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CHAPTER 2: THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
"Couldn't? Try wouldn't," Daniel accused coldly. "Who the hell do you think
you are, deciding for me?"
"Your C.O.!" Jack snarled. "Commanding officer," he explained tersely when
Daniel shot him a blank look. The only acknowledgement this earned him was a
disparaging sniff. "I don't leave my people behind!" he roared, goaded.
"I'm not your people!"
"Will you give it a rest, already?" One glance was enough to answer this
emphatically. Despite himself, Jack was softened by the crossed arms, the taut
defiance, the haughty tilt of Daniel's chin. "Stubborn bastard," he complained.
"You're worse than my kid!"
It struck with the force of a blow, doubling him up at the steering wheel,
gasping. He slammed on the brakes, losing it a little, having to wrestle the
wheel.
He was out of the jeep a beat later, headed out into nowhere, fast, Daniel
agitated and shouting behind him. Jack shrugged off urgent, reaching hands,
shoved Daniel away from him without looking. He wasn't surprised when Daniel
grabbed him hard, jerking him off balance. He spun around, raging, grabbing
back, yanking Daniel up close, off his feet, leaving him hanging from his grip.
Daniel had to fight to breathe, but he looked steadily back at Jack.
"Why aren't you afraid?" Jack whispered, easing up when Daniel's fingers settled
comfortingly on his shoulders, caught once more by the fearless compassion in
the too-seeing eyes. Jack was hurting. That was all Daniel knew, all he cared
about.
"I forgot," Jack said blankly, staring blindly into the empty space between
them. "My son is dead. I forgot!" How was it even possible?
"Maybe you need to," Daniel suggested gently.
Jack sure as fuck couldn't forgive. "Too soon," he said desolately, letting
Daniel down.
Daniel nodded wordless understanding, real understanding, halting the
instinctive rebuff from Jack.
He remembered belatedly Daniel had lost his parents in an accident; they'd died
right in front of him in some museum when he was only eight years old. It was in
his personnel file, not just a note in his record, but news clippings from the
New York Times. Messy. Ugly. Never leaving him. Jack had registered the fact
without letting it move him but now he was so focused, so obsessed with Daniel,
he felt another connection between them. There were too many echoes between
Jack's life and Daniel's, between the men they were. It made no sense.
They stood that way for a long time, drenched in sunlight, looking and not
really seeing, Daniel's fingers clenched tight on Jack's shoulders, his falling
to Daniel's waist. What shifted Jack, the only thing, was his sudden stupefied
awareness he wasn't blocking out the memory of Charlie any longer, he was
drinking Daniel in, staring and staring at Daniel's bewildering face because in
his grief, he wasn't being questioned. Daniel thought this was comfort.
"My wife is waiting," Jack snapped, his harshness instinctive, almost panicked.
He couldn't rely on Daniel to understand they couldn't be this close. The man
was clueless about what he was supposed to do, what was expected of him, far too
prone to doing his own damned thing.
And Jack?
His balance, the odd peace he'd made with the ending of his life, that was gone.
He had never looked at another man's mouth before.
Lazy summer afternoons, fishing and swimming and easy buddy fucks – they meant
nothing. The guys – Jack had left all of that behind him when he went out for
the Academy. All of it.
Only Daniel was here, now, eroding the control Jack had rigidly exercised all
his adult life, the cool, deliberate denial he hadn't left himself room or time
to regret.
Shuddering in reaction, in something like revulsion, he pulled away from Daniel,
left him stumbling.
Keeping a discreet distance, noticing now the high desert grasses, peppered here
and there with vibrant deep pink wildflowers, Daniel trailed Jack back to the
gleaming black testosterone-fuelled jeep.
He believed his presence here was a mistake. The palpable strain Jack was
under…everything but his job seemed too much for him to take. He couldn't help
but be concerned for Jack's wife too, for Sara O'Neill. Had Jack even let her
know he was bringing a guest home with him?
