fic: The Geocentric Days are Gone
Title: The Geocentric Days Are Gone
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam/Daniel (vaguely implied Sam/Jack)
Notes: Have I mentioned how awesome thraesja is for not only putting up with my random emails, but also doing such an awesome job of beta reading?
Sometimes she hates that this is what her life has become. She’s on the wrong side of sixty-five, desk bound and swimming in paperwork. Her hands shake too much to be of any real use in the lab and sometimes she thinks the only reason they even keep her around is because she has so many off-world contacts.
She’s pretty sure she’s going to punch the next person to refer to her “wealth of experience.” She feels like standing up and shouting that she’s more than that. She’s a goddamn three star general in the goddamn United States Air Force. She’s earned her rank with sweat and tears and blood and now she’s treated like some fragile object in a museum, tucked away except for a few hours a day.
She remembers listening to Jack complain about the same thing when he was in her position, except she knows that for him it was different. As forward thinking as she’d like to think her government is, he was still a man and she is still a woman and there’s still a different set of rules for her. She’s got his job, his office, even his desk - she runs a hand across the heavy, polished surface with distinct fondness - but she’s not him.
She presses a finger to her headset and speaks a number aloud, the voice recognition program doing all of the work for her. She listens to the faint mechanical whir that she’s still so tuned in to until the ringing starts. She counts along with them; one, two, three, four. Voicemail will pick up on the sixth and she’s already started to mentally prepare her message when she hears the little click.
“I’m thinking… PX3-252,” she says, skipping the whole greeting and small talk bit.
“For… what, exactly?”
“Retirement.” She hears Daniel’s laughter and it washes over her like a warm breeze, making her feel better already. “You remember that one, right?”
“Sandy beaches and ocean water as far as the eye can see. Not an over-dressed, bejeweled bad guy in sight.”
“Purple ocean water. Purple!” She can still remember the glee they’d felt upon seeing it, the way Jack had had an endless supply of purple water jokes. The way he’d brushed his hand against hers when they went on ‘patrol’ - a nice long ‘patrol’ down the beach, knowing there was no real danger. Talking, enjoying each other’s company in a way they so rarely ever had.
“Yeah.” She hears a sigh and the rustle of paper. Daniel’s probably busy. She’s jealous of that - the way age hasn’t affected his usefulness. He can still translate with the best of them. His eyesight is fading but new glasses fix that, and she knows he’ll probably be working until the day he can’t pick up a tablet anymore. He even goes off world still, once in a while. Only to worlds that pose no threat, and he’s usually accompanied by at least two SG teams. He’s a valuable commodity and they treat him as such. “What do you say? You ready to blow this popsicle stand yet, or what?”
“Sam,” he says in that patented Daniel-is-humoring-someone voice. “How are you?”
Wow, he can pretty much read right through her.
Once upon a time, she would have put on for him. Sat up straighter, pasted on a smile and said that everything was fine. Hell, if it were anyone else she’d still do that.
But he’s Daniel and he’s the one person in this world that she’s entirely bullshit-free with. “Not so great.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says. In that one syllable, his weariness seems to grow. Her eyes linger on the calendar, mentally ticking off the days (weeks, months) since they’ve seen each other.
“Hey, Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m gonna schedule a routine systems inspection for the mountain for… how does the twelfth sound to you?”
“Routine systems inspection?”
She can practically hear him making air quotes around the words.
“What? I do that. I can do that,” she insists. “I’m a general, remember? I can do that.”
He laughs. “The twelfth sounds great. I’m scheduled off world the twentieth through the… uh, twenty second, I think? Some great ruins we found on-“
“Ah, Daniel!” She stops him before he even gets started. She’s got a lunch meeting in twenty minutes and as nice as it is to just sit back and kick up her feet and let him ramble sometimes, she really can’t risk being late. The president tends to frown on that.
“Right, sorry,” he says. “How about I just tell you all about it when you get here?”
“That sounds good.”
