Herculaneum
by Pares

"Carter seems especially... fit. Lately." He kept his eyes on Carter as she walked away, right until the door closed with a soft hydraulic sigh. Jack turned his head to share a significant look with Daniel, but missed the opportunity, as Daniel was busy reading Old Norse. For fun.

"I mean. She's got this whole new walk thing goin' on." He offered the crown of Daniel's head a wavy hand gesture in an effort to describe Carter's new loose-limbed prowl.

"Well, she is finally getting laid. Regularly." He looked up and closed his book with a crisp little clap of paper. "And not by you." He finished with a slight head tilt and that prim eyebrow-hunching not-smile that meant he was enjoying himself.

Jack found he didn't know what to say to that. Daniel's rare displays of meanness were generally reserved for when Jack had actively pissed him off. Jack thought a moment, and decided he hadn't done anything to warrant such an attitude. Recently, anyway.

Jack cloaked the sting he really felt with one cocked eyebrow. "That's a bit harsh, isn't it?"

"However harsh it may be, it's also true."

"Well duh." He turned his attention back to the narrow rectangle of bulletproof glass in the door, but Sam was long gone. "She is getting married, after all. To Pete. Pete." He rocked on his heels and folded his arms across his chest. "And what do we even really know about this guy, any--" He swerved around to continue, just kicking it into diatribe, but Daniel was standing just behind him looking bored, with one finger raised in a call for silence.

"Can we not do this?"

"Do what?"

"You get nostalgic for what you could have had with Sam, and then you start giving her the eye when you think she's not looking, and then there's the denigration of Pete, which is really getting old, by the way, and don't you think it's time to grow up and just... let her go?"

"To let her go I'd have had to have her first," he snapped.

Daniel gave him his deadliest I-will-be-patient look and set a hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Not to be disingenuous, but you could have had her if you'd really wanted her, and what's more, you both know that. Which brings me to a question I've often wondered about: why didn't you? You could have reassigned her. She's probably too valuable to let through the gate anyway."

"There was the team! We were better as a team. You don't mess with the formula when you've got the chemistry we had."

"And when you became a General," Daniel guessed, "She was already dating, and she was your direct report, and so you never had the opportunity to do anything about it."

"Well, yeah. But ah, what the hell. It never would have worked out, anyway."

Daniel did the other head tilt that meant he was interested and hoped you'd continue.

"She still has that whole Junior Officer knee-jerk 'Sir! Yes, Sir!' thing, and just between you and me, after meeting Jacob, I think that I would fit a little too well into any Freudian grooves in that shiny brain of hers. She'd never really fight with me, and there'd only be trouble. And anyway, Pete worships her, and she deserves that."

"She does." The new respect in Daniel's eyes was equal parts sweet and sour to Jack; it wasn't easy to impress Daniel, after all. But then, Jack wasn't so sure how crazy he was about the idea that Daniel plainly didn't think Jack had ever had an introspective moment in his life.

"What? I have an internal dialogue!"

"Monologue."

"That, too." Jack paused judiciously. "Maybe I get a little carried away with the whole Pete-bashing thing, but I think I'm entitled. Besides, Carter eats it up."

Daniel dipped his head and smiled.

"I won't deny it." Crossing the room to the door, he turned and said, "She especially likes it when Teal'c gives Pete that 'I'm-her-big-brother' look, though. She says it'll keep Pete on his toes." With a final, mildly sympathetic look, Daniel opened the door and left.

Jack kept his eyes on Daniel as he walked away, right until the door closed with a soft hydraulic sigh.

*

A brown plaid button-down shirt was hanging on the back of Daniel's chair, and Jack made a quick visual circuit of Daniel's office, half-hoping to find Daniel inappropriately bare-chested. And maybe sweaty.

It turned out that Daniel had been wearing a white longsleeved tee beneath the button-down. All was not lost, however, as the tee seemed to have shrunk in the wash and was clinging to Daniel's molded arms and defined chest in a very satisfactory manner. Looking up from a lumpy gray artifact, Daniel gave him an inquiring look.

"Lunch?" Jack asked.

"Already?"

"It's after one."

"Not on PX8-814."

"We have cultural traditions, too," Jack said.

