Title:  Under My Skin

Author:  Joolz

Feedback:  If you like J  [email protected]

Rating:  R

Pairings:  Jack/Daniel

Category:  Pre-Slash, Angst, H/C, Episode related, POV

Season/Spoilers:  Spoils many, many eps from the Movie through Season 5 up to Threshold

Summary:  With time Jack learns to appreciate one particular geek.

Notes:  The wonderful suggestions of Catspaw and Sharon were sooo much appreciated, and helped make this much better.  Awesome chicks.

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

Warnings:  Language, adult situations, mention of rape

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UNDER MY SKIN

 

 

The guy turned out to be alright after all.  Yeah, a geek through and through, but in an okay sort of way.  Could’a killed him when he admitted that he couldn’t get us home.  Talk about a major screw up.  But he was good with other things.  Figured the gate thing out eventually, and his bumbling way sure won over the locals.  Pretty damn easy to please, they were.

 

Turned out to handle himself pretty well when the action started, too.  Except for….  It’s something I’ll never forget, the way he stepped out in front of that blast weapon.  Right in front of me.  Damn stupid thing to do.  I gotta wonder, did he know what he was doing, or did he just screw up again and get in the way?  I can’t believe he did it on purpose, no one’s that altruistic. 

 

And then he was dead.  One minute simpering civilian, next minute char-grilled chunk of meat on the floor.  Shame, but I’ve seen that before.  Just par for the course, me getting lucky again and someone else biting it.  Hey, everyone dies except me, right?  Grade-A O’Neill Irish four-leaf-clover luck.  Got buckets of it. 

 

But then he wasn’t dead, and the shooting started again.   Gutsy kid, I’ll give him that.  Really put his life on the line for all of us.  Especially the girl.  Had himself beamed up to the alien mother-fucker’s ship on the off chance that he could save the girl’s life, on purpose!  I guarantee you that it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone else to do something like that.  Wouldn’t have occurred to me, no even for my dear old mammy.  Ya just gotta consider the ‘stupid’ issue with that kind of behavior.

 

I don’t even know how to think about that other thing.  The reason I’m sitting here today freezing my nuts off looking at the stars instead of pushing up daisies.  That kind of thing had happened to me maybe once or twice before in 40 very long years.  You know, how in one moment something shifts and your life is totally different.  Not any good reason for it, maybe just the right word at the right time.  He said something about not wanting to die, and it’s too bad I did, and it’s like my stomach stood up and did a back flip.  It’s like someone changed the lens filter on the camera from red to yellow.  Stupid analogies, but suddenly I realized that maybe living was an option.  Maybe it would be an acceptable outcome.  Maybe I even wanted it.  My life changed in one instant; there was before that moment, and then there was after.  Again, I can’t believe that he meant for it to happen.  He can’t have known that his words would save my life, he didn’t know me from Adam.  It was just some crazy luck.  All the other stuff was memorable, sure, but that… there’s no way to repay that kind of thing.

 

I feel kinda bad that I never thanked him.  Of course, I didn’t think of it in those terms at the time, I just finished the mission and came home.  Left him there with that hot little ‘wife’ he got given.  That’s another crazy thing.  He just decided in an instant to live on another planet.  To never see anyone he’d ever known again.  Can’t understand a thing like that.   I would never do it, and it’s not like I had a life here to come back to or anything.  All I’ve got now is a house and a deck and a telescope and way too much time to sit around thinking.  Maybe he had one of those shift moments.  Maybe Shau’ri gave him that.

 

I look at the stars, and sometimes I wonder which one is by Abydos.  It’s not like I can ask anyone, is it?  Anyhow, it’s one of the bright ones, I know, because it’s fairly close to Earth.  Only hundreds of light years away instead of millions.  So I pick out the bright stars and wonder how he’s doing, this guy I know on another planet.  Not many people can say a thing like that.  This guy I know on another planet.   I’ll never know how he’s doing, he’s as gone as gone can be.  But I’ll wish him well, the stupid geek.  I hope he has a good life, a real life.  I hope he’s happy.

 

 

I can’t believe how well he’s holding up.  One day his wife and a kid that’s like a brother get kidnapped by aliens, and the next day they get turned into aliens.  It’s not worse than what happened to Charlie, nothing’s worse than that.  But I’m trying to imagine how I’d feel if Sara or Charlie were kidnapped by anyone, let alone aliens.  And if some horrible snaky creatures burrowed into their bodies and took them over… My mind won’t even let me go there.  I’ve faced some hard shit before, but I think I’d totally freak out at that.  It’s like the worst horror movie, only happening for real.   I’d lose it and someone would have to lock me up and sedate me.

