Daniel has been expecting him. He’s perched at his desk, ostensibly working, but at least half of his attention is on the open door. A part of him wonders why he didn’t just leave after Janet cleared him Goa’uld-and-injury-free, but the bigger part of his mind knows that he’ll have to face Jack eventually, and there’s no real point in putting it off.
So, when the colonel walks into his office and closes the door behind himself, Daniel is almost relieved to be able to drop the pretense of working on his post-mission report and turn his attention to his inevitable doom.
Honestly, right up until the Canon actually had them chained up in the center of town to await the Unas, Daniel had been pretty sure that Jack would let the rest of it slide. Of course, his acidic statement to Sam (‘Major, next time Daniel gets the urge to help someone, shoot him.’) had not been particularly promising, but if they had managed to talk their way out of it, he might have been able to apologize his way out of further repercussions.
He has done exactly that on several occasions recently since the disaster with Ma’chello’s Goa’uld killing bugs. All of his friends had felt bad for not believing that Daniel wasn’t going crazy, but Jack and General Hammond in particular had been going out of their way to make it up to Daniel, and he had taken full advantage of Jack walking on eggshells for about a month now. A little bit of the big-eyed sad-puppy routine and a genuine apology had been going a lot further than it usually did.
Judging by the deep frown lines between his colonel’s eyebrows now, Daniel is guessing that not only will that tactic not be particularly effective today, but also that Jack might have realized he’s been being played.
Jack shoves his hands in his pockets and looks directly at him for a moment, and when the scrutinizing stare starts to get to Daniel after a long stretch, he is the one to break the tense quiet.
“Hi Jack,” he intends it to be a blithe and unconcerned, and winces to himself when it comes out more on the side of slightly hesitant.
Those assessing brown eyes stay rested on his face another couple of heartbeats, and then drift thoughtfully to the cameras they both know are in the corner facing Daniel’s desk. When he looks back over, he makes a show of pulling his keys out of his pockets and holding them up.
“You ready to go?”
“You know, I really should stay here and catch up on some of these translations for SG-9 and that briefing on the river planet for SG-5…” Even knowing it has a snowball’s chance in hell of working, he tries the deferral with his most convincing absent-minded-scholar smile, reaching for some files on his desk and pulling them towards himself.
“I think those will keep for another time,” Jack responds dryly. “And the discussion you promised me about the theory of chain of command and the relative outcomes of disregarding orders in the field is more pressing, dontcha think?”
In this case, he seriously doubts that Jack is using the word ‘discussion’ with any definition he’s interested in, but he’s being offered a graceful way to agree to leaving for the night without losing face from his own stubbornness, and the last thing he wants is to give bored security personnel a show if Jack has to get more creative or physical to get him moving.
Resigned, he reaches for his own keys and bag on a deep sigh. “Sure, Jack.”
The ride from the mountain to Jack’s house is silent. Despite that, the habits of moving around Jack’s house in a sort of synchronous orbit around his best friend, getting rid of the day’s detritus and eventually coming together to settle on the evening’s next step is too routine to feel uncomfortable, so the butterflies don’t really start to populate Daniel’s stomach until he’s facing Jack across the expanse of the other man’s living room. Jack looks casual with his hands shoved in his pockets again and leaning back against the arm of the couch, while Daniel wraps his arms around himself and watches warily from safely out of arm’s reach.
“Jack…” Now, away from the base, he allows himself the slight whine that he didn’t want to sink to in his office. There’s no way this is going to end any way except with him over the other man’s knees, and the truth of that fully sinking in is unpleasant.
“Daniel…” Rather than starting the conversation, Jack just mimics his whine in a slightly mocking tone.
“Can’t we just say all’s well that ends well?” Despite knowing that he’ll feel better afterwards, that Jack giving him a spanking now will allow both of them to move on completely, somehow when it comes down to crunch time, it’s still hard to just give himself over to the next few minutes knowing he certainly won’t feel better during.
“It ended well because we got lucky,” Jack’s voice lowers and hardens a touch. “And because Simon found a little backbone. If you hadn’t gone rogue, we could have taken Teal’c body and been back to the Stargate before he woke up, and never been offered up as a Unas sacrifice at all.”
“That girl would have died from the trepanning procedure, Jack!”
“And you would have died if the Canon accused you of witchcraft if you helped her!” Jack pushes off of the arm of the couch as his voice rises, “Unlike Teal’c, you don’t have a snake in your gut to keep you from drowning!” He pulls a hand out of his pocket to point an accusatory finger at Daniel, cutting off whatever Daniel is opening his mouth to say; “And whatever argument you are about to make doesn’t matter, because I said no, which was pretty damn clear and absolutely not up for debate.”
