He should absolutely never have let Daniel go to Chicago by himself. But, damn it, he wasn’t even leaving Earth. It wasn’t Stargate business. Even Daniel shouldn’t have been able to get into trouble.

Leaning back against the door of the SUV, Jack adjusts his sunglasses and wonders who he’s kidding. This is Doctor Daniel Jackson he’s talking about – the man who first posited the real purpose of the pyramids and managed to open the door to the stars where everyone else had failed; it should not have been a shock when he managed to find two Goa’uld entombed in the last artifacts his mentor had been studying when he died, and then ended up in Egypt. 

Changing weight from one leg to the other, Jack crosses his left over his right and glances down at his watch. The transport isn’t late…yet. Teal’c, standing beside him in his usual version of parade rest, glances over at the obvious signs of Jack’s unrest. “Is something troubling you, O’Neill?”

Jack shoves his hands into his pockets and grunts. He isn’t sure what he was attempting to communicate, but it apparently means something to Teal’c, who tilts his head as he formulates a response. 

“Doctor Fraiser reported that only Daniel Jackson’s friend was seriously harmed, and he will recover. All of their other injuries are minor.”

“We should have been with them.” Jack isn’t even sure who to be mad at. Hammond, for sending them? Sam or Daniel, for not making more of an effort to get ahold of the rest of their team? Himself, for taking the battery out of the phone Teal’c had brought along? The last one is what has been bothering him the most.

A second vehicle pulls up behind them – the medical transport for Steven Raynor, who while no longer in critical condition is headed right back to a hospital in the States for some more recovery…and then probably to be debriefed about classified information by some branch of the government. 

T has turned, frowning at him, clearly ready to impart some sort of wisdom Jack isn’t sure he wants to hear, but the heavy droning of the military transport plane makes it impossible for them to talk. Saved by the bell. Plane. Whatever; he doesn’t need Teal’c to tell him he messed up when he hung up on Daniel, he already figured that out before they ever left the cabin. He’d been driven by a vague and growing unease to eventually put the battery back into the cell phone and call the SGC, but by that point his team was already halfway around the word following a presumed Goa’uld, and Jack and Teal’c had no way of catching up. 

Janet is the first one off the plane, helping guide a gurney onto the tarmac and striding alongside it on the way to the medical transport, carrying a clipboard thick with paperwork she’s still filling out as she starts to brief the medics who will take responsibility for the unconscious civilian. 

Sam and Daniel come down the ramp a moment later, moving more slowly, but both under their own steam. Sam’s talking to Daniel, making short efficient gestures to accompany her words, but their archaeologist isn’t paying attention. His gaze is following the gurney, and to Jack’s eye while Sam and the Doc seem fine, Daniel looks disheveled and worn down. He pushes off of the door behind him, purposefully moving to catch Sam’s eye, and she smiles a little in their direction and puts a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, murmuring something in his ear as she turns him toward Jack and Teal’c. 

“Welcome home, kids.” Jack takes the second bag Sam is carrying – Janet’s, he presumes – and walks around the back of to put it in the trunk. 

“Thank you, Sir. Uh, how was fishing?” Sam puts her own bag into the back of the SUV and reaches for Daniel’s; he relinquishes it without protest. 

“I do not believe there are any fish in O’Neill’s lake.” Teal’c intones this from the other side, and somehow manages to make it sound like a complaint even though the delivery is without any sort of inflection. 

“Oh, ya know, vacation was going great, until we got word that half of my team had decided to go Goa’uld hunting without us.” Jack shuts the hatch with a little more force than necessary, and eyes Daniel, who seems to have at least been shaken a little bit out of his daze. Daniel doesn’t say anything though, leaving Sam to rally some sort of response, which of course she does admirably.

“It was a…time-sensitive issue, Sir. Daniel and the General both made attempts to contact you, but the line wouldn’t connect.”

“Is that right, Daniel?” Jack drawls, putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and using that supposedly friendly gesture to loom just a little bit. Daniel doesn’t look up, determinedly avoiding Jack’s face as he responds.

“Yes, Jack, weirdly the phone that the General sent along wouldn’t connect when we tried to get a hold of you guys again. You really should think about taking a satellite phone or something when you go out to the cabin if service is that bad.” He gives a little shrug and slips out from Jack’s grasp. “I’m going to go see if Janet is planning on coming with us or heading to the hospital with Steven. She hadn’t decided on the plane.”

