Family

Jack tugged the brim of his baseball cap a little lower to block out the sun as he slouched in the deck chair. Beside him, Carter lazily reeled in her line and made soft snorts of amusement. "No fish," she laughed under her breath, and Jack fought a smile. After eight years, he'd finally gotten her to relax and stop thinking already. Who cared if there were fish in the pond anymore? That wasn't the point.

Behind him, he heard the distinct squeak of the cooler opening. "Hey Daniel, gimme a beer, would you?" he called without looking. He almost jumped off the tiny dock as an ice-cold bottle was pressed to the back of his neck. "Very funny," he growled, snatching the beer away from a sniggering Daniel. "What are you, five?"

Without any warning whatsoever, a large dark mass cannonballed into the pond, liberally splashing the trio with water. Jack's hands came up to protect his face far too late, ending up with a strand of seaweed over the top of his head. Teal'c popped up in the middle of the agitated water, smirking as much as the Jaffa ever did.

"Oh, that's it," Carter declared, setting down her fishing pole and kicking off her shoes. She leapt off the dock with a loud whoop, making a much smaller splash that nonetheless smacked Teal'c in the face with a decent amount of water. An intense splashing contest ensued, and Jack retreated to the safety of land with his fishing gear and beer.

"Come on Teal'c, are you going to let a girl beat you?" Daniel teased, dodging a mini-tsunami that the Jaffa sent his way. A wet hand wrapped around his ankle and pulled, sending him toppling into the pond. He came up sputtering, a very satisfied Carter grinning at her handiwork. He stripped off his camo jacket and flung it up on the shore, then tackled her.

Up by the cabin, Jack shook his head at his teammates' antics as he put away his fishing gear. For all their years of serious military service, he'd never met a bigger group of kids. It was a bit more than friendship; he'd even go so far as to say they were a family. A thrice-retired aging general, a repeatedly-resurrected archaeologist and linguist, a woman who just so happened to be a brilliant astrophysicist and soldier, and an alien warrior over a hundred years old. You'd be hard-pressed to find another seemingly mismatched group of people as close as SG-1 were. They'd skipped all the ceremony and "Dearly Beloved"s, but they all bickered like they'd been married to each other for years. Their relationship was so screwed up, but it was the best thing he'd ever been a part of and it worked.

Not bothering to hide his smile this time, he toed off his boots and headed back to the pond to join his family.