fanfic: Puppy Dogs' Tails
::cross-posted to wisdomeagle and samdanshippers::
Puppy Dogs' Tails
Pairings: Jack/Sam, Sam/Daniel
Fandom Stargate SG-1
Rating: R
Season/Ep: Call it post-Homecoming AU. Season 7 in my head is a dark, fucked, twisted place
Spoilers: Forever in a Day, Past and Present, Rite of Passage Meridian, Fallen
Summary: The stuff that Daniel's dreams are made on.
Warnings: See above, "dark" and "fucked up."
Notes: Thanks to wistful_fever for inspiration and to Wistful and Gvambat for reading it over. Any mistakes that remain are mine alone. Permanent link can be found here. Standard disclaimers apply. Feedback (of all kinds) would be adored.
Cassie's dog ran across Sam's scraggly backyard. Sam half-smiled and said she really ought to get that mowed at some point, but they all knew she wasn't going to, because they all knew that Sam didn't really live here anymore. Daniel had leaned his back against the rear of Sam's house, and a loose nail was chafing against his skin. It was uncomfortable, but not so much that he was willing to surrender this position, watching Cassie, forgetting for a minute that she was a teenager, chase a dog across the yard, watching Jack, who (Daniel knew) never forgot he was a divorced Air Force colonel, chase Cassie, watching Sam and Teal'c and Janet watch Cassie and Jack and the dog, whose name he hadn't caught. Sam would know. He almost got up then, to ask her, but she was holding a beer bottle and laughing and Daniel felt that he would be intruding if he joined them.
No, he knew he would be intruding. He could hear them talking, under their breath, could hear the whispers about things he had no part of, things that they'd done while he wasn't there. Not his fault he hadn't been there, he told himself. Their fault. Jack's fault for letting him go, Janet's fault for not being able to cure him. He felt the nail digging into his skin, sharp now. He scrambled to his feet, and Sam's smile faded. He chuckled under his breath. He liked that, yes. If he sat down again, would the smile reappear? Smile on, smile off, like electric lights in ancient people's homes.
"Hey, Sam. Ready to go home?" he said with a wry twist of his mouth, as if he hadn't said this every Cassie weekend since he'd gotten back--gotten back, like he'd been on a long vacation--and as if Sam hadn't said, every time, "No, Daniel. Jack and I will leave in a few minutes. You go ahead." Yes. Jack and Sam would leave last, perhaps still keeping up the pretense that Sam lived here, that she had a life here among her books and unused cooking supplies and flowered bedspreads. So Daniel left alone, jammed his car into gear, driving carelessly, his thoughts elsewhere. His driving skills had decayed while his corpse failed to moulder.
The first weekend, they hadn't invited him, perhaps hoping that he would remember on his own that he was expected. And Sam had opened the door and greeted him with a kiss on the cheek that immediately set the affair in weekend space, where Doc Fraiser was Janet and Colonel O'Neill was Jack and--he thought he remembered-Sam and Daniel were lovers. That was back before he'd remembered the niceties of interpersonal relationships--really, all he remembered was Sha're, and kisses that burned, burned the back of his throat so he couldn't breathe. Sha're and firefights. Every bullet, every staff blast, every pulse of electricity that had wracked through his body, he could remember, but he couldn't remember what had happened between him and Sam, and he hadn't thought to draw her aside privately and ask, because he was seeing Cassie for the first time in over a year and she hugged him exuberantly before she realized that he was a stranger and pulled back, shyly, a little frightened.
He'd left early.
And the weekend after that, he thought he'd once spent the night at Sam's house. There was something familiar here, he thought, as he dawdled at the door of her bedroom and looked at the bed, and he could almost see a phantom couple arching against each other when Jack clamped a firm hand on his shoulder and said, "Come on, Daniel. Everyone's downstairs."
They'd eaten birthday cake and Daniel said, "Remember on your last birthday? You had to come to the SGC, because you were so sick."
"No, Daniel. That was two years ago, and I'm not fifteen anymore. I know what happened. Remember?" Cassie was no longer shy; Janet had assured him (privately) that she wouldn't be so rude if she didn't like him, but Daniel thought she was just rude. Sam smiled with her eyes though.
