![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This really isn't NC17 this part but I suppose overall it will be...
Previous parts are here
Leaving Time
Part Seven
Jack walks into Daniel's office to find it occupied for the first time since their return.
With Daniel in it, the crowded room works, fitting around him in a careful curve of clutter, a shell for a snail. It's never felt anything but welcoming before, spicing up the cool, dead air of the SGC with odd, exotic scents from packing cases filled with reeds and giving Jack's khaki-drenched eyes rich, muted colours to look at, garish rainbow splashes of paint and dye time-washed to tasteful.
Now the oasis has shown itself as mirage.
This past week or so, with Daniel submitting to tests, mental and physical, cold-eyed and silent, before disappearing for a weekend that stretched to four days, Jack's found himself standing on the threshold, unable to take the step that would put him uninvited inside Daniel's space, maybe half a dozen times.
It's no different now Daniel's in there. He'd thought it would be, but it isn't.
Daniel glances up, deliberately fails to meet Jack's eyes, and carries on dictating notes into a hand-held recorder in a quiet murmur that manages to hold an edge, soft though it is.
"Sorry," Jack says, when it's painfully obvious that Daniel's done saying hello. "Didn't know you were back. Am I interrupting? Because, you know, I can come back later."
Daniel's thumb presses down on a button, robbing the air of the hiss of tape, and he looks up again. This time his gaze is direct, flickering over Jack and stabbing at him purposefully like an angry wasp. He nods to himself and stands, walking slowly over to Jack and pausing just out of reach.
He extends his hand, and for a moment Jack thinks he wants them to exchange a handshake, call a truce in a war he doesn't remember starting and doesn't want to fight, but Daniel's hand is palm up and steady and his eyes are staring at Jack's breast pocket.
"Oh, you want -- yeah, they said I could give it -- they took a copy, just for -- MacKenzie wanted to take a look, but Hammond said no, and --"
Jack hears himself achieve incoherence early, heaves a sigh of surrender, and gives Daniel the notebook. Daniel's fingers curl protectively around it, but his body flinches as if he's holding fire and acid and shit and Jack wants to snatch it back, carry it for him, take it away, but Daniel's never asked that of him with any other burden and the chances of him doing it now are... not so good, really.
"It's interesting," Jack offers. Lame. So very fucking lame.
"How would you know? You haven't read it."
The flat certainty in Daniel's voice verges on insulting.
"What? I've read it." Jack taps at his empty pocket. "Had it in here for days, and I might not be a speed-reader like you, but it isn't War and Peace, you know. Twenty-two pages, that's all."
"You haven't read it."
"Twenty-two pages, Daniel!"
Daniel places the notebook on a shelf beside a vase where it becomes part of the whole, flat and lost in the shadows.
"You haven't --"
"No! No, I haven't read it, Daniel. Is that better? That what you wanted to hear? I haven't read it." Jack steps inside the room, feeling the weight of all it holds settle on his shoulders, willing to bear it if it'll stop Daniel saying those four words again.
"I know." Daniel leans against his desk, gripping it with his hands, leaving his body open to view or attack. It's neither challenge nor submission but self-bondage. Daniel wants to hit him. Wants it enough to have to fill his hands with more than hate. "You wouldn't be here if you had. And we have nothing to discuss until you do, so I'd like you to leave. I have work to do."
Jack lets his gaze run over Daniel, hungry for the sight of him looking normal. Kind of, anyway. Daniel's hair's been trimmed severely, strips of paler skin showing at his neck and forehead, the over-grown soft fall replaced by something close to a buzz-cut. Doesn't suit him, but Jack's patient. It'll grow back to the way he prefers it; short enough that Daniel can't hide behind it, long enough to -- if he ever -- oh, for fuck's sake, what difference does it make?
He's skinnier, too, but as Janet reported him as malnourished and dehydrated that's to be expected. His black T-shirt is loose over his chest and belly and he's huddled in a blue uniform jacket so Jack can't see for himself if Daniel's skin is still marked.