 

But he just stands there looking out the window, arms wrapped around his chest, still as a stone.  Won’t talk about it; we’re alike that way.  But I don’t understand how he can be so calm.  Don’t get me wrong, I admire it in a way.  I just don’t understand it.  Today he got the paperwork straightened out so that he’s a legal person again and on the payroll.  Tomorrow he’s going to look for an apartment.  He can actually concentrate long enough to study his books looking for clues about Apophis.  He’s either the strongest person alive or completely heartless.  And I don’t think it’s the latter.  I saw how the people on Abydos felt about him, and they wouldn’t unless he was a good guy.  No one’s ever felt that way about me, I can tell you that much. 

 

He wants to stay on SG1, and that’s okay by me.  Yeah, he’s totally clueless about watching out for himself, so I’ll have to do it for him and try to make sure he doesn’t get us killed either.  But I promised we’d find them, and I intend to do just that.  I know what’s driving him, and frankly, that kind of brain power backed up by serious motivation should result in high quality strategizing.  Like a Harvard educated Retriever on the scent.  I just wish he didn’t look so much like a god damn puppy.

 

 

So how am I supposed to protect the kid when he doesn’t make even the most minimal effort himself?  Now he tells us he got snatched by the Touched because he stopped to help this sick girl.  What is it with him anyway?  Seems to be a hit with the ladies, our Daniel.  Who’d’a thought?  Skinny dweeb like that.

 

There I was worried sick… I almost killed him myself when I was doing the cave man thing.  I hated to imagine what a whole pack of them would do to a pushy, opinionated, annoying know-it-all who doesn’t know when to back down.  And they were rough on him, too.  Kinda freaked me out to see him all wild and lumpy.  (Did I look that bad?)  I got so used to seeing only ‘mild’ and ‘intelligent’ in his eyes that the feral animal impression was pretty much a shock.

 

Thought we lost him there.  When old Genghis Khan  wanted to add Carter to his harem a couple of weeks ago, I was worried, but I figured she’d be okay until we could get her back.  No such confidence with Daniel.  Sometimes I think he wouldn’t last a day without me watching over him.  Us.  Seems to have Teal’c wrapped around his little finger already, and Carter’s no better.  But even they can’t keep him from doing what he wants when he wants.    Got my work cut out for me.

 

 

I don’t know what the hell that was about!  It must have been an effect of the brainwashing thing.  I mean, sure, Daniel’s gotten to be a friend and all, but my reaction was way over the mark.  I’ve lost friends and teammates before, more than I care to recall, but I never smashed my CO’s car window.  I never thought about retiring because of it.  It’s just, I felt this emptiness, like part of myself had been cut away, crippled.  It was almost like I was doing it all for him, trying to be the best man I could be, trying to save the world and defeat the Goa’uld just for him.  Once he was gone it didn’t have any point, none of it.  And that’s just crazy.   I know what my priorities are.  I have a job to do here.  It’s got nothing to do with him.  Like I say, it must have been because that lizard’s machine fucked with my brain. 

 

 

Oh, God, Danny.  So he’s not superhuman after all.  He hurts, he just holds it in till he can’t hold any more.  And this was finally too much. 

 

It would have been different if it had been me.  I mean, I would have boned her in a second.  Hell, I got hard as a rock when she walked into the room, and she never invited me to her bed.  I bet most of the men on base felt the same.  But did she choose one of us?  No.  She went straight to the highest quality person in a thousand mile radius (did she know that, or was it just because he’s cute?), and the one man who would have ethical issues about getting inside a gorgeous redhead.   Yeah, she wanted to make baby Goa’ulds, but I’m sure that wouldn’t have stopped me. (Hey, had the little guys lived, can you imagine, there would have been a whole generation of super smart, allergic, nearsighted snakes.  What a concept!)

 

But Daniel.  It broke my heart to see him like that.  After we started remembering what happened, he disappeared from the base and I tracked him down at his apartment.  He was sitting on the sofa staring into space.  Like he was catatonic, like Carter said he was when she found him in the VIP room.  I pulled up a chair and sat in front of him.  I didn’t say anything and neither did he for a long time, but eventually he started to speak, so quiet.  He told me what happened.  Not all the details, but plenty.  I almost threw up.

 

He’d been raped.  God, I hate that word.  Shouldn’t happen to anyone.  Most definitely shouldn’t happen to Daniel.  Of all people.  Shouldn’t happen to him.  Shouldn’t. 

 

It’s just, I feel so angry and helpless.  I didn’t protect him.  I let that evil…there’s no word strong enough…monster… hurt him.  I want to turn back the clock and do it again, make it so it didn’t happen.  I want…  But I can’t do a damn thing.

 

I listened to him talk, and it scared me to death.  He said to me, he said:

 

“I don’t want to be her pharaoh.  She said I was her Beloved and would be her pharaoh and rule by her side for a thousand years.   I studied the pharaohs; many were great leaders and teachers.  They weren’t fuck toys, they weren’t….

