare and tattooed shoulder, his lips moving in what even he doesn't know whether is a kiss or a plea.

"Early night tonight," JD says, brushing his hand over the back of Daniel's head, cradling him gently. "Get some sleep. It'll look better in the morning. Or it won't, but at least you'll have slept."

"Yeah," Daniel says, straightening. "Sounds good. It's not like staring at all the stuff I brought home is going to do anything, anyway." He hears the bitterness in his voice, stops himself, corrects it. Makes himself smile. "What's for dinner? And what can I do to help?"

Dinner is roast beef and roasted potatoes (sitting in the oven on warm waiting for him to get home, and that means Cammie must have been feeling well enough to spend time in the kitchen today instead of heating up something she'd prepared ahead of time and frozen, which probably means she was cooking in batches and freezing the rest of the week's meals while she was at it), and dinner conversation is light. Or as light as it gets in the Nielson-Mitchell household -- the Nielson-Mitchell-Jackson household -- anyway. JD, apparently, has strong opinions (there's a shock) about this year's Nobel Laureate in Literature. JD thinks the committee was crazy. Cammie thinks JD's the crazy one. There is vigorous debate.

And it isn't that Daniel thinks JD is stupid -- far from it -- but it's one thing to watch JD's intelligence in matters technical (although that's a shock too, it's one Daniel's grown accustomed to) and another to realize that JD has apparently set himself the goal of learning everything there is to know in the world. And sometimes Daniel thinks JD might have a chance of succeeding. The books strewn around the house are an eclectic and whimsical selection, constantly reproducing; Daniel wonders, sometimes, if they reinforced the foundations of the house to support all the weight. Once upon a time he'd thought they were mostly Cammie's books. He's seen JD walking through the house with a book in one hand, his attention wholly upon it and somehow managing to avoid obstacles in his path, too many times since then.

So he sits and he eats and he listens -- dinner theatre of the absurd -- and eventually, once the plates are clean and JD and Cammie have gone eight rounds and still not arrived at a victor, Cammie throws up her hands and turns to him. "Back me up here, Daniel. Schöen was referencin' Yeats deliberately, wasn't he?"

"I haven't read it yet," Daniel says. Which is truth, not an attempt to avoid getting drawn into the argument; the book in question is at the bottom of his pleasure-reading pile, which he hasn't made any progress on in months. "I haven't had the time. And I have no idea how either of you do, either."

It's a bit of a sore spot -- he remembers, dimly, the days when he could be reasonably assured of being the most well-read person in any given conversation, but these days he can't remember the last time he read something that wasn't, directly or indirectly, work-related. He knows it comes out a little too sharp, a little too edged. Still, JD just says, in that infuriating I-am-saying-something-just-to-bait-you tone of his, "It's all the free time I get from cutting the daily commute out of my day."

Cammie snorts. "Doesn't hurt that you don't sleep," she says.

Which is untrue, but only barely; Daniel had been living here for half a year before he'd ever seen evidence that JD does sleep. He's the last one asleep at night and the first one awake in the morning, and about the only time Daniel sees him sleep, even now, is when he comes home to find JD and Cammie curled up and napping. It's just another one of those things they don't talk about, like the way JD eats twice as much as any normal human and never gains an ounce, like the way JD always runs warm to the touch, faintly feverish. (Daniel tries not to think the words 'normal human' too often.)

JD snorts. "I catnap," he says, stacking plates absently but not yet getting up.

Daniel considers getting up and bringing the plates over to the sink, decides (after a minute) that it can wait. "You do know that cats actually sleep more than eighteen hours a day, right?" he points out.

"I'm sleeping right now," JD says. "You can tell by my position of sloth and indolence."

"He talks in his sleep," Cammie leans over and confides to Daniel, helpfully. "Works in his sleep, too," she adds, her voice dark, "which is the only damn explanation on God's green Earth for some'a that shit he passes off."

"Now, now, Mitchell," JD says. It's lazy and halfhearted, though, which is how Daniel can tell they're not really fighting over work matters; this is more in the way of being a familiar refrain than anything else, the eternal floor-show of their lives. "You just don't appreciate my subtle genius."

