Part 6
I'm sitting on the bed staring into space when Jack comes back into the room. He immediately crosses to me and pins me on my back, his hands on my shoulders and his face over mine. He's grinning, his eyes bright, and he leans forward and brushes the tip of his nose against mine in a series of rapid, feather-light touches.
"Jack?"
"Hmm?"
"What are you doing?"
"They're called Eskimo kisses."
I frown and push up against his chest. He flops down beside me, one arm slung possessively over my belly, and his other hand immediately finds my hair. I'm starting to think he has an obsession with it.
"First of all, the term Eskimo is actually incorrect," I tell him. "It's a slang term that is somewhat derogatory, and the myth that arctic peoples kiss by brushing their noses because their lips are always chapped simply has no basis in reality. In fact—"
"Daniel." He's laughing again, his hand poking me just to the left of my navel in a way that I'm trying very hard not to think about.
"What?"
"Don't you want to know what Frasier said about my MRI?"
Ah. Not really. "Sure."
"She says I'm back to normal."
I sigh and pull his hand out of my hair. "Well, clearly, you're not."
"Try me."
What? "Try you," I repeat slowly. "What does that mean?"
He turns onto his side and props his head up on one hand, the other stubbornly going back into my hair. "I mean, try asking me something you think I wouldn't answer truthfully. I'll lie. I can do it again—Frasier and I just tested it out. I'm back to normal."
"It's so lovely that you being skilled at lying is normal," I snap, for lack of anything better to say. Normal? He just pinned me on the bed and sort of kissed me, and he's normal?
"Dannnnielll..."
"Well, I see your ability to act like a five year old has returned. How nice for you."
Jack frowns and pulls his hand back, studying me closely. "What's wrong? Why are you mad at me?"
"It's not funny, Jack. I know you're still under the influence of that thing, or you wouldn't be touching me so much. I don't enjoy having my feelings played with."
He sighs and scoots closer again, putting an arm around my ribs and tugging at me. "Daniel," he says quietly. "I know you're used to not letting yourself think about this stuff. Not hoping for it. I'm touching you for the same reason I was before—because I want to. The only difference is that before, I couldn't stop myself. Now I can stop, but I choose not to."
I blink at him for a while, trying to puzzle that one out. I don't see what's changed here. He went through a phase with an alien device that caused him to lose all impulse control, and now he's got control back, so his behavior should have returned to normal. The fact that he's still all over me doesn't fit into that equation.
"Daniel?"
"Why?"
He frowns. "Why what?"
I shake his arm off and retreat, getting off the bed and standing over by the far wall. "Why would you still want to... to do this stuff?" I wave a hand vaguely, frustrated at my inability to spell it out, but he seems to get it.
"Didn't we already have this conversation? I love you, Daniel." It's harder for him to say it now. He looks embarrassed, nervous, but he's also refusing to back down.
"That was the alien influence."
"No, it wasn't!" He sits up on the bed and throws his hands into the air. "How many times do I have to say this? The eclipse light show thing only made me see what was already there. I can't un-see it."
No. No, this can't be real. I'm not actually getting what I've wanted so long. The universe just doesn't work that way.
"But... but what about the rules? You said this couldn't happen, that it would compromise the team, that... you said..."
He's shaking his head slowly, his eyes sad. "We talked about that too, remember? You were the one who convinced me that us denying how we feel—how *we* feel, Daniel—is actually damaging the team. Why are you suddenly fighting this?"
"It wasn't *real* when we talked about it before." I pause and take a deep breath, not liking how high and tight my voice has gotten. "It was just... you weren't yourself. We could talk about this stuff, and it was harmless, because none of it was real. I could pretend for a little while that it could really happen, and enjoy it while it lasted, but I knew that once you weren't under alien influence anymore, it would be over."
"So, that's it?" he asks, spreading his hands wide, palms up. "You're so sure that you can never have me, that now, even when I'm telling you point- blank that I love you and I want to be with you, you're telling me it can't happen? You're so used to disappointment that you can't accept anything else?"
