The infirmary is quiet at this time of night. Never silent, the humming and beeping of machines a constant background noise at all hours, but devoid of all but the most essential medical staff and the constant bustle of SG teams in and out for the routine as well as mission-related injuries. Jack changes position in the uncomfortable chair, and not for the first time considers asking Janet if he can replace it. She might as well put Daniel’s name on this bay, anyway, and Jack would like to be able to do his sitting for hours on end in an armchair or something. He’d even splurge on something leather, for cleanability. 

Casting a tired eye over the steady rise and fall of Daniel’s chest, and the metronome beat of the heart monitor, he shoves his chair back a couple more feet and, taking care not to disturb the sleeping archaeologist, lifts his legs to balance them on the edge of the bed so he can slouch down in his chair, and take the time to mentally decompress from this disaster of a mission. 

It had all started with Daniel following the woman into the woods. 

It happens faster than he can interfere. It usually does. One minute Daniel is behind him, and the next he’s darting ahead of them through the trees. 

“I wish he’d stop doing that.” Jack grumbles, and they jump up to follow. The woman isn’t Jaffa, but they can’t be sure she isn’t Goa’uld, either. They watch her move to the edge of the cliff, opening her arms wide and leaning out into empty space. “She’s gonna jump,” Jack observes, and no sooner have the words left his mouth than Daniel takes off running, and Jack is too far away to grab him - again. 

Turned out the woman is some sort of princess. They had been quickly surrounded by Jaffa, and hopelessly outnumbered. He’d been irritated with Daniel, but at that point, he figured it would be an easy fix. The woman would admit that Daniel had been helping her - whether she wanted help or not – not attacking her, and Daniel would talk them out of trouble. The princess hadn’t seemed inclined to admit to anything, though, and they’d been thrown into the mines before they even had a chance to make their case. Somehow, as they’d been trying to mine enough naquadah to keep the overseers happy, Jack had missed the fact that Daniel was limping from an actual injury, and not just from exhaustion; he kicks himself now because if he hadn’t missed that, one of them would have grabbed Daniel and he wouldn’t have been lagging behind to get caught in the cave-in. 

His stomach tightens and he has to open his eyes to glance at the strong heartbeat on the monitor again, because he’d honestly thought Daniel had died…again. They’d been dragged off from their attempted escape and though Daniel had been alive when it happened, his failure to reappear alongside them had not seemed promising; Jack didn’t think they were going to offer medical care to the man who supposedly attacked the princess. 

It had been a terrible relief when Daniel walked into the mine the next day.

“Hi, guys.”

Honestly, Jack thought that he was hearing things until Sam’s shocked voice followed. “Daniel!”

“Whew, boy,” the relief hit Jack like a wave, his heart stopping for a moment and then starting to beat again, and he grabbed for sarcastic humor in defense of his feelings. “Surprisingly difficult to kill you, isn’t it?”

They’d been in shock through most of his explanation; it didn’t help that he was clean and looked well and was not there to release them. Still, as unfortunate as it was, they weren’t terribly surprised, given the fact that they’d been thrown into the mine without any hesitation to begin with. One more night wouldn’t kill them, though even then he’d had a bad feeling about leaving Daniel alone with the woman. It wasn’t like Daniel had a great track record with women who showed him the attention he didn’t usually get with his nerdy exterior, or for that matter, princesses. For crying out loud, he’d asked Jack to fake his death and stayed behind on a primitive planet, thinking it would be forever, because he’d accidentally married an alien princess with a pretty smile. 

They hadn’t seen Daniel for days after that. And the man who came down the next time hadn’t been their Daniel. Jack, Sam, and Teal’c were quickly starting to deteriorate. They weren’t getting nearly enough sleep, the water was brackish and nearly opaque with mine detritus and hard to force down, the gruel was just enough to keep them alive. But Daniel had barely noticed, going on and on about the wonders of the sarcophagus. He had sounded high. Sam, to her credit, had kept her cool and tried to gently steer Daniel into realizing something was wrong. 