She nods. "So fuckin' subtle you can't tell it from a mistake in a strong light," she says, agreeably.

JD waves a hand. "It's not my fault you're too stupid to recognize the right way of doing things when your nose gets rubbed in it," he says.

"Yeah, well," Cammie says. "If you'd just --"

"Five minutes," Daniel announces, looking down at his watch. Both of them turn to look blankly at him. He holds his wrist up, pointing at his watch. "Five minutes to go from a discussion of Great Books of the Western World to an esoteric and completely specious argument about coding," he elaborates. "It's a pity I don't have anyone to bet with. I could retire rich."

Cammie narrows her eyes at him, but he can tell she's obscurely pleased that he's joking with them. "You callin' us predictable, babydoll?" she asks. "'Cause if you're gettin' bored here, we could always just --"

"I think 'inevitable' is a better word," Daniel says, putting up his hands as if to ward off invisible disasters, discovering as he does (as always) that participating in the banter is making him feel better. "You know. Like ... inevitable things."

"Fire, flood, the bread falling jelly-side-down," JD murmurs helpfully.

Cammie continues to give Daniel the hairy eyeball, though her lips are quirking at the edges. "So, you're comparin' us to natural disasters, then?"

"He started it," Daniel announces. (Yes, the Great Negotiator, broker of treaties, veteran of first contacts with hundreds of alien cultures, has returned to Mankind's roots: the subtle negotiations of the nursery playground. It would probably have been just as effective as everything else he's done in the last twenty years, come to think of it.)

"Hmpf," Cammie says, her all-purpose noise, likely intended this time to indicate a). just how likely she finds this and b). her opinion of the degeneration of Daniel's argument. He watches as she heaves herself slowly to her feet (it looks painful), gathering up the stack of dishes one-handed, cane in the other, to limp over to the work area. Daniel stands to help; he knows better than to take the plates away from her, but he can (and does) gather up silverware and glasses and trail along behind.

She whips around and points her cane at him just as he's about to cross the masking-tape line laid down on the hardwood floor. "Hold it right there, mister," she says, and Daniel freezes.

"She put that down a few years back after I burned the popcorn one too many times," JD helpfully informs Daniel, having picked up one of the discarded books and gone back to reading. "You need a passport and a visa to cross the line once she's decided to get all territorial."

Daniel rolls his eyes. It had taken him a while to notice the masking tape on the floor at first; after a while, when it hadn't been referenced, he'd decided it was simply another one of their ongoing shared jokes, remnant and revenant of the years they shared before he met them. It's nice to have a suspicion confirmed. "I suppose the passport office is only open on Thursdays between the hours of two?"

"Ah, you've been there," JD says, not looking up from his book.

Cammie starts the water running in the sink, eyeing the pile of dishes for a little longer than a second, and then heaving a subtle sigh as she braces her good hip against the counter and plunges her hands into the suds. Daniel considers offering to help, but he doesn't; if she wants his help, she'll ask for it, and he's learned (the hard way) that it's best if he doesn't offer, no matter how much he wants to. After a minute, though, she turns her head and considers him. "You could possibly enter on a work visa," she says, and he's already stepping forward to take over dishwashing duty when she continues, "Need somebody to haul things over from the pantry. If you're engaged in trade, the border guards might not shoot you."

"Good to know," Daniel says, stepping cautiously over the line. (It really does feel like crossing a border. The power of imagination, especially his own, will never cease to amaze him.) He sets the glassware and silverware down cautiously on the counter next to the sink. "Is there anyone in particular I should see about my visa?"

"I'll speak to the consul," Cammie assures him. "In the meantime, get yourself over to the pantry and fetch me down the canisters of white flour, salt, an' sugar, an' the bottle of oil -- vegetable, not olive or grapeseed -- an' the wood box that's on the shelf just over the flour bin. Oh, an' the gallon of milk from the fridge. The whole, not the two percent."

From the table, JD perks up. "Do I get to punch it?" he asks. Which ... doesn't make much sense at all, really. But at least Daniel's used to that by now.

"Not unless you're gonna let me punch you," she sings straight back at him, then smiles at Daniel. "Then you can come back an' take over the dishes, babydoll."

