Chapter Text
Chapter 01
‘tis the Season
“Straight home, sir?”
Jack tapped his iPad to close the open tab and leaned back in his seat. Outside his car window snowflakes were dancing and trundling down. Not enough to stick yet, but a foreshadowing of the real thing Heather the CNN weather fairy had promised them for the weekend.
“Yeah, home it is,” he absently answered his driver’s question.
December again. When the hell did that happen?
Time flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re being swamped with work. Jack had spent the last week or so smoothing ruffled feathers on several fronts, alien and Earth contingents alike, reining in the enthusiastic Chiefs of Staff who’d gone wild over some fancy new Ancient weapon someone found… somewhere. The geek squad at Area 51 had been salivating and naturally the possibility of blowing a whole planet to netu with a snap of your fingers received way more attention from the military and government than finding technology to solve world hunger or cure cancer or HIV.
Jack and his staff had put out several fires these last couple of months and while it felt good, he just didn’t get the same kick out of trouble shooting from behind a desk or at a briefing room table. Yep, sometimes he still missed going off world even after all these years.
Or maybe he just missed doing something entirely different than… what he was currently doing.
December had crept up on him almost unnoticed until the lights began popping up everywhere, the leftovers from Thanksgiving had been purged, the first radio stations were playing Jingle Bells and Last Christmas again.
But Jack was ready. He had started to prep for the season way ahead, back in the fall. Now everything was in order; he had all his ducks in a row. Of course he had. He hadn’t made two star general without reason.
And yet, when December actually rolled around he somehow still had a last minute to-do list he needed to check.
Traffic slowed down and he got a glimpse of lights lining the shops and houses, dots of colorful brightness as daylight turned quickly to twilight.
“I guess we’re stuck here for a while,” Jack’s driver announced, an apologetic tinge to his voice. They’d had this conversation several times during the week.
Jack was about to go with his assigned part of saying, “Construction areas, never ending story, eh?” when his phone started playing the Simpson’s tune. He had meant to change it for years and kept forgetting. Or maybe he was just comfortable with it.
Looking at the caller ID he frowned and touched the screen. “Carter! Long time no call. How ya doin’? I hope all is well underneath that mountain of yours.”
“Sir! Hi! Yes, we’re good. No crisis, no worries.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “How are you?”
“Ohhh, you know what it’s like… keeping the world in the balance and all that.”
“Yeah, I know.” She paused and then cleared her throat. “Sir…”
“Jack.”
“Jack. He did it again. And this is the third time.”
“Who did what again?” But he knew. And he huffed out a breath. December. Right.
“Daniel, sir. Jack. He canceled again.”
“Carter…”
“Sam.” She didn’t miss a beat.
“Sam. Look, I know you’re worried, but maybe Daniel just has other plans…”
“What plans?” Now she sounded offended. “I mean we always spend the holidays together. As a team bonding thing. That never changed after you left.”
“Did you ask him why he doesn’t want to go to the cabin with you guys?” Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. The cabin. If he regretted one thing he had done in the last decade or so it was giving the cabin – his cabin – to Landry. It had been a rational decision. Jack hadn’t been at the cabin in years and the small old house had started showing signs of decay. Landry had put some work into it and somehow over the years it had ended up becoming SG-1’s holiday retreat.
Jack missed his cabin.
“Yes. He said he, uh, had other plans. And he took off a whole fortnight. He did the same thing last year and the year before as well. And he won’t tell us where he’s going.”
“Maybe he just wants to wind down, have some alone time, has a girlfriend… who knows?” The car started moving again, smoothly threading into the slow traffic in the other lane.
There was a snort on the other end of the phone. “A girlfriend?”
“Daniel is a man in the prime of his life.” Most of the time anyway.
“No, that’s not what I mean. But he’s either holed up behind his desk or going off world. You can hardly meet girlfriend material that way. At least not the kind you can date on Earth,” she pointed out.
“Right. What was I thinking.” In his mind he started running through the contents of his fridge. He should be stocked up with everything he needed on that front as well.
“Anyway, I just wanted to know if you’ve heard from him? If he’s, I don’t know, talked to you about what’s going on? Or… I… I don’t know.” She sounded really worried, almost desperate.
