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vain_glorious Word Count; 3,224
1. When Sam beat him up.
Okay, technically she just kind of grabbed him, pushed him to the ground, twisted his arms all up behind his back and sat on him. Sam apologized profusely afterwards. Daniel doesn’t even remember why she did it – ok, he does: he was trying to go somewhere and do something. It probably involved trying to go talk to the formerly friendly natives who were at the moment chucking primitive and yet extremely explosive grenades at SG-1.
The path to the Gate turned into a scene resembling the Normandy Beach landing, and Daniel and Sam ended up separated from Jack and Teal’c, hiding behind the stone henges that surrounded the DHD.
It was one of those early missions that well and truly sucked, with an undetected Goa’uld and his Jaffa showing up to supplement those old-fashioned grenades.
The henges provided decent cover for a while, though it was still early enough that Daniel’s heart throbbed at every rock that shattered in the crossfire. And then he nearly took a face full of BANG and his vision filled with rock splinters flying everywhere. His ears rang and every time he blinked a solid white curtain covered his eyes. Apparently, he was standing dazedly out in the open and the only reason he didn’t get a secondary hit or a staff blast was Sam diving out of her shelter and pulling him down.
At which point Daniel decided that this was a horrible misunderstanding and that he had to go talk to the chiefs and get them to stop. He was also, Sam liked to point out after the fact, impressively concussed and yet still conscious, and completely deaf to the screams of his entire team to stay down and out of the way of the flying staff blasts.
Jack evidently gave Sam a direct order to “keep him down” – though it was all blaring silence to Daniel.
And she did – despite the gushing shoulder would and the shrapnel his close call had lodged in her back – she dropped her P-90, forced Daniel to the ground and made him stay there.
This is where Daniel’s memory stops, but he’s told that getting him through the gate required similar police-style restraint, such that when the team stumbled into the Gateroom, the SFs thought he’d been snaked.
Jack and Teal’c didn’t see the big deal. Sam, bless her heart, totally did. Or at least the more obvious deal. She apologized again and again, repeatedly offering him the excuse that he was too shell-shocked out of his mind to react normally. Which was why she had to take him down in the first place, of course, but it didn’t mean he had to buy it. Other than really poor decision making, temporary deafness, and a lunar eclipse singularly located behind his eyelids, Daniel hadn’t actually felt that different. And he remembered offering feeble resistance, which was why Sam locked his arms up.
Daniel was never an athlete. He took a general martial arts class in college as an easy credit and that was his only training til he showed up on SG-1. And he was an enlightened and educated man. There was absolutely no reason getting his ass whooped by a girl should sting this much.
Sam was a trained professional, she was a soldier, and concussion or no he never had a chance of winning. He watched her spar with Jack, afterwards, and he knew that for sure. After some thought – and thanking Sam, of course, for preventing him from getting his head blown off – Daniel realized what he was dealing with.
Teal’c, Jack, and Sam were all soldiers. They were all completely capable of physically overtaking Daniel and forcing him to cooperate. He’d always kind of known that about Teal’c – um, big Jaffa – and Jack – also big and also frequently impatient and grabby. But he’d never really cached it in terms of military versus civilian.
It made Daniel feel oddly vulnerable, and he recognized the dissonance of having that response to the realization that his team were well-trained members of the military who were able to protect him. It might have had something to do with years of anthropological theory about structural violence and the state apparatus rattling around in Daniel’s skull, but all it made Daniel do was hit the weight room a couple more times a week, take Teal’c up on the offer of hand-to-hand combat instructions, and no longer resist Jack’s efforts to teach him to shoot straight.
He knew he was still a civilian, but he felt like a slightly better civilian after taking those steps.
2. When he signed away some of his ‘civilianness’.
Shortly after Shar’e’s death, a bunch of men in dark suits showed up at the SGC looking for Daniel. This was almost never a good thing, and he deliberately avoided them for a few hours. He was surprised when General Hammond called him into the briefing room and the Suits were there, waiting.
