Title: Ending for a Beginning
Author: Apocalypse1
Pairing: Jack/Daniel, Sam/Jack
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jack retires.
Disclaimer: Err ... I own none of these people.
A/N: This was written for the shipslashomgwtfathon, which I have tried to link to here but this website hates me and all my works and so I failed to do so properly and have given up.
Ending for a BeginningDaniel Jackson parked the car in Jack's driveway, deliberately blocking him from getting out just to be a bit of an asshole. This was payback for all those dirty cell phone messages Jack had left on his voice mail. Sex talk was all well and good, but it was hard to keep a straight face when he checked his voicemail when other people were around.
He rang the doorbell out of habit. After a moment Jack opened the door and wordlessly handed him a chilled bottle of beer, just a bare hint of amusement in his expression. Then he turned around and went to the living room.
Daniel followed him, thinking it was going to be one of those nights.
Jack sat down on his easy chair and with his beer in his hand and gave Daniel a nod.
Daniel sat down on the couch across from him and held his beer between his knees. "Hi," he said.
"Hi," said Jack. "I started without you. Hope you don't mind."
"Oh, no, that's fine. We all know how fast I get drunk," Daniel said.
"Yeah." Jack grinned a little. "That's my Danny-boy, can't hold his liquor for shit." He took a pull of his beer and frowned at the bottle for a moment before saying, "How's life treating you?"
"Not too bad," Daniel said, watching him. "Jack?"
"Mmm?" Jack continued to slowly spin the beer bottle in his hand.
"Why am I here?" Daniel asked.
"Wasn't expecting you to go all metaphysical on me," Jack said dryly. He sighed and drank some more beer.
Daniel opened his and took a very small sip, to show willing, but he suspected he probably wanted to be sober for this. Jack in a bleak mood generally meant he was going to be sullen, but if he'd brought Daniel here and got himself drunk it meant there was something he wanted to talk about.
"It's the general thing," Jack said finally.
Daniel smiled slightly. "General O'Neill," he said. "Bothers you?"
"The guy is an insufferable prick," said Jack.
Daniel couldn't keep from a little smug chuckle. "Jack, I've been telling you that for years."
"I'm not talking about me!" Jack said testily. "I'm the same as I ever was."
"You said it, not me," Daniel said lightly.
"Dammit, Daniel," Jack growled. "I'm not him. He's me, but I'm not him. Do you know what I mean?"
Daniel ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed, thoughtfully. "Mm ... it's just the job. It doesn't define you."
"Yes, it does." Jack sighed. "You're wrong."
Daniel raised his eyebrows at him, leaning forward on his knees. "You let it define you, Jack, but that doesn't mean it has to. You've got things outside the job."
"Like what?" Jack said. "I go fishing, I guess."
"There's me," Daniel said. "For a start."
"You're part of the job," Jack said, waving his beer dismissively.
"Not all of me," Daniel said, a slightly flirtatious smirk turning the corners of his mouth.
"Oh, yeah. That," Jack said. He swigged more beer.
Daniel chuckled. "That," he said.
"That's not really anything, though, you know?" Jack said. "I mean ... you know what I mean."
Daniel leaned back again and took another sip of his beer, watching Jack's face, and nodded. "Yeah," he said.
It wasn't really anything. It was just the default that they kept coming back to, ever since that first time all those years ago - drunk, and lonely, and worried, and Jack drunk, and lonely, and grieving, although not as drunk - that when neither of them had anyone else, or at least when there was absolutely nothing better to do, they went to each other. It was a different kind of caring. An extension of their friendship into something more physical when they were horny or drunk or bored or unhappy and neither of them could figure out a better means of comfort ... "just plain bored" had become the default reason by now. They didn't even need reasons anymore, come to think of it. "When one of them felt like it" was the new reason they'd developed. The other one could be got to feel like it fairly quickly, as a general rule.
It was only sex, of course. It didn't mean anything more. If it did, they both would have had to be uncomfortable with it.
"I don't like it," Jack said, and Daniel knew after a strange mixed-up second that he was back to talking about being General O'Neill again.
Daniel nodded. "What's wrong with it, exactly?"
"I'm not the guy who tells other guys what to do. I mean, I am, but I'm not the guy who stays behind to do it. Generals stay behind. They're ..." He hesitated, searching for a word. "Valuable."
"Jack ... you are always valuable," Daniel said, frowning. "The program ... I mean, they brought you out of retirement for this. And you've been essential to it since the beginning."
Jack shook his head. "I was valuable, but I wasn't valuable enough where people could be pissed at me for entering dangerous situations. I was supposed to enter dangerous situations. And I hate doing paperwork."
Daniel was exasperated. "You've been doing paperwork for seven years!"
"But it was paperwork about stuff I'd actually done! Not about what other people did! I was there for it! It was - I don't -" He stopped. "I want another beer," he said, setting down his empty bottle on the coffee table. "D'you want one?"
Daniel shook his head. "I'm still okay on this one," he said, holding it up.
When Jack came back, he sat down on the easy chair again.
"I get that you don't like the job," Daniel said.
"It's not just that I don't like the job. I think it's eating me alive. And ... that's not it," Jack said.
"What else is it?" Daniel said, thinking he might know the answer.
Jack didn't reply. Instead, he opened his beer and gulped down quite a bit of it. Taste was apparently more or less optional this evening.
