Though Near or Far (Dreamverse Chapter 7 of 8) PG-13
The penultimate chapter!
Fabulous icons are by the fabulous
magnavox_23. Feel free to take and use them with proper credit to her.
Thanks to princessofgfor the pompom waving and whip cracking. :-D
Chapter One
Chapter Six
THOUGH NEAR OR FAR
It wasn’t exactly a dream come true, but Jack would take it.
Certain elements were downright nightmarish, if you let yourself dwell, but Jack let himself be filled with relief instead.
Daniel was alive. That was the main thing. That was what Jack had hoped for, longed for all these months. Alive and come home, and if he was wary and uneasy that was only to be expected. That initial chilling look of rejection was gone, although Jack was probably never going to be able to forget it, and Daniel seemed to be accepting the truth of the things they all were telling him.
Daniel was here, and if he still looked at Jack like a complete stranger, at least it was more like Jack was a stranger that Daniel wouldn’t mind getting to know, now. That was progress, and in just a few short hours, too. Where there was life, there was hope and all that.
Jack had come close to giving up hope after the destruction of Abydos. He’d asked Daniel to step over a line, and Daniel had stepped and failed. Had vanished, leaving Jack with a black hole in his soul. But, lo, here he was, perfectly intact except for his memories and not the least bit glowy. Almost a dream come true.
Thing was, Jack found himself still missing his friend and unable to help wondering if he was ever really going to see him again. The man in the bed wrapped in bandages and wracked with pain hadn’t been Daniel anymore. The not-so-helpful being who’d appeared in the cell of Ba’al’s Funhouse hadn’t been Daniel. The fierce protector of Abydos had exuded a power that wasn’t anything like Daniel. And this man who looked at Jack without an ounce of recognition was even further away from being Daniel than the others had been.
Still. Jack would definitely take it.
~~~~
A week to kill before the mission that was probably going to fry all their butts; the mission that surpassed all others for wackiness, no matter what Carter said, and only partly due to the wackiness of blithely sending an amnesiac off to prowl around on a mothership. A week not to be wasted, and Jack was biting back his impulse to swoop down on Daniel and carry him off to his lair willy-nilly.
His restraint lasted about a day and a half.
He found Daniel and Jonas together in ‘their’ office, heads bent over a document. Jonas looked up. “Colonel.”
“Hellooo.”
Daniel looked at him. “Hi, um, Jack.”
Not Jim. Not quite. Jack smiled a little. “Lunch?”
Daniel blinked and opened his mouth, looking around at the books and papers spread out on the desk.
Jonas eyed Daniel and then looked at Jack, eyebrows raised, a thumb pointing towards Daniel.
Jack lifted his chin.
“I’m grabbing something later with Teal’c, if that’s okay,” Jonas said. “But, Daniel, you should go. I’ll keep working on this passage and you can check it over when you get back.”
“Ahhh… okay.” More with the blinking.
Jack gave Jonas a nod. “Come on, Daniel. Don’t want them to run out of macaroni and cheese. It’s your favorite.”
Daniel stood up, adjusted his glasses and scratched his head. “I get the feeling there’s a joke in there somewhere.”
Jack’s smile was more genuine this time.
~~~~
The way Daniel was concentrating on cleaning his plate, you’d think mac and cheese really was his favorite. Or that he just didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to be here.
Jack sighed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
Daniel, hunched forward, looked up warily, fork poised halfway to his mouth.
Jack’s reassuring smile failed utterly.
Daniel frowned and put down his fork. “Did you want to talk to me about something?”
Jack shrugged and went for it. “I thought you might enjoy getting out from under this mountain for a few days. You could come stay in my guest room. Hammond’s okayed it.”
Daniel stared at the center of Jack’s forehead for a second or two, then his gaze dropped to Jack’s left shoulder. His lips curved, very slightly. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
“Excuse me?”
“After your comment in the meeting yesterday? About not wanting witnesses?”
“That was more or less a joke,” Jack responded stiffly.
Daniel’s lips curved a little more. “I don’t know. This could just be a clever plan to get me away from here so you can hide the body where no one will ever be able to find it.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Daniel showed his teeth and nodded, biting his lip and ducking his head.
