Chapter 3

It was nearly 20.00hrs when Jack wandered along the corridor towards the commissary. He pushed open the door and saw one or two personnel sitting at the tables eating their meals or just sitting with a cup of coffee. He spotted Daniel safely ensconced in the corner of the room, his nose buried in a folder and a cup of coffee in his hand. He was oblivious to all around him as usual.

Jack walked along the counter, looking at the array of food on offer but his stomach suddenly balked at the idea of eating. Feeling slightly nauseous now he'd seen what was to be had, he opted for a cup of coffee instead. He picked up the cup and made his way over to Daniel's table.

"Daniel," Jack said as he sat down opposite his friend. "I thought you'd be gone from here now. Don't you guys keep Friday's for team nights any more?"

Daniel looked over the top of his glasses at Jack and appeared startled at Jack's statement.

"Friday night?"

"It was last time I looked," Jack replied with a smug grin.

"Damn! What time is it?" he asked frowning.

"Oh...it's..." Jack made a big show of checking his watch. "20.15 hrs. now. Shouldn't you be with Carter and Teal'c?"

"Ah...no!"

"No?"

"We ah...we dropped it."

"Why?

"Because it wasn't the same."

"For fear of repeating myself here Daniel, why?"

"It wasn't the same anymore. Not without you Jack. Those Jack O'Neill moments are missing. You know...the ones where we had to sit through the 'Simpsons' tapes for hours. There's no fun when there's only Sam and I to drink the beer. The conversation is far too serious. There's no-one to argue with us. Sam spends a lot of the time with Pete now too. He's not a patch on you Jack. He has absolutely no sense of humour, and Sam's the only one who laughs at his jokes. I...we... miss you Jack," he explained with embarrassment.

"Really?" Jack didn't know what to say to that little speech. "Why, thank you Daniel. That's nice. I kinda miss you guys too ya know," he sighed sadly.

They both sat in silence, brooding over missed companionship.

"What say we finish up and go for a beer, huh? After today's success we deserve a little break, don't ya think?" Jack said with a gleam in his eye. He was ready to give the paperwork a miss any day.

Daniel looked up and saw hope written over Jack's face. He was actually thinking of going home to bed, but instead he just smiled and nodded.

"Sure Jack. Meet you up top in 15?"

"Youbetcha!"

With that they both abandoned their, by now, cold coffee and hurried away.

Finigan's bar was crowded, being a Friday night, and Jack and Daniel had found a table right in the corner of the room. It was dark, and gloomy but it suited them perfectly. Jack took a huge swig of the beer from the chilled bottle and almost spit it out again. He choked but swallowed it down with difficulty and a cough afterwards.

"Jeez!" Jack exclaimed in disgust. "This beer tastes like crap! Tell me again why I'm drinking it Daniel?"

"What's wrong with it? It's good," Daniel responded in umbrage. He was enjoying it.

Jack glared at him.

"Yes well, you wouldn't know a good beer even if it..."

"Yes I do!" Daniel snapped in order to head off Jack's less than complimentary retort. "This stuff is really great! It's expensive."

"That does nothing to add to it's quality Daniel, and you're drunk."

"No I'm not!"

"Yes you are!"

"Am not," Daniel replied belligerently.

"Are too! Come on Daniel. I'll take you home!"

"You haven't finished your...beer!" he hiccupped.

"Yeah well, I don't like it," he pouted, "it tastes too damn weird. Come on Daniel," Jack urged, trying to pull his friend up from the seat. "I got better beer at home."

Daniel reluctantly followed his friend as they left the bar and headed towards Jack's truck. There was no way Jack was going to let Daniel drive his car home tonight, not while he himself was still stone cold sober.

Instead of dropping Daniel off at his home, Jack took him back to his house and put him to bed in the spare bedroom. He switched off the lights and went to bed himself, feeling slightly worse for wear too, though not for the same reason as Daniel. That man was sooo gonna pay for making him drink that crap at the bar.

No sooner had Jack retired and fallen asleep, at almost 01.00 hrs., then he was scrambling from his bed and dashing to the bathroom in time to lose everything he'd eaten during the previous day and more by the feel of it.

He slid to his knees on the floor to lean against the cool tiles, feeling somewhat indignant that Daniel had now given him hours ahead of uncomfortable kneeling to the god of porcelain. He was sooo gonna kill him. Next time he was buying the damn beer. That diabolical stuff didn't taste right going down and it sure as hell didn't taste any better coming back up.

He puked and retched and heaved a few more times before he decided that perhaps it was safe enough to crawl back to bed again. His knees were now killing him and he was sweating like the proverbial pig, but on the other hand, he was also shivering, having nothing except a pair of boxers on at the time. The temperature inside the house had dropped as it had outside, and there was a chill in the early Spring air, so sitting on the bathroom floor for the past hour did nothing to keep him from getting chilled.

He staggered up from his position on the floor, hanging onto the wall for good measure, cursing softly from feeling every minute spent on his damn knees. He rinsed his mouth out in the basin, having brushed his teeth to rid himself of the vile taste left in his mouth. He felt sure some smelly creature had just crawled on inside it and then promptly died. Trying to convince himself that he felt better, he stumbled back to bed, and hoped to god he'd feel vastly improved in the morning.

