Capes and Tights
"Yes, I did."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did."
"No, you didn't."
"Jack. Yes, I did."
"For the last time—you did not."
Jack sat on the gurney, bare to the waist. What was left of his shirt lay on the floor.
"I did so, Jack. You were there one minute, and then you were hanging off the edge of the cliff, and yelling for Teal'c, who—by the way—was totally not listening to you—and then I came over and I saved your butt."
The Colonel scowled petulantly. "I don't remember it that way."
"What, the screaming like a girl for Teal'c part, or the part where I saved your butt?"
"None of it." He turned and glared at Daniel over his shoulder. "I remember none of it that way."
Doctor Fraiser approached the Colonel with a tray covered with a blue cloth. "Okay, Colonel. Let's get you fixed up." She set the tray on the gurney next to O'Neill and then looked around for her stool. It sat on the other side of the room. She headed for it, but not without giving her pouting patient a stern look. "Don't touch anything, Colonel. Or I'll get out the really big needles."
Jack stared at the tray sullenly. "Sure. Take all the fun out of it."
Daniel smiled at Janet as she passed. "Hey, Janet. Did you hear that I saved Jack's life?"
"I did." The little captain beamed at the archaeologist. "Congratulations."
"I snatched him right out of the air!" Daniel continued. "Right from the brink!"
Janet pushed the stool back over in front of O'Neill's gurney. Sitting, she busied herself with snapping on some exam gloves and uncovering the tray. "Haven't I heard that phrase somewhere before?"
"I dunno." Daniel said. A nurse had approached him with another tray. His glee turned to wariness. "Hey, Janet. What's this?"
"I know that you didn't actually get injured on P5D-897, but your chart says you're due for your Gamma Globulin." She paused as she perused Jack's chest. "So I'm having Lieutenant Walling give you one."
"Well." Daniel stared in trepidation as the nurse put on her own gloves. "That sucks."
"You need it, Daniel."
"Yeah, I know, but I hate that shot."
"I don't know anyone that likes it." Janet pulled out a flashlight to better study the wound on the Colonel's abdomen.
"Well, yeah, because it hurts. It feels like you're injecting stew."
"Well, they do call it the Peanut Butter shot." She gently probed around the wound. "Colonel, it looks like there's something in here."
Jack looked down. "I told ya."
Daniel watched as the nurse prepared the syringe. "It already hurts."
"You'll be fine, Daniel." The doctor reassured him placidly.
"Janet, isn't there a better method of giving this one? An oral dose or an IV?"
Janet looked up from the Colonel's stomach and peered around his body at Daniel. "You'd rather have an IV?"
"I hate this shot."
"Hop down." Lieutenant Walling motioned for Daniel to stand.
"I save the life of the most manly man on base, the biggest hero in the Galaxy, and this is the thanks I get?"
"Turn." The Lieutenant flicked at the syringe with her index finger, shaking all the air to the surface.
"You think you finally earn some respect, and then someone pokes you in the butt with a needle the size of a Buick."
"Yeah, well, Daniel, balls bounce, cookies crumble."
"Jack babbles." Daniel stated. "Jack whines. Jack wreaks havoc on clichés."
The doctor made a sound in her throat, and then erupted with, "Emperor's New Groove."
"What?" Both Jack and Daniel returned their attention to Doc Fraiser.
"Emperor's New Groove. David Spade, John Gooman, Eartha Kitt." She doused a huge swab with iodine and started cleaning away the dirt on the wound.
"What about it?" Daniel asked the question.
"That's where that line is from. The Emperor's New Groove. Guy turns into a llama, and he has to get back to the castle. Hilarity ensues."
"Doesn't sound all that funny." Jack spoke from around clenched teeth. It wasn't true what they said—you never got used to pain.
"It's cute." Janet wet a piece of gauze for a particularly stubborn piece of grit. "Cassie wanted to watch it."
"She's what, thirteen years old?"
"Almost. The other kids in middle school keep quoting movies, and she hadn't seen any of them. So we're renting all these movies and watching them together." She reached for her tweezers. "Kind of like Earth homework."
"Wow. I hadn't thought of that. She's missed all that stuff—Sesame Street, Barney, the Teletubbies—"
"That's disturbing, Daniel, how do you know about those shows?" O'Neill tried to ignore the fact that the swab was cleaning him from the inside. Yuck.
"I'm current on my popular culture."