And that, Daniel remembered. She always smiled with her eyes when she was onto something, when she was leaning over her workstation prodding delicate wires, making them bend and quiver and jump and then a spark would fly, or a light would blow out. And Sam would leap up excitedly and Daniel would jump backwards so she didn't knock him over and she would kiss--
No. That never happened. He parked the car more quickly than he should have, rode an elevator to his floor, let himself into his apartment automatically. Jack had given him a book of old photos, hoping they would help him to remember, and he looked at them now: old pictures of the team that had been taken on Saturdays with Cassie or at birthday parties that they'd thrown for Teal'c or Sam, and one year for him. He'd said thanks but no thanks, sat stiffly in the birthday chair wearing the birthday hat (he hated Jack sometimes) eating birthday cake and made a wish. He wished that Sam would stop blushing and lowering her head whenever Jack called her "Sam" or said "Carter, with me." That was all he'd wanted.
That had been--he calculated--three years ago. They hadn't thought to throw him a party before (or was it that he'd spent his birthdays locked in his bathroom, a picture of Sha're in his hands, his head in his lap, and he'd never known if they tried to celebrate or not?) and hadn't dared to the next year. He laughed. Once you've died, you don't get birthdays anymore.
The pictures showed a story that Daniel had forgotten. He'd wanted to forget it, he thought, had probably been already trying to forget it when he'd drifted out of their world and into his. The story of how Daniel Jackson stopped being a part of SG-1, the story of how Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter fell in love, the story of how every day suddenly became a painful reminder that this family was not going to last forever either. No families ever last forever, Daniel thought, and that was for the best, because too much familiarity leads to...
There had been a word there, somewhere, in one of the old trite sayings. It was right at the tip of his tongue, a yesterday word, a promise word, a word exactly right for him and for Sam.
"What does familiarity breed?"
"Daniel?"
"Yeah, listen, is Sam there--oh, silly question, right, she's probably right on the brink of orgasm, huh, anyhow, ask her what familiarity breeds, will you?"
He heard muffled sounds over the phone that sounded something like, "Can you call Janet? It's Daniel... he's acting sort of funny." But that couldn't have been it; Jack would never say something like that. Daniel couldn't imagine why Jack would even think something like that. He was acting perfectly normally, and the rest of the world was wrong. Very wrong. Alternate reality wrong, Jack-and-Sam wrong, Sam laughing at him wrong.
Was there ever anything between us? He dragged his hands through his hair, found them resting around his torso in a familiar position of comfort. It was good to feel something so familiar, something he could do for himself, not like a hug from Sam that he kept on waiting for but that never came.
Someone was knocking on the door. Well, no one really was. He was slightly insane, he knew, but he knew clearly that this was a memory. He recognized it; he'd replayed it every day, hour upon hour of foul memory as he curled up in bed or in a sleeping bag under the stars, waiting for sleep that never came.
Sam had been at the door. She'd smiled at him, the warm smile that he'd started to rely on for black nights. He could call her at any time, she said, any time, honestly. He thought they were all slightly worried about him after Ke'ra left. He hadn't been worried. One night stand? Alien? Destroyer of worlds, even? Par for the course. Part of his life. No one could really blame him, right, and it showed he'd moved on. Sha're? Who was that? Surely no one who mattered to him, but Sam seemed to think that he might need someone, so she said, "Call me."
He called her. Every night, some weeks. He called her before he could remember too deeply, before he could taste despair, before it flooded through him and devoured him from the inside out.
It was easy to call her. It had never been easy to call anyone, because he'd never needed anyone, but he needed Sam and he called Sam and she comforted him in ways that only she could. He couldn't remember afterwards what words she'd murmured, whether she'd smiled or not, whether he'd cried, whether they'd kissed or embraced or fucked. He just couldn't remember.
But this time, Sam was at the door uninvited, and Daniel realized that it had been awhile since he'd called, and maybe she was checking to see how he was doing. That was perfectly likely. It was a very Sam sort of thing to do, thoughtful, considerate. He let her in, said, "Make yourself at home," and she sat at his kitchen table primly, like she was an intruder in his private estate, not like she'd spent every night here last February, holding his hand.