~~~~
Jack O’Neill was not, and never had been, a dancing man.
His feet went into a spontaneous step, step, slide, step as he walked back to his office after lunch.
His face, in the mirror of the nearest men’s john, was flushed. Down, fool, he told himself harshly.
He’d broken out in dance this way only one other time that he remembered, when a letter from Sara had reached him, halfway around the world. He’d had to leave her barely a month after she’d discovered she was pregnant, only eleven months after a miscarriage. //Would you please tell your child to stop kicking me?// His mission still wasn’t over and there would be no going home yet, but Jack’s heart had been light as a feather and his relief and joy had had to find expression somehow.
This… this, though.
What the hell was his subconscious thinking?
Yeah, like he didn’t know. Jack took a deep breath and let it out. Consciously relaxed. Smiled ruefully at the face in the mirror and the light of happiness he saw shining in the eyes reflected there.
~~~~
When he swung by to pick Daniel up, Daniel was having second thoughts.
“I’m just not sure I’m really ready to go out there and,” Daniel waved an arm, “face the world, you know? It’s… I can’t even begin to describe it.”
“You don’t ever have to leave the truck,” Jack said. “Well, except to walk into the house. I suppose you could stay in the truck and sleep in the driveway.”
Daniel gave him a look that was something close to the glare of old, but with an underlying layer of fear.
“There’s nothing to face. Really.”
“I just don’t feel good about it,” Daniel mumbled, looking uncomfortable.
Jack rubbed his jaw. Sniffed. “It really was a joke, you know.”
“What?” Daniel squinted at him, blinking.
“The bit about wanting no witnesses.”
Daniel’s jaw dropped.
“Total joke. Honest.”
Daniel gaped at him for another two seconds and then burst into laughter.
“C’mon,” Jack said, nodding towards the doorway. He could feel himself beaming.
~~~~
Nothing on the drive home seemed to ring any bells. Except McDonald’s. “They make good coffee, right?” Daniel asked.
Apparently his brain had some peculiar priorities when it came to restoring his memory. Big surprise, there. When hadn’t Daniel’s brain had its own particular way of doing business and leaving most other brains behind in the dust?
As Jack twisted his key in the front door, Daniel blurted, “There’s a deck out back.”
Jack’s hand shook for a second. He got the knob turned and the key out. He turned his head to look at Daniel. “Right.”
Daniel smiled broadly. “Right.”
They stepped into the hall. Daniel looked around, looked at Jack.
“Bedrooms are down here,” Jack said. Daniel followed him into the guest room and Jack tossed Daniel’s duffel bag down on the bed. “Bathroom’s across the hall. I’m across the hall.” He headed for the door. “I’ll give you a minute, to unpack or whatever.” His fingers tapped against the doorframe as he watched Daniel looking around the room. “Oh, yeah, there’re probably some things that fit you in the dresser.”
Daniel looked at him blankly for a second and then gestured with his thumb. “More of my personal things that you’ve been keeping alive?”
Jack shrugged and smiled. “What can I say? I had a feeling.”
Daniel simply stood and looked at him for so long that Jack started to feel twitchy.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Daniel answered, sounding bemused. “What’s next?”
“Next?”
“After I unpack?” Daniel elevated both eyebrows.
“Beer,” Jack answered immediately. “And food. In that order.”
“Am I a beer drinker?”
“You’re a total lush.” Jack kept a perfectly straight face. “You’ll guzzle whatever’s put in front of you.”
“Ah.” Daniel nodded. “Good to know.”
Jack did not dance down the hallway to the kitchen, but it was a near thing.
~~~~
Daniel stood in front of the empty fireplace, hands in his pockets, surveying the room. He barely seemed to register Jack’s approach, and he obviously didn’t notice the beer Jack was offering until Jack cleared his throat.
“Oh.” Both hands came out of the pockets and one took the beer, and then the other rose and hovered in midair as Daniel stared down at the bottle.
Jack’s toes curled.
“We’ve done this before,” Daniel said slowly.
“You’ve been here lots of times.”