Daniel smiled and set down the paintbrush he held.

"So. Lunch?"

"Sure. Except." Daniel grimaced. "It's not chipped beef day again, is it?"

"Our beef is the chippiest."

"Ah. How do you feel about kebab?"

"I have no strong feelings either for or against kebab." He considered. "Do I?"

"You'll like this place," Daniel promised, and tugged the plaid shirt on. Seeing Jack's dubious look, Daniel continued, "Really."

*

It turned out Daniel's shirt had been removed due to missing buttons.

"I snagged it on the handle of my car door, somehow." Daniel dropped his hands in order to lift a kebab from his plate.

Jack decided he liked the place; the decor was nothing to write home about, Early Eastern Strip Mall, he'd say, but the chicken had been marinated in something tasty and dusted with paprika. He slid another chunk of meat off its skewer and popped it in his mouth.

"I told you you'd like it," Daniel said indulgently, and Jack, who hadn't protested either way, just nodded and had another kebab.

*

Around the time people who had standard old-school office jobs went home, Jack stopped by Daniel's office again. Daniel wasn't in it, but his shirt, sans two buttons, was.

*

"Watcha workin' on?"

SG-1 had a three day leave, but that didn't mean any of them had actually gone home. Daniel, who was applying some kind of paste to what looked like the lumpy gray artifact he'd been working on the day before, waved Jack over.

"This," he said, eyes shining, "is from the library of Herculaneum."

"Were those the guys with the daisy chain crowns?"

"No, those were the Larun of PT4-167. This is from Earth. It's a scroll from the ruins of a city that was wiped out by Vesuvius two thousand years ago."

"Pompeii, huh?"

"No, Herculaneum. It was a neighboring city. They're excavating the Villa of Papyri, one of the only libraries of the age that we know of to have survived almost wholly intact." Daniel paused to let that particularly exciting fact sink in. "Anyway, I had put in a request, and the papyrologists in Naples lent me one to open and read. Sam and I are going to photograph it with some multi-spectral imaging equipment as soon as I get a sizable piece freed up."

"Can you two handle that much excitement?" He could just picture Carter and Daniel, head to head, poring over all kinds of wholesome scientific goodness.

"Jack, this could be a previously unknown manuscript by Virgil or Sappho-- it could have tremendous historic import."

"Or it could be somebody's grocery list," Jack said gamely. He continued before Daniel could get indignant. "What are you doing to it?"

"This is sort of a glue... gelatin, mostly. It keeps the scroll relatively intact. It's so fragile that it starts to degrade as soon as it's exposed to the air."

"Well, I'll leave you to it then. I just wanted to drop this off."

He handed Daniel his brown plaid shirt.

"I was looking for this, actually. Did I leave it in your car?"

"Nope."

"Then why--" Daniel held up the shirt and shook it slightly, unfolding it. Two black buttons stood out in the row of brown tortoiseshell marching down the shirt.

"I sewed the buttons back on for you."

"Oh." Daniel regarded him suspiciously before relaxing his face. "Thanks." After a pause he said, "I don't think anyone's sewn a button for me since Mrs. Gore."

"Who was she?"

"My foster mother. After my grandfather refused to take me, I lived in Boston with Mr. and Mrs. Gore until I went to college."

"Were they nice?"

"They were always very kind to me, yes." Daniel smiled. "They were nice."

"Where are they now?"

"Oh, they died." He paused again. "When I was still in school. Mr. Gore had cancer, and Mrs. Gore died a few months after he did. Heart attack. They were both in their seventies when I was placed with them."

Jack studied his friend's face, but Daniel didn't seem unduly distressed by the information he'd just shared, so Jack asked, "Is it weird that I've known you ten years and that's the first I've heard of them?"

Daniel gave him a wry little smile.

"Not especially. I know next to nothing about your parents. I guess I just figured you didn't much like them. No holidays at home. No 'when I was a kid' stories."

"When I was a kid there wasn't much to do, except fish and ride my bike. It was just me and my mom and dad. And my dog, Larry."

"Larry."

"Yep. Larry."

"And your parents?"

"My mom was an accountant. Part time. She was home after I got home from school. My dad was a machinist. He made window frames and stuff like that. A little arc welding."

