TITLE: Procrastinare
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Feb. 16, 2004
NOTES: Jack thinking about the possibilities of Daniel.
DISCLAIMER: Read




Jack spent a lot of time picturing a first, since until that happened there couldn't very well be a second, third, hey, if it's good, more. He drew tons of pictures, because those were all he ever thought he would have: images and his imagination and those silly daydreams that should've been in the head of a teenager, not his. Cassie. Cassie could have these thoughts...not these specific ones, though, please god.

It had started as curiosity. Amusement with an edge that cut deeper than he'd known while watching Daniel blink back into awareness as Sha're eased away and released his mouth but not his mind. Daniel hadn't looked shocked, or scandalized -- there'd been a bit of "um, wow, that's my wife" sneaking pride at the end, there, in fact -- but he sure as hell hadn't looked prepared. And right before sort of smothering a smile, Jack had wondered if that was because Daniel knew he couldn't ever prevent it from happening and so this? This was normal.

But after a while, when they'd gone years without a point for comparison, Jack had started thinking. There was this thought that was damn near as persistent as Daniel always had been, and it grew into a highly-skilled ambush of a deep-bone itch. Was it just that moment? he thought while he tried to keep Daniel from falling too much in love with the idea of the monk and his fire. Was it just Sha're? he specified after they came out of those mines and back to themselves, and he tried not to remember how much he hadn't wanted to be him. Or could just anyone make Daniel willingly lose himself in them? he asked when Daniel was sitting up on the stairs, slumped over beneath the 'gate, finally, thank you finally, breathing again. It was about then that Jack began to fight against dreaming of giving that itch a good and satisfying, five-minute scratch.

Tonight there were candles. Even in his sleep, Jack sees the deep flickering light filling the infirmary down the hall where they've been trading off turns trying to talk Teal'c's evil not-twin to death. Fraiser and the other docs had grimaced but stayed quiet when Bra'tac started around the room lighting each one, but the freaky thing was how the fire made things look so un-SGC-like. Really damn freaky, Jack thought before falling asleep, staring up into the emptiness of another room just large enough for a cot. Jack's seen his team lit by flame before; torches and campfires, explosions that came too close. Fire doesn't happen in the mountain, though, and it throws everything off, makes him afraid of what he'll dream. But it's not a dream and it's nothing like any of his pictures when Jack wakes in that bunker-black room with Daniel's breath in his mouth. It's Daniel's, has to be, the other one had his head shot off and it wouldn't be 24 levels down under ground, anyway, and Christ, no one else frowns like that, whether they've pulled back barely an inch from his nose or they're way across a very big room. Jack makes a noise, and it's more of a sigh than a word, but Daniel must know whatever the hell he said, because he gives it right back and Jack ditches the pictures. They've never done normal, and maybe the answer is that Daniel does also know when doing is best.

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