SG-1 Fic: Best Friend "Crystal Skull" (3-21)
Crystal Skull (3-21)
For the first time in ever, Daniel beat Jack to the punch. Or rather, to the offer of conciliatory liquor. As he laced up his street shoes in the locker room, the anthropologist looked up at his friend and asked, “Want a beer?” like it had been Jack's last known relative that had just walked out on him.
“Yeah,” O'Neill answered simply, and they went to O'Malley's. His friend was completely silent the entire way there, and Jack got the feeling that he was still processing things, trying to put thoughts into order. Still, the silence disconcerted O'Neill, more than just a little, and he had the sneaking suspicion that if Daniel kept this tight-lipped thing up, he wouldn't be able to handle this on his own.
He waited until Daniel was in the restroom before he yanked out his cellphone. “Backup,” he muttered to himself. He hit the speed dial for Carter's home number without thinking about it and had to wait five rings before she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Carter.”
Because she was a genius, she got right to the point he hadn't even made yet. “How is he, sir?” he could hear the concern in her voice and figured it was probably justified.
He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. “Heck if I know. It looks like he's actually dealing with it, at least.”
“Then why did you call?”
The question threw Jack for a second; he couldn't figure out if he was shocked that she even had to ask, or just confused because he didn't actually know why. “I dunno,” he finally admitted. “Look, just...he needs his team, okay?” And so do I, he absolutely didn't say. “We're at O'Malley's. C'mon, Carter, you know I suck at all this touchy-feely stuff.”
Her voice was warm when she said, “You're better at it than you think, sir. I'll pick up Teal'c and we can get there for dinner. How's an hour sound?”
“Thanks, Carter.” He was a little embarrassed at how not-flippant his gratitude came out sounding, and he hung up without waiting for a response. He could last an hour of depressing Daniel silence if he had to.
But by the time Daniel came back and they got drinks and sat at the bar, his friend had apparently shifted to a more conversational mood. They made a little small-talk that seemed awkward and stilted (mostly because it was). It wasn't until their second round that Daniel raised his glass soberly. “To Nick.”
“To Nick,” Jack agreed, tapping their glasses together before taking a long drink. After a moment, he broached the subject. “You know, you could have mentioned at some point that you actually have a grandfather.”
Daniel snorted into his drink. “Yeah, and then what? 'Oh, by the way, he's insane?'”
O'Neill looked around once to make sure no one was within direct hearing range before leaning forward. “Daniel, I go to other planets for my day job. One old guy who hears voices in his head isn't so bad. Besides, you know I care about that...family...stuff.”
The younger man raised an expressive eyebrow in response.
Jack sighed heavily, willing to concede the point on grounds of his regular and insistent refusal to talk about feelings of any kind. “Alright, fine.” He took a long sip of beer. “So tell me anyway.”
Daniel let out a breath, eyebrows raised. “Oh, there's not much to tell, really.” Jack gave him a look.
The anthropologist considered the amber liquid in his glass for a couple of long, silent minutes, his eyes focused on memory lane somewhere. Finally he sighed, his eyes coming up to meet Jack's only briefly before taking a pull of his drink. “My parents died when I was eight. You know that whole...” he waved absently, and O'Neill nodded in a silent agreement to skip the details. He didn't want to have to think about that any more than Daniel did.
Daniel nodded thoughtfully. “Well, they had a grave-side funeral, which I was really too young to get. Did I ever tell you it was the week before their anniversary?” Jack shook his head silently, at a loss for responses. Fortunately Daniel didn't need prompting as he continued, “I have no idea who I stayed with before... I think it was a friend of theirs from the museum. It's funny, the things you forget. I probably never even thanked them.”
He looked out the window, and Jack wondered if his friend even remembered that he was talking to someone anymore. “It rained. I didn't know anyone there, not even the priest. There must have been two hundred people standing out there getting soaked and I didn't know any of them. I still talked in a dialect of Arabic half the time because we'd spent that last year at a dig outside Cairo.” He gave a little smile, the one Jack had come to recognize as the one eight-year-old Danny must have given his parents. “...Nick was the only one I knew. He showed up halfway through the service with a suitcase. I guess he'd just gotten off a plane. I think he told me later that he'd been in Brazil.”
Jack could almost see it: a tiny Daniel, lost in a sea of mourning strangers, only for old Nick to come riding in on a shining horse, Indiana Jones style. Except it couldn't have gone that well, because Jack knew for a fact that after that funeral, Daniel had been in foster care until he got to college.
He almost didn't prod his friend to continue, but his curiosity got the better of him. Besides, he had the feeling that Daniel needed to do this, and he knew better than to think Daniel would ever start again if he stopped now. “So then what?”
