Story: Normal Is As Normal Does, Part II
Part II, in which there is much thinking of deep thoughts, and Siler heads to the infirmary. Again.
Sam needed a little space, so she went out on her motorcycle. It was a great evening for a ride, and she’d always found riding her bike allowed her to calm down. This living together business wasn’t as easy as - well, as easy as Jack and Daniel made it look. (Of course, they didn’t have to worry about someone putting bras in the dryer. Eddie took care not to own clothing he couldn’t put in the dryer, and it had come as quite a shock to him when Sam scolded him for shortening the life of her bras via the dryer.) After a while, she ended up at their house without really thinking about her destination.
As soon as she cut the engine she could hear a commotion in the backyard, so she put her helmet down and went around the back. There she found her friends attempting to bathe a very muddy dog. Both of them were shirtless, barefoot, and soaking wet. Sam knew many women at SGC -and Trevor Voss from Daniel’s department - would pay good money to see this.
At least she and Eddie were both cat people, so they didn’t have pets to disagree about. Roxanne was a good cat, and she’d adapted well to her new home. Sam liked having her around. That was a good thing, because Roxanne was inevitably around. This cat had no interest in going outside, possibly because Eddie had rescued her when she was half-starved on the side of the road. She liked to stay where she was warm and well-fed.
Daniel got a dirty tail slapped against his face. He yelped out something that was no doubt a curse - Sam guessed it was Arabic, but couldn’t be sure.
“Don’t suppose you’re here to help?” called out Jack as she headed to the back porch.
“No.”
Jack finally managed to get a solid hold on Zelda so Daniel could turn the hose on her back. “Thanks a lot.”
Rationally, Sam knew that living together was a challenge for any couple. Daniel had even told her as much. Still, she couldn’t help but admire how Jack and Daniel made it look effortless. Sam was thirty-eight - would be thirty-nine before the year was out - and she’d never lived with a boyfriend before. Her track record with men wasn’t great to say the least. She loved Eddie, and she really thought that their relationship would last. They wanted the same things out of life. She was happy with him. Eddie was the only man who’d ever shared her passion for science and made her feel like a princess.
Still, she couldn’t help but being scared she’d screw this relationship up over stupid things like laundry.
Several minutes later, Zelda was clean and Jack and Daniel were the dirty ones. Jack turned the hose on himself, then Daniel. Good thing it was a warm evening.
Daniel’s glasses were on the railing; Sam handed them to him when he wandered towards her. “Thanks,” he said, sitting down along side her. “Zelda played in the mud.”
“I’m surprised there was any mud left when we got her to come out,” added Jack.
Sam gave a little sigh. Jack looked at her for a minute, recognized her I-need-to-talk expression, and promptly announced, “I’m going to clean out the fridge.”
Both Sam and Daniel chuckled as he fled inside, Zelda trotting along behind him. Sam wasn’t the least surprised. She and Jack were friends, yes, both of them members of the SG-1 family. They were comfortable with each other, having settled into being professional at work and friends outside of the mountain. But Jack didn’t do talking. Daniel was much better at it, or at least just listening.
This was another of those times Sam could’ve used Janet’s wise counsel. Daniel, though, was alive and there and patiently waiting for her to explain what was going on.
“You two make living together look easy,” she said at last.
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.”
“Right.” So she was learning.
“We didn’t speak for over an hour Thursday night. You’ll never guess what the fight was about.”
“Baseball game or History Channel special?” she tried.
Daniel shook his head slightly. “There was a program on Discovery we both wanted to watch. We fought over whose fault it was the popcorn burned.”
“There must be something about kitchens.” When he gave her a questioning look, Sam elaborated, “Eddie puts utensils in the dishwasher standing up. Even the knives. He says they’ll get cleaner that way. I told him they won’t be cleaner if I bleed all over them.”
Daniel understood that it wasn’t the time for jokes. “It’s hard to find the balance between letting little things go and letting them fester.”
“Or you think you let them go, but really let them fester,” added Sam, who had firsthand experience with that thanks to the knives incident.
“I think the most important thing is to admit when you overreact. Even if you don’t use words.”
It was odd, on one level, for a linguist to suggest words might not be necessary. Then again, Jack was very much an actions-speak-louder-than-words man, so it all made sense really.
“There’s a lot to like about cohabitating,” she said. “Saturday afternoon I took Cassie out for pedicures. When I got home, Eddie had spelled out the chorus to ‘Beautiful Soul’ in Alpha-Bits. That’s our song.” They didn’t even have Alpha-Bits; Eddie had gone out and bought the cereal just for that. They hadn’t used the table until Tuesday because Sam didn’t want to ruin his gesture. “I’m not sorry he moved in.”
Daniel proved he was on the same page by finishing, “But nothing’s perfect.”
“No.” After a minute of staring out into their backyard, Sam confessed, “I don’t want to screw this up, Daniel. I love him too much.”
He knew better than to offer a simple, palliative promise that she wouldn’t. Instead, he nodded in understanding. “I think it’s better if you don’t take a relationship for granted.”
“As long as I don’t worry it to death,” she muttered.
Daniel couldn’t quite hide his grin. “You’ll figure it out, Sam. It took us time to get where we are.”
She remembered Daniel’s frustration when he first moved in and thought Jack was trying to hide away some of his favorite artifacts. It turned out that Jack wasn’t trying to hide them; he was afraid of breaking Daniel’s treasures and wanted to protect them.
Her problem had always been that her science and Air Force work came before relationship work. Even with a man who shared her priorities, it was a balancing act. Now, just when she felt she was doing well, there was this new dimension of melding their domestic habits. She was much better with physics puzzles.
When she got home, Sam took Daniel’s advice. She kissed Eddie and told him she could get used to looking for upright knives in the dishwasher if he could get used to checking to make sure he didn’t put bras in the dryer. Then, for good measure, she thanked him for not wanting a dog.
*****
Jack figured it was time to roll his coins. His change situation had gotten a little out of control, so he retrieved the jars, popped open a beer, and dug the little sleeves out from the back of a drawer.
He sat down with a full jar and a second that was nearly full. This was going to take a while. He dumped the contents of the first jar onto the table carefully, then started pulling out the quarters.
He was on his second roll of quarters when Daniel came in, headed for the fridge. Daniel never had much change because he’d fully embraced the use of his debit card. Jack didn’t want a debit card. If he was short on cash, he pulled out the MasterCard and wrote a check when the statement came.
Daniel apparently felt like pudding, because he made up a box of instant. Zelda, who was always interested in kitchen noises, came in to investigate. Daniel fell for her sad eyes - again - and gave her a treat. Then he sat at the table to wait while his pudding gelled. If he didn’t, he’d forget all about it.
“Whatcha thinking?” asked Jack, who was always curious when Daniel got that little hint of a smile.
“Something I hadn’t thought of in years.”
“Oh?”
“My second foster home, with the Havershams. Mr. Haversham had a huge bucket of coins. There were four of us, and he told us if we rolled all the coins we could split the money equally.”
“Pretty sweet deal.”
“It was,” agreed Daniel. “The Havershams were good to me.”
Jack tried not to pry, he really did. The thing was, he wanted to understand the forces that had shaped his lover into the incredible man he was. “So there were the Brays and the Havershams,” he said, leaving the option for Daniel to stop the conversation there.
