AN: This chapter references 3x18 'Shades of Grey' and 3x10 'Forever in a Day.'
tw: quick sentence about suicidal themes, though it's in the past and not active for either character.
Also, fun fact - the green blanket is based off a real Scottish wool blanket my grandmother used to own. I can still feel the itchy comfort.
A lizard bit his leg once.
No joke—a skinny yellow critter popped out of a hole in the desert dune and bit Jack squarely on the shin. He was crouched down at the time, rifle up to his eye, granting the territorial lizard better access.
It wasn't a deep nip, not excessively painful; his fatigues took most of the brunt with only a small bruise to show for it. The skin didn't even break.
But the guys in his unit laughed at him for a month straight and on the plane ride home someone snuck a stuffed animal gecko into his rucksack. He still has that gecko somewhere, tucked away with other tour mementos.
He'd been doing his duty! And look where it got him. The injustice of it all is what made Jack shake his head at the time. Though he also had a good laugh over it.
That memory races through Jack's mind when he gets home from work, his civic duty…
And the front door is already ajar.
Now, a smarter or more paranoid person might have reached for that handgun in his truck glove compartment. Noted the soft kitchen light already turned on over the stove and tensed at the prospect of an intruder.
As it is, Jack walks at a sedate pace through the door and makes sure his feet scuff on the floor, the door thumps, and grocery bags in his hands crinkle when he sets them on the kitchen table. Frozen items are quickly stored before they thaw.
Long before Jack reached the porch steps, his nose caught the heavy scent of bahara. Not a regular occurrence in his house.
The distinct Egyptian flavours carry him through the kitchen and down a step towards a lump stretched lengthwise on his couch. Stacked on the coffee table are takeout boxes of mujarda, tahini chicken, and mesaka'a, half eaten.
Oddly enough, no lights shine in the living room. No TV, nothing. The friend-sized lump isn't moving at all.
Jack rounds the couch. "I brought home frozen pizzas for a late supper, but I see you already got started without…"
You'd think lack of lamp light would hinder Jack's eyes, but there's just enough dusk left to glow ambient off twin shiny, wet tracks on the face poking out the itchy green blanket Grandma O'Neill gave him as a newlywed gift eons ago.
Jack's whole body jolts. Freeze framed before he takes another breath.
He can't quite make sense of it, the puffy eyes where his unexpected house guest is turned on his side. The red nose, fidgety fingers that roam and wander over that travesty of a blanket hem job, spikes of hair that stick to the equally itchy couch cushion. Somehow these clues look worse in dim lighting, harsher than if they'd been lit up by fluorescents.
For a stunned moment, there's no making sense of this at all.
Then Daniel sniffs, rather suddenly, into the hush.
It breaks the spell and Jack goes down on one knee.
His hand shoots out for Daniel's forehead at the same time, no fever, then ever so carefully presses a thumb to the lower lid. With a light flick, Jack pulls it down so he can check Daniel's pupils. They dilate normally, staring at Jack with a pain filled glaze.
More tears well in his eyes and flood down the slope of his cheeks.
Daniel lets Jack do whatever he wants, like a lost lamb who's too tired to care what happens. Terrifying as this is, Jack's just relieved it doesn't seem to be injury based. No physical culprit.
"Hey." The tender tone makes Daniel blink, glasses all over the place on the perch of his nose. Jack mirrors the pain in a twisted grimace. "What's goin' on in here? Huh?"
He taps over Daniel's chest, his heart, somewhere under that sea of Scottish wool, and cards through his hair. It's partly to check for a head injury and partly to reassure himself.
Jack expected this to be one of those things they do, a tradition started way back when Daniel first crashed with him after Abydos. Hard day at work? Daniel pops by for beers, supper, and a hockey game where they argue about the Maple Leafs. Frustrated about a decision some pencil pusher made? Daniel paces in front of the couch and rants while Jack brews him tea.
Not…not this. This hasn't happened in a long time.
"Your car isn't in the driveway," Jack prompts, when Daniel just gazes at him.
"Took a cab."
Which, well. Okay. Jack can play emotional detective for a while.
"Is this about me pretending to quit the SGC to go undercover? I know that hit you harder than you'll admit."