I step back until I hit the wall, and then I look around at it, startled. The wall is not far enough away from him. "No, no, I don't... that's not it, you're... you're still confused, Jack. You don't really mean what you're saying. You *can't* mean it. I, uh... I'm going to check in with Sam. See if I can figure out more about that stele. We'll get this figured out and get you back to normal."
He's on his feet in a flash, his hands reaching for me, but I'm already at the door. "Daniel," he protests, clutching at my shirt. "Don't."
"Jack," I hiss, grabbing his wrists. "Let me go. Now."
His hands fall to his sides, and he takes a step back, still shaking his head. "Why are you running?" he asks plaintively. "I thought we fixed all this."
"I'm not running," I tell him flatly. "I'm trying to help you. Your belief that you really have feelings for me isn't fair to either of us."
With that, I'm out the door, forcing myself to walk at a reasonable rate down the hall. I'm not running. I'm not.
~~~
"So this is the light pattern represented numerically, and this is what it looks like in a wave form."
"Uh-huh," I say vaguely, watching Sam's hands as they point out all her charts. We're in her lab, where I am not hiding from Jack.
"The light pulses definitely form a repeating pattern, but so far the numbers don't make any sense. It's possible that it's some kind of code."
"Ah."
Sam pauses and cocks her head, frowning at me. "Daniel? Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes, of course. I've just been working on that stele a lot, and I can't seem to get anywhere with it." There, that sounded plausible. I really have been working on it.
"Really," she says dubiously. "And that's the only problem?"
I blink at her, wide-eyed and innocent. "What else would there be?"
"Hmm." She gives me a narrow look. I avoid her eyes.
"So, you've been analyzing this stuff since you got back?" I ask in a pathetically obvious attempt to change the subject.
Sam focuses on her computer again, and my shoulders slump in relief. "Yes," she says brightly. "We did some rudimentary studies in the field, but we didn't have the necessary equipment for full scale computer modeling."
I nod and try to look enthusiastic as she flips through several images on her screen, explaining each one. They look sort of like bar charts, or the waveform of a trigonometric equation, depending on which display she uses. I'm staring at the shifting patterns and colors, still thinking about Jack and what I'm going to do, when something seems to click.
"Wait, wait, go back," I say, interrupting her flow of words.
"What? Which one?"
"The blue-green one with all the spikes."
Sam rolls her eyes. "You know, I did tell you what each display was called."
"Yeah, I know... that's not it... there!" I point at the screen, which is showing another chart, shifting color being rotated back and forth. "Can you tilt it so we're looking at it from above?"
"From above?" She frowns and peers at the screen. "It's a three dimensional representation of the pulse frequency and intensity. Changing the angle isn't going to change the data, and besides, if you look at it from above, all you see is a flat green square."
"No, no, put some kind of level on it."
Sam looks at me, at the screen, and then at me again. She's got that look that says she thinks I'm drinking too much coffee again. "Daniel..."
I sigh and point at the screen again, jabbing my fingertip against the glass as if I can reach in and do what I want. "Like... okay, it's a three dimensional diagram, right? Like a cube, with the base being solid green, and then the values of intensity and frequency, that stuff you said, that's represented in spikes of different heights and locations. So if you look at it from above, you're right, you'd see just a flat green square, unless you put a divider in. Like... like sticking a piece of paper on it so only the highest spikes are poking through. Then you'd have a white square with green dots in certain locations, right?"
She brightens a little, not understanding where I'm going but at least getting what I want. "Oh... okay, yeah, I see what you mean. Here, let me do this..." She taps on the keyboard for a few seconds, and then the screen suddenly changes to what I asked for, a white square with a handful of green dots scattered randomly across it.
"Yes!" I say, already rummaging through my books. "I knew I'd seen that pattern before. If I just hold one over the other..."
Sam is shaking her head again. "Daniel, I don't see what this has to do with—"
"Just bear with me, okay?" I ask absently, already holding my best picture of the stele engraving over the computer screen. The light of the monitor shines through the paper, and the dark green dots are visible behind it. "Uh... okay, the scale is wrong. Can you make it bigger?"