Snapping his mouth closed on words unsaid, because he honestly hadn’t considered the possibility that the Canon would accuse him of witchcraft as well and admitting to it wasn’t going to make Jack any happier, Daniel can feel the guilt rising as Jack tears down his walls of self-righteousness.
“What part of ‘no’ was unclear to you, Daniel?”
“I couldn’t stand by and let them kill her!”
“That’s why I’m in charge. You let me shoulder those choices, and when I give an order to get out of a dangerous situation after we’ve already lost a teammate, you follow orders!”
Shifting uneasily, Daniel looks down so he won’t have to meet Jack’s angry gaze and admits to himself that he has no other good arguments, or any arguments at all really. He knew ignoring Jack’s order was the wrong call, and he did it anyway. There’s a rustle of movement and when he glances through his fringe of hair Jack has stepped closer to him again, head slightly tilted as he considers Daniel. “How much of today was because I’ve been letting things slide since PY3-948?”
He can’t summon any response except a shrug without totally incriminating himself, but that seems to be more than enough information for Jack.
“Right, that’s what I thought. Okay, Daniel, I’m hearing you loud and clear.” Jack turns away and with movements that are becoming uncomfortably recognizable, settles himself in the center of the couch, and holds out a hand. “Come here.”
This is the hardest part, because he knows no matter how frustrated he is, Jack won’t lay a single hand on him without his consent, and willingly handing himself over to be thoroughly and painfully spanked reminds him that this was all his idea in the first place. Sighing and reminding himself again that the end result is always worth it, he forces himself to step forward and put his hand in Jack’s.
That’s all he can manage on his own today, but as usual his colonel is already seemingly aware of where Daniel’s head is at, and Jack uses that grasp to draw him over between his knees where he can unfasten Daniel’s slacks and push them and his underwear down to his knees. His mind is sharply focused on the warm hands that hold on his sides and guide him down over Jack’s lap, his upper body resting on the couch cushion and his legs stretched out behind him, his bare butt presented as the perfect target.
Jack says something, but Daniel doesn’t really understand it over the roaring in his head. A firm tap in the center of his back and a hand appearing in his line of vision jerks him back to the present. “Glasses,” Jack repeats, hand opening and waiting expectantly, and Daniel is glad nobody is here to see him flush as he takes them off and hands them over, aware even as he does that Jack’s laying them on the table out of harm’s way because Daniel will probably struggle and will definitely be crying when they’re finished.
The first firm swat takes him by surprise, falling without any other warning, and that’s his first sign that Jack really his more upset than usual; the realization sweeps through him accompanied by a surge of remorse as Jack’s hand falls again, leaving a sharp sting on the other side. Jack doesn’t spank with any sort of pattern, but every swat seems perfectly placed to get his attention. Daniel buries his face in his folded arms and tries not to squirm as Jack lands swat after swat.
He’s breathless and whining quietly with every spank, toes digging into the carpet to avoid kicking his legs, when Jack starts focusing on the lower curves of his bottom and his upper thighs. “I’m sorry! Jack!” he lifts his head to cry the words out, giving up entirely on quiet.
“I don’t give orders in the field because I like to hear myself talk.” Apparently, he was waiting on Daniel to break the silence. After a few more swats right where his bottom meet his thighs, each an explosion of stinging pain, Jack returns his attention to the fleshiest parts of his target and keeps scolding as he raises the temperature from uncomfortable to unbearable. “I always take your opinion into account, but it’s my call to make those decisions for the team, and when I say no it’s not open for interpretation. Are we clear?”
“Yes!” He wants to be embarrassed at the way he kicks out now, struggling with every movement to worm his way off of Jack’s lap, and tears are threatening to spill out of his full eyes. “Crystal clear!”
“Neat.” His captor lands another dozen swats and then pauses a second, shifting and leaning over Daniel’s prone form. He goes limp where he is, without the energy to move. Vaguely, he’s not sure why Jack stopped before he reduced him to his usual tears and heartfelt ‘sorries’, but he’s grateful for the moment to catch his breath. He is sorry that he had rushed off to help that girl – he knows Jack doesn’t tell him no unless he has a good reason and being upset about losing Teal’c wasn’t a good excuse for being stupidly stubborn. A rustle of cloth and papers as Jack moves something on the table and then he straightens. “I’m going to give you a really good reason not to do it again, even when you think I’m wrong.” For a second, he can feel something cool and smooth resting on his bottom but before he can really think too much about it, it lifts away and snaps back down at the top of his bottom.