The hovering hand landed on Jack’s forearm and gripped hard. “No, just like this. Just….” Daniel raised his head and looked at Jack. “Standing right here.”
“Yeah,” Jack breathed.
“Oh,” Daniel said, his hand falling away. “Oh.” He took a step backwards. “It was after Sha’re was taken, wasn’t it? When I came home from Abydos.” He looked away. “Except I didn’t have a home.”
He looked so forlorn that Jack had to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. “And nobody quite seemed to know what to do with you, so I brought you here.”
Daniel’s eyes crinkled as he smiled painfully. “It’s getting to be a habit, isn’t it?”
Jack squeezed his shoulder gently and let his hand drop. “Let’s call it ‘tradition’, shall we? Sounds so much better.” He lifted his beer and clinked his bottle against the neck of Daniel’s bottle.
Daniel looked overwhelmed. “Okay, I have a tradition. That’s new.”
“First of many.” Jack took a long, cool chug, never taking his eyes from Daniel’s face.
“I’ll drink to that. Yeah.” Daniel gave him a shaky smile, and drank.
~~~~
Jack stood in the hallway outside the guest room’s ajar door listening to Daniel breathing, like he’d done every night since that first one. Because Jack woke up every night and had to go convince himself that it was all real before he could go back to sleep. It was going to take time for him to get past that, to accept Daniel’s presence, his existence, as natural.
Daniel needed more time, too. Memories were coming back every day, sometimes out of the blue and sometimes specific to the task at hand or the conversation taking place. Five minutes on the firing range and Daniel was shooting as well as he ever had, and he stripped and cleaned his weapons afterwards with all the speed his skilled fingers had always brought to bear. Sometimes he remembered random details of missions as soon as he got the file opened to read. He remembered why macaroni and cheese was a joke, and saw flashes of that tastes-like-chicken feast so long ago now on Abydos-that-was.
History and languages, Earth and alien, on the other hand, came back to him in torrents. Jack got used to it, to Daniel breaking off in mid-sentence to stare intently at nothing for minutes at a time. He’d only interrupted Daniel once, just to make sure it could be done, just to make sure that Daniel was in control of himself and simply choosing to wallow in the influx of knowledge. “You need to be able to focus,” he’d said warningly, and Daniel had nodded and patted his arm.
Daniel was still a long, long way from being Daniel, though, and his brain’s timetable was hopefully just relegating all the touchy-feely human interaction bits to the back of the line, because he didn’t seem to be relating to people on any kind of level that counted. He seemed to regard Sam as a nice, interesting woman, and Teal’c as a teammate and fount of knowledge. Jack figured that Daniel probably thought of him as a friend, or at least a potential friend, after all the time they’d spent together here at the house, but he didn’t ever have the impression that Daniel remembered their friendship no matter how many isolated memories might be pointing to the fact that a friendship really had once existed.
And Daniel hadn’t mentioned Bjorn once, which continued to freak Jack out on a daily basis.
Hopefully, hopefully those things that made life really worth living were going to come back to Daniel in time. Jack just hoped they both were going to have all the time they needed.
Their mission was in the morning.
~~~~
No mission ever goes as planned. They got lucky. Jonas and Daniel disappeared into the ether and then the SGC got a collect call from Kelowna and everything worked out. Although most of Jack’s younger-than-springtime bounciness of the previous week had disappeared right along with Daniel, never to return, because he really, really hadn’t needed the reminder that having Daniel back meant that he could lose Daniel again at any point.
Nearly lost him to a damn staff blast, in fact - shades of Ra. If Jonas Quinn hadn’t already proven himself, he still would’ve earned his erst-while spot on SG-1 retroactively by pushing Daniel to safety and taking the hit himself. Shades of Daniel Jackson. Jack wondered if Daniel remembered that moment, that first death. He claimed that everything was starting to come back to him, but who knew what that meant. And how would he even know? Huge gaping holes in your life, sure, hard to miss - but what about the more subtle gaps?
The team, the old team, the new, restored team, had whooped it up tiredly at Jack’s place until Teal’c announced his need to kel’no’reem. Carter was driving him back to the Mountain and Jack had popped out to the nearest mini-mart to pick up a few things for the morning, leaving Daniel to put food away and load the dishwasher. He parked the truck, shut off the engine, grabbed the handles of his sacks and climbed out, locking the doors with his keychain remote.