“The Sikarskis, and Mrs. Olson.”
“Sikarskis.” What had Daniel said about them? “Macaw people?”
“You remember that?” asked Daniel, delighted.
Jack shrugged a little and folded the ends of his roll of quarters. “I try to understand,” he explained. “All these things that influenced who you are, you know?”
Daniel nodded. “Peanut. The macaw was named Peanut. I missed him most when they… when I left.”
Ah. Some less-than-pleasant memories there.
“You really want to know, don’t you?” asked Daniel. “I never - I guess I got used to pity when people asked.”
“Not pity, cariad,” promised Jack. Not for Daniel now, although maybe some for the kid he’d been.
“I get that. I felt like I understood you a little more after talking with Aunt Kate.”
Which reminded Jack that he should call his aunt soon. Her stove had damn near blown up, and he wanted to make sure she’d replaced it.
“I told you about the Brays. They were the most important, I think, if you want to understand me after my parents. Mrs. Bray taught me a lot in those three years. She understood that I wasn’t like other kids, that I literally didn’t have a frame of reference for an average life. She helped me navigate that while staying true to myself.”
“Sounds like a good woman.”
“She was,” agreed Daniel. “The Havershams were good, too. I think I’d have stayed with them longer, but they split up just before my fourteenth birthday. The Sikarskis weren’t bad. I didn’t cause trouble, so they let me be.”
Jack translated this as neglect, but knew better than to voice that opinion.
“Until Mr. Sikarski saw me kissing a boy and sent me packing. By the time I got to the Mrs. Olson, it didn’t matter that she was a good foster mother. I was sick of other people controlling my life.”
He understood that Daniel generally didn’t dwell on those eight years in foster care, and didn’t press for more details. “So, I guess a self-reliant genius was a no-brainer for emancipation, huh?”
“Evidently.”
Jack grabbed the pudding from the fridge and served them each a bowl. “Thank you,” he said, kissing Daniel briefly. He was grateful for the gift he’d been given - of trust, of a glimpse into what his boyfriend kept intensely private.
“I got to see your baby pictures,” answered Daniel. Then, changing the subject, he asked, “I wonder how Aunt Kate is doing?”
“I’ll call this afternoon.” He hoped he got spared the minute details of his aunt’s knitting group. He was glad she enjoyed it, and the women made hats, scarves, and mittens for needy kids so it was a good cause. Jack just didn’t especially enjoy hearing which patterns were the hardest.
*****
Between the two of them, Daniel thought he and Jack had dreamed up nearly every possible nightmare. They didn’t talk about them often, but they just knew. Jack had nightmares about Iraq, Ba’al’s torture, Daniel’s deaths, and it wasn’t uncommon for a nightmare about Charlie’s accident around the anniversary of his death. Or so Daniel had surmised from the date and the time Jack cried out his son’s name in his sleep. As for himself, Daniel had nightmares about falling stones, Goa’uld taking his loved ones as hosts, and becoming who he was in Shifu’s vision.
Then there was the old standby, one of the nightmares that haunted most SGC personnel: staff weapons. They’d very nearly lost Colonel Lukov that morning after the Russian took two staff blasts to the chest. Without that material which absorbed the energy, the one that Sam had spent so much time on, Lukov would certainly be dead. Daniel would’ve bet money he wasn’t the only one whose own close encounters had been dredged up by Lukov’s injuries. He was probably, however, the only one who’d technically died more than once from a staff blast.
Jack, the perennial light sleeper, realized Daniel was missing from the bed and found him on the back deck. It was cloudy and only a few patches of stars were visible, but the early September night breeze was refreshing. Jack also knew him well enough to see that Daniel had been deep in thought, about life and death and staff weapons.
“Hey,” said Jack. “Don’t you know it’s too late for deep thoughts?”
“Technically, it’s early.”
“Any time nobody can agree on what to call should be spent in bed,” retorted Jack, but he meandered over and hugged Daniel from behind.
Daniel leaned against his partner, grateful for Jack’s warm presence grounding him. “Do you ever wonder what other people think when they look up at the stars?”
“Nope.”
“I never thought much about it until the stargate.”
“Too busy digging in the dirt,” replied Jack, his affectionate tone taking any sting out of the words.
“More or less.” His senior year at UCLA he’d briefly dated an English major named Max who wrote long poems about the night sky. Honestly, Daniel had never understood the magnetic pull that the stars seemed to have on Max and so many other people. Not until he learned what was really up there.
“I wanted to be an astronaut,” said Jack. “Kennedy had just announced the plan to put men on the moon, and I thought it was the coolest idea ever. Clear nights up at the cabin - different cabin then, same spot - I’d lay on the grass and imagine what it would be like to fly to the moon.”
“You got a lot further than the moon.”
“Whole other galaxy,” agreed Jack. “It’s weird, though. A lot of the places we’ve been have been a lot like Earth.”
“Only because the Ancients chose their locations carefully.”
He could feel Jack nodding. “I know. Besides, there were always the things that were so obviously alien. A lot more interesting than the moon, really.”
“That we know of,” added Daniel.
“Hoping to find the ruins of the lost civilization of the Moon People?”
“Without a decent atmosphere? Not likely. I’m just saying that we never know for sure. Everything we thought we knew before was wrong, after all.”
Jack kissed his neck gently. “Not you.”
“I couldn’t have imagined-”
“Maybe not, but you were a lot closer than anyone else.”
They were quiet for a couple minutes after that. Daniel thought of all the people who had died out there, all the people who had encountered a staff blast before this wonder material (and, unlike him, without a convenient sarcophagus). He thought of Janet, so full of life and so dearly missed; of Sha’re, the woman he’d loved but had barely begun to know, set free in death; of Robert Rothman, a kindred mind lost because they didn’t know what they’d gated into. Daniel had learned a long time ago that life wasn’t fair, had made his peace with that as much as anyone could. That didn’t mean he still didn’t ache over what might have been.
“Mom loved that Doris Day song,” said Jack suddenly. “Que Sera, Sera.”
It wasn’t grammatically correct, but Jack knew that and it wasn’t his point. “Whatever will be, will be,” said Daniel.
“She’d go around the house singing it. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. We didn’t know, Daniel.”
Daniel turned so they were face to face and pulled his partner in for a hug. Jack knew exactly what he was thinking, probably because he was thinking the same thing: “What if?” What if they’d gotten the material earlier? What if they’d gated to the planet that had it? What if someone had thought it up independently?
And Jack, in his own way, was reminding Daniel that they couldn’t change anything. They couldn’t change the past anymore than they could foresee the future.
“Que era, era?” he quipped.
“Yeah,” said Jack with a little smile. “Que era, era.”
Nothing had changed, of course, but Daniel felt a little lighter, and he let Jack lure him back to bed with the promise of a neck massage.
*****
Jack strode into the infirmary as the bearer of good news. “Is Colonel Lukov awake?” he asked Dr. Brightman.
“Yes sir, awake and bored. Go ahead.”
He rounded the corner. “Good morning, Colonel.”
“Good morning, sir,” replied Lukov, sticking a bookmark in his book. It was a Russian book, Jack could tell from the Cyrillic alphabet. Personally, Jack had always done better with languages which used Roman alphabets, so it was probably just as well he had spent so little time in the USSR.
“Brightman still have you on the good drugs?”
