Author's note: This story takes place mid to late season five for opening. Includes Daniel's "death" and ascension in later passages. The concluding scenes take place after his return in season seven. Mature rating, not so much for this chapter, but I think it'll apply to the second. I also worked a little Nicole Peeler phrasing into the story. If you're familiar with her work, you might be able to spot it.
Music suggestions: 'State of grace' by Taylor Swift, 'Burning House' by Cam.
Disclaimer: Don't own SG-1. Just my daydreams.
1-Dealing With Ascension In Dreams
It all started with a dream.
"It was nothing, sir." Sam denied in record time, excuses lining up in quick succession as she lined up her first wave of defense: deflection.
"It didn't sound like nothing." Jack argued in an unrelenting tone.
"I didn't realize it was any of your business, needing to know the details of my dreams." Sam countered in a frigid tone. He was still her superior, though. "Sir."
"Just tell us, Carter. Put our minds at ease and tell us you weren't dreaming about Daniel...like that." Jack needled, the words accompanied by a circular hand motion. "Or, even better yet, that that Daniel wasn't even our Daniel. But rather, a Daniel that none of us have ever been introduced to. A Daniel that you didn't even tell our Daniel about. Which I find to be incredibly rude, by the way. So this Daniel that not even our Daniel knows about had better not be a security risk."
"That's a lot of Daniels, sir." Sam said after a moment, her forehead furrowing in consternation as she processed O'Neill's suggestions.
"I do not believe that this line of questioning is necessary." Teal'c chimed in smoothly from his perch on a nearby rocky outcropping as he scouted the horizon.
"Thanks, Teal'c." Sam said in a grateful tone, glad to have someone on her side. Daniel had remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the entirety of the debate. He was usually one of the first to climb on the bandwagon for a little innocent teasing.
Of course, she could have possibly just damaged their friendship and embarrassed the hell out of him with her rampaging hormones.
"If the quality of her dream is as to what you are suggesting, Major Carter would have been louder and more expressive in her commentary." Teal'c added assertively, his analysis complete.
Sam groaned plaintively and dropped her head into her hands.
"Commentary?" Jack reiterated emphatically, stressing the one word. "How would you know?"
Teal'c met the colonel's disbelieving stare and questions with stoic impassiveness.
Threading her fingers together to pull her hair back from her face, Sam brought her gaze up to her superior's chest, hoping her expression didn't convey her reluctance of lying straight through her teeth.
"He planned a relaxing dream vacation for me." Sam admitted on the fly, tacking on her displeasure at divulging such a detail into every word. "As a surprise."
"A vacation." Jack repeated, disbelief evident. "Really? You expect us to believe that."
"Yes, sir." Sam replied in a cold tone, meeting his gaze steadfastly. "Is that not what I just said?"
"You'll excuse me if I believe you pulled that straight out of your..." Jack countered, Teal'c cutting him off with a short burst from his zat aimed at the colonel's feet. Jack glared at Teal'c before continuing. "You'd never let anyone do something like that. You never take any time off!"
"And how would you know, sir?" Sam questioned, her hackles rising. Sure, it was utter bullshit, and she probably would turn the vacation down, but it was the principle of matter. It was supposed to be a dream anyway. Why would her dream self say no? "Maybe if enough thought was put into it, and it factored in the right location and duration...I probably wouldn't turn it down in favor of work."
"It was fishing, Carter. Nature, no electronic doodads, and no aliens...what's not to love?" Jack argued defensively, catching her dig referring to the last time he'd tried to drag her away from the SGC for leave.
"Sir, not all of us are in favor of purposefully cutting ourselves off from the outside world, much less considering doing it for fun." Sam countered flippantly, really getting into her utterly fake explanation.
"Indeed." Teal'c intoned from his perch. Jack glared up at him before continuing.
"So, this vacation..." Jack began surreptitiously, his head curving in a familiar pattern of curiosity to the colonel. "Where'd he send you? Someplace warm with a beach, I presume...?"
"As a matter of fact..." Sam agreed, daring him to challenge her again. She then pulled her ace. Something that was surefire guaranteed to get the colonel to back off. "But nothing on Earth. You remember that planet we scouted two months back?"
