Disclaimer: Presume to own nothing of the entire Stargate franchise whatsoever. All speech included is from the 'Unending' script but that isn't mine either. Nor are the credited lyrics.
Author's Note: This just wouldn't leave me alone, the summary was just stuck in my head :/. Literally woke up in the middle of the night to write this, so keep in mind it was written when half-asleep and way beyond the point where stress ceases to mean anything at all. Please forgive everything – will probably clean it up a bit when am more awake lol!
I guess you really did it this time,
Left yourself in your warpath,
Lost your balance on a tightrope,
Lost your mind tryin' to get it back,
Taylor Swift, 'Innocent'
She's not entirely sure what it was she was hoping to achieve when she'd reached for his belt. Surely not for him to acquiesce but not this either. Not the furious narrowing of his eyes, the disgust in his voice. She hadn't expected him to laugh.
Rejection is easy to take when you never expect to succeed, and what better way to go through life with no expectations at all? Confidence is easy to fake, a smile, a laugh, a coy word here and thee and nobody is any the wiser. The best lies, after all, are based on truths.
She had long since learnt that the best way to enter any situation was to have multiple motives. Don't let your left hand know what your right is doing and all that jazz. Provide enough of a distraction and they'll never realise why you started this dalliance in the first place. Why you began this ridiculous exchange of prepared words and predictable responses, because he always reacted the same way. That was how they worked. She never expected him to agree to anything and he never took her seriously. It should have infuriated her, but instead it made her smile, the pattern, the predictability of it. The first thing in a long, long time that she could completely rely on: she would flirt, he would knock her down. It was simple, easy even. But now he's gone and changed the game, and she's floundering for the first time since she was fifteen, scrambling to find even footing again before she can look him in the eyes without feeling like she's breaking in two.
"Do you believe I could have any kind of serious feelings for you?" his voice is cruel and jarring, the mocking tone is so ugly it makes her stomach turn and she has no choice but to look at him: mostly because she doesn't trust her own voice to cooperate.
"I wasn't suggesting you have serious feelings, Daniel,"she tries to laugh it off, emphasising in all the wrong places because it just makes it worse when tears sting her eyes, not with shame nor rejection, no but fury at her own voice failing her so. The trusted mechanisms of communication and defence falling about her ears like crumbling city walls.
"Oh!" he exclaims and it's all the worse for each hesitation, each falter in his own diatribe because he sounds so much more collected than she does, so much together about any of this, "oh, what, so what – what we sleep together once, then what?" she can imagine him gesturing, waving his arms around, fingers flying and something hitches in her throat at how rehearsed this all seems to be for him, "we work together!" the scorn in his voice is un-miss-able and that, too, stings more than it should, "And you know, even saying that part out loud sounds unbelievable."
Daniel laughs again at the absurdity of it all, and she will admit, yes, this is all so very absurd but his disbelieve has long-since deviated from anything vaguely resembling poorly-thought-out jibes between friends, or even just colleagues. No, now they are mean, words sharpened like blades meant to cut deep into her psyche, to twist and torment her long after he's finished saying them. Never before would she have thought to accuse Daniel of such self-righteous arrogance, but now that's all she can think about. How truly, despicably, arrogant he sounds saying that. She's tried. She's more than proven herself, time and time again to him, to the team, to the whole of Stargate Command. She shouldn't have to keep doing it. Dancing like a performing monkey just because Daniel Jackson smirks and smiles and rolls his eyes, challenging her with a look or a grin or a friendly taunt. He has no right to do any of this to her, no right at all. Except that he does, because she lets him.
He's ranting about relationships, about trustworthiness and honour and it's all so laced with condescension she wishes she could just stop listening to him. Hates the fact that the words 'I am very proud of you' coming from his lips makes her stomach do happy little somersaults before crashing back down with a startling amount of gravity when he starts picking at the faults she's tried so hard to disguise.
"I mean at best, you're an emotional, unstable wreck! I'm not saying I'm much better. I'm not saying I'm much better."
He's not. He's worse. He trusts too easily, and he's just as eager to please as she is, yet somehow he manages to make it heroic when he does it, whereas she just feels dirty, foolish for prostrating herself so guilelessly. Giving herself over like some simpering little creature, begging, pleading for approval that she so desperately wants but is never sure she deserves. It's disgusting, yet she'll keep doing it, over and over again until she gets it right, because those few seconds she gets where he looks at her with honest-to-goodness pride and that, that smile of his that somehow seems to light up half the stupid galaxy is worth every second of the bickering that borders somewhere between flirting and downright petulance. She loves the fact she can bring out that side of him. Hates the fact he can do it to her.
"– Not in a million years, a million, million years, would I ever possibly consider that person being you! I mean we are so completely opposite and wrong for each other, it's not even funny! And the worst part, the worst part about that is, you know that!" he pauses, and she prays silently he will stop soon, even as for some unknown reason she sits and waits this out, fascinated by the culmination of a storm she should have been watching brew for weeks. If she'd been paying any attention at all she might have predicted this. "And this whole flirty, sexual thing that you do, that's just your way of having a laugh at my expense," she doesn't have to look at him to see how his jaw must set at that. His teeth grinding minutely behind his lips because there's hurt behind those accusations, and just as she's a little bit glad that he's in pain over this, a bigger part of her wants to soothe it all away, and that just makes her want to cry harder.
