Some days, if he didn’t know any better, Jack would think Daniel was trying to get himself killed. Or kill Jack, scaring at least five years off of his life at every incident.
The mission paperwork is still blank in front of him, and all he can think about is the empty feeling in his gut when Vishnor had been choking their foolish archaeologist, and he had been helpless to prevent it. He is not sure his heart beat again until Sam was crouched next to Daniel, pronouncing him ‘Still alive. But just barely.’ Then there had been hours of waiting for Daniel to wake back up, and hoping that there wasn’t anything worse wrong.
Sam’s voice had sounded fairly confident when she declared that he hadn’t been not breathing for long enough to cause brain damage, but he could hear the slight uncertainty in her voice.
Jack absolutely despises feeling that useless; even more so because if Daniel had moved when Jack ordered him to, Vishnor wouldn’t have had cause to attack him. The whole ordeal was completely avoidable.
He growls his frustration out loud and snaps the pencil in his hand for good measure. It’s satisfying but doesn’t particularly make him feel better. It hasn’t been that long since he’d been forced to leave Daniel behind on Apophis’ ship, absolutely believing that he was leaving his best friend to die, and he’s still emotionally raw in a way that makes this feel like a bigger deal than it would usually be.
Hell, at this point, he’s used to Daniel’s absolute lack of self-preservation, and he should have been expecting the other man’s actions. No way would Daniel have let those men commit suicide without trying to stop them, but did he have to literally stand in the line of fire himself? It’s becoming a habit, honestly, and how many times is he expected to live through Daniel’s ‘death’ and still stay sane?
First, it had been their very first trip through the Stargate. Jack knows he’d been in a particularly dark place himself, and his tolerance for the geek that he’d been settled with had been very low. He’d been rude and taciturn himself, and turned a blind eye when his men resorted to straight up bullying Daniel. He had been awful, and to this day he still feels guilty when he thinks about it. But despite all of his shortcomings as commanding officer of that trip, Daniel had thrown himself in the path of a staff blast and died to save one very unworthy Jack O’Neill.
Then, he’d disappeared into the clutches of the cavemen on P3X-797 and they’d feared the worst. They’d all died on the Nox’s planet. Daniel had tried to stay on the planet where they’d found Earnest Littlefield, nearly dying in the process. They’d actually declared him dead, with a funeral and everything, when Nem had convinced them he had died (just because he hadn’t actually died didn’t lessen the grief beforehand). He’d touched the damn mirror on P3R-233 and only luck had gotten him back to their reality.
All of that, in little more than a year. How many near-misses can they weather before Daniel’s luck runs out?
A rap of knuckles on the wall draws his attention to his open office door. And…speak of the devil. The shaggy-haired linguist is standing in the doorway, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Even from this distance, Jack can see the ring of bruises already darkening against the fair skin of Daniel’s neck.
“Daniel,” he drawls, leaning over to pitch the broken pencil into the trash can beside the desk, and grabbing a pen from the metal cup to replace it. “Did you need something?” He looks back down at his paperwork, ignoring the younger man’s approach so he doesn’t have to look at the evidence of how close they’d come to losing him this time.
“Uh, no, I…” His voice is rough and very quiet from the doorway, and Jack is abruptly reminded that Janet had told him to try not to speak for a day or so until they were sure there wasn’t damage to his vocal cords, and to whisper when he was going to talk. Daniel wanders closer to the desk so he doesn’t have to speak louder than a whisper; “I was just coming to see if you wanted to go get food with us? I promised Teal’c we’d go try that new Indian place and Sam is going to tag along-“
“No.” Jack doesn’t look up from his paper, though he hasn’t written anything on it yet either.
There’s a pause, but it is far from comfortable. He can almost hear Daniel thinking, he can hear him shifting uneasily, and when he speaks again, his quiet voice has taken on a strange quality. “Ok, Jack. See you later.” He waits a minute, as if to see if Jack will change his mind, and then leaves as quietly as he entered. Jack abandons the pretense of filling out the mission report and leans back in his chair, tiredly rubbing his face.