"Ahh...clear blue waters, islands, and girls covered in flimsy, gauzy togas. PR3-950. The first time I willingly remembered a planet's designation." Jack reminisced in a whimsical tone.
"That would be it, sir." Sam corroborated. Along with an eye roll.
"I take it all back. I'd be "Oh, Daniel" too if he gave me an all-expenses paid ticket back to that world for a few days." Jack relented, pushing up to his feet. "Alright, campers. Since we're all awake, how about we start packing up? We'll move out at 0530." With that, he walked out of the camp towards the small creek located a few minutes south of their overnight setup.
Sam turned away from Teal'c's, and perhaps more importantly, Daniel's unreadable, intense stare with the express intention of methodically repacking her supplies into her pack.
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Not having spoken a word throughout the entire exchange, Daniel studied Sam as she meticulously repacked her belongings, with her studiously avoiding looking at him.
She may have convinced Jack and Teal'c about her dream, but he knew the truth without a doubt. Being as gifted as he was with language, some might say preternaturally so, he knew exactly how his name sounded when presenting a well-timed gift such as Sam was suggesting. He also knew how it sounded passing a woman's lips at the peak of intense intimate pleasure.
Granted, it had been severely watered down, considering all the filters it had passed through to reach past her subconscious dream state and into the air for those close enough to hear, but he had no doubt that Sam had been dreaming less than pure thoughts of him.
Having been more geek than "hardened sex god" – Cassie's words, not his – for the greater part of his life, he was still taken by surprise whenever a woman showed a sexual interest in him. When you live a certain way most of your life, and have the fact reinforced by those around you, you start to believe it, despite anyone's contradiction of that negative trait. Sarah's words of praise after a rather vigorous bout of lovemaking early on in their relationship resurfaced in his mind as he reminisced.
"You put the same amount of focus and intensity into pleasuring me as you would discovering the archaeological find of the century."
Even Hathor had praised his adequate skills in the bedroom. And considering what the Goa'uld queen had thought of humans...it was quite a complement. Well, sort of.
And now, knowing that Sam thought of him horizontally, considered him equal enough to meet her on that level, attractive enough to be with a woman such as her...it was a velvet soft stroke to his ego. Maybe there was some truth to Cassie's rather crass assessment after all.
Sam was everything. The whole package. She was beautiful, brilliant, and just the right amount of brawn. She could still kick his ass when they sparred, even after the fact that he'd put on almost twenty pounds of muscle over the years. She was his friend. Perhaps the best friend, that was female, that he'd ever had a strictly platonic relationship with.
He'd never had a problem separating Sam away from the romantic aspect of his mind. He'd recognized her beauty, all of her attributes – and she had plenty of them – and never had any tangle of lustful hormones directed her way. Even after all the opportunities thrown his way. Even after having slept together to share body heat.
In a strictly platonic fashion, of course.
It had happened on an off-world mission shortly after saving the earth from the almost catastrophic Goa'uld asteroid. Their first mission after the fact. They'd been on a moon with a climate similar to that of north-eastern Europe. Cold and depressing on a good day. Below freezing and life-threateningly miserable on a bad day. No Goa'uld presence, that they could detect. Unfortunately, something just as upsetting and disappointing – a dictatorial government that immediately classified the SG-1 team as a threat. Teal'c and Jack had been patrolling the opposite side of the ruins Daniel had discovered when a security sweep had brutally attacked without warning, taking him and Sam prisoner without so much as a "Welcome to our planet."
They were tossed into a cold, damp, stone 6 by 6 foot cell. He hadn't even been able to stand upright without knocking his head on the ceiling. The cell had been sparsely furnished with two simple beds, a threadbare blanket covering each one, and a toilet.
It was cold that night. Mid-forties to low fifties. Apparently, it had been summertime.
He and Sam had ended up in the same bed, both blankets, along with both of their military-issued coats spread over them. Putting Sam closer to the wall, he'd tucked her in tight against his body, sharing warmth through one of the few avenues they had.
Having Sam that close, he found out exactly how it felt to spoon his body around hers. Arms tight around her, hands clasped together over her heart, the smell of her hair lingering in his nose, his legs molded to the backs of hers...and while he hadn't considered it at the time, crisis situation and all, the heart-shape of her backside settled in snugly against his crotch.
