The General is giving them a completely unimpressed stare from his place at the head of the table, and Jack has to admit that when the mission is all laid out, it seems like they’d strayed quite far from their objective, especially given that Daniel had pitched the trip based entirely on the importance of the Harsesis child to their fight against the Goa’uld. He’s momentarily tempted to throw their archaeologist to the metaphorical wolf, but he’d put a lot of work today into proving to Daniel that he can trust and listen to him, and he doesn’t want all that work to go to waste.

Folding his hands on the conference table in front of him, Jack offers an explanation. “Sir, we didn’t have much of a choice. Jaffa aside, we weren’t a match for the power of whatever this was.”

“And what do we know about this being?” Hammond looks over to Daniel, who shifts uneasily and taps his pen against his journal before formulating a response.

“Um, not a lot at this point Sir. Based on the writings in the temple, they are an ancient race that somehow discovered how to ascend to another plane of existence entirely.” He looks up at the General, frowning. “Whatever she was, she had a lot of power. I’d like to go back to Kheb and study the writings there some more.”

“We should hold off on that until we’re sure the planet’s not flooded with Jaffa, General.” Jack interjects. Daniel gives him a shrug. 

“Oma Desala seemed to indicate that we’d be able to meet the boy again someday, sir. And in all fairness, he’s an infant. We wouldn’t have been able to learn anything from him yet anyway, and I don’t think there’s much that could cause him harm in her care.” Daniel sounds rather calm about this, but Jack had seen the reservations in his face as they trekked back to the Stargate; he hadn’t wanted to leave Sha’re’s child in someone else’s care anymore than the rest of them. “But, I think these ascended beings could be very important. I think that they may be one of the missing pieces in what we know about the four races.”

“Very well. I agree with the Colonel – it’s too much of a risk to return immediately. Doctor Jackson, you’ll have to study what materials you were able to bring back with you, and we can consider returning at a later date. Dismissed.”

Jack stays behind for a time to discuss some base matters and SG-1’s upcoming mission bracket with the General, goes to the locker room to change into his civvies, and then meanders down to Daniel’s lab. His archaeologist is hunched over a notebook, writing furiously. He wanders around looking at the shelves, trying to wait patiently, but it seems to have no end, and Daniel is quite good at ignoring him. Resorting to a sure-fire way to get his friend’s attention, he picks up one of the priceless artifacts and starts turning it this way and that.

“Jack.” The stress on his name is low and exasperated. 

“Daniel.” He works hard to keep the smile out of his face and his voice, but he is still so relieved to still be getting to have these moments with his best friend, it’s hard. Looking around, he finds Daniel’s eyes on him, eyebrows bunched down in a frown, but attention raised from his work.

“Put that back, it’s millions of years old, it doesn’t need to be handled.”

Obligingly, Jack sets the statuette back on the shelf and looks down at the notebook Daniel has been scribbling in instead. “It’s quittin’ time, Daniel.” 

“I’m not done with this,” he runs a hand through his hair in frustration, taking off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose, a sure sign that he’s exhausted even if he isn’t ready to admit it. “I’m piecing together the language quicker now, but there’s so much of it.” Jack can see the printouts now, clearly stills of the walls; there’s a couple with notes and translations on them scattered on the desk and a thick stack on the corner closest to the computer and printer. 

“It’ll keep until tomorrow.”

“Jack, this is important stuff. I don’t know why yet, but I can feel it. This is going to be big.”

“It’ll be just as big tomorrow, or next week, or next month.” Jack shoves his hands in his pockets and stands a little straighter, moving a little bit into Daniel’s space. “We’ve got places to go tomorrow, and you’re not going to stay here all night and be cranky tomorrow.”

“Cranky – Jack, I am perfectly aware of my own limitations.” Danny is scowling at him now, but he’s been successfully completely distracted from his paperwork and translations. “If anyone is cranky on this team, it’s you!”

“Sweet, so I’ll see you in fifteen minutes topside at the truck. We’ll grab some chow, and then neither of us will be cranky tomorrow.”

