Premonition by WinkyB [SG1; Jack/Daniel]
Category: Angst With A Happy Ending™
Characters: Jack/Daniel, with cameos by Sam and Vala
Rating: R, for language mostly
Length: 6,619 words
Warnings: Takes place before, during, and after the 200th episode.
Summary: Daniel has a habit of walking into the lion's den when Jack has his back turned. This time he's going to be ready for it.
Author’s Note: Stand alone, but follows Keys and Blackmail. Pertinent facts: In the aforementioned stories, Daniel moved in with Jack for the sake of convenience - established relationship, but they're hiding it in plain sight. Also, I'm in deep denial over Fraiser's fate in canon.
Also, sori1773 is a goddess that we should all bow down and kiss the feet of because she is the most excellent, superlative, [lots of other adjectives], spectacular beta ever! I may be slightly biased, but it's true. Awesome, I tell you!
Now available on AO3.
Premonition
Jack was at McMurdo and reading his email on a crappy old monitor when the files appeared in his inbox, automatically forwarded by Landry as all SG-1’s reports were. By the time he got through the second page, squinting at the off color text even with his glasses on, a feeling had started crawling up his spine like a Goa’uld looking for a cozy place to set up housekeeping. After the second reading, Jack double checked that Daniel had written the notes and personally signed off on his; the report was dry as a bone, the only suggestions so obvious Woolsey could have made them, and Daniel apparently had no opinions on anything it covered.
He started making arrangements.
His first call was to Los Angeles. Marty had been bugging him for a meeting with the team and Jack had repeatedly told him "Hell no". He only whined a little about his packed schedule when Jack did a 180 by agreeing to it. Jack also informed him the date was non-negotiable, and that it was only a few days away. He held the phone away from his ear, marveling at technology that allowed Marty’s howls of outrage to cross continents so clearly.
After Marty finished his pouting and accepted the offer, with a definite lack of gratitude, Jack hung up and called Landry. He joked about the Pentagon, discussed a few big money requests, and then said it was PR time again and Marty would be stopping by. Landry groaned, but agreed that no matter how annoying, Marty had both the clearance, by default, and the deniability.
Then Landry, conveniently, speculated on who he could spare for the meeting.
"SG-1," Jack said after a moment of silence during which he could have plausibly been considering the matter. "They’re used to him. SG-3 might zat him right in the conference room and the paperwork on that would be a bitch."
"Yeah,” Landry huffed. "He is quite a piece of work from what I’ve heard."
Jack smiled on his end. "That’s one way to describe Marty. And when Daniel throws a hissy fit, tell him I said he has to be there."
Landry just sighed and mentioned how Mitchell had been running on about it being his 200th trip through the gate. When he got to the part about how Mitchell had arrived at that number, Jack immediately added a second phase to his plan.
Arrangements made, he dropped the smooth plastic of the receiver back into its cradle and stood up to go pack his bags. There was nothing else he could do but haul ass to Colorado, hopefully getting there before Daniel disappeared back through the event horizon.
He caught the next transport out and made it in to Colorado Springs, and up to Cheyenne Mountain, in just enough time to catch the tail end of Marty’s meeting. Gearing up in the locker room before heading through the gate, Daniel said to him, "You know I’m going to make you pay for that, right?" Jack just smirked and said something about since he was so good at this PR stuff… Daniel rolled his eyes before Vala, bouncing around like a puppy, claimed his attention.
Jack liked Vala, partly because she actually was smarter than she let on and he loved watching her make Daniel squirm, but mostly because she was there and did what he couldn’t: pestered the hell out of Daniel anytime she was in his general vicinity, made him laugh despite himself, touched him when he needed it and wouldn’t ask for it, grounded him a little bit. Jack gave Vala full credit for unintentionally giving him enough time to see the oncoming train and, he hoped, do something to divert it.
……
Once they’d all trailed back into the gate room with Mitchell high on life and crowing "201!", Jack went though his post-mission physical along with everyone else. He escaped while appreciating the advantages of not leading an off-world team anymore; slapping Mitchell on the back he said, "Look forward to reading your report, Colonel."
Mitchell’s grin only wavered for a second, but Daniel scowled at him like he’d kicked a puppy.
In the locker room, he located his borrowed locker and reluctantly traded BDU’s and a tac vest for his dress blues. Hefting his gear bag he walked around the corner, saluted three members of SG-5 that were packing up to head home, and then turned and cocked an eyebrow at Daniel. "Beer?"
Daniel rolled his eyes. "No."
Vala, who was invading the men’s locker room again, came up behind Daniel, looking puzzled.
Jack huffed, shook his head, and walked away. He rounded the corner and stopped, standing silent as SG-5 finished filing out. He heard Vala say, "What the devil was that about?” He could just catch her reflection in a mirror on the far side; Daniel was still out of his line of sight.
Jack jumped when Sam brushed past him, grinning and shrugging into her jacket. "Beer," she said as her reflection passed in front of Vala’s. Jack wondered when they’d made the locker rooms unisex and why the hell no one had told him. The goddamned Head of Homeworld Security, he thought, and I’m still not getting my memos.
Vala snorted, "Well that’s just no help at all."
Sam, who’d apparently decided not to out him, said, "The General asked if Daniel had beer in his fridge." She paused. "Their fridge. Whatever. And Daniel said that of course he didn’t and if he wanted to drink beer at the house, then he’d have to pick it up himself."
Jack could see Vala’s gaze flicking back and forth between Sam and Daniel. "Really?"
Sam nodded, clasped her hands together, and looked earnest. "What’s really freaky is when they start carrying on whole conversations in silence. It’s like a couple of dogs talking with ear twitches and tail wagging. Only in their case, it’s eyebrows and frowns and pouting." She caught his gaze in the reflection and waggled her eyebrows.
Jack, giving her the evil eye in return, made a mental note to stuff her stocking with a lump of coal for Christmas. He heard Daniel say, "Sam!"
"Especially when they do the whole territory marking thing." She was ignoring both of them and had Vala’s rapt attention. Jack rolled his eyes. "I’m really surprised I’ve never caught them peeing around base."
He saw Vala smack herself on the forehead. "That’s what Daniel was doing the other day on level 26!"
Daniel gave a pained whine. "You, Samantha Carter, have been around Jack O’Neill way too long." His shape slid into the reflection and Jack stepped ghostly quiet around the end of the locker row, out of sight.
"Pot! Kettle!" Sam was calling out after the retreating figure, still laughing.
Once the door had opened and settled closed, Jack relaxed and Sam came back around the corner, looking amused. "Finally taken up stalking as a hobby, Sir?"
Vala, right behind her, squeaked in surprise.
Jack straightened and tugged his jacket into place. "Hobby? Hell, no." He tilted his head back in mock arrogance. "I am a professional, thank you very much."
……
Jack stopped for beer and a few groceries essential to his happiness and well being (Oreos, Pretzels, plain white bread), and arrived at the house at almost the same time as Daniel. Jack put the stuff away in the kitchen while Daniel bitched about the Ori, government funding, the Atlantis base’s need for more power, and a translation from P4S-898, all without stopping for any significant breath.
Setting all six beers in the fridge, Jack nodded in satisfaction. He turned around and removed his jacket, loosened and pulled off his tie, and sat down to untie his shoes. Kicking them off, he stood, grabbed Daniel by the front of his shirt, and hauled him in close before kissing him into silence mid-word.
Loosening his hold for the moment, Jack slid his right hand up along Daniel’s side, over the hard muscle of his shoulder, and up the arch of his throat to wrap his fingers along the underside of his jaw. Jack stroked the soft rasp of five o’clock shadow for a moment then gripped him, holding his head still so he could plunder his mouth at will. Daniel groaned, rubbing himself against Jack’s leg that had slid between his thighs.
Jack ignored his efforts to speed things along and started slowly flicking the buttons of Daniel’s shirt open with his free hand. Patience had never been one of Daniel’s strong suits and now he was trembling, hands grasping and bunching Jack’s dress shirt where it was still tucked into his pants.