"Yes, well." Janet continued. "Apparently nobody was going to believe that Walt Disney and his minions hadn't invaded Toronto, too, so we've been studying up."
"Drop your pants, Daniel." The Lieutenant looked like she'd been waiting a while to say that line. Daniel glared at her suspiciously.
Obedient, however, he hopped off the gurney and unbuttoned his pants. He jerked his head toward the curtain that ran on a track around the exam area. "Could I have some privacy, at least?"
"You're fine, Daniel. Just imagine you're living with the tribesmen of Gumby and they're all naked, too." Jack stared at the wall, trying assiduously not to study the swab moving back and forth under his skin.
"Funny, Jack." But Daniel's tone said that it really wasn't.
Daniel's nurse reached up and yanked the curtain partially closed. At least he wasn't visible from the entry door, any more. He unzipped and turned, lowering his pants to mid thigh. Then, he crossed one leg over the other, leaving the crossed leg as slack as possible.
He waited as the Lieutenant swabbed his bare backside with an alcohol laced cotton ball, and then blew on it to dry it off a little. He couldn't help but laugh. That part always tickled.
Doctor Fraiser pulled a little needle from her tray. "I'm just going to numb you up, sir."
"Can I be numbed up, too?" Daniel asked from behind his curtain.
"You'll be fine, Daniel." Ever patient, Janet rarely lost her cool with Daniel.
His answer was a sharp intake of breath, followed by something that sounded like a goat in labor.
"That sounded fun, Daniel. Can I be next?" Jack's face was screwed up, not watching as Janet fished tiny bits of twig and dirt out from under his skin. "Please?"
"You'll get your turn, Jack." There were zipping sounds, and then Daniel emerged out from around the curtain. Nurse Walling passed in front of him, carrying her tray, a sly smile on her face. He raised a brow at her and looked at her from over the rims of his glasses. "Was it good for you, too?"
The Lieutenant laughed and shrugged as she left the infirmary. As she passed through the door, Daniel was sure he heard her say something about having a cigarette.
He crossed to lean gingerly on the empty bed on the other side of O'Neill. "I swear they like doing that."
"It's because they think you have a cute tush, Dr. Jackson." Janet pulled a large bit of debris out of the wound. "Wow. I think that's an entire branch."
"It was a nasty cliff." The Colonel explained.
"Which you just—walked over?" Her skepticism lay obvious in her words.
"It was kinda hard to see it."
"How do you miss a cliff, Colonel? It's like—the edge of a mountain."
Daniel grinned. "Yeah, Jack, why don't you tell her?"
"No."
"Come on, Jack O'Neill, intrepid and courageous soldier." Daniel grinned widely. "Why don't you tell her?"
"I don't want to." Jack watched as something else—a leaf?—was pulled from the abrasion on his stomach.
"See, Janet. On 897 there are these little critters."
"Not so little." The Colonel pointed out. "And they had teeth. Huge teeth."
"Okay, they did have the teeth, but they were the size of—a Maltese, or a small Poodle."
"German Shepherds." Jack winced as she probed around with the swab. "Big German Shepherds."
"Whatever." Daniel shifted. His butt was already starting to hurt from the shot. "Anyhoo—Jack was looking at the Monolith."
"And by Monolith, he means rock."
"It had been carved by the Ancients."
"It was a rock."
"Okay—rock. He was looking at the rock, and he tries to move it, and one of these little critters jumps out of the bushes and starts running after him."
"Thing had to have weighed a hundred pounds." Jack gestured at the doctor as if to emphasize his point.
"Colonel, you need to hold still. I'm trying to get the rest of this out. I don't want it to become infected."
"Yeah, shut up, Jack. I'll finish this story."
"Be nice, Daniel." Janet had gotten the Parental Warning Voice down soon after she'd acquired Cassie.
"Whatever." He shifted again. Those shots were pure evil. "So Jack is standing there with this huge gun, right? He's a great shot—but instead of sighting the thing and taking it out, he starts jumping around and screaming—'Where'd it go? Where'd it go?'"
"I—"
"Colonel." The doctor placed a hand on his chest. "Please—hold still."
"So there's Jack O'Neill—the bravest guy in the universe, running around in circles, holding his P-90 above his head shrieking, 'Get it! Get it!' to Nobody!" Daniel was thoroughly enjoying himself. "Teal'c was on the other side of the clearing, and Sam was examining something at the monument. The Monolith—"
"Rock!"