Hammond introduced the three men as lawyers from the Air Force JAG. He must have read the anxiety on Daniel’s face because he smiled, leaned closer, and said, “It’s just about renewing your contract and the non-disclosure clause.”
Daniel would have been more comfortable if he had stayed, but the General pointed him to a seat and then left the room.
The lawyers gave their names – all very lawyerly and none memorable.
“I already had this meeting,” Daniel said, as a pile of legal documents suddenly appeared before him. “A couple of years a go.”
The head suit nodded. “It came to our attention that your contract has become long term.”
“Yeah,” Daniel said, and then focused really hard on the papers before him so that they wouldn’t see the flush of hot tears against the back of his eyes.
“The contract is identical,” said the lawyer to his left, the one apparently charged with making sure he understood the thing. The other two just wanted it signed. “The only difference is it accounts for the change in duration and your new position.”
Daniel started to reach for the pen. He only vaguely remembered reading the first one he signed. It had been long and in legalese, and he’d been too excited to care what the fine print said. He picked up the pen and leaned the tip against his lips.
“I’m just going to read it,” he said.
And he did. A couple of times he had to ask for clarification. It was mostly just detailing his position and duties as a civilian ‘consultant’. The word almost made Daniel laugh. He wouldn’t call his daily activities ‘consulting’.
The non-disclosure clause at the end was slightly less amusing. Daniel read it twice and looked up in confusion.
“Leavenworth?” he said. “I’m a civilian. That’s a military prison.”
Head lawyer immediately rifled to that page. “The nature of your knowledge requires a military facility,” he said. “There are also other possible facilities: Edwards, Kirtland –”
“Whoa,” Daniel interrupted. “I’m not going to violate the non-disclosure clause, so you don’t have to tell me where I’m not going to go to prison.” He paused. “I’m not in the military. I’m a civilian,” he repeated.
The lawyers all nodded, but they clearly weren’t following his train of thought.
“I can’t be brought to a military court for anything else? The only reason the word prison is in here at all is for the non-disclosure clause,” he clarified.
“And if you violate the terms regarding terminating your relationship with this facility,” head lawyer said.
Daniel found the relevant section. “If I join the goa’uld?” He asked, tartly.
“If you join an organization that is an enemy of this facility, foreign or …” – an awkward pause, since this wasn’t exactly common language – “foreign or alien.”
“Was that in the original contract?” he asked. Daniel felt phenomenally stupid for having signed that thing without checking if he was selling himself to the military.
More nods.
“The original contract was less detailed,” said the head lawyer. “This one accounts for the fact that you are a long-term employee of this facility and have far more extensive knowledge.”
“So no extended recreational trips to Russia?” Daniel joked, knowing before it left his lips that they weren’t going to appreciate it.
He looked sideways at the briefing room door, movement catching his eye. A green shoulder was bobbing in the window. More bobbing, then Jack’s face appeared for a second. He moved out of view and a flash of blonde hair let Daniel know Sam was with there, too, waiting outside the door.
Daniel wondered if they thought he wasn’t going to sign it.
“Leavenworth,” Daniel muttered to himself, picking up the pen and reaching for the contract. “At least I don’t have to cut my hair.”
3. When he did his Will.
The thoughts initially came to him when he was imagining his funeral. Which was something that crossed Daniel’s mind more than once, as one might guess, over the years. One time happened to be when Chaka was dragging him around by his wrists and his death seemed imminent. Again, not that unusual, but somewhat unique in that he had a pretty long time to think about what would happen after SG-1 found his charred and gnawed bones.
Closed casket, obviously.
He had, at that point, attended an unfortunate number of military funerals. And that was the first thing that popped into his head. It took him a few minutes to realize that while most of the attendees at his funeral would be in dress blues, his remains would still be a civilian consultant. He couldn’t be buried in a military cemetery next to other SGC causalities. And as much as he really, really didn’t want to die, that thought kind of hurt.
He lay on the cold cave floor, listening to the snuffling breathing of his captor. Chaka snored. Slowly, Daniel removed his tape recorder and held it up to his lips. Then, so softly he wasn’t sure the machine could even pick up his voice, he whispered his posthumous instructions into it.