Daniel didn't think there was room for him in their house, a destitute stranger,
not with their too-recent grief and Jack's biting tension. They shouldn't have
to perform hospitably for a needy, unwanted interloper.
Still, he felt helpless to resist.
Events were so far beyond his control, he felt battered by it all. He was edgy
and anxious, hating to be so passive, to have his life ordered for him. It was
anathema to him, but he swallowed it without complaint because he had been given
no choice and because Jack was barely keeping it together. The effort it took
for Jack to maintain his thin veneer of control was far more obvious here than
it had ever been back on the planet. He was out of his element now, where
training and discipline didn't count.
Jack had chosen not to die but Daniel didn't know yet if that meant Jack had
chosen to live. He didn't know what to do for him for the best. He didn’t know
what to do for him, period.
He was not good at people.
What Daniel was supposed to do if Jack and his wife didn't take him in was
anybody's guess. He had nowhere to go. Even Nick didn't want anything to do with
him. He wasn't going to forget anytime soon the last confrontation with his
grandfather. Nick had spent most of Daniel's adult life in the mental health
institute and even he thought Daniel's theories were nuts.
What a shame, Daniel thought humourlessly, he hadn't listened to Nick before he
stepped out onto the dais to lecture his peers and lost his career as well as
his apartment.
He'd been working for the Air Force for three weeks. He had exactly fourteen
dollars and fifty-three cents until he was paid his fee for the translation.
Sleeping on a cot close to his work and being made to eat three times a day had
suited him just fine while he tried to pull himself together and make sense of
how far and how fast he'd fallen. Even with a regular salary, it would be months
before he had the cash together for the rent and a security deposit on any kind
of apartment, and that was without considering the cost of cabbing it between a
place in Colorado Springs and Cheyenne Mountain while he scraped up the money
for some kind of car.
Daniel shuddered around a knot of something too close to fear and fought down
weary bitterness at Jack for dragging him back here.
He wasn't even angry anymore. Right now Jack needed him too much for him to
allow himself the luxury of self-pity. The man was afraid and hurting, and
despite what he'd done, he was Daniel's friend. Daniel didn't fool himself that
getting Jack to admit they were friends and to lean on him when he needed to
wasn't going to be anything but exhausting.
"You would have been wasted there."
The curt pronouncement was tossed back grudgingly over Jack's shoulder as he
loped up onto the road. Disconcerted by the suddenness of it, Daniel realised
this was as close to an apology as Jack was going to get.
Jack hesitated by the door of his jeep, looking steadily back at Daniel as he
made the final short climb to join him.
"You can't leave it alone."
"You're not as dumb as you act, Jack," Daniel snapped, shaken as much by Jack's
perception as by his knowing complacency. "But you don't know me as well as you
think you do."
"I know you well enough," Jack retorted as he climbed into the jeep. "You would
never have been content to just live that life. The Stargate would have been
there, within reach, tantalising, bigger than everything."
"Didn't you ever meet someone and just click?" Daniel demanded as he clambered
into his seat, resentful Jack thought him so selfish and regretfully aware there
was cause. "Is it so hard for you to-"
"Yes," Jack interrupted loudly, surprising himself. "Yes," he said again, more
quietly. He avoided Daniel's eyes as he started the jeep and pulled away.
"Your wife?" Daniel asked compassionately.
"Something like that," Jack said uncommunicatively.
They drove the rest of the way in uneasy silence, Daniel too busy
surreptitiously watching Jack to pay much attention to their surroundings.
Winter Park turned out to be a typical off-highway suburb. Jack's street was
literally on the edge of town, a long, pleasant, tree-lined avenue, windblown
with leaves tumbling and open fields beyond it. Painted a soft blue, his house
was maybe half-way along, neat with trees and shrubs, vibrant flower-filled beds
and a lush, clipped lawn, indistinguishable from all the others. Nice.