"The rock was way over there." He gestured with one hand towards his curtained exam area. "So he's running around, looking behind him for the critter."
"Evil, snarling, growling critter." O'Neill added.
"Colonel, do I have to send him away?"
"Please? Would you?" Jack steepled his brows, pleading for mercy. "Could you?"
And yet Daniel continued. "And as he's looking behind him, trying to find out where the thing is—Poof!—over the side he goes."
"I did not poof. I never poof. Not once in my life have I ever gone Poof."
"Sir, you need to hold still." Janet looked at him with her best Napoleon face. "Really."
"And I'm over at the Monolith-rock, and I see him disappear, because I've been watching him dance around this beast, and so I run over and crawl to the edge, and there he is."
"Was there a ledge?"
"Kind of."
"What do you mean, 'kind of'?" She reached for the tweezers again. More twigs.
"He'd landed on a root."
"Sticking out of the side of the mountain?"
"Straight out."
"You mean—"
"I do. He was not only calling for Teal'c, he was singing. Soprano."
Janet looked up at the Colonel. "Wow. Ouch. Why didn't you tell me that?"
"I was afraid you'd try to get the debris out of it." Jack glared at her.
Janet ducked her head, hiding a smile. "Go on, Daniel."
"Oh yes. Please." The Colonel grunted. "Do."
"So I reach out a hand, but I can't reach, so I run back to my pack and get some rope. I tie this really great knot I learned while I was studying some Inca ruins in South America, and I lower the knot down to him, and secure the other end of the rope around my body."
"I'm being chased down mountain sides by huge snarling beasts, and Daniel's playing Boy Scout."
"Yeah, and lucky you, Jack, because the root starts to slip—obviously it can't handle the weight of Jack on it."
"Yes." Jack cast a look heavenward. "Not many things can handle the weight of Jack."
Daniel rolled his eyes and hurried on. "And he grabs the knot just as the root gives way. So he's swinging on the knot, and I'm pulling on the rope, and I get him to the edge, and drag him over. And we both start running back toward the Monolith—"
"Rock!"
"—Because we can hear that something's happening there, and when the root gives way, the whole side of the mountain falls down into the ravine!"
Janet looked up from her work. "Really?" She turned and looked at Daniel, newfound respect on her face. "That's incredible, Dr. Jackson. Amazing."
"Why, thank you." Daniel hopped up onto the exam bed, but landed wrong on the injection site. Grinding out a curse, he scoots back off. "And for all this heroism, what do I get? A shot in the butt."
Doc Fraiser nodded. "An important shot in the butt."
"So. See? I snatched him right from the brink! I'm a hero!"
"You're a something." Jack retorted.
"They should give me a medal. A cape."
"Daniel, I'll happily buy you a leotard and some tights." Jack glanced down at where Janet was bathing the entire wound with some kind of solution. It was cold, but it didn't hurt. "But I think that you probably already own some."
Daniel blithely ignored him. "You know, in some cultures, you would now owe me your life."
"How so?"
"Well, if you save a person's life, that person owes it to you—you kind of end up owning the person you saved."
"Good thing we don't live in one of those cultures."
"Yeah. I guess." Daniel shifted again. "But it would be nice of you to say thanks."
O'Neill grunted.
Janet took one last swab with a piece of gauze and then expertly taped up the Colonel's abdomen. "No sit ups, no heavy lifting. Keep that wound clean and dry, and come back tomorrow and we'll clean it up again if necessary." She stood, yanking off the gloves. "Daniel—I mean it—that was a really cool thing you did. Really. I'm impressed."
Daniel grinned. "It's nothing. Truly. Just doing my job."
Janet laughed. "Okay, then. Tylenol if your butt starts hurting, and you, Sir—pick up your prescription at the desk in around an hour." She patted Daniel's arm. "Really—awesome."
Daniel beamed at her.
AS she left, he turned to Jack, who still sat, unmoving, on the gurney.
"Lunch?"
"Yeah-let's go find Carter and Teal'c."
"Locker rooms, is my guess."
"Probably."
Daniel headed out towards the door, but O'Neill caught at his arm. "Hey, Daniel."
"Yeah, Jack?"
The Colonel looked at him steadily, sincerely. "Thank you."
A slow, broad grin stretched across Daniel's face. Meeting Jack's look, he scrunched up his mouth and shrugged.
"Don't worry about it." He said, gesturing toward the door. "It was nothing."