Jack hadn’t kept his cool. Reviewing the memory now, he could kick his past self; even if Daniel hadn’t been under the influence of the sarcophagus, Jack has always known that unleashing his temper and throwing his weight around in orders is not a successful strategy to get Daniel Jackson to do anything. All he could see then, though, was that his team was dying, and the one person in position to do something about it…wasn’t. 

Daniel had said a couple of things that Jack knows he should probably not forget, even if Daniel does. The sarcophagus might have affected his ability to think rationally, but he doesn’t think it had outright manufactured thoughts and feelings. The Goa’uld technology had preyed on his feelings of being unappreciated and out of place to make him do things he would never do in his right mind, but Jack doesn’t like knowing he felt like that even a little bit. 

When he’d managed to convince their overseers he should be allowed to see Daniel, Sam had reminded him that they didn’t think Daniel was mentally well. He’d known that she was trying to remind him to keep his temper in check without actually saying any such thing to her commanding officer. He’d resolved to do it, too, and forcefully kept himself from yelling when he came face-to-face with his errant linguist.  

Daniel came bouncing down from a throne-like dais like a completely baked coed, babbling about getting married, and Jack had almost snapped until Daniel had followed it up by saying that they were going home in the morning, pulling Jack to his feet and hanging on his shoulder in an uncharacteristically touchy way. Usually, Daniel is pretty hands-off except in a few rare moments, and Jack couldn’t bring himself to shrug him off.

When they stepped through the Stargate the next morning, Jack had honestly thought that was the end of it. Janet was concerned about Daniel’s physical condition, enough to insist he stay on base and someone keep an eye on him, but they had all thought his system would right itself given a few days of rest.

That was, they’d thought that until he went off on Sam in her lab when she tried to talk to him. He’d denounced the entire search for Sha’re, his whole reason for joining the Stargate program again, and thrown an honest-to-god temper tantrum complete with smashing things.  Then he’d collapsed in the General’s office in the middle of trying to resign, and everything about his health went to hell from there. 

It was touch and go, and Jack spent a lot of time sparring with Teal’c and boring himself to sleep with various and sundry paperwork he hadn’t bothered to keep up to date with, all to keep his mind off of the hour-to-hour struggle for Daniel’s life. There was nothing Janet could do but treat the symptoms as they came, and they’d gone through a staggering array of potential life-threatening issues before Daniel’s body finally stabilized. Janet had believed they were on the last stretch and started to wean him off of the sedatives. Jack had even thought about heading home for a few hours to grab a real shower and some shuteye in his own bed, but of course that’s when the alarm got triggered and even before he made it to the quiet and isolated room where they’d been treating him, he already knew it was Daniel. 

Daniel had a head start but he’d left a trail of stunned and bruised marines in his wake, and he was still half-sedated, and thankfully not moving very quickly. Jack ran him to ground in a storeroom. He tried to reason with the panicking scientist, but he could hear his voice rising, shouting in response to Daniel’s accusations. He couldn’t help it – he was afraid, and the fear was coming out as anger (as usual). If he couldn’t get Daniel stopped, some trigger-happy marine was going to shoot first and ask questions later.

A sudden surge of motion, and they’re grappling on the floor. Jack knows Daniel’s armed because he’d shot out the overhead light right after disappearing into the rows of shelving. He’s stronger than usual, too, and completely desperate. Under any other circumstance, Jack would have had his friend disarmed and contained in seconds, but he’s at a severe disadvantage in that he doesn’t want to hurt Daniel, while Daniel is fighting him as if his life depends on it. His desperation covers a lot of tactical errors that would have had Jack or Teal’c dropping him mercilessly on his ass in the training room. They crash into another shelving unit, sending things crashing all around them, and Daniel manages to free himself from Jack’s hold and roll away.

Jack sits up quickly – and freezes as he stares down the barrel of the gun. Daniel is wild-eyed, shaking, barefoot. The gun is unsteady in his hands, but at this distance, that won’t matter much.

