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Jack didn't say much when he stopped by the VIP quarters to pick Daniel up for dinner.
In the briefing room earlier in the day he'd hesitated on his way out, half turning back toward Daniel, not meeting his eyes, and said, "I bet you'd like to get out of here for a while. See some sunshine." And Daniel had said, "The sun is shining? Is it still summer?" And Jack had matched Daniel's teasing half-grin (jokes were so awkward; Daniel was still feeling his way) and remarked, "So, dinner."
Odd to think that Daniel had already been offworld and seen combat, but had only been up the surface, to Jack's house and ordinary daylight, once since his return to this planet. It was just that so far, he'd had no time for reacquainting himself with his home. It had been one great big messy emergency from the day SG-1 had found him until they'd sent Jonas back with the Langaran delegation. Daniel was regaining his memories in bits and pieces, fits and starts. But just as he'd had no time to explore his homeworld, he'd had no time to cobble those memories together and contemplate what they might add up to.
Jack knocked on the door of his quarters, even though Daniel, expecting him, had left it ajar. Jack didn't come in, but waited in the corridor for Daniel to check his pockets -- leftover reflex -- and come out. Jack had changed into civilian clothes, which looked a little odd on him, as if Jack had been pasted into the stark military setting by mistake. Daniel shook his head, feeling he was missing something, but then, he had that feeling so often these days that he was learning to shrug it off. It was that or go crazy chasing after memories that weren't quite ready to form.
Daniel was content not to talk and Jack seemed happy with silence, as well, as Daniel followed him up through the elevators and out to the parking lot. There was quiet recorded music and cool sunlight as the forest slid by the windows of Jack's truck. Even the tug of the seatbelt felt familiar and peaceful. Daniel let his mind drift. He'd surely been down this mountain road a thousand times. But it all looked new to him now.
Jack took him to a cafeteria, an ugly free standing building near the mall, and the word drifted up and slotted into place without fanfare. A cafeteria, not a commissary, though the setup was the same. And thus another word was regained.
Daniel watched, with an odd detachment and yet with a sense of wrongness at being waited on, as Jack put wrapped silverware on his tray for him and then pushed both trays along the rack. He shook himself and reached to take control of it, feeling for a fleeting irritated moment that Jack shouldn't, needn't, treat him like a child. Jack didn't look at him, but he let him push his own tray.
There were at least a dozen giant bowls of tossed salads. He had to choose one.
"Um, spinach," he said, pointing, reading labels, and remembered to add, "please." Yeah, maybe he was a little childlike after all. He smiled to himself.
"Dressing?" the lady behind the counter asked, briskly yet politely.
"No dressing," Daniel said, but Jack was speaking over him.
"Vinaigrette," Jack stated firmly, and Daniel glanced at him and then waved his agreement at the waitress' questioning look. There were people behind them. They moved on.
Next was a different selection of salads, most of them shimmery with jello, and full of fruit or shredded vegetables. Daniel pulled out a plain tiny bowl of blue jello cubes. Jack smiled at him sidelong but didn't say anything.
And on to main dishes.... Daniel scanned the labels. Again, the choices were almost overwhelming.
"Cod, please," he said, and Jack said, "He likes the broiled," though Daniel had pointed at the fried. Daniel frowned. Jack let him order squash casserole but substituted brown gravy for cream on his mashed potatoes, and a wheat roll for white.
Jack smiled again when Daniel put chocolate cheesecake his tray. He redirected Daniel to unsweetened iced tea and grabbed a handful of flavored creamers when Daniel poured himself a cup of coffee.
When they were seated and had begun to eat, Jack launched into a story from his childhood about a time when he'd had the flu, been sick in bed for a week, lost several pounds, and his grandmother had taken him to a Luby's and had encouraged him to load up on whatever looked good. Jack seemed to relish listing the odd combinations of dishes he'd picked out that day. Daniel wondered how in the world he could remember something so trivial after all these years, so many other experiences on top of those childhood events.
It wasn't until they were back in the truck, full of the heavy salty food that made Daniel sated and a little queasy, all at the same time, that Daniel remembered to say to Jack, "You changed my food orders. What was that about?"
Jack's hands tightened on the wheel, and he kept his eyes on the road, but his voice was light. "What? I know what you like."
