Daniel

[more_flexible]

It was late. The club was closed and he knew Logan would be asleep. Jack took the last of one of the bottles, just enough to get a buzz, and he took the long way home so he'd go past New Atlantis. He went to Daniel's first and knocked on the door. If he didn't get an answer he'd try Vala's but he hoped Daniel was home. He really just needed some time with his friend. Things were so...he didn't even know. He needed a sympathetic ear and someone who wasn't invested in things.

It was just so involved. Jack was trying so hard to devote more time to his marriage. He was off the ITF for a couple more weeks, he had cut his time at the club, he was giving Logan his undivided attention, and there was the council. Jack had thought long and hard and had decided what he really wanted to do was take off for a few days. Just head into the forest and get his head right. But that wasn't a real option so his next best (and probably wiser) choice was to call on his friend and get some council. Or at least get a little drunk.

Comments

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"It has to be for you, Jack. It might sound selfish, but there it is. And if you make concessions, they have to be because you're willing to make them and not because someone else wants you to. When I stayed with Sha're, I knew that she wanted me to. I knew that she didn't want to go with me through the Stargate. But when I chose to stay, it was the right decision for me. She factored into it, but it's not completely why I made the choice."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"What did you stay for if it wasn't for her...only?" Jack asked. He was nicely buzzed. Just loose enough to let things slip that he normally kept a tight lid on. It was okay...this was Daniel after all.

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"Who could risk the adventure of another planet?" Daniel pointed out. "After a year with her, I'm not sure that I would have gone back home if things had worked out differently, not forever." He had fallen in love with her in such a short time. A year had turned the infatuation into something deeper and more real.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Then you get it. You know how I feel every time I look at him. When I just think about him. I hate that he's unhappy and I hate that it's my fault, Daniel," he said softly. "And it'd be so easy to fix. I just need to stop thinking of myself all the time and think about him. That's what marriage is about, right?"

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"But stopping about thinking of yourself at all is a lie," Daniel answered quietly. "No one should be entirely selfless, Jack. Even, maybe especially in a relationship. Too much of any one extreme is a bad thing."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"But it's got to change. I can't keep fighting with him. It seems like it's all we do...fight about me being dismissive and him being sulky."

Jack reached for the bottle, just tipsy enough that he didn't care if he got drunk for a little bit. There wasn't really much left anyway and Daniel didn't seem to be downing it.

"He makes me so happy. I don't get how we can be so miserable at the same time."

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

Daniel bit his tongue and it took a minute for the words that were in his head to leave his mouth. "Things were like that with Dr. House before you two split up, weren't they? You loved each other. You just couldn't be the man he wanted you to be and he couldn't settle for anything else." Maybe that wasn't how it had ended, exactly, but he had remembered similar conversations.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. He had a real problem with me fucking other people and I wouldn't quit," Jack said flatly. When he put it like that...it was at least honest.

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"And why did you start in the first place?" Daniel asked pointedly. "I'd been under the impression that you hadn't been sleeping around. At least not when I first met you. What changed?"

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"I tried really hard to be the man he wanted me to be but I just couldn't do it anymore. And then he sort of said something that could have kind of been permission and I ran with it," he said. "I felt so...trapped. But I don't feel like that with Logan. I don't want anyone but him. Maybe I've grown up a little."

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"You tried to be the person Greg wanted you to be. You might not want to be with someone other than Logan, but that's still the crux of your problem right there, Jack. Now you just have to figure out whether what he wants is too much for you to give or not and that's not something I can tell you."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"It's nothing to give at all. I just need to think. I need to make him my priority, not the task force or the club or anything else. Nothing is more important to me than him," Jack replied. "Is there anything that's too much to give when you really love someone? Is there anything you wouldn't do for Vala?"

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"No," Daniel admitted. "No, there's nothing I wouldn't do for her."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"See? It's the same way," he sighed. Jack went quiet for a long moment and then he smiled. "He's really fantastic. I wish people got to see what I see. He's so...he's really romantic and sweet and amazing. But he's not open with most people."

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"Just...be careful. She's not my whole life. I'm not with her every waking moment. We'd probably kill each other if that happened. Don't give up everything because you want to be with him." Daniel thought about how best to express it. "He shouldn't be your only priority, just your top one."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"That's what I'm talking about. He should be my top priority and right now he competes with everything else and usually loses. That has to change."

It really was as simple as that. Jack just needed to do it.

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"It sounds like you know what you want, then," Daniel said simply. "You just have to do it and you always seem to manage to find a way to do it once you've recognized a problem."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

Jack nodded slowly. He felt good. Warm and soft and a little sleepy. It was easier to smile now that he'd relaxed.

"One of my problems," Jack replied.

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"Yes, the other is that you wake your best friends up in the middle of the night," he teased. Never mind that it wasn't the middle of the night and that he didn't really mind being pulled out of bed. He moved his head a little and rested it on Jack's chest. This was...familiar. Nice. They hadn't done this in too long.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"That's another one," he agreed. "And I shocked the hell out of a new old friend."

He paused.

"Rose is here."

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"Rose?" Daniel didn't bother to look at Jack this time. He just looked up at the stars. Hadn't he once figured out what the Stargate meant because of those stars? Well, no. That had been because of a convenient newspaper.

"Your Rose?"

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Not exactly my Rose. My Rose from years down the line. From beyond where she was from the last time she was here," he said. "She's still the same. A little tougher. A little older. And I think I broke her a little talking about Logan...and Chase and Nate. Hard to turn up and realize the people you care about have moved on with their lives."

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

Daniel bit his tongue against pointing out that it was just what she had done from the little he'd heard. She was beyond. Hadn't that meant that she'd moved on? Plus she would have thought of Jack as...no. Maybe she did know he was alive. He was never quite sure how that whole 'bad wolf' thing had worked. And, except for the parts that had included Jack, he hadn't cared to. It was almost disappointing seeing a Doctor that he could have liked.

"Still, is it close enough?"

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Rose is Rose," Jack said. A tiny smile played on his lips and he tilted his head to look at Daniel.

"She's still fantastic. She's done so much and she's older...she's Rose. She'll always be the girl hanging from the barrage balloon to me."

[theunascended.livejournal.com]

"Then I'm happy for you," Daniel said softly. He paused a beat and then added, "You were right, you know. It's not same when someone shows up who's from a radically different period as you are." He was thinking specifically about Jack. There was...things were different somehow.