Sam does as I ask without speaking. I think she's starting to see what I'm doing.
"There! You see how it lines up? Most of the symbols are meaningless, and the ones that do mean something are words all jumbled together, with no sense. But if you only read the ones with dots behind them... can you put numbers on the dots? From lowest intensity to highest?"
"Okay." Now she sounds excited. Her hands are stuttering on the keys, rapid and eager, her eyes on the paper. Numbers appear on the screen—one through twenty-four.
"So, reading the symbols over the dots, in order of intensity..." I start scribbling a translation on the closest available piece of paper, my eyes darting between the screen and what I'm writing.
Sam reads over my shoulder. "Who comes seeking knowledge finds truth. The dark eats the light and what was shadowed is seen. Lies cannot pass the ring of fire."
I sit back, my legs suddenly rubbery. Sam stares at me, her eyes widening, and she puts a cool hand on the back of my neck, pressing my head down to rest on the table.
"Easy, Daniel. Take deep breaths."
"I'm okay," I mumble. "Just... um..."
"Stay put," she orders firmly. "You went white as a sheet just then. Keep your head down for at least a few minutes."
I decide to humor her because she sounds so concerned, and because all the strength seems to have run out of my body. I feel like a loose, overstretched bag of thick liquid, ready to spill onto the floor.
"Daniel... how did you do that? How could you possibly see that pattern in the original graph?"
"I don't know," I say, my words muffled against the tabletop. "I wasn't even really looking at it. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, and it just fit."
I have my eyes closed, but I can feel the excitement and energy welling up in Sam. "This is incredible," she gushes. "A code of this sophistication, that requires an advanced visual model of the light pulses to be interpreted in a certain way in order to decipher the message... the technology involved would have to be so advanced..."
"As advanced as creating a satellite that could cause daily, safely observable eclipses?" I ask. "As advanced as a series of light pulses causing a person to be completely unable to hide anything and to act on their own buried feelings?"
She pauses, and her hand comes to lightly rest on my back. "Daniel? You said that the Colonel wasn't affected after all. That he was fine."
"I know what I said."
The hand is taken away from my back. I lift my head and find Sam staring at me, wide-eyed and concerned. "Daniel?" she asks faintly. "Did he... did he tell you?"
I don't have to ask what. It looks like I'm the last to know how he really feels. The only consolation is that he didn't know either.
"He told me," I say slowly. "But I didn't believe him. I didn't think it could be real."
"And now?"
"Lies cannot pass the ring of fire." I shiver and rub at my arms, soothing my prickling skin. "I have to go, Sam. I have to talk to him."
She smiles and gives me a quick hug. "Go, Daniel. Good luck."
I nod distractedly, already on my way out the door. Yes, good luck. I'd forgotten that bad luck wasn't the only kind, but it looks like things are about to change. If I'm lucky.
~~~
"Jack?"
He looks up from his desk, somehow looking hopeful and wary at the same time. "Daniel," he says neutrally, his eyes steady on mine.
I take two stumbling steps into the room and shut the door behind me. My hands are shaking and I know Jack sees it, but he keeps his mouth shut. Not assuming, not pushing, not touching. Letting me lead. It's just what I need.
"I, ah... I figured out the stele."
He raises an eyebrow. "Oh? What's it say?"
"Who comes seeking knowledge finds truth. The dark eats the light and what was shadowed is seen. Lies cannot pass the ring of fire."
Jack stands, slowly, his hands in his pockets. I don't know if that's to appear non-threatening, or to keep from reaching out to me. I find myself hoping it's the latter. I want him to want me.
"I'm sorry," I blurt, taking another step toward him.
"What for?" So soft, his voice. So soft.
"I should have believed you. You said... what you said... and I should have believed you."
"You spent a long time not letting yourself think it could be true," he says, forgiving me effortlessly. "Old habits and all that."