“It’s the last day,” said the Russian. “I might not be such pleasant company tomorrow, sir.”
“When a man takes two staff blasts, he’s allowed to be lousy company.” Lukov wouldn’t have made it without that new material which absorbed staff blast energy. Jack tried not to think about how many people could’ve been saved if SGC had the technology earlier - all the ‘what ifs’ in the galaxy couldn’t bring people back. Unfortunately, the material didn’t work nearly so well after the first hit. “Anyway, I come bearing good news.”
Lukov looked intrigued. “That’s been in short supply lately. Other than my continued existence, of course.”
“Of course. Captain Tarasova mentioned that you were leaving for Moscow Thursday.”
“Yes sir. To meet my new nephew.”
“She said you’re very disappointed to postpone your leave.”
Lukov nodded.
“We’ve arranged for a video teleconference at 1100.”
That news got him a very happy Russian colonel. “Thank you, sir. It will - how do you say - tide me over very nicely.”
Despite his inherent distrust of Russians, Jack had to admit that Lukov was a good officer and effective SG team leader. Lukov’s team trusted and respected him. He was a bit more authoritarian than most SG team leaders, but it worked well for his team, and he played nicely with other teams when needed. He respected Jack’s command. All in all, Jack couldn’t come up with anything other than being Russian that he really didn’t like about Lukov, so he made a concerted effort to treat the man like any other SG team leader. (Daniel called this a sign of personal growth.)
Leaving one pleased Russian in the infirmary, he headed out to deal with less pleasant tasks. For reasons he would never understand, he had to approve renovations to the VIP suites. As if he cared what color they were painted or what style the furniture was.
Jack rounded the corner and almost collided with Siler. Well, Siler and Sergeant McLellan, who was supporting Siler as he hobbled along, not putting any weight on his right foot.
Damn. Siler had only gotten his left wrist out of a cast a week and a half ago.
“Sorry, sir.”
Jack shook his head. “What happened this time?”
“There was a grease spill, General,” said McLellan. “Someone missed a spot.”
“It’s just a sprain,” Siler added. He should know; he’d had enough of them.
“Take care,” said Jack, moving along so they could get to the infirmary.
Poor Siler. For a man who never went through the gate, he spent a heck of a lot of time in the infirmary. Suddenly, Jack’s stupid approval forms for the remodeling didn’t seem so bad. At worst he’d get a paper cut, and even those were few and far between.
*****
Daniel was going to eat lunch with Sam and Sue Thibodeau, but thought better of that idea as he neared their table and heard the phrase ‘in-shower body lotion.’ Instead he walked over to where Paul Davis was staring at his penne. “Mind if I join you?”
“Oh, sorry, Dr. Jackson. Have a seat.” Davis looked around, then leaned forward and quietly added, “I just made the mistake of mentioning to Teal’c that I majored in political science.”
Teal’c had long wanted someone with whom he could discuss political theory; it was part of his quest to build a strong Free Jaffa Nation. He probably had a very long list of questions. “If I were you,” suggested Daniel, “I’d free up an entire afternoon. Maybe two.”
“On duty?” asked Davis cautiously.
“Sure. Helping Teal’c work out ideas for the Free Jaffa can fall under diplomacy.”
“If you don’t think General O’Neill would mind…”
“I don’t think he would expect anyone to consider it a leisure activity.” Jack certainly wouldn’t. He’d promised Teal’c an in-depth political discussion the next time they went fishing together. Teal’c was apparently not that desperate.
Davis nodded in agreement and took a bite of his penne.
“Then again, he’s been looking for someone knowledgeable about political science for a while now. You could probably swing a free meal out of it.”
This prospect clearly appealed to Davis, who said, “That could work. I’m a terrible cook.”
Daniel had done his best to help Teal’c, but could only go so far. “I just hope you can explain the Electoral College to his satisfaction. I couldn’t.”
Teal’c was in luck, because Davis seemed undaunted. “I tutored American Government 101 for two and a half years. Teal’c’s smart, and a hell of a lot more motivated than most of the students I worked with.” After another mouthful of penne, he continued, “The man has a full-time job with SG-28 and works on nation-building in his spare time. Talk about devotion. You’ve got to admire that.”
Daniel completely agreed with that. Everyone at SGC kept busy with the responsibilities of their duties and the importance of SGC to Earth. Teal’c took on the burden of the Free Jaffa as well. He couldn’t not take it on, because that was just who he was.
“I agree. It’s even more complicated because the Jaffa don’t have any traditions to build on. American history is far too recent to fall within my expertise, but our Founding Fathers already had the ideological groundwork. Some of the practical foundations they needed, too.”
“No Jaffa equivalent of John Locke,” agreed Davis. “I think that’s part of the problem for Teal’c, actually. Has anyone suggested that he read some of the Enlightenment texts?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Most people don’t realize how critical the Enlightenment was to the development of the modern era.”
“How so?”
“I’m sure you’re aware that much of how we think is a cultural construct.”
“Of course,” said Daniel with a nod. Applied to communication, that was one of the basic concepts underlying everything he studied.
“The intellectual tradition we inherited from the Enlightenment colors everything, especially how we think. Now, different Western cultures spin it differently. In America we’re much more concerned with individual liberty than, say, the Germans. But the principle remains.”
“I’ve never really given as much thought to the modern era, but it makes sense.” It made tremendous sense, actually.
“I’m sure that Teal’c will find a lot of what he reads unsuited to the Free Jaffa,” continued Davis. “I don’t know enough about them to really know what would suit them.”
“Still, you’re just the person Teal’c has been looking for.”
“I hope I can live up to that.”
“You’ll do just fine,” promised Daniel.
“As long as he doesn’t expect me to make sense of tax codes. Nobody could explain those.”
“I don’t think he’s interested in tax codes.”
“That’s a relief,” said Davis.
Daniel thought it was just as well that Teal’c had already done a study of American taxes, if only because he wanted to know what everyone was complaining about.
*****
When Jack left for Washington on a trip which, regrettably, could not be assigned to Colonel Davis (not for lack of trying), Daniel had planned to work on his book, the one about Egypt under the Goa’uld. Not sixty hours later when Jack returned, Daniel was writing a book, alright, but not the same book.
“It’s about Asgard activities on Earth,” explained Daniel over dinner, which was Chinese takeout Jack had picked up on the way home from the airport.
“So, Thor’s mission reports were just begging to be written about, huh?”
“Well, yes.”
Jack shook his head fondly and grabbed an egg roll. “You are such an overachiever. Why don’t you just start one about the Ancients and make it a trilogy?”
“I would, but we don’t really have enough material for a whole book on the Ancients.” This was clearly something Daniel found highly regrettable. Jack too, but more on the chance that knowing more about the Ancients would lead to better, Goa’uld-defeating weapons.
Jack consoled his lover by suggesting, “Just think, your books will probably introduce a whole new generation to archaeology.”
This, naturally, made Daniel very happy. “It’s going to take years to properly go through all our material. Decades, even.”
Not particularly eager to delve into the details - it had been a tiring trip, as visits to Washington usually were - Jack changed the subject. “Did I miss anything else?”
“I learned that Zelda likes licking out peanut butter jars once we’ve emptied them.”
He hadn’t mentioned that when they’d talked on the phone last night. “Just what she needed,” said Jack, “another way to be spoiled.”
“Sam was pleased with her lessons yesterday.”
