Behaving As The Wind Behaves

by Sage

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/ass/sage/wind.php
Summary: Shades of Jack and the way Jack and Daniel *are*

I. Zephyr

Patience with the heat is easy. Patience with Daniel is even easier. Especially when Jack gets to let Daniel do all of the sweaty work, while he sits on the edge of a deep pit, wearing one of the native sombrero thingies. They're called tur-turs. And Jack has made wonderful use of every permutation of that name. Tu-tu's. Tee-tee's. Even tattoos at one point.

And from underneath wire rims, Daniel has rewarded him with irritated glances and teeth-flashing grins that turned into frowns.

So, no, not hard to enjoy this world.

Jack's world is so narrow and snug. His command decisions are deciding whether to radio Carter and Teal'c to find out that nothing is happening or to continue "keeping an eye" on Daniel. Whatever that's supposed to be.

Daniel climbs out of the large hole where most of the ruins were buried in a pit and sits on the edge next to him. He reeks of sweat and the pink of sunburn flushes his shoulders and lets Jack know that Daniel is in for some serious discomfort because by this time, it's too late.

Still, he casually pushes the sunblock into Daniel's stomach until Daniel looks at himself and understands.

He pushes his glasses up and wipes off the beads of sweat with his shirt.

"You know, I really like these toto's, think we could talk Hammond into making them standard issue?" Jack asks. And he puts the big leaf sombrero over Daniel's head (and notices that even his *hair* is super heated by the sun) and puts back on his regular hat.

From under brown-green leaves, Daniel grimaces.

"Tur-turs," Daniel corrects, and wipes his glasses until the sweat becomes smears and the smears disappear.

He's got to be really tired if he's not even giving Jack a look. Which sends a flag up for Jack. Not a red one, but maybe a yellow one. Traffic-cone orange, even. An internal memo, really, to tell himself to keep an extra eye on Daniel.

Because Daniel's eyes aren't on anything but the ruins. And Daniel is really only dangerous when distracted.

"Looks good on you," Jack tells him. And he forgoes mentioning that the hat looks vaguely like the pineapple-basket that Zipacna wore to triad on Tollana. Back when there was a Zipacna. Or a Tollana, for that matter.

"The material culture has obviously suffered from a gradual migration of foreign peoples. There are at least three burn layers," Daniel tells him and is doubly smarter, because he slathers on sunblock while he talks. Jack actually knows that it means that a bunch of foreign yahoos came in and burned stuff and caused things to go down the toilet. But if Jack never made Daniel explain anything, he wouldn't learn anything. And Daniel would be seriously overpaid.

But thanks to Jack, Daniel can now safely said he doesn't get paid nearly what he's worth.

"Anything that would make the president smile? Besides bringing back some nice ta- ta's for him," says Jack with such easy ignorance. It's taken him years of careful Air Force training and hours of steam-pressure boredom in basic training to cultivate this level of dumb. And yes, Jack is *proud*.

He'd like to think he's reached the zen of dumb.

"Tur-turs," Daniel corrects with offhanded importance in his voice. "Something doesn't make sense though."

"I know, why don't they just call them hats?" Jack answers. And yes, he smiles when Daniel turns his head so slowly and stares, with his eyebrows all crunched to the bridge of his nose and his mouth doing that scowl thing that it does where his canine teeth show and it's very easy to picture Daniel as an *animal*.

"The burn layers are so close together. I don't think there would have been enough time for the city to rebuild itself. The loot they must have recovered from the first layer should have been enough, suggesting this was not entirely a material venture."

Jack knows what that means, too. It means it's time to call Carter and have her confuse him with *math*. And Teal'c can confuse him with eyebrows.

"Carter, what's your status?" Jack asks and waits. Nothing.

The yellow flag is up.

"Carter?" he calls again. Nothing.

The orange flag is up.

"Carter, come in."

The red flag is officially flapping in the wind.

Daniel even tries his radio in case maybe it's just Jack's, but nothing. No Carter, no Teal'c. And the dry dirt is smoke the way they run towards Carter and Teal'c's last position.

II. Gale Force

He's now resorted to pushing Daniel when he can't scramble up the rocks fast enough. And once he's climbed ahead, he's practically dragging Daniel up. He ignores the stickiness of blood on his hands. He even ignores the way that Daniel breathes so funny.

There is nothing but Carter and Teal'c and the top of this thing. Nothing but fifty angry natives behind them, with Carter's P-90 and her sidearm and zat and Teal'c's staff weapon.

Jack has already rolled himself to his feet when he sees Daniel's arm rise up from the other side of the edge. And he pulls himself up until he's almost chest level. And then he stops.