He knows he was being an asshole, but he still thinks it’s better to give Daniel the cold shoulder while he gets over his frustration rather than releasing his temper. Daniel will get over it, and by the time they’re back to work in a day or two, Jack will be over it too.
Several hours later, he’s sitting next to his telescope but not looking through it. The cold beer dangling from his fingers is half gone, and he’s tilted back in the comfortable lawn chair contemplating the sky he can see with his naked eye. He’s trying not to allow himself to regret not going to dinner with the team.
The sound of a vehicle, and it’s stopped at the end of his driveway. A door closes, and someone walks to the front door and knocks. Jack tries to remember if he left lights on that will make it obvious he’s at home; when he hears a person climbing the ladder he guesses either he did, or it’s someone who knows to look up here for him anyway.
“Jack?” Daniel’s quiet inquiry precedes the appearance of his head over the top of the roof. He doesn’t wait for a reply to slide over the top of the ladder and cross the roof, making his way to the second lawn chair and settling tentatively onto the front edge of it. It would feel presumptuous, if Jack hadn’t dragged that chair up here specifically for the man sitting in it, when it had become clear to him a few weeks after they’d returned from Abydos that Daniel was as adrift in the world as he was. They had little more than the Stargate program and each other, at that point, and even then, he’d wanted Daniel to feel as comfortable here as possible. Since then Daniel has spent many nights curled up in that chair next to Jack, and Jack doesn’t think he’d ever be upset enough to send him away.
“How long are you going to be mad at me?”
At that, he finally looks over and clocks the look on Daniel’s face. Regretful, definitely upset at the way Jack is behaving but also…guilt? “I don’t know. That was a damn stupid thing to do.”
“I couldn’t just let them kill themselves.”
“Daniel, you think I don’t know that? I wouldn’t have expected you to do nothing.” Jack sets down his beer with a hard, decisive click and leans forward into his archaeologist’s space with a scowl. “You could have made your point without standing in front of an opening wormhole, for one. And definitely without making yourself a target for the biggest guy in the prison.”
“I didn’t know he was going to react that way…” tries Daniel in his own defense, but Jack quickly cuts him off.
“I did,” Jack snaps. “It’s my job to know, and I ordered you to move. And if you’d listened to me instead of assuming you’re always right, you wouldn’t have been in reach for him to grab.” He keeps his eyes focused on Daniel’s face, though he tilts his head just a little before he growls, “You basically died. If he’d been just a little rougher, a little more careless, he might have snapped your neck instead of choking you out. Do you have a death wish?”
Daniel’s staring back into his face but he drops his eyes at something he sees, flushing and looking shameful now instead of stubborn. “I know, Jack. You’re right, and I’m sorry. It was stupid. I wish I could promise I’ll never do it again, but I don’t want to lie to you. But I can’t stand this, I could barely sit through dinner knowing you didn’t come because you were mad at me.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting your voice?” Jack hears himself offer the rebuttal grimly, and winces even as he looks back up at the sky. That sentence came straight from Jack the Asshole. He doesn’t want to be mad, either, not at Daniel, but he doesn’t know how else to make him start taking more care for his own skin. The sound of crickets and other night insects fills the emptiness around them, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Daniel working himself up to saying something else.
“I’ve, um, been thinking a lot about Ospar.”
Whatever Jack was expecting, it wasn’t that. Daniel is staring at the roof under their chairs, and even in the dark he can see that his friend is flushed dark red, and his hands are fisted together between his legs.
“I’ve been writing back and forth with Callo, and I think I’m starting to understand. I really hate it when things are like this between us. If you, um, disciplined me when things like this happened, it would clear the slate and let us move on.”
Daniel has his full, if incredulous, attention. Jack sits up slowly to the front of his own chair and turns towards the linguist. “You want me to spank you.” His voice is flat, with more than a hint of skepticism.
“No, Jack, I don’t want you to spank me,” Daniel mumbles, still staring at his own hands and feet. “But I’d rather you spank me than live with this feeling. I did do something stupid, and I feel guilty about it. On top of that, I really can’t stand when you’re mad at me – it’s like being physically ill, it’s basically all I can think about and even after you stop acting mad outright, I question whether you’re still mad and just hiding it better. I can’t focus.”