"Do you still... I mean, um, even though I was so stupid about it, can you..." I can't say it. I can't ask—not when I'm so afraid the answer will be no.
Jack shakes his head, and I feel my insides freeze and twist. He must see this on my face, because he immediately steps forward, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing almost painfully.
"Yes," he whispers fiercely. "Yes, yes, Danny. Yes. I was only shaking my head because we can't do this here." He indicates the security camera with his eyes.
"Oh." Does my voice really sound so small?
"What do you say we go for a little walk, Doctor Jackson? Get some fresh air?"
I blink at him. My brain feels like it's about three steps behind in the conversation. Yes? He said yes?
"Daniel?"
"Right!" I say suddenly, my voice squeaking in a way that should be embarrassing, but isn't. I'm beyond that right now. "A walk. That, uh... good idea. Sure. Fresh air, sunshine, vitamin D, it's good for you. Nice day, is it? Is it spring? What month is it?"
Jack's laughing again, his hand still on my shoulder, sliding dangerously close to stroking my neck. "Nervous?" he asks.
"God, yes."
"Good. Me too."
I can feel my mouth smiling, even though my face feels numb. "Let's... um, let's be nervous together."
"That's a brilliant idea, Daniel," Jack says, steering me out the door with an arm casually thrown over my shoulders. "I always said you were a smart man."
"Almost wasn't smart enough," I murmur. "Almost didn't figure out something really important."
"But you did figure it out," Jack replies, his voice low, his eyes direct. "You make your own happiness in life, Daniel. You can't just wait for it to happen to you."
"I think..." I look him up and down as the elevator doors close on us. Jack tilts his head, his face quizzical, and I push myself off the wall and pin him against the opposite one, my face close to his. I rub our cheeks together like he did to me in the tent that night, relishing the coarse, close touch of skin. "I think I'm done waiting," I whisper.
"Good," he whispers back.
He tries to kiss me, but I kiss him first. I think I'm finally going to get lucky.
~~~
Fin
March 4-15, 2004
I'm sitting on the bed staring into space when Jack comes back into the room. He immediately crosses to me and pins me on my back, his hands on my shoulders and his face over mine. He's grinning, his eyes bright, and he leans forward and brushes the tip of his nose against mine in a series of rapid, feather-light touches.
"Jack?"
"Hmm?"
"What are you doing?"
"They're called Eskimo kisses."
I frown and push up against his chest. He flops down beside me, one arm slung possessively over my belly, and his other hand immediately finds my hair. I'm starting to think he has an obsession with it.
"First of all, the term Eskimo is actually incorrect," I tell him. "It's a slang term that is somewhat derogatory, and the myth that arctic peoples kiss by brushing their noses because their lips are always chapped simply has no basis in reality. In fact—"
"Daniel." He's laughing again, his hand poking me just to the left of my navel in a way that I'm trying very hard not to think about.
"What?"
"Don't you want to know what Frasier said about my MRI?"
Ah. Not really. "Sure."
"She says I'm back to normal."
I sigh and pull his hand out of my hair. "Well, clearly, you're not."
"Try me."
What? "Try you," I repeat slowly. "What does that mean?"
He turns onto his side and props his head up on one hand, the other stubbornly going back into my hair. "I mean, try asking me something you think I wouldn't answer truthfully. I'll lie. I can do it again—Frasier and I just tested it out. I'm back to normal."
"It's so lovely that you being skilled at lying is normal," I snap, for lack of anything better to say. Normal? He just pinned me on the bed and sort of kissed me, and he's normal?
"Dannnnielll..."
"Well, I see your ability to act like a five year old has returned. How nice for you."
Jack frowns and pulls his hand back, studying me closely. "What's wrong? Why are you mad at me?"
"It's not funny, Jack. I know you're still under the influence of that thing, or you wouldn't be touching me so much. I don't enjoy having my feelings played with."