But Daniel shakes his head, though the soft-worded question makes him cry harder. His sniffling gets louder, with tired fray lines around his eyes that speak to an earlier weepy fit.
Lines, Jack thinks, wry at himself. What lines?
And it poleaxes him then—Daniel is young. So, so very young. Thirty-one years old with too much life experience and nowhere to go but up.
His skin might have a few extra texture marks than when Jack first met him, but it's smoother than anyone else's on SG-1 because of this obvious fact Jack forgets some days.
Daniel is young. Youngest on the team by a good five years behind Sam.
And yet Daniel's spirit is very, very old.
Granted, it doesn't look so old when he's bundled up burrito style in this blanket that smells like Jack and middle eastern spices and rum. When his hair sticks up like he put it through a blender and he gazes at Jack with enough anguish and make-it-go-away eyes to rival a toddler.
"Sorry."
Jack's hand shifts back up to resume the petting strokes. "I'm not. Don't apologize for not wanting to be alone in that big apartment."
"Just feelin' crappy."
"I can see that. Sucks to go through this by yourself."
Daniel wipes his nose on the top of the blanket, which Jack really can't fault him for because he does the same thing when he's miserable.
"Couldn't…c-couldn't save that group of villagers today."
Jack draws back a few feet, so his face isn't as close to Daniel's. "What, the ones trapped under the bell tower?"
"Yeah, they…they were screaming, Jack. When the buildings came down." Daniel's throat clicks in a swallow, louder than it should be with the house so quiet. "Then they stopped."
"The rest of the citizens are fine now though," Jack clarifies, despite the fact Daniel was at the same debrief this afternoon. "Hammond agreed to send relief aid so they can rebuild."
Daniel just shakes his head again. "They went silent."
Jack has honest-to-God forgotten about this incident a little bit.
Bad colonel award but hey, they had bigger priorities with the whole earthquake destroying the village tidbit going on. Destroying most of the planet really. Carter said it competed with the Richter scale and would have damaged even the most advanced city, let alone a ragtag group of farm houses and two-story taverns.
SG-1 went to explore and learn about how the villagers' ancestors freed themselves from Goa'uld rule. No one had been prepared for the town hall to start shaking or the floor to crack open, least of all the villagers. They hadn't had an earthquake in centuries.
"I see." Jack says it even softer than his earlier words.
He slides the glasses higher and straighter on Daniel's nose. They're so delicate, so precisely made. Round frames barely hold Daniel's thick prescription, wired in bronzy metal.
"We couldn't have done a thing, Daniel, even if we had run to the village square in time."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Positive, and I think you are too. It was just a fluke accident."
"I know." Daniel sighs it out around a hitch in his breathing.
Funny, that. "This is gonna sound callous…but we've seen a lot of people die in this job over three or so years."
Daniel's glasses fog for a moment, closer to his eyes now. "Yeah, we have."
"And it doesn't always affect you like this."
Daniel says nothing, hesitates—and Jack feels like a jerk. A cruel jerk.
"Your parents." His hand stops moving and cinches gently around a palmful of Daniel's hair. "Of course. I'm so sorry, Daniel."
"It's fine."
"It's really not."
"That's not why today…" Round four or maybe even five of tears sifts to Daniel's jaw. "That's not why I'm crying."
Then why? Jack thinks, jaded as the question seems. Maybe he should be asking why he isn't mourning too.
"Ten innocent people," Daniel murmurs, pitch higher than it was a minute ago. "Gone in seconds."
Jack is about to comment on that when Daniel's hand fishes out of the blanket to rub his temple. A snaked line creases across his forehead to go with the bloodshot eyes.
"Be right back." Jack squeezes Daniel's wrist as he hops to his feet.
Upon a peruse of the spartan pantry and the generous medicine cabinet, Jack digs out Tylenol, a glass of ginger ale, and some herb crackers. He also grabs the dish cloth where it hangs off the kitchen sink tap on his way by. After running it under lukewarm water, he wrings it out.
Daniel hasn't moved much in five minutes, though it's tar black outside the patio windows now and Jack flicks on a table lamp at the foot of the couch. He favours it over the wall light because it's softer, a muted yellow that suffuses the room with warmth.