As soon as Jack pulled in and parked, Daniel slipped out to grab his battered
bag from the back of the jeep. A week ago everything he owned was in this bag
and his suitcase. The suitcase and most of his textbooks were blasted apart with
Ra, along with his career. Now all he had was this bag. All the evidence of his
existence was here. There was no permanency for him, no neat suburban space.
Jack's life was as alien to him as Sha'uri's. He looked at Jack's house and
hated the way it made him feel.
He wouldn't lie and atone for his originality to get a grant, he had no favours
he could call in and no friends who would return his call right now, except
Robert, who was unreachable on a celebratory post-doctoral dig in the Yucatan
for the next eight months.
He had nothing but this bag and he didn't know what to do.
A shaky future with the Air Force and this cold, suffering man were it, in terms
of choices.
Cabin'd, cribbed, confined, he thought vacantly, staring
uncomprehendingly at the pretty prison he was meant to find a place in. It
suffocated him.
Instinct had him wondering if Jack was counting on that. There was something
intense between them. Daniel himself was uneasily aware of how drawn he was to
Jack, how difficult he found it not to respond to him. It wasn't a feeling he
was used to. He hovered anxiously in the driveway, hugging close to the side of
the jeep as Jack bounded up the steps to the front door, his heart sinking when
he found the door locked. Jack's sudden frown didn't do anything to reassure
him.
Jack unlocked his front door, annoyed and faintly ashamed he had no idea what
Sara's routine was, whether she was meant to be here or not. Not that he wasn't
glad she was out of the kitchen and past the chain smoking. "Sara?" he called.
In all the silence, he was too aware of Daniel unhappily trailing him into the
house, showing the first signs of real nervousness Jack had seen in him, for all
the self-consciousness that seemed to be the norm of his body language. Daniel
only appeared to relax when he was wholly absorbed in his researches.
Jack ran upstairs to check their bedroom in case Sara was sleeping with the aid
of the pills they'd both been prescribed, barging past the always-open door to
Charlie's room. When he went into their room he found it empty, the soft greens
and blues oddly impeccable. Not that Sara didn't take care of things, she just
preferred to be with Charlie. To be doing things in the house, not to it. This
pristine hotel room neatness unnerved Jack.
"Dammit, Sara."
He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as he walked back down the hallway and
took the stairs down two at a time. Daniel was standing right where he'd left
him, planted by the front door. He hadn't even put his bag down. Surprised, Jack
noted the white-knuckled grip as he moved past and turned to head into the
kitchen. He hadn't really pegged Daniel as the shy type, but then he'd only seen
him in his element.
The kitchen was immaculate, every gleaming oak surface reflecting the late
afternoon sunshine, making it dance and play over the pale green walls. Jack
stood at the doorway, staring at an envelope propped against the coffee-pot. His
name stood out starkly, flowing black against the creamy paper. He almost didn't
need to read it. Almost. He was frozen, half-knowing and refusing to believe
Sara could do it, even though they'd been warned by the counsellor...
There had always been a chance the grief could have brought them together.
If he'd given an inch or a word, it could have.
When he could move, Jack picked up the envelope, sorry his hands weren't
shaking, that he didn't have enough left to grieve for both Sara and Charlie.
The note was curt and difficult. Sara had gone to be with her father, she was
staying for a month. Mike was moving back to Winter Park to be with her because
she couldn't be alone and even when Jack was there she felt alone. More alone.
He was grateful Sara didn't insult him with sorry, astonished she'd believed for
long enough to write this note that he was actually coming back. Sara had lived
with him, had watched him crash and burn. She knew what the Air Force had wanted
from him when they reactivated him.
Daniel's hand on his shoulder made him jump violently.
"Sorry," Daniel apologised breathlessly, snatching his hand away as if burned.
Instinctively, Jack caught it and held it, resting warm and strong in his, long
fingers curling around his hand after a moment. Daniel's eyes were filled with
sorrow and the same quiet, unnerving understanding that once again stifled
Jack's customary cutting retorts.