“OW!” His whole body stiffens, a second scorching circle landing on his other cheek before he has even finished crying out. He throws his hand back, but as if Jack can read his mind, it’s pinned to the center of his back before he can even finish the movement and lands another swat on each check, slightly lower than the first set. Yelping and twisting, he tries to catch a glimpse of the weapon Jack is wielding, but with Jack’s elbow set firmly between his own shoulder blades he can’t lift up enough to get a good look. Every smack feels like being stung by a hundred little bees in one spot, the sting making him jerk his whole body with every swat.
“I’m sorry! Jack! Ow!” Another inch down and another pair of swats, and then a fourth set below that. Daniel kicks hard, scissoring his legs and trying to swim forward and escape Jack’s firm hold. Swats nine and ten land on each sit spot and he gives in to the tears. “S-sorry,” he manages to get out, “Sorry ‘ck!” Eleven and twelve find their spot unerringly on the top of each thigh, and he goes limp, not noticing when Jack drops the implement but curling closer around Jack’s body when he starts to rub his hand up and down the length of his spine.
“We’re done, Danny,” he’s vaguely aware of being lifted upright, his underwear slid gently back over his butt, and arms wrapping around him, tucking his head under Jack’s chin. “Easy, kid, you’re okay.”
The words sound incredibly far away, and the tears are still coming fast and hard. Daniel gradually starts to feel his heart and lungs beginning to race. It’s as if once the floodgates opened, all of the things he’d buried and refused to acknowledge come swarming to the surface.
He remembers the feeling of slowly going mad, the fear and the utter helplessness of being trapped with his own thoughts spiraling, unable to sort any of them out under the influence of MacKenzie’s drugs. The utter despair when he thinks he might be stuck in that padded room, in his own brain, forever. He remembers, too, the deep grief at each hesitation in their actions and thoughts even after he’s released from the mental ward. Jack is shaking underneath Daniel’s grasp. “Danny, breathe. In and out.” Jack issues the order in a gentle but unyielding tone.
Oh. Maybe Daniel’s the one shaking. He grips the soft material of Jack’s t-shirt in both hands to try and stay still and tries to inhale, but a fresh wave of tears prevents him from getting any real air into his lungs. “Everything’s ok, clean slate, we’re okay. You have to calm down.” Jack’s voice is starting to sound alarmed, but his hand rubbing underneath Daniel’s shirt is still calm and soothing.
“S-s-sorry,” he gasps out, “I-I…y-you….” The archaeologist can’t get enough air to finish his sentence, much less think clearly, so he gives up and leans into Jack’s firm hold. Several minutes pass of this, his colonel’s voice a warm and concerned wash of white noise over his own stuttered breathing, but every time he thinks he might have it under control the tears come again.
“Dannyboy, if you can’t calm down I’m going to have to call someone for help. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Jack stops rubbing his back and tries to lift him away, but Daniel, shaking his heart vehemently ‘no’, clings to him with a complete lack of self-consciousness and presses his ear to Jack’s chest and tries to match their heartbeats.
That works, finally, and the tears taper off, leaving him with just very shaky breathing and still wrapped around Jack as if they can merge into one being if he tries hard enough. Jack doesn’t ask anything of him until he’s completely boneless and quiet, each inhale timed to match Jack’s own so that he doesn’t have to think about them for himself.
“Ok, kid, what was that?” It’s almost a growl, but now that his mind is starting to work again, Daniel can hear the fear underneath driving the growling and he doesn’t feel threatened in the least. “Did I hurt you? Do I need to get Doc?”
“N-not t’ spanking.” He mumbles it into the shirt in front of him, completely and utterly mortified now but still unwilling to give up his spot in Jack’s arms while it’s still acceptable for him to be here in these post-spanking moments.
“Ooookay, not the spanking. Something else I said?” Daniel shakes his head in the negative. “Something else I did?” After a moment’s hesitation, he disagrees with another head shake, but it’s less emphatic. Nothing about his ordeal at MacKenzie’s hands had really been Jack’s fault, per se, but it certainly hadn’t helped his emotional state when even Jack believed he was crazy.
“E-everyone assumed I was nuts,” Starting to feel like he can breathe fully again, the risk of hyperventilating fading, he manages to get that out with only a slight hitch to the words. Because his ear is pressed against Jack’s chest, he can actually hear the way his friend’s breath catches, the couple of out-of-rhythm heartbeats. One of Jack’s steady hands resumes it’s steady rubbing on his back and the other is laid gently on his head, even as he whispers the rest of it that he hadn’t said to anyone since it happened. “I wasn’t crazy. But I was scared.”