Saturday was actually Daniels' day off, and the archaeologist was quite happy to stay where he was when the sun rose. His head hurt and he could barely see straight. Jack was right, he had been drunk, and he'd only had one beer; but that foreign stuff must have been really strong. His stomach felt a little delicate, so he turned over and snuggled down into the covers, ignoring the time, and the queasy feeling niggling at his gut.

If anything Jack felt worse when the dawn eventually crept over his windowsill. One good thing though, he didn't feel like he needed to puke any more, but his head throbbed instead, more than making up for the nausea. He rubbed his hand over his face, drawing it down slowly as he tried to wash away the residual memory of last night.

He hauled his aching body from his bed when the clock said 07.00hrs and after dragging on some sweats, made his way to the kitchen to brew a decent cup of coffee. He made himself some toast as it was about the only thing he felt would stay down right then. He didn't want to risk upsetting his stomach all over again.

While he waited for his breakfast, he called the base and cried off going in unless there was an emergency. Nobody was scheduled to go off-world today and none of the teams currently on other planets were expected home. He didn't ring in to say he was sick exactly, he just said something had come up; well, it wasn't a lie as such – yesterday's dinner had come up.

Once the coffee was ready he poured himself a cup and one for Daniel, though he wondered why he was being so generous when it was obvious the man had tried to poison him last night with that rot-gut muck he called beer. Jack shuddered at the thought of it and swallowed convulsively.

He wove his way along the hall and almost fell through the door when he opened it. He managed to keep from spilling the hot black liquid and sucked in a steadying breath to step rather shakily across the room to the bed where his friend lay sleeping still.

"Daniel. Daniel!" he called, wincing at the loudness of is own voice.

There was no answer except a light snore. Jack placed the cup on the nightstand and shook his friend's shoulder forcefully.

"Daniel!" he cried louder, which was enough to send his head reeling under the onslaught of sound. "Crap!" he muttered, plonking his butt down heavily on the side of the bed and managing to wake Daniel at last with the movement.

"J'ck?" he muttered sleepily.

"Who else were you expecting? One of those 'ditzy blondes' we picked up at the bar last night?"

"Geez Jack! You don't have to shout!" he whispered groggily, holding his head. "Wh...what? We didn't...did we?" he asked in confusion when he realised what Jack had said, sitting up quickly and regretting it almost immediately.

"Whadda you think?" Jack sighed in exasperation. Daniel was so easy to lead on sometimes.

Daniel heaved a sigh of relief when he realised Jack was kidding him and that there wasn't any 'ditzy blonde' in bed with him.

"And I didn't shout, but I did call ya several times Daniel. Coffee. On the nightstand, and thank you so much for last night!" he added, his voice laden with sarcasm.

"What?" Daniel asked reaching for his glasses. He propped them on his nose and took a look at his friend. Jack looked washed out and heavy-eyed.

"Ooh Jack. You...er...you don't look so good."

"Ya think?" he moaned, shutting out the light for a moment with his hand to ease his thumping headache and then swallowed some bile that scalded the back of his throat. His mouth still tasted foul.

Jack rose unsteadily to his feet and headed for the door, mumbling about not letting the coffee get cold and breakfast was ready if he felt up to it; he wasn't even sure that he was, now he'd made it.

Daniel followed his sluggish movements and sighed. 'That beer must have been really strong for Jack to be having a hangover too, even though he didn't drink that much of it. Maybe next time they should stick to the usual brands they knew.'

After a more sullen and silent than usual breakfast, the morning passed quietly, with neither of them willing to do much of anything. In fact Jack sprawled out on the sofa with his arm across his eyes, while Daniel chose the easy chair and both fell asleep again for another three hours before being woken by the ringing of the telephone.

Jack automatically leapt up to answer it, though he quickly had to hang onto the back of the chair for support when the world tilted alarmingly.

"O'Neill!" he mumbled, half asleep and still unsteady on his feet.

Daniel listened to the one-sided conversation and he didn't need to be a rocket scientist to know something was going on inside the SGC that needed Jack's immediate attention.

"You're sure?" Jack said into the phone, sobering up quickly.

"Okay. Get hold of Colonel Carter and Teal'c, and I'll grab Daniel. Be there in 30."

Jack replaced the phone and turned to Daniel. He took a moment to scrub his hands over his face to pull his thoughts together, then at Daniel's curious face he gave him the information he needed.

"Come on Daniel, get yourself together. There's a crisis that needs us to sort it out. Go, get some shoes on. Now!" Jack growled. He wasn't really up to facing some dire emergency at the SGC, but needs must, and he was now the man in charge so he had very little choice.

Daniel, who was bare-footed, rose as quickly as he could from the chair, and hurried into the spare bedroom to put his shoes and socks on and grab his jacket.

"Are you up to this Jack?" Daniel asked tentatively eyeing Jack's pale yet flushed face as they met in the hallway.

Jack glared at his friend, then answered in perfect honesty.

"No. But neither are you, so that makes two of us. Next time we go out, I'm buying!" he reminded him. Daniel didn't dare disagree.

"What's going on?" Daniel persisted in asking questions when Jack needed all his concentration on the road ahead.

"I won't know that until we get there Daniel. Dixon couldn't say over the phone, you know that," Jack panted. He was feeling woozy now. Blowing hot and cold, and driving the truck was getting harder. They fell into an uneasy quiet, both wondering what was happening inside the SGC or off-world to warrant calling them in. Jack was thankful that Daniel wasn't saying much now, allowing him the wherewithal to keep his focus on the road ahead.

TBC