"Looks like two of us for dinner," he joked in rough, dry voice with no humour
at all.
He stood there in what used to be his kitchen, breathing hard, holding Daniel's
hand, holding another man, knowing only gratitude he didn't have to say a
goddamn word, be anything or anyone, not with this man. Not a father, not a
husband. Not brave or bullshitting.
Maybe one thing. Maybe a friend.
Not that he - he didn't have friends, not like this. Not like Daniel. He didn't
let people in. He didn't let Sara in. His wife.
"Why you?" he burst out, raging.
"Oh, Jack," Daniel sighed.
Daniel didn't have an answer for Jack or his galling grief but he had compassion
and as much giving warmth as anyone Jack had ever known, moving into him, coming
close, a hand gentle on his hair as the few hot, hard tears boiled up from
nowhere and left him shaken and aching.
When Jack moved, Daniel turned, saying nothing, judging nothing when Jack held
onto his hand. He followed him patiently upstairs and along to his bedroom,
glancing once into Charlie's room, suddenly showing a fleeting glimpse of pain,
something old and dark, enough to stop Jack in his tracks and ask a sharp
question. Daniel's head dropped. He was too gentle for any other sign of
refusal, his small, tentative smile taking the sting even from that, but he
wouldn't talk. Jack's grip on his hand tightened involuntarily. He hated the
reminder anything could hurt that much, that a child could still mourn his
parents after twenty-odd years.
Where did that leave him? He had nothing left to lose, nothing to give, and he
had to live with that.
A choked, panicked instinct drove him along to the end of the hallway and into
the guestroom. Jack hadn't thought at all, he just needed Daniel with him. He
couldn't believe how close he'd come to taking Daniel into the bed he shared
with his wife. He wasn't thinking, he wasn't making any kind of choice here; he
literally couldn't let go. He hated it.
Daniel shied when Jack led him right over to the bed, but the anguish he saw in
the dying brown eyes and the bruising clasp on his hand stilled any protest he
felt he could make. He remembered falling into the sand and Jack cradling him
with his own body from the worst of the storm. Jack had responsibilities, a
mission to complete and men depending on him. He should have left Daniel behind
but he chose to stay with him, to protect him with his life if that was what it
took. What Jack needed from him now was a small thing in comparison.
He thought Jack would balk at climbing into bed with another man but he was
wrong. He had to toe off his sneakers and scramble in awkwardly after him, dully
recognising Jack didn't seem able to let him go. He froze involuntarily when
Jack pulled him into his arms and held onto him grimly, like he was the only
thing that made sense.
"Have to hold on," Jack mumbled indistinctly, shaking with grief. "Hold on."
It was a desire to comfort that led Daniel to put his arms around Jack,
remembered, shared trust which made him relax into the embrace by degrees. He
wasn't sure how his head wound up on Jack's shoulder when Jack was the one dying
inside, but it seemed to help.
Jack.
It - it helped Jack.
His difficult friend didn’t find it easy to talk, maybe couldn't talk, but he
seemed better for this.
Daniel's own feelings were complicated and bitter. Jack had had no right to drag
him back here as if he could choose for him. He was so tired of people taking
his choices from him, believing they had the right. He ached with regret for
Sha'uri as real and immediate as anything he'd felt, far stronger than his
reaction when Sarah left him after two months. He'd barely known Sha'uri that
number of days.
He was only grateful he couldn't accept what she'd offered him. Or rather what
had been offered him by her people. Even if in Sha'uri's eyes they were married,
she was Kasuf's daughter, she was untouched by Daniel and in time she would
marry one of her own people. She had helped to change her world and he wanted
her to find her place in it, to live a life shaped by freedom and by her own
choices. He wanted that for her, knowing her choice to be with him would never
have been a free one. It couldn’t be, not when she was given to him. Not when
she was property. If he had stayed, marriage to him would have made her the last
slave among her people.