Jack had forgotten about those. She was going to Peterson to train people to train people on using the new zat guns. The Air Force was beside itself with the scientific and PR coup, but Jack didn’t expect the zats to be all that widespread. He had refrained from reminding Daniel or Sam, but it didn’t make much sense to stun terrorists and let them wake up to fight again. Certainly, the zat guns would have their uses. It was reasonable to assume that in some situations, like city streets, they could reduce civilian causalities. But if the enemy couldn’t be secured… well, even when SGC had access to zats, they usually favored standard issue projectile weapons. Jack didn’t expect that to change any time soon, at SGC or in Afghanistan.
Still, the first field units would be receiving zats for trial use soon. “Glad it went well,” he said.
“And someone asked Teal’c on a date.”
Jack almost dropped his teriyaki. “Do tell.”
Daniel grinned and leaned in. “He decided his car needed a remote starter so he can warm it up when it’s colder, and since I got one installed last year he asked for my help.”
That made sense. Neither Daniel nor Teal’c handled cold very well. Jack, who had made the unpleasant discovery that the older he got the worse he found the cold, was thinking about getting a remote starter for his truck. If anyone decided that was cause to question his Minnesota credentials, he could blame it on Daniel.
“We had a couple hours before the mechanic could install it, and I saw a new bookstore right down the road,” continued Daniel. “I left Teal’c in the mystery section and when I found him by the travel narratives he was politely telling a woman that he has given his affections to another.”
That was as much of a commitment to Ishta as Teal’c had ever given. Those two had a very odd relationship. “That’s more interesting than my meetings.”
Daniel was not at all surprised. “I imagine Washington was more of the same?”
“Yep. Thor called this morning, though. He got our message about leaving those Trust bastards stranded.”
“Good.”
“He called while I was meeting with Generals Yarrow and Ives, Admiral Flaherty, and the Secretary of Defense,” added Jack, who’d quite enjoyed interrupting that meeting with his casual, ‘Excuse me, it’s Supreme Commander Thor.’
“And you just loved that, didn’t you?” asked Daniel knowingly.
“What’s not to love?”
Daniel just shook his head and stabbed a piece of his moo shu pork, but then Jack felt his lover reach out and start a game of footsies. Ah, it was good to be home.
*****
Daniel was hungry and really would’ve liked to have eaten an actual meal for lunch. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that his level was one of the designated levels to be sealed off for most of the afternoon. SG-3 was testing potential new Marine recruits, and their plan involved sealing off several levels supposedly contaminated with radiation. It was just Daniel’s luck that he’d forgotten about this exercise and thus neglected to get a sandwich from the mess hall.
At least he had some food in his office. Plenty of coffee, of course, but didn’t help much with his hunger. A bit of scrounging turned up a Snickers bar, a bag of Skittles, some pretzels, a handful of mixed nuts, and a box with three raspberry NutriGrain bars. The NutriGrain bars had to have been Sam’s at one point, because she liked them and raspberries were her favorite fruit, while Daniel had never been a NutriGrain fan. He was hungry enough to rip into one anyway.
Besides, it could’ve been worse. SG-3 had come up with a scenario that didn’t involve him getting zatted. That was always a plus. For some reason he and Sam tended to end up on the wrong end of a zat during these sessions. Jack had finally told the teams to start getting more creative, because Daniel and Sam had better things to do. It was hard to work on translations when he was waiting for the post-zatting headache to subside.
Creativity was working well, too. A couple of months before SG-2 had managed to convince their recruits that they’d ended up in a parallel universe. Everyone had thoroughly enjoyed themselves that day. Particularly Siler, who got to be a Colonel for a day.
Daniel tried to get back to work, but the NutriGrain bar and the nuts only satisfied his stomach for forty minutes. Unfortunately, he was working on a routine briefing for SG-8, which was not the kind of thing he tended to lose himself in to the point of forgetting hunger. His stomach growled in protest.
Just as he reached for the Snickers bar and tried to get back to his summary of ancient Macedonian culture, his phone rang. This briefing was going to take all day.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Daniel,” said Jack warmly. “Did you check your cabinet?”
“Um, no.” He wasn’t in the habit of examining his office cabinets. “Why?”
“Just check it.”
It would be a lot faster to check the cabinet than try to persuade Jack to explain himself. To Daniel’s surprise, his pencils and erasers had been moved aside in order to make room for a sandwich, sitting on an ice pack. He took the plate back over to his desk, peeling back the plastic wrap. Turkey and cheese, and even a pickle on the side.
“Find it?” asked Jack.
“Thanks, Jack.”
“No problem. You were too busy thinking about that monument this morning.”
The monument in question had one of those vexing languages Daniel simply couldn’t translate. He didn’t have anything else to work with other than a few lines of on the base of the monument, and the symbols were unlike anything he’d ever seen. Either the inhabitants had been completely alien, or (more likely) they’d lacked a written language until after they were taken from Earth. Either way, the mystery haunted him. By the time he’d forced his attention to the briefing, it was too late to get lunch.
But Jack, his wonderful Jack, had known and planned for this. “I’m starving. Looks delicious. Thank you.”
“Sure. See you topside at 1730?”
“Yes.”
“Bye.”
It was the best turkey sandwich Daniel could remember eating.
*****
Jack was exhausted, but somehow managed the energy to smile as he looked at Daniel’s sated, post-orgasmic bliss face. He loved that expression, and the goofy way his lover looked up at him.
Daniel muttered something, but Jack couldn’t make it out. “What?”
“Think that’s a new record.”
“Record for?”
“Time.”
“You’ve been timing?” Jack was more than a little concerned about his technique if Daniel felt the need to entertain himself by timing their lovemaking. Maybe it was time for another visit to that website Daniel kept bookmarked as “Cross-Cultural Ethno-Linguistic Models: A Comparative Approach.”
Jack thought they had a great sex life. Sure, he’d have preferred to have the recovery time he had twenty years ago, but they mixed things up sometimes, experimented with new tricks, in addition to their reliably good favorites. It had taken Jack a bit to get into the idea of bottoming, but Daniel hadn’t minded and anyway they’d been switching for a long time now. (And, of course, much fun could be had without penetration at all.) Neither of them was into anything extreme, and Jack had long figured they were on the same page. Now, though, he felt a cold fear creeping into his perspective.
“No,” said Daniel, closing his eyes. “Shadow’s moved a lot.”
This was true. It had to be close to noon by now. Saturday mornings were perfect for slow, lazy sex. “Oh,” Jack said, relieved that he could stop worrying.
Daniel forced his eyes open. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Just… had me worried for a second there, cariad. Thought we might be in a rut if you’re spicing things up by timing us.”
“No rut,” promised Daniel. “We outdid ourselves.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jack with a little grin. Sometimes, when they had nothing pressing to do, they liked to make sex last as long as possible, dragging it out, slow and sensuous. This had been one of those times.
“Don’t worry, Jack.” This was followed by a yawn. “Very satisfying sex life.”
“Glad we agree.” Was he ever!
Daniel scooted over and tucked himself against Jack’s body. Jack pulled his lover in a little closer. He loved times like this, when they could just laze around. Maybe they’d nap, maybe not. The point was that they had nothing to do and nowhere to be. It was just the two of them, together.
In less than a minute Daniel was asleep, and Jack wasn’t far behind.