Daniel still squints, his glasses in disarray once again thanks to the slippery effect of tears on his skin. He has to lift his head to eye Jack through the lenses.
"Here." Jack sits in the hollow near Daniel's stomach and hands him the glass. He doesn't let go, even when Daniel brings it to his face. "Slow sips, bud. Slow sips."
Fizz on Daniel's lips starts his head back at first before he sniffs and recognizes what it is. Two Tylenol are swigged back with absolutely no fan fair. "Thanks."
"Had the headache for a while?"
"Coupla hours."
Jack doesn't reply, other than to cover Daniel's forehead with the cloth and push up his glasses again. Daniel closes his eyes into the sensation and away slithers the snake. Tension lines around his jaw melt. The cloth has the added benefit of being used to swipe away dried tears.
Jack hasn't tended someone's pain with a washcloth in a long time. Not since…
He quickly stows away that line of thinking.
A round cracker is nibbled next, at almost torturous speed. Daniel must be more nauseous than he lets on. Jack actually times the second cracker—it takes Daniel over three minutes to eat.
"Can your eyes handle a game?"
"No." Daniel excavates a third cracker from the box, where Jack left it on the floor within easy reach. "But I like the sounds."
By the time Jack gets them settled, him tucked between the back of Daniel's knees and the couch, blanket draped around them both, remote in hand, Daniel has finally stopped crying, at least in an active sense.
Jack decides on a basketball game, some college league finals tournament. He keeps the volume low, nearly muted. Daniel's eyes stay closed, but he looks calmer. The house hovers in a suspended state, quiet save the commentator's voice and Daniel's congested breaths through his nose.
Elbow propped on Daniel's hip, Jack pats the closest knee. Somewhere between the crackers and the game's second quarter, he puts the pieces together in a messy sort of reverse order. This is about dead villagers on another planet but at the same time it's not really, not at all.
His throat knots.
Daniel reaches across for Jack's hand. Their fingers end up in a clumsy tangle, Jack's calloused skin and Daniel's long fingers that would put a concert pianist to shame. Chipped nails from digging in the dirt.
"I forget sometimes." Jack rubs a thumb over the inside of Daniel's ring finger. "That it's only been eight months since she died."
Only one tear escapes this time, a single droplet from the eye facing up. Just one dewdrop. But the sight guts Jack clean through.
Daniel's tear catches red light from the TV's melee of crimson jerseys and glides sideways towards the bottom of his left ear, as if from an unseen wound.
"I'm sorry," Jack whispers. "Sorry that I forget you're still grieving."
Daniel's nose twitches in another sniff. "I forget too."
Scratch Jack's previous conclusion—these three words slaughter him in a blink.
It's easy to forget when you never stop moving. Jack's been there more often than he wants to tally up.
He clutches Daniel's kneecap with his other hand. "She'd be proud of you, you know."
Daniel curls into himself like a sad turtle. "How do you figure that?"
"Daniel, you have the most incredible heart of anyone I've ever met. Period. You're a wonder."
The bald, earnest words choke inside Jack at the end. He closes his mouth abruptly, uncomfortable at the sensation of verbal honesty. He wouldn't, however, take it back for anything.
Daniel's eyes snap open.
"You do." Jack forces out the truth, for he's never been able to refuse Daniel anything when he looks like this. "We need your brain, sure. You and Carter are a whole university of knowledge in two bodies, but that's not why the team would be incomplete without you."
Daniel's mouth flounders, then settles on a scowl. "I couldn't save her, Jack."
"None of us could."
"Sha're was…" Daniel's voice cracks. "She was innocent too."
"Yes, she was. Just like you."
Both men are too world-weary for this to truly be the case, but Jack's not talking about life experience. He's talking about the part that changed his mind on blowing himself up and helps him want to get up in the morning, a curiosity that reminds him why they step through the gate in the first place.
He's talking about the part of Daniel that hasn't stopped believing in people.
Jack twists to the side so he can hold Daniel's hand in both his own. Daniel tries to pull away but Jack grips him fast.
"She was because you were."
"Jack—"
"You remind people of what we're meant to be, before dark experiences take the wind out of us. Sha're was better for knowing you."