An hour later in the briefing room, everything is starting to make a little more sense, as the returned travelers spin out their tale of Egyptian intrigue. Jack spins his chair towards Daniel, trying to keep the tone of his voice from being accusing, because he finds he’s quite jealous of Sarah. “And it really never occurred to you that your pal Sarah might be the Goa’uld?” 

Still looking distinctly unkempt and more exhausted than Sam or Janet, Daniel looks up at Jack over the tops of his glasses, assessing his tone and his words even as he answers him quietly. “Sarah wasn’t the one acting strangely, Steven was.” He looks away after that, holding his pen tightly in both hands like he might be trying to bend it. “I trusted Sarah. Steven and I were always more academic competitors than anything else but Sarah and I were…close.”

“Do we have any idea where this Goa’uld will have gone?” The General’s question prevents Jack from saying anything else, which is probably for the best. 

“He was imprisoned for 10,000 years, and we killed both of the other Goa’uld he was closest to – Seth on Earth, and Isis died in the stasis jar.” Daniel glances down at his notes, and then gives a half-hearted shrug. “Osiris will have to find a way to gain new power somehow, I doubt whoever imprisoned him left him much to work with.”

“The ship was definitely older than what we’ve seen the Goa’uld piloting now,” Sam added. “And we know from the Tok’ra that the Goa’uld have minimal shielding capabilities even now – so if it had lingered near Earth I think we would have detected it, Sir.”

“And this Steven Raynor?” 

All eyes go to Janet, who gives a little shrug. “I’m guardedly optimistic that he’ll make a full recovery, but only time will tell at this point. He’s in the base hospital and under guard until he’s fully conscious long enough for the importance of national security to be imparted to him, and then he’s someone else’s problem. But he’s in the best possible hands at the hospital until he recovers.”

“Very well. It seems the immediate crisis have passed. Go home and get some rest, people.” 

The General retreats to his office and Daniel is out of his seat before Jack can grab him, but his attempt to slip out the door and escape is bungled by Janet intercepting him at the door. “You still don’t look great, Daniel. I’d rather you not go home tonight and stay by yourself. You did have some signs of a concussion.”

Jack throws an arm around his archaeologist’s shoulders, taking a slight vindictive pleasure at the way Daniel jumps at the touch, glad he’s not totally losing his edge. “Don’t worry, Doc,” he says, accompanying it with his most winning smile. “Daniel’s going to come home with me, and I’ll keep an eye on him for you tonight.” Fraiser visibly relaxes, in counterpoint to Danny who tenses under his arm. 

“Make sure he eats, too, Colonel. I don’t think I saw him eat more than a bite of anything the whole time we were gone.”

“Will do, Doc.”

“And plenty of fluids – not beer, Jack.”

“I’ll make sure the good doctor takes care of general basic needs, Doc, you know I’m good at that.”

“The good doctor is right here, you know.” Daniel mutters, but only makes one half-hearted attempt to escape Jack’s arm over his shoulder before giving up. Janet smiles at him, gently in a way that seems to be reserved for Daniel and Cassie. 

“I know, Daniel, and I know most of it is probably still shock and grief. But that could quickly become something else if you don’t get rested and take care of yourself, alright?”

“Yes, mother,” Daniel rolls his big blue eyes so hard Jack thinks they might have seen him in Hammond’s office, but softens the insult by leaning forward to kiss Janet’s cheek in a sweet way. “See you tomorrow, Janet.”

Jack takes them to his house, of course. Daniel thinks it’s a good thing that his fish are relatively low-maintenance and that he has a young neighbor whose mother refuses to have any pets who is happy to feed them whenever Daniel is on base. The kid’s mom was super suspicious of how often Daniel was gone, at first, but she seems to have accepted that he has absolutely no life and spends most nights at the base. In reality, probably about a third of the nights she thinks he’s on base, he’s at Jack’s, especially recently, but the work excuse is easier to manage and garners more sympathy than the truth.

He flees to the bathroom as soon as they’re in the door. A hot shower and a change of clothes is the first thing on his mind – somehow, because they hadn’t been off-world it hadn’t been a priority back at the SGC. Or maybe that’s because Sam and Janet had showered and changed while they stabilized Steven in the Egyptian hospital and arranged transport back to the States. Daniel hadn’t been able to make himself go over to the hotel room they’d arranged next to the hospital, sitting vigil instead in the waiting room and later at Steven’s bedside.

