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It was twelve noon at Cheyenne Mountain and Colonel Jack O'Neill was on his way to the commissary-dining hall. But he was going by the Archaeological Section to grab Daniel. Well, he couldn't really grab Danny. The hat over the security camera had been used a bit too often. His lover had told him that maintenance had been down to his office again to 'fix' the camera and there had been nothing wrong with it. He couldn't keep disabling the thing, just for no good reason. No, he'd have to be a good little Colonel, politely ask the good Doctor to go to lunch and then actually go to lunch. Sigh, there was no joy in his life today.
Now, last night! Now, there was joy! And this morning too...much joy. Even though the erstwhile Doctor Danny had to leave his house early to go to his apartment, change clothes, feed fish, make more coffee and then drive in to work on his own. But yes, there had been some serious deep, down, hard, fast and passionate joy last night. Enough to make this old man feel downright weak in the knees just thinking about it.
Hum, now this was interesting. The light was off in Daniel's office. The door wasn't locked but that wasn't unusual in itself. Jack pushed the door open and went in. Lessee, lights off, not here...but there were clues to be found.
Lights off, door unlocked, computer on but logged off. There were books on the workbench, but they weren't open. Papers were scattered around, but no big deal for Daniel. There, sitting on the desk was a half a cup of coffee, cold. Coffeepot was on, but pot boiled almost dry with a thick syrup of coffee-goo at the bottom putting out an acrid burned smell. The day planner was open, but there were no appointments noted; but it did have some doodles and a happy face with glasses drawn on it. Was that because of last night...oh, he hoped so. He knew HE sure had a happy face on this morning.
Jack glanced at the coat tree in the corner. Daniel's boonie-hat was hanging there by its string and so was the bandana. The fatigue shirt that should have been there wasn't, but that made sense as his teamie, friend, buddy, lover, and light of his light had a tendency to get chilled down here.
Suddenly the door swung open and Jack turned quickly to face the intruder. It was Sam Carter. "Oh, Sir. I'm sorry." She apologized when she saw the surprised look on her supervisor's face. "I was just looking for Daniel to ask his opinion on something."
Jack shrugged and waved his hand around the room. "Me too, but he's not here. I was gonna drag him to lunch with me." He looked at her curiously, "I was gonna call you to see if he was with you."
"No, sir. I haven't seen him since early this morning...he came to get some cookies from me...said he was running late and didn't have time for breakfast." She looked thoughtful. "I told him about my project and he seemed interested, so I said I'd come by later to show it too him." Carter sighed. "Oh, well, I guess he's..."
"He's where?" O'Neill prompted.
"I was going to say with you, but obviously not."
"Obviously." He agreed with a nod. "With Teal'c?"
"No, I just left Teal'c." She shook her head. "Well, I passed him in the hall. He said he had a class to teach some new Marines the Jaffa fighting style. I know Daniel wouldn't go there." She mused,
"He 's not that blood thirsty."
O'Neill nodded, "It sounds like fun to me, but you're right...not Daniel's cup of coffee, which by the way is cold."
"Humm," Carter crossed over to the phone and dialed down to the Maintenance area. "Hi, Sergeant Siler? Have you seen Daniel this morning? No? Okay, thanks." She hung up the phone. "He's not there either." She commented, then dialed out again.
After determining that Daniel was not with Doctor Fraiser, General Hammond, Nayan, or any of his other normal haunts; Jack was beginning to get worried. He even went to the extreme of going down himself to the storage rooms. Maybe his missing man was down there doing something archaeological or maybe, God forbid, he'd had a flashback or something.
Since his return from glowy-land, the young man had begun having nightmares again. Several times he'd had to physically shake Daniel awake and hold him comfortingly until he'd come to his senses. Once, he'd even gotten a black eye for his efforts. Explaining that to Doc Fraiser had been a bit tricky. They'd wound up telling her a little white lie about Daniel staying over in the guest room that night...
not saying he'd actually been in Jack's own bed. Fraiser had nodded, slanting her eyes at them and saying she didn't care where they were sleeping, but he needed to duck faster next time. Then she made some teasing comment about his reflexes slowing down... at least he'd hoped they were teasing."
Finally, General Hammond had gotten wind of Daniel's disappearance. The man was concerned, Jack knew, for several reasons. Number one, George thought a lot of Daniel. The General had mourned him no less than anyone and certainly welcomed him back very happily, immediately reinstating him in his old position and insuring the paperwork was done quickly to reestablish Daniel's legal status and identity. Number two, the SGC was a high security installation and it was not a good thing that a well thought of staffmember could go missing from his work area. And of course three, there was the concern that Daniel HAD been spirited away by the Asgard or Tok'ra or someone else not so friendly to them. That thought gave Jack cold chills, but how the hell did they misplace a six foot tall, one hundred and eighty pound recently de-ascended Department of Defense Contract Archaeologist. It was downright scary.
It was in mid afternoon when O'Neill decided to try the literal last place in the world he could go to look. He sighed, and grabbed his cap and his fatigue shirt off the hook, picked up his radio and went down the rarely used hall to the emergency exit shaft. Jack looked up the vertical metal ladder, sighed and started the climb up the several hundreds rungs. He knew if he didn't find him here...well, he just didn't know what he'd do.
After a long, seemingly indeterminable climb that tested his wind and his knees, Jack hung on with one hand as put the big metal key into the large, usually stiff locking mechanism. To his surprise and, he had to admit, his relief the lock was easily unlocked. An extra push forced the heavy metal plate lid up and the large cylindrical pneumatic arm held it open.