Up the path, onto the porch, through the door. Jack threw the bolt behind him. “Lucy, I’m home!”
There was a muffled sound from the kitchen, and Daniel appeared in the dining room. His glasses were off and he was rubbing at one of his eyes.
“Tired?” Jack asked.
Daniel gave an odd, breathless huff of laughter. “Not even a little.”
The hall and dining room were dark, and Daniel’s face was cast into shadow by the light on the kitchen ceiling behind him. “You all right?” Jack asked. Daniel stepped forward through the dining room and into the hallway, into the faint glow cast through the louvered windows by the porch light. Jack saw the moisture glittering in his eyes. He bent down and lowered the sacks to the floor. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Another breathless laugh. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. Everything’s right now. I remember, Jack. I… only bits and pieces, but….” Daniel came closer, reached for Jack, gripping the lapels of his jacket. “Couldn’t you have told me?”
“Whoa,” Jack said, starting to get that breathless feeling himself. “Wanna fill me in on what you’re talking about?”
Daniel shook his head, and then nodded, laughing again. “Yes. Yes, I really, really do. I do. Oh, Jack.”
Jack found himself being kissed. His knees nearly caved in. His hair stood on end. He thought his heart might literally have skipped a beat.
Still being kissed, Daniel pressing in closer. Like he’d gotten some encouragement. Jack moaned. Daniel whispered something against his lips. Jack raised his hands, meant to use them to push Daniel away. There were questions to be asked. Something wasn’t… his hands clutched at Daniel, pulling him in tight as Daniel’s tongue swept past his lips and swirled around his mouth.
And then it wasn’t just Daniel doing the kissing anymore. Jack’s head tilted, his lips slid and pushed, his tongue sought warmth. One step back, pulling Daniel with him, both pairs of lips clinging, and Jack was up against the wall. He parted his legs and Daniel’s thigh nestled between his, rubbed. They murmured into each other’s mouths. Daniel’s hands lost their death-grip on his jacket and one buried itself in Jack’s hair while the other cupped the back of his head. Sparks flickered from Jack’s skull all the way down his spine.
Daniel lifted his mouth from Jack’s and spoke quietly, rapidly. Jack, dizzy and warm, watched his lips moving in the dim light, struggled to put meaning to the sounds he was hearing.
“Even on Vis Uban, even when I knew nothing, nothing, somehow I knew. I knew, Jack. I looked around me at all the couples, young and old, and I knew that a part of me was missing. I felt it. Somewhere there was someone I loved, someone who loved me.” A warm, lingering kiss to Jack’s frozen lips. “But I didn’t know it was you, not until tonight. How could I not remember? How could I have forgotten you? This? Us?”
Jack moved clumsily to block Daniel’s next kiss, his fist pushing Daniel’s chin up. “Stop. Stop.” His words shattered in the air around them.
Daniel went very still, his eyes very wide. “Jack?”
“There is no ‘us.’ Never was.” He couldn’t control how harsh that sounded.
“No.” Daniel shook his head.
“You’re confused; you only think you remember….”
“No. No!” Daniel pushed away. He pointed at Jack. “You kissed me back.”
Jack straightened up from the wall. “That was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You love me! Tell me I’m imagining that! Tell me you didn’t stand in my living room and tell me how much you loved me, wanted to be with me.”
“Daniel.”
“I remember.”
Jack closed his eyes against the accusation in Daniel’s trembling voice. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped you. But it was everything I ever wanted.” His own voice sounded remarkably calm. Dead. Dead calm. He opened his eyes and felt two tears roll slowly down his cheeks. “That part’s true. I told you I loved you, just like you remember.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were with someone else.”
“Someone…?”
“It wasn’t me.” Jack wiped away the tears. “It was never me.”
Daniel turned abruptly, stumbling away into the shadows by the front door.
Jack listened to him breathing. Heard his breath hitch.
Daniel’s shocked whisper pierced Jack’s heart. “Bjorn!”
