Title:  Brown Eyes

Author: Joolz

Feedback:  if you like J  [email protected]

Category:  Pre-slash, angst

Rating:  PG

Pairing:  Jack/Daniel

Season/Spoilers: Early 1^st season, spoilers for The Movie, CtoG

Notes:  This could totally be Gen, too, depending on how you read it.  I just have my preferences as to where it should go from here.  Not beta’d.

Summary:  Daniel tries to understand what those brown eyes are trying to tell him.

Disclaimer:  Not my lovely characters, just playing with them.

                   

 

Brown Eyes

By Joolz

 

 

I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to react, or even if I’m supposed to react.  How should I know what’s going on in his head?  What does he expect?

 

Right, I’m not being fair.  He’s not the one who’s confused here, I am.  It’s not like Jack has ever said anything or really given any indication that there’s something particular to respond to.  He’s been unflaggingly supportive, patient and professional.  It’s just this feeling I have that there’s more, something important that’s not being said out loud.

 

It’s this look he gives me.  Sometimes I turn to him and find his eyes already on me.  As much as I’ve tried to figure it out, I can’t read that expression.  All I know is that it makes my breath catch. 

 

Well, that’s an astounding piece of scientific analysis, isn’t it?  Doctor Jackson just has a feeling.  I’d have as much success writing that up for a journal as I did the last few pieces I submitted.  Doctor Jackson thinks that Egyptian civilization might be five or six thousand years older than everybody thought. 

 

Or how about this?  Doctor Jackson thinks the symbols in the cartouche room might be really important.

 

So I was right about both those things.  Was being right worth destroying all my professional relationships?  Was being right worth leaving my wife alone to be…taken?

 

Yeah, Doctor Jackson acts on his hunches and loses everything that matters.  A track record that inspires confidence.  And I was more certain about those things than I am about this.  This is just…a feeling.

 

So let’s look at it again.  At what point did I notice Jack?  On that first trip through the ‘Gate, he hadn’t really registered in my consciousness yet.  Super-macho military type.  Not much to notice there.  I needed him in order to do what I wanted to do, nothing more.  How wrong those first impressions can be.

 

It wasn’t long before I figured out that under the beret and automatic there was a man named Jack, who was perhaps the most rigidly self-controlled person I’d ever met.  But you know what they say, the more tightly you try to hold something the more it slips through your fingers.

 

That’s what it was like with him.  Totally against his will there were little cracks in his defenses.  In his eyes I saw flashes of compassion and humor, and intriguingly, pain.  There were ten thousand year old Egyptian gods and a completely unique culture requiring my attention, but there was something about Jack that stood out in the midst of it all. 

 

I wonder if anyone could tell that I was about to vomit when I was walking toward Jack, on his knees and helpless, with a deadly weapon in my hand.  In front of thousands of people I could feel his eyes drinking me in.  I think that upchuck impulse was what finally came out through my hands as I shot to kill.  There was a part of my brain that could see those nameless guards as non-entities, not real, not dying.  But not Jack.  He was so real to me that his dying was not even a possibility.  I guess I had died for him once already, it was a small step to kill for him.  After that we fell into place with each other.

 

But even so, it wasn’t like I really knew him.  I felt a twinge of regret when he went back through to Earth, sad to see that small connection break, but in truth I was so wrapped up in the excitement of my new life that I didn’t give it much thought.  I’d never had a relationship like the one with fiery, passionate Shau’ri.  That would have been enough to distract me completely, all on its own.  But on top of that there was so much to study.  My brain whirled non-stop for months just taking it all in.

 

It wasn’t until the sudden desperation of culture-shock hit that I stopped long enough to even remember a man named Jack.  At that point he was mainly in my mind because he had been to Abydos and Earth, both.  As much as Shau’ri and the others loved me and gave to me open-heartedly, they couldn’t, no matter how much they tried, ever know who Doctor Jackson was. 

 

I was caught between the two worlds, the two me’s, and there were precious few people in the universe who could even begin to know what that meant.  Jack O’Neill was perhaps the only person who had ever seen both, and I found myself explaining to him in my head what I was experiencing and learning.  It was important that Jack understand.  I guess it was my way of coping with the thought that there was no going back.  Talking to Jack helped me feel less isolated.

 

When the Kleenex box came through the Stargate I sat down in the sand and hugged it, tears in my eyes.  I knew it had come from Jack.  It wasn’t until that moment that I fully realized how much he meant to me.  Yes, I was probably projecting my homesickness onto him, but I wanted more than anything to see him again. 

 

Even now everything that happened after that is kind of a blur.  Re-establishing contact with Earth was an incredible high.  Then my entire life was ripped away in one moment.

 

Shau’ri.  There wasn’t even time to grieve.  She was just gone, a chunk of my soul hacked off.  Then I turned and walked away from Abydos, another piece cut out.  I stepped from there into the military world, not Earth, really.  Funny how I had conveniently forgotten what that meant.  Another layer of culture-shock did nothing to heal my lacerated life.

 

At some point amid the planning and arguing and the first missions through the ‘Gate, amid trying to fit into this hybrid military team, amid the devastating longing for Shau’ri, amid the next round of vending machine/automobile culture-shock, I found Jack again.

 

I found myself watching him.  I noticed how much he had changed from the macho military man I had known before.  Somewhere along the line he’d stopped holding himself so tightly, and now he was right out there for anyone to see.  Not that most people did see him, but I could.  I saw that he was struggling to rebuild his life, just like I was.  He never expected me to pull myself together and get over it, but he was a model of how to be strong and persevere.  He was a lifeline.  Once again it seemed like he was the only person in the universe who could understand. 

 

This was also about the time that I started to notice him watching me.  I thought at first that it was his sense of team-leader responsibility, but there was something in those coffee brown eyes when he looked at me that wasn’t there with other people. 

 

But what?  That’s the question that’s driving me crazy.  I wish Jack O’Neill’s eyes came with an instruction manual.  Given adequate training I’m certain I could read them, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.  It seems that his eyes read me like a book, while I haven’t even learned the alphabet yet.

 

In a way I can understand that.  Now I’m the one holding myself too tightly, and he can see the bits slipping through my fingers.  And I need that so much.  God, I need him to understand.  Sometimes when I’m lying awake at night, drowning in loss and fear for the future, I see his eyes.  They’re like a promise.  I cling to them desperately, because they contain the only hope I can find.

 

Even though he in no way demands it, I feel like I should respond somehow.  What would I say?  Thank you, please don’t stop looking at me?  He confuses me, but I need him more than I ever have.  How can you possibly talk about that?

 

But I want to know.  What does he see when he looks at me?  Does he really understand?  Does he want something from me?  Does he, maybe, need me, too?  If  I stopped holding on, would he catch me?  I almost think he would.

 

Ah, but my hunches always turn out so well.  What could I possibly hope to gain by letting myself…what?  I don’t even know what I want his eyes to be saying.  Maybe if I just let myself…loosen… just a little bit.  Just with him.  Just to see.

 

Maybe I would finally be home.

 

 

End

 

 

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