He'd held onto her. Held her all through the night. Only to wake with her facing him, her arms still curled up to her chest, her legs entwined with his and her breath coming out in soft gentle puffs, tickling his neck due to her shifting during the night.
At some point during the night, he'd had the strangest dream. He'd been standing at the bottom of a steep hill, Sam standing at the top holding a naquadah generator. As he climbed the hill, the generator started up, powering up faster the higher he climbed. He was less than a meter away from Sam, his hand outstretched towards her, when the ground started to tremble. Tumbling back down the hill, he woke with a minute start. Sleep already started pulling him back under, his eyes not even opening, as he recognized the cause of the disturbance continuing to shift in her sleep.
Waking up that morning with Sam in that kind of setting had been...different, but not off-setting. It had been the first time he'd woken up in bed next to another woman since Sha're.
He'd been able to lay there and doze for another forty-five minutes or so before Sam began to stir. Opening her eyes, she pulled back far enough to meet his eyes with a gentle smile. And after a light pat to his chest, he opened his arms and let her roll out of his embrace to sit up and stretch.
And that had been that.
Thankfully, it had only been for the one night. Teal'c and Jack sprung them less than half a day later. Any longer than that, and he might have started...phyiscally responding to Sam's closeness.
It was a debated, yet fairly astonishing fact that a high percentage of children were conceived on the coldest, harshest winter nights. Counting back from his own birthday, he was conceived sometime in late January to early February.
Not that anything of that nature would have transpired. But still, he was a flesh and blood man in full control of his facilities. Well, except for one, but that was more of a biological issue, rather than a parasitical one. And it would have been that one that might have caused an awkward moment or two.
But even if anything of that matter would have occurred, there wouldn't have been any feeling attached to it, romantically or even lustfully, because his heart hadn't quite made that connection at that time.
His feelings for Sam didn't change until after he died.
And then everything became a complicated mess, in typical SG-1 fashion.
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Sam could still remember vividly a night spent in a prison cell with Daniel on M9Q-862. How indescribably extraordinary it had felt, having a man just hold her as they slept.
Working for the SGC had its perks. An active dating life wasn't one of them. It made dating extremely difficult, a long-term relationship near impossible. It had been months...alright, years since she'd last had a man wrapped around her like Daniel had been that night.
She remembered waking up some time during the night inexplicably, only to realize that somehow Daniel's hands had moved. The move had to have resulted from some primal, subconscious section of his brain sparking, because Daniel would have never consciously wrapped his lower arm over her breasts as the other splayed possessively over her lower abdomen, inches from touching her intimately.
She'd even subconsciously submitted to the hold, her own hands holding onto his arm across her chest and one of her legs raised closer to her body, as if granting him access. Only him.
And before she'd even realized what she was doing, her leg began to shift higher, attempting to pull Daniel's hand to the place that was suddenly starved for his touch.
As if he'd instinctively read her body's need, his hand grazed along the outside of her pants, lower...
His fingertips had been poised to crest over the swell of her pubic bone when her brain awoke to the repercussions of this encounter.
He probably hadn't even been aware that it was her.
Twisting in his embrace, his hands reflexively stilled, waiting for her movement to cease. As she finished moving, Daniel's arm immediately banded tight around her new position, the arm underneath her pressing between her shoulder blades, and the other on her lower back. As a result of her turning, her body was now almost a head below his. Pressing her face into the valley his neck and shoulder formed, she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, her breath exhaling in a content sigh at the warm air found there.
And if one of Daniel's legs had worked its way between hers after her shift, grazing against her intimately before locking her in place against his well-muscled everything...well, those things just happened on occasion.
Less than four months later, Daniel was dead. Or whatever was involved in ascension.
It felt as if a shrapnel bomb had exploded inside her heart, with her heart left in bloody, jagged shreds afterwards. It felt as if another piece of her heart had been ripped away without warning, a deep wrenching pain she hadn't felt since she'd lost her mother. It was then that she realized how deep Daniel had been, how far she'd let him in. And not knowing whether or not to mourn him had driven the blade that much deeper, nearly driving her insane with grief. What was worse, everyone else acting as if nothing had transpired, as if he'd simply taken a leave of absence. Which, if the hope that burned mutinously inside her had anything to say, may just likely be the case.
