Chapter Text
There had to be some law in the universe, somewhere, about vegetables.
Or, rather, a law about stereotypes coming true on the one occasion he had someone staying in this bachelor pad. If a bungalow could even be called a bachelor pad.
That stereotype being—
“Jack…there’s just beer in this fridge. And some questionable Havarti cheese at the back.”
“So?” He purposely didn’t meet his friend’s eyes while rummaging in the cupboard for soup pots.
“So how are we going to make this special stew you keeping talking about if you have no vegetables?”
Straightening from his crouch, Jack clapped his hands. He grinned at seeing Daniel, owl eyed, in front of the open refrigerator. A plastic orange patient bracelet still circled his wrist in a crystal clear indication of what an enormous trial run this stay at Jack’s house was.
“You’ve been here for almost two weeks, Danny. Have I let you down in the supper department?”
Daniel scoffed, shoulders bobbing.
“On second thought, don’t answer that. I can hear your mental sarcasm from here.”
“I should put that as a language skill on my next resume.”
Jack’s brows rose. “Daniel. You’re never going to need to show a resume again once the program goes public. As if you’d ever be out of a job.”
“Don’t tempt fate, Jack.”
“When have I ever done such a thing?”
Daniel cheeks puffed—“Ach! Don’t answer that either!”—and then released.
Though Janet called every morning for an update, Daniel’s episodes hadn’t caused any major problems. Sure, he used up all the hot water that time he zoned out for forty minutes in the shower. But Jack could live with cold showers in exchange for seeing his friend so relaxed, mellow.
The close quarters were doing them both good.
Well, that and the fact they were both on “down time,” as Hammond called it.
“It’s not my fault someone fell asleep in the passenger’s seat instead of going in to buy groceries,” said Jack.
Daniel’s cheeks flamed and he shut the fridge door with a slow, controlled whump that was somehow worse than a slam.
Jack sobered. “I’m just teasing you, Danny. Linda picked the veggies up for me when I realized you’d forgotten at the mall.”
“So that’s your grocery secret.” Daniel smiled but wouldn’t quite meet Jack’s eyes. “Wondered how you manage all these house plants when we’re off world.”
“Yup.” Jack smiled too. “Everyone needs a good neighbour.”
Daniel rubbed his eye and suddenly stepped closer. His fingers sought a white, tortoise shell button on Jack’s plaid shirt and turned it back and forth. Jack let him. At least it wasn’t his earlobe like the first night home. Daniel’s brows crinkled as if he studied an artifact instead of a button.
Jack was more concerned about the glazed eyes. “You still having trouble sleeping?”
Daniel didn’t answer.
He couldn’t have nightmares about their captivity, like a normal person.
Like me, Jack thought. To his relief, his own nightmares had all but gone away since taking Daniel in.
No, Daniel wandered.
Jack would jolt awake in response to some paternal sense only to find Daniel’s bed empty. Frantic searches usually led to finding Daniel standing in the middle of the living room, or crumpled in the grass outside, or that one time he’d tried to fit in the pantry closet.
Each time, Daniel startled out of a cloudy stupor, eyes huge and fearfully confused. Surprised to find himself free of the cell and laboratories.
Sometimes he forgot he was allowed to talk and Jack’s pulse wouldn’t calm until he heard a small, “Jack?” after hours and hours of Jack silently panicking.
“I’m here, Danny,” Jack always replied. “We’re at my house. No test tubes. No Haines.”
Sometimes Daniel didn’t forget and whispered to Jack in Russian, Afrikaans, Hebrew…
“Abba,” Daniel once whispered to Jack with a pat on his arm.
Jack swallowed. He hadn’t been called that—in any language—for a very long time.
Even Janet was baffled. Daniel had never been a sleepwalker, but then he’d been given nearly eight times the dose of neural hallucinogen as Jack. The SGC chose to blame it on that and mental stress.
Jack refocused in time to see Daniel rub under his eyes. Again. His glasses smudged.