“What are you going to do, Daniel? You wanna kill me?” He asks, buying himself time to think. Daniel doesn’t reply but the gun twitches in his hand, like a part of him wants to lower it but the rest of him doesn’t. His eyes are terrified like he doesn’t understand what’s happening. It’s heartbreaking. Jack has a strong, irrational urge to gate back to P3R-636 and torture Shyla until she understands what she’s done to the purest soul Jack’s ever met.

“Oh, God, look at you.” It occurs to him that maybe he should try Daniel’s method for once, and try talking Daniel down instead of overpowering him. “I know what this is.” He continues, lowering his voice and slowing down the words. Daniel had seen him at his worst, an alcoholic not so much recovering as on pause, ready to sacrifice his own life on Abydos because he was so far gone. He can relate to what Daniel’s going through right now if he can find the right words to convince Daniel. He doesn’t have Daniel’s silver tongue or mastery of languages, but he has the bond between them, no matter how strained it might currently be.

“I know what it’s like. You can get through it.” He puts his faith in Daniel into those words, his absolute conviction that he can get through this, and he can see the moment something clicks on for the man across from him. Daniel’s face falls, he moans ‘no’ several times, and then he collapses in on himself, dissolving into helpless tears. As he melts his hands lower, taking the gun with them, and Jack shoots across the floor, disarming Daniel with one hand while he gathers him to his chest with the other, holding tightly as he weeps, nearly coming to tears himself. 

Janet had actually tried to claim responsibility for the whole fiasco, claiming that she’d woken him and scared him, theorizing his mental state hadn’t recovered as quickly as his physical one, and in that state it had been flight or fight until his altercation with Jack.  Daniel hasn’t been sedated since then, but he hasn’t been interacting freely with them either. Usually as soon as he starts to feel better, Daniel is trying to persuade, beg, or sneak back to work in some capacity, but he’s been lying quietly in the infirmary without even the slightest hint of an objection. He’s cooperating fully with Janet, and will answer questions and keep up his side of a conversation, thought admittedly in a reluctant and stilted way, but even Jack, who has more than once been accused of emotional illiteracy, can see that Daniel is far from ok, he just doesn’t know what to do about it.

Daniel spends a lot of time faking sleep. Usually, that wouldn’t work on Jack, but his colonel is so exhausted from restless nights spent in the chair beside Daniel’s hospital bed that he isn’t catching on. It works on Janet and Sam, too. It doesn’t fool Teal’c at all, but he’s not sure if the Jaffa will call his bluff or not, and he doesn’t want Teal’c to do something that will clue Jack in to the deception, so when Teal’c visits he mostly forces himself to stay present and engaged as much as possible. 

Everyone is acting like as soon as Janet clears him medically, everything with be fine, but Daniel knows that’s not true. How could it be? He assumes they’re all just trying to keep him on an even keel until his recovery is finished, listening to Janet’s lectures about a stress-free environment, and the other shoe will drop later.

They haven’t asked, so he hasn’t said, but Daniel remembers everything. He really wishes he didn’t. 

Now, as the influence of the sarcophagus starts to fade, he can see all the terrible choices he’d made for what they were. He remembers running off after the woman right after they’d arrived, basically doing exactly the sort of foolish thing he’d just promised Jack less than a month he wouldn’t do. He remembers doing basically nothing but eat, drink, flirt with Shyla, and sleep in the sarcophagus while his friends almost died; he remembers denouncing Sha’re to Sam in her lab. He remembers attacking Janet and the marine with her, as well as all the men between him and that storage closet. 

Daniel remembers not caring, when he’d visited the mine and his friends were half-dead, filthy and starving, Sam shivering slightly against what had probably been a fever. 

It makes him almost physically ill, choking back the need to hurl up his breakfast right then and there, but he remembers aiming a gun at Jack in that dark storage room. 

No, everything won’t be all right when he recovers. How could it be?