Once he’d laid Daniel at least partly bare, Jack pulled back to appreciate the view. Daniel, panting, still had his eyes closed behind fogged glasses. Jack smirked and slid them off, setting them down on the counter beside them. Then he brushed a hand lightly across the smooth chest in front of him, listening closely when Daniel whimpered.
He spent the next few minutes just touching, stroking, stringing Daniel out on his favorite drug. The slick sweat of Daniel’s skin, the firm curve of muscle, the hint of softness around his belly, the way he moaned and sighed - touching Daniel was Jack’s guilty pleasure and he was going to indulge.
Hands still roaming, Jack leaned back in, capturing Daniel’s mouth, tongue licking in through the gasps for air.
They kept kissing for a while, but Daniel, legs now shaking badly, finally broke loose and suggested breathlessly that lying down before falling down would be good.
Later, curled up together on the rumpled sheets, Jack could feel Daniel stirring, restless, almost as soon as their heartbeats slowed. Too soon he was climbing out of bed and heading for the shower, Jack’s skin chilling from the swirl of air he left behind. The sense of unease that had been tapping along his spine ever since Daniel had returned from Atlantis made itself known and he scowled as he rubbed his hand across the lingering warmth on the bedspread next to him.
Once Jack had taken his own shower - alone, damnit - and gotten dressed, he retrieved a beer and stood drinking it in the living room, watching. Daniel was perched in front of his laptop that was sitting on the coffee table while barely legible photos of etchings trailing lightning quick across the screen, his eyes twitching away occasionally to jot down notes on the legal pad next to him.
Jack knew what this was, this sense, this… warning. He’d felt it before but dismissed it, too caught up in other concerns to pay it attention at the time, or to really believe it until after the fact. But now, this time, he could identify it and it was lying like ice cold water in his gut.
Daniel was going to do something stupid. Really stupid. Oh, it might be selfless and noble and even brilliant, but it would also be very, very stupid - and probably fatal.
Jack realized he was still standing in the living room, staring like he was stalking a Daniel shaped target. Shaking loose from the stillness, he settled into the recliner and pretended to watch the television while he formulated and discarded a dozen different ways to stave off the inevitable. By the time the credits were rolling on the second show of the evening, he was realizing that there simply wasn’t a way, short of knocking Daniel unconscious and stuffing him in a stasis chamber.
Tempting, but not a long term solution.
He flicked another glance towards the glow of the laptop where Daniel had barely stirred for the past two hours and then pondered his second beer. He looked down and tapped at his softening midsection with the bottle and scowled. What had bothered him most since his spine had started that tingling was looking in the mirror. When he shaved in the morning he saw an old man looking back at him, his face filled out, the hard lines softened; sitting behind a desk, even on multiple continents, was doing nothing for his girlish figure. If he was too weak and too slow, who was going to drag Daniel back from the edge of some other plane of existence?
The fact was, the whole universe had a hard on for Daniel and he was starting to get that look of being available to the highest bidder. Which for Daniel meant whoever did the best job of looking like they needed saving. Daniel was restless and when that happened he went looking for a cause, always biting off a hell of a lot more than he could chew.
Then, when Jack had his back turned, he walked right into the lion’s den.
One could argue, and Jack tried to argue it with himself, that Mitchell, Carter, and Teal’c would watch Daniel’s six. The problem was, Jack knew how much Carter and Teal’c had on their plates right now, and Mitchell didn’t have a prayer of actually keeping up with one stubborn, arrogant, too smart for his own good, hell bent on martyrdom Daniel Jackson. Jack could already see the echoes of Daniel leaving the world behind - it was in the way he walked, the words he chose, the quality of the long silences, the increased distraction and impatience.
He hadn’t even been talking to himself while he translated and Jack found the quiet damned creepy. Daniel was slipping away from the real world and with no one around to tie him, kicking and screaming, to his own mortal coil, Daniel would begin to forget the little things. Like laughing. Like breathing.
Like being alive.
Jack rose from the recliner, joints stiff from the hours of flights between McMurdo and Colorado. He was very conscious that his pants, which had been near to falling off his skinny ass just a couple of years ago, were damned tight. His dress blues were only a size larger than the ones he’d been wearing his first day as commander of the SGC. The buttons on the front of his jacket, however, were starting to show the strain. In the kitchen, he savored the last mouthful of beer and dropped the bottle grimly into the recycling bin. He’d have to head back to DC tomorrow - which he didn’t like, at all, but even a distracted Daniel would notice an overnight change of habits - and hope there was enough time.
He walked back out the living room and sat back down, watching Daniel stare at the computer screen, the glow of it turning his face an eerie blue and reflecting like fire in his eyes. Jack mentally re-arranged his schedule, planned out his grocery list, worked out a time table; fortunately, in his line of work, a gym and a firing range were almost always conveniently nearby.
Getting back into fighting trim was going to suck at his age, but he wasn’t just handing Daniel over. Not this time.
……
The next morning, Daniel wasn’t happy with Jack’s change in plans. He didn’t say much about it, which was damning enough, but his utter lack of surprise was even worse. Jack still felt like a traitor every time he said, "Sorry, but I have to head back to Washington."
Daniel just looked at him for a moment over his coffee, still bleary eyed with sleep, then went back to reading the cereal box.
……
Over the next few weeks he nurtured his paranoia and worried that something would happen before he was ready, so he clued Carter into the situation on his next trip back. She was at ground zero more often than not and could be counted on to let him know when everything went sideways.
He laid the whole thing out and she reluctantly agreed with him. Then they had the standard argument where Carter tried to take the blame and Jack tried not to strangle her for missing the point completely. It was worse than talking to Daniel some days.
"You’re not his babysitter, damnit, and you can’t watch his ass 24-7."
Sam blinked and bit her lip, trying desperately to hold in the grin. Jack’s eyes narrowed. "Yes, Carter?"
"Nothing-" she wheezed a bit. "Sir."
But then she gave him a transmitter, said he probably needed to be carrying one anyway, and explained that if the Daedulus was in orbit then he could be at the SGC within seconds.
He forgave her completely, magnanimously offered to buy her a slice a pie, and crossed out the mental note about stockings and coal for Christmas.
A week later, Daniel came to visit him in Washington, on break from scaring the piss out of Mitchell with his usual narrow escapes from certain death. When he did, he found Oreos in the cabinet and half a case of beer in the fridge. Had he been suspicious, he might have read the expiration dates and known something was a little off. As it was, Jack mumbled something that was true enough about wanting to be in better shape and Daniel nodded and even went with him when he climbed reluctantly out of bed before dawn and put on his running shoes.
Saving Daniel from himself worked best when he didn’t see it coming.
……
The call came in the middle of a meeting and Jack was up and out the door even as half a dozen pagers went off behind him.
"That situation we talked about, Sir," Carter said. "It’s happening. The Daedulus is in orbit when you’re ready."
"Give me ten." Jack said, snapping shut the phone and sprinting through the halls, sliding around corners and dodging obstacles in the slick dress shoes. He was in his office and had picked up his gear bag just as the world grayed out. He caught a glimpse of Carter - all hollow eyed and swaying with exhaustion behind the control panel - before it fuzzed out again and he was looking at Landry sitting behind his desk at the SGC.
Resettling his bag more comfortably, he nodded, "Heard you lost my archaeologist. Thought I’d come get him back." He really hoped Daniel was listening. Jack was pretty sure the phrase ‘my archaeologist’ would piss him off no matter how glowy he’d gone and gotten himself this time and the bastard deserved it for pulling this kind of crap.
Landry, running more on adrenaline than anything else for the last couple weeks, said, "I’m thinking one of those radio controlled collars. Like for hunting dogs? They don’t come back and you push the button and it beeps? And if they still don’t come back you can shock their furry little butts?"
Jack had to resist the urge to say it was a damned spectacular idea. "That’s more… Vala, really."
Landry nodded gravely. "True, and I have to confess that I stole the idea from Colonel Mitchell, who originally suggested it for that exact individual."
Jack set his bag down and began stripping off the top layer or his uniform. "How long till show time?"
"At least 4 hours," Landry said, rising to leave.