"Your wish is my command," Daniel says, soberly, and turns to obey.

She clucks at him; he freezes. "Forgot my kiss," she says, her hands still in the sink full of soapy water, tipping up her face, and he grants her both kiss and smile.

He likes his home. He likes his life, this crazy madcap insanity; it's an anodyne to the insanity he faces day in and day out beneath the Mountain. Here, at least, the odd things are harbingers only of JD and Cammie's whimsical selves, not possession or alien invasion or the end of the world. By now, he even knows that it's important to ask (if he hadn't been told in advance) which oil and which milk (and which of a number of other items, should they be called for), because Cammie's kitchen contains a wide assortment of varietals of a number of each, in the walk-in pantry that's larger than some people's kitchens. Even with this much information on what items to collect for her, what she can make from them remains a dark mystery (though apparently it isn't one to JD); he's seen her produce glorious and varied works of art from each of those ingredients a hundred times over. He makes more than one trip (canisters have a habit of taking flight at awkward moments, and the integrity of their seal is in direct proportion to the mess the contents will make upon their liberation; that's one kitchen lesson he hadn't had to learn from Cammie) and places the items where Cammie wants them. Milk (whole, not two percent) last of all.

His mission discharged, he returns to the sink to take over the dishes. He supposes there are people who don't like washing dishes. He isn't actually one of them (even though they have a perfectly-good dishwasher; it gets little use). Warm water, exacting but not taxing work, and when you've finished, you've actually accomplished something (unlike, supplies the voice in the back of his head, the rest of the things he's attempted this week). There's satisfaction in doing dishes, even if there are always (inevitably) more.

By the time he's finished scrubbing out the last of the pots and pans and dishes and silverware (scrubbed to Cammie's standards, which are more exacting than any laboratory supervisor he's ever had in his life) she's poured the entire gallon of milk into a saucepan on the stove, stuck a kitchen thermometer into it, and turned the heat to "so low it's barely on". She's humming, happily, as she opens the palm-sized wooden box (simply made, hand-joined, with a tiny but sturdy latch to keep it from opening before its time) and measures out heaping tablespoons of what looks like a vaguely-familiar grain.

It isn't until she adds a few tablespoons of sugar into the glass bowl she's spooning things into and covers the whole mess with warm water (run from the tap; she borrows the thermometer from the saucepan of milk briefly) that Daniel realizes: of course, not grain at all. (He's slow tonight, he supposes; he's eaten her bread a hundred times, though he's never seen her during the process of preparation.) The warm, rich smell of activating yeast rises from the bowl as she stirs lightly and sets it into the warmest corner of the kitchen. "Fetch me down the big wooden bowl, baby," she instructs, and he goes to do so happily.

JD catches his eye as he heads back over to the pantry -- the 'big' wooden bowl, which is larger than a car tire and (Daniel suspects) was handmade by someone with a familiar last name, is big enough to have to live on the top shelf of the pantry, since there's no room for it in the prep area with the rest of Cammie's tools -- and makes a small, subtle gesture. By now Daniel has no trouble reading it; he drops off the bowl and then detours back over to the eating area, snagging two of the padded kitchen stools and bringing them back to set them in front of the work counter. He sits on one of them and pulls the bowl over in front of the other. "Just let me know the next thing I need to do to avoid deportation," he says.

It isn't a hardship; watching Cammie in the kitchen is always a delight. He's always liked watching people who do things well do them. Never enough time to indulge that particular secret passion. It's not like wanting to go to the ballet; he's not interested in watching a performance. (Is and isn't, but that's on a separate track in his mind from this.) Robert Rothman (absent friends) -- clumsy when he walked, graceful as Hermes when he ran. Daniel dislikes organized team sports (watching them bores him, participating annoys him) but he's found himself standing transfixed for forty minutes watching a pick-up game of basketball. Things done well, for no more reason than to do them. Those moments when the ordinary is refined into something more. The intersection of skill and joy.

Cammie is like that in her kitchen. And yes, what she does there has an ulterior purpose (food is for eating), but he's known many people who could get an edible meal on the table with grudging skill. For her, the doing is what brings her joy.