She hangs up the phone a couple of minutes later and starts to make the calls she needs to rearrange her schedule for the following week.
*
Flying takes it out of her more and more these days. Even with the luxury of a private Air Force transport and the spacious seats that accompany such privilege, her knees ache and there’s a stabbing pain in the small of her back that she’s sure wasn’t there yesterday. She makes a note to have it checked out by one of the base doctors.
Daniel is waiting for her when she gets there. She drops her duffel bag on the ground and sinks into the embrace, enjoying the warmth and the way he smells the same every time she sees him.
She presses her face into his neck and doesn’t want to let go.
But she does, for the sake of propriety and so she can get a better look at him. Bit more padding around the stomach, new glasses. She reaches up and runs her fingers through his hair, graying but still thick. His hands stay on her waist but his eyes wander and she’s secure in the fact that what he’s seeing is still decent - a little older, a few more wrinkles and hair a little whiter but a body that’s still fit for her age thanks to daily runs.
The day passes in a blur. The reason for the visit may have been more or less fabricated but they’ve still found plenty of things for her to do. It feels good to see the technology that she spends so much time reading reports about being put into action.
She’s in the control room when SG-12 is set to return. She can feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up when she hears the sound of chevrons locking. She’s transfixed when the even horizon sweeps into view, and the sound of it takes her back. She closes her eyes and just for a few seconds imagines that she’s about to step through it, Jack at her side.
She fights back tears and if anyone notices, they wisely choose not to comment. She makes her way down to Daniel’s lab after that and sits for hours just talking with him. It feels good - better than therapy, and a hell of a lot cheaper. There’s more on her itinerary but she’ll get to it tomorrow. If she puts it off long enough that she needs to stay another day, then… well, she’s okay with that, too.
“How’s Iggy?” Daniel asks. Sam’s smile deepens momentarily. She swore she’d never be the kind of person who substituted pets for children, but the dog is the only real family she’s got left and it’s still better than coming home to nothing.
“He’s at the kennel. Absolutely hated me for it… he’ll probably piss all over everything when I bring him home, and then he’ll forgive me.”
“Did he get over that whole sock eating thing?” he asks. The last time he’d come to stay with her, the dog had chewed the toes out of every pair of socks he’d owned.
“Only men’s socks.” She grins. “So I’m not really sure. We’ll find out next time you’re there. Hey, I’m thinking of taking him out to the cabin for a week or two in the spring… will you come?”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Daniel says, his voice going somewhat absent as something on the computer screen in front of him distracts him. She’ll ask him again later and he’ll probably say yes and mean it. She can’t remember the last time he turned down an invitation.
*
She sleeps at Daniel’s house when she’s in Colorado Springs. She’s got clothes there - off duty clothes, a spare set of dress blues and some BDUs. This is the only time she gets to wear them anymore. They’d be so horribly out of place in her Washington office, a sleek building of steel and glass where there’s a constant underlying soundtrack of heels clicking on tile and headsets chirping.
The Air Force would gladly put her up in a fancy suite if she wanted, but she doesn’t. And Daniel wouldn’t have it any other way, as he tells her every time she mentions intruding in on his personal space.
She changes into pajamas at what she once would have considered a ridiculously early hour. Actually, she still considers it a ridiculously early hour but instead of an annoyance it’s now an indulgence to rest her bones, especially after a day that involves flights and walking up and down the endless halls of the mountain. Her hair goes back into a ponytail and she scrubs the makeup from her skin.
She stretches out on the sofa and puts her feet in Daniel’s lap. He makes a face at her but starts to rub them, taking his cues from the sounds of satisfaction she makes and digging his fingers into the areas that seem to give her the biggest problems, gently caressing the slightly swollen ankles. The television drones on with nightly news but they don’t pay much attention to it.
She dozes off and when she wakes up, his hands have stilled with one on her ankle and one on her calf. He’s just watching her, staring at her with an expression that she’s hard pressed to define.
She gives him a sleepy smile and holds out a hand, silently asking for a bit of assistance sitting up.