"Good, get Carter’s ass down here and sitting down for two of that, even if it involves tying her to a chair. Sleeping would be better and, from the way she looked up there," He gestured vaguely skyward, "if you can get her horizontal for 5 seconds she might just pass out. Then wake her up and get her something to stay that way - I’m going to need her at full speed in about 3 hours. Teal’c and Mitchell?"
"Running a blockade on one of the super gates with Vala."
Jack paused. "With what?"
Landry smirked. "The Ori ship Vala stole."
Jack was impressed.
……
In the end, he didn’t actually need to so much as leave base. Which seemed cosmically unfair to Jack considering he’d given up beer, damnit, and gotten his ass kicked a lot over the last few months preparing for something he was already a world champion at - arguing. With Daniel, no less.
No, he told himself, looking at the blank eyed figure standing on the ramp in front of the gate, No, it’s arguing with something holding Daniel prisoner and wearing his body like a shiny new suit. It had dressed Daniel up like a Goa’uld Barbie doll and looked at Jack while calling itself ‘Prior’.
Without the microphone on, Jack said, "Fucking snake."
Sam snarled, "It’s not a parasite, Sir!" Her fingers were poised over the keys, trying to be ready for anything. She looked like hell, was higher than a kite, and focusing so hard Jack had been waiting for one of her bones to snap from the tension for the past hour. He revised her Christmas gift again, this time to something sappy and expensive.
He keyed the mic and started talking. It turned out that looking as dangerous as he felt counted for something. Hunched over the dialing console and carrying on a conversation with the thing backlit by the event horizon, Jack looked deadly enough that no one but Landry and Carter would get within 3 feet of him without clearing their throat first.
The debate was tense and Jack had never used so many of Daniel’s own tricks so successfully before - hadn’t realized that he’d known that many. He’d apparently been paying attention after all. It shouldn’t have worked, not on Daniel, but the line between Prior and Daniel was so blurred that, ultimately, it did, and that was all Jack cared about.
He really didn’t want to examine why too closely. He didn’t want to think about how it would have never worked if Daniel had been in his right mind. Didn’t want to consider how much of that weird, flaming thing was actually Daniel. If he had, he would have had to think about how it’d been way too fucking much like some warped version of seeing Daniel’s ghost in Ba’al’s guest room - beautiful, other worldly… dead.
Jack was still calm, so very calm, as an unconscious Daniel was dropped without ceremony, cold and naked into the gate room. "Arrum," Jack said whimsically. But he didn’t smile and no one heard him over the alarms going off.
He found it ironic that whatever heights a race aspired to, he had yet to meet one that could do better than Daniel on a good day. They could possess his body and his mind, but they would never understand him, never be able to use him as effectively as he could use himself.
Watching the medics swarm over the still form below, Jack pondered the absurdity that he was possibly the only one in the universe who had a clue about what made the legendary Daniel Jackson tick. Carter came running back up the steps and into the control room, still hopped up on speed and on the edge of panic, yelling out, "He’s alive!"
Jack looked at her and said, "Of course he is."
……
Afterwards, Jack stood in the infirmary and pondered one of the hard chairs. Deciding he’d done his time in the damn things, he pulled up an extra bed, raised the head of it so he was propped up, slid on his reading glasses with a sigh, and settled in to start writing down notes. Next to him, Daniel slept, his breaths reassuringly steady - no coma, vitals good, all blood work and brain scans normal. It was downright unnatural and Jack wasn’t letting him out of his sight until he woke up and was still speaking English. Or Arabic. Or Abydonian. Or, better yet, all of the above and a couple dozen others.
Once Daniel regained consciousness and got through his initial embarrassment - Jack had just looked at him and Daniel had turned so very red - he worked on holding down solid food while convincing Jack, Landry, and Frasier that yes, he remembered and had no intentions of reciting some horrifyingly embarrassing missions that no forgery of himself would ever admit to and, oh hey, had Jack gotten over that foot fungus yet?
Oh yeah, it’s Daniel. Jack thought even as his eyes promised payback.
It wasn’t long after that Sam appeared and perched on the bed next to Jack’s feet. She hadn’t completely crashed yet, but the doc had let her roam around the mountain to work out some of the amphetamine fueled twitchiness.
"So, Sir, you keep an F16 on standby now?"
Jack eyeballed her over the top of his glasses and went back to writing, "Don’t you have something to be blowing up, Carter?"
Sam grinned. "Nope."
Daniel rolled over onto his side and pillowed his head on his arms. "Hmmm?"
"The general had a backup plan that involved commandeering an F16 and flying it here from D.C.," she said, with an extra side of perky.
Jack muttered, "Tattle tale."
"Oh, I almost forgot!” She smacked the side of his boot. "The president called. Wanted to know where the heck you were."
"Jaaaaack…"
"Shut up, Daniel - Carter’s exaggerating. No sense in waiting around to be given an order that I already knew. Besides, where else would I be?" He nudged her ass with the toe of his boot, then realized he’d spent too much time around the suits at the Pentagon when he immediately felt guilty about it.
He was successfully ignoring the disbelief radiating off the bed next to him, but Daniel said dryly, "The president would have ordered you to steal an F16 and fly yourself to Colorado."
"Probably not, but only because he wouldn’t have thought of it." He huffed, scowling. "And I didn’t steal it!"
Carter was in way too good a mood to be trusted. "You didn’t get a chance to. He also mentioned something about you’d better be on Earth." She’d spent a very formative decade hanging around three very bad influences so he was going to have to be checking chairs before he sat down for a week. Not that he was going to catch any practical joke that Carter would pull on him before it happened, but hope springs eternal.
"Well, see? I was. That’s me, a good little general."
Jack didn’t think it was all that funny, but Daniel laughed so hard the orderly had to come running over and put the IV back in arm. Grimacing at the fresh tape a few minutes later, he’d said, "It’s awfully quiet around here. Where is everybody?"
Which was when they all heard the rush of lightweight combat boots as someone skidded into the infirmary, then a shriek and breathless apologies.
"Well," Jack said. "I’m sure this will answer part of that question." He tucked up his feet to keep from kicking Carter and swung them to the floor. Hopping off, he turned and leaned against Daniel’s bed, braced himself, and waited.
A moment later, Vala, bright eyed and moving fast, exploded into view. Jack caught her just as she was a step shy of launching herself into the air, spun her around, and planted her in front of Carter. Vala stopped dead in confusion.
Carter, to everyone’s shock, squealed in delight and threw her arms in the air. Then grabbed Vala and kissed her. Really kissed her. Jack and Daniel stared. Carter pulled back and beamed. Vala looked stunned.
Daniel snaked a hand out from under the covers and, without tearing his eyes away, poked Jack in the side and said, "Do it again."
……
It was a month later and Jack and Daniel were sitting in the Oval office, awaiting the president’s arrival. Jack tapped his hat against his knee and studied Daniel, who stared absently into the distance.
He couldn’t remember what Daniel had been wearing when he’d first met him - if he thought of Daniel pre-Abydos, it was always those too big government issue hand me downs, all smiles and intensity and off-handed arrogance. Daniel had never understood why people couldn’t see what was perfectly obvious to him, particularly once he’d explained it. And he’d never done stillness very well, his body a reflection of his mind with something always twitching or tapping, a rush of words tumbling out with the occasional half stutter of frustration or excitement. If he was still, it was only because he was holding himself rigid, every muscle contracted into a dead stop.
Back then his smile had come easy enough though, too easy sometimes; it was a mask, a way to look harmless. Jack recognized the tactic as one he had used often enough himself. Daniel had bared his throat a lot back then, head tilting back in apparent submission. It was a total lie, of course, and the moment someone fell for it he’d just smack them down, give them one of those curious looks that asked if they were really that stupid? It’d made Jack laugh every time.
Over ten years later, the stillness - the calm - Jack was watching made him uneasy. The military issue had given way to Abydonian robes, then steadily more fitted and larger sized uniforms, BDUs, and tac vests. There’d been the hats, the bandanas, and one pretty memorable flag. Now, it was an expensive, tailored suit Davis had insisted on, hiding the dog tags Daniel had been saddled with a couple of years back when the Pentagon finally got tired of one of their more valuable assets always getting misplaced. Strangely, they seemed to think it would help.