“Daniel?”
Still no response other than the twirling of the button.
“Come on, bud.” Jack rubbed the hand in his shirt. Slowly, as it always did, physical contact coaxed Daniel out of the sensory fixation. “Can’t make tonight’s stew without my trusty sous chef. Stay with me…”
Daniel blinked at last. The pale lips regained some colour. He glanced around, jolting when he saw his hand on Jack. He tried to pull away, blinking fast, but Jack held the palm to his chest, gently but firmly.
“It’s okay, Daniel. We’re okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not mad.”
Daniel deflated at the eternally magic words. Jack had a sneaking suspicion the fact these words were so comforting had absolutely nothing to do with Haines.
Sometimes Jack wanted to go back in time and strangle Daniel’s foster parents.
Daniel was content to stand there and let his hand be rubbed, apparently. So was Jack.
“Do I need to grab you a chair? Any dizziness?”
“Actually…” Daniel patted at himself with his free hand. “No.”
Jack beamed. “That’s progress!”
“How long was this one?”
“Just a few minutes,” Jack assured him.
Daniel glanced at the soup pot now on the counter and frowned. “There aren’t any veggies for the stew.”
“We just had this conversation. Remember?”
Daniel studied the floor, both hands now on his hips. Then he lifted his head, eyes a squint. Jack’s heart thudded. Daniel seemed to be doing worlds better, but once in a while setbacks like this took everyone off guard.
Then Daniel pointed at Jack. “…Linda?”
“Give the man a door prize!” Jack shook his friend by the shoulders once. “That’s going in the morning report to Janet!”
Daniel rolled his eyes but the effect was dampened by a smirk.
“You’re on stirring duty, my good man.”
Jack handed him a wooden spoon for sautéing the onion, then for stirring the broth mixture. Over the next hour, Daniel chattered away about an old Hitchcock film and its Faustian themes while Jack cooked the beef.
“Wait.” Daniel’s methodical stirring froze. Jack’s heart skipped a beat and he set down his meat tongs, prepared to catch Daniel should he slip to his knees. “Sous chef?”
The replying exhale of relief was hidden by Jack’s quirked brow. “Yeah. That’s what the assistant chef is called in a kitchen. I’m clearly head chef.”
“But…I was lead chef on Abydos that year. You should be sous chef.”
“I have years of experience making food from literally whatever I find lying around.”
“That’s survival cooking. Doesn’t count.”
“And your woolly mammoth specialty does?”
“It’s community. Food is community.”
“Food is survival,” said Jack with a long look.
“My culinary pallet is broader.”
“Oh yeah? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? Bet it doesn’t beat my squid-dog stew in Japan.”
Daniel threw him back that spark-eyed expression which was uniquely theirs. “Survival and community cooking: Spiced scorpion mixed with the three thousand year old remains of a cat we found in a canopic jar. We were lost in the desert and that’s all we had.”
The sound of metal clattering to marble counter top replaced the swear word Jack wanted to bark out. He hastily retrieved his meat tongs, staring at Daniel.
“It takes a lot to shock me anymore…”
“You’re welcome.”
Cheeky kid.
“Alright. Lead chef title is officially yours forever.”
Daniel’s chin lifted with his triumphant smile—
Until Jack handed him a slender knife.
“Jack, what—”
“For cutting our veggies. I just have to go down the road to get the rest from Linda. Here.” Jack hauled out a bag of carrots, freshly peeled, from the basement steps. “You chop some root vegetables, Mister Lead Chef, while I hunt and gather. Deal?”
Daniel just poked Jack with his elbow and was already slicing the carrots into neat, circular coin shapes. He plopped some into a pot of water boiling on the stove.
With a satisfied nod, Jack beat his retreat. The onset of fall meant darkness settled faster. Streetlights popped on in tandem with Jack’s trek down the pavement. In this secluded section of town, the sound of cars was scarce.