Somewhere along the line, he falls asleep for real, and when he wakes back up Jack is gone. Janet is there almost immediately, doing another check of all of his vitals while he sits quietly. Finally she steps back, smiling gently at him. 

“Everything looks really good today. I’m not ready for you to leave the base and go home, but you can certainly get out of this bed, go shower, and have a pretty normal day. You can do whatever office work you want, but promise me if you get tired you’ll stop and rest. We don’t know what the long term effects are here, and the last thing we want is a relapse.”

As she speaks, voice lightly cheerful, she’s going around turning off monitors and gathering things up to put away. “Okay,” he agrees, standing up, but hesitates before walking away. “Janet I’m so sorry…”

“For what?” she demands, turning around and putting her hands on her hips. 

“Um, for attacking you…and being difficult…” he looks down, burning with shame at the way he remembers treating her during his convalescence.

“Daniel, you have nothing to apologize for. You weren’t yourself. We didn’t know the sarcophagus had that effect, and even if we did, nobody would have wanted you to die instead of using it.” She reaches out for just a second and brushes a hand down his arm. “Everyone’s just so glad you’re getting better.  The fact that you’re apologizing is just another great sign that you’ve recovered, but it’s not needed.”

Daniel doesn’t believe her, but he smiles a little to make her think he does. When she walks away, he slides on the pair of BDU pants under his hospital gown that someone has thoughtfully left draped over the end of his infirmary bed, and sets off for a shower and changes into his own well-worn uniform in relief. 

He wanders up to Sam’s lab because he’s not sure what is most urgently needed for him to work on and she usually has the answers; but she’s not there. Another stop at Jack’s office reveals he is also missing. Daniel stops a passing airman to ask if he knows where they are, and the young man directs him to the observation center.

As he climbs the stairs, he can hear the rest of the team discussing options for their next off-world mission, and that hits him harder than he expected it to. He knows that Janet hasn’t cleared him for anything near the level of going on an off-world mission yet, but they would normally have included him in any briefing to do with SG-1, even if he wasn’t going to be accompanying them. The fact that they’re planning without him underlines his own thoughts, that his actions had been nearly unforgivable. His heart falls somewhere to the vicinity of his toes, but he forces himself to climb the last few stairs.

It’s hard to look in their eyes knowing what he’d done to them so recently, but he forces himself to hold General Hammond’s gaze for a painful moment, and then Jack’s for an even shorter time. He knows he can redeem himself if they go back, to get them the access to the naquadah Sam desperately wants and to help Shyla’s people find an alternative to slavery, but he doesn’t blame them for not trusting him to be back within reach of Shyla and the sarcophagus. 

He wouldn’t trust him with that either.

He makes his arguments as calmly as he can, trying to keep his desperation out of his voice, but General Hammond is looking distinctly unsupportive. Sam looks almost eager, and Teal’c is impossible to read, but he knows only one person would be able to convince the General to change his mind. Taking a deep breath, he forces his gaze back up to Jack’s face.

“Please, Jack…” he’s begging, but there’s nothing to be done for that. “I need to take the chance.” If he can’t do this to prove to himself and his team, Daniel isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to forgive himself for everything and he might as well leave SG-1. Jack is still searching his face, silent, and then his eyes do a quick once-over as if checking his overall health. 

When he turns away and tells Hammond they’ll back him up, using the words “I’d like Daniel back on the team”, Daniel feels a single ray of hope break through the cloud of uncertainty and despair. Maybe he can fix this, somehow.

Daniel turns away from the Gate, where he was seeing Janet and her SG-5 escort off back to help get Shyla through her Sarcophagus withdrawal. She’d cleared him to go home before she left, but he feels like he hasn’t seen his own office or work for months, so he heads in that direction instead. It’s easy to lose himself in the translations other teams have brought back for him, and he jerks back from his academic stupor only when a hand lands on top of the paper’s he’s reading.