This morning, when Daniel had come into the kitchen after getting dressed, Jack’s stomach had dropped to his shoes. The only thing he could think was that Daniel looked scary and really fucking valuable and what the hell had Davis been thinking? The less people who realized how important Daniel actually was, the better.
"Yes, Jack?" Daniel asked in the here and now, gaze still unfocused and somewhere off towards the west lawn. Aware of enough of Jack’s stare, though.
"Nothing," Jack said, mind still drifting.
Ten years ago - eleven, he reminded himself - Daniel had been tripping over his own feet, sleep deprived, over caffeinated, and in danger of dropping an armload of charts and graphs that almost no one in the room understood. As a rule, Daniel had always come prepared to meetings with no less than a thick report, at least 3 reference texts, and occasionally a multi-media presentation. He was always within a few short steps of a whiteboard, preferably with at least four different colors of markers, and everyone had started hiding the permanent kind of markers from him pretty early on. Off-world he would use anything that held an image, whether it was a pen and notebook, a patch of sand and a nearby stick, or stone scratched on stone.
Now, for this meeting, when the fate of the universe could well hang on Daniel’s ability to explain the impossible to someone who could barely conceive of how a Stargate functioned, let alone been through one, he’d come with nothing but himself. Whether Jack should be impressed over that fact or mentally drafting his resignation and packing for the Alpha Site was still to be determined.
Out of the shadows, a memory swam to the surface and Jack’s hand jerked, his hat smacking quietly against his knee. They’d had to gate in to the Alpha Site from PX5-423 and it was one of the addresses he never forgot. He had the nervous twitches to prove it; Daniel’s blood was still soaked into it’s stones.
There had been an old temple there on the other side of a long hike where a lot of things went wrong and the four of them had ended up with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their pocketknives. It hadn’t been a lot of blood Daniel had spilled that day and God knew he’d bled more on the milk runs, but it’d left Jack on edge as if they had crossed some line that mission, passed right by the sign on the gate that said Here Be Dragons.
Daniel - eager, excited, babbling - had looked around and found himself without pen and paper. So he’d pulled out his pocketknife, pricked his finger, and kept right on going, finger tracing out a dark red stain on the floor.
The moment when that first drop of blood had welled up was about the time Jack had realized Daniel didn’t have the same boundaries as other people. Not that he hadn’t known that before, but somehow, watching Daniel casually spill his own blood for the sake of an explanation, the wet lines drafted across a hard stone floor, worn smooth by exposure to the rain and wind and snow… Jack had turned and walked away. He didn’t really know if the feeling he got then was fear or anger - or both.
He didn’t know if either was justified, and he didn’t care. Who the hell does that kind of thing? Only Daniel.
The kicker was that there were other things Daniel could have used, but he’d been impatient and hadn’t paused, hadn’t take the time to run outside for a rock or even looked for anything else. After that, Jack had known that Daniel would step easily across lines that should never be crossed, think nothing of strolling into the shadow of the Valley of Death.
Unless someone stood in his way.
He’d known that before Kelowana, and in the aftermath, watching Daniel go all glowy - well, a part of him had thought they’d been on borrowed time all along anyway.
Daniel had wanted to go. Asked to go. Looked up at that goddamned parody of a Stargate with the universe spinning in his eyes and joy like Jack hadn’t seen on any of their faces in way too long. So Jack had stepped aside and let him go.
Then he’d immediately started telling himself that he hadn't failed, that he had done the right thing. He told himself that he hadn’t lost his own team member, hadn’t lost a broken friendship and given up a lifetime to fix it, hadn’t lost, God, lost Daniel. He tried telling himself he hadn’t just let Daniel walk past, walk away. But he’d never been that good at lying to himself.
Now, with Daniel alive and whole and healthy and not six feet away, Jack wasn’t so sure they’d found all the pieces to put him back together again. But he was damn sure going to keep a hold of what was left.
……
Daniel turned out to be at his most brilliant that afternoon; the SGC was getting it’s funding requests and then some, the Atlantis crew was getting greater governing independence, and SG-1 was on permanent stand-by. No reassignments, no replacements, and no permanent grounding. There were smiles all around as they left.
Jack joked and laughed as they headed out, but he was livid - Daniel had thrown in the part about SG-1 at the last minute and with no heads up to him. He kept his mouth shut until they were through security, in his truck, and on their way back to his house.
At the first traffic light at New York and 17th, he twisted to the side and shouted, "What the fuck were you thinking?!"
Daniel looked over at him, eyes bright blue in the afternoon light. "I was thinking we should stop for coffee?"
"No! Damnit! Back there!"
Daniel didn’t say anything, just looked puzzled, and Jack was too pissed off to explain.
Twenty minutes later, after ordering Daniel to stay put for ten, he risked life and limb in the rush at the nearest Starbuck’s. Returning, he handed Daniel two coffees, stripped out of his medal heavy jacket, laid it across the back of the seat, and stepped back up into the truck.
He sat there for a minute, his hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel, arms braced, and finally said, eyes still straight ahead, "You said permanent standby. As in-" Jack took a deep breath, voice dropping lower, harder. "The whole fucking universe has had it’s turn at you and we’ve only got so many years left, Danny boy. No permanent fucking standby. The rest of your time is mine, got that?"
"Jesus, Jack." Daniel set the coffees in the holders. Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw the fine tremor Daniel was trying to hide by settling himself back against the window and sliding his hands under his suit jacket. "You make it sound like I’m whoring myself out."
"Yeah, you are, Daniel - whoring out your soul and as of right now? It’s mine. You want to fight a war? You do it from Washington with me as your watchdog. You want to go exploring on this planet? You give it a couple years and then we take off together with me watching your six. You want to go get all orgasmic over the city of the goddamned, Danny thefting Ancients? We’ll both hop a ride on the Daedulus ‘cause there’s no way I’m letting the Glowy Club or one of their holier than thou cities anywhere near you without me there. Got it?"
Daniel just blinked at him, retrieved his coffee, took a sip of it, and stared, but Jack could hear his breathing; too quick for the dead calm look he was wearing.
Jack set his mouth in a tight line, threw the truck in reverse, twisted his arm over the back of the seat and turned to look out the rear window as he backed up. After merging back into traffic and whipping around the next circle, he broke the thick silence, body slumping a little in sudden weariness, thinking, Damn I feel old.
"There’s a new show on tonight I’d like to watch," he said. "Just stay in. I’m free tomorrow so we can do whatever you want."
Daniel stirred beside him. "Okay."
Jack tapped a thumb on the steering wheel. "It’s about treasure hunters. Good, clean, mind numbing entertainment in front of the tube, ya know? I’ve been- well, just haven’t had much time for-"
"No," Daniel interrupted, shaking his head. "No, I mean, meant- I meant okay to before. The other stuff. Well, to the staying in, too. Maybe order in some Thai food, eat it in front of the TV, but the other stuff - I just… Okay."
Jack stopped at the red light, his foot a little heavy on the brake, and looked across the cab. "Okay? Just like that? You’re okay with it? No yelling? No arguments?"
Daniel sipped at his coffee, tapped the fingers of his free hand against his knee. "Would any of my reasons of how this is a bad idea convince you?"
Jack’s jaw went tight. "No. Not any more. Not this time."
Daniel shook his head. "I didn’t think so. And, truth be told, I’m not sure I would want to win that one." He paused for another sip. "I knew it was only a matter or time before you crossed the line from stalker to psychotic control freak." He smiled, wide and brilliant, at Jack’s narrow eyed glare and said, "Green light, Jack." The horns behind them pointed out the same thing.
They rode for a few minutes in silence before Daniel, struggling to look offended and hold in the amusement, said, "Danny thefting ancients?" Jack just snorted and Daniel’s laughter broke loose, not stopping even as he pulled off his glasses to dry his eyes. Happy ending, Jack thought as they rode home, both of them still grinning. Didn’t see that coming.