They may not have ever been as close as Daniel and Sarah, but Steven had been a friend. His animosity after the funeral had been hard to take, but the idea that he almost died because Daniel had to keep the truth a secret was worse. Janet had assured him over and over than the man would pull through, but it’s hard to believe her until it happens.

Leaning his head against the wall, he lets the hot water pound on the tight muscles in his back and tentatively touches the raw spot that is Sarah. With his eyes closed, he thinks of her as she was – all sharp, bright smiles and hungry for knowledge. She’d been the same way in their relationship and their bed, a whirlwind of energy and warmth that swept him along in its wake. The memories are tainted now, like his memories of Sha’re, by the intrusion of flashes of yellow eyes and sinister smiles.

Did Sarah open the Osiris jar because Daniel wouldn’t tell her anything? The thought makes his stomach clench and the guilt roll over him, but he couldn’t have done anything differently. The Stargate and everything that goes with it is classified for good reason, and even Daniel couldn’t get away with breaking that seal of secrecy.

The other option is that Sarah had opened the jar before Dr. Jordan had died, when they’d received the news that the artifacts had to go back to Egypt. Steven would have been the one who complained the loudest, but if Steven was complaining, Sarah had always been several steps past that looking for a solution, even one that bent or broke the rules. This possibility hurts just as much because that would mean none of their interactions were real, and that possibly Sarah had hated him for leaving and not coming back just as much as Steven.

A rapid shave-and-a-haircut knock on the door rouses him, and he realizes the water isn’t even hot anymore, which means quite some time has passed while he was deep in thought.

“Daniel?” They’ve been walking a fine balance between friends and…something more that neither of them has been willing to put a name to, but the closed bathroom door is enough of a signal that Jack knows to knock instead of letting himself in.

“Yeah, coming.”

He turns off the water and finds a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt to change into before padding quietly down the hall and into the kitchen. Jack is serving something into two bowls at the stove, and a quick glance as he comes alongside him to get a glass out of the cabinet makes Daniel smile a little to find the pan full of his own cooking, which Jack must have warmed up out of the freezer. If he’d stayed on base, Sam or Janet would have tried to ply him with some sort of bland American comfort food – toast maybe, or something like tomato soup and grilled cheese. Jack knows better; he knows that when Daniel’s looking for comfort food, he’s looking for the sharper and distinctive tastes of Mediterranean dishes that remind him of his childhood.

He takes his glass of water, stopping to grab Jack a beer from the fridge, and settles down on the couch. Jack’s not far behind with their dinner, and they eat in peaceful silence, though he’s certainly not unaware of the long looks aimed his direction when Jack thinks he’s not paying attention. The colonel doesn’t get truly twitchy until they’ve both finished eating, Daniel clearing the dishes away to the sink to be dealt with later, and he comes back to settle into the couch again.

Jack’s fingers are drumming a quiet but impatient rhythm on the leather underneath his hand, and he opens his mouth several times as if he’s going to start but every time he chokes off whatever it is and frowns as if reconsidering his words. A rush of deep affection fills Daniel; he half expected Jack to jump all over him in the car on the way home, but here he is still keeping everything bottled up, waiting for Daniel to take the lead and decide how much he’s willing to share about these people he’s never talked about.

"Daniel..."

"Jack." On impulse, he scoots across the cushions and tucks himself under Jack’s arm before the other man can react, pressing their sides together and putting his head on the colonel’s shoulder. “Sarah and I were over before I ever left Chicago. We didn’t break up because my career tanked, we broke up because we weren’t good for each other.”

Underneath him, he can feel it as Jack starts to relax bit by bit. This isn’t the only thing bothering him, of course, but it would have been a big one. “Carter said you considered asking to read her in and bring her back to the Mountain.”

Jack’s voice might be neutral, but the words aren’t. “I trusted her because she was always a good friend, not because I was interested in her, Jack. She’d been studying those particular artifacts for years, and when it became clear Dr. Jordan’s death was foul play, I thought maybe she could help. If the university and the museum had decided to balk at my investigations, she would have been invaluable.”

“I’m sorry about your professor. Bad enough when it was natural causes but…” He doesn’t have to finish, Daniel knows where he was going with that. Bad enough if he had died in a freak gas accident, but worse that the Goa’uld have stolen yet another person Daniel loved. Slowly, Jack’s right arm finds its way around him and he starts to idly run his fingers through the hair on the back of Daniel’s head and neck, which feels amazing. Daniel leans back into the touch rather shamelessly and decides to keep sharing.