She works with calm certainty, assembling ingredients in the wooden bowl bit by bit, without needing to pause and consult any sort of notes (knowing her, he's willing to wager this recipe isn't written down anywhere but in the memories of Mitchell women): oil, salt, yeast, sugar, milk. Eventually, she settles onto the stool (a bit of a relieved sigh as she gets off her feet; he's pleased to realize that he's finally starting to be able to read her cues) and twines one ankle with his as she picks up the wooden spoon she'd laid out and begins folding in cup after cup of flour.

"I can stir," Daniel offers. "Since I need to earn my visa."

"Naw," Cammie says, absently stroking the back of his calf with the arch of her foot. "Jes' keep me company, is all."

So Daniel props his chin up on one palm and watches, and there's a part of him that remembers watching Sha're grinding flour (remembers asking for instruction, remembers being awful at it but laughing too much to care), and there's a part of him that doesn't think about it at all, just watches Cammie's hands, strong and sure.

There's a lot of dough being assembled. A lot of dough. He's pretty sure there's enough for a dozen loaves, and he wonders who's going to eat all that bread. Ah, well, it doesn't matter. Cammie and JD are certainly rich enough to afford some wasted ingredients if Cammie has decided that baking bread is what will bring her happiness tonight. He can always bring some to the Mountain if there's leftovers. He does that a lot; he's pretty sure half his staff is willing to rush to give Cammie anything she wants if she ever decides she's looking for additional paramours.

It's soothing and meditative, watching her work, and after a while he says, giving voice to his rambling thoughts, "Did you know that a loaf of bread has been the standard of value in most cultures for thousands of years? A loaf of bread used to be a day's wage, or a day's food, or an indication of inflation -- if a pound loaf cost more than a penny, your country was in trouble -- or the standard issue for the almshouse dole, which wasn't that bad, considering that a loaf of bread was a full day's caloric intake for even the -- oh, I suppose the nearest modern equivalent would be the lower middle classes. 'Hlaf-gifu' and 'Hlaf-ward' are the Saxon terms for 'Lady' and 'Lord', and they mean 'Loaf-giver' and 'Loaf-protector,' because bread -- and beer, of course -- have been the cornerstones of human diet, and human civilization, all the way back to the caves..."

She listens, smiling slightly, and he thinks that her hands and arms, lightly sheened with flour, the muscles flexing as she works, are more beautiful than indolence and perfume and gold (he's always thought so about a woman in the process of industry, but watching Cammie makes the thought seem ever new).

Eventually, she sets the spoon aside, once the dough has gained sufficient strength to be worked by hand. She lifts her legs and sets her heels on the highest cross-bar of the stool, pulls the bowl close so her knees can grasp it, and plunges her hands into the warm wet dough.

"Now," she says, once his impromptu lecture has drawn to a stuttering close (cut short by the delight of watching her work), "you can make yourself useful, baby. You just keep addin' more flour bit by bit every few minutes or so, 'til I tell you to stop."

He does, reaching for the measuring cup that she left in the canister of flour, and sets himself to his task with studious care; as they work easily together, side by side, he can feel the last lingering pieces of stress from the false starts and staccato stutters of his day fading away. It's comfortable, pleasant, Cammie's presence warm and solid beside him, and he barely even remembers JD is across the kitchen until JD says, sounding amused, "You've got flour on your nose."

"Hush, you," Cammie says, without looking up, and Daniel, resigned, sneaks a look at her profile; as he suspected, her nose is not the nose being addressed.

"Just mentioning," JD says. He puts down his book and slides from his seat at the table, loose-limbed and limber, to saunter across the room. "I gonna spark a global incident if I cross the borders long enough to hit the fridge?"

Cammie sticks out her tongue at him (dignity and maturity, thy name is the Nielson-Mitchell household). "While you're up," she says, in dulcet tones, "you get to scrub out the bowl while I knead the bread."

"Daniel can do it," JD says, instantly.

Being volunteered for things is a familiar refrain -- just as comforting in its familiarity as watching Cammie work -- and Daniel is already preparing to rise, but Cammie clucks and he sits back down. "Daniel," she corrects, "is keepin' me company. That's a more important job."

"Daniel is right here," Daniel says. (He doesn't know why he bothers.)