Characters: Jack/Daniel, with cameos by Sam and Vala
Rating: R, for language mostly
Length: 6,619 words
Warnings: Takes place before, during, and after the 200th episode.
Summary: Daniel has a habit of walking into the lion's den when Jack has his back turned. This time he's going to be ready for it.
Author’s Note: Stand alone, but follows Keys and Blackmail. Pertinent facts: In the aforementioned stories, Daniel moved in with Jack for the sake of convenience - established relationship, but they're hiding it in plain sight. Also, I'm in deep denial over Fraiser's fate in canon.
Also, sori1773 is a goddess that we should all bow down and kiss the feet of because she is the most excellent, superlative, [lots of other adjectives], spectacular beta ever! I may be slightly biased, but it's true. Awesome, I tell you!
Now available on AO3.
Premonition
Jack was at McMurdo and reading his email on a crappy old monitor when the files appeared in his inbox, automatically forwarded by Landry as all SG-1’s reports were. By the time he got through the second page, squinting at the off color text even with his glasses on, a feeling had started crawling up his spine like a Goa’uld looking for a cozy place to set up housekeeping. After the second reading, Jack double checked that Daniel had written the notes and personally signed off on his; the report was dry as a bone, the only suggestions so obvious Woolsey could have made them, and Daniel apparently had no opinions on anything it covered.
He started making arrangements.
His first call was to Los Angeles. Marty had been bugging him for a meeting with the team and Jack had repeatedly told him "Hell no". He only whined a little about his packed schedule when Jack did a 180 by agreeing to it. Jack also informed him the date was non-negotiable, and that it was only a few days away. He held the phone away from his ear, marveling at technology that allowed Marty’s howls of outrage to cross continents so clearly.
After Marty finished his pouting and accepted the offer, with a definite lack of gratitude, Jack hung up and called Landry. He joked about the Pentagon, discussed a few big money requests, and then said it was PR time again and Marty would be stopping by. Landry groaned, but agreed that no matter how annoying, Marty had both the clearance, by default, and the deniability.
Then Landry, conveniently, speculated on who he could spare for the meeting.
"SG-1," Jack said after a moment of silence during which he could have plausibly been considering the matter. "They’re used to him. SG-3 might zat him right in the conference room and the paperwork on that would be a bitch."
"Yeah,” Landry huffed. "He is quite a piece of work from what I’ve heard."
Jack smiled on his end. "That’s one way to describe Marty. And when Daniel throws a hissy fit, tell him I said he has to be there."
Landry just sighed and mentioned how Mitchell had been running on about it being his 200th trip through the gate. When he got to the part about how Mitchell had arrived at that number, Jack immediately added a second phase to his plan.
Arrangements made, he dropped the smooth plastic of the receiver back into its cradle and stood up to go pack his bags. There was nothing else he could do but haul ass to Colorado, hopefully getting there before Daniel disappeared back through the event horizon.
He caught the next transport out and made it in to Colorado Springs, and up to Cheyenne Mountain, in just enough time to catch the tail end of Marty’s meeting. Gearing up in the locker room before heading through the gate, Daniel said to him, "You know I’m going to make you pay for that, right?" Jack just smirked and said something about since he was so good at this PR stuff… Daniel rolled his eyes before Vala, bouncing around like a puppy, claimed his attention.
Jack liked Vala, partly because she actually was smarter than she let on and he loved watching her make Daniel squirm, but mostly because she was there and did what he couldn’t: pestered the hell out of Daniel anytime she was in his general vicinity, made him laugh despite himself, touched him when he needed it and wouldn’t ask for it, grounded him a little bit. Jack gave Vala full credit for unintentionally giving him enough time to see the oncoming train and, he hoped, do something to divert it.
……
Once they’d all trailed back into the gate room with Mitchell high on life and crowing "201!", Jack went though his post-mission physical along with everyone else. He escaped while appreciating the advantages of not leading an off-world team anymore; slapping Mitchell on the back he said, "Look forward to reading your report, Colonel."
Mitchell’s grin only wavered for a second, but Daniel scowled at him like he’d kicked a puppy.
In the locker room, he located his borrowed locker and reluctantly traded BDU’s and a tac vest for his dress blues. Hefting his gear bag he walked around the corner, saluted three members of SG-5 that were packing up to head home, and then turned and cocked an eyebrow at Daniel. "Beer?"
Daniel rolled his eyes. "No."
Vala, who was invading the men’s locker room again, came up behind Daniel, looking puzzled.
Jack huffed, shook his head, and walked away. He rounded the corner and stopped, standing silent as SG-5 finished filing out. He heard Vala say, "What the devil was that about?” He could just catch her reflection in a mirror on the far side; Daniel was still out of his line of sight.
Jack jumped when Sam brushed past him, grinning and shrugging into her jacket. "Beer," she said as her reflection passed in front of Vala’s. Jack wondered when they’d made the locker rooms unisex and why the hell no one had told him. The goddamned Head of Homeworld Security, he thought, and I’m still not getting my memos.
Vala snorted, "Well that’s just no help at all."
Sam, who’d apparently decided not to out him, said, "The General asked if Daniel had beer in his fridge." She paused. "Their fridge. Whatever. And Daniel said that of course he didn’t and if he wanted to drink beer at the house, then he’d have to pick it up himself."
Jack could see Vala’s gaze flicking back and forth between Sam and Daniel. "Really?"
Sam nodded, clasped her hands together, and looked earnest. "What’s really freaky is when they start carrying on whole conversations in silence. It’s like a couple of dogs talking with ear twitches and tail wagging. Only in their case, it’s eyebrows and frowns and pouting." She caught his gaze in the reflection and waggled her eyebrows.
Jack, giving her the evil eye in return, made a mental note to stuff her stocking with a lump of coal for Christmas. He heard Daniel say, "Sam!"
"Especially when they do the whole territory marking thing." She was ignoring both of them and had Vala’s rapt attention. Jack rolled his eyes. "I’m really surprised I’ve never caught them peeing around base."
He saw Vala smack herself on the forehead. "That’s what Daniel was doing the other day on level 26!"
Daniel gave a pained whine. "You, Samantha Carter, have been around Jack O’Neill way too long." His shape slid into the reflection and Jack stepped ghostly quiet around the end of the locker row, out of sight.
"Pot! Kettle!" Sam was calling out after the retreating figure, still laughing.
Once the door had opened and settled closed, Jack relaxed and Sam came back around the corner, looking amused. "Finally taken up stalking as a hobby, Sir?"
Vala, right behind her, squeaked in surprise.
Jack straightened and tugged his jacket into place. "Hobby? Hell, no." He tilted his head back in mock arrogance. "I am a professional, thank you very much."
……
Jack stopped for beer and a few groceries essential to his happiness and well being (Oreos, Pretzels, plain white bread), and arrived at the house at almost the same time as Daniel. Jack put the stuff away in the kitchen while Daniel bitched about the Ori, government funding, the Atlantis base’s need for more power, and a translation from P4S-898, all without stopping for any significant breath.
Setting all six beers in the fridge, Jack nodded in satisfaction. He turned around and removed his jacket, loosened and pulled off his tie, and sat down to untie his shoes. Kicking them off, he stood, grabbed Daniel by the front of his shirt, and hauled him in close before kissing him into silence mid-word.
Loosening his hold for the moment, Jack slid his right hand up along Daniel’s side, over the hard muscle of his shoulder, and up the arch of his throat to wrap his fingers along the underside of his jaw. Jack stroked the soft rasp of five o’clock shadow for a moment then gripped him, holding his head still so he could plunder his mouth at will. Daniel groaned, rubbing himself against Jack’s leg that had slid between his thighs.
Jack ignored his efforts to speed things along and started slowly flicking the buttons of Daniel’s shirt open with his free hand. Patience had never been one of Daniel’s strong suits and now he was trembling, hands grasping and bunching Jack’s dress shirt where it was still tucked into his pants.
