#polyfacetious | daniel

[kingofdirtandnothing]

@polyfacetious big ass Christmas Drabble Extravagaza: Day Twenty Three

“You know, I didn’t expect retirement to be this good.” Jack can feel the sway of the dock beneath him, the slow and steady slosh of the waves where it hits the wood. The sun is just starting to peak over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of blushing pink and soft yellows. It’s paradise, plain and simple. 

Even the breeze was gentle, soft and sweet and scented with the salt of the ocean without that heavy fish smell that came with being too close to the dock. 

And the only reason he’s here is sitting beside him in a matching folding chair, a little streak of aluminum white sunscreen still visible on his nose, just below where his glasses have slid. Jack doesn’t make any effort to look down at the book in Daniel’s lap, he knows he wouldn’t get it, even on the off chance it was written in English. 

Knowing Danny, it was probably in Aramaic or something. 

For all the overflowing bookshelves in their little condo, if Jack had to guess how many of them were in English, he’d guess twenty five percent or less. There were German fairy tales and Polish fantasy novels, and even some Russian crime novels shoved on the far end of the shelf. Jack picked them up when he saw something interesting in the book store. It was a game, trying to see if there was something Danny couldn’t read. 

And on those few times he found something Daniel wasn’t fluent in, the stubborn bastard would sit there with a dual language dictionary and a notebook and puzzle his way through the whole thing. Then he’d flop down on Jack in bed and give him a smug review of whatever it was.

Jack just hoped Daniel never cottoned on to the fact that Jack liked those smug book reviews more than any he’d ever read in the paper. All that skin against his skin while he was listening to Daniel talk didn’t hurt either.

“I thought...frozen dinners and too many days in a row in front of the TV watching the game.” Any game. Hell, Jack had stooped so low a time or two that he sat there and watched things like shuffleboard and darts. Because that’s what his retirement had been the first time around, after Charlie died. The silence of an empty house, his marriage bed cold and his son’s old bedroom a mausoleum. The only sound that ever broke the silence was the sound of the tv. Jack hadn’t turned it off for two years.

He’d gone through the motions while the divorce finalized, and even got in touch with a lawyer. Jack had a decent pension from his time in the service, and a nice sized life insurance policy. He’d just been waiting to make sure that putting a gun in his mouth wasn’t going to take all those things from Sarah.

After what he took from her, the least he could do was make sure she was taken care of financially when he was gone.

More than a few nights had been spent with the same sidearm that took his kid from him sitting on the arm of his recliner. Just in case he was ready. 

Jack never could work up the nerve to be ready.

It’s not a story he’s ever going to tell Daniel. Some things were just meant to be kept to yourself. But he thinks about it now, about how much he would have missed out on if he let his grief pull him over the edge and into the darkness.

Sarah had told him once, long after the divorce and with tears in her eyes, that Charlie wouldn’t have wanted this for him. That he wouldn’t have wanted his dad to be miserable for the rest of his life. That he could grieve their boy but at some point, he would have to move on with his life. (Sarah was a saint of a woman. She never blamed him for something that was his fault. That was alright, Jack would blame himself enough for the both of them, for the rest of his life.)

It was her words in his head that made him even pick up the phone when Hammond called. Jack had ignored a whole lot of calls from a whole lot of people before then. He and Hammond had  been in the Air Force together, and even worked a couple of missions on the back end when Hammond was riding the pine pony and before Jack’s forced retirement took him out of the service altogether.

It was Hammond who said he had a security company that he was starting up, and that he could use a fresh pair of eyes to make sure he was covering all his bases. Jack didn’t manage to have that conversation without asking Hammond if Sarah called him. He was too raw, too pissed off at the idea of being forgiven to leave it alone.

Hammond, God bless him and rest his soul, had deadpanned all the way through the phone wire. ‘Son, whether she did or not doesn’t change the fact that I’m asking you to do me a favor here.’ 

So Jack let words like favor and friendship coax him back out of his deathly silent house in Colorado and halfway across the world. Rich folks always needed someone to look after them, regardless of if they actually needed someone watching their backs at night. It was easy pay, most of the time. 

And then Jack got saddled with a sarcastic archaeologist who got a bodyguard courtesy of the university, after one of his failed students tried to put a hit out on him on the internet. (Jack always wondered how you even started looking for someone to kill another person. Did you type ‘hitman for hire’ in a search engine or something?)

The rest was long, complicated history. A whole lot of time and miles and sitting in on lectures until Jack stopped zoning out and started listening. Dr. Daniel Jackson was smart, that was never up for debate. Jack knew that the second he laid eyes on him. But listening to him talk, Jack started to realize how much more than just an egghead that Daniel was. 

He was clever, and he was funny. God, Daniel has a whip smart sense of humor and Jack enjoys it just as much now as he did when he first started seeing it unleashed on poor and unsuspecting entitled assholes at colleges where Daniel was going to speak. Dr. Jackson took no shit, but he did it with a smile on his face and left a lot of confused people in his wake. 

And how was a guy like Jack supposed to turn a blind eye to that? He’d settled down with Sarah, sure, and he loved the hell out of her. (He loved her so much that he was pretty sure he’d never be able to fall in love with a woman again.) But he’d had more than his fair share of foxhole fornication with the boys before he and Sarah got married. 