 

“She would have trapped me and kept using me forever.  She would have made me a Goa’uld, right?  Is that what she meant?  Year after year.  She would make me do it…  I couldn’t stop, Jack.  I did it.  She wanted me hard and I…”

 

I interrupted him.  He was spiraling in on himself.   “You were drugged and abused, Daniel.  You didn’t do anything to be ashamed of.   It was her act, not yours.”

 

It was like I hadn’t spoken.  He kept on talking, trying to describe what happened,  working himself up, his sense of helplessness building.  Then he would start on what almost happened to me, anguished as though it were his own fault.  I kept answering him back.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve done.  I’m not good at this shit.  Give me a gun and I can shoot the enemy.  What do I do when the enemy is guilt and fear inside my friend’s head?  But I thought that if I left him alone he’d crash for good, so I would have stuck it out as long as necessary.  Eventually he started to hear me. 

 

I said to him, I said:

 

“A horrible thing has happened to you, but it’s over now.  You’re well and whole.”  I rubbed his arms and legs to remind him his body was still there.  “I’m well and whole.”  I wrapped his hands around my biceps to remind him that I was still there.  “And tomorrow we need to go find a way to defeat those sons of bitches, so they can’t do this to anyone else.  We’re going to beat them, Danny, but we need you to do it.  I need you to stay with me.  I need you to fight by my side.  Will you do that?  For me?”

 

He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.  I felt like he sent out a rope and secured himself to me like a boat on a mooring.  His eyes were wide when he asked,  “And… and you’ll stay with me?”

 

I promised him I would.  I don’t know exactly what I was committing myself to, but whatever it was I’ll try to do it for his sake.  After a while he was calm enough that I made him lie down and he went to sleep.  I sat on the floor by his side with my hand on his head for the rest of the night. 

 

He was better in the morning, and went back to work.  He’s different now, though.  He still gets monomaniacal about what he believes is right, and gets excited about culture and language stuff, argues with me and everything.   In general he seems to be back to normal.  Except there’s a new sadness in his eyes, another sadness.  He seems slightly more withdrawn, maybe the way to say it is more wary.  But in another way more open.  More attached to me and to Carter and Teal’c.  More passionate, if that’s possible.  Older.  Wiser. 

 

I’m sorry about that.  I would have kept him innocent if I could.  But I know that’s selfish.  I wanted him to be what I can’t.  It’s like he’s growing up, and I have to let him.

 

 

When he disappeared on 233, at first I was mad as hell.  Something’s just got to give.  He ignores what I tell him and does whatever he damn well pleases.  Over and over again.  This is not acceptable in what is basically a military unit.  You know, I don’t really mind it when he argues with me, but it depends on the situation.  A lot of the time, though I don’t show it, I really enjoy our arguments.  He’s the only one I can do that with, after all.  Except for General Hammond, I outrank everyone else around here.  And I can’t argue with the General, can I?  And Teal’c, he just won’t.  But with Daniel I get as good as I give.  And let’s face it, what fun is it to play sarcastic asshole if everyone just lets it slide off them?  I know sometimes I go over the line with some of the cracks I make, but he seems to handle it okay.  And God, I love how he gets red in the face and bounces in frustration at my thick headedness.  It’s the best kind of applause an artist like me can have. 

 

But everything in its place.  In the middle of a mission is not the time.  Wandering off on his own when I say we’re going is not okay.  Arrogant prick needs to be put in his place once in a while, needs to understand how we do things around here.  While we spent all those hours searching that lab I really built up a head of steam.  I was ready to kick his butt all the way to the next solar system. 

 

But when I saw him, laying there on the floor with a smoking burn on his arm, I couldn’t kick him.  Not physically.  Did it verbally, though.  Told him I didn’t believe his story.  I didn’t exactly disbelieve him, but geez, alternate universes, me and Carter together, ewww.  Sounds more like a nightmare.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a man.  I’ve noticed that Carter’s pretty damn attractive.  But she’s my 2IC, so no way.  Ewww.

 

So I left him hanging there by himself on that one.  I’m not particularly proud of that.  He was right, and I guess I knew it all along.  I was just so mad at him.  Paid for it later, though.  I had to leave him alone to die.  Talk about nightmares.  There was my ultimate failure, staring me in the face.  He wanted me to destroy the ships and save the planet.  Don’t know why, exactly.  It’s not like the Earth ever did much for him. 

 

When he looked up at me with that pleading in his eyes, it wasn’t just for the mission, though, it was for me, too.  He knew what leaving him there would do to me.  In spite of everything, I think he does know that I’ve got soft spot for him.  He knows, damn him, that I feel stuff more than I show.  He knew what he was asking me to do. Damned underhanded looking at me like that.  That hole in his chest making the other staff weapon burn look like a fucking hangnail.