The scowl doesn’t fade but Daniel’s eyebrows rise and then knit again, and it softens into something considering. “You’re buying dinner?”

“Yasureyoubetcha.”

“Thai?” He tilts his head a little, voice hopeful, and Jack shrugs, looking at his watch. 

“If you make it ten minutes, we’ll get Thai. You take forever, I’m getting burgers.” Thai actually sounds great to Jack, but the opportunity to think he deprived Jack of a fatty meal of burgers and fries against Jack’s wishes and inspired a healthier option will put some pep into Daniel’s step. The younger man has already made a beeline for the locker room, and Jack lets himself smirk a little as he shuts off the lights, closes the door, and heads for the truck.

By sheer force of habit, they’d gotten their food to go from Daniel’s favorite Thai place, and because it was closer to Daniel’s apartment they’d retreated there instead of to Jack’s house. It’s a rarer destination, mostly because Daniel doesn’t have a guest room for Jack if they stay up late with discussions and alcohol, whereas Jack’s guest room basically belongs to Daniel. Still, he’d bought a new couch a year ago and the ability for a 6’2” Air Force Colonel to get a decent night’s sleep may have been a big factor in his choice. 

They make light chatter about SGC gossip while they’re eating, but after they’ve finished and Daniel has gotten them new beers from the kitchen, a quiet and contemplative silence falls between them. 

“Jack?” he starts, but falls silent to consider his words.

“Daniel?” It’s patient, just like he had been all day, even though Daniel could practically feel the tension rolling off of him at times.

Daniel blows out a sharp breath and leans forward, looking over at Jack sprawled comfortably in his corner of the couch. “I just…I want you to know that I know it wasn’t easy for you to trust me on a lot of things today, and it really means something that you did, even when it seemed crazy.”

Jack’s hesitation over many of the things that happened today flash back in Daniel’s memory, accompanied by his dry, clipped sarcasm as they interacted with Oma Desala’s riddles and metaphors and mysteries. From the first moment when they’d entered the courtyard and Daniel had shed his weapons without even checking out the place for hidden dangers, he’d known he was on thin ice with Jack, but the colonel had followed his lead with astounding patience anyway. 

“Daniel, I do trust you. Someday you’ll believe it.” Jack holds up a hand to stall his objections before he can get them out, “No, Danny, don’t say anything. You have good reason not to believe me yet. But I’m going to make it up to you in time. I know how important this whole thing was to you, and so did Carter and Teal’c. We agreed to help you find Sha’re’s child and we meant it, even if the path you had to walk was meaning-of-life stuff we couldn’t do with you.”

Daniel smiles at him, trying to make sure all of his affection and gratitude is reflected in the expression. “Thanks, Jack.” He’s about to sit back and relax when Jack leans forward, and his eyes sharpen in a way that makes Daniel’s stomach swoop. 

“I was always going to do everything I could to support you on this quest. But there’s a few things we need to chat about.”

His heart is thumping a little too fast in his chest, and Daniel chews on his lip a little bit, beer hanging uselessly from his fingers. Everything had ended well, so he’d kind of been hoping Jack would overlook a couple of things. No such luck, apparently. He doesn’t respond.

“First of all, since when do you disarm without someone doing a sweep for danger? No, Daniel, I don’t care how you felt about the place, there could have been Jaffa behind every column!” Daniel winces a little at not even getting a word in, but Jack is already on to his next talking point, and his voice drops into a growl that Daniel knows all too well from when he royally pisses off his commanding officer. “Secondly, I don’t care what point you and your friend Oma were making, I cannot believe you pointed my gun at me! That thing was loaded, Daniel!”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, I just knew it would get your attention,” he responds in a soft voice, looking away.

“Well you got my attention then, and you’ve got my attention now, I assure you. Third, what possessed you to disappear without telling me? We’ve talked a million times about wandering off; not to mention, I’d already told you we were leaving, and you should have been right behind me. Anything could have happened to you on the other side of that wall, we couldn’t follow you, and we would never have known where to even start looking. We’ve talked about that before.”