Continued in Part III: http://ent-alter-ego.livejournal.com/23633.html
Sam needed a little space, so she went out on her motorcycle. It was a great evening for a ride, and she’d always found riding her bike allowed her to calm down. This living together business wasn’t as easy as - well, as easy as Jack and Daniel made it look. (Of course, they didn’t have to worry about someone putting bras in the dryer. Eddie took care not to own clothing he couldn’t put in the dryer, and it had come as quite a shock to him when Sam scolded him for shortening the life of her bras via the dryer.) After a while, she ended up at their house without really thinking about her destination.
As soon as she cut the engine she could hear a commotion in the backyard, so she put her helmet down and went around the back. There she found her friends attempting to bathe a very muddy dog. Both of them were shirtless, barefoot, and soaking wet. Sam knew many women at SGC -and Trevor Voss from Daniel’s department - would pay good money to see this.
At least she and Eddie were both cat people, so they didn’t have pets to disagree about. Roxanne was a good cat, and she’d adapted well to her new home. Sam liked having her around. That was a good thing, because Roxanne was inevitably around. This cat had no interest in going outside, possibly because Eddie had rescued her when she was half-starved on the side of the road. She liked to stay where she was warm and well-fed.
Daniel got a dirty tail slapped against his face. He yelped out something that was no doubt a curse - Sam guessed it was Arabic, but couldn’t be sure.
“Don’t suppose you’re here to help?” called out Jack as she headed to the back porch.
“No.”
Jack finally managed to get a solid hold on Zelda so Daniel could turn the hose on her back. “Thanks a lot.”
Rationally, Sam knew that living together was a challenge for any couple. Daniel had even told her as much. Still, she couldn’t help but admire how Jack and Daniel made it look effortless. Sam was thirty-eight - would be thirty-nine before the year was out - and she’d never lived with a boyfriend before. Her track record with men wasn’t great to say the least. She loved Eddie, and she really thought that their relationship would last. They wanted the same things out of life. She was happy with him. Eddie was the only man who’d ever shared her passion for science and made her feel like a princess.
Still, she couldn’t help but being scared she’d screw this relationship up over stupid things like laundry.
Several minutes later, Zelda was clean and Jack and Daniel were the dirty ones. Jack turned the hose on himself, then Daniel. Good thing it was a warm evening.
Daniel’s glasses were on the railing; Sam handed them to him when he wandered towards her. “Thanks,” he said, sitting down along side her. “Zelda played in the mud.”
“I’m surprised there was any mud left when we got her to come out,” added Jack.
Sam gave a little sigh. Jack looked at her for a minute, recognized her I-need-to-talk expression, and promptly announced, “I’m going to clean out the fridge.”
Both Sam and Daniel chuckled as he fled inside, Zelda trotting along behind him. Sam wasn’t the least surprised. She and Jack were friends, yes, both of them members of the SG-1 family. They were comfortable with each other, having settled into being professional at work and friends outside of the mountain. But Jack didn’t do talking. Daniel was much better at it, or at least just listening.
This was another of those times Sam could’ve used Janet’s wise counsel. Daniel, though, was alive and there and patiently waiting for her to explain what was going on.
“You two make living together look easy,” she said at last.
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.”
“Right.” So she was learning.
“We didn’t speak for over an hour Thursday night. You’ll never guess what the fight was about.”
“Baseball game or History Channel special?” she tried.
Daniel shook his head slightly. “There was a program on Discovery we both wanted to watch. We fought over whose fault it was the popcorn burned.”
“There must be something about kitchens.” When he gave her a questioning look, Sam elaborated, “Eddie puts utensils in the dishwasher standing up. Even the knives. He says they’ll get cleaner that way. I told him they won’t be cleaner if I bleed all over them.”
Daniel understood that it wasn’t the time for jokes. “It’s hard to find the balance between letting little things go and letting them fester.”
“Or you think you let them go, but really let them fester,” added Sam, who had firsthand experience with that thanks to the knives incident.
“I think the most important thing is to admit when you overreact. Even if you don’t use words.”
It was odd, on one level, for a linguist to suggest words might not be necessary. Then again, Jack was very much an actions-speak-louder-than-words man, so it all made sense really.
“There’s a lot to like about cohabitating,” she said. “Saturday afternoon I took Cassie out for pedicures. When I got home, Eddie had spelled out the chorus to ‘Beautiful Soul’ in Alpha-Bits. That’s our song.” They didn’t even have Alpha-Bits; Eddie had gone out and bought the cereal just for that. They hadn’t used the table until Tuesday because Sam didn’t want to ruin his gesture. “I’m not sorry he moved in.”
Daniel proved he was on the same page by finishing, “But nothing’s perfect.”
“No.” After a minute of staring out into their backyard, Sam confessed, “I don’t want to screw this up, Daniel. I love him too much.”
He knew better than to offer a simple, palliative promise that she wouldn’t. Instead, he nodded in understanding. “I think it’s better if you don’t take a relationship for granted.”
“As long as I don’t worry it to death,” she muttered.
Daniel couldn’t quite hide his grin. “You’ll figure it out, Sam. It took us time to get where we are.”
She remembered Daniel’s frustration when he first moved in and thought Jack was trying to hide away some of his favorite artifacts. It turned out that Jack wasn’t trying to hide them; he was afraid of breaking Daniel’s treasures and wanted to protect them.
Her problem had always been that her science and Air Force work came before relationship work. Even with a man who shared her priorities, it was a balancing act. Now, just when she felt she was doing well, there was this new dimension of melding their domestic habits. She was much better with physics puzzles.
When she got home, Sam took Daniel’s advice. She kissed Eddie and told him she could get used to looking for upright knives in the dishwasher if he could get used to checking to make sure he didn’t put bras in the dryer. Then, for good measure, she thanked him for not wanting a dog.
*****
Jack figured it was time to roll his coins. His change situation had gotten a little out of control, so he retrieved the jars, popped open a beer, and dug the little sleeves out from the back of a drawer.
He sat down with a full jar and a second that was nearly full. This was going to take a while. He dumped the contents of the first jar onto the table carefully, then started pulling out the quarters.
He was on his second roll of quarters when Daniel came in, headed for the fridge. Daniel never had much change because he’d fully embraced the use of his debit card. Jack didn’t want a debit card. If he was short on cash, he pulled out the MasterCard and wrote a check when the statement came.
Daniel apparently felt like pudding, because he made up a box of instant. Zelda, who was always interested in kitchen noises, came in to investigate. Daniel fell for her sad eyes - again - and gave her a treat. Then he sat at the table to wait while his pudding gelled. If he didn’t, he’d forget all about it.
“Whatcha thinking?” asked Jack, who was always curious when Daniel got that little hint of a smile.
“Something I hadn’t thought of in years.”
“Oh?”
“My second foster home, with the Havershams. Mr. Haversham had a huge bucket of coins. There were four of us, and he told us if we rolled all the coins we could split the money equally.”
“Pretty sweet deal.”
“It was,” agreed Daniel. “The Havershams were good to me.”
Jack tried not to pry, he really did. The thing was, he wanted to understand the forces that had shaped his lover into the incredible man he was. “So there were the Brays and the Havershams,” he said, leaving the option for Daniel to stop the conversation there.
“The Sikarskis, and Mrs. Olson.”
“Sikarskis.” What had Daniel said about them? “Macaw people?”