"Jack!" he calls, fearfully staring at Jack's boots like Jack might leave him. And the sickening slide of gravelly rocks underneath Daniel's weight, like ball bearings sending him backwards has Jack pulling Daniel up by his vest.

It's both brutal and beautiful the way Daniel *tries* to get up but slides again on the pebbles. Jack drops to his bottom and sits. He takes his hat off and scratches his head.

"Maybe we'll take five, this whole getting chased by natives thing is really wearing me down," Jack says. Daniel just lays on the ground with a hand, fingers apart on his chest.

"Maybe," Daniel replies.

"Where does it hurt?" Jack asks.

"I got hit in the back," Daniel replies. And he rolls to his side and then stands up. He's going to start walking again, only Jack grabs his arm at the elbow.

"How far did you say the ritual place was?" Jack asks.

"Maybe another five clicks," Daniel answers. And neither of them really notices that Jack's hand is still on Daniel's arm.

They decide on a nice spot behind some large rocks, near a small stream, that seems defendable. Jack leaves Daniel just long enough to find something to use for firewood in this place that has precious few trees.

But then he hears a gunshot and a scream and he goes running back faster than he expected that he could. And some completely random part of his mind says that maybe if he thinks of Daniel in danger all the time, he could be a really fast runner.

Daniel is on the ground, held down by two half-naked men shouting at him to renounce the demon within him. And they have knives.

And one of them stabs Daniel and Daniel screams.

It's not even a decision to shoot really. And Jack is close by the time he does that their blood spatters on his face like a Jackson Pollock painting. And Daniel's face, too. There's the urge to shoot them again, even if they are still dead.

"Jack," Daniel says and Jack steps over a body to see Daniel's shirt wet with blood. And he presses his hands over the wound. He wants to scream for Fraiser, for a medical team, for someone to fix this.

"Just keep pressure on the wound," Jack tells him. And Daniel presses his hands to his side and after a while the blood doesn't seep through the cracks of his fingers.

Night comes and while Daniel sleeps on Jack's rolled up jacket, Jack sits with the safety off his gun. And he dares anything out there, in the blind darkness, to try to touch Daniel. He's already dumped two bodies downstream and god help him, he will make it three or four or a hundred.

If he were a bird, his song would be 'come and get it'.

III. Dead Calm

There's a completely straightened slinky on his desk and Jack needs an excuse to go down to the infirmary. This used to be easier, when he was a soldier and he only worked with soldiers, and it was perfectly acceptable to keep bedside vigils. To go keep your buddy company while fate or God or the CMO decided whether he was going to live or die.

Only Daniel isn't in life-threatening condition. Sure, Fraiser is going to own him for a couple of weeks, but there's been worse. Like the time he actually died. Oh, and Jack still winces. Because Daniel actually died, and they didn't know he was coming back at the time.

Still, this should be reassuring. After all, Daniel has officially reached 'impossible to kill' status. Only, it's not. Because Oma Desala and her buddies aside, there's eventually going to be some half-naked native idiot with a knife somewhere. Some Jaffa who just gets lucky.

After all, the first time around, it wasn't the Goa'uld or the replicators that got the honor of saying they took down the mighty Dr. Jackson. Opener of the Stargate. Speaker of twenty-three languages. Bane of every commander and colonel.

It was the damn pissant Kelownans who weren't even trying that did it.

So Jack thinks about pie from the commissary. He thinks about Mary Steenburgen. He thinks about how he's going to recoil his slinky. He thinks about maybe getting a plastic one. He thinks about the fact that he could make a valid case for doing his report in Daniel's office, just because technically Daniel has a better computer. And a better office.

But that's because Daniel uses his. And Jack has to be held at gunpoint by Hammond and at least two of the joint chiefs to be caught dead in his office.

Maybe he could shoot himself in the foot accidentally. Only, that would be way more paperwork and people who tried that to get out of Vietnam that way ended up losing toes. And losing toes would get him off SG-1 permanently. Plus, there'd be a psych evaluation.

And he'd probably even end up admitting to the shrink that he was driven stark, raving mad by a linguist. An archaeologist. An anthropologist. A civilian. And the shrink would wonder why all these people were harassing him and Jack would have to admit they were all the same guy.

So, he's probably not going to shoot himself in the foot.

Jack doesn't get this. Daniel gets stabbed and shot and he's Mr. In Control. Daniel sits in a perfectly safe infirmary and Jack is left chasing after his own thoughts. Actually, yeah, he does get it. He gets that he needs to have Daniel all by himself so he can do his own inspection and know for himself that Daniel's okay.

He needs to make him watch hockey and distract him from work and piss him off and make sure he's still Daniel that's all in one piece.