He wants to. His last memory of the planet is of stepping through the 'gate with the image of Daniel's bare, bruised back to keep him cold and angry. He'd needed that to let him get through what followed and it hadn't quite been enough.
He can't look at Daniel, at the tense, vibrating length of him leaning, and not want to strip him bare and make sure he's back in one piece. He looks now at shrouded skin and sees dark marks drifting over shoulder blades, stamped over kidneys, purple shading to yellow and green; dirty bruises, his mother would've called them; the sort that looked as if you could scrub them off, but you couldn't.
It's not been that long. Daniel might still be bruised. Jack doesn't think he wants to look at them but he knows he won't stop seeing them until he does.
"I have work to do," Daniel repeats, his voice clear and angry.
Jack smirks, giving it all he has, knowing Daniel hates it when he does that and not caring. "Yeah. You have a mission report to make. I want it on my desk as soon as fucking possible, Doctor Jackson."
Jack doesn't know how Daniel does this to him. Only Daniel. Only him. He can hate, hurt, be angry and mourn without ever letting it show, but Daniel won't even leave him that shred of privacy. Daniel's inside him, wrapped around him.
And Daniel's staring, mouth hanging open, the way it does when he's too busy thinking to spare a synapse or two to snap it closed. He looks stunned. Jack carries on, drunk with the taste of free-flowing words after a week of guarded, scripted responses.
"I haven't read it and I don't want to read it. Teal'c did. Go talk to Teal'c. Go cry on his shoulder if mine's not good enough."
Daniel's still staring.
"Think about it, Daniel," Jack hisses. "Think about what I did when all I knew was that you'd been fucking tortured. Doesn't it scare you wondering what I'd have done if I'd have known the details?"
"You did enough." Daniel's eyes, blue eyes, blue -- and if Jack sees them brown, just for a second, it's the way this damned room is like a cave and not because he's dreaming again -- are accusing.
"For what they did to you and the others?" Jack shakes his head. "If they let me go back --"
"Go back?" Daniel laughs, low and incredulous. "You're lucky you're still here, Colonel."
"Lucky?" Jack rolls his eyes. "It wasn't luck."
"Undue influence? Pull?"
And hasn't Daniel learned sarcasm from the best, Jack thinks.
"Friends."
"Isn't that what I said?"
This isn't the place to do this. Not with the open door at his back and the corridor behind it.
"What did I do, Daniel?"
"Ask Foster. Ask Talbot."
"Kind of hard, wouldn't you say? They're more or less dead."
"And whose fault is that, Jack?"
Jack. Not Colonel. Why does he not think that's an improvement?
"Is this a trick question?" Jack moves forward and rests his elbow on a shelf. Something tilts and rocks and he grabs at it, losing his balance and all pretensions to dignity in the process. "Go on; you can tell me; I say it was my fault and that's wrong; I say it wasn't and I'm still deep in it. Help me out here, Daniel. Throw me a bone."
Daniel smiles, tight and hard and beaming. Scary smile. "Not this time, Jack."
"Fine." Jack smiles back, hating that the warm, sweet curve of Daniel's mouth has turned into a weapon. "It wasn't my fault. Whatever happened to them happened before I set foot on the planet, so, you know, I'm going to pass on the blaming me, just this once."
"I could have saved them."
"No, you couldn't." Jack's sure of that. Utterly certain. Foster, Talbot; they were gone.
"How do you know that?" Daniel says. "How can you possibly know that?"
"I just do, okay?"
They should be yelling. By now, they're usually yelling, ends of sentences overlapping, a discordant duet. Jack doesn't mind the yelling. It's a sledgehammer to break down a wall.
These clipped, depressed recitals of what should've been screamed, full-blooded accusations, are bricks and mortar.
Jack turns to walk away.
"I've been asked to testify at the inquiry."
"I know."
"I'm going to tell them the truth."
Jack turns back, staring not at Daniel but the pale edge of the notebook, far out of reach. "Which one?"
"You should have trusted me."
"You weren't you, Daniel, or I might have."
"I am now."