“You remember that?” asked Daniel, delighted.
Jack shrugged a little and folded the ends of his roll of quarters. “I try to understand,” he explained. “All these things that influenced who you are, you know?”
Daniel nodded. “Peanut. The macaw was named Peanut. I missed him most when they… when I left.”
Ah. Some less-than-pleasant memories there.
“You really want to know, don’t you?” asked Daniel. “I never - I guess I got used to pity when people asked.”
“Not pity, cariad,” promised Jack. Not for Daniel now, although maybe some for the kid he’d been.
“I get that. I felt like I understood you a little more after talking with Aunt Kate.”
Which reminded Jack that he should call his aunt soon. Her stove had damn near blown up, and he wanted to make sure she’d replaced it.
“I told you about the Brays. They were the most important, I think, if you want to understand me after my parents. Mrs. Bray taught me a lot in those three years. She understood that I wasn’t like other kids, that I literally didn’t have a frame of reference for an average life. She helped me navigate that while staying true to myself.”
“Sounds like a good woman.”
“She was,” agreed Daniel. “The Havershams were good, too. I think I’d have stayed with them longer, but they split up just before my fourteenth birthday. The Sikarskis weren’t bad. I didn’t cause trouble, so they let me be.”
Jack translated this as neglect, but knew better than to voice that opinion.
“Until Mr. Sikarski saw me kissing a boy and sent me packing. By the time I got to the Mrs. Olson, it didn’t matter that she was a good foster mother. I was sick of other people controlling my life.”
He understood that Daniel generally didn’t dwell on those eight years in foster care, and didn’t press for more details. “So, I guess a self-reliant genius was a no-brainer for emancipation, huh?”
“Evidently.”
Jack grabbed the pudding from the fridge and served them each a bowl. “Thank you,” he said, kissing Daniel briefly. He was grateful for the gift he’d been given - of trust, of a glimpse into what his boyfriend kept intensely private.
“I got to see your baby pictures,” answered Daniel. Then, changing the subject, he asked, “I wonder how Aunt Kate is doing?”
“I’ll call this afternoon.” He hoped he got spared the minute details of his aunt’s knitting group. He was glad she enjoyed it, and the women made hats, scarves, and mittens for needy kids so it was a good cause. Jack just didn’t especially enjoy hearing which patterns were the hardest.
*****
Between the two of them, Daniel thought he and Jack had dreamed up nearly every possible nightmare. They didn’t talk about them often, but they just knew. Jack had nightmares about Iraq, Ba’al’s torture, Daniel’s deaths, and it wasn’t uncommon for a nightmare about Charlie’s accident around the anniversary of his death. Or so Daniel had surmised from the date and the time Jack cried out his son’s name in his sleep. As for himself, Daniel had nightmares about falling stones, Goa’uld taking his loved ones as hosts, and becoming who he was in Shifu’s vision.
Then there was the old standby, one of the nightmares that haunted most SGC personnel: staff weapons. They’d very nearly lost Colonel Lukov that morning after the Russian took two staff blasts to the chest. Without that material which absorbed the energy, the one that Sam had spent so much time on, Lukov would certainly be dead. Daniel would’ve bet money he wasn’t the only one whose own close encounters had been dredged up by Lukov’s injuries. He was probably, however, the only one who’d technically died more than once from a staff blast.
Jack, the perennial light sleeper, realized Daniel was missing from the bed and found him on the back deck. It was cloudy and only a few patches of stars were visible, but the early September night breeze was refreshing. Jack also knew him well enough to see that Daniel had been deep in thought, about life and death and staff weapons.
“Hey,” said Jack. “Don’t you know it’s too late for deep thoughts?”
“Technically, it’s early.”
“Any time nobody can agree on what to call should be spent in bed,” retorted Jack, but he meandered over and hugged Daniel from behind.
Daniel leaned against his partner, grateful for Jack’s warm presence grounding him. “Do you ever wonder what other people think when they look up at the stars?”
“Nope.”
“I never thought much about it until the stargate.”
“Too busy digging in the dirt,” replied Jack, his affectionate tone taking any sting out of the words.
“More or less.” His senior year at UCLA he’d briefly dated an English major named Max who wrote long poems about the night sky. Honestly, Daniel had never understood the magnetic pull that the stars seemed to have on Max and so many other people. Not until he learned what was really up there.
“I wanted to be an astronaut,” said Jack. “Kennedy had just announced the plan to put men on the moon, and I thought it was the coolest idea ever. Clear nights up at the cabin - different cabin then, same spot - I’d lay on the grass and imagine what it would be like to fly to the moon.”
“You got a lot further than the moon.”
“Whole other galaxy,” agreed Jack. “It’s weird, though. A lot of the places we’ve been have been a lot like Earth.”
“Only because the Ancients chose their locations carefully.”
He could feel Jack nodding. “I know. Besides, there were always the things that were so obviously alien. A lot more interesting than the moon, really.”
“That we know of,” added Daniel.
“Hoping to find the ruins of the lost civilization of the Moon People?”
“Without a decent atmosphere? Not likely. I’m just saying that we never know for sure. Everything we thought we knew before was wrong, after all.”
Jack kissed his neck gently. “Not you.”
“I couldn’t have imagined-”
“Maybe not, but you were a lot closer than anyone else.”
They were quiet for a couple minutes after that. Daniel thought of all the people who had died out there, all the people who had encountered a staff blast before this wonder material (and, unlike him, without a convenient sarcophagus). He thought of Janet, so full of life and so dearly missed; of Sha’re, the woman he’d loved but had barely begun to know, set free in death; of Robert Rothman, a kindred mind lost because they didn’t know what they’d gated into. Daniel had learned a long time ago that life wasn’t fair, had made his peace with that as much as anyone could. That didn’t mean he still didn’t ache over what might have been.
“Mom loved that Doris Day song,” said Jack suddenly. “Que Sera, Sera.”
It wasn’t grammatically correct, but Jack knew that and it wasn’t his point. “Whatever will be, will be,” said Daniel.
“She’d go around the house singing it. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. We didn’t know, Daniel.”
Daniel turned so they were face to face and pulled his partner in for a hug. Jack knew exactly what he was thinking, probably because he was thinking the same thing: “What if?” What if they’d gotten the material earlier? What if they’d gated to the planet that had it? What if someone had thought it up independently?
And Jack, in his own way, was reminding Daniel that they couldn’t change anything. They couldn’t change the past anymore than they could foresee the future.
“Que era, era?” he quipped.
“Yeah,” said Jack with a little smile. “Que era, era.”
Nothing had changed, of course, but Daniel felt a little lighter, and he let Jack lure him back to bed with the promise of a neck massage.
*****
Jack strode into the infirmary as the bearer of good news. “Is Colonel Lukov awake?” he asked Dr. Brightman.
“Yes sir, awake and bored. Go ahead.”
He rounded the corner. “Good morning, Colonel.”
“Good morning, sir,” replied Lukov, sticking a bookmark in his book. It was a Russian book, Jack could tell from the Cyrillic alphabet. Personally, Jack had always done better with languages which used Roman alphabets, so it was probably just as well he had spent so little time in the USSR.
“Brightman still have you on the good drugs?”
“It’s the last day,” said the Russian. “I might not be such pleasant company tomorrow, sir.”