"I've got something to tell you," she said in the voice that friends use when they have secrets to divulge and promises to break. Daniel thought it was a sign of true love that he didn't have a clue what was coming, even when her hands landed on the table, empty and fidgety, even as she told him in long, broken paragraphs how much he meant to her, and about alternate realities and about Colonel O'Neill and about regulations.
He thought for a minute that it might be a come-on, but he hadn't said, "Of course I love you too." That would have been too naïve, too careless, and Daniel's heart, broken so often, was practically embossed, "Handle with care."
So it really made no sense for Sam to say, "I know you care about me, Daniel, but what I'm trying to say is... I've been with Jack" (she called him Jack now?) "for a few months, now, and we've loved each other for a long time, and..."
"No," he interrupted her. "No," he repeated. "I don't need to hear this, Sam, I really don't, and I want you to please leave right now because I've got a lot to think about. Thank you." He said the words tightly, his throat prickling. Sam left. He sat.
The knocking on the door didn't stop. Would it if he relived the memory enough times? "Make yourself at home." "I've got something to tell you." He played the script again, filling it this time with I should have and what if I'd? and maybe if we tried again.
Sam had her own key, and she let herself in, and she stood behind Daniel, hands resting gently on his shoulders, massaging away all the tension and fear and misremembered nightmares. She loved him. He loved her too, he told her, so much, and they kicked off their shoes and tore off their shirts and he kissed her, gently, and lowered her to the kitchen table and played with her while she whimpered and gasped in response.
Jack didn't have a key, but he could knock the door in, and he did, and he was angry, but not as angry as Daniel was. This wasn't between him and Sam anymore; it was between him and Jack. Jack, who didn't respect him, Jack, who didn't understand how hard Daniel had always tried to be a good soldier for him, Jack, who thought he had proprietary rights to Sam because he'd met her first or because they shared a life of flight and blue uniforms, Jack, whose face was suddenly twisting beneath his fist as he showed Jack. Words never worked with Jack; Jack was typical military, no subtlety of thought, he thought Sam was just another broad, and Daniel would never let anyone else treat her like that, most of all not Jack.
The knocking continued. He didn't think he could move, but he surprised himself by standing up, dragging his feet across the kitchen, slipping the deadbolt off and letting them in, a host of friends, all of them there to celebrate Daniel dying again. But he wasn't dead. Wasn't that funny? They thought he'd gone round the bend completely, but they were wrong, he was still sane and still alive.
The arms around him were unfamiliar and strong, strangely comforting. "Sam?" he choked out. Who else knew how to make the agony dissipate?
"It is I, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c's voice was warmer than it was in the flood of memories. Had he learned compassion, or had Daniel just learned how to listen for it? "You are not well. I have come to assist you back to the SGC. Doctor Fraiser will attend to you."
"I'm fine. Don't worry about me, Teal'c. Just let me go."
"You are fine?" Teal'c looked at him searchingly.
"Fine. Absolutely, totally fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"
Teal'c didn't say anything, but looked at him, concerned, slightly wary. Was he that dangerous, that he threatened Teal'c? He was proud of that for a minute. He let Teal'c hold his arm, let Jack lead them both down eight flights of stairs to the waiting Air Force vehicle.
He had his own bed in the infirmary, his and his alone, where he lay and stared up at the ceiling and heard the ebb and flow of Janet's voice as she told the rest of his team what she thought the problem might be. He heard the worry in Sam's voice and the concern that Jack was keeping out of his, and when he closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep, he could feel a hand on his cheek that felt like Sam's, and, squinting, he could see that her eyes were full of tears.
He liked that, tested the reaction. If his eyelashes fluttered, would she jerk away? If he sat straight up and talked about the things that made her uncomfortable, feelings, feelings, and more feelings, if he pretended that he didn't remember what "inappropriate" meant, then what would she do? What would she say? The day she shied away from him the moment he opened his eyes, Daniel laughed outright.