“Jack!” Linda leaned on the steps of her wrap around porch when Jack came around the bend, a grocery bag at her feet. “Good to finally see you!”
“Linda, you doll.” Jack jogged up the steps two at a time and pecked the white haired lady on her cheek. He pressed a twenty in her palm. “I can’t thank you enough for this. Time…slipped away from us yesterday.”
The woman’s wrinkled face softened. “How is your boy?”
A sudden pause overcame Jack. Uncharacteristically lost for words, he only nodded.
“If you need any help with his recovery, anything, you call. You hear?”
Jack nodded again. “I’m just glad he’s talking again. Thought I’d lost him for good this time.”
He hadn’t told Linda the full story but she was the kind of grandmotherly lady who would see through a lie anyway. Her eyes glowed yellow in the lantern light hanging over her porch.
“There’s a little something extra in the bag,” she said.
“You didn’t have to do that…”
Linda slapped Jack’s nosy hand away from opening the plastic bag. “It’s for after you’ve eaten.”
Jack only smiled and hugged her again. “You’re too good, Linda.”
“Darn right I am.” Linda winked. “But it’s no trouble, Jack, really. Besides, how many times have you shovelled my driveway? Checked in on me that time I fell?”
“If you were gone who would water my plants?”
Linda threw a sharp retort of laughter at Jack’s retreating back. “Get off my lawn, flyboy!”
Jack saluted and jogged the quarter mile home.
He didn’t realize he’d been holding his shoulders tightly until the inviting orange glow from his screen door framed Daniel, back to the door and bent over the cutting board. He hummed faintly to himself, some Beatles’ song.
Jack said nothing while he got to work beside his friend. He stuck on an actual Beatles’ record and as it began to spin, Daniel hummed along.
The vegetables were cubed in no time and softened while they simmered. Salty scents filled the bungalow, along with a thin haze of steam. Jack warmed soup bowls in the oven. The smell of bread being sliced only made his mouth water more.
Their stew was almost finished and Jack was just flipping the record when he stilled. Something felt…different.
The humming. Daniel had stopped humming.
His fingers set the needle down on a new song, just in case.
Nothing.
“Daniel?”
Jack hopped the lip from his living room into the kitchen. Daniel still stood at the cutting board.
“Jack,” said Daniel, eyes on the knife in his hand. “Do you think those are real bird sounds in this song? Listen.”
Jack hesitated. “Daniel, ‘Blackbird’ was six tracks ago. That song ended already.”
“Oh.” Daniel’s face fell. “I thought it was still playing…”
Jack took a deep breath. It wasn’t unusual for this to happen, for Daniel’s brain to delay and misconstrue time.
“How’s our bread coming along?” he asked instead.
He stepped around Daniel’s back to see the counter. Neat slices of spoon bread lay in a fan pile—
Covered in red.
Jack’s heart rate spiked. “Daniel! You’re bleeding!”
He ran for the bathroom’s first aid kit, Daniel’s voice faintly asking, “Did you know most household accidents happen in the kitchen?”
“Yes, Daniel, I am now very well acquainted with this fact.” Jack pried the knife from Daniel’s hand, threw it in the sink, and examined both palms. A wide slice, from the wrist joint of his friend’s thumb and wrapping around the pinky finger, marred his left hand. “Aww, Danny…”
“Oh,” said Daniel again. “I didn’t even notice.”
Neither did I. Guilt churned like bile in Jack’s sternum. He pressed gauze onto the dripping wound. Blood spatter was on the counter, the floor, both men’s shirts. The serrated bread knife had frayed the skin edges.
“Jack?”
“Not your fault, Danny. These episodes will go away soon enough.”
“Jack?”
“What, Daniel?” Jack immediately regretted the snap.
“I think…I think I’m going to need that chair now.”
Jack whipped up from his frenzied cleaning of the wound. Daniel swayed backwards and his skin drained.