“Danny, we’re more sorry about that then I think we can ever express to you. I’m so sorry.” The older man matches his whispered words now, head ducked low over Daniel’s. “After everything we’ve been through I should never have doubted you when you said something else was going on, but even when Janet thought you were a danger to yourself, we should never have let that moron take you away. It won’t ever happen again.”
He doesn’t have to look up into his friend’s face to hear the regret. Daniel is very much guilty of keeping his history very private, but Jack knows and understands more than anybody how being rejected by his living relatives after his parent’s deaths and shuffled from foster home to foster home and then being shunned by his friends and colleagues when he presented his research and theories had affected him, and why being abandoned to MacKenzie’s whims had hit him so hard.
Though neither one of them had expected that fun little episode he’d just had. Part panic attack, part residual feelings Daniel supposes. “Promise?” At the risk of sounding about twelve years old, he says it anyway, wanting the reassurance more than his own dignity at the moment.
“I promise, Daniel, I swear it to you. I won’t let it happen again.” A pause, and then Jack continues, “I’m pretty sure at this point that if MacKenzie so much as breathes in your direction, Teal’c is going to murder him anyway.” It’s intended to make him laugh, and he summons a shaky chuckle to make Jack feel successful.
Jack gives him another minute, but Daniel can feel him take a deep breath before his next statement, and it’s accompanied by hands on his sides, pushing him far enough back so that Jack can look down into his face. “You know, Danny, you could have just talked to me about how you were feeling, rather than basically spending the last month daring me to spank you? I know I razz you a lot, but you can always talk to me.”
“It doesn’t always work like that,” Daniel tries hard to duck out from Jack’s warm gaze, knowing that he’s flushed dark red again and the knowledge that given the time to think about it, the colonel had very much been able to go back and realize how far and how hard Daniel had been pushing on the last few missions, and if they’re being honest, even just in their day-to-day interactions around the base. If General Hammond didn’t feel just as bad about the MacKenzie issue, he’s pretty sure the General would have already called him on some of his ridiculously…well, for lack of a more mature term, bratty behaviors.
“Well, kid, you better work on figuring it out because if you get seriously hurt on a mission because you’re trying to get a reaction out of me, you’re not going to like the reaction you get.” He can feel Jack’s dark eyes boring into him as he growls that out, and darts his eyes up to meet his friend’s gaze for a sliver of time before looking away with a sheepish nod of acquiescence. But, as he’s shifting to try and settle himself on the cushion next to Jack instead of wrapped around him like a koala, he’s reminded that while the panic attack might have been causing his absolute melt down, his bottom HURTS, and then he remembers those last completely nasty twelve swats, and raises his head to give Jack a completely offended pout.
“That wasn’t your hand!”
Jack’s gazing back, not looking particularly sympathetic. “I told you last time we talked about blatantly disobeying orders in the field that the next time it happened, I was going to give you some other incentive.”
“It hurt!” Daniel tries to twist his upper body without moving his lower half to figure out what Jack had smacked him with. Jack’s still giving him a little bit of the evil eye as he thinks back on the actual act which landed Daniel over his knees this time, but relents and leans over to pick something up off the floor, where it apparently got tossed when he found himself with an armful of completely distraught archaeologist. Sitting back up and shifting both of them so Daniel is sitting off his butt and leaning most of his weight on Jack’s side, he holds the offending item out like he thinks Daniel might want to take it.
Daniel has absolutely no idea what he was expecting – some sort of strap? A medieval torture device? – but what Jack is actually holding is a totally harmless looking wooden spoon from the kitchen, which he must have grabbed as they were putting their work stuff down without Daniel realizing it. There’s nothing special about it, though Daniel thinks the work end looks suspiciously large and flat, nothing like the flimsy things in his own kitchen that he’d gotten five-for-a-dollar from the grocery store when he moved into his apartment. It certainly doesn’t look like something that can sting that bad, and he refuses to take it from Jack. “That thing is evil.”
“Good.” He says it with all the blunt authority he’s gained over the years as an officer in the United States Airforce. “Then I know it makes an impression. Don’t do it again. One of these times we’re not going to get lucky.”
The tone of voice hits Daniel right in the gut and makes him almost tear up, and he wants soft-and-comforting Jack back, so he squeaks out “Sorry, Jack,” and ducks his head, putting his face back against the solid shoulder beside him. Jack makes a sound and wraps his arm around Daniel, rubbing his hand up and down his arm now. But maybe all is well that ends well, or anyway, Daniel thinks maybe he’s well again, and his end is certainly well-smacked. But he might slip that spoon into the fireplace the next time he’s over, and replace it with something less threatening. Just in case.