"I could --" JD says (argument pro forma; if he didn't argue they'd have to check him for fever).

"--scrub out the bowl," Cammie says implacably (surely the most beautiful Harpy in all of mythology, or possibly a cuddlier Valkyrie; Daniel hasn't made up his mind entirely) and JD huffs under his breath (amusement and acquiescence and technical concession all in one) and collects the bowl. Wooden kitchen utensils are as fussy and delicate as cast iron ones. Or copper ones. (Sometimes Daniel thinks that "easy-care" may be a dirty word in Cammie's kitchen, a place where even the Tupperware has special handling protocols.)

The bread, meanwhile, looks as if it may be on its way to declaring sentience and running for Congress. One or the other, anyway. Cammie turns it out onto the counter and devotes all of her considerable skill to teaching it manners. (There is a great deal of science involved in breadmaking, something which Daniel carefully ignores. There's watching Cammie make it, and there's eating the results; he's not interested in chemistry, physics, or engineering.)

When the bowl's clean and set back onto the counter for Cammie to use again as she sees fit, JD goes to the fridge for the first of many nightly communings with the freezer compartment. Whatever he wants isn't in there tonight, apparently (it can't be that he's saving himself for the bread; JD is capable of eating the entire contents of the freezer compartment and a loaf of bread, did he feel so inclined), so he settles for a beer.

"You want anything while I'm up?" he asks, still hanging over the refrigerator door.

Cammie rolls her eyes. "Not to fucking freeze to death while you're memorizin' the insides of the icebox, Nielson. How 'bout we just stick a webcam in there, that do you? Bottle'a water for me, an' you can put the coffee up for Daniel, long's you're up."

He'd like to again point out that he's here, or even say that he doesn't want coffee (though that would be untrue; he can usually reliably be counted upon to want coffee, as long as he's awake and often when he isn't), but it's simply too entertaining to be the present absent referent.

"You know, in some countries, this is known as slave labor," JD says, in passing, as he delivers the requested bottle of water for Cammie (and uncaps it, setting it at her elbow; she has bread dough and flour all over her hands, and uncapping it would have been a struggle; she need not ask him to do it for her, and neither of them so much as acknowledge the assistance in any way).

"Yep," Cammie says, undaunted. "Crossed the border into one where it ain't, though. Oven on low for five minutes, please an' thank you, not that either've those words is in your vocabulary."

Beneath her hands, on the floured counter, the dough is beginning to take shape; what was once a lumpen mass of stickiness is forming, under her careful attention, into something resembling humanity's long-cherished staple. Sitting in this kitchen, with its warm camaraderie (and, all right, constant bickering; the one is much the same as the other, really), Daniel feels a dim satisfying connection with the unbroken line of his ancestors, spiraling back through recorded history; century after century, women and men have known the motions Cammie's hands are shaping as she kneads, pulls, folds, kneads again.

It's ... comforting, is the word he finally decides on; comforting, and comfort. Some dim impulse prompts him to offer, "Want me to take a turn for a while?"

Cammie tosses him a lidded glance, assessingly, and then seems to shrug. "Get some flour on your hands," she instructs, and once he has, she takes his hands in her own (sticky and flour-covered) and places them, palm-down, on the dough. It feels soft and silken, almost like Cammie's skin, and she places her hands over his and bears down, just a little. "Like this," she says.

It's nothing he's ever done before (on Abydos the bread was unleavened; on Atlantis he was never permitted into the kitchens; on Earth he has simply never had the opportunity). But it isn't as if he hasn't learned things before (in this house, and elsewhere), and Cammie is both a patient and exacting teacher. That, too, is comforting: he's never been a fan of impatience (he's always been impatient, always known it was a character flaw, always done his best -- never successfully -- to curb it) and even less does he admire anyone who will say (of his own efforts or of anyone else's) 'good enough' and let the flaws, mistakes, and errors go. 'Good enough' turns day by day into 'never will be good enough', because the only platform upon which to build perfection is perfection, and false kindness is a breeding ground for the mistakes that will someday kill you. (In academia, only a reputation dies, but Daniel hasn't been in academia for two decades.)