They've talked about her death since debrief that day, of course they have, but Jack realizes they don't talk about her life. About Daniel's life, before he joined the SGC, back when it was just he and Jack against a very different world.
"What good was that heart if it couldn't save her?" Daniel spits out each word. The hand in Jack's begins to tremble.
"Hey, hey." Jack jostles Daniel's arm. "Look at me."
But Daniel's eyes cinch shut again, tight as a wad of tissue paper. He's never been very good at doing what Jack tells him. He tosses the washcloth onto the floor.
Making an executive decision, Jack slides out and back down to his knees. Daniel turns his face into the cushion.
Oh no. We're not having that.
Jack throws manly distance out the window and gathers Daniel up in warm arms, one around the back of his neck and the other behind his shoulders. Daniel, for all that he feels like a piece of plywood in Jack's embrace, balls both fists in Jack's shirt front. He holds on for dear life.
Daniel isn't crying again, but he dry gasps into Jack's shoulder. Over and over again.
"It did," Jack insists. "You did save her."
Daniel pushes a bony fist against Jack's chest, which, ow.
But he hears its silent protest. "You gave her back her mind, for however brief a time, so she could be with you and loved before she died. You saved the part of her that mattered, Daniel."
Jack doesn't say soul, because he doesn't know what he believes on that front, but Daniel's pretty good at hearing words people refuse to say. They both are after all this time.
Sure enough, the boxer fists relax and Daniel's arms sneak around to hug back. His nose feels cold and oh so normal on Jack's neck. For they've done this more times than Jack can honestly count.
If his own eyes tear up a bit, well, who's going to know?
"Thanks, Jack."
"Anytime, Danny. You know you're always welcome here."
"I mean for…for…how you've stuck around longer than anybody else in my life."
Jack has to swallow a few times before he can speak. "We're going to be alright, okay?"
One of Daniel's hands has landed on his shoulder and it tightens. His pronounced ribs dig into Jack's diaphragm, bringing a smile to his face. The last person Jack held for prolonged minutes like this was also Daniel, after the funeral, and the familiar weight of him eases something deep and dusty in his heart.
For a long time there's only the cheers of a TV crowd, their heartbeats in a duet, and the smell of ginger ale and paprika.
When the hands go lax around Jack's back, some minutes later, he pulls away in time to see Daniel's lids droop. Those Tylenol hit him in real time, compounded with bags under his eyes.
"When was the last time you slept?"
"Dunno. Two days ago?"
"Uh-huh. I expect nothing less from you, my workaholic friend." Jack sets him back down on the couch and readjusts the crumpled blanket.
Low and behold—out falls a stuffed animal.
It's a yellow gecko. About the length of Jack's forearm.
He gapes at it. "Where did you find this?"
Daniel's already drifting off, but he flails a hand until Jack nestles the stuffed critter back in his arms. "Found it in your closet when I was lookin' for the blanket."
So saying, he promptly cuddles the thing to his chest like he's been doing it all his life and closes his eyes. Filled with silicone beans, the gecko's tiny feet make squishy sounds on Daniel's wrist.
Jack can't resist a ruffle of the muddled hair. Daniel opens his eyes for the express purpose of rolling them at Jack.
"Ma'be I'll believe you someday," Daniel slurs, on the brink of sleep. "'Bout how my heart…"
"How you saved hers."
"Mmm."
Jack watches Daniel go the rest of the way, defeated in the battle with sleep. It's a light doze, judging by how his limbs twitch whenever there's a particularly loud sound on the TV, but Jack removes the glasses and Daniel doesn't stir. He leaves them on the coffee table where Daniel will be sure to spot them in the morning.
This is Jack's opportunity. To get up off his stiff knees, dry his eyes, close up shop and lock doors for the night, crawl under his own itchy quilt in the bedroom…
But he can only kneel in the banal peace of his normally empty house, now filled with the technicolour life that is Daniel Jackson, and drink in the awe of it all. That he is trusted enough by this battered life to be sought for shelter in a personal storm.
"You seem to have a habit of saving people," he breathes, hand on Daniel's forehead. "Wouldn't be here if you didn't."
It might just be Jack's imagination, but he's never noticed the gecko's mouth before. Complete with the big glass marble eyes—it looks like it's smiling.
So does Daniel.
