Rating: PG?
Category: First Time
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Warnings: Um...you know I honestly can't think of any. Language, maybe? But even that's pretty tame.
Season/Episode: After Forever In A Day.
Spoilers: Very slight for Evolution (for mention that Jack and Daniel both speak Spanish).
Summary: In which Sam speaks the language better than Daniel and Jack has a thing for Daniel's neck.
Author's notes: My Jack/Daniel Ficathon entry, written for "walkawayslowly". The request was for "something offworld, preferably involving an alien race, Daniel speaking in languages other than English," without "juices (you know the kind I mean...) or smut for the sake of smut." This...this is what happened. Word count is about 1660.
---------------
Daniel was frustrated. Jack found the whole thing funny as hell. The combination had resulted in Daniel getting more frustrated and refusing to talk to Jack for several hours. Jack still thought it was funny.
Nogruevo was a naquada-rich planet populated by a society that revered the acquisition and application of knowledge. Basically a planet of geeks, as Jack put it. Carter and Daniel had been full of geekish glee upon discovering all the fun things the planet had to offer. That glee had dimmed somewhat for Daniel when he discovered that the locals spoke something that had once been Spanish but had, as Daniel described it one day in a fit of pique, "devolved into something you'd get from an online translator." Apparently, Carter with her half-remembered high school Spanish was easier for them to understand than either Daniel's or Jack's fluency; hence Daniel's frustration and Jack's supreme amusement.
The trip was also proving something Jack had previously only suspected. Technobabble was a universal language. At least, universal as long as you had plenty of material to write down equations and blueprints. Before she'd started simply writing down the numbers, Carter had tried to share her calculations verbally only to discover she couldn't remember the Spanish numbers past one hundred, much less decimals and fractions and all those other complicated mathematical extras she liked to play with.
Mythology and genealogy, however, proved significantly more difficult to translate, as Daniel had quickly found out. All the charades and hand gestures in the world couldn't prevent him from sounding like a slightly dim child with a speech impediment. It was an unfamiliar and unsettling situation for the linguist. The irony made Jack smile every time he thought of it.
Luckily, Daniel's status as an accomplished scholar on his world was successfully explained to Nogruevo's people, and if there was anything they respected it was an accomplished scholar. So both parties did their best to understand each other and, in the end, the bond of shared geekiness brought them together and a mutually beneficial alliance was tentatively forged.
That was how they'd gotten where they were: Carter was off scribbling technobabble with technogeeks while they set up the naquada mining. Daniel was burying himself in the ruins near Cercadrío, the town they were staying in, and getting frustrated daily by communication difficulties. Teal'c was...Teal'c was Teal'c and apparently quite respected by the Nogruevoans because age often equaled wisdom and in their eyes he was the wisest being they had ever met by virtue of also being the oldest they had ever met, so it didn't matter a whit if he didn't speak the language or even try. Apparently there was also wisdom in silence. And Jack swore Teal'c was just brimming over with smug, even though all the big guy did when he said so was raise an eyebrow at him.
Jack knew that eyebrow. That was the Smug Bastard eyebrow.
As for Jack, he was sticking close to Daniel and basking in the joys of watching his archaeologist at work. If the Nogruevoans thought he was an idiot, he didn't bother trying to convince them otherwise.
He probably was an idiot, anyway. At the moment he was contemplating a drop of sweat that had formed right on the middle of the back of Daniel's neck.
That drop was just begging to be licked up. And, obviously, once he was in the vicinity the neck itself would need nibbling, and that would just lead to more and Jack really shouldn't be thinking about that but Daniel was so absorbed in the cracked and eroded wall he was trying to translate that there was a good chance Jack could get him halfway naked before he noticed what was going on.
Jack mentally shook himself from thoughts of sweaty, half-naked Daniel and glanced around to make sure no gliders or motherships had shown up while he was distracted. The sky remained bright and clear and kind of boring.
"Jack?"
"Hm?"
"Jack, I think I've found something." Daniel sounded excited. "There's a reference here to a lengua entre, some sort of...I don't know, I guess a trade language. A common language that different peoples could use to communicate between each other. Jack...I don't think this is their native language."
Jack stared at him. "I was with you as far as 'I think I've found something'," he said slowly.
A look of frustration flitted across Daniel's face before being replaced again by the glow of discovery. "This...language they speak. I don't think it was their original language." Daniel motioned vaguely at the wall he'd been studying while his gaze remained fixed steadily on Jack. "I can't be sure yet, but it looks like there was more than one group of people...transplanted on this world. They used Spanish as a sort of common language when they had to communicate with each other. Now, as far as I can tell...they more or less barely got by with it. They couldn't speak it very well, but at the same time they couldn't speak each others' languages at all so they had to make due and it evolved from that."