O'Neill clambered out of the shaft's opening and stood up straight, catching his wind. There was no path up here on the side of the mountain. This was strictly an emergency exit, not even known to half the personnel of the SGC. He was hoping against hope that his lover had come this way. He located a narrow game trail and followed it around the large granite boulders, under low hanging limbs and through brush that grabbed at his uniform.
Finally, the track broke out into a small glade and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. There was the missing prodigal son of the SGC. Daniel was sitting there, boots off, shirt balled up behind him apparently asleep. He was leaning back on an ancient Ponderosa Pine, it's needles creating a soft carpet on the granite rock face. On his left side was a large bank of brush made of Scrub Oak, Yucca and Kinnikinik shading him from the direct sunlight. A natural clearing stretched out before the napping man, giving him a breathtaking vista of the natural world of Cheyenne Mountain. In the scrub oak was perched a long tailed black and white Magpie, it's dark feathers reflecting blue-green in the warm sunshine. The bird had evidently been staring at his guest for a while at least but he spooked and flapped away at Jack's approach. Above him, a gray Albert's Squirrel with long tufted ears chattered at the newcomer for disturbing them and climbed higher up in his tree-home to hide.
Jack smiled softly to himself, appreciating the view of his sleeping lover. He came over and knelt down next to him. The tousled short-cropped hair was a shining golden chestnut; the fair skin with its faint dusting of freckles was a darker shade now than it had been when he'd left the house this morning. Daniel looked all the world like a woodland elf that had been hard at work and was now taking a little ease amongst his woodland charges. Even Galadriel would have welcomed him into her fairy kingdom.
Slowly, Jack raised his hand and lightly stroked his finger down the soft skin of cheek and throat. "Danny," he called softly, "Danny, wake up."
The face's expression changed slightly, the eyes shifted under their lids, the high forehead scrunched and the full lips parted. A small ummph was exhaled, then the blue eyes opened and Daniel saw Jack.
"Hi," he said sleepily.
O'Neill chuckled softly. "Hello, yourself. What are you doing up here?"
The long body shifted and the expression changed to one of confusion.
"What?"
"I said, what are you doing up here?"
"Up where?"
"Up here, on the side of the mountain."
Daniel began to look around in confusion. "The mountain? What am I doing on...what mountain?"
He couldn't help himself. He leaned down and kissed Daniel, softly, chastely on the lips. Then he sat down next to him. "Daniel, you've been missing for over three hours. Hammond, Carter, Teal'c and I have swept the base for you. Now, I find you sitting against a tree on the face of Cheyenne Mountain asleep with a magpie and a squirrel pulling sentry duty. What's going on?"
Daniel began to look around and suddenly; he flushed a bright red in embarrassment as he realized what he had been doing. "Oh, my God! What time is it?"
"It's 1530 hours." Jack supplied with a grin. He reached up to his shoulder and keyed his radio microphone. "Carter, you can stand down, I found him."
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded tinny on the radio. "You found him? Is he all right?"
"Yes, he's fine. A bit sunburned but good. Call off the dogs."
"Do you need assistance, Colonel?" That was Hammond's voice.
"No sir, he's fine. We'll be down shortly."
Daniel was sitting with his head in his hands. "I'm so sorry, Jack. I...guess, I fell asleep."
"Jeeze, Danny, ya think? What in the world were you doing up here?"
"I...I finished the translation on Lou's steles and I just wanted to take a break, get some fresh air." Daniel was now cranked up to mortified. "I can't believe I fell asleep."
"Well, Danny, next time just tell someone." Jack stood up and stretched, then he reached down to help the younger man to his feet, not to mention he got to hold the aforementioned hand for several minutes. "I do have to admit this is a pretty great place to come for a break, though."
"Yes, I guess I just wanted to see the sky for a while." Daniel responded by taking and squeezing the proffered hand. "It's just so quiet up here. I'm sorry. "
Jack glanced around, in an overemphasized sneaky manner, then enfolded Daniel in his arms for a real kiss. After several seconds, he pulled back and dropped his voice to a more official tone. "I admit, we were worried. We were afraid...I was afraid...that the glowy people had realized what a stupid thing they done and had come back for you."
Daniel looked up into the dark brown eyes with the worry lines bracketing them. "You would have known, because they would have had a big fight on their hands." He shifted in Jack's embrace. "I'm not going anywhere, well, except for SGC missions."
Jack smiled at him, then released his embrace to become the Colonel again. "So, Doctor Jackson, have you completed your experiment up here this afternoon? I'm sure the research will be invaluable some day, but I must reprimand you for not going through proper procedures before uh, going off on your own."
"Oh, yes Sir, Colonel O'Neill. Next time I will uh, request assistance," Daniel glanced around at their surroundings. "And I'm sorry if I worried you."
"Danny, I get paid to worry about you." Jack admonished him. "But I think I need a raise." He made a big show of dusting off Daniel's uniform. "Come on, let's go back to your office. I think your security camera is acting up again."
"Must be gremlins." Daniel said with a laugh.
"Nah, I think it's elves..."
"Elves, Jack?"
"Yep, long-legged, barefoot, blue-eyed elves wearing BDUs and bandanas. You know, the troublesome kind, the kind I like so much."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh." Jack stepped back, tugging on the still held hand.
"Come on, we have to go do the Show-The-Worried-General-That-You're-Okay thing. Then we can go home."
"I already am, Jack."
"What?"
"Home."