In some miraculous feat, Jack hooked a chair with his ankle and caught Daniel around the waist simultaneously. His hands scrabbled for Daniel’s belt so that the man’s descent was controlled.
Daniel sank onto the chair, breathing shallow.
Jack sat across from him, panting hard from fear, and began to wrap the hand. Daniel stretched out his elbow on the table to allow him better reach. His other hand cradled his forehead.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Jack gave the cotton-Telfa bandage a particularly hard tug. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. You just scared me. We have to talk about that nasty habit of yours.”
“Cutting myself on things?”
“Sending me to an early grave from worry. And I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Jack’s jaw twitched. “For being stupid enough to give my best friend who suffers from lapse episodes a knife. I should have known better. I failed to protect you.”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Stop beating yourself up, William Wallace.”
“My job is more than protecting you off world, Daniel.”
“I know.”
“That’s the whole reason you’re here, because Janet and the SGC trusted me with the rest of your recovery.”
“I know.”
And I’m going to mess it up. I just did mess it up.
As if he’d heard this thought—he probably had—Daniel growled in frustration. “Jack, stop!”
For once, Jack obeyed. Gurgling broth filled the place of words. A gash this deep probably needed stitches, but it could wait to see Doc Fraiser until morning. Daniel was pale, the wound already clotting.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” said Jack.
“Shoot.” Daniel was blessedly in the present, one hundred percent.
“That day we had a bonfire and…and went stargazing. You poked me. Why?”
Daniel’s eyes tracked the hypnotic winding of the bandage. Around and around. He sniffed, wrist swiping once at his nose.
“Daniel?”
“I poked you because you love steak.”
Jack’s mouth did a thoughtful little down flip and then smoothed. “Yeah. If I had to have a last meal type thing, I’d choose steak.”
“Exactly. Yet you weren’t eating much of it. I guess…I thought I had to trigger ‘normal’ you as my brain remembered. I thought I was losing memories of you or that Haines had manipulated them.”
“That day wasn’t a memory. We’d never done it before.”
Daniel shook his head. “But you eating steak was within the realm of how I know you. You not eating steak threw me for a loop. I don’t know.”
Surprised by this answer but keeping his face calm, Jack taped off the bandage and squeezed the hand. “There. I can put on my hockey jersey and swig back some beer if that would reaffirm my manly O’Neill-ness to you.”
Daniel pinned him with a wry grin. “No, that won’t be necessary. Even Haines’ recreations had nothing on you. Some things you just can’t…make up.”
Jack stood, patting the side of Daniel’s face once. He shoved some Tylenol in Daniel’s good hand.
“I don’t feel much pain, if you can believe that.”
“I do. Take them anyway. Trust me. It’ll reduce swelling.”
And for once, Daniel obeyed Jack without question.
It was a night for firsts.
“You’re not going to lose me.”
Daniel dropped the water glass onto the table. His gaze swung up to Jack, more open than he’d been even that night he first spoke. It was something so young looking, something so vulnerable.
That vulnerability was a mirror and Jack’s greatest mission all in one.
“You’re not going to lose me,” he said again, for good measure. “Not in body or in your mind, got it?”
“I-I know. Or, at least, I will know.”
Jack nodded, knowing that was as much of a verbal admission to the intense emotional upheaval Daniel had experienced during Haines’ medical torture that he would get tonight.
“I know just the thing to get your blood sugars back up.” Jack spun around in a “ta-da!” motion, holding a plate of chocolate fudge. “Courtesy of Linda.”
“That’s great. Thanks, Jack.” Daniel grabbed the plate from him and polished off two squares before Jack could get in an indignant yelp.
“Hey! No hogging the fudge!”
Daniel’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh? I thought Lead Chef always tasted first.”
“Not when chocolate is on the line. Careful, I know where you keep your meds.”
“I know where your bait tackle is.”
Jack put a hand to his chest. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“Savage.”
“Jerk.”
“Punk.”
“…Old fart.”