After the Osiris debacle, Jack is disinclined to let Daniel get very far from SG-1. More specifically, from him. They go on a couple of inconsequential missions, and then Teal’c heads off to Chulak for a secret meeting with some other Jaffa leaders, and Sam finally actually achieves some personal time when Jacob comes to Earth on ‘vacation’. That leaves Jack and Daniel mostly at loose ends around the SGC; or, rather, it leaves Jack at mostly loose ends. Daniel has a never-ending backlog of translations and artifacts to look at. Jack always suspects that half of it is really someone else’s work (Daniel does have an entire department at his disposal), but the three-PhD genius just can’t help himself and has fingers in every pie.
His own office is bare of anything personal, just the basic supplies and stacks and stacks of paperwork that theoretically he should be looking at as Hammond’s second-in-command. The General is incredibly lenient in how much he actually expects Jack to accomplish; guilt had once driven the colonel to ask him why, and George had told him in no uncertain terms that his value as the leader of SG-1 was infinitely higher than any help he could offer with the paperwork and day-to-day minutiae of running the base.
Jack does put in a lot of work helping design training and vetting personnel for the SGC, and reviewing missions that have gone wrong to make sure they can prevent the same issues from plaguing future teams. He knows Walter regularly comes in here and sorts the files, leaving the most important ones on top and center, and taking away things he doesn’t get to for other personnel to take care of. Today there was a small stack of mission reports with a bright post-it attached that indicated they were the most urgent thing, so that’s what Jack had grabbed and taken with him to Daniel’s office.
In contrast to Jack’s space which reflects how much he despises the idea of spending any real time there, Daniel’s office is crowded with books and papers and objects; every surface veritably drips with curiosity. The only two spaces that are clear on a regular basis are Daniel’s own chair and the small couch where Jack usually works and where Daniel naps when not forced to find a real bed.
When the klaxons go off, Jack isn’t working. There’s a mission report open on his knee, but his eyes have been on Daniel for several minutes now. He gets a kick out of watching Daniel work; you can pretty much see every thought he has reflected in the archeologist’s mobile face as he studies a text or an artifact. The little frown when he’s thinking, an honest-to-god pout if he’s frustrated, wide eyes and hurried movements when he gets an idea, the smoothing and brightening of his whole expression when he figures something out or learns something new. Sometimes he mouths translations to himself, and sometimes he talks out loud, regardless of whether someone is in the room. Even better, he’s almost never aware of being watched, so Jack can observe to his heart’s content.
The klaxon doesn’t even get a twitch out of Daniel, so Jack closes the file and sets it down, his own curiosity too strong to resist as he heads to the control room. There are no scheduled arrivals for this time, and no teams off-world that should be in situations that could have gone bad. That leaves Teal’c, or something unexpected.
Of course it couldn’t have been Teal’c coming home so they could get back on the mission roster. In the colonel’s opinion it’s the opposite of good when they determine it’s a Tok’ra transmission, because the history of uneventful missions with the Tok’ra is so very poor. Still, he does like and respect Jake, so he tries to keep his obvious distaste to himself. Jacob listens to the transmission as it’s recorded onto a handheld device, and then turns to Jack. “I think we’re going to need Daniel.”
It’s easiest just for the three of them – Jacob, Sam, and Jack (or is that the four of them, with Selmak? Jack’s never sure) – to trek up the several floors to Daniel’s lab, where absolutely nobody is surprised to find him still engrossed in his work, unaware that Jack ever left. Jacob plays the recording back for Daniel, leaving Jack and Sam to stand around and wait for a translation. Oh, great, it’s their friend Apophis again, because the guy just won’t die. If forced to rate the Goa’uld on some sort of sliding scale of how much he hates them, Jack would put Apophis pretty high on the list both because he keeps annoyingly not dying but also because of everything he has personally cost SG-1.
His mind is wandering as Daniel does his near-magic translation-on-the-fly thing, but he’s brought firmly back to the present when Selmak asks Daniel to accompany him on this mission he’s concocting.
“Acht! Wait a minute! Just…stop, hold it.” He moves, making sure to position himself in between the Tok’ra and Daniel in a way that even the densest ancient snake couldn’t fail to miss as completely purposeful. “If you’re about to say you’re going to explain along the way, I’m going to lose it! I’ve just about had it with the way the Tok’ra do business. I wanna know exactly what we’re dealing with here. Every mission detail you’ve got right now, or we go nowhere!”
Some of the rigidness leaves the older man’s body, which is the only sign that Selmak has retreated before he opens his mouth and Jacob’s voice comes out. “I was going to tell ya, Jack.” There’s only the slightest hint of irritation in the former general’s words – mostly, Jack knows, Jake appreciates how protective Jack is of his team. Not only because of Sam – Jake has a mile-wide soft spot for Daniel too; even when things have been at their most strained during joint missions, SG-1’s civilian has never heard the sharp side of Jake’s tongue like the rest of them have.
Jack backs down, and they move to the briefing room to bring the General up to speed. They’ve laid out the facts and the goals for the SGC’s commander, and Jacob makes a formal request for Daniel and Sam to accompany him. Jack manages not to say anything rude, confining himself to a very pointed clearing of his throat, and gets his own invitation.
Which is just peachy, because he’s not about to let Jacob take Sam and Daniel off on some crazy Tok’ra mission into an abandoned minefield without him. Jack would prefer none of them go, but if the science twins are going, he’s going too. He’d rather have Teal’c there as additional backup, but their Jaffa teammate hasn’t returned or checked in yet, and the timing is critical.