Daniel has a sinking feeling about where this is going, when Jack lays his complaints out like that. He looks up at Jack with just his eyes, keeping his face averted. “I wasn’t thinking about that,” Daniel represses the urge to wince, because that came out not entirely like he intended, and not nearly appeasing enough, and Jack’s frown deepens.

“I know, that’s the problem. You get so single-mindedly focused on something you forget about basic safety and protocol.”

A silence descends between them in which Jack studies him, and Daniel tries not to shift too obviously under his gaze. He can only take so much of the quiet. Slowly, he sets his nearly empty bottle down on the coffee table and turns towards Jack. “Are you…um…” He licks his dry lips and knows he’s flushing brightly. 

“Are you okay with that?” 

That’s not the answer he’s expecting. Daniel’s head jerks up and he looks back at his colonel, puzzled, because this isn’t how they’ve been doing this. The first few times, he’d had to ask; but after that, Jack had simply laid out his grievances and if Daniel didn’t object, gotten on with it. Jack reads his confusion as well as he always does, looking back at him seriously. 

“We’ve had a rocky couple of months. I’m not going to do this if you’re not comfortable with it, Danny. We can deal with it some other way.”

Oh. He understands, though he thinks possibly he’s blushing even more at the mortification of knowing he will, in fact, be agreeing to get spanked by his best friend shortly. Not for the first time, Daniel is filled with an immense affection for Jack that he doesn’t dare try to put into words, despite the obvious dread at having put them in this position again. “No, Jack, I trust you with this. Always.” He rubs his hands on his arms for a minute absently, looking for the right words. “I know you’d never take advantage of our arrangement. And it’s still the best way.”

Jack studies him for a moment more, and nods once. “Then yeah, I am going to “um”.” He makes somewhat sarcastic finger quotes in the air around the word, and then finishes off his beer in one long drink, setting the bottle beside Daniel’s. “C’mere.” Even as he speaks, he’s shifting closer to the center of the couch.

Slowly, reminding himself that the guilt roiling in his gut will go away afterwards, Daniel slides down the length of the couch towards him. Honestly, it’s only a foot or so, but he knows it’s important to Jack that he cooperate in some ways, for everything to stay consensual and safe. Still, his best friend always knows at what point Daniel’s courage will fail him, and when he stops moving Jack takes his arm in a firm but gentle grip and guides him to his feet only long enough to unbutton and unzip his slacks before guiding him down over his knees. 

Before Daniel has a chance to try and settle, Jack has pushed his pants and his underwear down to the middle of his thighs. He squirms a little, trying to settle his weight more evenly across Jack’s knees, and the colonel responds by wrapping and arm around his waist and shifting him forward and a little bit at an angle, so that the couch is supporting his upper body. Then he pauses a moment, his other hand at the small of Daniel’s back, and Daniel knows he’s waiting to see if that helped or if Daniel is going to keep moving around. 

And it did help – even in this, Jack is conscientious of his security. Daniel tries to arrange his arms in some way that isn’t awful, crossing them in front of his body for now, under his head. Then he sighs, relaxing a little, and that seems to be Jack’s cue. His left arm tightens just slightly around Daniel’s body and his right hand leaves his back and lands on his butt with a loud smack and not inconsequential sting. 

Normally – and god, he’s so completely chagrined that this has a ‘normal’ – Jack is pretty methodical, taking his time as if making each smack count, usually accompanied by bits of lecture at key points. This time, he just seems to be going for speed, swat after swat falling in quick succession. The sting builds up far faster, only a few seconds in and Daniel is already yelping and squirming, resisting the urge to kick his legs only with the strongest possible exertion of self-control. 