Daniel leaned toward him, eyes wide. "Jack...this planet's official language is bad high school Spanish!"
"That's...fascinating." Jack said in a calm, humoring-the-crazy voice. "Why don't we go get out of the sun, have something to drink, maybe rest a little. You've been working on that for...hours. I think you've earned a break."
Daniel narrowed his eyes, obviously suspecting he was being humored, but finally nodded. "Fine."
Smiling, Jack clapped him on the shoulder as they headed for the nearby tent where happy Nogruevoan archaeologists were chattering bad high school Spanish with each other over various discoveries. He was looking forward to seeing Daniel try to explain his wall to them.
"Para hablar los que esta' sobre las colinas, los padres de los padres aprendidos lengua entre." Daniel muttered quietly as he wrote, occasionally glancing at scattered papers of wall rubbings for reference.
Jack groaned quietly and rolled over to face him. He was sharing a room with Daniel in something that was like a hotel but not and the man had been muttering to himself for over an hour. Jack was tired and wanted to sleep. While he did enjoy the general sound of Daniel's voice, it was keeping him awake.
"It'll be there in the morning, Daniel," he grumbled.
Distracted, Daniel replied, "I think I'm on to something here."
"I'd be shocked if you weren't." Jack sighed and sat up, rubbing the side of his face. "If you figured it out once you'll figure it out again. Go to bed, get some sleep."
"But I'm so close, Jack," Daniel protested. "There was a Goa'uld, or maybe more than one, I'm still working on that. But there was a Goa'uld here and now there's not and I don't think it was by choice. I just haven't found that part yet, but it's here, somewhere." He stopped as firm hands suddenly landed on his shoulders, tilting his head up to see Jack frowning down at him.
"It's waited all these years, it'll wait a few more hours," he said firmly, squeezing slightly then kneading tense muscles. "You're distracting when you're being brilliant and I need my beauty sleep, so you're going to go to bed if I have to tie you to it."
Groaning softly, Daniel leaned into the massage, murmuring, "If that's what does it for you. Just keep doing what you're doing."
Thinking over Daniel's words, Jack kept doing what he was doing. After a few moments, he also leaned down to kiss the back of Daniel's neck. When he didn't protest, Jack did it again. A few moments later Daniel didn't argue about going to bed.
"Jack, I think I have something here! Listen to this: La fuerza Tezcatlipoca de pulsado abajo Sumer y sus seguidores más cercanos. Pero era demasiado de gran alcance y Tezcatlipoca fue consumido tan también por él. It's talking about some...thing, a weapon maybe, that Tezcatlipoca used against Sumer. It destroyed Sumer, then backfired on Tezcatlipoca and destroyed him too."
Jack's eyes half closed as he held up a hand, trying to make sense of Daniel's excited words. "Big honkin' space gun?" he asked hopefully.
"I'm not sure. It doesn't actually say what it is, just that it got rid of the local Goa'ulds. It does say 'entonces Chac fue dispersado a las cuatro esquinas', Chac was scattered to the four corners, but I can't tell if Chac is a person or a thing." Daniel's brow furrowed in thought. "In mythology he was a benevolent Mayan god, associated with rain and life, and there's also a connection with the wind god Kukulcan--"
"Back to the Goa'uld-killing weapon?" Jack interrupted.
"Right." Daniel pointed at the wall and looked him in the eye. "I think there are directions here to the four pieces of Chac."
"And Chac is...good?"
Letting out a frustrated breath, Daniel said, "For all I know Chac is another Goa'uld."
"So we call home, tell them we're going hunting for a space gun, and we go look for it."
"It's not that simple, Jack, this is like trying to make sense of a preschooler's fingerpainting, you have to be told that the big green blob in the corner is their pet dog."
Smiling, Jack reached over and squeezed Daniel's shoulder. "So we find the big green blob. C'mon."
Daniel glanced up at him, then slowly smiled. "Guess I better get to work on that, then."
"Take a break." Jack advised. "Get something to drink, sit in the shade for a little bit." He smiled charmingly. "I'll come with."
Shaking his head, Daniel turned and headed in the direction of the tent where the water was kept. Jack watched for a moment, then followed him.
That drop of sweat on the back of Daniel's neck was just begging to be licked up.