“When a man takes two staff blasts, he’s allowed to be lousy company.” Lukov wouldn’t have made it without that new material which absorbed staff blast energy. Jack tried not to think about how many people could’ve been saved if SGC had the technology earlier - all the ‘what ifs’ in the galaxy couldn’t bring people back. Unfortunately, the material didn’t work nearly so well after the first hit. “Anyway, I come bearing good news.”
Lukov looked intrigued. “That’s been in short supply lately. Other than my continued existence, of course.”
“Of course. Captain Tarasova mentioned that you were leaving for Moscow Thursday.”
“Yes sir. To meet my new nephew.”
“She said you’re very disappointed to postpone your leave.”
Lukov nodded.
“We’ve arranged for a video teleconference at 1100.”
That news got him a very happy Russian colonel. “Thank you, sir. It will - how do you say - tide me over very nicely.”
Despite his inherent distrust of Russians, Jack had to admit that Lukov was a good officer and effective SG team leader. Lukov’s team trusted and respected him. He was a bit more authoritarian than most SG team leaders, but it worked well for his team, and he played nicely with other teams when needed. He respected Jack’s command. All in all, Jack couldn’t come up with anything other than being Russian that he really didn’t like about Lukov, so he made a concerted effort to treat the man like any other SG team leader. (Daniel called this a sign of personal growth.)
Leaving one pleased Russian in the infirmary, he headed out to deal with less pleasant tasks. For reasons he would never understand, he had to approve renovations to the VIP suites. As if he cared what color they were painted or what style the furniture was.
Jack rounded the corner and almost collided with Siler. Well, Siler and Sergeant McLellan, who was supporting Siler as he hobbled along, not putting any weight on his right foot.
Damn. Siler had only gotten his left wrist out of a cast a week and a half ago.
“Sorry, sir.”
Jack shook his head. “What happened this time?”
“There was a grease spill, General,” said McLellan. “Someone missed a spot.”
“It’s just a sprain,” Siler added. He should know; he’d had enough of them.
“Take care,” said Jack, moving along so they could get to the infirmary.
Poor Siler. For a man who never went through the gate, he spent a heck of a lot of time in the infirmary. Suddenly, Jack’s stupid approval forms for the remodeling didn’t seem so bad. At worst he’d get a paper cut, and even those were few and far between.
*****
Daniel was going to eat lunch with Sam and Sue Thibodeau, but thought better of that idea as he neared their table and heard the phrase ‘in-shower body lotion.’ Instead he walked over to where Paul Davis was staring at his penne. “Mind if I join you?”
“Oh, sorry, Dr. Jackson. Have a seat.” Davis looked around, then leaned forward and quietly added, “I just made the mistake of mentioning to Teal’c that I majored in political science.”
Teal’c had long wanted someone with whom he could discuss political theory; it was part of his quest to build a strong Free Jaffa Nation. He probably had a very long list of questions. “If I were you,” suggested Daniel, “I’d free up an entire afternoon. Maybe two.”
“On duty?” asked Davis cautiously.
“Sure. Helping Teal’c work out ideas for the Free Jaffa can fall under diplomacy.”
“If you don’t think General O’Neill would mind…”
“I don’t think he would expect anyone to consider it a leisure activity.” Jack certainly wouldn’t. He’d promised Teal’c an in-depth political discussion the next time they went fishing together. Teal’c was apparently not that desperate.
Davis nodded in agreement and took a bite of his penne.
“Then again, he’s been looking for someone knowledgeable about political science for a while now. You could probably swing a free meal out of it.”
This prospect clearly appealed to Davis, who said, “That could work. I’m a terrible cook.”
Daniel had done his best to help Teal’c, but could only go so far. “I just hope you can explain the Electoral College to his satisfaction. I couldn’t.”
Teal’c was in luck, because Davis seemed undaunted. “I tutored American Government 101 for two and a half years. Teal’c’s smart, and a hell of a lot more motivated than most of the students I worked with.” After another mouthful of penne, he continued, “The man has a full-time job with SG-28 and works on nation-building in his spare time. Talk about devotion. You’ve got to admire that.”
Daniel completely agreed with that. Everyone at SGC kept busy with the responsibilities of their duties and the importance of SGC to Earth. Teal’c took on the burden of the Free Jaffa as well. He couldn’t not take it on, because that was just who he was.
“I agree. It’s even more complicated because the Jaffa don’t have any traditions to build on. American history is far too recent to fall within my expertise, but our Founding Fathers already had the ideological groundwork. Some of the practical foundations they needed, too.”
“No Jaffa equivalent of John Locke,” agreed Davis. “I think that’s part of the problem for Teal’c, actually. Has anyone suggested that he read some of the Enlightenment texts?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Most people don’t realize how critical the Enlightenment was to the development of the modern era.”
“How so?”
“I’m sure you’re aware that much of how we think is a cultural construct.”
“Of course,” said Daniel with a nod. Applied to communication, that was one of the basic concepts underlying everything he studied.
“The intellectual tradition we inherited from the Enlightenment colors everything, especially how we think. Now, different Western cultures spin it differently. In America we’re much more concerned with individual liberty than, say, the Germans. But the principle remains.”
“I’ve never really given as much thought to the modern era, but it makes sense.” It made tremendous sense, actually.
“I’m sure that Teal’c will find a lot of what he reads unsuited to the Free Jaffa,” continued Davis. “I don’t know enough about them to really know what would suit them.”
“Still, you’re just the person Teal’c has been looking for.”
“I hope I can live up to that.”
“You’ll do just fine,” promised Daniel.
“As long as he doesn’t expect me to make sense of tax codes. Nobody could explain those.”
“I don’t think he’s interested in tax codes.”
“That’s a relief,” said Davis.
Daniel thought it was just as well that Teal’c had already done a study of American taxes, if only because he wanted to know what everyone was complaining about.
*****
When Jack left for Washington on a trip which, regrettably, could not be assigned to Colonel Davis (not for lack of trying), Daniel had planned to work on his book, the one about Egypt under the Goa’uld. Not sixty hours later when Jack returned, Daniel was writing a book, alright, but not the same book.
“It’s about Asgard activities on Earth,” explained Daniel over dinner, which was Chinese takeout Jack had picked up on the way home from the airport.
“So, Thor’s mission reports were just begging to be written about, huh?”
“Well, yes.”
Jack shook his head fondly and grabbed an egg roll. “You are such an overachiever. Why don’t you just start one about the Ancients and make it a trilogy?”
“I would, but we don’t really have enough material for a whole book on the Ancients.” This was clearly something Daniel found highly regrettable. Jack too, but more on the chance that knowing more about the Ancients would lead to better, Goa’uld-defeating weapons.
Jack consoled his lover by suggesting, “Just think, your books will probably introduce a whole new generation to archaeology.”
This, naturally, made Daniel very happy. “It’s going to take years to properly go through all our material. Decades, even.”
Not particularly eager to delve into the details - it had been a tiring trip, as visits to Washington usually were - Jack changed the subject. “Did I miss anything else?”
“I learned that Zelda likes licking out peanut butter jars once we’ve emptied them.”
He hadn’t mentioned that when they’d talked on the phone last night. “Just what she needed,” said Jack, “another way to be spoiled.”
“Sam was pleased with her lessons yesterday.”