Daniel didn’t want a funeral. He told them to have a memorial service at the SGC and a wake afterwards at bar downtown.
“And I want it to be happy,” Daniel said, a little louder than intended. Chaka stirred. Daniel froze, holding the recorder against his neck. After a few seconds of silence, the Unas settled back. “Happy,” he repeated, softer. “Because you’re going to kick the Goa’ulds’ ass and I want some righteous vengeance in my name.”
That sounded kind of dumb, and Daniel thought it was doubly stupid that he was going to die on a planet full of Goa’uld but was definitely going to be killed by the creature beside him. But vengeance and ass-kicking were concepts that would resonate with Jack, Sam, and Teal’c, and were far better than anything maudlin. Daniel wasn’t feeling very poetic; his wrists hurt, his ass was freezing, and he was talking about dying into a tape recorder.
“If there’s anything…uh…left…of me, of my remains,” Daniel continued. “I want it donated to an anthropology program at a university. Unless there’s something classified about my body, of course, like a snake in my skull or something. There’s not, presently, but you never know. But I’m serious; that’s what I want done with my remains.”
He almost started talking about how butchery marks would be okay, because baffling some young anthropologists with alien dentition sounded kind of fun. But he figured that would be the last thing SG-1 wanted to hear, so he kept it to himself. Chaka started moving again and Daniel decided he’d said enough. “Bye, guys,” he said, clicking off the machine.
Daniel didn’t die there, of course. SG-1 did find the tape, but if they listened to that part, no one ever felt the need to talk to him about it. He put his wishes in writing shortly after he got home. Even without the threat of death, it still sounded good to him. Well, not the dying part, but going back to anthropology in that way.
4. Whenever he remembered the military was the military.
Most often this manifested in the field. And it usually pissed Jack off, because it involved Daniel doing a lot of arguing and direct-order-disobeying. Which he could do with impunity, because he was a civilian. As angry as it made Jack, Daniel also considered it to be one of his most valuable contributions to the team. He never verbalized this, though, since it would only make Jack and then probably Hammond mad.
But, it was true. As comfortable as Daniel had become in the BDU’s, as skilled he was with weapons and combat now, and as proud as he was of the SGC and all its undertakings, he tried very hard to maintain enough self-awareness to speak up with he was ordered to do something the military thought was right and he knew was wrong.
Less frequently, this happened at home. Daniel basically lived at the SGC, particularly at the height of the war with the Goa’uld – the height somehow lasting essentially his entire time at the SGC before the Ori showed up. And it was a lot harder to be the voice of reason and ethics at home, when military procedures and their enforcers were everywhere.
And it was a lot more frustrating, because Daniel really, genuinely couldn’t do anything about it.
He found out that an airman who’d once carried him through the gate on a gurney had been dishonorably discharged for homosexuality. And it made him furious. Sam and Jack were both blank slates to his anger. Teal’c might have understood, but it required a really long conversation that explained human sexuality, American culture, military law, and politics. Feeling mean, Daniel told Teal’c to ask Jack.
After that, Daniel hopped in his car and drove to the airman’s house. He parked in front and was walking to the door before his brain had fully formulated what he was going to say.
Former airman Rodriquez answered the door on the first knock, looking unfamiliar in jeans and a sweatshirt. Daniel had never seen him out of uniform.
“Dr. Jackson?” Rodriquez said. He looked confused.
“Hi,” Daniel said. “I’m sorry.”
Rodriquez blinked at him.
“The SGC is going to miss you,” Daniel said. It sounded totally inadequate.
“Thanks,” Rodriquez said, slowly. The confusion stayed, and Daniel realized that showing up on the doorstep with righteous anger for a colleague who really was barely an acquaintance might seem at best weird and at worse a highly inappropriate pass.