He smiles back at her then and pulls her to lean against him. His arm goes around her and he kisses the top of her head. “Thought we might cut out early tomorrow and go by the cemetery.”
She feels something catch in her chest and turns her face into his shoulder. “Daniel, I don’t-“
“Please, Sam. For me.”
She’s always dealt with grief in a different way than he does, and staring at Jack’s headstone leaves her with an uneasy knot in the pit of her stomach. But when Daniel looks down at her she knows she can’t say no. He asks so little of her, and it really shouldn’t be something he has to talk her into.
She nods and he relaxes beside her. She hadn’t even realized how tense he’d been. She laughs, because she wants to avoid the awkward moment that’s hovering in the doorway of the room.
“How long were you working up the nerve to ask me that?”
“Since you told me you were coming,” he says. She looks up at him again and puts a hand on his face, feeling the weathered skin underneath her fingertips.
She leans up and kisses him, her mouth pressing dryly into his. He returns the kiss while his hand travels up the back of her neck into her hair, tugging lightly until she shifts so they’re both facing each other.
If she were twenty - hell, even ten - years younger, they’d probably have ripped each other’s clothes off before they even made it through the door.
But twenty years ago this would never have happened anyway, because - well, it just wouldn’t have. Now it takes a slow build, a gentle coaxing to get them both to the point where this exists.
“Sam.” He smiles at her, kissing the corner of her mouth.
“Daniel.” She grins back. She cups his face with her hands. Such a lovely face - old, tired, paunchy, but beautiful and when she looks at it she sees every bit of the man he is and was.
She can only hope he sees the same in her. When he tugs on her hand, helping her up and leading her to his bedroom - sex on the couch would be a bit optimistic (or maybe just masochistic) - she realizes he’d never let this happen if he didn’t.
the geocentric days are gone and earth is still a sphere
objects in the mirror may be just as they appear
we spin around the sun and call each trip we make a year
thirty more years of this and, people, i am out of here
- Steve Forbert (Thirty More Years)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam/Daniel (vaguely implied Sam/Jack)
Notes: Have I mentioned how awesome thraesja is for not only putting up with my random emails, but also doing such an awesome job of beta reading?
Sometimes she hates that this is what her life has become. She’s on the wrong side of sixty-five, desk bound and swimming in paperwork. Her hands shake too much to be of any real use in the lab and sometimes she thinks the only reason they even keep her around is because she has so many off-world contacts.
She’s pretty sure she’s going to punch the next person to refer to her “wealth of experience.” She feels like standing up and shouting that she’s more than that. She’s a goddamn three star general in the goddamn United States Air Force. She’s earned her rank with sweat and tears and blood and now she’s treated like some fragile object in a museum, tucked away except for a few hours a day.
She remembers listening to Jack complain about the same thing when he was in her position, except she knows that for him it was different. As forward thinking as she’d like to think her government is, he was still a man and she is still a woman and there’s still a different set of rules for her. She’s got his job, his office, even his desk - she runs a hand across the heavy, polished surface with distinct fondness - but she’s not him.
She presses a finger to her headset and speaks a number aloud, the voice recognition program doing all of the work for her. She listens to the faint mechanical whir that she’s still so tuned in to until the ringing starts. She counts along with them; one, two, three, four. Voicemail will pick up on the sixth and she’s already started to mentally prepare her message when she hears the little click.
“I’m thinking… PX3-252,” she says, skipping the whole greeting and small talk bit.
“For… what, exactly?”
“Retirement.” She hears Daniel’s laughter and it washes over her like a warm breeze, making her feel better already. “You remember that one, right?”
“Sandy beaches and ocean water as far as the eye can see. Not an over-dressed, bejeweled bad guy in sight.”
“Purple ocean water. Purple!” She can still remember the glee they’d felt upon seeing it, the way Jack had had an endless supply of purple water jokes. The way he’d brushed his hand against hers when they went on ‘patrol’ - a nice long ‘patrol’ down the beach, knowing there was no real danger. Talking, enjoying each other’s company in a way they so rarely ever had.