So spending his days shadowing a smart mouthed professor started being an exercise in repression. Because above all else, Jack was a professional. He wasn’t going to let his slow slide from respect to fondness to Feeling get in the way of doing his job. Hammond deserved better than that. 

Daniel did too. 

“You don’t have the best long view on the world, Jack. You’ve been known to be a little short sighted.” It’s sharp, and a little wry, and Jack loves the way that Daniel puts his index finger right on the line that he was reading so that he won’t lose his spot while he shoots a playful, loving look at Jack. 

“Yeah yeah, rub it in why don’t you.” Jack gestures around him, encompassing the blue skies and the white sand beaches and the handsome fella sitting next to him all with a wave of the hand that would do Vanna White proud. “This is all here because of you.”

Because Jack might have had decades worth of practice when it came to repressing the things in life he couldn’t deal with at the time, Daniel Jackson had never met a puzzle that he couldn’t solve. And Daniel had looked at Jack and seen a Gordian knot that he was itching to get his fingers on, convinced that if he could find the right string and tug, that he could unravel him. 

Smug bastard was right, too. Jack came apart like a house of cards in a hurricane the first time that Daniel cornered him in an elevator, a hand pressed flat against his chest and the smell of his cologne in Jack’s nose. ‘I want you.’ Daniel said, in that same knowing way he talked about the pyramids and the ancient Egyptians. ‘And I know you want me too. So why don’t we stop circling each other like some kind of alpha predator and actually do something about it?’ 

That had been peak Daniel. An argument rushed out on excitable words that Jack couldn’t think of a good excuse to argue back with. It didn’t hurt that they were coming to the end of Daniel’s contract, and his shit for brains ex-student hadn’t so much as sent a threatening email since the cops got involved. 

And in true Daniel fashion, he dug and he dug and he dusted off all the broken vase pieces of Jack’s heart and he treasured them just as they were. No need to be glued back together, or polished. Daniel loved him as much academically as he did emotionally, and Jack loves the son of a bitch so much for it that it keeps him up at night sometimes. 

Literally. 

Just the other night, Jack had lain there, tipped over onto his side because Daniel slept like the damn dead, and watched the way the filtered light from the street outside played against Daniel’s cheekbone, and felt that knot in his chest go taut. Daniel was the reason Jack got out of bed every day. 

(And in the morning, while Daniel was shoveling oatmeal into his mouth without looking away from the translation in front of him, Jack had let slip ��Charlie would have liked you’. And he meant it, too. Charlie had been whip smart, too. He would have loved Daniel.)

“No short jokes from you, junior.” It’s a lazy back and forth, and Jack digs at his own thoughts for a second until he can find the words that Daniel had used for it in one of his lectures last week. Call and response. 

Jack wasn’t getting paid to sit in on the lectures now. But he still liked to take up a spot in the back row and do the crossword with the ebb and flow of Daniel’s voice washing over him, the same way the sound of the sea was washing over him now. 

“I would never.” But Daniel’s voice trails off, the same way that his attention is fading, already shifting back to the book in his hand. If Jack was a betting man, he’d bet that tonight would be one of those nights that he’d have to roll out of bed with creaking knees and crackling ankles at two in the morning and usher Daniel into bed. He was close to a breakthrough, and Jack knew that getting much else out of him today when his brain was in Translation Mode wasn’t going to happen. 

“Yeah yeah.” Jack repeats, his own kind of absent as he reaches over to squeeze Daniel’s knee, careful not to bump the book where it sits in his lap. He turns his own attention back to the rod and reel he’s been ignoring through this stroll down memory lane, giving it a little tug on the line. 

Nothing was biting at the moment, but that was alright. Jack had nothing else to do, and there was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be. 

[kingofdirtandnothing]

Thoughts Meme: (Accepting)

“I should have told you I loved you ten years ago.”

[kingofdirtandnothing]

polyfacetious asked: Amortentia — Daniel

Amortentia Meme: (Accepting)

He realizes with a start that he doesn’t know. 

Magnus has spent a handful of lifetimes connecting lovers to scents, a way to keep them with him even when they were gone. Old perfumes for mundane women, the ruddy mixture of dried blood and alcohols for vampires. 

And with his few fae lovers, it’s always been flowers. Different flowers from each of them, little scents of their gardens clinging to them even in the mortal world.

But here in bed next to Daniel, watching him read through the glasses slipping down on his nose, all Magnus can smell is his own soap, and his own detergent. 

It bothers him in a way he can’t name.

[kingofdirtandnothing]

polyfacetious asked: 💭

Thoughts Meme: (Accepting)

“Really, nothing personal. I love seelie. You guys are a great bunch. Very into nature. Very accepting.” Jack is rambling, because the longer he can keep the seelie knights talking, the more likely it is that Alec can get into the garden they need to steal the scrying mirror. 

In the grand scheme of plans, this wasn’t his best. But they were running out of time, and if they were going to save Alec’s dumbass friend from this curse, they needed the mirror. Pronto. 

“I’m a big fan. Really.” The seelie knight in front of him might as well be carved out of onyx, for as little as his face changes. Jack sees a slip of black in the background as Alec darts by on silent feet, and he picks up his speech again.

“Did I tell you that I used to date a se-”

The words die on his tongue, and for possibly the first time in his adult life, Jack O’Neill is struck silent. His stomach plummets to the floor, and Jack finds the name leaving him without any direct permission from his brain.

“...Daniel?”