“He took me to get waffles,” he said, and there was fondness on his face despite the apparently painful memories. “It was this little diner in the middle of nowhere. I don't even think he meant to stop there. But right after the funeral, he just put me in his car and we drove until we finally had to stop somewhere. And then he bought me waffles, and he told me all about the dig he'd just been on. I think it was his way of saying sorry.”
Jack tilted his head a little. “Sorry for what?” He caught the bartender's eye and silently signaled for refills.
Daniel waited until his glass was full again before answering, “I think he'd just realized that he wasn't going to adopt me. My parents' will said that he was supposed to, if something happened to them. But he was traveling the world. I knew there was no way he could bring a little kid along.”
“His loss,” Jack said firmly.
The other man looked up in surprise, like he didn't exactly believe that O'Neill could be sincere until their eyes met. When Jack held his gaze, Daniel smiled for real, but it was with that little-boy-lost expression again and for a split second his demeanor reminded Jack so much of Charlie that he actually felt queasy. For some reason, his son had been on Jack's mind even more than normal lately, ever since Nick showed up.
Maybe it's because that look on Daniel's face could've been Charlie, a little voice inside him said. You always wondered, before he died, what would happen to him if you got killed somewhere. Jack actively ignored the voice, because it was all just theoretical now; but he couldn't help thinking that he'd always known that Sara would've been with Charlie, no matter what. He wondered, now, if Daniel's parents hadn't thought the same thing about Nick.
All at once, he felt a kind of empathy with the long-dead Jacksons. They'd lost their son, just like he had; the semantics were just a little different. And now he looked at the man next to him with new eyes. Jack had lost his son. Daniel had lost his parents. In some twisted way, Jack wondered if understanding that experience, albeit from different ends, was part of the reason they clicked so well. It wasn't a thought he wanted to dwell on.
Apparently his thoughts had gone on a little too long, because he resurfaced to find Daniel watching him worriedly. “Jack?”
The colonel shook his head and deliberately cleared away the cobwebs. Man, that had gotten way deeper into the darker corners of his mind than he'd been ready to deal with. He managed a little grin and covered with, “Sorry. Was trying to imagine you carting around after Nick in a little Indiana Jones hat.”
The somber mood of the conversation thus far was suddenly stifling to him, and he took a long drink of beer. “So,” he continued much more cheerfully, “you spent the next seventeen years awing and amazing foster parents, and then next thing you know you end up talking to an empty lecture hall.”
He realized a moment too late that that was probably a little harsh, but to his relief Daniel actually laughed a little and took a drink of his own. “Yeah,” he said wistfully. “How time flies.” He shook his head once as he set his drink down with a heavy clink. “There's not much more to say about Nick, honestly. He followed my academic career, but then he started talking about The Giant Aliens,” and Jack could absolutely hear the capital letters in his voice, “and then I started on the pyramids, and...well, we kind of drifted apart.”
Jack nodded in understanding, and then out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carter's car pulling into the lot outside. Realizing that their moment was just about over, he returned his gaze to Daniel and said, with all seriousness, “He's proud of you, Daniel. And I don't doubt your parents are too.”
The direct and deliberate emotion in the statement made Daniel stare at him with amazed eyes for a moment. But then, at last, the younger man relaxed, and the hesitant smile he gave was entirely his own. “Thanks, Jack.”
“Hey, any time.” Jack clapped him on the shoulder, which caused him to awkwardly balance his drink to keep from spilling it.
Mood officially broken, the anthropologist glared at his friend just as Sam and Teal'c came in the door. Jack flagged them down and they came over, Sam's expression questioning behind Daniel's back. O'Neill offered a shrug and an expression that said, Hey, I tried.
Then Daniel stood to greet their teammates, and his face was clear of most of the sadness that had weighed it down since Nick left. “Sam! Teal'c!” he said enthusiastically. He returned Carter's hug and let Teal'c give him a rare squeeze on the shoulder. It looked like that, despite all odds, talking with Jack had actually made him feel better. O'Neill smiled widely because he knew Daniel wouldn't see it. Maybe he wasn't so bad at this touchy-feely stuff after all.
...Maybe. His eyes fell to the empty beer glasses on the bar, and then he caught Teal'c's knowing look, and remembered the smile in Sam's voice, and for the first time he wondered if the offer to come drinking in the first place hadn't been more for his sake than Daniel's.
These people knew him too well. It didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have. He signaled for more drinks: a beer for Carter, and a cranberry juice for T. When they all had their glasses, he raised his ceremoniously. “To Nick,” he said. “May he learn about all kinds of planet-saving things in the course of his cultural exchange with The Giant Aliens.”
“Here here,” Daniel agreed with a grin, tapping his glass to Jack's. Their eyes met for a moment and Jack felt the new level of understanding between them.
And then, because he was Jack O'Neill, he shook off whatever remnants of seriousness he still had and clapped Teal'c on the shoulder. “C'mon, I'm starving here!” And because they were his team, they followed him and went to dinner.