To make her cry, that was power, but to make her fear him--that was omnipotence.
Puppy Dogs' Tails
Pairings: Jack/Sam, Sam/Daniel
Fandom Stargate SG-1
Rating: R
Season/Ep: Call it post-Homecoming AU. Season 7 in my head is a dark, fucked, twisted place
Spoilers: Forever in a Day, Past and Present, Rite of Passage Meridian, Fallen
Summary: The stuff that Daniel's dreams are made on.
Warnings: See above, "dark" and "fucked up."
Notes: Thanks to wistful_fever for inspiration and to Wistful and Gvambat for reading it over. Any mistakes that remain are mine alone. Permanent link can be found here. Standard disclaimers apply. Feedback (of all kinds) would be adored.
Cassie's dog ran across Sam's scraggly backyard. Sam half-smiled and said she really ought to get that mowed at some point, but they all knew she wasn't going to, because they all knew that Sam didn't really live here anymore. Daniel had leaned his back against the rear of Sam's house, and a loose nail was chafing against his skin. It was uncomfortable, but not so much that he was willing to surrender this position, watching Cassie, forgetting for a minute that she was a teenager, chase a dog across the yard, watching Jack, who (Daniel knew) never forgot he was a divorced Air Force colonel, chase Cassie, watching Sam and Teal'c and Janet watch Cassie and Jack and the dog, whose name he hadn't caught. Sam would know. He almost got up then, to ask her, but she was holding a beer bottle and laughing and Daniel felt that he would be intruding if he joined them.
No, he knew he would be intruding. He could hear them talking, under their breath, could hear the whispers about things he had no part of, things that they'd done while he wasn't there. Not his fault he hadn't been there, he told himself. Their fault. Jack's fault for letting him go, Janet's fault for not being able to cure him. He felt the nail digging into his skin, sharp now. He scrambled to his feet, and Sam's smile faded. He chuckled under his breath. He liked that, yes. If he sat down again, would the smile reappear? Smile on, smile off, like electric lights in ancient people's homes.
"Hey, Sam. Ready to go home?" he said with a wry twist of his mouth, as if he hadn't said this every Cassie weekend since he'd gotten back--gotten back, like he'd been on a long vacation--and as if Sam hadn't said, every time, "No, Daniel. Jack and I will leave in a few minutes. You go ahead." Yes. Jack and Sam would leave last, perhaps still keeping up the pretense that Sam lived here, that she had a life here among her books and unused cooking supplies and flowered bedspreads. So Daniel left alone, jammed his car into gear, driving carelessly, his thoughts elsewhere. His driving skills had decayed while his corpse failed to moulder.
The first weekend, they hadn't invited him, perhaps hoping that he would remember on his own that he was expected. And Sam had opened the door and greeted him with a kiss on the cheek that immediately set the affair in weekend space, where Doc Fraiser was Janet and Colonel O'Neill was Jack and--he thought he remembered-Sam and Daniel were lovers. That was back before he'd remembered the niceties of interpersonal relationships--really, all he remembered was Sha're, and kisses that burned, burned the back of his throat so he couldn't breathe. Sha're and firefights. Every bullet, every staff blast, every pulse of electricity that had wracked through his body, he could remember, but he couldn't remember what had happened between him and Sam, and he hadn't thought to draw her aside privately and ask, because he was seeing Cassie for the first time in over a year and she hugged him exuberantly before she realized that he was a stranger and pulled back, shyly, a little frightened.
He'd left early.
And the weekend after that, he thought he'd once spent the night at Sam's house. There was something familiar here, he thought, as he dawdled at the door of her bedroom and looked at the bed, and he could almost see a phantom couple arching against each other when Jack clamped a firm hand on his shoulder and said, "Come on, Daniel. Everyone's downstairs."
They'd eaten birthday cake and Daniel said, "Remember on your last birthday? You had to come to the SGC, because you were so sick."
"No, Daniel. That was two years ago, and I'm not fifteen anymore. I know what happened. Remember?" Cassie was no longer shy; Janet had assured him (privately) that she wouldn't be so rude if she didn't like him, but Daniel thought she was just rude. Sam smiled with her eyes though.