"Yeah?" Jack stares at him. "Then I trust you, Daniel, just like always. See? Simple. Tell them what the hell you think they need to know and I'll take whatever I've got coming to me for saving you."
"You really see it that way, don't you? O'Neill the conquering hero, rescuing his pet geek?" Daniel's got that half-smile on his face and he's nodding as if he's listening to another voice whispering in his ear.
That doesn't worry Jack. Daniel's always done that.
"Of course you do." Daniel sits down and pulls the recorder towards him, flicking it on. "On closer examination of the engraving, I found that a possible interpretation of the..."
"Daniel --"
Daniel's mouth shapes two words that the recorder won't capture.
"Oh, that's very mature!"
"Is there a problem?"
Jack turns to see General Hammond. Hammond's got that tight-lipped, barely holding in his anger look on his face. Had he been shouting? "No, sir."
Hammond looks past him to Daniel. "Doctor Jackson?"
"No, there's no problem, General. Colonel O'Neill was just leaving."
Hammond looks at them both. "Sort this out, both of you," he says tersely. "I don't want to have to reassign personnel, but if this continues, you leave me no choice."
"Well, that might not be a problem very soon, General," Jack says without looking at Daniel. "You can't reassign me if I've been kicked out on my ass."
Hammond glances at Daniel. "I'm hoping it won't come to that, Colonel. Doctor Jackson, I'm going to need your written report before the inquiry. I know you've spoken about what happened, but you were still in shock, naturally, and if your thoughts on events have changed, that's understandable."
Nice try, but somehow Jack doesn't think Daniel's going to jump through the hoop Hammond's holding up.
"The Colonel's already asked me for it, General. And no, I don't think that they have. In fact, now that I've had time to think about what happened, it's all a lot clearer to me."
"You do what you have to do, Doctor Jackson," George says in a cool, clipped voice. "Jack, Teal'c was looking for you; said you were supposed to meet him in the gym?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then I suggest you get over there right now."
"Yes, sir."
Sometimes it's good to have no choice about what to say.
Part Eight
Previous parts are here
Leaving Time
Part Seven
Jack walks into Daniel's office to find it occupied for the first time since their return.
With Daniel in it, the crowded room works, fitting around him in a careful curve of clutter, a shell for a snail. It's never felt anything but welcoming before, spicing up the cool, dead air of the SGC with odd, exotic scents from packing cases filled with reeds and giving Jack's khaki-drenched eyes rich, muted colours to look at, garish rainbow splashes of paint and dye time-washed to tasteful.
Now the oasis has shown itself as mirage.
This past week or so, with Daniel submitting to tests, mental and physical, cold-eyed and silent, before disappearing for a weekend that stretched to four days, Jack's found himself standing on the threshold, unable to take the step that would put him uninvited inside Daniel's space, maybe half a dozen times.
It's no different now Daniel's in there. He'd thought it would be, but it isn't.
Daniel glances up, deliberately fails to meet Jack's eyes, and carries on dictating notes into a hand-held recorder in a quiet murmur that manages to hold an edge, soft though it is.
"Sorry," Jack says, when it's painfully obvious that Daniel's done saying hello. "Didn't know you were back. Am I interrupting? Because, you know, I can come back later."
Daniel's thumb presses down on a button, robbing the air of the hiss of tape, and he looks up again. This time his gaze is direct, flickering over Jack and stabbing at him purposefully like an angry wasp. He nods to himself and stands, walking slowly over to Jack and pausing just out of reach.
He extends his hand, and for a moment Jack thinks he wants them to exchange a handshake, call a truce in a war he doesn't remember starting and doesn't want to fight, but Daniel's hand is palm up and steady and his eyes are staring at Jack's breast pocket.
"Oh, you want -- yeah, they said I could give it -- they took a copy, just for -- MacKenzie wanted to take a look, but Hammond said no, and --"
Jack hears himself achieve incoherence early, heaves a sigh of surrender, and gives Daniel the notebook. Daniel's fingers curl protectively around it, but his body flinches as if he's holding fire and acid and shit and Jack wants to snatch it back, carry it for him, take it away, but Daniel's never asked that of him with any other burden and the chances of him doing it now are... not so good, really.