He stayed long enough to meet Rodriquez’s partner and make small talk about the men’s future plans. Daniel never did something like that again, figuring out his reaction was one that really made no sense in a military world. Instead, whenever militarily-sanctioned homophobia appeared at the SGC, he made bitingly sarcastic comments and he didn’t care how many officers were in the room. Because he was a civilian and he could do that.
5. When he started, um, fraternizing with Vala.
Initially, he didn’t tell anyone because he didn’t want anyone to know. And since Vala was involved, that lasted approximately two days. Then, he didn’t have to tell anyone because Vala had already done it for him.
Daniel still managed to avoid having an official conversation about it with anyone for a good while. He was really proud of himself for that, until he noticed Mitchell watching them with annoyance. Daniel stood up so fast Vala fell off of his lap and on to the floor with an outraged cry.
“OW!” she screamed from the floor.
Daniel hadn’t thought they were being inappropriate, but he could also admit that he tended to get a bit distracted and make poorer decisions where Vala was concerned. A lot.
Sometime later, Daniel ended up alone with Mitchell in the locker room after a mission. Well, actually Daniel sat on the bench and waited for Mitchell to be done, even though the humidity in the room made his clothes sticky and completely defeated the toweling he’d just done.
“You still here, Jackson?” Mitchell said, coming out into the dressing area, towel around his waist.
“Yeah,” Daniel said. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Speak,” said Mitchell, heading to his locker.
“Um, it’s about Vala.”
Mitchell turned his head and looked over his shoulder. “What did she do?”
“What? Nothing. Well, nothing that I’ve found out about recently, “ Daniel amended. “She’s been slightly better about that, or become better at hiding it.”
Chuckling, Mitchell turned back around and started rifling around inside his locker.
“It was more about Vala and me,” Daniel said. “About us.” He paused, not yet having phrased it that way. He was glad Vala wasn’t here to seize upon it and make the weirdness worse.
He noticed Mitchell had stopped moving. Daniel had been right; Mitchell didn’t like it.
“I was wondering how you felt about it,” Daniel finished.
“Okay.” Mitchell started toweling his hair. “You have my blessing. If you want it, I guess.”
“Really?” Not what Daniel had expected.
“Yeah.” Mitchell looked at him oddly. “What did you expect? Did you think I was jealous? I’ve had an invitation, Jackson. And no offense, I think the last one was this morning.”
“I was there,” Daniel reminded him.
“Right.”
“You looked like you had a problem,” Daniel persisted. “This is hard enough as it is, I don’t need a surprise attack later.”
“Attack?” Mitchell had his shirt half over his head. “What?”
“Technically,” Daniel said, “You’re the CO. Are you okay with…”
“Fraternization,” Mitchell interrupted, yanking his shirt down. “That’s what it would be called if either of you were in the military.”
Daniel paused. “Oh,” he finally said, dumbly.
“As is, you’re just two civilians – okay a civilian and an alien – doing something that is totally none of my business and I really don’t want to see or hear. Especially hear, Jackson. Tents are not soundproof.”
“Oh,” Daniel said again. “Sorry.” He found an interesting spot on the floor to stare at.
“Anyways.” Mitchell’s belt jangled as he pulled on his jeans. “I probably wouldn’t mind even if you were. Rules against fraternization are mostly designed to reduce conflict.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible for you and Vala to fight more, so I really don’t see a problem if you break up.”
“Hmmph,” Daniel said, unwilling to deny that but still annoyed it had been said.
“Also, you won me 50 bucks in the pool,” Mitchell continued, putting on his shoes.
Daniel grunted again, now no longer remotely concerned and kind of irritated.
“Forgive me for being concerned about team cohesion,” he muttered.
“I’d rather forgive you for making me think I was being propositioned for a threesome. Don’t corner a man in the locker room and talk like that, Jackson.”
Daniel’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“That sounds like an excellent idea!” Vala announced, suddenly appearing in the locker room doorway. She strolled up to them and leaned into Daniel.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Daniel was still flabbergasted. “He’s fine,” he said.
Vala grinned. “He certainly is.” She swung both arms out, catching them each around the shoulders and pulling them inwards. “Threesome?”
