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Sam sensed him come up behind her and breathed in the scent of leather. She turned and couldn’t help smiling; Ba’al was dressed in a long, gold-black leather coast with panel designs on the front and elaborate sleeves.
‘How,’ she asked, still grinning to herself, ‘do you cope with dressing like a normal person when you go to work?’
‘It is a daily struggle,’ replied Ba’al, his brown eyes dancing with amusement.
He produced an extremely expensive bottle of red wine and started to pour it into two glasses. Sam squinted at it suspiciously.
The leather coat wouldn’t have been cheap (Sam suspected he’d had it made specially) and the wine definitely wasn’t, but both were probably just affordable on a mechanic’s wage. However, there hadn’t been a repeat of the cooking fiasco and toss in all the various materials Ba’al would have needed to start messing around with the gravity in his apartment…
‘How…’ Sam started to ask and then quickly reconsidered. ‘Never mind; I don’t want to know.’
Ba’al smirked in a way that said he knew exactly what she was talking about… or maybe there was a whole bunch of things that she wouldn’t want to know about.
At least she hadn’t heard of any local bank heists.
‘What’s the occasion?’ Sam asked as she accepted the offered wine glass. She preferred beer, but had discovered that Ba’al had a very good taste in wines.
Ba’al collected his computer, setting it on the table in front of her, and sat down next to her, casually throwing an arm around her shoulders. Sam hesitated, and then leant against him.
‘I,’ Ba’al announced smugly, ‘have cracked that Ancient code you gave me.’
‘Really?’ Sam looked up at him, impressed. One of the artefacts that had recently been sent back to them from Pegasus had been locked with a complex code, Sam hadn’t been able to crack it, so she’d given it to Ba’al.
‘Really,’ Ba’al confirmed, touching his wine glass against hers in a toast. The peace of the gesture was broken as Sam saw a sly expression creep over his face, only to be swiftly replaced by a wistful look. ‘Of course, I will be unable to reap the benefits-‘
Sam rolled her eyes. ‘Oh here we go, break out the violins.’
A smirk broke through and Ba’al raised his eyebrows. ‘No congratulations? No ‘thank you’? I have just achieved something that would have taken you and your Tau’ri friends y-‘
‘Ba’al,’ Sam warned, before realising that he was laughing at her. She smiled sweetly. ‘Thank you for working on the stuff you bothered me for weeks to get hold of.’
‘You’re very welcome, my sweet,’ said Ba’al and Sam frowned at the endearment, but let it slide.
He’d spent a lot of time insisting that he could crack that code, after Sam had accidentally mentioned it to him. She’d been reluctant to give it to him, partly in case he solved it before she did, but she’d fixed that issue by deciding not to keep working on it and just let him try. At least then it couldn’t be a competition, for once. Her other reason for holding back was still perfectly valid; anything Ba’al showed particular interest in could be something he wanted for another, less apparent, reason than academic interest or boredom.
His fingers ran through her hair and Sam sighed and asked; ‘Are you using me?’
She felt the start of surprise jolt through him.
‘Of course I am,’ Ba’al said, in a highly affronted tone that was laced with the symbiote reverberation.
Sam tried to cover her spontaneous laugh with a cough.
‘Of course you are,’ she agreed. ‘Why else would a System Lord bother with a Tau’ri?’
She felt Ba’al relax again. ‘Precisely.’
One day, maybe, she would work out when he was being serious. Not today, apparently, so since he seemed in a good enough mood; Sam went for a different question that was bugging her.
‘Are you planning on staying here? On Earth, I mean. Long term.’
She couldn’t see it, somehow, but what else would he do? And what was long term for him, anyway?
‘I’m afraid I’ve run out of long term plans,’ Ba’al remarked wryly, dropping the double tone of the symbiote.
Sam snorted; yeah, right. She tilted her head back so he could see her incredulous look. ‘You want me to believe you don’t have a game plan for being here?’
Ba’al smirked at her. ‘As flattered as I am by that assumption… one can only have so many long term plans. When there are twenty of you, they tend to be exhausted rather fast.’
‘Maybe you should have thought about that before making twenty versions of yourself,’ Sam said accusingly, wondering if twenty had been the final number or if there’d been more. Probably more, because they’d killed a few clones before letting twenty of him into the SGC. Scary thought.
‘Ah, but that was part of a plan, and fun while it lasted. It was extremely entertaining to see the surprised look on your face when you saw me in that warehouse. Even better to think that it may be generations before you Tau’ri will actually stop looking over your shoulders, just in case.’