Coming back to Earth is the worst. Because it's not hard offworld to turn the hormones and the feelings off. Offworld it's so easy. Jack is actually an Air Force colonel offworld and Daniel is actually a geek. And they actually don't have that many feelings. Because offworld is such safe, neutral territory. Even when they aren't being shot at, stabbed, chased, or otherwise in mortal peril.

The next thing to being offworld is having to do a report about one.

So what does he say? Carter made an offhand comment and the natives believed they were all infected by demons and took them to a ritual place to burn them at the stake and purify them? That Daniel was both shot and stabbed?

That the idea of Carter and Teal'c dying terrified Jack so much that he pushed his wounded lover hard and fast across a hot, unforgiving terrain at a breakneck pace and couldn't *afford* to pay attention? That he shot two natives who hurt Daniel and was *satisfied*?

And Daniel had given him hell about that, too. Apparently he needed to negotiate. Only, Jack knows better.

"You could have fired warning shots, it would have scared them off," Daniel had said. And Jack didn't pay attention to the words so much as the bruises on Daniel's knuckles and the IV in his arm. He can tolerate Daniel's grandiose morals, because hey, at least he's alive to enjoy it. And that's about as high as Jack's thinking has ever gone.

"I didn't think about it," Jack confessed and didn't care to argue with Daniel. As long as Daniel could forgive him for it.

"They did the only thing they knew how to do," Daniel said and Jack could almost feel sorry for the toto-wearing, half-naked bastards the way Daniel put it.

"I didn't want to shoot them," Jack mentioned.

"I know," Daniel replied.

Jack realizes that he and Daniel have become such good liars that they can even lie when they tell the truth. And that's when Jack notices the near-itching urge to go to the infirmary has passed. And he isn't tapping his foot anymore. And he needs a new slinky, urgently.

IV. Breeze

"You only got half pepperoni," says Daniel and pushes the top back down. Jack shrugs and thrusts the box at Daniel chest level and then piles the rental videos on top of them. "At least you got the movie I wanted."

Any nobody will ever accuse Jack of being subtle, because by the time Daniel sets the pizza box down and goes to get plates, Jack's head is in the fridge and he's searching for beer. He doesn't even have to take his head out to say,

"Just get some napkins and eat of the box like a normal person, Daniel."

"I think I'm out of the stuff you like," says Daniel and goes into the living room.

"You know, even Carter keeps better beer than you do," Jack notes and decides that with appropriate frowning and carrying on, he can live with what Daniel has in stock.

"Then you'll just have to go have a thing with her," Daniel snipes back and even worse, he's gone straight for Jack's supreme topping side of the pizza.

"Hey! That's my side," Jack gripes, "You don't even like supreme."

"Don't like beer either," Daniel says and Jack swears he's smirking around a mouthful of pizza. So Jack eats the pepperoni and drinks the beer he doesn't really like. And he doesn't really mind. Because he doesn't mind pepperoni, and honestly, the beer is growing on him.

And Daniel probably knows that by now. Or at least he should.

For some reason, Daniel has this thing about turning the lights off when they watch a movie. So once they're done eating, they sit in the dark and they have their feet up on Daniel's coffee table, next to each other.

Jack is, for once, paying attention to the movie when something bumps his foot. And Daniel is paying attention to the movie with such innocence that he can't *not* be guilty. Jack decides to ignore it. And a few minutes later, there's another. And another.

And when Jack finally acknowledges it, Daniel looks at him with such convincing confusion that Jack stares at Daniel's feet and can't decide if Daniel means it or not.

Maybe he really is just watching the movie.

Jack is still staring at Daniel's toes, thin boned and finely constructed, when suddenly he gets knocked over and he can taste the remnants of tomato and salt across his lips and his tongue. Yeah, okay, so maybe he misjudged that situation a little badly. After all, how many times can a man see Casablanca and stay *that* enthralled?

Something about the black and white glow of the TV (now muted, thanks to Daniel's easy grace with the remote) makes Jack feel like being so slow and lazy.

So he is. He kisses and he licks and touches as though he's going for an endurance record.

He listens to Daniel moan and loves him for the sound he makes.

He listens to Daniel climax and loves him for having a couch big enough to handle two lazy, satiated, naked men in complete comfort.

He ruffles Daniel's hair when Daniel's head is on his chest and loves him for that, too. Loves Daniel for eating *his* side of the pizza and making him drink beer he doesn't like.

And while Daniel's breath slows down, Jack's fingertips trace a scar.

"I didn't mean to shoot them."

And Daniel tells him, "I know."

Jack kisses Daniel's forehead and loves him for forgiving him for all the things he can't stop himself from doing.

Jack closes his eyes and loves Daniel for everything.

- END -