It takes a couple of blinks to be able to see in the dim light his desk lamp doesn’t affect, but he already knows who is going to be standing in front of his desk. “Jack?”

“Didn’t Doc clear you to go home?”

Daniel rubs his face, glancing at his watch. It’s past ten o’clock. He’d missed dinnertime entirely, and Jack should be long gone by now too. “I’ve got too much to catch up on, I’ll probably just crash here.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. If I leave you here now, you’re not going to eat or sleep this weekend at all.” Jack reaches for Daniel’s jacket and offers it to him. “C’mon, we’ll pick something up and you can come play a game of chess, relax, crash at my place.”

Daniel darts a quick look up into Jack’s face but then shakes his head. “I’ve got some snacks here. I can put in another hour on this.”

“No can do, you’ll work yourself stupid tomorrow too. We need you back at 100% so Doc will clear you to go off-world next week.” 

“Jack…” That’s exactly what he’s been trying to avoid. He still hasn’t been able to apologize to Sam or Teal’c, much less Jack. When he closes his eyes, he sees his friends in the mine. They’re better off, safer, to go on missions without him there to get everyone in trouble. 

“Daniel.” Jack’s frowning at him now, brown eyes assessing. Shit, he must have seen something of what Daniel was thinking. The archeologist quickly averts his eyes, swiveling around as if he needs to consult the article on the computer screen, though he is so tired he can’t even make his eyes focus on the words in front of him. 

It’s silent for long enough that he thinks maybe Jack slipped back out the way he came, so he jumps again when the colonel invades his space unapologetically, reaching over him to turn the computer screen off with a sharp jab. 

“Jack!” Daniel’s voice rises in indignation, but Jack already has a hand under his arm, propelling him out of chair and towards the door. 

“I don’t know what’s up with you, but we’ll sort it out tomorrow, after I feed you and you get at least 8 hours of sleep.” 

“I’m not a child, Jack,” he says bitingly, “Or a houseplant,” but they’re already out the office door and halfway to the elevator. When Jack is this determined, there’s not much he can do short of putting up a physical fight. Another time he might have, but right now he closes his eyes and sees his own hands pointing a gun at his best friend and lets himself be towed along. 

“Sweet,” Jack says agreeably, jabbing the elevator “up” button. The door opens almost immediately and closes on a soft whoosh behind them. Daniel tries a different tactic.

“I need-“

“Nothing out of your office, since you’re resting this weekend, like someone who just went through a pretty awful withdrawal.” Jack holds out Daniel’s jacket, both eyebrows raised in challenge, and Daniel gives in. He swipes the faded green garment out of Jack’s hand and shrugs into it. He’s still in his BDUs, but that argument won’t get him anywhere either since they both know he has several changes of clothes at Jack’s place.

True to his word, Jack drives through a fast food place and feeds him, though later Daniel wouldn’t be able to recall what they ate. He’s practically sleepwalking by the time they to the house, utterly overwhelmed as reality starts to really crash down; he barely remembers making it to bed either, but he remembers fragments of Jack pulling his boots and jacket off, leaving a glass of water on the nightstand, and briefly resting his hand on Daniel’s head before he leaves.

He wakes up because the sun is creeping across the bed, and he’s too hot underneath the comforter where the sun is warming it. Rolling over, he fumbles for his glasses and checks the time. It’s late morning – he gave Jack more than the required eight hours of sleep. He’s glad for the glass of water now, and the two aspirin next to it. 

The fact that his head is pounding and he more than needs the aspirin makes him a little sheepish. Jack knows him so well, sometimes he’s afraid of it. He’d spent an entire year married to Sha’re with very little to do except get to know one another as they went about the much more basic daily life on Abydos, and he doesn’t think she knows him as well as Jack does. What kind of husband does that make him? 

With a sigh, he gets out of the bed and goes to the dresser, opening the drawer where he’s stashed some clothes. He glances at his own exhausted face in the mirror as he sheds his sleep-rumpled BDUs and chooses a soft pair of sweatpants and an old air force t-shirt instead, knowing that there’s no way he’ll talk Jack into letting him go back to work today once he sees the dark circles under his eyes. 

