At first, PJ2-445 seemed like exactly the kind of reason why Daniel was an important part of SG-1. Jack knew he certainly wouldn’t have had the patience to try and get information from the completely noncommunicative natives. It felt like an easy success when the naked, pale people brought the UAV out from behind one of their dwellings.
But then it got weird when they started to collapse, and as per their usual things went downhill from there. The whole situation was quickly giving Jack a headache, which steadily worsened as he and Teal’c trekked across miles of land to check on the other villages, and it was quickly reaching migraine proportions by the time they return to the original community to check on Daniel. It wasn’t an excuse for being short with his friend, exactly, but it was certainly a contributing factor.
“What’s he smilin’ at?” he asks, looking at Daniel, as the alien steps between them wearing a forced pantomime of a smile, which they’d learned from Daniel early in their attempts to communicate.
“He appears to be bothered by the tone you have taken towards each other,” Teal’c offers, adding sternly, “as am I.”
He isn’t sure why, but that rubs him all the wrong ways. Looking from Teal’c to Daniel, and briefly at the still-smiling alien, he orders, “Uh, Teal'c…go head back to the Gate. Get a message to General Hammond. Let him know what's going on here.”
“And the two of you will be fine?” Teal’c questions, rather than immediately following the order, which should have been the next clue that something was wrong, but Jack is, apparently, feeling extra dense. He blames the migraine.
“Yeah. Yeah. We'll be OK. I'm going to stick around and work on this quarantine thing with Plant Boy here.” Even as the words leave his mouth, he freezes at the hurt look on Daniel’s face and shakes his head, not sure why he’d said that. But Teal’c goes, and Daniel seems to shrug it off.
Jack heads back to the dwellings, feeling increasingly irritable as enforcing any sort of quarantine as recommended by Janet seems completely impossible. The minute he shoos any seemingly healthy aliens away from one sick area, they simply run away from him silently or with quiet keening into another mud hut and attempt to mind the sick there. Walking out of the dwelling, he stalks across the clearing towards Daniel.
“Why aren’t you helping me?” he demands, eyeing the video camera still in Daniel’s hands as he continues to inspect the strange round plants that are everywhere.
“Oh, it’s no use. They don’t understand.” Daniel says it almost absently, “They wanna be with each other.”
“Well, we’re not going to stand around doing nothing.”
“We’re not doing nothing,” Daniel protests, looking at Jack like he does when Jack is being completely unreasonable. Normally, that look makes Jack at least re-evaluate his actions. Right now, it just pisses him off.
“You’re videotaping a plant,” he responds acidly, even as Daniel leans down to set up the tripod pointing towards the alien plant he claims had…magically sprouted, earlier.
“Well, I think this might be important,” the archaeologist says it softly, in a voice obviously intended to diffuse the tension. It’s his humor-me-Jack voice, and Jack isn’t planning to fall for it today. Today, he needs Daniel to get his act together and help enforce the quarantine so that maybe Jack can sit down for a minute and nurse this headache with five aspirin and a protein bar.
“Well, I think you might be losing what’s left of your mind,” he snaps, and Daniel rises quickly with a kicked-puppy look on his face.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that on a good day, you can be a little flaky,”
“And on a good day you can be a little ignorant and condescending,” Daniel isn’t raising his voice, not rising to the bait of the argument, but every word feels like an ice pick in Jack’s skull anyway.
“Not condescending,” he scoffs, “You're obviously misreading a basic philosophical difference of opinion on how to handle a crisis.”
That, finally, seems to get to Daniel. “Oh, please! We have a difference of opinion on just about everything.” Jack feels like that’s a low blow, while Daniel is glaring at him in obvious confusion.
“Give me an example.” He knows they don’t have a difference in opinion about everything. They’re friends, after all. They do have some differences, but Daniel is exaggerating greatly.
“I don't know. Pick something.” Daniel swings an arm wide, leaning towards Jack. “How about - how about mythology?”
“Rumors? Lies? Fairytales?” Though this is the base of one of their biggest ongoing arguments, Jack thinks this is a fairly accurate and fair statement. Yes, of course, some of those myths have turned out to have a basis in fact (see: their ongoing fight with the Goa’uld, the actual characters behind the Egyptian pantheon of gods), the myths are not the actual truth any more than your average joe’s ‘big fish’ tale.
“You see?” Daniel raises his voice at last, waving his arms in Jack’s space. “See? See? See? See? See?” He’s hopping up and down, throwing an honest-to-god temper tantrum, and Jack can’t take it.
Several of the aliens are starting to toddle over, eyes wide, at the disturbance they are causing in the middle of the village. Deciding he’s tired of being yelled at, Jack reaches out and snags the linguist’s closest elbow as he starts to hop his way through another furious circle, and brings his other hand down a dozen times on Daniel’s butt hard enough that he knows the other man will feel it, even through his BDUs. “Stop throwing a tantrum and making a scene!” he growls into his teammate’s ear, letting go, and Daniel does stop jumping up and down, looking immensely upset, but that quickly morphs to anger again and it doesn’t stop him from growling back,
“Mythology is one of the primary motivations for cultural development!”