“Yeah.” She hears a sigh and the rustle of paper. Daniel’s probably busy. She’s jealous of that - the way age hasn’t affected his usefulness. He can still translate with the best of them. His eyesight is fading but new glasses fix that, and she knows he’ll probably be working until the day he can’t pick up a tablet anymore. He even goes off world still, once in a while. Only to worlds that pose no threat, and he’s usually accompanied by at least two SG teams. He’s a valuable commodity and they treat him as such. “What do you say? You ready to blow this popsicle stand yet, or what?”
“Sam,” he says in that patented Daniel-is-humoring-someone voice. “How are you?”
Wow, he can pretty much read right through her.
Once upon a time, she would have put on for him. Sat up straighter, pasted on a smile and said that everything was fine. Hell, if it were anyone else she’d still do that.
But he’s Daniel and he’s the one person in this world that she’s entirely bullshit-free with. “Not so great.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says. In that one syllable, his weariness seems to grow. Her eyes linger on the calendar, mentally ticking off the days (weeks, months) since they’ve seen each other.
“Hey, Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m gonna schedule a routine systems inspection for the mountain for… how does the twelfth sound to you?”
“Routine systems inspection?”
She can practically hear him making air quotes around the words.
“What? I do that. I can do that,” she insists. “I’m a general, remember? I can do that.”
He laughs. “The twelfth sounds great. I’m scheduled off world the twentieth through the… uh, twenty second, I think? Some great ruins we found on-“
“Ah, Daniel!” She stops him before he even gets started. She’s got a lunch meeting in twenty minutes and as nice as it is to just sit back and kick up her feet and let him ramble sometimes, she really can’t risk being late. The president tends to frown on that.
“Right, sorry,” he says. “How about I just tell you all about it when you get here?”
“That sounds good.”
She hangs up the phone a couple of minutes later and starts to make the calls she needs to rearrange her schedule for the following week.
*
Flying takes it out of her more and more these days. Even with the luxury of a private Air Force transport and the spacious seats that accompany such privilege, her knees ache and there’s a stabbing pain in the small of her back that she’s sure wasn’t there yesterday. She makes a note to have it checked out by one of the base doctors.
Daniel is waiting for her when she gets there. She drops her duffel bag on the ground and sinks into the embrace, enjoying the warmth and the way he smells the same every time she sees him.
She presses her face into his neck and doesn’t want to let go.
But she does, for the sake of propriety and so she can get a better look at him. Bit more padding around the stomach, new glasses. She reaches up and runs her fingers through his hair, graying but still thick. His hands stay on her waist but his eyes wander and she’s secure in the fact that what he’s seeing is still decent - a little older, a few more wrinkles and hair a little whiter but a body that’s still fit for her age thanks to daily runs.
The day passes in a blur. The reason for the visit may have been more or less fabricated but they’ve still found plenty of things for her to do. It feels good to see the technology that she spends so much time reading reports about being put into action.
She’s in the control room when SG-12 is set to return. She can feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up when she hears the sound of chevrons locking. She’s transfixed when the even horizon sweeps into view, and the sound of it takes her back. She closes her eyes and just for a few seconds imagines that she’s about to step through it, Jack at her side.
She fights back tears and if anyone notices, they wisely choose not to comment. She makes her way down to Daniel’s lab after that and sits for hours just talking with him. It feels good - better than therapy, and a hell of a lot cheaper. There’s more on her itinerary but she’ll get to it tomorrow. If she puts it off long enough that she needs to stay another day, then… well, she’s okay with that, too.
“How’s Iggy?” Daniel asks. Sam’s smile deepens momentarily. She swore she’d never be the kind of person who substituted pets for children, but the dog is the only real family she’s got left and it’s still better than coming home to nothing.
“He’s at the kennel. Absolutely hated me for it… he’ll probably piss all over everything when I bring him home, and then he’ll forgive me.”