~~~~
Final chapter: http://sidlj.livejournal.com/167451.html
Fabulous icons are by the fabulous
magnavox_23. Feel free to take and use them with proper credit to her.
Thanks to princessofgfor the pompom waving and whip cracking. :-D
Chapter One
Chapter Six
THOUGH NEAR OR FAR
It wasn’t exactly a dream come true, but Jack would take it.
Certain elements were downright nightmarish, if you let yourself dwell, but Jack let himself be filled with relief instead.
Daniel was alive. That was the main thing. That was what Jack had hoped for, longed for all these months. Alive and come home, and if he was wary and uneasy that was only to be expected. That initial chilling look of rejection was gone, although Jack was probably never going to be able to forget it, and Daniel seemed to be accepting the truth of the things they all were telling him.
Daniel was here, and if he still looked at Jack like a complete stranger, at least it was more like Jack was a stranger that Daniel wouldn’t mind getting to know, now. That was progress, and in just a few short hours, too. Where there was life, there was hope and all that.
Jack had come close to giving up hope after the destruction of Abydos. He’d asked Daniel to step over a line, and Daniel had stepped and failed. Had vanished, leaving Jack with a black hole in his soul. But, lo, here he was, perfectly intact except for his memories and not the least bit glowy. Almost a dream come true.
Thing was, Jack found himself still missing his friend and unable to help wondering if he was ever really going to see him again. The man in the bed wrapped in bandages and wracked with pain hadn’t been Daniel anymore. The not-so-helpful being who’d appeared in the cell of Ba’al’s Funhouse hadn’t been Daniel. The fierce protector of Abydos had exuded a power that wasn’t anything like Daniel. And this man who looked at Jack without an ounce of recognition was even further away from being Daniel than the others had been.
Still. Jack would definitely take it.
~~~~
A week to kill before the mission that was probably going to fry all their butts; the mission that surpassed all others for wackiness, no matter what Carter said, and only partly due to the wackiness of blithely sending an amnesiac off to prowl around on a mothership. A week not to be wasted, and Jack was biting back his impulse to swoop down on Daniel and carry him off to his lair willy-nilly.
His restraint lasted about a day and a half.
He found Daniel and Jonas together in ‘their’ office, heads bent over a document. Jonas looked up. “Colonel.”
“Hellooo.”
Daniel looked at him. “Hi, um, Jack.”
Not Jim. Not quite. Jack smiled a little. “Lunch?”
Daniel blinked and opened his mouth, looking around at the books and papers spread out on the desk.
Jonas eyed Daniel and then looked at Jack, eyebrows raised, a thumb pointing towards Daniel.
Jack lifted his chin.
“I’m grabbing something later with Teal’c, if that’s okay,” Jonas said. “But, Daniel, you should go. I’ll keep working on this passage and you can check it over when you get back.”
“Ahhh… okay.” More with the blinking.
Jack gave Jonas a nod. “Come on, Daniel. Don’t want them to run out of macaroni and cheese. It’s your favorite.”
Daniel stood up, adjusted his glasses and scratched his head. “I get the feeling there’s a joke in there somewhere.”
Jack’s smile was more genuine this time.
~~~~
The way Daniel was concentrating on cleaning his plate, you’d think mac and cheese really was his favorite. Or that he just didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to be here.
Jack sighed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
Daniel, hunched forward, looked up warily, fork poised halfway to his mouth.
Jack’s reassuring smile failed utterly.
Daniel frowned and put down his fork. “Did you want to talk to me about something?”
Jack shrugged and went for it. “I thought you might enjoy getting out from under this mountain for a few days. You could come stay in my guest room. Hammond’s okayed it.”
Daniel stared at the center of Jack’s forehead for a second or two, then his gaze dropped to Jack’s left shoulder. His lips curved, very slightly. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
“Excuse me?”
“After your comment in the meeting yesterday? About not wanting witnesses?”
“That was more or less a joke,” Jack responded stiffly.
Daniel’s lips curved a little more. “I don’t know. This could just be a clever plan to get me away from here so you can hide the body where no one will ever be able to find it.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Daniel showed his teeth and nodded, biting his lip and ducking his head.