Once he’d laid Daniel at least partly bare, Jack pulled back to appreciate the view. Daniel, panting, still had his eyes closed behind fogged glasses. Jack smirked and slid them off, setting them down on the counter beside them. Then he brushed a hand lightly across the smooth chest in front of him, listening closely when Daniel whimpered.
He spent the next few minutes just touching, stroking, stringing Daniel out on his favorite drug. The slick sweat of Daniel’s skin, the firm curve of muscle, the hint of softness around his belly, the way he moaned and sighed - touching Daniel was Jack’s guilty pleasure and he was going to indulge.
Hands still roaming, Jack leaned back in, capturing Daniel’s mouth, tongue licking in through the gasps for air.
They kept kissing for a while, but Daniel, legs now shaking badly, finally broke loose and suggested breathlessly that lying down before falling down would be good.
Later, curled up together on the rumpled sheets, Jack could feel Daniel stirring, restless, almost as soon as their heartbeats slowed. Too soon he was climbing out of bed and heading for the shower, Jack’s skin chilling from the swirl of air he left behind. The sense of unease that had been tapping along his spine ever since Daniel had returned from Atlantis made itself known and he scowled as he rubbed his hand across the lingering warmth on the bedspread next to him.
Once Jack had taken his own shower - alone, damnit - and gotten dressed, he retrieved a beer and stood drinking it in the living room, watching. Daniel was perched in front of his laptop that was sitting on the coffee table while barely legible photos of etchings trailing lightning quick across the screen, his eyes twitching away occasionally to jot down notes on the legal pad next to him.
Jack knew what this was, this sense, this… warning. He’d felt it before but dismissed it, too caught up in other concerns to pay it attention at the time, or to really believe it until after the fact. But now, this time, he could identify it and it was lying like ice cold water in his gut.
Daniel was going to do something stupid. Really stupid. Oh, it might be selfless and noble and even brilliant, but it would also be very, very stupid - and probably fatal.
Jack realized he was still standing in the living room, staring like he was stalking a Daniel shaped target. Shaking loose from the stillness, he settled into the recliner and pretended to watch the television while he formulated and discarded a dozen different ways to stave off the inevitable. By the time the credits were rolling on the second show of the evening, he was realizing that there simply wasn’t a way, short of knocking Daniel unconscious and stuffing him in a stasis chamber.
Tempting, but not a long term solution.
He flicked another glance towards the glow of the laptop where Daniel had barely stirred for the past two hours and then pondered his second beer. He looked down and tapped at his softening midsection with the bottle and scowled. What had bothered him most since his spine had started that tingling was looking in the mirror. When he shaved in the morning he saw an old man looking back at him, his face filled out, the hard lines softened; sitting behind a desk, even on multiple continents, was doing nothing for his girlish figure. If he was too weak and too slow, who was going to drag Daniel back from the edge of some other plane of existence?
The fact was, the whole universe had a hard on for Daniel and he was starting to get that look of being available to the highest bidder. Which for Daniel meant whoever did the best job of looking like they needed saving. Daniel was restless and when that happened he went looking for a cause, always biting off a hell of a lot more than he could chew.
Then, when Jack had his back turned, he walked right into the lion’s den.
One could argue, and Jack tried to argue it with himself, that Mitchell, Carter, and Teal’c would watch Daniel’s six. The problem was, Jack knew how much Carter and Teal’c had on their plates right now, and Mitchell didn’t have a prayer of actually keeping up with one stubborn, arrogant, too smart for his own good, hell bent on martyrdom Daniel Jackson. Jack could already see the echoes of Daniel leaving the world behind - it was in the way he walked, the words he chose, the quality of the long silences, the increased distraction and impatience.
He hadn’t even been talking to himself while he translated and Jack found the quiet damned creepy. Daniel was slipping away from the real world and with no one around to tie him, kicking and screaming, to his own mortal coil, Daniel would begin to forget the little things. Like laughing. Like breathing.
Like being alive.
Jack rose from the recliner, joints stiff from the hours of flights between McMurdo and Colorado. He was very conscious that his pants, which had been near to falling off his skinny ass just a couple of years ago, were damned tight. His dress blues were only a size larger than the ones he’d been wearing his first day as commander of the SGC. The buttons on the front of his jacket, however, were starting to show the strain. In the kitchen, he savored the last mouthful of beer and dropped the bottle grimly into the recycling bin. He’d have to head back to DC tomorrow - which he didn’t like, at all, but even a distracted Daniel would notice an overnight change of habits - and hope there was enough time.
He walked back out the living room and sat back down, watching Daniel stare at the computer screen, the glow of it turning his face an eerie blue and reflecting like fire in his eyes. Jack mentally re-arranged his schedule, planned out his grocery list, worked out a time table; fortunately, in his line of work, a gym and a firing range were almost always conveniently nearby.
Getting back into fighting trim was going to suck at his age, but he wasn’t just handing Daniel over. Not this time.
……
The next morning, Daniel wasn’t happy with Jack’s change in plans. He didn’t say much about it, which was damning enough, but his utter lack of surprise was even worse. Jack still felt like a traitor every time he said, "Sorry, but I have to head back to Washington."
Daniel just looked at him for a moment over his coffee, still bleary eyed with sleep, then went back to reading the cereal box.
……
Over the next few weeks he nurtured his paranoia and worried that something would happen before he was ready, so he clued Carter into the situation on his next trip back. She was at ground zero more often than not and could be counted on to let him know when everything went sideways.
He laid the whole thing out and she reluctantly agreed with him. Then they had the standard argument where Carter tried to take the blame and Jack tried not to strangle her for missing the point completely. It was worse than talking to Daniel some days.
"You’re not his babysitter, damnit, and you can’t watch his ass 24-7."
Sam blinked and bit her lip, trying desperately to hold in the grin. Jack’s eyes narrowed. "Yes, Carter?"
"Nothing-" she wheezed a bit. "Sir."
But then she gave him a transmitter, said he probably needed to be carrying one anyway, and explained that if the Daedulus was in orbit then he could be at the SGC within seconds.
He forgave her completely, magnanimously offered to buy her a slice a pie, and crossed out the mental note about stockings and coal for Christmas.
A week later, Daniel came to visit him in Washington, on break from scaring the piss out of Mitchell with his usual narrow escapes from certain death. When he did, he found Oreos in the cabinet and half a case of beer in the fridge. Had he been suspicious, he might have read the expiration dates and known something was a little off. As it was, Jack mumbled something that was true enough about wanting to be in better shape and Daniel nodded and even went with him when he climbed reluctantly out of bed before dawn and put on his running shoes.
Saving Daniel from himself worked best when he didn’t see it coming.
……
The call came in the middle of a meeting and Jack was up and out the door even as half a dozen pagers went off behind him.
"That situation we talked about, Sir," Carter said. "It’s happening. The Daedulus is in orbit when you’re ready."
"Give me ten." Jack said, snapping shut the phone and sprinting through the halls, sliding around corners and dodging obstacles in the slick dress shoes. He was in his office and had picked up his gear bag just as the world grayed out. He caught a glimpse of Carter - all hollow eyed and swaying with exhaustion behind the control panel - before it fuzzed out again and he was looking at Landry sitting behind his desk at the SGC.
Resettling his bag more comfortably, he nodded, "Heard you lost my archaeologist. Thought I’d come get him back." He really hoped Daniel was listening. Jack was pretty sure the phrase ‘my archaeologist’ would piss him off no matter how glowy he’d gone and gotten himself this time and the bastard deserved it for pulling this kind of crap.
Landry, running more on adrenaline than anything else for the last couple weeks, said, "I’m thinking one of those radio controlled collars. Like for hunting dogs? They don’t come back and you push the button and it beeps? And if they still don’t come back you can shock their furry little butts?"
Jack had to resist the urge to say it was a damned spectacular idea. "That’s more… Vala, really."
Landry nodded gravely. "True, and I have to confess that I stole the idea from Colonel Mitchell, who originally suggested it for that exact individual."
Jack set his bag down and began stripping off the top layer or his uniform. "How long till show time?"
"At least 4 hours," Landry said, rising to leave.