"It's interesting," Jack offers. Lame. So very fucking lame.
"How would you know? You haven't read it."
The flat certainty in Daniel's voice verges on insulting.
"What? I've read it." Jack taps at his empty pocket. "Had it in here for days, and I might not be a speed-reader like you, but it isn't War and Peace, you know. Twenty-two pages, that's all."
"You haven't read it."
"Twenty-two pages, Daniel!"
Daniel places the notebook on a shelf beside a vase where it becomes part of the whole, flat and lost in the shadows.
"You haven't --"
"No! No, I haven't read it, Daniel. Is that better? That what you wanted to hear? I haven't read it." Jack steps inside the room, feeling the weight of all it holds settle on his shoulders, willing to bear it if it'll stop Daniel saying those four words again.
"I know." Daniel leans against his desk, gripping it with his hands, leaving his body open to view or attack. It's neither challenge nor submission but self-bondage. Daniel wants to hit him. Wants it enough to have to fill his hands with more than hate. "You wouldn't be here if you had. And we have nothing to discuss until you do, so I'd like you to leave. I have work to do."
Jack lets his gaze run over Daniel, hungry for the sight of him looking normal. Kind of, anyway. Daniel's hair's been trimmed severely, strips of paler skin showing at his neck and forehead, the over-grown soft fall replaced by something close to a buzz-cut. Doesn't suit him, but Jack's patient. It'll grow back to the way he prefers it; short enough that Daniel can't hide behind it, long enough to -- if he ever -- oh, for fuck's sake, what difference does it make?
He's skinnier, too, but as Janet reported him as malnourished and dehydrated that's to be expected. His black T-shirt is loose over his chest and belly and he's huddled in a blue uniform jacket so Jack can't see for himself if Daniel's skin is still marked.
He wants to. His last memory of the planet is of stepping through the 'gate with the image of Daniel's bare, bruised back to keep him cold and angry. He'd needed that to let him get through what followed and it hadn't quite been enough.
He can't look at Daniel, at the tense, vibrating length of him leaning, and not want to strip him bare and make sure he's back in one piece. He looks now at shrouded skin and sees dark marks drifting over shoulder blades, stamped over kidneys, purple shading to yellow and green; dirty bruises, his mother would've called them; the sort that looked as if you could scrub them off, but you couldn't.
It's not been that long. Daniel might still be bruised. Jack doesn't think he wants to look at them but he knows he won't stop seeing them until he does.
"I have work to do," Daniel repeats, his voice clear and angry.
Jack smirks, giving it all he has, knowing Daniel hates it when he does that and not caring. "Yeah. You have a mission report to make. I want it on my desk as soon as fucking possible, Doctor Jackson."
Jack doesn't know how Daniel does this to him. Only Daniel. Only him. He can hate, hurt, be angry and mourn without ever letting it show, but Daniel won't even leave him that shred of privacy. Daniel's inside him, wrapped around him.
And Daniel's staring, mouth hanging open, the way it does when he's too busy thinking to spare a synapse or two to snap it closed. He looks stunned. Jack carries on, drunk with the taste of free-flowing words after a week of guarded, scripted responses.
"I haven't read it and I don't want to read it. Teal'c did. Go talk to Teal'c. Go cry on his shoulder if mine's not good enough."
Daniel's still staring.
"Think about it, Daniel," Jack hisses. "Think about what I did when all I knew was that you'd been fucking tortured. Doesn't it scare you wondering what I'd have done if I'd have known the details?"
"You did enough." Daniel's eyes, blue eyes, blue -- and if Jack sees them brown, just for a second, it's the way this damned room is like a cave and not because he's dreaming again -- are accusing.
"For what they did to you and the others?" Jack shakes his head. "If they let me go back --"
"Go back?" Daniel laughs, low and incredulous. "You're lucky you're still here, Colonel."
"Lucky?" Jack rolls his eyes. "It wasn't luck."