 

So I did it, but never again.  I’m never going to leave him hanging out there on his own again.  No matter how mad he makes me.

 

 

This way Daniel has with women is going to be the death of him yet.  And maybe of us, too, the way things are going.  Saints preserve us from young women and Daniel Jackson.  For some reason when I saw him sprawled out on the ground with that ‘princess’ he’d just saved between his long, gangly legs, I thought, ‘Oh, shit.’  I just knew this was going to turn out bad.  I had no idea how bad. 

 

I still can’t get over it.  I can’t forgive that bitch for what she did to him.  Don’t talk to me about extenuating circumstances.  Don’t tell me she didn’t know what she was doing.  She fucked him up, fucked him over and just plain fucked him.  Catch of the day, our Danny.  Can’t tell a lure from the real thing, and they scoop him up in their nets.  At least the not-entirely-consensual, not-in-his-right-mind sexual intercourse situation was the last thing he was worried about this time.  No, this time there was that little surviving while-every-cell-in-your-body-explodes thing to get through first.  And as if that weren’t enough, then there was the wracked-with-guilt thing, too. 

 

He doesn’t trust himself anymore, and that’s what I think I blame Shyla for the most.  While the sarcophagus was in the process of destroying his soul, he said I didn’t respect him.  That hurt, but I can kind of understand how he might think that.  It isn’t true.  I just act that way.  And he was angry about it.  Jesus, I prefer that to what he’s doing now.  Now he thinks that he doesn’t deserve respect.   After all the shit he’s been through in the last year or so, he so did not need this.  None of us did.  We’re going to have some work to do rebuilding the trust between us, but it all hinges on Danny and what’s going on in his head.  He’d been well on his way to becoming the steady center of our team, and now he’s confused and off balance.  He needs to get his confidence back, and I can’t really help him with that.  All I can do is trust that he’ll find his way through the darkness yet again. 

 

 

Oh goody, yet another gut-punch for our favorite civilian.  He finds his wife and loses her again.  And oh, joy.  She’s still possessed by one alien and had a baby with another.  Yeah, this is all good for a man’s psychological state.  Won’t make a man feel the slightest bit inadequate or anything.  I’m sure having her so close, being able to touch her, and then losing her will definitely bring an end to those nightmares where he wakes up calling her name.

 

I feel sorry for Shau’ri, I really do.  She’s a good kid, and sure as hell doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her.  She deserves to live happily ever after with someone like Daniel, have a whole passel of kids laughing and playing at her feet.  But I really hope that this kind of thing won’t keep happening.  Either we should get her back, or… I don’t know, but Daniel won’t survive if we keep running into her around the galaxy.

 

I got him to talk to me a little bit about what it was like.  Amazing what a bottle of Glenlivet will do.  After a while, I put my arm around his shoulders and he turned into my chest and cried.  Not loud wracking sobs or anything, just silent tears wetting my shirt.  I’m glad he can do that, cry I mean.  I wish I could.  It’s about the only way he has to let out the tension.  I wish I could have done more.

 

 

I would start to think I was going soft in the head if I didn’t know that other people were affected the same way by the geeky archaeologist.  It’s like he could talk the skin off a snake.  Bad choice of words.  But far as I can tell, there’s hardly anyone in the mountain that can resist him, except for maybe a few of the Marines, and they’re just jealous. 

 

Even shape shifting animal-spirit aliens fall victim to his charms.  There we were, just the two of us left on the whole base, and he got through to them and saved us all.  Well, we did it together.  It’s good when it works like that.  Sometimes we get into a flow, and our differences blend together to create this unstoppable force.  Man, that rocks.  Never had anything like that happen with anyone else.  Makes me feel for a while like we can do anything.  Who’d’a thought we’d make such a good team?

 

 

So I forgot all the information the Ancients’ machine put in my head, but I didn’t forget what happened.  I remember how my mind slowly began withdrawing from what was going on around me.  I remember, frankly, being just about as scared as I’ve ever been.  I mean, it was worse than when I got pinned to the wall like a bug, and that was pretty bad.  It’s bad enough when it’s physical, but when it’s your mind that goes, that totally freaked me out.  And I couldn’t express it, I was all shut down.

 

And I remember how Daniel wouldn’t leave me alone.  I can’t tell you how glad I was that he could speak the same language as me.  And even when that went, I could see his lips moving and hear sounds coming out, and I knew he was talking to me.  Not alone.  Almost, but not completely.  I’m lucky to have a friend like that.

 

 

It was probably the second most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.  The first and totally untoppable was the birth of my son.  But the second, was it the wonder of alien skies, flying through the solar system in a big honkin’ space ship, or being the first to meet the Roswell grays on their home soil?  No, it was watching Daniel talk to Apophis’ host. 