He sighs and scoots closer again, putting an arm around my ribs and tugging at me. "Daniel," he says quietly. "I know you're used to not letting yourself think about this stuff. Not hoping for it. I'm touching you for the same reason I was before—because I want to. The only difference is that before, I couldn't stop myself. Now I can stop, but I choose not to."
I blink at him for a while, trying to puzzle that one out. I don't see what's changed here. He went through a phase with an alien device that caused him to lose all impulse control, and now he's got control back, so his behavior should have returned to normal. The fact that he's still all over me doesn't fit into that equation.
"Daniel?"
"Why?"
He frowns. "Why what?"
I shake his arm off and retreat, getting off the bed and standing over by the far wall. "Why would you still want to... to do this stuff?" I wave a hand vaguely, frustrated at my inability to spell it out, but he seems to get it.
"Didn't we already have this conversation? I love you, Daniel." It's harder for him to say it now. He looks embarrassed, nervous, but he's also refusing to back down.
"That was the alien influence."
"No, it wasn't!" He sits up on the bed and throws his hands into the air. "How many times do I have to say this? The eclipse light show thing only made me see what was already there. I can't un-see it."
No. No, this can't be real. I'm not actually getting what I've wanted so long. The universe just doesn't work that way.
"But... but what about the rules? You said this couldn't happen, that it would compromise the team, that... you said..."
He's shaking his head slowly, his eyes sad. "We talked about that too, remember? You were the one who convinced me that us denying how we feel—how *we* feel, Daniel—is actually damaging the team. Why are you suddenly fighting this?"
"It wasn't *real* when we talked about it before." I pause and take a deep breath, not liking how high and tight my voice has gotten. "It was just... you weren't yourself. We could talk about this stuff, and it was harmless, because none of it was real. I could pretend for a little while that it could really happen, and enjoy it while it lasted, but I knew that once you weren't under alien influence anymore, it would be over."
"So, that's it?" he asks, spreading his hands wide, palms up. "You're so sure that you can never have me, that now, even when I'm telling you point- blank that I love you and I want to be with you, you're telling me it can't happen? You're so used to disappointment that you can't accept anything else?"
I step back until I hit the wall, and then I look around at it, startled. The wall is not far enough away from him. "No, no, I don't... that's not it, you're... you're still confused, Jack. You don't really mean what you're saying. You *can't* mean it. I, uh... I'm going to check in with Sam. See if I can figure out more about that stele. We'll get this figured out and get you back to normal."
He's on his feet in a flash, his hands reaching for me, but I'm already at the door. "Daniel," he protests, clutching at my shirt. "Don't."
"Jack," I hiss, grabbing his wrists. "Let me go. Now."
His hands fall to his sides, and he takes a step back, still shaking his head. "Why are you running?" he asks plaintively. "I thought we fixed all this."
"I'm not running," I tell him flatly. "I'm trying to help you. Your belief that you really have feelings for me isn't fair to either of us."
With that, I'm out the door, forcing myself to walk at a reasonable rate down the hall. I'm not running. I'm not.
~~~
"So this is the light pattern represented numerically, and this is what it looks like in a wave form."
"Uh-huh," I say vaguely, watching Sam's hands as they point out all her charts. We're in her lab, where I am not hiding from Jack.
"The light pulses definitely form a repeating pattern, but so far the numbers don't make any sense. It's possible that it's some kind of code."
"Ah."
Sam pauses and cocks her head, frowning at me. "Daniel? Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes, of course. I've just been working on that stele a lot, and I can't seem to get anywhere with it." There, that sounded plausible. I really have been working on it.
"Really," she says dubiously. "And that's the only problem?"
I blink at her, wide-eyed and innocent. "What else would there be?"
"Hmm." She gives me a narrow look. I avoid her eyes.
"So, you've been analyzing this stuff since you got back?" I ask in a pathetically obvious attempt to change the subject.
Sam focuses on her computer again, and my shoulders slump in relief. "Yes," she says brightly. "We did some rudimentary studies in the field, but we didn't have the necessary equipment for full scale computer modeling."