1. When Sam beat him up.
Okay, technically she just kind of grabbed him, pushed him to the ground, twisted his arms all up behind his back and sat on him. Sam apologized profusely afterwards. Daniel doesn’t even remember why she did it – ok, he does: he was trying to go somewhere and do something. It probably involved trying to go talk to the formerly friendly natives who were at the moment chucking primitive and yet extremely explosive grenades at SG-1.
The path to the Gate turned into a scene resembling the Normandy Beach landing, and Daniel and Sam ended up separated from Jack and Teal’c, hiding behind the stone henges that surrounded the DHD.
It was one of those early missions that well and truly sucked, with an undetected Goa’uld and his Jaffa showing up to supplement those old-fashioned grenades.
The henges provided decent cover for a while, though it was still early enough that Daniel’s heart throbbed at every rock that shattered in the crossfire. And then he nearly took a face full of BANG and his vision filled with rock splinters flying everywhere. His ears rang and every time he blinked a solid white curtain covered his eyes. Apparently, he was standing dazedly out in the open and the only reason he didn’t get a secondary hit or a staff blast was Sam diving out of her shelter and pulling him down.
At which point Daniel decided that this was a horrible misunderstanding and that he had to go talk to the chiefs and get them to stop. He was also, Sam liked to point out after the fact, impressively concussed and yet still conscious, and completely deaf to the screams of his entire team to stay down and out of the way of the flying staff blasts.
Jack evidently gave Sam a direct order to “keep him down” – though it was all blaring silence to Daniel.
And she did – despite the gushing shoulder would and the shrapnel his close call had lodged in her back – she dropped her P-90, forced Daniel to the ground and made him stay there.
This is where Daniel’s memory stops, but he’s told that getting him through the gate required similar police-style restraint, such that when the team stumbled into the Gateroom, the SFs thought he’d been snaked.
Jack and Teal’c didn’t see the big deal. Sam, bless her heart, totally did. Or at least the more obvious deal. She apologized again and again, repeatedly offering him the excuse that he was too shell-shocked out of his mind to react normally. Which was why she had to take him down in the first place, of course, but it didn’t mean he had to buy it. Other than really poor decision making, temporary deafness, and a lunar eclipse singularly located behind his eyelids, Daniel hadn’t actually felt that different. And he remembered offering feeble resistance, which was why Sam locked his arms up.
Daniel was never an athlete. He took a general martial arts class in college as an easy credit and that was his only training til he showed up on SG-1. And he was an enlightened and educated man. There was absolutely no reason getting his ass whooped by a girl should sting this much.
Sam was a trained professional, she was a soldier, and concussion or no he never had a chance of winning. He watched her spar with Jack, afterwards, and he knew that for sure. After some thought – and thanking Sam, of course, for preventing him from getting his head blown off – Daniel realized what he was dealing with.
Teal’c, Jack, and Sam were all soldiers. They were all completely capable of physically overtaking Daniel and forcing him to cooperate. He’d always kind of known that about Teal’c – um, big Jaffa – and Jack – also big and also frequently impatient and grabby. But he’d never really cached it in terms of military versus civilian.
It made Daniel feel oddly vulnerable, and he recognized the dissonance of having that response to the realization that his team were well-trained members of the military who were able to protect him. It might have had something to do with years of anthropological theory about structural violence and the state apparatus rattling around in Daniel’s skull, but all it made Daniel do was hit the weight room a couple more times a week, take Teal’c up on the offer of hand-to-hand combat instructions, and no longer resist Jack’s efforts to teach him to shoot straight.
He knew he was still a civilian, but he felt like a slightly better civilian after taking those steps.
2. When he signed away some of his ‘civilianness’.
Shortly after Shar’e’s death, a bunch of men in dark suits showed up at the SGC looking for Daniel. This was almost never a good thing, and he deliberately avoided them for a few hours. He was surprised when General Hammond called him into the briefing room and the Suits were there, waiting.