~~~~
Jack O’Neill was not, and never had been, a dancing man.
His feet went into a spontaneous step, step, slide, step as he walked back to his office after lunch.
His face, in the mirror of the nearest men’s john, was flushed. Down, fool, he told himself harshly.
He’d broken out in dance this way only one other time that he remembered, when a letter from Sara had reached him, halfway around the world. He’d had to leave her barely a month after she’d discovered she was pregnant, only eleven months after a miscarriage. //Would you please tell your child to stop kicking me?// His mission still wasn’t over and there would be no going home yet, but Jack’s heart had been light as a feather and his relief and joy had had to find expression somehow.
This… this, though.
What the hell was his subconscious thinking?
Yeah, like he didn’t know. Jack took a deep breath and let it out. Consciously relaxed. Smiled ruefully at the face in the mirror and the light of happiness he saw shining in the eyes reflected there.
~~~~
When he swung by to pick Daniel up, Daniel was having second thoughts.
“I’m just not sure I’m really ready to go out there and,” Daniel waved an arm, “face the world, you know? It’s… I can’t even begin to describe it.”
“You don’t ever have to leave the truck,” Jack said. “Well, except to walk into the house. I suppose you could stay in the truck and sleep in the driveway.”
Daniel gave him a look that was something close to the glare of old, but with an underlying layer of fear.
“There’s nothing to face. Really.”
“I just don’t feel good about it,” Daniel mumbled, looking uncomfortable.
Jack rubbed his jaw. Sniffed. “It really was a joke, you know.”
“What?” Daniel squinted at him, blinking.
“The bit about wanting no witnesses.”
Daniel’s jaw dropped.
“Total joke. Honest.”
Daniel gaped at him for another two seconds and then burst into laughter.
“C’mon,” Jack said, nodding towards the doorway. He could feel himself beaming.
~~~~
Nothing on the drive home seemed to ring any bells. Except McDonald’s. “They make good coffee, right?” Daniel asked.
Apparently his brain had some peculiar priorities when it came to restoring his memory. Big surprise, there. When hadn’t Daniel’s brain had its own particular way of doing business and leaving most other brains behind in the dust?
As Jack twisted his key in the front door, Daniel blurted, “There’s a deck out back.”
Jack’s hand shook for a second. He got the knob turned and the key out. He turned his head to look at Daniel. “Right.”
Daniel smiled broadly. “Right.”
They stepped into the hall. Daniel looked around, looked at Jack.
“Bedrooms are down here,” Jack said. Daniel followed him into the guest room and Jack tossed Daniel’s duffel bag down on the bed. “Bathroom’s across the hall. I’m across the hall.” He headed for the door. “I’ll give you a minute, to unpack or whatever.” His fingers tapped against the doorframe as he watched Daniel looking around the room. “Oh, yeah, there’re probably some things that fit you in the dresser.”
Daniel looked at him blankly for a second and then gestured with his thumb. “More of my personal things that you’ve been keeping alive?”
Jack shrugged and smiled. “What can I say? I had a feeling.”
Daniel simply stood and looked at him for so long that Jack started to feel twitchy.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Daniel answered, sounding bemused. “What’s next?”
“Next?”
“After I unpack?” Daniel elevated both eyebrows.
“Beer,” Jack answered immediately. “And food. In that order.”
“Am I a beer drinker?”
“You’re a total lush.” Jack kept a perfectly straight face. “You’ll guzzle whatever’s put in front of you.”
“Ah.” Daniel nodded. “Good to know.”
Jack did not dance down the hallway to the kitchen, but it was a near thing.
~~~~
Daniel stood in front of the empty fireplace, hands in his pockets, surveying the room. He barely seemed to register Jack’s approach, and he obviously didn’t notice the beer Jack was offering until Jack cleared his throat.
“Oh.” Both hands came out of the pockets and one took the beer, and then the other rose and hovered in midair as Daniel stared down at the bottle.
Jack’s toes curled.
“We’ve done this before,” Daniel said slowly.
“You’ve been here lots of times.”
The hovering hand landed on Jack’s forearm and gripped hard. “No, just like this. Just….” Daniel raised his head and looked at Jack. “Standing right here.”