I nod and try to look enthusiastic as she flips through several images on her screen, explaining each one. They look sort of like bar charts, or the waveform of a trigonometric equation, depending on which display she uses. I'm staring at the shifting patterns and colors, still thinking about Jack and what I'm going to do, when something seems to click.
"Wait, wait, go back," I say, interrupting her flow of words.
"What? Which one?"
"The blue-green one with all the spikes."
Sam rolls her eyes. "You know, I did tell you what each display was called."
"Yeah, I know... that's not it... there!" I point at the screen, which is showing another chart, shifting color being rotated back and forth. "Can you tilt it so we're looking at it from above?"
"From above?" She frowns and peers at the screen. "It's a three dimensional representation of the pulse frequency and intensity. Changing the angle isn't going to change the data, and besides, if you look at it from above, all you see is a flat green square."
"No, no, put some kind of level on it."
Sam looks at me, at the screen, and then at me again. She's got that look that says she thinks I'm drinking too much coffee again. "Daniel..."
I sigh and point at the screen again, jabbing my fingertip against the glass as if I can reach in and do what I want. "Like... okay, it's a three dimensional diagram, right? Like a cube, with the base being solid green, and then the values of intensity and frequency, that stuff you said, that's represented in spikes of different heights and locations. So if you look at it from above, you're right, you'd see just a flat green square, unless you put a divider in. Like... like sticking a piece of paper on it so only the highest spikes are poking through. Then you'd have a white square with green dots in certain locations, right?"
She brightens a little, not understanding where I'm going but at least getting what I want. "Oh... okay, yeah, I see what you mean. Here, let me do this..." She taps on the keyboard for a few seconds, and then the screen suddenly changes to what I asked for, a white square with a handful of green dots scattered randomly across it.
"Yes!" I say, already rummaging through my books. "I knew I'd seen that pattern before. If I just hold one over the other..."
Sam is shaking her head again. "Daniel, I don't see what this has to do with—"
"Just bear with me, okay?" I ask absently, already holding my best picture of the stele engraving over the computer screen. The light of the monitor shines through the paper, and the dark green dots are visible behind it. "Uh... okay, the scale is wrong. Can you make it bigger?"
Sam does as I ask without speaking. I think she's starting to see what I'm doing.
"There! You see how it lines up? Most of the symbols are meaningless, and the ones that do mean something are words all jumbled together, with no sense. But if you only read the ones with dots behind them... can you put numbers on the dots? From lowest intensity to highest?"
"Okay." Now she sounds excited. Her hands are stuttering on the keys, rapid and eager, her eyes on the paper. Numbers appear on the screen—one through twenty-four.
"So, reading the symbols over the dots, in order of intensity..." I start scribbling a translation on the closest available piece of paper, my eyes darting between the screen and what I'm writing.
Sam reads over my shoulder. "Who comes seeking knowledge finds truth. The dark eats the light and what was shadowed is seen. Lies cannot pass the ring of fire."
I sit back, my legs suddenly rubbery. Sam stares at me, her eyes widening, and she puts a cool hand on the back of my neck, pressing my head down to rest on the table.
"Easy, Daniel. Take deep breaths."
"I'm okay," I mumble. "Just... um..."
"Stay put," she orders firmly. "You went white as a sheet just then. Keep your head down for at least a few minutes."
I decide to humor her because she sounds so concerned, and because all the strength seems to have run out of my body. I feel like a loose, overstretched bag of thick liquid, ready to spill onto the floor.
"Daniel... how did you do that? How could you possibly see that pattern in the original graph?"
"I don't know," I say, my words muffled against the tabletop. "I wasn't even really looking at it. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, and it just fit."
I have my eyes closed, but I can feel the excitement and energy welling up in Sam. "This is incredible," she gushes. "A code of this sophistication, that requires an advanced visual model of the light pulses to be interpreted in a certain way in order to decipher the message... the technology involved would have to be so advanced..."
"As advanced as creating a satellite that could cause daily, safely observable eclipses?" I ask. "As advanced as a series of light pulses causing a person to be completely unable to hide anything and to act on their own buried feelings?"