"So I'm so sorry if I'm not more appreciative of that, and I'm so sorry that you're bored. But don't you pretend it's anything else!" he continues, sarcasm dripping sickly sweet from his voice as he ploughs onwards, ignorant and she'll gladly have him remain that way. This whole situation is humiliating enough without having him know just how much it's crippling her listening to him fling calloused words around as if they mean nothing at all. Out of everyone, Daniel should know just how harshly words can wound. He's ranting and raving without even really raising his voice at all, too scared someone might over hear. That Mitchell or Landry or Teal'c, or even Sam - were she to pull herself away from the Core long enough to listen - should realise that Daniel Jackson isn't as perfect as they'd like to believe. That of all the people he could take his frustration out on it's not a stranger, not the Goa'uld, the Ori, or even a enraged native, but a colleague, a team-mate, a would-be friend. That any of them might dare realise that Daniel is just as capable of being a bully as the next person.
It's not about laughing at his expense. If anything, he's laughing at hers: letting her trail at his ankles, clutching at straws, desperately seeking some sort of recognition for her ministrations even as she despises herself to her very core for craving something so pitiable. She's never thought about it before, but she can imagine now, as clearly as she can hear his voice drilling through her silent tears, that he mocks her behind her back, jeering her ridiculousness with the others when she's not around. Before, she'd never have thought him capable of such asinine cruelty, but then, she never predicted this of him either. Never thought he'd seek out the deepest of her self-doubts and distort them for the sole purpose of tearing her down and apart. Shredding her so entirely in front of him with no effort at all that she has no hope of building herself back up again without his help. When did she become so reliant on somebody else to make her feel good about herself? When did he become so such a critical part of her reality that a world without him in it seems laughable?
He knows all the right buttons to press, and she has no one to blame but herself.
It isn't about boredom either, or even loneliness. It's not even that she wants to steal his heart, not at all. She just wants hers back.
Jerking her head slightly, she tries to suppress a jump when she hears him shift behind her, his footsteps moving across the floor and she holds her breath until she's sure he isn't approaching. Wiping tears from her face she tries to calm herself, ashamed at just how easy she made it for him to get to her.
"Don't act like your hurt," he says it so much like an accusation she huffs indignantly, pulling on her sweater rather than allowing herself to dignify him with a response, not that she trusts herself to speak right now.
She feels the bed dip next to her and she moves quickly, turning her back on him, refusing to allow him the satisfaction of seeing the tear-tracks on her cheeks, the sadness in her eyes. He has ruined her, but if she's fast enough, maybe she'll be able to pull everything together for long enough to pretend like he hasn't. After a while of trying to convince everybody else, eventually, she should be able to believe it too.
"Hey," the combination of kindness in his voice and the comforting warmth of his hand on her back sends sparks jittering across her skin, and she suppresses a shiver and fresh tears find their way to her eyes, pulsing behind her eyelids like daggers.
Gulping a breath she covers her face with her hands, "just give me a minute," her voice shakes as a trapped sob works its way into her throat, settling there, waiting to erupt the moment she opens her mouth again.
"Look at me," it's somewhere between a request and an instruction and normally she would obey such a simple suggestion without question but she still feels strewn all over the place and looking him the eye might just shatter what's left of her self-respect.
His hand on her hair as he pulls it aside is gentle and, for him, so surprisingly intimate that she lowers her hands in compromise, feeling, for some reason, that she owes him something. She's still reluctant to look at him but when he touches her face, his fingers gently guiding her to meet his eyes she knows, in that moment, that she has never felt so exposed. Letting him watch her, staring, drinking in his fill as he examines the consequences of his tirade, she realises that he doesn't look pleased at her disarray. Curiosity mingles with infrequent flashes of guilt that dance though his eyes, all the walls falling away and she feels like she's looking at him for the first time.
He leans in and presses his lip against hers, nervous energy crackling between them and whilst she wants nothing more than to throws herself into the kiss with complete abandon, the niggling feeling that this might be another step in his rally to take her the pieces won't leave her alone. Instead she lets him take the lead, and when they pull apart he smiles, almost nervously at her, and she can't help but feel a little bit confused.
"You better not be messing with me," he says softly, the mirth in his voice mixes with the apprehension in his eyes and for the first time in this entire exchange she sees the fear that must have been dancing there since the very beginning.
When they kiss again, there's more desperation to it than passion, a frantic need to convey a million messages at once: I'm sorry, and forgive me - granting clemency, absolution, with the barest of touches. It's not perfect, and it's far from the best kiss either of them have ever had but it doesn't matter. As he lets them fall, sideways on the bed she finds herself surrendering readily to his waiting embrace. Although eager as she is to hold him and be held in return, they both know there will be time for words later and he calms her anxious movements by pulling away just enough to rest his forehead against her and smile dopily at her for a moment. This is probably the most real thing that has happened to either of them in weeks and neither of them wants to hurry.
As the frenetic kisses turn lazy and hands, rather than pawing roughly at clothes take on languidly clumsy explorations and the task of applying firm, yet gentle reassurances, she realises that maybe she doesn't need her heart back after all. It's not shattered, just a little broken, bruised, a bit battered around the edges and so very tender, but if it's enough that he wants to keep it then maybe, just maybe she might be willing to share it.
Time turns flames to embers,
You'll have new Septembers,
Every one of us has messed up too,
Minds change like the weather,
I hope you remember,
Today is never too late to be brand new,
Taylor Swift, 'Innocent'.
Author's Note: Don't suppose, you might, perchance, leave a review would you? :).