Hammond introduced the three men as lawyers from the Air Force JAG. He must have read the anxiety on Daniel’s face because he smiled, leaned closer, and said, “It’s just about renewing your contract and the non-disclosure clause.”
Daniel would have been more comfortable if he had stayed, but the General pointed him to a seat and then left the room.
The lawyers gave their names – all very lawyerly and none memorable.
“I already had this meeting,” Daniel said, as a pile of legal documents suddenly appeared before him. “A couple of years a go.”
The head suit nodded. “It came to our attention that your contract has become long term.”
“Yeah,” Daniel said, and then focused really hard on the papers before him so that they wouldn’t see the flush of hot tears against the back of his eyes.
“The contract is identical,” said the lawyer to his left, the one apparently charged with making sure he understood the thing. The other two just wanted it signed. “The only difference is it accounts for the change in duration and your new position.”
Daniel started to reach for the pen. He only vaguely remembered reading the first one he signed. It had been long and in legalese, and he’d been too excited to care what the fine print said. He picked up the pen and leaned the tip against his lips.
“I’m just going to read it,” he said.
And he did. A couple of times he had to ask for clarification. It was mostly just detailing his position and duties as a civilian ‘consultant’. The word almost made Daniel laugh. He wouldn’t call his daily activities ‘consulting’.
The non-disclosure clause at the end was slightly less amusing. Daniel read it twice and looked up in confusion.
“Leavenworth?” he said. “I’m a civilian. That’s a military prison.”
Head lawyer immediately rifled to that page. “The nature of your knowledge requires a military facility,” he said. “There are also other possible facilities: Edwards, Kirtland –”
“Whoa,” Daniel interrupted. “I’m not going to violate the non-disclosure clause, so you don’t have to tell me where I’m not going to go to prison.” He paused. “I’m not in the military. I’m a civilian,” he repeated.
The lawyers all nodded, but they clearly weren’t following his train of thought.
“I can’t be brought to a military court for anything else? The only reason the word prison is in here at all is for the non-disclosure clause,” he clarified.
“And if you violate the terms regarding terminating your relationship with this facility,” head lawyer said.
Daniel found the relevant section. “If I join the goa’uld?” He asked, tartly.
“If you join an organization that is an enemy of this facility, foreign or …” – an awkward pause, since this wasn’t exactly common language – “foreign or alien.”
“Was that in the original contract?” he asked. Daniel felt phenomenally stupid for having signed that thing without checking if he was selling himself to the military.
More nods.
“The original contract was less detailed,” said the head lawyer. “This one accounts for the fact that you are a long-term employee of this facility and have far more extensive knowledge.”
“So no extended recreational trips to Russia?” Daniel joked, knowing before it left his lips that they weren’t going to appreciate it.
He looked sideways at the briefing room door, movement catching his eye. A green shoulder was bobbing in the window. More bobbing, then Jack’s face appeared for a second. He moved out of view and a flash of blonde hair let Daniel know Sam was with there, too, waiting outside the door.
Daniel wondered if they thought he wasn’t going to sign it.
“Leavenworth,” Daniel muttered to himself, picking up the pen and reaching for the contract. “At least I don’t have to cut my hair.”
3. When he did his Will.
The thoughts initially came to him when he was imagining his funeral. Which was something that crossed Daniel’s mind more than once, as one might guess, over the years. One time happened to be when Chaka was dragging him around by his wrists and his death seemed imminent. Again, not that unusual, but somewhat unique in that he had a pretty long time to think about what would happen after SG-1 found his charred and gnawed bones.
Closed casket, obviously.
He had, at that point, attended an unfortunate number of military funerals. And that was the first thing that popped into his head. It took him a few minutes to realize that while most of the attendees at his funeral would be in dress blues, his remains would still be a civilian consultant. He couldn’t be buried in a military cemetery next to other SGC causalities. And as much as he really, really didn’t want to die, that thought kind of hurt.
He lay on the cold cave floor, listening to the snuffling breathing of his captor. Chaka snored. Slowly, Daniel removed his tape recorder and held it up to his lips. Then, so softly he wasn’t sure the machine could even pick up his voice, he whispered his posthumous instructions into it.