"What were their names?"

"Grant and Emily."

"Are they still around?"

"No."

"I'm sorry."

"It happens. Mom had a stroke while I was in Iraq. My dad was doing okay, then about two years later, he took a header on the cellar stairs. Then, Charlie. So."

"Yeah."

"I figure, between us, we've lost too much family to talk about it much, you know?"

Daniel gave him a nod, and then glanced at the scroll he'd been working on. He covered it with a glass case and set it in the center of his desk before standing up and dusting his palms on his thighs.

"It occurs to me that I'm supposed to be on vacation." He glanced at his watch. "And it's the end of the day. You wanna get out of here?"

"Sure. Where to?"

"Um. I hadn't thought that far ahead. But back at my place I've got a drawer full of takeout menus and The Simpsons on DVD. We could pick up some beer on the way," he said, leading Jack out of his office.

"Simpsons DVDs?"

"I had intended to give them to you for your birthday, and then SG-4 came back with that scaly rash thing and--"

"Say no more."

*

After half a beer, Daniel had melted into the couch with sigh. He studied the cartoons with a sleepy, heavy-lidded look and Jack watched him swallow his Guinness out of the corner of his eye. In point of fact, Jack had every Simpsons season Amazon.com sold, but he didn't feel it at all necessary to admit that to Daniel. Or to Carter, who had already given him two seasons he'd already owned.

Out of nowhere, Daniel turned to him and said:

"The cargo ship. On the naquada asteroid. When we were waiting to be rescued, you stretched out on the floor next to Sam."

"Okay."

Daniel turned back to the television and failed to say anything more.

"And?"

"You were hoping she'd kiss you in some sort of 'We're all going to die' fit of passion, weren't you?"

Hello, we were stranded, no radio, life support running out. Hell yeah, I thought she'd kiss me.

"That's what you were thinking? That I was hoping for a little last-gasp nookie?"

"No. At least, not until later. Back at the SGC."

"What were you thinking?"

"At first I was thinking about how I'd really like to brush my teeth. Those escape pods don't exactly have state of the art air recirculation. Then I was thinking about how I was going to die having helped to save the lives of countless terran organisms who'd never even know I'd done it. And then I got sidetracked thinking about how I hadn't paid my credit card bill."

"So you're saying that whenever you're sure you're about to die, which is oh, twice a week for us, you're thinking about late fees?"

"Well. Not all the time. Sometimes I worry that the translations I haven't finished will get mangled by someone who doesn't know a consonant cluster from a diphthong."

"Hell, Daniel. You've been dead!"

"Technically, so have you."

Jack waved dismissively. "You mean that none of those times-- you weren't, you know..."

"What?"

"You were there with Sam, before I cut the last wire. We could have died, the entire planet could have gone kablooie, and you didn't think about a goodbye kiss? A hug even?"

"Don't get me wrong, I love Sam, but she's like a sister to me. Kissing her would be like... kissing Teal'c. And besides, we were both kind of annoyed with you."

"Of course you were."

"So you were hoping Sam would kiss you," Daniel said, with that sly look he only got when he was half in the bag.

"Of course I was! There are worse ways to go than in a liplock, you know."

"I do." Daniel looked speculative. "You know, for what it's worth, we should have all held hands, at least."

"A little kumbaya, don't you think?"

Daniel shrugged, and blew a low moody hoot across the mouth of his beer bottle. Then he said, "Sam would have kissed you. If the Tok'ra hadn't come. I could tell."

"Well. Thanks. Or something."

"I would have kissed you, too, but I didn't want Teal'c to feel left out."

There was a hum in Jack's head, and after a beat Jack said, "Just how drunk are you?"

Daniel actually laughed.

"Nowhere near drunk enough to be having this conversation."

"And what conversation would that be, exactly?"

"The one where I admit that I wasn't really thinking about my credit card bills on the asteroid."

"Daniel. Do I want to know what you were really thinking about?"

Daniel cocked his head.

"I don't know. Do you?" There was an incredible intensity in his eyes, one that shouldn't have been there in a Daniel who'd finished an entire beer.