"You know what I eat, to that level of detail?"
"Yeah, so?"
Daniel leaned back against the cushions and frowned.
Jack sounded defensive. "I know that stuff about all the team."
"We spend a lot of time together," Daniel concluded.
"Yeah," Jack said, and he sounded wistful. "We do."
They drove along in silence, then, the music again threading its way behind Daniel's thoughts, and Daniel finally noticed they were nowhere near the approach to the mountain, nor to what he vaguely remembered as Jack's neighborhood.
"Where are we going?" he inquired.
Jack slowed and stopped in front of a house that backed up to a view of the mountains -- a small house on a nondescript street, its front, under the generous eave, shadowed by the setting sun.
"We found this place for you. I wanted you to take a look."
"A place for me."
"You don't really want to stay in those quarters on base, do you?" Jack said, shutting his door, pocketing his keys, and leading the way up the walk.
"No. No, I don't."
"Didn't think so."
Jack stood aside at the front door, which he opened with a realtor's key. Daniel noted the box on the lock and wondered how Jack had gotten hold of it. Another detail for another day; another missing piece.
He walked slowly through the empty pristine rooms, the sunlight slanting in through the bare windows. The kitchen, and the deck beyond, were what he liked the best. He could imagine sitting there in the morning light, drinking coffee, looking at mountains whenever he felt like it.
"This will be nice," he said, turning to Jack.
"Good. We'll see about executing the lease and getting your stuff out of storage."
"I have stuff in storage," Daniel repeated, memory banks lighting up, almost blinding him.
Memories, lots of memories, of lots of books. Also artifacts, keepsakes, antiques -- things he had begun to buy almost obsessively once he had a paycheck again, that first year he'd been in the program. Making up for lost time, perhaps; lost vagabond years when he was practically penniless. Things filled the empty spaces in his old apartment, spaces he'd have preferred to populate with the voice and motion of someone beloved, someone he'd never see again. He folded his arms and looked around the kitchen, seeing, in his mind's eye, objects hanging on the walls, bright and shiny and shaped. Color and texture. Memories.
"I could live here," he said, and Jack said nothing, only nodded and led the way out.
^^^^
Daniel was drinking coffee, immersed in the nonessential and yet totally captivating job of shelving books, when Jack came over Sunday morning. The morning after Daniel's first night in his new house.
Surrounded by a jumble of possessions and furniture, their shapes and smells sinking into him, as the Saturday hours of his moving-in tumbled by in a blur, like scenery viewed from a train, memory after memory was triggered for Daniel. And that night he'd dreamed, jerkily and vividly. Sunday, he'd awakened feeling more like himself than he had since the day he woke up on Vis Uban.
Feeling energized and excited, he'd made coffee (Teal'c had unpacked that first) and wandered among the boxes, finding the ones that held books and lugging them to the built-in shelves that lined two walls in the second bedroom.
Sometime in the morning, he heard a truck door slam outside, heard a tailgate fall, and knew in a flood of certainty, without having to look, that it was Jack. He knew those sounds as well as he knew the brush of page on page, the tap of a pencap against wood.
Jack didn't knock. He opened the front door slowly and said, "Hello," making it a question, as he stepped in. "I smell coffee, so you're up," he called.
Daniel, happy, still riding that wave of excitement, met him in the living room. Jack was wearing old clothes today -- cut off jeans, a T-shirt with the sleeves torn out, battered running shoes. Daniel took one look at him and knew he'd come to mow and trim Daniel's yard.
How did I know that? Daniel thought.
"Don't tell me," Jack said, wandering on through to the kitchen and helping himself to a cup of coffee. He took it black, Daniel noted, and realized he already knew that too. "You started with the books."
Daniel's smile brightened to a grin.
Without further ado, Jack went out to the truck, and Daniel went back to his shelving, and Daniel heard unloading noises and a bit of banging, and Jack came inside and then went out again, once, and presently there was a gasoline cough or two, followed by the muffled roar of the mower.
Daniel sank back on his heels, holding tight to his well-thumbed hardback annotated edition of "The Book of the Dead." He knew the mower, knew what it looked like as well as he knew that the sprawling corrections liberally peppered through the book he was holding were in his own handwriting, the fruit of years. The mower he was hearing was the small red Black and Decker that Jack used around the trees and at the front walk of his own home. He closed his eyes and he could see it all vividly -- the view from Jack's deck, Jack putting the finishing touches on his yard. The little mower, and then the weedeater. Behind Daniel's eyelids, Jack was working hard, getting hot. His shirt was stuck to his back with sweat, and damp grass was stuck in clumps on his bare legs.