Eventually, she lifts her hands from his, still watching him closely as he works by himself. She didn't tell him what to do; she showed him, and so he has the feedback of muscle-memory to rely on now (so much more complex and information-dense than speech) as he works. 'Here, let me show you' isn't just an empty phrase. So many things can never be told, even if the teller wishes to. You have to be there. You have to be shown. Or you'll never know at all.

He frowns, just a little, as the thought crosses his mind, as it sparks some vague stirring of an idea, an inspiration, but it isn't quite ready to mature yet; he leaves it be. Eventually, he realizes that JD has placed a cup of coffee at his elbow; he'd barely noticed the smell of it brewing, over the heady scent of yeast and flour taking shape into dough beneath his hands. Cammie is smiling at him when he looks up. "Make a baker out of you yet," she says, gentle and affectionate, and he can't help but smile back, watching the light in her eyes.

"Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man," Daniel says back, lightly, and gives the dough one last half-turn, tucking its corners underneath and pinching the seams of the ball closed. His biceps aren't burning -- he may have no intention of ever stepping through the Gate again in his life, but life is what happens when the Universe informs you that it has other plans and he isn't stupid enough to let his body fall to pieces on him, not when his abilities might someday make the difference between life and death. (Not when he's seen Cammie struggle with tooth and nail to keep whatever last bits of ability her body will let her retain.)

But his arms are pleasantly weary, the satisfaction of physical labor well-done, and he watches as Cammie fusses briefly with the dough (precise and exacting, needing to touch it again just to satisfy herself even though she makes no real corrections to his work) and then sets it back in the bowl, limping over to leave it to rise in the oven with the door open and a warm wet towel over bowl and dough alike.

"There," she says, satisfied, dusting her hands off over the sink before turning on the faucet with the back of her hand to scrub them. "You can bring yourself a couple-few loaves of that into work with you tomorrow, an' even if you can't understand the whatever-their-name-is, at least you can give them a real gift."

"Huh," Daniel says, surprised. Hadn't been thinking all that much about the Azhurbundush (Cammie calling them the whatever-their-name-is is not without justification), but if this turns things around and stops Taram-Burak and his evil twin Turam-Rukgum (they do look terrifyingly alike, only one of them is Priestly Class and the other is Warrior Class and heaven help you if you mix the two of them up, even though the Azhurbundush have been a peaceful people -- when not running and hiding from alien menaces -- since about the time Europe was converting to Christianity) from tossing their gifts back at them one more time and telling them that their hearts are made of wood, he's all for it. Nobody on 18 has the least idea why they keep saying that, and General Napolitano is starting to get even quieter every time.

"'Huh', yourself," Cammie says, smiling back over her shoulder at him. "Ever'body knows you don't borrow sugar and pay back cream, Daniel. Ever'body."

"For certain values of 'everybody', maybe," JD says, dryly, but he's setting out loaf-pan after loaf-pan. And this, Daniel thinks, is why this kitchen has a dozen loaf-pans: for days when Cammie feels like baking enough bread to feed a whole army.

"I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you," Cammie says, automatically. "Jes' for that, you get to scrub the flour off the counter."

"Oh, frabjuous day, calloo callay," JD singsongs, but he's already sweeping the flour with the heel of his hand.

"I'll do it," Daniel says, absently, his thoughts still on the Azhurbundush (a culture that builds its relationship around gifts, and he's been trying and failing to find the right gift all week, and he's putting it together now, finally, finally.) "Let me just wash my hands first."

"I got it," JD says, in an undertone meant for him alone, the one that drops most of the (feigned) snip and snarl from whenever he deals with Cammie. JD presses him back against the stool with one warm hand against his shoulder. "I don't mind. Drink your coffee."

Daniel drinks his coffee. It's just cooled down to the perfect temperature.

"You borrow sugar and pay back sugar," he says slowly, working it out. But hey. If they had the botanicals the Azhurbundush have, they wouldn't want to trade for them, would they? Not to mention, oh, the chance to observe and record and possibly adapt some of their chemical processes for use on earth, because the Azhurbundush don't do much with metal; they've skipped straight to rubber and plastics. It's why General Napolitano is bothering to invest all this time (time is money) in wooing them. For the bottom line.