It made Jack think of the way Daniel had sat in the cargo ship's throne and stared at him with a little frown. A speculative frown. Maybe the sort of frown you'd wear if you were considering unbuttoning someone's pants and shoving their shirt up so you could suck on a nipple.

And here he'd thought Daniel was just bored.

"Maybe."

Daniel leaned forward, the empty bottle still in his hand, and brought his face close to Jack's. Jack could taste Daniel's pleasantly beery breath blowing soft and hot across his own mouth.

"I was thinking about putting my tongue right... here." Daniel briefly touched a spot below Jack's left ear with an outstretched forefinger.

A wash of electric sensation splashed down Jack's skin and he swallowed hard.

"Oh."

Daniel lifted his chin and then angled his head until his jaw brushed against Jack's. The heat from Daniel's skin whispered across his face and then focused in a hot wet dot just below his ear. Jack's pants started to get tight and then Daniel's teeth closed softly on his ear. His right hand was kneading Jack's upper arm and he'd apparently dropped his beer bottle, because he was resting his palm against Jack's tented crotch.

For a long moment, Jack just sat there and let it happen, and then he closed his hands on Daniel's shoulders and pushed him back, gently.

"Listen. Just so you know? I wanted Carter. I love Carter, okay?"

Daniel's face went curiously blank.

"I have to say… that I really didn't think we'd have this conversation until tomorrow morning."

"Wait, wait, I'm not finished." Knotting his hands in Daniel's shirt, he shook him slightly, trying to transmit the real urgency of what he was saying. "I wanted you, too. And that's why I didn't make a move on Carter."

"Okay." Daniel backed away from him, unhooking his shirt from Jack's grasping hands and frowning now. "You know that makes no sense at all, right?"

"I wanted you more," Jack explained tightly. "And I couldn't do that to her. She was the practical choice, Daniel. She loved me, and I loved her, and I could have just reassigned her and asked her to marry me. But I didn't want to make her my goddamned cosmic consolation prize. She deserves better than that. And so do you."

For eleven minutes, according to Daniel's clock, Daniel was silent, considering the implications, Jack assumed, of what Jack had just said.

"So, as far as you're concerned, because of the burdens of both command and conscience, neither of us get to have you," Daniel said finally.

Jack wasn't sure what to say to that. Now that he was General, he had both more and less freedom than he'd had as SG-1's CO, but the same problems existed. Except now maybe there were more ways around them...

"Jack. I've known you a long time. And I think you made your choice a while ago. But I've made mine, too, and you know what? I'm overriding your command decision." And that said, Daniel hooked his hand behind Jack's neck and dragged him into a slow, wet kiss, sliding a hand under Jack's shirt and digging his nails into the small of Jack's back to goad him closer.

Jack leaned awkwardly on his arms, the angle was bad, Daniel's nails were surprisingly painful-- and then Jack hauled Daniel toward his side of the couch, Daniel on his knees now, his hand smoothing along Jack's back, his dick prodding at Jack's hip, and everything was perfect.

The way Daniel kissed reminded Jack that a tongue was all muscle, and the way Daniel ground against him reminded Jack that Daniel himself was all muscle these days. His pushy, single-minded personality was now housed in a body rippling with hard pecs and buffed biceps, and it was a little weird, because Daniel was somehow more substantial now, more alive than he'd been before he'd wafted away as a wavy ball of light.

Heavy, Jack thought, as Daniel started to try to overbalance them on the couch.

"Hold up!" Jack managed, and Daniel blinked at him, breathing hard, his hair mussed and his mouth all soft and red. "This is fun and all, but I think we're both a little old to be making out on the couch."

"See, I would have thought that you never got too old for that sort of thing," Daniel said, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Yeah. Well. I'm gonna go."

Daniel looked vaguely pissed off, and dropped back on the couch in a sort of cranky sprawl.

"You're really going to leave? You're not even going to give this a chance?"

Jack edged over until he was thigh to thigh with Daniel, and rested a hand on his chest.

"I'm gonna go home. Tomorrow, you come to my place. And we'll..."

Daniel's eyebrows rose. "And we'll...?"

"Do this some more," Jack answered. "With less clothing. On a bed. After I've… gotten my head around it."

"Jack," Daniel began, a warning note in his voice.