And that, Daniel remembered. She always smiled with her eyes when she was onto something, when she was leaning over her workstation prodding delicate wires, making them bend and quiver and jump and then a spark would fly, or a light would blow out. And Sam would leap up excitedly and Daniel would jump backwards so she didn't knock him over and she would kiss--
No. That never happened. He parked the car more quickly than he should have, rode an elevator to his floor, let himself into his apartment automatically. Jack had given him a book of old photos, hoping they would help him to remember, and he looked at them now: old pictures of the team that had been taken on Saturdays with Cassie or at birthday parties that they'd thrown for Teal'c or Sam, and one year for him. He'd said thanks but no thanks, sat stiffly in the birthday chair wearing the birthday hat (he hated Jack sometimes) eating birthday cake and made a wish. He wished that Sam would stop blushing and lowering her head whenever Jack called her "Sam" or said "Carter, with me." That was all he'd wanted.
That had been--he calculated--three years ago. They hadn't thought to throw him a party before (or was it that he'd spent his birthdays locked in his bathroom, a picture of Sha're in his hands, his head in his lap, and he'd never known if they tried to celebrate or not?) and hadn't dared to the next year. He laughed. Once you've died, you don't get birthdays anymore.
The pictures showed a story that Daniel had forgotten. He'd wanted to forget it, he thought, had probably been already trying to forget it when he'd drifted out of their world and into his. The story of how Daniel Jackson stopped being a part of SG-1, the story of how Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter fell in love, the story of how every day suddenly became a painful reminder that this family was not going to last forever either. No families ever last forever, Daniel thought, and that was for the best, because too much familiarity leads to...
There had been a word there, somewhere, in one of the old trite sayings. It was right at the tip of his tongue, a yesterday word, a promise word, a word exactly right for him and for Sam.
"What does familiarity breed?"
"Daniel?"
"Yeah, listen, is Sam there--oh, silly question, right, she's probably right on the brink of orgasm, huh, anyhow, ask her what familiarity breeds, will you?"
He heard muffled sounds over the phone that sounded something like, "Can you call Janet? It's Daniel... he's acting sort of funny." But that couldn't have been it; Jack would never say something like that. Daniel couldn't imagine why Jack would even think something like that. He was acting perfectly normally, and the rest of the world was wrong. Very wrong. Alternate reality wrong, Jack-and-Sam wrong, Sam laughing at him wrong.
Was there ever anything between us? He dragged his hands through his hair, found them resting around his torso in a familiar position of comfort. It was good to feel something so familiar, something he could do for himself, not like a hug from Sam that he kept on waiting for but that never came.
Someone was knocking on the door. Well, no one really was. He was slightly insane, he knew, but he knew clearly that this was a memory. He recognized it; he'd replayed it every day, hour upon hour of foul memory as he curled up in bed or in a sleeping bag under the stars, waiting for sleep that never came.
Sam had been at the door. She'd smiled at him, the warm smile that he'd started to rely on for black nights. He could call her at any time, she said, any time, honestly. He thought they were all slightly worried about him after Ke'ra left. He hadn't been worried. One night stand? Alien? Destroyer of worlds, even? Par for the course. Part of his life. No one could really blame him, right, and it showed he'd moved on. Sha're? Who was that? Surely no one who mattered to him, but Sam seemed to think that he might need someone, so she said, "Call me."
He called her. Every night, some weeks. He called her before he could remember too deeply, before he could taste despair, before it flooded through him and devoured him from the inside out.
It was easy to call her. It had never been easy to call anyone, because he'd never needed anyone, but he needed Sam and he called Sam and she comforted him in ways that only she could. He couldn't remember afterwards what words she'd murmured, whether she'd smiled or not, whether he'd cried, whether they'd kissed or embraced or fucked. He just couldn't remember.
But this time, Sam was at the door uninvited, and Daniel realized that it had been awhile since he'd called, and maybe she was checking to see how he was doing. That was perfectly likely. It was a very Sam sort of thing to do, thoughtful, considerate. He let her in, said, "Make yourself at home," and she sat at his kitchen table primly, like she was an intruder in his private estate, not like she'd spent every night here last February, holding his hand.