"Sure you do," Cammie says, watching him thinking, watching the light dawning. "S'only neighborly."

And the Azhurbundush have brought them ... what?

Examples of traditional crafts (weaving and basketry), samples of their food (well, actually, they just brought them food; Daniel suspects that after the snack bars the Team offered them on Azhurbundu, they think Earth is experiencing a famine). And Earth has given them ...

Beads and rattles.

Oh, of the very nicest sort, but the whole idea has been that since it's a metal-poor backward planet (he winces mentally, but he knows his own, his native land by now) they'd love to have a lot of high-tech things.

They haven't been paying back cream. They've been paying back skim milk.

There's a basket in his office at the SGC they can use; he got it as a baseline reference to compare with an offworld piece, but he doesn't need it any more. He ought to be able to cadge a nice sample textile from somewhere on the floor.

"What else do you think they'd like to go along with the bread?" he asks aloud.

Cammie beams, and he knows she can see him reasoning, knows that he's taken her idea (and, he thinks, this has been her idea all along, and he's a little bit grateful and a little bit fondly exasperated that she's been leading him up to it for most of the evening; he's never doubted that she listens and thinks about all the problems he brings home, but it's always disconcerting to be confronted with evidence that she wants so much to solve them). "Could-might throw in some cookies," she says. "Couldn't hurt. Dunno if any of this'll work, but you keep sayin' how they say our hearts are made of wood, well, to me that says we ain't givin' them what they respect as real. Ain't nothin' in the world more real than home-baked bread."

JD dusts his hands off in the sink and acquires a sponge. "We've got some of Sophie's blackberry wine," he says, consideringly. "Good vintage last year."

"Oooh, yeah," Cammie says, her eyes lighting up. "An' I betcha I could find somethin' my daddy or Uncle Roy made up, somethin' small an' pretty. Little box like the yeast-box, Daniel, you could put some seeds or somethin' in it. An', you know, I got a shawl that's just ready to come off the needles, just needs the last little bit of border an' a good blocking an' it's ready to go."

"I couldn't --" Daniel protests (he knows that shawl -- knit out of gorgeous soft grey merino -- is something Cammie's been working on for months) but Cammie only shakes her head to stop him.

"Happy to give it up to the cause," she says. "Aunt Emma spun that merino herself, you know. She'd be glad it was going to good use, if we could tell her." She leans back against the counter. "Betcha we could put together a whole bundle of stuff that ain't never even been introduced to mass-produced."

Daniel's mind is still racing, thinking about all the bits and pieces of Azhurbundush culture he's been able to put together, thinking about all the linguistic tells and cues he's been missing. "I think that might work," he says, slowly. "I think -- even if it doesn't work, it'll show them that we can make things that aren't made by machines."

The minute he says it, he realizes: yes, that is the answer. The Azhurbundush aren't primitive and they aren't a-technological -- but in all the reports he's seen about their culture (second-hand news and it's going to stay that way, dammit), in all the Azhurbundush writing and literature and the few conversations he's had with the delegation, he'd somehow managed to miss the high premium they place on the hand-made and the personal. Earth may have come to them, but in their minds, they're treating with Earth as equals. And so they want to know ...

Is anybody home?

Are they worth talking to? (Now, yet, ever: the eternal question, and no matter how many times Earth gets asked it, they always fucking pooch the essay question. It's almost depressing.)

What will the Azhurbundush learn from handmade gifts? Who knows? Maybe more than they've learned from the ones they've received. Maybe they'll only learn that there are people on the other side of the Gate smart enough to listen and willing to try (pity those people don't work at the SGC, a fate Daniel wouldn't wish on his worst enemy). Maybe they'll learn that Cameron Mitchell (Lt. Col., USAF, retired) makes a damned fine loaf of bread.

He helped.

"There's a basket in my office at work that I was thinking of using for the, uh, the presentation," he says slowly. "It's a winnowing basket. Hopi. It's modern, but it was made the traditional way." He frowns, momentarily distracted. "I don't know why I've been keeping it, actually."

"For this, babydoll," Cammie answers, laughter in her voice, the sound of home. "For this."

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