To his shock, he finds the change in routine extremely distressing. He wants to speak up, to blurt out all of the things he won’t do again and to plead with Jack to stop, but he can’t seem to catch his breath long enough to do anything except gasp, squeak, and yelp at particularly hard smacks. Trying to resist reaching back to shield Jack’s target, he grabs Jack’s pant leg and squeezes as hard as he can, which works to distract him for about thirty seconds. It doesn’t take long for frustration to sweep over him and he gives in to the urge to kick his legs, feeling like he’s doing some sort of manic swimming routine with his combination of scissor kicks and frog-like motions, but Jack’s grip on his waist keeps him pulled firmly into the older man’s side and it doesn’t slow down his assault at all. 

He manages a protesting cry of “No, J’ck, p-please!” when the colonel’s arm tightens around him, a little more weight being put into the arm across his back, knowing something is coming that he’s not going to like. Sure enough, Jack drops his fierce and rapid spanks to the lower curves of Daniel’s bottom and the tops of his thighs, and all Daniel can do is wail his wordless protest. 

Without warning, the wave of guilt breaks and it’s like he’s able to surface for a breath of fresh air. With the relief comes the tears and he stops all but the most reflexive kicks, curling into Jack’s side and around his legs as he cries. Almost immediately, Jack stops, landing only a half-dozen more sharp smacks. Only half-aware of his surroundings, Daniel doesn’t attempt to move as Jack leans over and tugs off his shoes and eases his clothes back up his legs, lifting his hips with his left arm so that he can very carefully pull them over Daniel’s blazing rear. 

It doesn’t take much effort for Jack to lift Daniel up to his chest, turning sideways so he can lean against the arm of the couch and let his quietly sobbing archaeologist lay prone on top of him, their legs stretched out down the length of the couch. Daniel is loosely aware of Jack making quiet shh-ing sounds in his ear, but main he’s focused on his colonel’s hands. One is massaging his head, fingers deep in his short hair, and the other is idly stroking his back. Jack doesn’t say anything as Daniel lets the penitence leak out with the tears, leaving only calm and a lingering faint sense of having failed Sha’re in it’s place. 

“’m sorry,” he manages after a while, when the tears have abated, and both hands still for a moment to clasp him closer. 

“It’s all forgiven, Danny. Let it go.”

“What if I made the wrong call? What if Oma Desala isn’t one of the good guys?” What goes unspoken but not unheard is ‘What if I failed Sha’re?’. 

“You weren’t going to be able to get that baby from that alien if she didn’t want you to, kid. It was already out of your hands.” Jack’s matter-of-fact about it, about what they had all seen, but Daniel knows some of that is an act for his benefit. They’re all used to races with superior technology, but the races that actually seem to have powers beyond human ability are more disconcerting, like the Nox and this new ancient species. “But regardless, I think it was the right call. That was your gut feeling from what you were able to read and translate, and your gut feelings are usually good, Danny.”

He sighs out acceptance of this, going limp again in Jack’s grasp, and hums a little in contentment when Jack resumes his back-stroking and head-scratching. Daniel happens to catch sight of the clock across the room and can’t help but admire Jack’s efficiency today; it’s not even been half an hour since they sat down, and he is aware that he’s calmed and settled far quicker than usual, the tears already long dried. His butt is still stinging and burning and he’s not in any hurry to sit on it, but even that is less than usual. Jack had made his point quite clearly, and cleansed Daniel’s guilt, all while keeping in mind that they were both exhausted and had to go off-world the next day, and managed to have them settled on the couch to relax in what feels like record time. 

“It might be a nightmare night,” Daniel admits very quietly, shivering just a little. He still has dreams – more so and more often night terrors – about Sha’re’s death, and the loss of Shifu will most certainly be a trigger. Jack’s hand stops stroking to pull an afghan off the back of the couch to settle over them.

“I’m not going anywhere.” He shifts a little under Daniel and gropes for the remote for the TV that had gotten installed about the time the new coach had been purchased, switching it on to some hockey game and lowering the volume to just loud enough to hear the colorful commentary, and Daniel knows his sleep will be safe tonight or at least, his best friend will be here to pull him out of the worst of the dreams.