“Yeah,” Jack breathed.
“Oh,” Daniel said, his hand falling away. “Oh.” He took a step backwards. “It was after Sha’re was taken, wasn’t it? When I came home from Abydos.” He looked away. “Except I didn’t have a home.”
He looked so forlorn that Jack had to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. “And nobody quite seemed to know what to do with you, so I brought you here.”
Daniel’s eyes crinkled as he smiled painfully. “It’s getting to be a habit, isn’t it?”
Jack squeezed his shoulder gently and let his hand drop. “Let’s call it ‘tradition’, shall we? Sounds so much better.” He lifted his beer and clinked his bottle against the neck of Daniel’s bottle.
Daniel looked overwhelmed. “Okay, I have a tradition. That’s new.”
“First of many.” Jack took a long, cool chug, never taking his eyes from Daniel’s face.
“I’ll drink to that. Yeah.” Daniel gave him a shaky smile, and drank.
~~~~
Jack stood in the hallway outside the guest room’s ajar door listening to Daniel breathing, like he’d done every night since that first one. Because Jack woke up every night and had to go convince himself that it was all real before he could go back to sleep. It was going to take time for him to get past that, to accept Daniel’s presence, his existence, as natural.
Daniel needed more time, too. Memories were coming back every day, sometimes out of the blue and sometimes specific to the task at hand or the conversation taking place. Five minutes on the firing range and Daniel was shooting as well as he ever had, and he stripped and cleaned his weapons afterwards with all the speed his skilled fingers had always brought to bear. Sometimes he remembered random details of missions as soon as he got the file opened to read. He remembered why macaroni and cheese was a joke, and saw flashes of that tastes-like-chicken feast so long ago now on Abydos-that-was.
History and languages, Earth and alien, on the other hand, came back to him in torrents. Jack got used to it, to Daniel breaking off in mid-sentence to stare intently at nothing for minutes at a time. He’d only interrupted Daniel once, just to make sure it could be done, just to make sure that Daniel was in control of himself and simply choosing to wallow in the influx of knowledge. “You need to be able to focus,” he’d said warningly, and Daniel had nodded and patted his arm.
Daniel was still a long, long way from being Daniel, though, and his brain’s timetable was hopefully just relegating all the touchy-feely human interaction bits to the back of the line, because he didn’t seem to be relating to people on any kind of level that counted. He seemed to regard Sam as a nice, interesting woman, and Teal’c as a teammate and fount of knowledge. Jack figured that Daniel probably thought of him as a friend, or at least a potential friend, after all the time they’d spent together here at the house, but he didn’t ever have the impression that Daniel remembered their friendship no matter how many isolated memories might be pointing to the fact that a friendship really had once existed.
And Daniel hadn’t mentioned Bjorn once, which continued to freak Jack out on a daily basis.
Hopefully, hopefully those things that made life really worth living were going to come back to Daniel in time. Jack just hoped they both were going to have all the time they needed.
Their mission was in the morning.
~~~~
No mission ever goes as planned. They got lucky. Jonas and Daniel disappeared into the ether and then the SGC got a collect call from Kelowna and everything worked out. Although most of Jack’s younger-than-springtime bounciness of the previous week had disappeared right along with Daniel, never to return, because he really, really hadn’t needed the reminder that having Daniel back meant that he could lose Daniel again at any point.
Nearly lost him to a damn staff blast, in fact - shades of Ra. If Jonas Quinn hadn’t already proven himself, he still would’ve earned his erst-while spot on SG-1 retroactively by pushing Daniel to safety and taking the hit himself. Shades of Daniel Jackson. Jack wondered if Daniel remembered that moment, that first death. He claimed that everything was starting to come back to him, but who knew what that meant. And how would he even know? Huge gaping holes in your life, sure, hard to miss - but what about the more subtle gaps?
The team, the old team, the new, restored team, had whooped it up tiredly at Jack’s place until Teal’c announced his need to kel’no’reem. Carter was driving him back to the Mountain and Jack had popped out to the nearest mini-mart to pick up a few things for the morning, leaving Daniel to put food away and load the dishwasher. He parked the truck, shut off the engine, grabbed the handles of his sacks and climbed out, locking the doors with his keychain remote.