Daniel didn’t want a funeral. He told them to have a memorial service at the SGC and a wake afterwards at bar downtown.
“And I want it to be happy,” Daniel said, a little louder than intended. Chaka stirred. Daniel froze, holding the recorder against his neck. After a few seconds of silence, the Unas settled back. “Happy,” he repeated, softer. “Because you’re going to kick the Goa’ulds’ ass and I want some righteous vengeance in my name.”
That sounded kind of dumb, and Daniel thought it was doubly stupid that he was going to die on a planet full of Goa’uld but was definitely going to be killed by the creature beside him. But vengeance and ass-kicking were concepts that would resonate with Jack, Sam, and Teal’c, and were far better than anything maudlin. Daniel wasn’t feeling very poetic; his wrists hurt, his ass was freezing, and he was talking about dying into a tape recorder.
“If there’s anything…uh…left…of me, of my remains,” Daniel continued. “I want it donated to an anthropology program at a university. Unless there’s something classified about my body, of course, like a snake in my skull or something. There’s not, presently, but you never know. But I’m serious; that’s what I want done with my remains.”
He almost started talking about how butchery marks would be okay, because baffling some young anthropologists with alien dentition sounded kind of fun. But he figured that would be the last thing SG-1 wanted to hear, so he kept it to himself. Chaka started moving again and Daniel decided he’d said enough. “Bye, guys,” he said, clicking off the machine.
Daniel didn’t die there, of course. SG-1 did find the tape, but if they listened to that part, no one ever felt the need to talk to him about it. He put his wishes in writing shortly after he got home. Even without the threat of death, it still sounded good to him. Well, not the dying part, but going back to anthropology in that way.
4. Whenever he remembered the military was the military.
Most often this manifested in the field. And it usually pissed Jack off, because it involved Daniel doing a lot of arguing and direct-order-disobeying. Which he could do with impunity, because he was a civilian. As angry as it made Jack, Daniel also considered it to be one of his most valuable contributions to the team. He never verbalized this, though, since it would only make Jack and then probably Hammond mad.
But, it was true. As comfortable as Daniel had become in the BDU’s, as skilled he was with weapons and combat now, and as proud as he was of the SGC and all its undertakings, he tried very hard to maintain enough self-awareness to speak up with he was ordered to do something the military thought was right and he knew was wrong.
Less frequently, this happened at home. Daniel basically lived at the SGC, particularly at the height of the war with the Goa’uld – the height somehow lasting essentially his entire time at the SGC before the Ori showed up. And it was a lot harder to be the voice of reason and ethics at home, when military procedures and their enforcers were everywhere.
And it was a lot more frustrating, because Daniel really, genuinely couldn’t do anything about it.
He found out that an airman who’d once carried him through the gate on a gurney had been dishonorably discharged for homosexuality. And it made him furious. Sam and Jack were both blank slates to his anger. Teal’c might have understood, but it required a really long conversation that explained human sexuality, American culture, military law, and politics. Feeling mean, Daniel told Teal’c to ask Jack.
After that, Daniel hopped in his car and drove to the airman’s house. He parked in front and was walking to the door before his brain had fully formulated what he was going to say.
Former airman Rodriquez answered the door on the first knock, looking unfamiliar in jeans and a sweatshirt. Daniel had never seen him out of uniform.
“Dr. Jackson?” Rodriquez said. He looked confused.
“Hi,” Daniel said. “I’m sorry.”
Rodriquez blinked at him.
“The SGC is going to miss you,” Daniel said. It sounded totally inadequate.
“Thanks,” Rodriquez said, slowly. The confusion stayed, and Daniel realized that showing up on the doorstep with righteous anger for a colleague who really was barely an acquaintance might seem at best weird and at worse a highly inappropriate pass.
