Breathing Daniel

by J. M. Griffin

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asj/jmgriffin/breathing.php
Summary: Jack finds the alternative haunts him

The gate closed with its usual whoosh and they were gone, tinker, tailor soldier, spy, whatever. General Jack O'Neill wasn't sorry to see them go. Standing beside him, Daniel sighed and Jack cut his eyes to look over at him.

"I have stuff to do."

Jack nodded his head. "Yes, you do."

"I'll go do it," Daniel said softly as he turned to leave the control center.

Jack stayed for a bit, staring out at the dormant Stargate. A civilian expedition leader, some of the Air Force's best men and women, and various highly trained civilian specialists had all marched through the gate into the greatest adventure of the decade, possibly of the century. There had been a time when he himself would have headed the expedition. Time was when Daniel, Carter, Teal'c and one Colonel Jack O'Neill would have led the way into the unknown. They would have been the ones to find Atlantis, to unravel the mysteries of the Ancients. He should be frustrated and unhappy that it wasn't SG-1 that had just gone through the gate. But he wasn't, because if SG-1 had gone through, he still wouldn't have been in command of the group. He wasn't on the team anymore.

With a grimace at his pointless line of thinking, Jack turned away from the viewing window. He was in command here, now, and he had things to do.

He went home, eventually. No one stayed at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex 24/7, not even generals. The house showed signs of being cleaned recently. There were no coffee cups in the sink, and the kitchen table shined with a light coating of lemon oil. Daniel's books and journals were stacked neatly in the living room. The bed had been made, there were fresh towels hanging in the master bathroom.

Grabbing one of the towels to dry his wet face, Jack stopped rubbing and stared at himself in the mirror. He had white patches in his grey hair now. The groove on one side of his face was deeper than last year. He looked weary. He felt it, too.

Padding back into the bedroom, Jack scooped up his green jacket and tossed it onto a chair. It said a lot that he hadn't changed at the base, but had come home in his BDU. He was too tired to fix dinner, so he sat on the bed, sighed, then flopped back against pillows artfully stacked against the head board. In no time at all he was asleep.

He stood at the viewing window, his heart in his throat. The gate was open, washing the room below him with wavy fronds of blue light. Weir and her group were lining up to go. O'Neill could see Colonel Sumner at the top of the ramp, and Weir slightly behind him. Major Sheppard and Lieutenant Ford were next, walking shoulder to shoulder. Dr. Daniel Jackson was right behind them.

Jack opened his mouth to call out, to cry "Halt" in his most authoritative voice. To call Daniel back down from that ramp. But the archaeologist would not thank him for interfering, would never forgive him if he kept him from going on this, the most important mission of his career.

Ford went through the gate backward, and O'Neill would lay bets that Sheppard squeezed his eyes shut tightly before he moved into the event horizon. Daniel stopped a moment to shift the weight of his back pack. It stuck up higher than his head, filled with enough gear to last him several months. Even that might not be enough. Jack watched as Daniel looked over his shoulder, his blue eyes going up to the window behind which Jack stood. He gave Jack a wink, then turned and plunged into the deep.

He knew he shouldn't, it went against all protocol, but Jack threw himself against the clear shield and cried out the word, "No." Pain shot through him which had nothing to do with bashing his hip into the console beneath the window. "No, no."

"Oh, God, Daniel, no!" Jack jerked awake and sat up in the bed, his chest heaving with the horror of his dream.

"Whoa, whoa, Jack. It's okay." It was Daniel's voice, of course, Daniel's arms that came around him in the dim room.

Jack resisted, still wrapped up in the events of the dream. He shuddered and shook, and he knew tears were leaking down his face.

"Jack?...Jack, are you awake?"

In a violent move, Jack threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat curled over on himself, his head hanging down. It was a dream, just a dream, but it replayed in his head: Daniel's single-minded assent up the ramp, the wink, and then the last irreversible move away, away from him.

A hand touched his back, warm and alive and *there.* Jack scrubbed at his face with his hands, took a deep breath and turned toward the man hovering beside him.

Daniel's face had changed with the years, too. He no longer looked ten years younger than his age. Still, his hair didn't have even a hint of grey in it, though the worry line between his eyes was more pronounced.

He stared at Jack, wrinkling his brow as he always did when he was unhappy or just plain confused. "Jack, you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, " Jack nodded, though he was far from all right. Daniel moved over, and Jack slid back into his accustomed place on the bed, and laid back against the pillows once more.

"I didn't want to go. I was only teasing you," Daniel said gently, still sitting, watching Jack with concerned eyes.

"I know," Jack said quickly. "It's all right, it was just a dream."

Daniel picked up Jack's hand from where it was resting on the outside of the blanket. "Maybe, if nothing had changed, I would have gone. But only if we had gone together, the four of us."

"Carter refused to leave Cassie, or Pete, for that matter," Jack explained without needing to. "No one asked Teal'c as we need our resident alien here on Earth. But I should have asked you, Daniel, if you wanted to go. I should have at least asked."

Daniel smiled, a small quiet smile, the one that Jack liked best to see on his face. "If I had wanted to go, I would have gone."

Jack didn't answer, instead he shifted down, rearranging a pillow under his head. Daniel slid under the covers with him, nestling against Jack side, resting his head in the cup of Jack's shoulder.

Jack lipped at a tuft of Daniel's hair. Daniel's body was warm and soothing, and Jack felt himself relax, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly, making the hand Daniel pressed lightly against his lower ribs, rise and fall with his movement. "Thank you," he said softly.

"For what?"

Jack didn't answer, he simply turned until he was looking straight into Daniel's eyes. He took Daniel's face in his hands and covered his mouth with his own. He didn't kiss him, however. Instead, he lingered there, letting Daniel's breath pass, in and out, between his own lips.

For a long time he stayed very still, just breathing Daniel, until his eyes closed and he fell into a peaceful, dreamless asleep.