He risks a peek up at Jack through the curtain of his hair and must find some sort of encouragement in Jack’s face, because he continues. Jack is shocked into silence, and doesn’t know what to think, so he has no idea what is actually on his face. “Callo says when he gets punished, he’s able to let go of the guilt and forgive himself, and believe that his partner forgives him too. I’m asking you to…to punish me and help me like that.”
Jack can honestly say he had never considered it, not once, since they had come home from that damn planet. In fact, he had been pretty convinced that Daniel wouldn’t forgive him for spanking him the first time, and he certainly had never in his wildest dreams imagined that they’d be sitting on his roof and his best friend would ask him to do it again.
But.
Jack had seen all of the emotions Daniel is describing on his friend’s face in that holding cell on Ospar. The guilt and shame, the uncertainty; and then had been much less of an issue in Jack’s mind than today. He’s seen those feelings many times actually, when Daniel has let his heart and passion override common sense and put himself or the team in danger on missions. And he has to admit that Daniel had actually recovered from his experience on Ospar quite quickly compared to how long it usually takes him to stop beating himself up over mistakes once the crisis is over. Yes, as crazy as it is, he can actually see a road where this benefits their relationship.
The question is, is he willing to jump off of this cliff with Daniel? This might be the cultural norm on Ospar, but it certainly isn’t here on Earth, and one wrong move could effectively end SG-1, and possible both of their careers. Not to mention, if Daniel isn’t 100% serious and committed to this, it’s a itsy bitsy tiny step away from abuse. He leans forward towards Daniel again.
“I need you to be able to look me in the eye and tell me that you want me to spank you. For real, which you know will not be a pleasant experience because we’ve been down this road before. You need to be absolutely sure.”
Daniel takes a few shaky breaths, and then a deep one and manages to lift his chin and look right into Jack’s intent gaze, though he gets the feeling this time Daniel is whispering because he can’t manage a louder volume, not because Janet had forbidden a louder volume. “I’m really sure. Jack, I promise this is something I’ve thought a lot about. It’s not some sudden poorly thought out impulse.”
Jack holds his younger friend’s gaze for a minute more, tempted to force Daniel to use the word he’s so carefully avoiding, but decides that would just be mean. He can see the truth in Daniel’s eyes, and that’s enough. “Ok, kid. Ok.” Jack is still trying to wrap his head around the idea a little and needs a minute. “Go let yourself into the house and wait for me in the living room. I’ll be down in a second.”
For a few minutes after Daniel disappears back down the ladder, Jack stares up into the sky, trying to figure out what he’s getting himself into. A part of him does understand what Daniel is saying, and he thinks it will work. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have agreed. But another part of him is worried about this upsetting the fine balance they walk every day. Yes, there are times when he desperately needs and wants Daniel to be more careful, to listen to the orders issued to keep him safe, to listen more. But other times, he hates to admit it but maybe just as often, he needs Daniel to balance his own militaristic tendencies and yank him back to the middle.
Daniel wouldn’t have risked this if he didn’t think it was important, and that’s really the deciding factor. Wherever Jack is understanding this, Daniel is probably ten steps further ahead. If he trusts Jack with this, maybe it’s the right call.
He instinctively knows he shouldn’t leave Daniel waiting for too long. With quick, practiced movements, he packs away the telescope and gathers up his now warm half-empty beer, and climbs down the ladder. He locks the front door behind himself and detours through the kitchen to toss the glass bottle into the sink and then heads into the living room.
Daniel’s standing by the glass doors, arms wrapped around himself in that obvious tell that says he’s nervous, despite his conviction on the roof. He flicks a glance over his shoulder back at Jack, and slowly turns around, giving Jack the shyest half smile. Jack wanders over and wraps an arm around his shoulders, guiding him over to the couch.
“I am frustrated when you don’t think things through,” he keeps his voice steady, and tries for firm but not too harsh. “I admire how much you want to save everyone, but not at the cost of your own life. You almost died today, Daniel, and it wasn’t the first time, or even an isolated incident. You have to figure out when it’s more important to follow orders than to put yourself and everyone else at risk doing what you think is right.”