He stayed long enough to meet Rodriquez’s partner and make small talk about the men’s future plans. Daniel never did something like that again, figuring out his reaction was one that really made no sense in a military world. Instead, whenever militarily-sanctioned homophobia appeared at the SGC, he made bitingly sarcastic comments and he didn’t care how many officers were in the room. Because he was a civilian and he could do that.
5. When he started, um, fraternizing with Vala.
Initially, he didn’t tell anyone because he didn’t want anyone to know. And since Vala was involved, that lasted approximately two days. Then, he didn’t have to tell anyone because Vala had already done it for him.
Daniel still managed to avoid having an official conversation about it with anyone for a good while. He was really proud of himself for that, until he noticed Mitchell watching them with annoyance. Daniel stood up so fast Vala fell off of his lap and on to the floor with an outraged cry.
“OW!” she screamed from the floor.
Daniel hadn’t thought they were being inappropriate, but he could also admit that he tended to get a bit distracted and make poorer decisions where Vala was concerned. A lot.
Sometime later, Daniel ended up alone with Mitchell in the locker room after a mission. Well, actually Daniel sat on the bench and waited for Mitchell to be done, even though the humidity in the room made his clothes sticky and completely defeated the toweling he’d just done.
“You still here, Jackson?” Mitchell said, coming out into the dressing area, towel around his waist.
“Yeah,” Daniel said. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Speak,” said Mitchell, heading to his locker.
“Um, it’s about Vala.”
Mitchell turned his head and looked over his shoulder. “What did she do?”
“What? Nothing. Well, nothing that I’ve found out about recently, “ Daniel amended. “She’s been slightly better about that, or become better at hiding it.”
Chuckling, Mitchell turned back around and started rifling around inside his locker.
“It was more about Vala and me,” Daniel said. “About us.” He paused, not yet having phrased it that way. He was glad Vala wasn’t here to seize upon it and make the weirdness worse.
He noticed Mitchell had stopped moving. Daniel had been right; Mitchell didn’t like it.
“I was wondering how you felt about it,” Daniel finished.
“Okay.” Mitchell started toweling his hair. “You have my blessing. If you want it, I guess.”
“Really?” Not what Daniel had expected.
“Yeah.” Mitchell looked at him oddly. “What did you expect? Did you think I was jealous? I’ve had an invitation, Jackson. And no offense, I think the last one was this morning.”
“I was there,” Daniel reminded him.
“Right.”
“You looked like you had a problem,” Daniel persisted. “This is hard enough as it is, I don’t need a surprise attack later.”
“Attack?” Mitchell had his shirt half over his head. “What?”
“Technically,” Daniel said, “You’re the CO. Are you okay with…”
“Fraternization,” Mitchell interrupted, yanking his shirt down. “That’s what it would be called if either of you were in the military.”
Daniel paused. “Oh,” he finally said, dumbly.
“As is, you’re just two civilians – okay a civilian and an alien – doing something that is totally none of my business and I really don’t want to see or hear. Especially hear, Jackson. Tents are not soundproof.”
“Oh,” Daniel said again. “Sorry.” He found an interesting spot on the floor to stare at.
“Anyways.” Mitchell’s belt jangled as he pulled on his jeans. “I probably wouldn’t mind even if you were. Rules against fraternization are mostly designed to reduce conflict.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible for you and Vala to fight more, so I really don’t see a problem if you break up.”
“Hmmph,” Daniel said, unwilling to deny that but still annoyed it had been said.
“Also, you won me 50 bucks in the pool,” Mitchell continued, putting on his shoes.
Daniel grunted again, now no longer remotely concerned and kind of irritated.
“Forgive me for being concerned about team cohesion,” he muttered.
“I’d rather forgive you for making me think I was being propositioned for a threesome. Don’t corner a man in the locker room and talk like that, Jackson.”
Daniel’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“That sounds like an excellent idea!” Vala announced, suddenly appearing in the locker room doorway. She strolled up to them and leaned into Daniel.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Daniel was still flabbergasted. “He’s fine,” he said.
Vala grinned. “He certainly is.” She swung both arms out, catching them each around the shoulders and pulling them inwards. “Threesome?”