“Maybe it is, what's that got to do with filming a plant?!” Jack steps forward into Daniel’s space again, reaching for him, but this time Daniel is quick to step back before he yells in response.
“Exactly!”
“What does that mean?!”
“I don't know!”
Their original alien friend has managed to get between them, forcing both men to pause, and Jack takes a deep breath. “OK…” he drawls slowly, “what was that?” He absolutely can’t believe the way Daniel was yelling at him, even Daniel isn’t usually that insubordinate, but he also can’t believe that he’d just spanked Daniel off-world, on a mission, and in the heat of the moment.
“I don't know. I don't feel so good.” It doesn’t escape Jack’s notice that Daniel immediately stopped yelling when he did, and the guilt for issuing even those few swats increases tenfold now that he’s feeling calmer. His head is still killing him, but they’re clearly neither one in a great place.
“I've got a headache.” He admits, touching the back of his neck because that’s where the worst of the pain has settled. He wants to say more, eyes searching Daniel’s face, but the younger man is not quite meeting his eyes.
“Maybe we're getting whatever they have.” Even as the words leave Daniel’s mouth, the alien collapses beside them. Without speaking, they work together to lift him and carry him into the dwelling that they’ve been using as a central staging point, lowering him to the ground near the medical equipment that Janet had left behind, in case it might come in handy. That’s about all either of them has in them, energy-wise, and he can hear Daniel thumping to the ground even as does the same and lifts a hand back to his head, rubbing the base of his skull like it might help.
“Getting worse?” Daniel has lowered his voice intentionally, frowning at Jack with a worried expression.
“Yeah. Kinda.” He doesn’t think that their affliction is necessarily what’s making his headache worse, but the guilt might be. Daniel nods and looks away from him. Jack looks down for a moment and then back up, intending to offer some sort of apology, as useless as that might be, but a shadow fills the cave entrance and quickly resolves into Teal’c, who frowns at both of them as he takes in their deteriorating condition. “Hey, Teal’c.”
“Dr. Fraiser and Captain Carter have had little success in healing the alien.”
“Well I think…Daniel and I are coming down with something too.” The frown Daniel is aiming at him is a little accusing, and definitely wounded, and he just grimaces a little. Apology and groveling later, then, but in the meantime, “How are you doing?”
“I remain unaffected,” Teal’c says, but he’s frowning at Jack too, clearly aware that something has happened.
“I think we should probably go back and get checked out, huh?” Jack phrases it like a suggestion, forcing himself to keep his voice low and quiet, and Daniel gives him a jerky nod of acquiescence.
Teal’c helps them both to their feet, and Jack hurries as fast as his protesting body will allow towards the edge of the village, turning back to see that Daniel had gone instead to his video camera, Teal’c following closely. His stomach clenches a little; he wouldn’t blame Daniel for not wanting to be anywhere near him right now, nor for telling Teal’c that Jack had basically assaulted him a few minutes ago for no reason. He can’t hear their short exchange, but since the Jaffa doesn’t come storming over to knock Jack flat, he is guessing Daniel doesn’t say anything. Teal’c is, after all, perhaps even more protective of Daniel than Jack is.
From his crouched position, Daniel gives Jack a hesitant look, and Jack tries to appear calm and reassuring. The scientist rises slowly, not as wobbly as the aliens but looking less than not great, and moves slowly over to join Jack. His eyes are half-closed as they walk out into the barren expanse between the village and the stargate, and he hasn’t even bothered to swing his pack onto his shoulders. He looks like crap, honestly, way worse than Jack feels.
“You gonna make this?” Jack pauses, and Daniel looks back towards the village but can’t seem to form a response. Jack decides it’s better to drag him to the Stargate than leave him without help in the village. “Come on.” He puts his hand back on Daniel’s elbow, supporting this time, and moves him forward, wanting now to get Daniel into Janet’s hands as soon as possible.
Sometime later, they’re sitting side by side on the same infirmary bed where Janet has planted them after their tests.
“Listen. I, uh…” Jack knows he sucks at apologies, even as he trails off.
“No, no.” Daniel starts to say at the same time, but when Jack stops he seems to get nervous about interrupting him. “Um…Sorry. You were going to say?”
“No, it's just that, uh…Well…You know.” He wants to apologize for the brief spanking, for his short temper, but he knows there are a lot of cameras on them and trails off again, feeling like a middle school boy trying to talk to a first crush or something.
“No, I know. I know. You know that I…” Daniel’s looking at his lap, blushing, and Jack doesn’t need him to finish to know that the archaeologist is beating himself up over yelling at Jack, no matter that Jack had yelled first.
“I know. It's obvious there's something...”
“…wrong with us.” Daniel finishes for him, sneaking a glance upwards.