The kitchen and living room are empty, but there’s a pot of coffee waiting on the counter. Daniel smiles at it a little wistfully; he really doesn’t deserve Jack taking such care for him, not after this week. If he’d just listened to Jack instead of running after Shyla in the woods, none of this would have happened. Jack should be furious. It wasn’t even Daniel who got into trouble this time, after all; the whole team had paid dearly for his impulsiveness. 

But he hasn’t been on the receiving end of the cold shoulder Jack usually employs when he’s mad and doesn’t want to say something he’ll regret. No, Jack’s been nothing but patient and attentive. That just makes Daniel feel worse. Done doctoring his coffee, he wanders towards the back porch. Since it’s daytime, that’s a more likely place to find the colonel than the roof. 

Sure enough, Jack is sprawled comfortably into one of the cheap loungers on the patio, squinting at the day’s crossword puzzle, his own coffee mug half-empty on the little table beside him. 

“Jack,” he greets him quietly as he takes the second chair, settling into a cross-legged position and lifting his face to the sun. Any time he spends an extended period of time underground at Stargate Command, the pleasure of the warm sun on his skin becomes more pronounced. It reminds him of Egypt, with his parents, and of Abydos. Even in the dead of winter, Colorado’s sun is warm enough at the height of the day to feel like home if his eyes are closed. 

“How’s the head?” Jack asks without looking up from his puzzle, and Daniel looks over at him, startled. 

“Fine,” he murmurs, and gets pinned with a don’t-bullshit-me look from the man beside him. “I took the aspirin, and the coffee will help. It will be fine.”

Jack seems to accept that and goes back to his crossword. The silence stretches between them, but rather than feeling like a comfortable routine, Daniel is vaguely aware of sinking deeper and deeper into his own guilt and misery. He doesn’t want to, but it’s like being in a canoe with no paddle on a river with a strong current – he just gets swept away by the shame and the doubts. 

“Seven letters, ‘factor in criminal sentencing’, starts with R,” 

Jack’s voice comes out of nowhere, and without really surfacing from his own feelings, Daniel answers automatically.  “Remorse.”

Silence, except for the sound of a paper getting folded and a faint clunk and rustle as paper and pencil are dropped on the table. “And are we going to talk about that?”

The matter-of-fact way Jack says it jerks him firmly into the here-and-now. He looks up and his eyes widen when he finds Jack looking directly at him, his expression unbearably tender. 

“…Jack?”

“I’m tired of watching you beat yourself up. Daniel, the sarcophagus would have had the same effect on any of us. And you beat it – you got us out of there in the end.”

“I almost shot you!” It’s yanked out of him, sounding totally desolate.

“You didn’t. In this case, all’s well that ends well.”

“No, Jack!” he stands up abruptly, tumbling his empty coffee mug off of his lap and fumbling to catch it before it shatters on the patio stones. When he stands up and puts it on the table, his face is flushed darkly. “If I hadn’t gone running after Shyla, if I’d listened to you, none of it would’ve happened. You guys shouldn’t forgive me.” His hands find their way to his head, winding in his hair and tugging sharply. “You’ll all be safer if I don’t deploy with SG-1.”

“Yes, it was stupid to go after that woman, I wanted you to wait because we knew nothing about those people. But you meant well, and you had no idea that that dude was psycho. Of course we’re going to forgive you.” Jack isn’t getting to his feet, which just makes Daniel feel that much more out of control. “And when you aren’t eating yourself up over things, you know full well that’s not true. There’s just as many missions we wouldn’t have made it back from if not for you – starting from the very first trip through the Gate. Your place is on SG-1.”

Daniel shakes his head, closes his eyes, hanging on the terrible feeling of guilt in his stomach because he doesn’t know what he’d feel if he didn’t.