"Good, get Carter’s ass down here and sitting down for two of that, even if it involves tying her to a chair. Sleeping would be better and, from the way she looked up there," He gestured vaguely skyward, "if you can get her horizontal for 5 seconds she might just pass out. Then wake her up and get her something to stay that way - I’m going to need her at full speed in about 3 hours. Teal’c and Mitchell?"
"Running a blockade on one of the super gates with Vala."
Jack paused. "With what?"
Landry smirked. "The Ori ship Vala stole."
Jack was impressed.
……
In the end, he didn’t actually need to so much as leave base. Which seemed cosmically unfair to Jack considering he’d given up beer, damnit, and gotten his ass kicked a lot over the last few months preparing for something he was already a world champion at - arguing. With Daniel, no less.
No, he told himself, looking at the blank eyed figure standing on the ramp in front of the gate, No, it’s arguing with something holding Daniel prisoner and wearing his body like a shiny new suit. It had dressed Daniel up like a Goa’uld Barbie doll and looked at Jack while calling itself ‘Prior’.
Without the microphone on, Jack said, "Fucking snake."
Sam snarled, "It’s not a parasite, Sir!" Her fingers were poised over the keys, trying to be ready for anything. She looked like hell, was higher than a kite, and focusing so hard Jack had been waiting for one of her bones to snap from the tension for the past hour. He revised her Christmas gift again, this time to something sappy and expensive.
He keyed the mic and started talking. It turned out that looking as dangerous as he felt counted for something. Hunched over the dialing console and carrying on a conversation with the thing backlit by the event horizon, Jack looked deadly enough that no one but Landry and Carter would get within 3 feet of him without clearing their throat first.
The debate was tense and Jack had never used so many of Daniel’s own tricks so successfully before - hadn’t realized that he’d known that many. He’d apparently been paying attention after all. It shouldn’t have worked, not on Daniel, but the line between Prior and Daniel was so blurred that, ultimately, it did, and that was all Jack cared about.
He really didn’t want to examine why too closely. He didn’t want to think about how it would have never worked if Daniel had been in his right mind. Didn’t want to consider how much of that weird, flaming thing was actually Daniel. If he had, he would have had to think about how it’d been way too fucking much like some warped version of seeing Daniel’s ghost in Ba’al’s guest room - beautiful, other worldly… dead.
Jack was still calm, so very calm, as an unconscious Daniel was dropped without ceremony, cold and naked into the gate room. "Arrum," Jack said whimsically. But he didn’t smile and no one heard him over the alarms going off.
He found it ironic that whatever heights a race aspired to, he had yet to meet one that could do better than Daniel on a good day. They could possess his body and his mind, but they would never understand him, never be able to use him as effectively as he could use himself.
Watching the medics swarm over the still form below, Jack pondered the absurdity that he was possibly the only one in the universe who had a clue about what made the legendary Daniel Jackson tick. Carter came running back up the steps and into the control room, still hopped up on speed and on the edge of panic, yelling out, "He’s alive!"
Jack looked at her and said, "Of course he is."
……
Afterwards, Jack stood in the infirmary and pondered one of the hard chairs. Deciding he’d done his time in the damn things, he pulled up an extra bed, raised the head of it so he was propped up, slid on his reading glasses with a sigh, and settled in to start writing down notes. Next to him, Daniel slept, his breaths reassuringly steady - no coma, vitals good, all blood work and brain scans normal. It was downright unnatural and Jack wasn’t letting him out of his sight until he woke up and was still speaking English. Or Arabic. Or Abydonian. Or, better yet, all of the above and a couple dozen others.
Once Daniel regained consciousness and got through his initial embarrassment - Jack had just looked at him and Daniel had turned so very red - he worked on holding down solid food while convincing Jack, Landry, and Frasier that yes, he remembered and had no intentions of reciting some horrifyingly embarrassing missions that no forgery of himself would ever admit to and, oh hey, had Jack gotten over that foot fungus yet?
Oh yeah, it’s Daniel. Jack thought even as his eyes promised payback.
It wasn’t long after that Sam appeared and perched on the bed next to Jack’s feet. She hadn’t completely crashed yet, but the doc had let her roam around the mountain to work out some of the amphetamine fueled twitchiness.
"So, Sir, you keep an F16 on standby now?"
Jack eyeballed her over the top of his glasses and went back to writing, "Don’t you have something to be blowing up, Carter?"
Sam grinned. "Nope."
Daniel rolled over onto his side and pillowed his head on his arms. "Hmmm?"
"The general had a backup plan that involved commandeering an F16 and flying it here from D.C.," she said, with an extra side of perky.
Jack muttered, "Tattle tale."
"Oh, I almost forgot!” She smacked the side of his boot. "The president called. Wanted to know where the heck you were."
"Jaaaaack…"
"Shut up, Daniel - Carter’s exaggerating. No sense in waiting around to be given an order that I already knew. Besides, where else would I be?" He nudged her ass with the toe of his boot, then realized he’d spent too much time around the suits at the Pentagon when he immediately felt guilty about it.
He was successfully ignoring the disbelief radiating off the bed next to him, but Daniel said dryly, "The president would have ordered you to steal an F16 and fly yourself to Colorado."
"Probably not, but only because he wouldn’t have thought of it." He huffed, scowling. "And I didn’t steal it!"
Carter was in way too good a mood to be trusted. "You didn’t get a chance to. He also mentioned something about you’d better be on Earth." She’d spent a very formative decade hanging around three very bad influences so he was going to have to be checking chairs before he sat down for a week. Not that he was going to catch any practical joke that Carter would pull on him before it happened, but hope springs eternal.
"Well, see? I was. That’s me, a good little general."
Jack didn’t think it was all that funny, but Daniel laughed so hard the orderly had to come running over and put the IV back in arm. Grimacing at the fresh tape a few minutes later, he’d said, "It’s awfully quiet around here. Where is everybody?"
Which was when they all heard the rush of lightweight combat boots as someone skidded into the infirmary, then a shriek and breathless apologies.
"Well," Jack said. "I’m sure this will answer part of that question." He tucked up his feet to keep from kicking Carter and swung them to the floor. Hopping off, he turned and leaned against Daniel’s bed, braced himself, and waited.
A moment later, Vala, bright eyed and moving fast, exploded into view. Jack caught her just as she was a step shy of launching herself into the air, spun her around, and planted her in front of Carter. Vala stopped dead in confusion.
Carter, to everyone’s shock, squealed in delight and threw her arms in the air. Then grabbed Vala and kissed her. Really kissed her. Jack and Daniel stared. Carter pulled back and beamed. Vala looked stunned.
Daniel snaked a hand out from under the covers and, without tearing his eyes away, poked Jack in the side and said, "Do it again."
……
It was a month later and Jack and Daniel were sitting in the Oval office, awaiting the president’s arrival. Jack tapped his hat against his knee and studied Daniel, who stared absently into the distance.
He couldn’t remember what Daniel had been wearing when he’d first met him - if he thought of Daniel pre-Abydos, it was always those too big government issue hand me downs, all smiles and intensity and off-handed arrogance. Daniel had never understood why people couldn’t see what was perfectly obvious to him, particularly once he’d explained it. And he’d never done stillness very well, his body a reflection of his mind with something always twitching or tapping, a rush of words tumbling out with the occasional half stutter of frustration or excitement. If he was still, it was only because he was holding himself rigid, every muscle contracted into a dead stop.
Back then his smile had come easy enough though, too easy sometimes; it was a mask, a way to look harmless. Jack recognized the tactic as one he had used often enough himself. Daniel had bared his throat a lot back then, head tilting back in apparent submission. It was a total lie, of course, and the moment someone fell for it he’d just smack them down, give them one of those curious looks that asked if they were really that stupid? It’d made Jack laugh every time.
Over ten years later, the stillness - the calm - Jack was watching made him uneasy. The military issue had given way to Abydonian robes, then steadily more fitted and larger sized uniforms, BDUs, and tac vests. There’d been the hats, the bandanas, and one pretty memorable flag. Now, it was an expensive, tailored suit Davis had insisted on, hiding the dog tags Daniel had been saddled with a couple of years back when the Pentagon finally got tired of one of their more valuable assets always getting misplaced. Strangely, they seemed to think it would help.