“Physically.” That they say together, and it earns him a tiny little imitation of a Daniel Jackson smile. He’s about to celebrate that success by reaching over to pat Daniel’s back, but they’re interrupted by Janet’s cheerful return, and he has to fall silent again.
They don’t have any more time alone until he follows Daniel down to his lab, and that doesn’t go well at all. Daniel is visibly frustrated at their failure to help the childlike alien race, and Jack doesn’t really have anything to help him. This time Jack keeps his calm, hands shoved into his pockets, even when Daniel starts yelling, and sweeps his work off his desk in temper.
Daniel and Sam come up with some sort of bad-sound theory, and Janet confirms that could be the cause of Daniel and Jack’s symptoms. Teal’c arrives to further corroborate that theory, and Jack feels the punch of guilt again when the warrior confirms that the plants did, indeed, rise out of the ground if left alone for long enough. If Jack had just believed Daniel on that point from the start, maybe they would have figured this out sooner.
SG-1’s two scientists are off to the races from that point with a solution, and in the end, they have to drag Daniel off the planet. He wants to know how their society works, of course – but Janet is anxious to have them back on base for observation to make sure there are no lasting effects from the sound, and General Hammond is reluctant to waste SG-1’s time on a civilization that seems unlikely to have anything to offer them in the way of technology or alliance.
He debriefs alone with the General, releasing the rest of SG-1 to get cleaned up, so it is another few hours before he goes looking for Daniel. His team is gathered in an off-duty room, chatting amiably, but when he props himself up by the doorway, Daniel sees him first and goes silent. Sam is oblivious, but Teal’c picks up on the tension quickly.
“Captain Carter, I find I am quite hungry. Will you join me for the evening meal?”
“Yeah, Teal’c, I’m hungry too. You coming, Daniel?” Sam jumps down from the table she’s sitting on, looking expectant, but Daniel smiles a little and shakes his head.
“We’ll catch up in a minute.”
“We…?” At Sam’s confusion, Daniel looks towards Jack in the doorway. “Oh, uh, hi, Sir. See you guys in a few, I guess.” Jack nods at them and walks over to sit down in the chair by Daniel when Teal’c and Sam are gone.
“Hey,” Daniel says quietly, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Hey.” They sit in silence for a moment, and Jack knows he’s going to have to be the one who breaks the ice. He is the one most at fault, and the one in charge. “Look, Danny, I’m sorry. Really sorry. I should never have…I lost my temper, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
Daniel looks up at him finally, shrugging a little. “It wasn’t your fault, you were affected pretty strongly by that planet.” He doesn’t sound quite alright, but he’s also not giving Jack what-for for what he did, either.
“I understand if you want to…not do what we’ve been doing anymore.” Jack stumbles over still trying to not say anything incriminating out loud. This isn’t a surveillance-free room any more than the infirmary was. “If I’ve…lost your trust. Or even if you want to be reassigned, I can make that happen also-“
“No, Jack, don’t be ridiculous.” Daniel grabs his wrist, looking frustrated, then lets go when Jack looks up at him. “You’re human. You’re going to make mistakes like the rest of us. And you didn’t hurt me. Even if you’d given me a full…uh…talking to-“ Jack’s not sure Daniel could get much redder now, but he forces himself not to smile. “You’d not have really hurt me. I guess you just hurt my feelings more than anything, because I do remember what you said. But it’s not like I didn’t say and do worse, under the influence of the sarcophagus.”
“You know I didn’t mean any of it, right?”
“Yeah, Jack. I know. I’ll be okay.” A tentative smile, but not a good enough one.
“You know, we’re not scheduled for any urgent missions. I can probably talk to the General, see if we can’t take a couple of days after all, and go back to PJ2-445, give you some time to play with your new friends.”
Personally, he thinks his peace offering is a little weak, but Danny smiles brightly at him. “Thanks, Jack.” He accepts Jack’s help getting to his feet, and they start towards the mess to join Sam and Teal’c. “You know,” He hesitates, glances up at Jack through his fringe of hair, “this weekend there’s a new exhibit opening in D.C. …”
“Sure, Daniel, I’ll get us a flight to D.C. but I’m sitting somewhere with my crossword while you ogle the exhibits.” He’s rewarded with another warm smile, which makes giving up his weekend of beer and fishing probably worth it. He reaches over Daniel to pull the mess door open.
“And, I’ve been meaning to go through the last year’s mission reports and compare any unfinished translations to new data we’ve gathered but they’re hard files already stored a few levels up…”
“Don’t push it, Dannyboy.” He mock-frowns at the archaeologist, who is looking at him very seriously. “What?”
“Jack, I would have forgiven you with just the apology, you know.” The colonel growls and swipes at him, but Daniel has already ducked out of reach, laughing, and is halfway to the table where their team is, telling them loudly about Jack agreeing to go to his new exhibit over the weekend to make sure Jack can’t back out. Jack shakes his head, muttering about brats and archaeologists under his breath, and turns towards the line to get food, but he’s smiling when he does it.