“Carter, you know me and Daniel. We don’t usually talk. About… stuff.”
“But he usually turns to you when he needs a friend.” There was something akin to resentment in her voice. Or maybe not. Maybe she was just annoyed that Daniel had gone off the grid again. Jack couldn’t tell.
“Nope, he didn’t call, didn’t write.”
“Right. Cam is going to pin him down and get some answers once he’s back. I just thought I’d ask.”
“Sorry.” He waited a heartbeat, then added. “I’m sure he’s fine, Carter.”
“Yeah, he probably is. Good night, sir.” She hung up and after a moment Jack pocketed his phone and leaned back in his seat watching the dancing snowflakes.
* * *
The alluring smell of something hot and spicy greeted Jack when he closed his apartment door and tossed his keys into the ceramic bowl on the side table by the wall.
“How’d you get here?” he called as he shrugged out of his winter coat. His eyes caught sight of a pair of heavy boots in a tiny puddle of melted snow on the rug underneath the coat hangers.
“Took a cab. Walked a couple of blocks. Traffic is a mess.”
Jack left his own shoes to keep the other pair company and strolled into his kitchen where he opened the fridge and got out a bottle of Bud. A bottle opener was handed to him.
“Dinner is almost ready.”
Jack opened his bottle, tossed the cap in the general direction of the sink and leaned against the fridge taking a sip. “Smells good.”
“Paella. I brought wine. The good one from Spain.”
Ignoring the mention of wine for now Jack watched his house guest puttering around in his kitchen, totally comfortable, as if he had lived here all year round and done the cooking every night. Jack hardly ever cooked. He ate at the Pentagon or ordered something. His specialty in the food department were omelets, pancakes and steaks. Well, and the basic meals he managed to put together during the second half of December.
Because in December everything was different.
“Carter is worried about you. And Mitchell is going to grill you about going off the grid when you’re back.”
Daniel chopped the parsley, flourishingly adding it to the contents in the large pan. “I know,” he said on a sigh. “And I had a hard time getting Vala off my back.”
“Maybe it’s time…” Jack didn’t finish the sentence.
“What am I supposed to tell them?” Daniel stirred the rice and added spices Jack didn’t even know he owned; saffron, some fancy herbal salt, black pepper.
“What, you think they can’t handle the truth?”
There was more stirring and more adding of spices. “No! Yes. Maybe. I don’t… know.” Daniel’s shoulders tensed, his back stiffened for a moment, then he put down the spatula and slowly turned to face Jack. In the kitchen light he looked tired and a there was a hard line around his mouth, dark circles underneath his eyes. “Can we just eat?”
“Sure.” Jack put his beer down and started setting the table. From tomorrow until the day after Christmas that would become Daniel’s job because he always insisted on doing it. But today things were still normal.
The paella was hot and spicy, the rice soft and the chicken tender. They ate and Daniel talked about a planet SG-2 had gone to and the incredible finds they’d brought home. Jack listened and didn’t roll his eyes. They were tap dancing around the pink elephant in the room with their well-honed skill of strategic denial.
Until Daniel poured himself a second glass of wine.
Jack’s left eyebrow climbed upwards. “You know that’s a bad idea.”
“I’ll take full responsibility.” A set of stubborn blue eyes framed by those familiar plain glasses glared back at him across the table.
“You’ll be hungover, sick and miserable.” They had been there, done that, had gotten the t-shirt. Jack wasn’t keen on going through it again.
Daniel picked up his glass, turned it this way and that, eyeing the rich red liquid. “Who knows, maybe nothing’s gonna happen this year,” he muttered under his breath.
“If nothing’s gonna happen you’re welcome to have as much wine as you like. Tomorrow.”
“I hate it when you are the actual voice of reason,” Daniel pointed out but put the glass down and gave it a gentle push in Jack’s direction. “That’s usually my job.”
Jack placed the wine next to his own empty glass. “How about hot chocolate? I got cinnamon sticks and marshmallows.”