“I should have reached out to him years ago. He would have welcomed me back even with nothing to show for the years apart. I distanced myself from him to protect him when I started to try and pursue my wilder theories, but he never cared.” Daniel sighs, remembering how his mentor had always listened, even if he couldn’t see what Daniel saw. “I just hated that I couldn’t tell him about any of it, and so it always seemed better to stay away. There would always be people like Steven, who wouldn’t let my supposed failures rest if I went back.”

“This Steven character sounds like a real piece of work,” Jack grumbles, making Daniel smile yet again. For once, knowing nothing he says here will ever leave this room, he allows himself to be just a little petty.

“I never much worried about Steven, Jack, he was just jealous. Dr. Jordan always liked me better, and while I think Sarah and Steven were pretty serious lately, she dated me first.” That gets a surprised chuckle out of Jack, which is exactly what Daniel wanted because he doesn’t want Jack to stew on the things he finds unfair about Daniel’s life before the Stargate. He tries to keep the philosophy that he can’t change his past, so it’s not worth dwelling on what was fair or unfair, on what other people did. Jack doesn’t ever seem to see it that way. Every time something about his past comes to light that doesn’t fit with what Jack thinks is fair, he worries it like a dog with a favorite bone.

His own actions, well, that’s a different story. He knows he gets tangled up in his webs of guilt and self-recrimination, sometimes so deeply buried that he can’t get free. The worst are the nightmares, where he gets to relive the consequences of his bad decisions and worst moments again and again and again until they’re supplanted by new failures. The earliest one is his parent’s death; he still wonders if he hadn’t distracted them that day, would they have noticed the instability in the tomb before it collapsed? It’s part of why he doesn’t sleep on a regular schedule that would please Jack and Janet; it’s easier to work himself to complete exhaustion so that his body has no choice but to essentially collapse and rest, and then there are fewer dreams.

Of course, now he has found another solution. It’s crazy, and he doesn’t like to look too closely at what they’re doing, but he never has guilt-induced nightmares about the things Jack spanks him for, and he usually doesn’t have other nightmares those nights either. Daniel doesn’t mind the strain it takes off of their day-to-day relationship, either. Before, when he’d truly riled Jack up, it had sometimes taken days or even weeks of their friendship being strained before his friend could let things go; Daniel being completely out of the military chain of command had always been hard for Jack. Daniel having some sort of consequences seemed to bridge that gap, and it just works for them.

Even though he can acknowledge all of those truths to himself, somehow Daniel still isn’t usually able to admit that he needs a spanking (not since that first time on the roof, after Hadante, and that had taken a little liquid courage, though he hadn’t ever admitted that to Jack). Most of the time he doesn’t have to – after the initial reluctance, Jack had taken to the whole thing quite well and tends to anticipate Daniel’s needs on his own. He’s only had to manipulate Jack into spanking him a couple of times, and both times he quite regretted it and wished he could have just made himself ask before he dug a guilt-induced hole for himself that ended up getting him into serious trouble. In the comfort of his thoughts, he can admit that this is one of those times. Guilt about Sarah and Steven will eat away at him, but every time he tries to find the words to ask, it’s like he gets verbal paralysis.

It’s gotten quite dark outside, but he’s happy curled up against Jack and not inclined to move when the older man’s voice breaks the silence. “So. You couldn’t get a hold of me, huh?”

Ah. Maybe he won’t have to ask, because that is the voice of a Jack O’Neill who is seriously not pleased. Daniel had picked up on this threat earlier, but caught up in thoughts of Sarah and Osiris and Steven and Egypt, he’d completely forgotten that Jack had almost called him on this little lie twice already today, once at the landing strip and again in the debrief with the General. He tries to stay relaxed, willing his voice to be calm and casual. Just moments ago he was trying to make himself ask for a spanking, but now with one looming decidedly above his head, survival instincts have kicked in. “Yeah, after you hung up on me, the phone the General sent with you guys wouldn’t connect. Teal’c says you took the battery out.”

Jack’s hand gentle still in his hair is in direct contrast to the steel in his voice. “Funny, I didn’t hear the phone in the cabin ring. Did you forget the number?”