Up the path, onto the porch, through the door. Jack threw the bolt behind him. “Lucy, I’m home!”
There was a muffled sound from the kitchen, and Daniel appeared in the dining room. His glasses were off and he was rubbing at one of his eyes.
“Tired?” Jack asked.
Daniel gave an odd, breathless huff of laughter. “Not even a little.”
The hall and dining room were dark, and Daniel’s face was cast into shadow by the light on the kitchen ceiling behind him. “You all right?” Jack asked. Daniel stepped forward through the dining room and into the hallway, into the faint glow cast through the louvered windows by the porch light. Jack saw the moisture glittering in his eyes. He bent down and lowered the sacks to the floor. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Another breathless laugh. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. Everything’s right now. I remember, Jack. I… only bits and pieces, but….” Daniel came closer, reached for Jack, gripping the lapels of his jacket. “Couldn’t you have told me?”
“Whoa,” Jack said, starting to get that breathless feeling himself. “Wanna fill me in on what you’re talking about?”
Daniel shook his head, and then nodded, laughing again. “Yes. Yes, I really, really do. I do. Oh, Jack.”
Jack found himself being kissed. His knees nearly caved in. His hair stood on end. He thought his heart might literally have skipped a beat.
Still being kissed, Daniel pressing in closer. Like he’d gotten some encouragement. Jack moaned. Daniel whispered something against his lips. Jack raised his hands, meant to use them to push Daniel away. There were questions to be asked. Something wasn’t… his hands clutched at Daniel, pulling him in tight as Daniel’s tongue swept past his lips and swirled around his mouth.
And then it wasn’t just Daniel doing the kissing anymore. Jack’s head tilted, his lips slid and pushed, his tongue sought warmth. One step back, pulling Daniel with him, both pairs of lips clinging, and Jack was up against the wall. He parted his legs and Daniel’s thigh nestled between his, rubbed. They murmured into each other’s mouths. Daniel’s hands lost their death-grip on his jacket and one buried itself in Jack’s hair while the other cupped the back of his head. Sparks flickered from Jack’s skull all the way down his spine.
Daniel lifted his mouth from Jack’s and spoke quietly, rapidly. Jack, dizzy and warm, watched his lips moving in the dim light, struggled to put meaning to the sounds he was hearing.
“Even on Vis Uban, even when I knew nothing, nothing, somehow I knew. I knew, Jack. I looked around me at all the couples, young and old, and I knew that a part of me was missing. I felt it. Somewhere there was someone I loved, someone who loved me.” A warm, lingering kiss to Jack’s frozen lips. “But I didn’t know it was you, not until tonight. How could I not remember? How could I have forgotten you? This? Us?”
Jack moved clumsily to block Daniel’s next kiss, his fist pushing Daniel’s chin up. “Stop. Stop.” His words shattered in the air around them.
Daniel went very still, his eyes very wide. “Jack?”
“There is no ‘us.’ Never was.” He couldn’t control how harsh that sounded.
“No.” Daniel shook his head.
“You’re confused; you only think you remember….”
“No. No!” Daniel pushed away. He pointed at Jack. “You kissed me back.”
Jack straightened up from the wall. “That was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You love me! Tell me I’m imagining that! Tell me you didn’t stand in my living room and tell me how much you loved me, wanted to be with me.”
“Daniel.”
“I remember.”
Jack closed his eyes against the accusation in Daniel’s trembling voice. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped you. But it was everything I ever wanted.” His own voice sounded remarkably calm. Dead. Dead calm. He opened his eyes and felt two tears roll slowly down his cheeks. “That part’s true. I told you I loved you, just like you remember.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were with someone else.”
“Someone…?”
“It wasn’t me.” Jack wiped away the tears. “It was never me.”
Daniel turned abruptly, stumbling away into the shadows by the front door.
Jack listened to him breathing. Heard his breath hitch.
Daniel’s shocked whisper pierced Jack’s heart. “Bjorn!”
~~~~
Final chapter: http://sidlj.livejournal.com/167451.html