 

As well as I know that Apophis is the symbiote hidden inside, and the human body is that of an innocent host, I can’t remember it when I’ve got one in front of me.  That face just says ‘Apophis’ to me.  I can’t separate them out. 

 

But when Apophis suddenly started talking in some funny language, Daniel went all gentle, almost loving, with him.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  He was cooing and murmuring to Apophis, as though he were a precious glass vessel that could shatter with a gust of wind.  Alright, I know it wasn’t Apophis.  It was a pitiful, traumatized, tragic human being.  But Daniel adapted to that in an instant.  The poor guy may have suffered unimaginably for thousands of years, but he was damn lucky that the one time he got control of his body it was Daniel there beside him.  I almost envied him being the focus of that kind of tenderness.

 

I know how uptight Daniel was having Apophis there.  I can just imagine what kind of thoughts were going through his head.  But that didn’t stop him being able to give to someone who needed him, even if the face was that of his greatest enemy.  Amazing.  I get choked up when I think about it.  That’s a kind of power that doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun, or from money, or from fame.  It comes from the human heart, and I guess I never understood before that moment how it leaves all other kinds of power in the dust.   Maybe other people knew that already, but I didn’t.  It gives me a lot to think about, and one more thing to thank Daniel Jackson for teaching me.

 

 

Okay, I’m going to have to start dealing with how important Daniel is becoming to me.  It’s just that against all the odds, despite all our differences, I’ve come to think of him as my best friend.  To tell the truth, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had.  Ever.  I didn’t realize it, but all I’ve had before were buddies.  Good buddies, but not one of them ever knew me so well or gave me so much without even trying.  And Sara, well I was in love with her.  She knew me, for sure, but we both wanted something from the other, something we had to get or it wouldn’t work out.

 

It’s not like that with Daniel.  I just like being around him.  I look forward to having down time so we can hang out.  I just think he’s probably about the best person born since Jesus.  It’d be cool, not even worth mentioning, if we didn’t have to go through the Gate.  The problem is that so much shit happens out there, and I can’t protect him from it.  I try, and I’ll do anything I have to, but it isn’t enough.

 

Like that run in with Hathor.  The moment she appeared, I pretty much went into an all out panic.  Not that I’d give her the satisfaction of showing it, but you name any evil, vile, criminally overdressed snake we’ve met, and I would have preferred them to  her.  Daniel shut down, closed off, went out to lunch in an instant.  He did that closing-the-shutters-and-disappearing-inside thing, which is VERY BAD.

 

And God, she freakin’ touched him!  And said that stuff about being together.  It was all I could do to keep from leaping at her and trying to break that snake-infested neck.  I would have failed.  Shit!  There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t fail!  All I could think was to get them to put the thing into me instead of him, and hope that she would make me kill him.  See how crazy I was?  I’d do anything to keep him from going through that with her again.  He’d be better off dead than destroyed.

 

This is not normal Jack O’Neill, ace team leader, professional behavior.  I need to think larger picture, I need to think team.  And I do, it’s not like I don’t.  But right then, in that moment, I wasn’t.  It may not be a good thing to have my best friend on the same team with me.  But what am I going to do?  Let him go off with someone else?  Over my dead body.  Shit, what a mess.

 

And I know it’s hard for him, too.  After it was all over he just kept staring at me all the time, whenever we were together.  Big round blue eyes following my every move.  I finally made him tell me what gives, and it turns out he was majorly freaked out by my little close encounter with snaky.  He was having trouble accepting the reality that I was Goa’ulded, but then I wasn’t.  He said that that was the worst thing he could think of happening, worse than anything she could do to him.  Losing someone else to the Goa’uld, losing me, was more than he could take.

 

I made him touch the scar on my neck where it went in.  (I’m not even going into that.)  I took him to the infirmary to look at the scans of my head sans Goa’uld.  I teased him and cajoled him until he started to relax, started to believe in the reality where I wasn’t a Goa’uld after all. 

 

I told him I killed her, and Carter confirmed it, but I wish he’d been there to see it himself.  He still has nightmares about that bitch.  I want him to have CLOSURE on this one, but he’s not likely to get it. 

 

But his boat’s still tied to me, and the waters have stilled.  I suppose that’s the most we can ask for.

 

 

Jesus, it seems like we’ve done nothing but run into Goa’uld lately.  First Hathor, then Seth and Yu and Nirrti and Cronos.  Daniel was acting normal, very much himself, but I wasn’t sure I trusted that.  That’s probably why I was easy to convince that he’d finally lost it.  I mean, it was only my greatest fear.  Makes sense it should happen, right?

 

Me, who says I’ll do anything to protect him, won’t leave him hanging out to dry, let them wrestle him to the ground, drug him and lock him up.  I know how it feels to have your brain betray you, and he depends on his brain way more than I do.  Great friend I am. 