They head to the lockers rooms to get geared up, and since he’s done first by far Jack takes his pack to the armory and supply to switch some things out and replenish consumables. It’s a quick task and Sam and Jake are waiting by the elevator when he gets back – but no sign of Daniel. Jack makes a face at Sam. “Where is he?”
“He’s on 18.” They step into the elevator and she pushes the button to go up towards the surface. When the doors open on level 18, they look out on a certain linguist crouched in the hallway, trying to shuffle more books into several clearly already overstuffed bags. Jack wordlessly gestures for Sam to hold the elevator and stalks over.
“What are you doing?”
Danny looks up at him, a little red-faced from the struggle and frowning. “I could use a hand here,” he says as he clips the bag shut in his hands. Jack reaches down and grabs the biggest one, leaving Daniel to put on his pack and then hoist the other bag bulging with corners.
“Sure you got everything?” He drops the heavy bag on the floor of the elevator, where it makes his point nicely with a loud thud. Daniel looks up at him, still flushed and glasses sliding down his nose because he doesn’t have a free hand to catch them.
“Wanna try to reprogram that mine without the proper translation?” he retorts.
“Thought of a laptop?”
“Well,” Daniel drawls, and Jack just knows from the tone that he’s going to be a complete smartass. “I had one. I just couldn’t get ‘Beck’s Ancient Phoenician Symbology’ on CD at archaeology.com, so….”
Jack’s favorite way to silence a sarcastic Daniel, recently discovered, is by kissing him. It doesn’t help right this minute that Daniel is standing inches from him, scowling in a way that totally fails to be intimidating. He’s grateful that Jacob and Sam are also in the elevator, or he might not have the self-control to stick to their nothing-happens-on-base rule. Still, any touch will probably startle Danny into silence…Jack reaches out with his freehand and slowly pushes Daniel’s glasses back up into his face, swallowing a smirk when his partner’s pupils go wide and his mouth opens but no sound comes out.
Point to Colonel Jack O’Neill.
A couple of hours later, Jack wishes that he’d grabbed some of the growing stacks of paperwork on his desk and brought them along. Jacob is piloting the scout ship with absolutely no need of help from Jack, and the two blonde heads of his teammates are bent over books from the small library Daniel has brought aboard. Sam has what is clearly the equivalent of “Phoenician for Dummies” open and is slowly but steadily working her way through.
Daniel is sitting against the opposite wall, books spread around him like a halo. Most of them are open already to various points and he’s moving his lips silently again, taking quick notes in a handwriting Jack knows as well as his own. He can picture the neat, dark, cramped letters in his mind even though he can’t see it from here. Daniel doesn’t waste paper in his leather-bound notebooks either, covering each page from edge to edge, even bringing words tight in to sketches of artifacts to make sure every available blank space has information on it. His writing is bigger, looser, but just as deliberate when he’s writing casual notes at home or on his whiteboards.
The artificial light of the scout ship reflects off of his tousled hair, making it almost as gold as the walls. Jack wants to be able to sit down next to Daniel and listen to each of his breaths as he works. He wants to be able to pull Daniel back against his chest, where he can feel each heartbeat as he waits and watches Danny’s mind go places the rest of them can’t hope to keep up. He wants to run his hands through those gilded strands of hair that he knows very well are soft and smell like Jack’s own shampoo and usually the faint scent of leather and old books. He wants to distract Daniel from his work and…persuade…him to take a nap, because he knows how few hours the man had slept the night before.
He can’t do any of those things, not even in from of two of the people that he and Danny trust the most, so Jack grasps at any other distraction, leaning over Sam to glance at her text, which while written mostly in good plain English has enough Phoenician symbols on each page that his eyes threaten to cross. “Do you understand any of that?”
Sam turns a page, glancing at him over her shoulder. She laughs at the disgruntled expression on his face, and grins. “It’s all Phoenician to me, Sir.”
Jack just groans.
Everything goes sideways, but when doesn’t it? They can’t really count the mission as a success, since they didn’t accomplish sending Heru’ur and Apophis to war. If the Tok’ra are to be totally believes, they’ve instead solidified Apophosis’ place as the strongest Goa’uld in the galaxy. A party of Jack wants the bastard to come after Earth, so they can have another chance at destroying him once and for all.
However, nobody dies. They don’t get captured or tortured or snaked, and the most danger they ever really face is from the mine itself, which of course really stood no chance against Sam and Daniel. Jack thinks that must be a kind of success, on this type of insane mission. He’s also more than a little smug, because his geeks have succeeded where Selmak has admitted the Tok’ra had failed, and he can’t help but rub that in a little when they debrief for Hammond.
They even pull off a rescue of a man nobody knew was missing, retrieving Teal’c from Rak’nor and sending the younger Jaffa back on his way to Chulak in the glider. That bothers Jack more than a little, that Teal’c could simply vanish from Chulak and nobody be the wiser until he showed up in the middle of a Goa’uld negotiation they intended to tank. He wants an alliance of free Jaffa at their back in the fight against the snakeheads as much as anyone, but he resolves to talk to Teal’c about taking more precautions in the future.
But what he wants most of all is to escape the confines of the SGC and act on every thought he’s had this very, very long day about his favorite geek. Daniel, of course, had retreated almost immediately back to his lab when Jack stayed behind to speak to Hammond, and as Jack enters the elevator he’s expecting to have to go drag the kid out of the SGC by force. The elevator comes to a soft stop on floor 18 and the doors open, and Jack blinks in surprise, because Daniel is standing there, already changed into civvies, backpack slung over one shoulder.
After a day of watching him frown his way through a complicated puzzle, Danny’s smile brightens the whole damn complex. “Home, Jack?” He is swallowing hard on a rush of emotion, so he just reaches out and drags his partner into the elevator and jabs the button for the ground level.