Shit. Daniel’s probably the only person alive besides Jack’s ex-wife who knows there’s a phone in the cabin, albeit hidden in a cabinet (out of sight out of mind) and never used. Jack had installed it ages ago, before cell phones, when he married Sara, in case there was ever an emergency while they were there. Jack had given him the number early on after Abydos in case Daniel ever needed him when he was out there, when Jack was all Daniel had in the world, and ensured he’d memorized it. Still trying not to wince, he admits, “Um…I didn’t call it. I wasn’t sure you wanted the General to know it existed since you never told him yourself.”

It’s a lame excuse, but he hopes maybe it will hold water anyway. It doesn’t.

“And nobody answered at Frank’s?”

Frank, the retired police officer with the cabin closest to Jack’s. Another number Jack had made him memorize, as a backup in case there ever was a problem with the reception at the cabin, or in case of emergency if nobody was answering at the cabin to have a living person to go check it out. Daniel valiantly resists the urge to put some distance between himself and Jack. “I didn’t call Frank’s either.”

“So you thought it was a better choice to go racing off to God knows where, chasing a Goa’uld we know nothing about, without any backup, rather than admit to the General you knew damn well how to get ahold of me?”

“I had backup,” Daniel grumbles, finally shifting to pull away from Jack and sit back in the middle of the couch. “The General sent Sam and Janet.”

“Doc Fraiser is not a field officer,” Jack snaps. “You had half an SG team worth of backup, at best.”

“If we had waited for you to get back to the SGC we might have missed them.”

“That’s a crap excuse Daniel and you know it. You should have called as soon as you realized there were two jars and one was missing. Teal’c and I could have met you there.”

“Well, you hung up on me,” he makes a last attempt, trying to look offended.  “I didn’t think you were interested.”

“Nice try, Dannyboy, but you know I would have answered the cabin phone if you called it and explained…anything…before haring off on your own.”

“Yeah.” Daniel looks away, biting his lip, and feels Jack home in on that with laser focus, frowning at him. It’s the same expression of discontent he gets when he’s working on his crosswords – the irritation of not quite being able to solve a problem by himself.

“Spill, Daniel.”

“Um…I was trying to…ask…anyway.” Without turning his head, he glimpses Jack’s expression out of the corner of his eye and can see that did not clear anything up for him, so Daniel tries again, feeling a blush start and crawl across his face. “I feel guilty about Steven getting hurt because I trusted Sarah, too.”

“Danny, that’s not your fault. The idiot was messing with things he had no business messing with. Plus, he seems like a real jerk. I would have suspected him too.”

“Doesn’t change how I feel, Jack,” he still doesn’t want to meet his friend’s eyes, but the frustrated bite of his words must get his point across because he can see Jack’s slow nod as he processes.

“So, running into danger without enough backup because you were peeved with me, and a good dose of guilt because you aren’t omniscient. I can deal with both of those.” His hand appears, palm up and open for Daniel’s. With a heavy sigh and the clenched gut that always comes right before the main event, he puts his hand in Jack’s and lets himself be pulled over Jack’s knees, fidgeting a little to try and find a secure spot until a heavy arm wraps around his middle and Jack lifts his hips slightly, hooking warm fingers into the sweats and Daniel’s underwear and pulling them down to his knees.

The slight whine of embarrassment comes involuntarily, and Daniel hates it. It’s not like Jack hasn’t seen that – and much more, recently! It's stupid to be embarrassed by this and not anything else they've done, but he is every time. Once he’s done baring his bottom, Jack shifts backward, pulling Daniel tight against his body, and then pauses to get a last confirmation. “Okay?”

Daniel closes his eyes, dropping his head and relaxing into Jack’s firm grasp, and manages to choke out, “Okay.”

The first smack always takes him by surprise; this time is no different and he jumps and gasps, and then lies quietly as swat after swat lands, managing to confine his physical reactions to one or two jerks when the smacks land low on his butt or at the top of his thighs. Jack isn’t talking – sometimes he does, but not always, and not usually when they’ve talked it over beforehand. Daniel thinks it’s easier when Jack scolds as he spanks because it gives him something to focus on. This way, when he’s silent, all he can think about is whatever decisions got him into his current predicament.

Oh, and eventually, how unpleasant it is. His butt stings all over, the unique stinging-itching-smarting feeling that only comes with being thoroughly spanked, and now each of Jack’s sharp smacks is starting to hurt. Daniel starts to lose the battle against silence, each spank prompting a yelp or low whine depending on how it lands, and he begins to wiggle his hips and kick his feet a little as the stinging turns into an all-over burn, with each new spank. He can’t even think about how embarrassing it is anymore; all he can think about is that it hurts, he’s sorry, and he wants it to stop. Kicking isn’t helping; every strike lands with accuracy where Jack wants it, but Daniel kicks anyway, gasping a little wetly on unshed tears.