 

He says he forgives me.  How can he?  How can he trust me again?  I let him down big time.  All I wanted was hold him and squeeze him till he was well again, but what did I do?  I called for the medics to take him off my hands.  This guy with a heart the size of the entire planet may forgive me, but I don’t forgive myself.  I’m not good for him.  He needs someone he can count on.

 

 

I just saw him a while ago in the infirmary.  He still has that red mark on his face from the hand device, but the feverish look in his eyes is way worse.  When he talks at all, he rambles on about some vision and the kid Shau’ri had with Apophis.  I make ‘Yeah, yeah, sure’ noises, but I’m hoping he’ll get over this delusion pretty soon.  I don’t want him to be upset, but I want him to face the truth more.  Amaunet tried to kill Daniel, Teal’c killed Shau’ri, end of one very sad story.  It’s not real healthy to be fixating on your wife’s illegitimate son at a time like this.  He says he did a lot of his grieving already and is going to be okay.  Hello?  It only happened yesterday. 

 

You know, usually Daniel takes the responsibility for everything onto himself.  The hole in the ozone layer is his fault.  And he does feel guilty about failing to rescue Shau’ri in general.  But it’s funny that he hasn’t taken on her actual death.  A pretty good case could be made for that in fact being his direct fault.  If he’d have, god forbid, listened to me for once, we could have taken out the Jaffa and had time to deal with capturing Amaunet without killing her.  But no, he rushed in and ended up forcing Teal’c’s hand. 

 

I may not be a genius, but I’m good at what I do.  I know how to work through a firefight like that.  He could have trusted me for five minutes, and I would have fulfilled my promise to find her.  But since I don’t want him to realize what he did, I can’t use it as an example of why he needs to follow orders.  I just hope it isn’t one of us who pays the price next time.

 

 

See what I mean?  If we’d have been able to capture Amaunet, then the Tok’ra could have extracted her like they did for Skaara.  God, it’s good to see the kid free again.  It’s ridiculous how much it means to have one person, just one, saved from the Goa’uld.  I know Daniel feels the same way.  Despite the bittersweet pain of how much Skaara reminds him of Shau’ri, having been able to help one of the people he loves goes a long way toward making up for all the other losses.  I think he can look Kasuf in the eyes again, now that he’s returned at least one of his children. 

 

He’s still talking about the baby, though, which worries me.  Maybe we will find him, but I hope he’s not thinking that that will bring Shau’ri back to him.  He’s just setting himself up for more pain.

 

 

Daniel invited me over for dinner the other night.  It was right after I’d gotten back from Edora.  He made this huge meal, with this rich, savory Egyptian lamb stew.  He knows lamb is my favorite.  There was wine and chocolate mousse for desert.  When I asked him what the special occasion was, he got all shy and embarrassed, and said no special occasion, he was just glad I was back.  He’d missed me.  Can you believe it?  I, uh, I got all shy and embarrassed, too.  Told him I’d missed him.

 

We ate so much I thought I’d die, then afterwards we settled down to talk.  I told him about what happened with Laira.  I told him how she had offered me just what I dreamed of having my whole life: love and acceptance, a family, a place to belong, peace of mind.  She handed it to me on a plate.  Not that I wasn’t glad to be back now that I was here, but it wasn’t easy.  Felt like kind of a shit saying it after the whole shy and embarrassed scene, but he had asked.  And he deserved to know. 

 

I think he understood what I was talking about.  He said he did.  He said that he’d had that with Shau’ri on Abydos, so he understood what I meant.  We agreed that we shouldn’t have to go to other planets to find it.  We joked about ‘What’s wrong with Tau’ri women anyway?’, but it fell kind of flat. 

 

It was a good evening.  It felt good.  I finally felt like I was home.

 

 

I don’t know how to get out of this one.  Things are so screwed up that I don’t think they’ll ever be fixed again.  I didn’t want to do it.  I could have said no.  I could have found another way or insisted on telling them.  I could have just told them anyway and sworn them to secrecy.  But what did Colonel O’Neill of the US fuckin’ Air Force do?  Followed orders.  And destroyed something precious.  I wish someone could tell me if it was worth it, ‘cause I don’t know.

 

Daniel says he forgives me, of course.  He says he understands why I did what I did.  But he doesn’t.  I mean, he understands, but he holds it against me anyway.  Or rather, I think he holds it against himself.  I think he thinks that he was wrong to trust me, to think that our friendship was solid.  ‘This friendship thing we’ve been working on,’ he’d said.  And we had been working at it.  It was always take a step, test the waters, maybe take a step back, try again.  We’re too different for it to be easy.  And after almost four years, I just knocked the foundation out from under all of it.  And he’s thinking that it was inevitable, and he was a fool to believe otherwise.