"I wonder you're not drinking something harder," Daniel said. "Smashed on beer is kind of ... slow, isn't it?"
Jack shrugged. "Keeping you company," he said.
Ah. Daniel was apparently also here as safeguard, to keep Jack from drinking himself sick. How reassuring. "I see," he replied.
They sat in silence for awhile, Jack drinking beer and Daniel watching him.
Finally Daniel said, "It's the Sam thing, isn't it?"
Jack scowled. "I don't want to talk about this," he said.
"You're going to have to. If it's starting to get to you this much, you don't get to not talk about it anymore," Daniel said.
"I was doing okay. I had it all balanced. You know?" Jack said. He shook his head. "The job was the most important thing in my life. Now I hate bits of the job. She's heading the team, and I can see her career shining brighter ..."
"You're an idiot. Jack. You're a general. Your career is ..." Daniel stopped.
Jack nodded. "It's been over for a long time now, Daniel. I mean, I was retired."
"But ... you came out of retirement," Daniel said.
"I wanted to do this. Not what I'm doing now, but what I was doing. But I don't want to be doing what I'm doing now. I stick around because I don't really want to see the SGC in the hands of some other son of a bitch, but ... when you get right down to it, I'm not doing what I want anymore. And ..." He shrugged. "I'm not gonna lie to you and say I haven't thought about it. A lot. Or drunk a lot of beer about it either." He took another pull at said beer.
"So," Daniel said, "you should retire again."
Jack blinked at him. "What?"
"Retire again. If that's what you want to do. If you're feeling unfulfilled in your work. Don't retire just because you want to date Sam," Daniel said, "but if you're ready to go ... if you've finished here ... go ahead. Be done."
Jack looked at him in silence.
"You can't come back again, though," Daniel said. "If it doesn't work out with Sam and you get bored? You can never come back. You can't go through the Stargate anymore. You'll be a civilian again."
"I'll never be a civilian," Jack said. He took another swig of beer, looking pensive. "But I think I could be retired."
Daniel nodded. He tried to imagine the SGC without Jack bopping around, with his peculiar sense of humor, his energy, his strength. He couldn't picture it. But it wasn't like the place was going to fall apart without him, right?
"I'll miss you, Jack."
"You won't have to. You're coming to see me," Jack said. "Every weekend. We'll have beer and hot dogs."
"Whenever I can," Daniel said. "You know how it is. With the job."
He grinned at Jack.
Jack grinned back, sourly.
"But we can't fuck anymore, Jack," Daniel said.
Jack blinked. "You got some kind of kinky military sex thing?"
"No. If you're with Sam. I'm not going to be responsible for you hurting her," Daniel said.
"It's you or her, is that it? I thought you were above those kind of theatrics," Jack said.
"Nothing like that," Daniel said. "I ... may not care for her the way you do. But she's ... she's very dear to me, and I'm not going to be the one you cheat on her with."
Jack hesitated. "It's not like we were ever ... you know. Together. Like that."
"No. But you and she will be, Jack, and ... women are not notoriously understanding about that one buddy you have that you fuck on weekends," Daniel said, chuckling wryly.
"If it doesn't work out with Sam, do we have to stay over?" Jack asked.
"No," Daniel said. He laughed. "Why would we?"
"Dunno," Jack said. He finished his beer off. "Once more, Daniel? For old times' sake?"
Daniel grinned. "Yeah," he said.
It turned out to be three times more. Daniel opted not to complain.
Samantha didn't get many chances for straight research these days. The lab was beginning to feel less like a second home and more like a strange room where other people worked and she didn't get to. But she had some time now, even if only a very little bit of it before she was certain to get called away on some other task.
That was why it was so irritating when the phone rang just as she was getting set up.
"Carter," she bit off into the phone, avoiding the temptation to just let its ring to its little heart's content. Having a cell phone meant being accessible. It was a thing.
"Hi," said Jack.
Despite her irritation at the interruption, she felt herself relaxing into a slight smile at his voice.
God, I'm pathetic, she thought. Not over this yet?
"Hi ... General," said Sam.
"Actually," Jack said pleasantly, "that's what I called to tell you."
"You're demoted to colonel?" she asked, feeling her heart jump. Would he back in charge of the team again? It wasn't that she objected to the new position of authority, but it really wasn't the same without him around. "Or maybe you're under my command," she added playfully.
"We-ell ... not as such, not actually. Actually, I'm retired," Jack said.
Sam blinked. She opened her mouth. Then she closed it again.
"So - when you get off work, do you want to go for a bite to eat and maybe catch a movie?"
Sam's mouth moved, but she had lost the capability of vocalization.
"I mean, no pressure or anything. I thought you'd want to," Jack said. "Not like a date or anything, I know you're still with that Pete guy, but ... you know. Like ... friends."
Pete, she thought, trying to get ahold of herself. I love Pete. I do.
"Jack ..." she said.
She couldn't turn this down. She couldn't.
"All right."
"Cool," Jack said. He hung up.
Sam looked at the phone for a very long moment, just breathing.
Very carefully, she put it in its clip on her belt.
She also, carefully, did not dance, sing, or do anything remotely silly like that - although the smile that broke out on her face was, she suspected, goofy as all hell.
She'd have to tell Pete it was over. She'd call him.
Just as soon as she got herself to stop grinning like a maniac, she'd call him.