In his heart, Daniel couldn't deny Jack's accusations that life with Sha'uri and
her people would never have been enough for him. His relationship ended badly
with Sarah because he hadn't been able to put her first. She had never had a
strong enough hold on him to pull him out of his researches. It shamed him part
of what had made him need so strongly to stay with Sha'uri and the others was
the chance to immerse himself in the living past, to test himself and everything
he knew from his studies against reality. It wasn't even the smallest part of
his desire to stay.
He'd spent the night with a beautiful, courageous woman. They hadn't made love,
even though Sha'uri had wanted him. They were married in her eyes, but Daniel
hadn't been able to forget she was a gift to him to appease their vengeful god,
and the bearer of his Eye. Mired in his inexperience and in hers, knowing
neither of them had a real choice in the situation, he'd only kissed her. He'd
needed – and wanted - to learn their language too badly to leave room for
anything else. He was ready to stay with her, though, to give up everything he
had.
Not exactly the bold commitment Sha'uri deserved, when what he had at that point
was nothing.
Now, there was the chance his Stargate could take him to another world, a new
world, and the excitement he felt at the opportunity to explore the galaxy was
giddying and humbling. Shaming. Feelings were beginning to tie him here,
anchoring him, stronger than any regrets he felt at losing a chance for a new
and simpler life.
Jack was right about him, but more than that, Jack needed him. The military
hard-ass was brittle. Daniel felt sincere pity for Jack, who truly had lost
everything. It was a pain he genuinely understood.
He could still remember lying awake at night in the Brooklyn Family Crisis
Centre, arms wrapped tight around himself, shivering convulsively against the
crash of the cover stone and the loss. It was a habit he'd never broken. He was
holding Jack close to him now the way he still held himself at times, trying to
soothe away the constant shiver he knew so well and warm the ache darkening
Jack's expressive eyes.
Daniel didn't flatter himself he was more to Jack than simply here. He
was no replacement for the son Jack had lost or the wife who'd left him, but he
did what he could for him. It was hard to hold onto resentment, hard to blame
Jack when the man was so stricken. Yet Daniel couldn't let go of it, not when it
was all still so close. It had never occurred to him Jack would refuse to allow
him to stay, let alone have Kawalsky help drag him ignominiously back through
the Stargate.
He needed to know why Jack had done this, because he was exhausted from thinking
about it and the only explanation he could come up with for Jack's implacable
refusal to leave him behind was that it was somehow personal. Nothing else fit.
Daniel sighed.
'Personal' didn't exactly fit Jack's behaviour either. He was uneasy about the
implicit selfishness, angry Jack didn't respect him enough to honour his choice
of what to do with his life and determined to get to the bottom of it when his
friend could take more pressure than he was already bowing under.
Remembering the long, desolate silences in the social services shelter, his fear
and a loneliness that hurt his soul in the night, Daniel shuddered and began to
speak, the first verse of an Auden poem tumbling out at random.
Jack held Daniel close, this friend he'd never expected to make sweet with
trust, patiently giving all he could. Jack was too conscious of the strong,
slender body so supple against him. He should have been thinking about Sara. He
was in bed with a man he barely knew, not thinking at all, as afraid as he'd
ever been in his life from the rightness of this, of being with Daniel.
He fell asleep for the first time in weeks in this empty house, lulled by the
sound of Daniel's voice, speaking softly of love and stars.
Moonlight was streaming into the room when Jack finally stirred, feeling more
exhausted than before he'd slept. He was nothing but glad General West wanted
Daniel contained while he spouted the official line to the Joint Chiefs and
brought the new C.O. up to speed. The Air Force in its infinite wisdom would
decide on a course of action, Dr. Daniel Jackson would waltz in, make them doubt
everything they thought they knew, then get them to do what he wanted in the
teeth of their considered, concerted opposition. Jack had no doubt of that. It
was Daniel's M.O. to date.
He glanced down at his particular bane, sleeping peacefully, his face neatly
resting against Jack's shoulder. He couldn't move without waking him, so he
stayed put, feeling flattened and lousy, thoughts tumbling through his mind too
fast for him to make sense of them.