 

He thinks that maybe I didn’t mean it this time, I didn’t really do it this time, but I will the next.  God, especially after that conversation we had, he accepted all too easily that I could just leave and go live with Laira.  That I’d chosen her.  He doesn’t know, and he’ll never believe it now, that I couldn’t ever do that.  That I won’t leave again.  Leave him again.  I….

 

I got a taste of what it would feel like, to be cut off from him.  On Edora I couldn’t get back, but I assumed at least that everyone wanted me back.  This time he pulled away from me.  It left a weight on me so heavy I almost couldn’t breathe.  I don’t know how to handle needing his friendship that much.  I don’t know how to handle having lost it.  I don’t know how to get it back.

 

He says that we’re still friends, don’t worry about it, and in some ways things have gone back to how they were.  But not that thing that used to be there between us.  He’s untied his boat.  I feel so adrift that it makes me wonder who was  the boat and who the mooring.

 

 

I saw something today that I’ve never seen before.  Right, of course, I’ve seen Daniel almost every day for the last several years, but not like this.  When did he become this person?  Where was I?

 

When he was standing on the porch of the temple, asking me to trust him like he thought I didn’t, despite or maybe because of the shit that was going on, I really saw him.  I saw the curve of his chest under the black T-shirt.  The square line of his jaw.  The muscular neck. 

 

God damn him!  How dare he do this to me?  How dare he be… beautiful.  As if it weren’t enough me eating my heart out because he doesn’t trust me anymore, now there has to be this, this…weirdness.  I could barely look at him after that in case I might notice how the muscles of his thighs move under the cloth of his pants.  And God!  His bare feet were on display!  When did he get to have a body like that?  When did I start caring?

 

Oh, geez.  This is so not right.  I do not want to look at Daniel like that.  Everything about it is wrong.  We’re friends, for God’s sake.  I don’t think of him that way.   In fact, I don’t think about men that way.  All I want is to show him he can trust me.  The last thing we need is for me to go all predatory on him.  It would be so unfair to do that to him on top of everything else.

 

Well, I’m just not going to do it.  I’m not going to look at him.  I’m not going to think about him.  I’m going to leave him alone and not screw up his life, or mine, any more than they already are.  I’m Special Ops trained.  You know all those techniques they teach you to avoid brainwashing?  Well they can be used for other things, too.  Redirection of thought patterns.  It ain’t happening.  Nothing to see here, folks, move along.  You’ll see.  This is going to un-happen.

 

 

He was looking at me all eager and puppydogish again when he got back on base after the Lego-bug shooting gallery incident.  Don’t bother lookin’, bucko, ‘cause I ain’t lookin’ back.  Keepin’ my distance, you could say.  In fact, you’d be better off not even talking to me, ‘cause I don’t want to hear it.  May not seem like it now, but this is for your own good.    You’ll thank me later.   Ya see, Danny boy, I’m gonna prove to you that you can trust me by making sure you don’t trust me, ‘cause you shouldn’t.  You’re a genius, figure it out.

 

 

Well, I’d have to say it’s working really well.  It was, anyway.  He hadn’t exactly given up on me, but his expectations were sure lowered.  I hadn’t exactly been able to not notice him, but I had been able to keep him at a distance. 

 

Let’s see.  Oh, first I cut him cold and tell him to shut up in front of everyone on a mission. Then I get everyone believing that I had a thing for Carter.  Honestly, I didn’t mean to.  It’s just that there was no way I was going to say to her, “Hey, Carter.  I’m just going to run along now.  You stay here and get blown up.”  I wouldn’t have been able to do that with any of them.  I’m supposed to be able to, though.  It just all got misinterpreted. 

 

Then I almost blow him up on the Gadmeer ship.  Then I try to beat him to a pulp when we’re in the power station (memory wipe is no excuse).  Then I hang up on him and he almost gets killed by yet another Goa’uld.  Shall I go on?  I’m truly skilled at being a complete asshole.  No, there was no way he would ever guess that I was caring for him way more than I should. 

 

But then our dear friend, Shifu the wunderkind, had to come for a visit.  How could I keep all those barriers up when he was lying there in the infirmary like in a coma, and I didn’t know if he was ever going to wake up again.  I sat there looking at him remembering all the things I like about him, all those things that were there from the beginning.  His bravery, compassion, enthusiasm, his willingness to take me as I am. 

 

You know what?  I’m not willing to give that up.  I’m not saying I’m going to declare my undying love or anything, but I’ve gotta recognize that I’ve been hurting him by keeping him away.  I thought I was protecting him, but I was hurting him at the same time.  If I keep it up, he’s gonna be gone for good, one way or the other.  Maybe it is a self serving rationalization, but two really clear ‘hit me over the head with a sledgehammer’ lessons taught me that I’m doing wrong.

