Rating: PG 
Pairing: Jack/Daniel, Daniel/Paul Davis 
Category: Angst 
Date: October 17, 2002 
Spoilers: Takes place after MERIDIAN, just before the first ep of Season 6. 
Warnings: This is a POST-MERIDIAN fic, which means poor Daniel is, well, you know. NOT a fix-it. Sorry:( 
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of Stargate: SG-1 belong to MGM and lots of other people. I make no claim of ownership and I make no money from this. 
Notes: I would love feedback. Inspired a bit by the song 'Cry' 

Summary: Paul Davis wants to know what happened to Daniel. So he decides to talk to the only person who can answer his questions.

It would have been apropos if he had decided to do this on a dark and stormy night or at least an evening where the sky poured rain down over his drenched frame as he stood outside this particular door. Instead, the Colorado skies were hopelessly clear of clouds, the early evening crisp and cool. Paul Davis pulled his jacket tighter around his chest, and rapped against the door before he lost his courage.

When there was no sound from inside, he nearly turned and backed away from the entire situation. He wasn't sure what he was even doing here. The only thing he was certain of was the way he felt when he entered the Cheyenne Mountain Complex earlier today and found the SGC lacking one archaeologist. No one would look him in the eye when he had asked, and official reports listed Daniel Jackson as "missing in action." But that wasn't good enough for Paul.

He needed to know, to understand what had happened to his lover. Why no one was out looking for Daniel. If it was certain the unique young man was dead. He wanted to know how to feel, besides this desperate uncertainty that hovered in his chest and would not let him go.

Just as he was about to knock again, he heard a crash and a muffled curse. The door swung open to reveal one wide-eyed Jack O'Neill. The older man squinted, as if not sure what he was looking at. "Davis? What the hell are you doing here?"

Paul sighed, this was silly. What was he doing here? Nothing could be gained by speaking with Colonel O'Neill, the man simply didn't work that way. "Never mind sir," he whispered and began to back up, wondering how he could explain away this visit.

"Wait." One strong hand shot out and grasped him around the wrist, preventing his exit. "Did something happen at the mountain?"

"Not exactly," Paul hesitated. "I needed, I mean, I would like to know what happened to Dr. Jackson."

Jack pulled his hand back as if burned. He frowned, and then stepped back through his doorway. "You'd better come in, this is gonna take a while."

Paul followed the colonel with trepidation, still disbelieving his own forwardness. He wasn't sure what to expect, but this quiet invitation was not it. O'Neill offered him a seat in his living room, so he sat on the long couch. The colonel had gone into what he presumed to be the kitchen.

"Want a beer?" he called.

"No, no thank you!" Paul called back. It was so odd to see the Colonel so casual, out of uniform in his faded jeans and T-shirt. He himself hid behind casual clothes, showing that he was here not as Major Paul Davis, pentagon liaison, but simply Paul, lover and friend to one Daniel Jackson. He hoped he could converse with Jack, who was a good friend to Daniel, and not the hardass Colonel. 

Jack returned to the living room, a beer in either hand. "In case you change your mind," he said, putting it on the coffee table. He sat across from Paul, cradling his own bottle between his hands. "So, Major…" he stopped and corrected himself, "Paul. What did you want to know?"

Not sure what to do with his hands, Paul leaned forward and began to spin the beer bottle gently, his fingers wet from the condensation. "Is he dead?"

Jack took in a long breath. "Not exactly." He took a long drink of beer.

That didn't help much. "What do you mean, not exactly?" Paul snapped. "Where the fuck is he?"

The Colonel gripped his beer tightly, his face was drawn and closed. He began to speak, slowly at first, then gaining speed as he tried to hurry past the darkest parts.

Paul closed his eyes and leaned back into the couch. Oh god, Daniel, his Daniel, dying, suffering, so alone. He interrupted Jack once, "Wait, you told Jacob to stop?"

"He asked me to," Jack whispered. "He wanted to move on."

"And leave…" Paul censored himself, "us."