Jack had forgotten about those. She was going to Peterson to train people to train people on using the new zat guns. The Air Force was beside itself with the scientific and PR coup, but Jack didn’t expect the zats to be all that widespread. He had refrained from reminding Daniel or Sam, but it didn’t make much sense to stun terrorists and let them wake up to fight again. Certainly, the zat guns would have their uses. It was reasonable to assume that in some situations, like city streets, they could reduce civilian causalities. But if the enemy couldn’t be secured… well, even when SGC had access to zats, they usually favored standard issue projectile weapons. Jack didn’t expect that to change any time soon, at SGC or in Afghanistan.
Still, the first field units would be receiving zats for trial use soon. “Glad it went well,” he said.
“And someone asked Teal’c on a date.”
Jack almost dropped his teriyaki. “Do tell.”
Daniel grinned and leaned in. “He decided his car needed a remote starter so he can warm it up when it’s colder, and since I got one installed last year he asked for my help.”
That made sense. Neither Daniel nor Teal’c handled cold very well. Jack, who had made the unpleasant discovery that the older he got the worse he found the cold, was thinking about getting a remote starter for his truck. If anyone decided that was cause to question his Minnesota credentials, he could blame it on Daniel.
“We had a couple hours before the mechanic could install it, and I saw a new bookstore right down the road,” continued Daniel. “I left Teal’c in the mystery section and when I found him by the travel narratives he was politely telling a woman that he has given his affections to another.”
That was as much of a commitment to Ishta as Teal’c had ever given. Those two had a very odd relationship. “That’s more interesting than my meetings.”
Daniel was not at all surprised. “I imagine Washington was more of the same?”
“Yep. Thor called this morning, though. He got our message about leaving those Trust bastards stranded.”
“Good.”
“He called while I was meeting with Generals Yarrow and Ives, Admiral Flaherty, and the Secretary of Defense,” added Jack, who’d quite enjoyed interrupting that meeting with his casual, ‘Excuse me, it’s Supreme Commander Thor.’
“And you just loved that, didn’t you?” asked Daniel knowingly.
“What’s not to love?”
Daniel just shook his head and stabbed a piece of his moo shu pork, but then Jack felt his lover reach out and start a game of footsies. Ah, it was good to be home.
*****
Daniel was hungry and really would’ve liked to have eaten an actual meal for lunch. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that his level was one of the designated levels to be sealed off for most of the afternoon. SG-3 was testing potential new Marine recruits, and their plan involved sealing off several levels supposedly contaminated with radiation. It was just Daniel’s luck that he’d forgotten about this exercise and thus neglected to get a sandwich from the mess hall.
At least he had some food in his office. Plenty of coffee, of course, but didn’t help much with his hunger. A bit of scrounging turned up a Snickers bar, a bag of Skittles, some pretzels, a handful of mixed nuts, and a box with three raspberry NutriGrain bars. The NutriGrain bars had to have been Sam’s at one point, because she liked them and raspberries were her favorite fruit, while Daniel had never been a NutriGrain fan. He was hungry enough to rip into one anyway.
Besides, it could’ve been worse. SG-3 had come up with a scenario that didn’t involve him getting zatted. That was always a plus. For some reason he and Sam tended to end up on the wrong end of a zat during these sessions. Jack had finally told the teams to start getting more creative, because Daniel and Sam had better things to do. It was hard to work on translations when he was waiting for the post-zatting headache to subside.
Creativity was working well, too. A couple of months before SG-2 had managed to convince their recruits that they’d ended up in a parallel universe. Everyone had thoroughly enjoyed themselves that day. Particularly Siler, who got to be a Colonel for a day.
Daniel tried to get back to work, but the NutriGrain bar and the nuts only satisfied his stomach for forty minutes. Unfortunately, he was working on a routine briefing for SG-8, which was not the kind of thing he tended to lose himself in to the point of forgetting hunger. His stomach growled in protest.
Just as he reached for the Snickers bar and tried to get back to his summary of ancient Macedonian culture, his phone rang. This briefing was going to take all day.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Daniel,” said Jack warmly. “Did you check your cabinet?”
“Um, no.” He wasn’t in the habit of examining his office cabinets. “Why?”
“Just check it.”
It would be a lot faster to check the cabinet than try to persuade Jack to explain himself. To Daniel’s surprise, his pencils and erasers had been moved aside in order to make room for a sandwich, sitting on an ice pack. He took the plate back over to his desk, peeling back the plastic wrap. Turkey and cheese, and even a pickle on the side.
“Find it?” asked Jack.
“Thanks, Jack.”
“No problem. You were too busy thinking about that monument this morning.”
The monument in question had one of those vexing languages Daniel simply couldn’t translate. He didn’t have anything else to work with other than a few lines of on the base of the monument, and the symbols were unlike anything he’d ever seen. Either the inhabitants had been completely alien, or (more likely) they’d lacked a written language until after they were taken from Earth. Either way, the mystery haunted him. By the time he’d forced his attention to the briefing, it was too late to get lunch.
But Jack, his wonderful Jack, had known and planned for this. “I’m starving. Looks delicious. Thank you.”
“Sure. See you topside at 1730?”
“Yes.”
“Bye.”
It was the best turkey sandwich Daniel could remember eating.
*****
Jack was exhausted, but somehow managed the energy to smile as he looked at Daniel’s sated, post-orgasmic bliss face. He loved that expression, and the goofy way his lover looked up at him.
Daniel muttered something, but Jack couldn’t make it out. “What?”
“Think that’s a new record.”
“Record for?”
“Time.”
“You’ve been timing?” Jack was more than a little concerned about his technique if Daniel felt the need to entertain himself by timing their lovemaking. Maybe it was time for another visit to that website Daniel kept bookmarked as “Cross-Cultural Ethno-Linguistic Models: A Comparative Approach.”
Jack thought they had a great sex life. Sure, he’d have preferred to have the recovery time he had twenty years ago, but they mixed things up sometimes, experimented with new tricks, in addition to their reliably good favorites. It had taken Jack a bit to get into the idea of bottoming, but Daniel hadn’t minded and anyway they’d been switching for a long time now. (And, of course, much fun could be had without penetration at all.) Neither of them was into anything extreme, and Jack had long figured they were on the same page. Now, though, he felt a cold fear creeping into his perspective.
“No,” said Daniel, closing his eyes. “Shadow’s moved a lot.”
This was true. It had to be close to noon by now. Saturday mornings were perfect for slow, lazy sex. “Oh,” Jack said, relieved that he could stop worrying.
Daniel forced his eyes open. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Just… had me worried for a second there, cariad. Thought we might be in a rut if you’re spicing things up by timing us.”
“No rut,” promised Daniel. “We outdid ourselves.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jack with a little grin. Sometimes, when they had nothing pressing to do, they liked to make sex last as long as possible, dragging it out, slow and sensuous. This had been one of those times.
“Don’t worry, Jack.” This was followed by a yawn. “Very satisfying sex life.”
“Glad we agree.” Was he ever!
Daniel scooted over and tucked himself against Jack’s body. Jack pulled his lover in a little closer. He loved times like this, when they could just laze around. Maybe they’d nap, maybe not. The point was that they had nothing to do and nowhere to be. It was just the two of them, together.
In less than a minute Daniel was asleep, and Jack wasn’t far behind.
Continued in Part III: http://ent-alter-ego.livejournal.com/23633.html