A slight tremor runs through Daniel’s body, and Jack decides not to draw it out any longer than necessary. Shoring up his own resolve with images of all the times Daniel has almost been lost to them recently because he thought his ideas were better than the rest of the teams’, he quickly unbuttons Daniel’s jeans and pulls them down to his knees. Before that really registers with the linguist, wraps one arm around Daniel’s waist and pulls firmly on his arm, overbalancing him to tip him down over his lap but catching and steadying him before he can fall on his face.
Once he’s over Jack’s lap, Jack leaves one hand planted firmly in the center of his back and uses his free hand to lower Daniel’s underwear to meet his pants at his knees. He wants to be able to see what he’s doing and make sure he doesn’t cause any real harm, and besides, it had been part of the formula every time Jack had ever been on the receiving end of a spanking, and Daniel gave him the impression that had worked for him the first time. “Give me your glasses,” he remembers at the last minute, reaching out a hand. Daniel does, and Jack folds them and reaches over to set them safely on the coffee table.
It feels like it would be stupid to ask if Daniel is ready (could you ever be ‘ready’ for a spanking? Jack certainly doesn’t remember ever feeling ready when he was a kid), but he takes a firm grip around the younger man’s waist with his left arm and taps warningly on the nearest cheek before lifting his right hand for the first real swat.
Daniel jumps in his grip when his hand lands, and a bright pink spot blooms where his hand landed. He lands a matching spot on the other cheek, and then readjusts his grip and sets about establishing a steady rhythm, the bottom under his hand quickly turning rosy under the onslaught. Daniel is quiet, though his body jerks every few spanks when Jack hits a particularly sensitive spot. As the pink starts to edge into a color more accurately described as red, Jack can feel the linguist start to squirm under his arm, and his toes dig into the carpet as his legs start to shift restlessly.
A part of him wants to stop there – but Daniel had made it clear he was after the emotional release, and they aren’t even close to that point yet; his partner is still completely silent over his knee, not even the hint of being emotionally affected.
With that in mind, he thinks back to what had worked before, and shifts his aim downwards, to catch the lower curves of Daniel’s bottom and upper thighs with sharp swats. Almost immediately the younger man starts to yelp quietly, and after a minute he takes his hand off of the ground in front of him and tries to throw it back over his butt. Jack grabs it and moves it to the small of his back, tipping him slightly further over his knee for his troubles.
Daniel’s yelps have turned into quiet gasps and involuntary little whining protests, and the undercurve of his bottom has taken on the same dark pink color as the rest of his butt. Jack decides to see if he can tip Daniel over the edge with words, not particularly keen to take the spanking itself as far as he had on Ospar.
“I am not going to stand by and let you risk your life when it’s avoidable,” he starts scolding, moving his brisk spanks back up to the main top of his friend’s rear, taking the light red to a deeper shade. “There are too many risks involved in what we do already. Your sense of self-preservation is lousy, and if this is what it takes to make you stop and think, so be it.” Daniel’s squirming in earnest now, his legs scissoring futilely as he struggles against the grip Jack has on his hand and his waist, and his breath is starting to sound a little wet, his yelps punctuated by hitched breaths.
“S-sorry!” The exclamation drifts up from somewhere below Jack’s knees. “I just w-wanted to save them, I d-didn’t think about how it w-would come across!” His normal eloquence has failed him, as he struggles to get his words out around the looming tears.
“I know you wanted to save them,” is the colonel’s frustrated rebuttal, still landing steady and solid spanks. His hand is starting to sting, so he can’t imagine Daniel isn’t about ready to give in also. “But that’s why you Listen. To. My. Orders.” When he gets to the last four words, Jack tightens his grip on Daniel and brings his hand down harder than before, back and forth right at the tender junction of bottom and thigh. “Because when you get too caught up in the people, it’s my job to Keep. You. Safe.” Four more hard swats to his sit-spots accompany that sentence and that does it.