He’d lead her away from her question. Sam sighed; he was scarily good at doing that. ‘So… do you plan, fine; are you expecting to stay on Earth long term?’
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘My, my Samantha. Anyone would think you had a personal interest in the matter.’
She did, and he knew it. Still, she was hardly going to admit that.
‘My interest is for the safety of this galaxy.’
Ba’al shook his head in mock sadness. ‘We’re back to that, are we?’ A smirk slipped through as she nudged him in the ribs. ‘I’m rather enjoying being on your planet Samantha, and I certainly intend to be here for a while. Long term… who can say? It depends what comes up.’
‘Basically, you’re winging it,’ Sam summarised sceptically.
‘Absolutely. It adds a nice element of surprise to life.’
‘Great,’ said Sam, making sure every bit of her doubt was in her tone. ‘Speaking of surprises… how about you show me that code you supposedly cracked.’
Ba’al sniffed theatrically. ‘You should not doubt-‘
‘My God,’ Sam finished for him. ‘The code?’
Ba’al leaned forward and scoped up his computer, an outrageously smug expression fixed on his face. ‘Here, my sweet.’
Sam leaned over to look at it, but wearily. What had she said now…? It hit her and Sam rolled her eyes. ‘I was being sarcastic, Ba’al. You’re not a God, you’re an ex-System Lord with a seriously overinflated ego.’
‘Last,’ corrected Ba’al, looking at her with a twinkle in his eye.
‘What?’
‘Last System Lord,’ Ba’al repeated.
Sam just rolled her eyes, the disbelief making her smile. ‘Last time I checked you don’t have a system to lord over, so: ex-System Lord.’
‘Actually.’ Ba’al fingers skimmed over the keyboard as he spoke, bringing up the code for her. ‘As there are no other Goa’uld to claim my territory, I am not only the last System Lord; I am the Supreme System Lord of the entire galaxy. And so it shall remain, since there is no-one left to challenge me.’
‘I can challenge that,’ argued Sam, again not sure if he was being serious or just messing with her. ‘Seeing as you don’t have control over a single planet.’
‘Being a mere Tau’ri, not a Goa’uld, you cannot challenge that.’ Ba’al smiled smugly.
Seriously overinflated ego, Sam realised, didn’t even begin to cover it.
‘This mere Tau’ri,’ she said, mildly offended, ‘could always stop giving you Ancient codes to crack.’
‘Ah, Samantha,’ said Ba’al, taking a sip from his wine, ‘but look how helpful I’ve been. Besides, you would miss my company; it must get tedious working with those idiots you call colleagues.’
The annoying thing was, she would miss his input. That said, the implication that he would stop bothering to visit her if she stopped giving him alien research didn’t sit well with her. Whatever it was she was doing with Ba’al, she liked to think that it meant… she had no idea what it meant. To either of them.
It was top of the list of things Sam didn’t want to examine too closely.
Ba’al took her silence as agreement. ‘That’s what I thought. Here, my love, the code.’
Sam almost dropped her wine glass. My sweet was an endearment she could ignore, but that… hadn’t he just said…? Hadn’t she just been thinking…?
‘Sorry, what?’
‘The code.’ Ba’al raised an eyebrow. ‘That I used my not inconsiderable genius to crack for you.’
‘That’s not what… I hadn’t picked you as the sort to use endearments,’ Sam compromised, because, really, how was she supposed to ask Ba’al if they were exclusive?
Ba’al just shrugged. ‘If you would prefer I did not…?’
‘No, it’s okay,’ said Sam, without thinking. It was flattering though, even if he didn’t really mean it. ‘Just don’t start expecting me to use them.’
She really wasn’t the endearment type; it just never seemed to sound right.
‘Hmm,’ Ba’al mused. ‘Well, you did call me your God earlier… and I wouldn’t mind ‘my lord’ either…’
‘In your dreams,’ Sam scoffed.
‘Oh absolutely,’ said Ba’al wickedly and Sam felt her face heat up.
‘I am not calling you my lord,’ she said, firmly.
‘A true shame,’ Ba’al lamented, before assuming a thoughtful expression. ‘Although, it does seem that my name has come to mean lord on your planet, so technically…’
Sam laughed. ‘Trust you to do an ego search.’
‘Well I did need to discover the fate of my many worshipers,’ Ba’al said comfortably. ‘They, at least, recognised my genius.’
‘Weren’t you pretending to be their God, not their resident genius?’
‘One can be both,’ Ba’al told her airily. ‘In fact, I would argue it is necessary to be both.’
Plucking the laptop out of his hands, Sam leant back against him. ‘Okay, genius, let’s see this code.’