She pauses, and her hand comes to lightly rest on my back. "Daniel? You said that the Colonel wasn't affected after all. That he was fine."
"I know what I said."
The hand is taken away from my back. I lift my head and find Sam staring at me, wide-eyed and concerned. "Daniel?" she asks faintly. "Did he... did he tell you?"
I don't have to ask what. It looks like I'm the last to know how he really feels. The only consolation is that he didn't know either.
"He told me," I say slowly. "But I didn't believe him. I didn't think it could be real."
"And now?"
"Lies cannot pass the ring of fire." I shiver and rub at my arms, soothing my prickling skin. "I have to go, Sam. I have to talk to him."
She smiles and gives me a quick hug. "Go, Daniel. Good luck."
I nod distractedly, already on my way out the door. Yes, good luck. I'd forgotten that bad luck wasn't the only kind, but it looks like things are about to change. If I'm lucky.
~~~
"Jack?"
He looks up from his desk, somehow looking hopeful and wary at the same time. "Daniel," he says neutrally, his eyes steady on mine.
I take two stumbling steps into the room and shut the door behind me. My hands are shaking and I know Jack sees it, but he keeps his mouth shut. Not assuming, not pushing, not touching. Letting me lead. It's just what I need.
"I, ah... I figured out the stele."
He raises an eyebrow. "Oh? What's it say?"
"Who comes seeking knowledge finds truth. The dark eats the light and what was shadowed is seen. Lies cannot pass the ring of fire."
Jack stands, slowly, his hands in his pockets. I don't know if that's to appear non-threatening, or to keep from reaching out to me. I find myself hoping it's the latter. I want him to want me.
"I'm sorry," I blurt, taking another step toward him.
"What for?" So soft, his voice. So soft.
"I should have believed you. You said... what you said... and I should have believed you."
"You spent a long time not letting yourself think it could be true," he says, forgiving me effortlessly. "Old habits and all that."
"Do you still... I mean, um, even though I was so stupid about it, can you..." I can't say it. I can't ask—not when I'm so afraid the answer will be no.
Jack shakes his head, and I feel my insides freeze and twist. He must see this on my face, because he immediately steps forward, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing almost painfully.
"Yes," he whispers fiercely. "Yes, yes, Danny. Yes. I was only shaking my head because we can't do this here." He indicates the security camera with his eyes.
"Oh." Does my voice really sound so small?
"What do you say we go for a little walk, Doctor Jackson? Get some fresh air?"
I blink at him. My brain feels like it's about three steps behind in the conversation. Yes? He said yes?
"Daniel?"
"Right!" I say suddenly, my voice squeaking in a way that should be embarrassing, but isn't. I'm beyond that right now. "A walk. That, uh... good idea. Sure. Fresh air, sunshine, vitamin D, it's good for you. Nice day, is it? Is it spring? What month is it?"
Jack's laughing again, his hand still on my shoulder, sliding dangerously close to stroking my neck. "Nervous?" he asks.
"God, yes."
"Good. Me too."
I can feel my mouth smiling, even though my face feels numb. "Let's... um, let's be nervous together."
"That's a brilliant idea, Daniel," Jack says, steering me out the door with an arm casually thrown over my shoulders. "I always said you were a smart man."
"Almost wasn't smart enough," I murmur. "Almost didn't figure out something really important."
"But you did figure it out," Jack replies, his voice low, his eyes direct. "You make your own happiness in life, Daniel. You can't just wait for it to happen to you."
"I think..." I look him up and down as the elevator doors close on us. Jack tilts his head, his face quizzical, and I push myself off the wall and pin him against the opposite one, my face close to his. I rub our cheeks together like he did to me in the tent that night, relishing the coarse, close touch of skin. "I think I'm done waiting," I whisper.
"Good," he whispers back.
He tries to kiss me, but I kiss him first. I think I'm finally going to get lucky.
~~~
Fin
March 4-15, 2004