"I'm not gonna rush into this, Daniel," Jack snapped. "And neither are you. It's been a couple of years now, longer than that, and I think it'll keep for one more night. If we're gonna do this..." And he slid his hand down Daniel's chest to cover Daniel's hand with his own. "We're gonna do it right."

Jack himself didn't have much idea of what "doing it right" meant-- candles? Flavored lube?-- and they both knew he was mostly stalling for time, but he felt surprisingly strongly about giving Daniel another day to really consider the consequences of getting involved with his boss. Sexually.

"I don't know if you know this," Daniel said softly, with a birdlike tilt of his head, "but I'm not a fourteen year old girl. I know my own mind, Jack, and I'm pretty sure I know yours, too. We can do this. If you want to. And that's really the question, isn't it?"

Jack closed his eyes, and saw a million images of Daniel: smiling, bare armed, in suits, bleeding, sweating, covered in grime. When he opened his eyes again, Daniel was staring at him, his face wary and controlled. Sighing, Jack reached up to cup his cheek and leaned in to kiss him.

The kiss was thorough but almost lazy, slow and languid, Jack taking his time, mapping Daniel's mouth with his tongue, relishing that plump lower lip against his chin, his throat, sinking a hand into Daniel's plush hair, feeling Daniel's breath catch and curl in his ear.

"Oh, I want to."

Daniel said nothing, but studied Jack's face carefully and unzipped Jack's pants, slipping a hand inside and squeezing a little so that Jack hissed slightly on an indrawn breath.

His hand was heavy and warm, incredibly warm, but he made no move to kiss Jack, instead keeping his eyes open and focused on Jack's face.

They stared at each other through every stroke, and Jack's breath got ragged, and he struggled to keep still, not pushing into Daniel's hand or asking with his hips for more or less friction, and Daniel's face lost its wary cast and melted into that avid look of fascination that Jack had always envied a little: a guy who was so interested in everything was probably hardly ever bored, and Jack had found himself bored a fair amount from day to day, even when he had been leading SG-1.

There was nothing boring about Daniel's relentless hand, the way his heavy-lidded eyes looked almost green in the buttery light of the lamp on the end table, or the way his mouth parted softly as his intensity grew.

Jack knew he was flushed, he could feel his ears redden, he was close, he was so close-- his eyes slipped shut and he bit his lower lip, ready to let go-- and Daniel stilled his hand.

When Jack's eyes flipped open again, there was something light in Daniel's expression, almost Puckish, and Jack groaned silently, refusing to whine out loud.

"You're going to stay the night, right?"

"Jesus, Daniel! Of course I am."

"Good," Daniel said, and his hand was wicked and welcome and Jack shot all over the couch and slumped over to pant and rest his forehead against Daniel's throat.

"Bed now," Jack husked, and Daniel stroked the back of his neck, agreeing.

"Bed."

*

They'd navigated the morning after with a sort of casual amiability; it was like a rehearsal for something. It was like they'd already done this, were already used to waking up in the same bed. He'd brewed a pot of coffee and brought in Daniel's paper and lit out well before six to get home and shower and change.

He found Daniel in his office.

"This feels familiar, somehow," Jack said.

Daniel looked up from the swath of paper on his desk, every sheet covered in an image of the scroll he'd been poking at.

"So what's it say?" Jack asked.

"It's a grocery list," Daniel deadpanned.

"Funny. No, really."

"It's a treatise on love by a writer I've never heard of before. Abinius Something."

"Well, what's old Abinius got so say about it?"

"He's actually quoting other writers to support his claims that love is absolute and all consuming and should be man's great work. It's almost like a term paper. Listen to this: γω δ φ λημ βροσ ναν, κα μοι τ λμπρον ροσ ελ ω κα τ κ λον λ λογχεν. He's quoting Sappho. It means, 'I love refinement and for me Love has the splendour and beauty of the sun.'"

Daniel himself was practically glowing, and Jack thought the statement suited his intellectual radiance (and his almost annoying hotness) pretty well.

"Yeah. I was just thinking that."

Daniel blinked and flushed and Jack grinned at him and left his office, letting the door close with a soft hydraulic sigh.

END