"I've got something to tell you," she said in the voice that friends use when they have secrets to divulge and promises to break. Daniel thought it was a sign of true love that he didn't have a clue what was coming, even when her hands landed on the table, empty and fidgety, even as she told him in long, broken paragraphs how much he meant to her, and about alternate realities and about Colonel O'Neill and about regulations.
He thought for a minute that it might be a come-on, but he hadn't said, "Of course I love you too." That would have been too naïve, too careless, and Daniel's heart, broken so often, was practically embossed, "Handle with care."
So it really made no sense for Sam to say, "I know you care about me, Daniel, but what I'm trying to say is... I've been with Jack" (she called him Jack now?) "for a few months, now, and we've loved each other for a long time, and..."
"No," he interrupted her. "No," he repeated. "I don't need to hear this, Sam, I really don't, and I want you to please leave right now because I've got a lot to think about. Thank you." He said the words tightly, his throat prickling. Sam left. He sat.
The knocking on the door didn't stop. Would it if he relived the memory enough times? "Make yourself at home." "I've got something to tell you." He played the script again, filling it this time with I should have and what if I'd? and maybe if we tried again.
Sam had her own key, and she let herself in, and she stood behind Daniel, hands resting gently on his shoulders, massaging away all the tension and fear and misremembered nightmares. She loved him. He loved her too, he told her, so much, and they kicked off their shoes and tore off their shirts and he kissed her, gently, and lowered her to the kitchen table and played with her while she whimpered and gasped in response.
Jack didn't have a key, but he could knock the door in, and he did, and he was angry, but not as angry as Daniel was. This wasn't between him and Sam anymore; it was between him and Jack. Jack, who didn't respect him, Jack, who didn't understand how hard Daniel had always tried to be a good soldier for him, Jack, who thought he had proprietary rights to Sam because he'd met her first or because they shared a life of flight and blue uniforms, Jack, whose face was suddenly twisting beneath his fist as he showed Jack. Words never worked with Jack; Jack was typical military, no subtlety of thought, he thought Sam was just another broad, and Daniel would never let anyone else treat her like that, most of all not Jack.
The knocking continued. He didn't think he could move, but he surprised himself by standing up, dragging his feet across the kitchen, slipping the deadbolt off and letting them in, a host of friends, all of them there to celebrate Daniel dying again. But he wasn't dead. Wasn't that funny? They thought he'd gone round the bend completely, but they were wrong, he was still sane and still alive.
The arms around him were unfamiliar and strong, strangely comforting. "Sam?" he choked out. Who else knew how to make the agony dissipate?
"It is I, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c's voice was warmer than it was in the flood of memories. Had he learned compassion, or had Daniel just learned how to listen for it? "You are not well. I have come to assist you back to the SGC. Doctor Fraiser will attend to you."
"I'm fine. Don't worry about me, Teal'c. Just let me go."
"You are fine?" Teal'c looked at him searchingly.
"Fine. Absolutely, totally fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"
Teal'c didn't say anything, but looked at him, concerned, slightly wary. Was he that dangerous, that he threatened Teal'c? He was proud of that for a minute. He let Teal'c hold his arm, let Jack lead them both down eight flights of stairs to the waiting Air Force vehicle.
He had his own bed in the infirmary, his and his alone, where he lay and stared up at the ceiling and heard the ebb and flow of Janet's voice as she told the rest of his team what she thought the problem might be. He heard the worry in Sam's voice and the concern that Jack was keeping out of his, and when he closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep, he could feel a hand on his cheek that felt like Sam's, and, squinting, he could see that her eyes were full of tears.
He liked that, tested the reaction. If his eyelashes fluttered, would she jerk away? If he sat straight up and talked about the things that made her uncomfortable, feelings, feelings, and more feelings, if he pretended that he didn't remember what "inappropriate" meant, then what would she do? What would she say? The day she shied away from him the moment he opened his eyes, Daniel laughed outright.
To make her cry, that was power, but to make her fear him--that was omnipotence.