Maybe the worst of this bad melodrama his life had turned into was that loving
Sara wasn't enough, not for either of them. Jack hadn't even known how much of
their lives together had been focused on Charlie until they were left alone with
nothing to say to one another. Everything they had together was invested in
their son, in being a family more than a couple. They had become parents, a unit
of three not two, leaving behind the lovers they once were. Jack didn't know
where or when, precisely. He didn't know how. Sara couldn’t blame him more than
he blamed himself, and not just for Charlie. He'd been blind to it all. He
hadn't wanted to see the distance between him, had closed himself to it.
Sara had not had that luxury. She had tried to reach him, tried to talk to him,
to get him to talk to her. She'd tried everything.
Eaten up inside with corrosive self-pity, Jack had blanked her as if she weren't
there.
It wasn't pain for Charlie which had him ready to eat his gun, but the fact he
couldn't take living in that pain. He killed his son and he didn't have the
balls to live with it. He didn't shed a tear or give his wife any part of
himself so she could hold on, he left her alone while he cracked and made the
choice to die because it was easier on him.
Sara was gone.
No matter how many times he thought it, he couldn't make sense of it.
Daniel stirred against him, sleepily rolling away. Jack's instinctive grab for
him was stilled by the moonlight bathing his pretty, bewildering face. He looked
absurdly young and defenceless, angelic in his sleep.
Jack loved his wife but he'd felt the odd tug of attraction to other women. Sara
carried a shameless torch for John Cusack and the kid was about seventeen in the
first movie she watched him in. She flirted with the guy who ran the historical
society, confessing in a drunken rush one New Year's. She laughed her ass off
when he said he did too. They were okay. Adult. Easy and comfortable in their
affection and their son. Jack had been content with the choices he'd made, Sara
not always content but ultimately accepting.
He'd never looked at that guy who ran the historical society. He'd never looked
at a guy period, not since he was a kid and he looked at everyone. He didn't
want his wife to be gone or to face a part of himself he'd started to bury when
Maggie Leery finally put her hand on his cock on Prom night. It was easy. He
wanted the Air Force, always had, and he had to forget how good Brendan Leery
looked in his cut-offs, how hot he got Jack all those lazy, sunny afternoons
they were supposed to be fishing.
Jack wanted the Air Force and after graduation, he never looked again.
He was turning forty in October, for chrissake. He was career military. He
didn't want to be looking at Daniel, but God help him, he was. He didn't want
Daniel to unmake his necessary choice any more than he wanted to face the fact
it was a choice. He'd chosen his career and lied to himself he was giving up any
part of who he was for that.
Jack rolled stealthily onto his side, propping his face on a supporting hand,
staring. It didn't make any difference how he lied to himself. It didn't change
the fact he was looking at Daniel Jackson the whole time. More than looking; he
wanted to touch.
It was stupid and dangerous but he moved slowly and cautiously, alert for any
sign of stirring. Daniel slept like a child, sprawling and still, dead to
everything but his dreams. With infinite care, Jack brushed his thumb over
Daniel's lips, disconcerted at the inviting smoothness he would have found
beautiful on a woman.
Daniel frowned in his sleep, shifting restlessly, his long, slim throat arching.
Jack's fist was clenched in the duvet when Daniel opened drowsy eyes, then,
seeing him awake and watchful, smiled at him, a sweet, shy smile that took
Jack's breath away, a fierce pang of desire striking low in his belly.
"I think you should move in with me," he said flatly.
Daniel sat hunched at the dining table, clutching his coffee, warily watching
Jack silently freaking out over scrambled eggs and bacon in the kitchen across
the hallway. It was four in the morning and he felt like he'd been beaten with a
stick. He flinched when Jack stormed in with two heaped plates and dropped his
in front of him with a jarring thud.
"You're acting like a child," he reproved Jack quietly as he sat heavily on the
chair opposite.