This morning, when Daniel had come into the kitchen after getting dressed, Jack’s stomach had dropped to his shoes. The only thing he could think was that Daniel looked scary and really fucking valuable and what the hell had Davis been thinking? The less people who realized how important Daniel actually was, the better.
"Yes, Jack?" Daniel asked in the here and now, gaze still unfocused and somewhere off towards the west lawn. Aware of enough of Jack’s stare, though.
"Nothing," Jack said, mind still drifting.
Ten years ago - eleven, he reminded himself - Daniel had been tripping over his own feet, sleep deprived, over caffeinated, and in danger of dropping an armload of charts and graphs that almost no one in the room understood. As a rule, Daniel had always come prepared to meetings with no less than a thick report, at least 3 reference texts, and occasionally a multi-media presentation. He was always within a few short steps of a whiteboard, preferably with at least four different colors of markers, and everyone had started hiding the permanent kind of markers from him pretty early on. Off-world he would use anything that held an image, whether it was a pen and notebook, a patch of sand and a nearby stick, or stone scratched on stone.
Now, for this meeting, when the fate of the universe could well hang on Daniel’s ability to explain the impossible to someone who could barely conceive of how a Stargate functioned, let alone been through one, he’d come with nothing but himself. Whether Jack should be impressed over that fact or mentally drafting his resignation and packing for the Alpha Site was still to be determined.
Out of the shadows, a memory swam to the surface and Jack’s hand jerked, his hat smacking quietly against his knee. They’d had to gate in to the Alpha Site from PX5-423 and it was one of the addresses he never forgot. He had the nervous twitches to prove it; Daniel’s blood was still soaked into it’s stones.
There had been an old temple there on the other side of a long hike where a lot of things went wrong and the four of them had ended up with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their pocketknives. It hadn’t been a lot of blood Daniel had spilled that day and God knew he’d bled more on the milk runs, but it’d left Jack on edge as if they had crossed some line that mission, passed right by the sign on the gate that said Here Be Dragons.
Daniel - eager, excited, babbling - had looked around and found himself without pen and paper. So he’d pulled out his pocketknife, pricked his finger, and kept right on going, finger tracing out a dark red stain on the floor.
The moment when that first drop of blood had welled up was about the time Jack had realized Daniel didn’t have the same boundaries as other people. Not that he hadn’t known that before, but somehow, watching Daniel casually spill his own blood for the sake of an explanation, the wet lines drafted across a hard stone floor, worn smooth by exposure to the rain and wind and snow… Jack had turned and walked away. He didn’t really know if the feeling he got then was fear or anger - or both.
He didn’t know if either was justified, and he didn’t care. Who the hell does that kind of thing? Only Daniel.
The kicker was that there were other things Daniel could have used, but he’d been impatient and hadn’t paused, hadn’t take the time to run outside for a rock or even looked for anything else. After that, Jack had known that Daniel would step easily across lines that should never be crossed, think nothing of strolling into the shadow of the Valley of Death.
Unless someone stood in his way.
He’d known that before Kelowana, and in the aftermath, watching Daniel go all glowy - well, a part of him had thought they’d been on borrowed time all along anyway.
Daniel had wanted to go. Asked to go. Looked up at that goddamned parody of a Stargate with the universe spinning in his eyes and joy like Jack hadn’t seen on any of their faces in way too long. So Jack had stepped aside and let him go.
Then he’d immediately started telling himself that he hadn't failed, that he had done the right thing. He told himself that he hadn’t lost his own team member, hadn’t lost a broken friendship and given up a lifetime to fix it, hadn’t lost, God, lost Daniel. He tried telling himself he hadn’t just let Daniel walk past, walk away. But he’d never been that good at lying to himself.
Now, with Daniel alive and whole and healthy and not six feet away, Jack wasn’t so sure they’d found all the pieces to put him back together again. But he was damn sure going to keep a hold of what was left.
……
Daniel turned out to be at his most brilliant that afternoon; the SGC was getting it’s funding requests and then some, the Atlantis crew was getting greater governing independence, and SG-1 was on permanent stand-by. No reassignments, no replacements, and no permanent grounding. There were smiles all around as they left.
Jack joked and laughed as they headed out, but he was livid - Daniel had thrown in the part about SG-1 at the last minute and with no heads up to him. He kept his mouth shut until they were through security, in his truck, and on their way back to his house.
At the first traffic light at New York and 17th, he twisted to the side and shouted, "What the fuck were you thinking?!"
Daniel looked over at him, eyes bright blue in the afternoon light. "I was thinking we should stop for coffee?"
"No! Damnit! Back there!"
Daniel didn’t say anything, just looked puzzled, and Jack was too pissed off to explain.
Twenty minutes later, after ordering Daniel to stay put for ten, he risked life and limb in the rush at the nearest Starbuck’s. Returning, he handed Daniel two coffees, stripped out of his medal heavy jacket, laid it across the back of the seat, and stepped back up into the truck.
He sat there for a minute, his hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel, arms braced, and finally said, eyes still straight ahead, "You said permanent standby. As in-" Jack took a deep breath, voice dropping lower, harder. "The whole fucking universe has had it’s turn at you and we’ve only got so many years left, Danny boy. No permanent fucking standby. The rest of your time is mine, got that?"
"Jesus, Jack." Daniel set the coffees in the holders. Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw the fine tremor Daniel was trying to hide by settling himself back against the window and sliding his hands under his suit jacket. "You make it sound like I’m whoring myself out."
"Yeah, you are, Daniel - whoring out your soul and as of right now? It’s mine. You want to fight a war? You do it from Washington with me as your watchdog. You want to go exploring on this planet? You give it a couple years and then we take off together with me watching your six. You want to go get all orgasmic over the city of the goddamned, Danny thefting Ancients? We’ll both hop a ride on the Daedulus ‘cause there’s no way I’m letting the Glowy Club or one of their holier than thou cities anywhere near you without me there. Got it?"
Daniel just blinked at him, retrieved his coffee, took a sip of it, and stared, but Jack could hear his breathing; too quick for the dead calm look he was wearing.
Jack set his mouth in a tight line, threw the truck in reverse, twisted his arm over the back of the seat and turned to look out the rear window as he backed up. After merging back into traffic and whipping around the next circle, he broke the thick silence, body slumping a little in sudden weariness, thinking, Damn I feel old.
"There’s a new show on tonight I’d like to watch," he said. "Just stay in. I’m free tomorrow so we can do whatever you want."
Daniel stirred beside him. "Okay."
Jack tapped a thumb on the steering wheel. "It’s about treasure hunters. Good, clean, mind numbing entertainment in front of the tube, ya know? I’ve been- well, just haven’t had much time for-"
"No," Daniel interrupted, shaking his head. "No, I mean, meant- I meant okay to before. The other stuff. Well, to the staying in, too. Maybe order in some Thai food, eat it in front of the TV, but the other stuff - I just… Okay."
Jack stopped at the red light, his foot a little heavy on the brake, and looked across the cab. "Okay? Just like that? You’re okay with it? No yelling? No arguments?"
Daniel sipped at his coffee, tapped the fingers of his free hand against his knee. "Would any of my reasons of how this is a bad idea convince you?"
Jack’s jaw went tight. "No. Not any more. Not this time."
Daniel shook his head. "I didn’t think so. And, truth be told, I’m not sure I would want to win that one." He paused for another sip. "I knew it was only a matter or time before you crossed the line from stalker to psychotic control freak." He smiled, wide and brilliant, at Jack’s narrow eyed glare and said, "Green light, Jack." The horns behind them pointed out the same thing.
They rode for a few minutes in silence before Daniel, struggling to look offended and hold in the amusement, said, "Danny thefting ancients?" Jack just snorted and Daniel’s laughter broke loose, not stopping even as he pulled off his glasses to dry his eyes. Happy ending, Jack thought as they rode home, both of them still grinning. Didn’t see that coming.