"Undue influence? Pull?"
And hasn't Daniel learned sarcasm from the best, Jack thinks.
"Friends."
"Isn't that what I said?"
This isn't the place to do this. Not with the open door at his back and the corridor behind it.
"What did I do, Daniel?"
"Ask Foster. Ask Talbot."
"Kind of hard, wouldn't you say? They're more or less dead."
"And whose fault is that, Jack?"
Jack. Not Colonel. Why does he not think that's an improvement?
"Is this a trick question?" Jack moves forward and rests his elbow on a shelf. Something tilts and rocks and he grabs at it, losing his balance and all pretensions to dignity in the process. "Go on; you can tell me; I say it was my fault and that's wrong; I say it wasn't and I'm still deep in it. Help me out here, Daniel. Throw me a bone."
Daniel smiles, tight and hard and beaming. Scary smile. "Not this time, Jack."
"Fine." Jack smiles back, hating that the warm, sweet curve of Daniel's mouth has turned into a weapon. "It wasn't my fault. Whatever happened to them happened before I set foot on the planet, so, you know, I'm going to pass on the blaming me, just this once."
"I could have saved them."
"No, you couldn't." Jack's sure of that. Utterly certain. Foster, Talbot; they were gone.
"How do you know that?" Daniel says. "How can you possibly know that?"
"I just do, okay?"
They should be yelling. By now, they're usually yelling, ends of sentences overlapping, a discordant duet. Jack doesn't mind the yelling. It's a sledgehammer to break down a wall.
These clipped, depressed recitals of what should've been screamed, full-blooded accusations, are bricks and mortar.
Jack turns to walk away.
"I've been asked to testify at the inquiry."
"I know."
"I'm going to tell them the truth."
Jack turns back, staring not at Daniel but the pale edge of the notebook, far out of reach. "Which one?"
"You should have trusted me."
"You weren't you, Daniel, or I might have."
"I am now."
"Yeah?" Jack stares at him. "Then I trust you, Daniel, just like always. See? Simple. Tell them what the hell you think they need to know and I'll take whatever I've got coming to me for saving you."
"You really see it that way, don't you? O'Neill the conquering hero, rescuing his pet geek?" Daniel's got that half-smile on his face and he's nodding as if he's listening to another voice whispering in his ear.
That doesn't worry Jack. Daniel's always done that.
"Of course you do." Daniel sits down and pulls the recorder towards him, flicking it on. "On closer examination of the engraving, I found that a possible interpretation of the..."
"Daniel --"
Daniel's mouth shapes two words that the recorder won't capture.
"Oh, that's very mature!"
"Is there a problem?"
Jack turns to see General Hammond. Hammond's got that tight-lipped, barely holding in his anger look on his face. Had he been shouting? "No, sir."
Hammond looks past him to Daniel. "Doctor Jackson?"
"No, there's no problem, General. Colonel O'Neill was just leaving."
Hammond looks at them both. "Sort this out, both of you," he says tersely. "I don't want to have to reassign personnel, but if this continues, you leave me no choice."
"Well, that might not be a problem very soon, General," Jack says without looking at Daniel. "You can't reassign me if I've been kicked out on my ass."
Hammond glances at Daniel. "I'm hoping it won't come to that, Colonel. Doctor Jackson, I'm going to need your written report before the inquiry. I know you've spoken about what happened, but you were still in shock, naturally, and if your thoughts on events have changed, that's understandable."
Nice try, but somehow Jack doesn't think Daniel's going to jump through the hoop Hammond's holding up.
"The Colonel's already asked me for it, General. And no, I don't think that they have. In fact, now that I've had time to think about what happened, it's all a lot clearer to me."
"You do what you have to do, Doctor Jackson," George says in a cool, clipped voice. "Jack, Teal'c was looking for you; said you were supposed to meet him in the gym?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then I suggest you get over there right now."
"Yes, sir."
Sometimes it's good to have no choice about what to say.
Part Eight
Tags:
- fic,
- jack/daniel,
- sg-1,
- slash