“Last chance to stop beating yourself up the easy way,” he says it so easily, but Daniel doesn’t connect the dots. 

Last chance before…what?

“It was my fault,” he says stubbornly. “I should have worked harder to convince them to let you guys go. You would never have –“

Standing swiftly, Jack has taken his arm in a firm grip and he’s steering him back inside, pausing to slide the patio door shut before manhandling Daniel to the couch. 

Oh. 

Jack had been so reluctant both times, Daniel hadn’t even considered this as a possibility since he couldn’t bring himself to ask for it. 

“I’m going to spank you for rushing out after Shyla, and ignoring me when I said to stop. That’s the only thing that happened that you have any business feeling guilty about. And then you’re going to let it all go.” He pauses a second to meet Daniel’s eyes, pausing, giving Daniel a chance to say ‘no’, and when Daniel is silent he proceeds.

Daniel realizes with a rush that’s half warm affection and half sudden and total consternation that his friend had been listening to everything Daniel said, and some of the things he didn’t. He doesn’t have much time to think about it further, though, because Jack’s taken advantage of his unresisting shock and tugged the sweatpants and underwear to his knees and tipped him down over his lap on the couch, starting in immediately with brisk swats that make Daniel jump a little under his hand. 

Jack is spanking faster than the last time, and Daniel is aware of how quickly the sting starts to build, like a million little bee stings. The sting builds and builds, until his whole bottom feels like he’s just sat down on a hot metal chair on an Egyptian summer day but someone is holding him down so he can’t jump up again. He’s squirming involuntarily and gasping with every swat; he wraps his left arm around Jack’s waist and tangles his fingers in his colonel’s shirt, and grabs at Jack’s pant leg with his right hand to try and keep from reaching back.

Jack pulls him tighter in to his stomach and shifts his forward a little, and Daniel whines out loud, knowing what that means. Sure enough, a moment later Jack starts applying hard swats methodically in sets of six – the lowest curves of each cheek, and then the crease where his bottom meets his thigh on each side, and then the top of each thigh. Daniel yelps with each swat and starts to kick, desperate for Jack to spank somewhere else, but his movement doesn’t affect the colonel’s aim or rhythm even a single time. 

“This is the second time in less than a month we’re in this position because you didn’t follow one of my orders, and rushed in to do something reckless,” Jack starts scolding, and Daniel tries to stifle the first few sobs so he can hear the words. 

“Ow! O-ow, Jack, please I w-won’t.” He gives in and swings his right hand around, stopping himself halfway towards getting it over his bottom. Jack takes hand, threading his fingers through Daniel’s and using his arm to keep him pinned over Jack’s knees.

“You better start thinking before you go rushing in,” Jack has moved the swats back to the top of Daniel’s butt, spanking just as hard, and it hurts even more after the break. Every individual swat hurts the most until the next one falls, and it feels like Jack has taken a blowtorch to his butt. “If we have to talk about this same issue a third time, I’m going to assume my hand isn’t getting the message across.”

“Jack!”   

“Then don’t put us back in this position.” 

Jack lands a particularly hard swat and that, combined with the idea of pushing Jack so far he thinks he needs to spank Daniel with something meaner than his hand, sends Daniel over the edge into heartfelt sobs, hanging limp over Jack’s knee. He’s mumbling out a litany of ‘sorries’ now, for this past week, year; even incidents that well predate their current arrangement. Jack ribs his back and talks to him; he can’t understand the words, per se, but Daniel recognizes the tender tone as he slowly starts to surface. 

Jack lifts him up off of his lap and wraps his arms around him, letting him sink into the embrace. When Daniel starts to get his sobbing under control, Jack gentle pulls up his pants and underwear. Shifting back on the couch, he tugs him down to lay on his stomach, his head on Jack’s lap, and continues to rub his back in long, soothing strokes. Daniel lets the guilt flow out with the tears, and finds that Janet was right – he’s still sleep deprived – as he drifts off to the familiar sounds of Jack getting really involved in a hockey game on the television.