“Did he get over that whole sock eating thing?” he asks. The last time he’d come to stay with her, the dog had chewed the toes out of every pair of socks he’d owned.
“Only men’s socks.” She grins. “So I’m not really sure. We’ll find out next time you’re there. Hey, I’m thinking of taking him out to the cabin for a week or two in the spring… will you come?”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Daniel says, his voice going somewhat absent as something on the computer screen in front of him distracts him. She’ll ask him again later and he’ll probably say yes and mean it. She can’t remember the last time he turned down an invitation.
*
She sleeps at Daniel’s house when she’s in Colorado Springs. She’s got clothes there - off duty clothes, a spare set of dress blues and some BDUs. This is the only time she gets to wear them anymore. They’d be so horribly out of place in her Washington office, a sleek building of steel and glass where there’s a constant underlying soundtrack of heels clicking on tile and headsets chirping.
The Air Force would gladly put her up in a fancy suite if she wanted, but she doesn’t. And Daniel wouldn’t have it any other way, as he tells her every time she mentions intruding in on his personal space.
She changes into pajamas at what she once would have considered a ridiculously early hour. Actually, she still considers it a ridiculously early hour but instead of an annoyance it’s now an indulgence to rest her bones, especially after a day that involves flights and walking up and down the endless halls of the mountain. Her hair goes back into a ponytail and she scrubs the makeup from her skin.
She stretches out on the sofa and puts her feet in Daniel’s lap. He makes a face at her but starts to rub them, taking his cues from the sounds of satisfaction she makes and digging his fingers into the areas that seem to give her the biggest problems, gently caressing the slightly swollen ankles. The television drones on with nightly news but they don’t pay much attention to it.
She dozes off and when she wakes up, his hands have stilled with one on her ankle and one on her calf. He’s just watching her, staring at her with an expression that she’s hard pressed to define.
She gives him a sleepy smile and holds out a hand, silently asking for a bit of assistance sitting up.
He smiles back at her then and pulls her to lean against him. His arm goes around her and he kisses the top of her head. “Thought we might cut out early tomorrow and go by the cemetery.”
She feels something catch in her chest and turns her face into his shoulder. “Daniel, I don’t-“
“Please, Sam. For me.”
She’s always dealt with grief in a different way than he does, and staring at Jack’s headstone leaves her with an uneasy knot in the pit of her stomach. But when Daniel looks down at her she knows she can’t say no. He asks so little of her, and it really shouldn’t be something he has to talk her into.
She nods and he relaxes beside her. She hadn’t even realized how tense he’d been. She laughs, because she wants to avoid the awkward moment that’s hovering in the doorway of the room.
“How long were you working up the nerve to ask me that?”
“Since you told me you were coming,” he says. She looks up at him again and puts a hand on his face, feeling the weathered skin underneath her fingertips.
She leans up and kisses him, her mouth pressing dryly into his. He returns the kiss while his hand travels up the back of her neck into her hair, tugging lightly until she shifts so they’re both facing each other.
If she were twenty - hell, even ten - years younger, they’d probably have ripped each other’s clothes off before they even made it through the door.
But twenty years ago this would never have happened anyway, because - well, it just wouldn’t have. Now it takes a slow build, a gentle coaxing to get them both to the point where this exists.
“Sam.” He smiles at her, kissing the corner of her mouth.
“Daniel.” She grins back. She cups his face with her hands. Such a lovely face - old, tired, paunchy, but beautiful and when she looks at it she sees every bit of the man he is and was.
She can only hope he sees the same in her. When he tugs on her hand, helping her up and leading her to his bedroom - sex on the couch would be a bit optimistic (or maybe just masochistic) - she realizes he’d never let this happen if he didn’t.
the geocentric days are gone and earth is still a sphere
objects in the mirror may be just as they appear
we spin around the sun and call each trip we make a year
thirty more years of this and, people, i am out of here
- Steve Forbert (Thirty More Years)