Even if his soul had still been alive in some other form, his physical body had died. She still believed they should have held a memorial service, if for no other reason than to give those that didn't know the mysterious nature of his ascension some peace.
The day after returning from rescuing Thor and breaking the news of Daniel's "death" to Osiris, Sam went to Daniel's apartment. It too, had held the lingering familiarity of the tenant that had lived there for over five years.
It had broken her.
After obstinately packing up two boxes of his possessions, she collapsed in the center of his living room and cried. Soul-wrenching sobs and uncontrollable tremors had wracked her body as she curled into an upright ball, protectively clutching one of his journals tightly to her chest. The tears that she'd held inside flowed unrestrained down her face, spattering both onto her knees clutched tightly in the circle of her arms as well as the hardwood floor beneath her.
Even after her body refused to produce more tears, the sobs still escaped her lips when she pulled herself to her feet and shuffled into his bathroom to freshen up.
Knowing it probably wasn't the healthiest idea, Sam exited the main bathroom without doing anything and crossed the hall into Daniel's bedroom. Glancing at his hastily made bed, still rumpled from its owner's last half-hearted attempt, Sam entered his personal bathroom, pushed the door partially closed, and began to strip.
Turning on the taps, Sam adjusted the temperature of the water before switching over to the shower function and stepped into the tub, pulling the curtain shut behind her.
As the water rained over her head, she closed her eyes and attempted to push all of her hurt to the surface, so the water could wash some of it away. Not all of it, just enough so she could function, could cope.
Seeing as how she felt even more alone than she'd felt when she'd first entered the apartment, all she felt was depleted, drained. Hollow.
That would do.
Using the soap he'd had perched on the shelves built into the wall, Sam scrubbed every inch of her skin, rinsed off, shut off the water, and climbed out. Patting herself dry with a towel, she opened the door and padded across his bedroom to his closet. After rifling through the selection and selecting the one that carried his scent the strongest, Sam pulled it over her head and let it settle over her smaller frame.
Standing completely still, Sam closed her eyes, held the collar of the long-sleeved t-shirt up to her nose, and inhaled deep. Her eyes burned with the need to cry again. Letting the shirt drop, she opened her eyes and, with steely determination, smothered the urge until the hollow feeling returned. Turning to his bed, Sam, with meticulous care, folded back the covers and climbed between the sheets.
Curling into the fetal position, her head on his pillow, she folded her arms underneath the pillow, and fell into an almost restful slumber. Perhaps one of the few times over the following weeks that she actually slept peacefully, uninterrupted. One of the rare times that the emptiness that Daniel's absence created was displaced.
As the weeks passed by in a haze, Sam learned to function as she was expected to, and pushed her grief to the furthest corners of her mind, locked up in an airtight box right next to her mother's.
She dreamed about him. Frequently. And not every dream was sexual, as most of her dreams that had precluded his ascension had been inclined towards. Sometimes, they were memories mashed together. Not always happy, but not always sad, either. They were her only surcease.
But, then there was one dream that stood apart from all the others. A dream that she remembered with crystal clarity, and if she hadn't known any better, would have deemed it a fresh memory, it had felt that real.
The aftermath of that dream had left her with a loose, utterly spent, and joyful feeling. As if Daniel had actually thoroughly sexed her brains out and cuddled with her afterwords.
She'd gone to sleep with a smile for a full week following that dream, and it still warmed her heart during the bleakest nights.
Months pass, almost a year, and the weight of Daniel's absence increased with every teasing murmur of Daniel's ascended visits to her commanding officer and the Jaffa that had become one of her closest friends.
And, then suddenly, he was there, helping them protect Abydos. She barely had time to process before he was yanked away just as quickly. This time, his fate was even more uncertain. Thanks to Anubis, so was the rest of SG-1's.
What else was new?
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I sincerely hope everyone is enjoying the read so far! I've always been an avid Sam/Daniel fan, and I enjoy any interaction between them in the show. Also, The Barque of Heaven by Suzanne Wood is the SG-1 book to read for all Sam/Daniel shippers out there, in my opinion! Anyway, I've always wanted to write a Sam/Daniel fic of my own...so here it is.
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