"Present another option," Jack retorted, biting neatly into his crispy bacon.
"You move in with me. Or?" He looked up expectantly, his face filled with sly
humour.
There was no 'or' and they both knew it. Daniel felt panicky at the thought of
being buried alive in all that bare concrete under Cheyenne Mountain for months
on end. It didn't lessen his reluctance to surrender his hard-won independence
to the Air Force purely because they were paying his wages. The way General West
had handed him over to Jack like a naughty child rankled. Jack's offer - demand
- felt too close to that.
He looked up to find Jack staring at him, his face softening.
"You have a hell of a time taking what people want to give you, Daniel Jackson,"
Jack said almost gently. "Maybe some day you'll tell me why."
The unexpected kindness made Daniel's face flame. He knew Jack was fully
conversant with his personnel file, the extensive background checks the Air
Force had run on him even before Catherine had approached him. Jack knew he'd
been fostered but wasn't about to be obvious by bringing it up. It was one of
the best things Daniel knew about the man, that he didn't make assumptions.
Desperation had made Daniel take the Air Force job. There wasn't an archaeology
department in the country which hadn't heard about him crashing in flames before
an audience of his most respected peers. It didn't make any difference that he
was right in his assertions. He had proof he could never share and his career
was effectively over. He would never get a grant approved, he was unlikely to
get published and he didn't have any kind of independent income.
Daniel glanced furtively around at the dining room, admiring the rich woods and
sparkling crystal more alien to him than many of the things he'd seen on the
planet. He'd never lived the good suburban life. He'd earned his scholarships,
his grants, scrimped and saved every penny to support his researches. Helluva
joke. Half his lifetime studying the written word had left him with fourteen
bucks, every single thing he owned fitting in two suitcases, one of which he'd
lost, and his ass on the street. Or in the Air Force.
What choice was there for him? What exactly was he fighting here? The blazing
shock of relief to have someone just help him? Or his humiliation and dreary
fear of dependence?
Jack was utterly disarmed by Daniel's weary slump, the anxious grip he had on
the coffee cup he was nursing like it was the Holy Grail. He was as shaken by
Daniel's vulnerability as he had been by his courage. Jack's job - his men's
lives - depended on his ability to read people. He was thwarted by Daniel; the
boy was a mass of contradictions, his strength hampered by this odd hesitance he
had. Intellectually, morally, Daniel was fearless. Emotionally he was more than
just shy. Watching the nervous, almost submissive dip of Daniel's head, Jack
realised that for all his brilliance, his amazing accomplishments, he was
insecure.
For the first time, he understood how big a deal Daniel's trust was, how badly
he'd let him down when he couldn't let him go.
"I've never been alone," he blurted out impulsively. "I guess I've always been a
part of something. A family. A unit. A team."
His gut told him this was the right tack to take with Daniel and he was proved
correct at once. He hadn't meant to say as much, didn't know where it had come
from, but he was reading him right. Daniel straightened up, instantly concerned,
wholly focused on Jack, hearing what he couldn't say. That he didn't want to be
alone now, any more than Daniel did.
Jack's motives were screwed, hell, he was screwed, but he needed to help Daniel
as much as he figured Daniel needed help, whether the stubborn S.O.B could admit
to it or not. What Daniel wouldn't - no, make that couldn't do for himself, he'd
do for Jack.
"I could use the company," Jack coaxed, shamelessly looking pathetic, as if he
were the one who needed help here. It was as graceful an out for the sake of
Daniel's pride as he could come up with.
"I'd drive you crazy," Daniel suggested timidly, unclenching visibly.
The sweet, sensitive smile punched through Jack's complacency, through his
defences, struck him hard and low, sullen want coiling.
With the need came the fear.
He could not be attracted to Daniel.
It was impossible. It had to be.
Chapters: | WEAT novel home
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2 | 3 | 4 |
5 | 6 |
7 | 8 |
9 | 10 |
11 | 12 |
13 | 14 |
15 |
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