 

First of all, after he woke up from being Shifued he came to me.  Asked directly, could we talk.  Could we still talk?  I didn’t brush him off for once.  He told me about his vision (I’ve learned the hard way not to ignore his visions), and he told me the worst part was that he and I didn’t know each other any more.  There was no chance for us to find each other again in his dream, he said, because he had made it impossible.  Said he didn’t want to let that happen to us. 

 

I don’t know why it should be a surprise, but he blames himself for the distance that I’ve been enforcing.  Thinks he’s done something to deserve it.  Oh Danny.  You’re breaking my heart.  I said everything was fine, we were still friends, but I don’t know if he believed me.  He shouldn’t have, because I was lying.  It’s not so easy to just turn off the defense shields I thought were for his benefit.

 

Then he almost died on that balcony, and he was so unhappy.  Then he did die before we got him back through the gate.  God, I’ll still do anything to save him.  I still need him.  I swear, if he’d gone off that balcony I would have followed.  If he hadn’t come back from the flatline, I wouldn’t have cared enough about living to turn the damn light off.  And that wasn’t my addiction talking. 

 

I’ve done him a disservice.  I haven’t been treating him like an adult who can make his own decisions and take care of himself.  I decided to protect him without asking him if he wanted protection.  Actually, by ‘protecting’ him, I left him unforgivably alone.  I’m going to stop doing that.  I’m going to learn to let him back in again.  He is strong.  He is capable.  He is a grown man.  If I get out of line he’ll let me know. 

 

 

Sometimes it can be that simple.  I stopped blocking him, and from one moment to the next he was there again.  With me.  My friend Daniel.  We didn’t say anything about it, it just was.  You know those mooring lines we used to have?  They’re back.  This time we’re both boats, and have tied on to one another. 

 

Okay, sure, I’ve noticed a pattern of needing life or death situations before I get a clue about the important stuff, and maybe this is no different.  But who cares?  Here we are hurtling through space faster than any human has probably ever traveled before, in a ship overrun with voracious little Lego-bugs, and guess-who our favorite bad guy around the corner, and I gotta tell you, I haven’t been as happy in a long time.  Daniel is by my side.  I don’t even have to look around to know.  I can feel him there.  When he’s standing beside me, or sitting beside me, there’s like this energy zinging back and forth, and it’s way cool.  We’re just…together.  That simple.  And life is good.

 

Yes, of course I’ve noticed that he’s incredibly cute.  He’s the cutest thing since… well, since ever.  And he’s looking at me like he’s glad to see me, too.  I can tell he’s just as jazzed as I am by the way he’s bouncing and prowling like the king of the jungle.  And I gotta say, I don’t think it’s because of our imminent destruction.  It just feels so right. 

 

What the hell was I thinking?  I know, I know.  I wasn’t thinking.  I’m a moron.  I’ve played the idiot so much that it came true.  The miracle is he can forgive me for it.  Getting a second chance here.  If we die, I’ll die happy.  If we live, well, we’ll see.  Whatever happens, this time I’m gonna work it out with Danny’s active participation.  I’d say I’ve got something worth living for!

 

 

We’ve had to concentrate on getting Teal’c back ever since we got home.  It’s been real hard on everyone, and we’re all stressed out of our heads.  But the tie is still there between Daniel and me, and it’s getting easier.  It’s getting good.

 

This amazing thing happened.  After Bra’tak’s ‘kill him or cure him’ ritual, I found Daniel in his office.  He was just standing there with his shoulders slumped and head bowed.  When I walked in he looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes.  It was relief; he’d been so afraid of losing Teal’c.  I didn’t think.  I walked right up to him and wrapped my arms around him.  He relaxed against my chest, and I relaxed against his.  Our stubbly cheeks pressed together, our chins in each other’s necks.  He snaked his arms around my waist, and we just stood there like that holding each other.  I’m tellin’ ya, we stood there like that for a long time.  Two big, tall, tough men.

 

I’m not saying it wasn’t weird.  It was.  Especially when our groinal areas began to get frisky.  But neither of us pulled away.  I had a feeling of comfort, of love, that I haven’t had in years.  I looked him in the eyes and made sure he knew what he was getting into.  I said, “I screw things up, Daniel.  You gotta make allowances for how hard it is for old dogs to learn new tricks.  I’m ornery and obnoxious and damned hard to get along with, and you’d be way better off without me.  I’m gonna make your life a living hell.”

 

He just gave me one of those drop dead gorgeous smiles, his eyes smoldering in a very attractive way.  He said, “I know.  I’m thinking of taking out an insurance policy.  How much do you think it costs to cover natural disaster?” 

 

I snarled at him, “You little…”  Then I kissed him.  That’s right.  I kissed him.  I’m not going to say that the extreme weirdness factor was gone.  But I think I can handle it.  We can handle it.

 

 

 

The End

 

 

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