“I will! Sorry, Jack, sorry,” he manages to choke out the promise and then it’s as if all the air has been suddenly let out of a party balloon; the collapses over Jack’s lap and gives into the tears. Jack lands a couple more spanks to the same spots, and then older man stops spanking. He switches to rubbing his geek’s back, muttering soothing words.
“Ok, Danny, I know. We’re done. It’s over.” He lets go of Daniel’s wrist and takes his hand, trying to massage some feeling back in; he’s sure it’s numb from the way it was drawn up awkwardly across his back. “Easy, kid, take some deep breaths.” While he’s murmuring and rubbing, he casts a critical glance over his handiwork. Daniel’s butt is a solid, hot red from the top crest to about a hand-span down the back of both thighs, but he’s relieved to see this time it’s not any darker than that. Not sign of bruising, this time, which is a relief. Last time he simply hadn’t been prepared in any way, and he hadn’t known how to bring Daniel to the tears they’d demanded without leaving some bruises. This he thinks might be a little pink and tender tomorrow morning, but he’d be surprised if Daniel can even feel it tomorrow night.
Daniel’s sobs have started to subside into a quieter crying, so Jack wraps his arm around the other man’s waist again and lifts him off of his lap. He’s aiming for putting Daniel on his feet, but the scientist has other ideas; he slides to his knees between Jack’s legs and wraps his arms around Jack’s waist, burying his face in the soft, well-worn folds of Jack’s favorite old air force t-shirt.
“I am sorry,” comes his somewhat shaky voice, and then even quieter, “I was scared.”
“Mhmm, Danny, I was scared too,” he says somewhat dryly, threading his fingers through the man’s hair and gently scratching at his scalp. “But I forgive you. Hell, I forgave you the minute I knew you were still alive, but I still wish you wouldn’t pull that shit.” That draws a very watery and not particularly humorous-sounding laugh from Daniel, and a nod of agreement against his stomach.
“The real question is, do you feel better? Because if this didn’t do what you wanted, we’re sure as hell never doing it again.” Keeping his grip gentle, he pushes his friend away by the shoulders, and puts a hand on his chin to force Daniel to look up when he would have kept his eyes averted. “Daniel?”
The blue eyes that meet his are still swimming a little bit with reflexive tears, but as he searches his partner’s face he does think that Daniel seems calmer, and his body is less tense. He even manages to give Jack a glimpse of an infinitesimal smile. “Yeah, Jack, I feel better.” He reaches back, hands hovering near his butt but seemingly not quite daring to touch. “I mean, my butt doesn’t feel better but, um, the rest of me feels better.”
Jack lifts his eyebrows as the archeologist finally gets the gumption to rub his red bottom, wincing and hissing a little. “Your hand is hard.” He says it with a definite pout, voice just this side of a plaintive whine. Jack shakes his head at him, amused despite himself.
“Danny, you literally asked for it. Stop whining.” The pout is interrupted by a yawn, Daniel collapsing forward against Jack’s midsection again, and Jack snorts. “And you’re totally wiped. C’mon, up, it’s time for bed. Doc’s already going to kill us, that can’t have been what she meant by resting your voice. Let’s not add sleep deprivation to her list.” He stands and lifts Daniel up with him, reaching down and pulling up his underwear, easing it as gentle as he can over the shorter man’s sore butt. Somewhere along the line Daniel had kicked off his jeans and Jack doesn’t bother to retrieve them, simply grabbing his glasses off of the table and guiding him to the guest bedroom with a hand on his shoulder.
Guest bedroom is kind of a joke. Daniel sleeps here as often as any guest – so many nights that they’re up late, playing chess or stargazing or watching hockey, and it never seems logical for Daniel to stumble back to his own apartment. They might as well call it Daniel’s room. Daniel basically pours himself into the bed on his stomach. He’s only wearing a tshirt, boxers, and socks, having shed his jacket and shoes when he came in the house and his jeans kicked off somewhere near the couch. That’ll do for sleeping, then; Jack sets his folded glasses on the nightside table in easy reach. The archeologist barely stirs as he manhandles the sheet and comforter out from underneath his prone form and pulls them up over his partner.
In the doorway, he glances back once more before flicking off the light and shakes his head with a fond smile – Daniel’s already out for the count.