Daniel grimaced. “Maybe tomorrow.” They looked at one another. Jack caught a glimpse of something in Daniel’s eyes. Fear? Anxiety? It disappeared quickly, at least from the surface. “Jack…”
“Ah!” He raised a finger to stop what he knew was going to come out of Daniel’s mouth before he even started. “I’ve got this. We’re going to make the best of it.” He had made plans. And at least part of him was looking forward to this. Not that he would ever admit it.
“You shouldn’t…”
“Your room is ready. We’re all set. Let it go, Daniel.”
The glare intensified if that was possible. “Oh, okay, sure, I’ll let it go, thanks for the pep talk.”
Jack had started gathering the dirty plates. Now he put them down again and answered Daniel’s steely stare with one of his own. “You want us to take this to the mountain?” It was what Jack had wanted to do in the very first place. Three years ago when a panicked Doctor Jackson had called him in the middle of the night, compelling Jack to jump onto a plane ASAP. And it hadn’t even been so much what Daniel had said that put Jack into gear without a second thought.
It had been his voice.
So small and vulnerable, so unlike the Daniel he had known for so many years. And it had been due to that voice and the look in those big-as-a-saucer blue eyes that had made Jack promise not to drag Daniel to the mountain so Lam could prod and poke at him for solutions.
They had called in the Asgard instead. Not that it had done them any good, mind you.
Daniel’s eyes darted sideways. The unyielding look softened but his jaw was still set. “You know that’s the last thing I want.”
“Okay. All I’m saying is, if you really want to put an end to this, we should get you into the infirmary and have Lam figure it out,” Jack said quietly.
“There’s no way of knowing she’d be able to stop it. Loki couldn’t stop it.”
“Yeah, okay, point taken.” Jack still thought it might be worth a try. He didn’t trust Loki further than he could throw him, but Lam might have a couple of tricks up her sleeve or something in the infirmary’s vast data bank. Fifteen years of gate travel, collecting knowledge and technology had to be good for something, right?
But deep in his gut Jack knew Daniel was right. The only one who would be able to make it stop was the one who had caused all of this in the first place. And trying to pin her down and ‘make her stop it’ was a lost cause.
Daniel leaned back in his chair and gazed at the tree in the corner by the window. It was still in its birthday suit, in all its green needle-ish glory. A spruce Jack had paid a fortune for, but at least it wasn’t dropping its needles yet.
A smile curled Daniel’s lips. “You haven’t decorated yet.”
Jack shrugged. “Well, you told me to wait, so…”
“You remember that.” Up went the eyebrows behind the glasses.
“I listen sometimes. And I do remember the important stuff.” Jack grinned.
They cleared the table together, put everything into the dishwasher and Jack ignored the longing look Daniel aimed at the espresso machine on the counter. Not gonna happen. Not tonight.
Jack went into his bedroom and returned to the living room with an armful of bedding he dumped on the couch.
“Thanks. I guess we should call it a night, huh?” Daniel fluffed up his pillow and fiddled with the blanket.
Jack’s cue to say, “I can stay if you like.”
“Uh, no. I won’t even notice. I’ll go to bed like this, and I’ll wake up like… that.”
“Right.” Jack walked past him, brushing Daniel’s shoulder with his own just so. “Sleep tight.” He stopped in the doorway and looked back. “I’ve locked the coffee away.”
“Cool. What about the alcohol?”
“Not your kind of poison. But just in case… yes, all out of reach.” Jack snorted and caught the small throw pillow coming his way. He tossed it back and went to his bedroom to get ready for the night.
He used the bathroom, changed into his old but comfy black sweatpants and a gray t-shirt and then he found himself lying on the bed staring at the ceiling of his dark room. He listened to Daniel puttering around in the bathroom as well, then heard his soft footsteps as he returned to the living room to bunk on the couch.
A glance at his clock radio. Still too early.
Jack’s thoughts wandered back to his phone call with Carter. They were genuinely worried about Daniel, no doubt about it. It wasn’t fair to leave them in the dark about what was going on. He needed to talk this through with the Holiday Daniel. Maybe he was more open to the idea of cluing them in. He hadn’t done that last year or the year before that because in the first year there had been much adjusting and figuring things out and last year there had been more things to figure out and then they had just gotten carried away with Christmas and establishing a couple of maybe traditions.