He looked beautiful to Daniel -- beautiful and beloved and desired.
Daniel's eyes flew open, and he was abruptly anchored again in the new, the now -- same books, same things. Different place. Different body.
Same memories. Same Jack.
Oh, Daniel thought.
Some revelations were quiet.
After a moment, the old mower continuing its familiar steady grumble outside, Daniel resumed his shelving, and now he pondered, tasting and testing the fact that he'd just discovered how much he loved and desired his co-worker. His boss? His teammate? Funny how none of those words seemed to describe Jack very well.
There was more, though. More behind the certainty of these feelings. Daniel had learned not to grope for his memories. He'd learned to wait, and to watch for them out of the corner of his eye, as if watching for game.
He was out of coffee, and his hands were dusty.
He got up and wiped his hands on his jeans and went through the living room, ready to pour himself more coffee, seeing the objects in the room, in the clear morning sunlight, as if they were all highlighted and glowing. He noticed that Jack had brought in a small battered duffel. It was unzipped, there on Daniel's old leather sofa, and Daniel could see that Jack had packed a second, newer pair of running shoes, and a change of clothes. For after mowing.
He looked at the duffel for a moment, and then headed for the coffee pot, tongue caught between his lips. On the kitchen table, a bright gold box caught his eye. It hadn't been there earlier.
He frowned and set down his empty cup and touched it with his fingertips. The embossed letters said "Godiva," and there was a design, too, a border stamped into the lid like Braille. His fingers drifted over it.
And there they were. The rest of the memories.
Breathing was suddenly difficult. He flushed, deeply and red, his face getting hot, his dick getting hard. He opened the box. The rich scent of the chocolate drifted up. He didn't sample Jack's gift -- Jack's favorite gift to him, Jack's standard, all-purpose offering -- but he studied the sculpted chocolates in their perfect paper cradles, and then he poured a new cup of coffee with a steady hand and went back into the bedroom and shelved books and concentrated on breathing while Jack mowed and edged and finally came into the kitchen in the sudden silence and filled himself a glass of water.
Daniel heard the weedeater cease, and the door close and the faucet running, and so he went to the kitchen, too, and while Jack had his back turned, he picked up one perfect chocolate out of the golden box, and he faced Jack and waited. When Jack turned from the sink, sweaty, hot, grass-covered, sunwarmed, Daniel crossed the distance in two quick steps and pressed against him. He pressed his cheek to Jack's cheek and waited for Jack's startled huff, for his arms to come around Daniel.
And then Daniel leaned back enough to bring the chocolate up to Jack's mouth.
"Those were for you," Jack protested, around the chocolate, starting to chew it but still trying to speak.
"Don't talk with your mouth full," Daniel admonished, and put his mouth on Jack's.
Yeah, he remembered this part too.
The part where they would kiss in a kitchen, and then stumble to shower together, after Jack mowed on Sunday mornings, followed by leisurely familiar lovemaking until they fell asleep still entangled, and woke to grill something on the deck, or order pizza, and make love again. And eat chocolate in bed.
Daniel released Jack's mouth, and demanded, "What do I put on my hamburger?"
"Everything but pickle, and you only have onions if I'm having onions."
"And you have onions a lot."
"Mm," Jack said, his arms tight around Daniel, his mouth on Daniel's collarbone.
"What brand of deodorant do I buy?"
"Gillette."
"How do I like my eggs?"
"Scrambled, with salsa, unless I can talk you into making hollandaise sauce."
Jack, apparently tired of answering food questions, kissed Daniel again. Deeply. Lengthily. With enthusiasm. The intense flavor of the chocolate had faded. Daniel chased it around Jack's mouth.
"The cherry-filled ones are your favorites," Daniel paused to say. "But I'm waiting on those, until I can feed them to you in bed. Later this afternoon."
Jack grinned against his mouth.
"Welcome home, Doctor Jackson," he said, and took Daniel's head in his two hands for one more long kiss, before leading the way to the shower.
end