Underneath him, Jack lifts his right knee, tipping him further towards the ground, and lands a volley of extra-hard smacks to his sit-spots and upper thighs, and that breaks the silence and Daniel hear as if from far away, his own desperate voice let loose with all of the “Ows” and “Sorries” and “Jacks!” that hitherto had been contained in his head. Just when he thinks he can’t take anymore, on the very edge of tears, the punishing hand stops falling and he hangs there, sniffling, waiting for Jack to gather him up into a hug.

Hands underneath him lift him up, but instead of turning him into a broad and welcoming chest, Jack moves him to the end of the couch and stands him there. One hand leaves Daniel’s arm and instead gently grabs his chin, and lifts it; Daniel blinks into Jack’s frown in utter bewilderment; his vision is a little blurry swimming with the tears he hasn’t shed. For a moment the other man says nothing, merely seeming to search Daniel’s face, and then he grimaces as he comes to some sort of decision, and even before he speaks Danny can feel his stomach turn over unpleasantly. “We’re not done. We would have been, but we’ve talked about you putting yourself in extra danger because you were mad at me before.”

Jack leaves him standing there, baffled, and walks briskly into the kitchen. Oh, OH! It hits him just before he walks back into the living room with the spoon in hand, and it feels like his stomach abandons him, and he realizes he’s taken a step back, but Jack just grabs his arm again. Rather than sitting down and trying to get situated again, Daniel finds himself bent over the arm of the couch, Jack’s hand hot and heavy on the skin of his back where his shirt has slid down towards his armpits from the sharp angle his body is folded at.

“AH! Owwww!” The spoon falls on the crest of each cheek in quick succession, unbearably sharp. The tears that had started to dissipate while he was standing up spring back into his eyes. The spoon falls again, a smack on each side, and he cries out and throws his hand back, but Jack is fast and grabs his wrist in the hand resting on Daniel’s back and lands the spoon again, working his way down to the tenderest parts of his already burning rear.

“Every time you risk your life when you don’t have to, we’re going to end up back here.” Jack’s voice washes over him, deadly serious. “I’ll give you little spankings for the guilt for the rest of our lives if that’s what you need, Danny, but being reckless is always going to get you in over your head. I understand our jobs are never going to be safe, but I am not going to stand by and watch you die for no reason.”

The quiet resolve and emotion in Jack’s voice push him over the edge, at the exact same time as Jack lands the spoon once more on each sit-spot and then throws the implement in the general direction of the kitchen and yanks Daniel up off the arm of the couch, folding him into his arms. Daniel buries his face in the fabric of Jack’s shirt and wraps his arms around his waist, just wanting now to cling as he lets the tears wash away the guilt and the grief and the fear. Jack is warmth and safety and everything he never quite had since his parents died, and the best friend Daniel has ever known. He feels sorry for people who take Jack at face value and don’t bother to look under the surface act he puts on.

At some point, he must doze, because when he surfaces, they’re propped up in Jack’s bed. Daniel’s still wrapped around Jack, and Jack’s hand is rubbing lazy circles on his back. Something is playing quietly behind Daniel (when he concentrates for a moment, he recognizes the voice of Homer Simpson), but Jack isn’t watching, because his eyes are closed.

“J’ck?” he mumbles, throat still feeling a little tight.

“Danny?” Brown eyes open, Jack’s hand wanders up to his head, and Daniel is warmed by an immediate smile.

“Sorry. Thanks. Won’t do it again.” Each word feels heavy in his mouth, almost as heavy as his eyelids, which threaten to slide closed on their own.

“Can’t live without you, Danny.” Jack murmurs, pressing a kiss to his hair, and Daniel sighs in agreement. Hands on his sides again, and Daniel is being slid off of Jack’s chest, laid out on his stomach next to him.

“J-ack,” it’s an objection, a whine, and he grabs half-heartedly at his colonel’s retreating figure.

“D-aniel,” Jack mimics, but with a smile in his voice. “I’m just going to change and I’ll be right back.”

“Good.” Daniel stretches, whines a little at the lingering burn when his underwear rubs his bottom and is just barely awake enough to wrap himself around Jack when he slides into bed beside him before he slips into a deep and nightmare-free sleep.