Jack felt like he had a lot more control over this now. And a lot more confidence. Hopefully Daniel was going to feel the same way tomorrow.
Another look at the clock. Time to get this show on the road.
He rubbed his eyes and slipped out of bed, silently making his way down the hall into the living room. Daniel was on the couch, apparently dead to the world. Jack wondered if the gift that kept on giving made sure he wasn’t awake during the process…?
He settled down at the end of the couch where Daniel’s head was resting on one of the guest pillows. Daniel was a tall guy but Jack’s couch was bigger, so he could easily slip in beside his friend. He reached over and shoved his right arm under Daniel’s head, resting one hand on his chest, feeling the slow, steady heartbeat.
Daniel stirred briefly but didn’t wake. He’d probably be mad if he ever found out Jack had been – and always would be – sitting through this with him. Daniel was incredibly bad at asking for or accepting help and any kind of personal comfort. The holiday version was a bit different though, which was one thing Jack was grateful for.
He kept his hand on Daniel’s chest when the heartbeat quickened and he began moving a bit restlessly without waking up, head turning from side to side, tremors going through his body. Jack carefully removed the pillow and maneuvered Daniel’s head and shoulders into his lap. Daniel moaned. Jack patted his shoulder and carded his other hand through his hair.
“Shhh, it’s okay, I’ve got ya, Danny-boy, it’s all good,” he whispered just as the glow appeared. It started like a bauble of light on Daniel’s solar plexus and then spread from there all over him, legs, chest, arms, head. Jack had seen it happening for the first time last year and thought he was prepared for it this time around, but it still hit him right into the gut.
It just wasn’t right to do this to anyone without consent. And nope, her reasoning of Daniel needing this wasn’t justification in Jack’s book. It was wrong on so many levels.
“I want you to show yourself!” he snapped as he held Daniel in place and tried to help ride out the convulsions. “C’mon out and stop it!”
But he had tried that last year and she hadn’t bothered. Had just done her thing and left them to deal with it. Again.
The glow intensified, engulfing all of Daniel’s six feet something body and then with a flash of white blinding light it disappeared.
Jack quickly wrapped a blanket around the now still form and gathered him into his arms. He felt for a pulse and it was there, not as slow as before, but steady and strong.
“Your anger will not help him heal.”
He almost dropped his bundle of joy as he spun around. “Geez, what an entrance.”
She was only light, energy, whatever - with the human face of a woman. Jack had never met her in person, but he was quick on the uptake when he wanted to be. “Morgan LaFey, I presume.”
“Only Daniel himself can put an end to this.” She stepped closer. A tendril of light reached out to touch, but Jack took a quick step back.
“Whoa, easy, lady.”
A frown appeared on her translucent ageless face. “Why would I harm him? I am only trying to help.”
“How’s that working out?”
She flickered, then established her visible form again. “He does not seem to understand.”
“Oh, I don’t know, though maybe if you stopped talking in riddles and just … no, strike that. I don’t want you to do anything else. Except stop this.”
“Only Daniel…”
“Yeah, you said that. What is this? A fairy tale? Solve the riddle and be free? Make three wishes for your own good? What?”
“He will know. Once he finds what he’s been looking for.” And with that she disappeared into thin air and left a seething Jack standing in the middle of his living room in his swanky apartment in Georgetown.
However, his anger died quickly when Daniel began stirring. “Shhh …” Jack patted him soothingly as he crossed the hallway to Holiday Daniel’s room. Without turning on the light he found his way to the small bed and laid him down. He quickly grabbed the pajamas from the nightstand and it was only a matter of minutes before the holiday version of Daniel was dressed and underneath the comforter. Like last year he didn’t wake up, probably thanks to a special LaFey spell or something.
Jack turned on the nightlight, a small, smiling pot-bellied Santa Clause, and watched for a couple of minutes as his friend slept peacefully. He picked up Bumpy the camel from the foot of the bed and placed it beside Daniel. A small hand came out from underneath the blanket, found it and pulled it close to him.
“Welcome home, Danny,” Jack said.
Finally convinced that, just like last year, everything was going as it should be Jack left to get a couple hours of sleep. Because from here on out there wouldn’t be a dull moment.