They were silent in the dim lamplight of the room, a clock in the corner ticking off the seconds. Jack tried to explain ‘ascension,' what Daniel had moved on to do. 

Jack had finished speaking, and Paul had nothing to say. He felt almost drained, as if he were the one who had been speaking for nearly an hour. Had it been that long? An entire hour of sitting here in Jack O'Neill's company, talking about Daniel's own last hours. 

"Thank you," Paul said quietly, knowing that no official report would have given him the answers he sought. "I'm glad he wasn't alone at the end."

"Crap," Jack murmured, slamming his beer bottle down on the coffee table. "I didn't know you and he were close. I would have let you know sooner."

Sooner, instead of leaving countless messages on Daniel's machine, sending him worried emails, wondering why he got no response, until his letters had finally bounced. He didn't know what had happened to Daniel's things, or his apartment. He wondered if Jack had been the one to clear out Daniel's life. That wasn't his right, it should have been 
Paul's, should have been…

Paul realized he was trembling, and he hunched over bracing his forearms on his knees as he covered his face with his hands. He couldn't lose it, not here, not in front of this man.

"Hey, are you all right?" Jack asked, coming to sit next to him.  He put a hand on Paul's shoulder and the younger man jerked away.

"No," Paul whispered, still not daring to look up.

"He's not dead," Jack exclaimed, "Just out of touch."

Paul let out a short bitter laugh. "Is that how you deal with it? Imagining that he's on a holiday somewhere?" It didn't matter, Daniel was gone, and he would never get to hold his lover again, never get to tell him how much he loved him. And Paul would be alone, grieving alone, for a forbidden lover. 

"He was my friend too," O'Neill murmured. He most likely meant to comfort, but the words only stung Paul.

No, he wanted to say, not like him and me. You didn't love him, not like I did. Instead he said only, "I know." Then he stood, biting back his emotions, holding it in for a better place and time. He grabbed his jacket from the couch seat and pulled it on as he walked towards the door. He realized Jack had not followed and he was glad.

"Thank you for your time, Colonel," Paul said briskly, as if he were thanking O'Neill for lunch, or a tennis match or anything else not so remotely personal. He reached for the doorknob, looking back only once.

Jack O'Neill still sat on the couch, sprawled ungainly against the arm, framed by the odd misty light given off by the lamps. Paul saw something in those dark eyes, something raw and emotional, but nothing he could identify. Nothing he was meant to see anyway. He pulled open the door and stepped out, pulling it shut behind him with an ominous click.

There, it was done. Now he could go back to his hotel room and grieve in peace. Alone.

Part 2

It didn't take too many calls to find what he was looking for. Or rather, who. The unexpected surprise of finding Major Paul Davis on his doorstep had disturbed him deeply.

On the other hand, he really shouldn't have been surprised, either. He had known of Daniel's involvement with someone off-base, thought Daniel hadn't said as much. He could just tell in the smallest of things, like how Daniel rushed to get out of the mountain on time, when his ordinary custom was to work well into the next morning. Or how he had begged off plans to celebrate General Hammond's birthday when the entire base had attended. Or the time Jack had actually gotten in a peek in the showers and saw the love bites along Daniel's back.

Daniel hadn't told him who it was, and shortly before the archaeologist left this plane of existence, well, they hadn't been on the best of terms anyway. That had hurt, to have had that distance between them as he watched Daniel leave.

He had cleaned out Daniel's apartment, ostensibly to gather top secret USAF material. Maybe Jack had hoped to find the identity of Daniel's secret lover. But Daniel had been careful – his most recent journals – marked "Personal" in large red letters – had been written in some obscure mix of languages. He had asked someone in the linguistics department to take a look, but no one had been able to crack the code.

There went the mystery of Dr. Jackson's personal life. Since all of his work journals had been in English, no one had complained – or said anything when Jack had kept the journals for himself. Sometimes he would pull the volumes out from his closet and run his fingers over the carefully penned script, imagining Daniel's hands moving across the pages.

Nothing else in the apartment had given him any clues as to the identity of Daniel's elusive lover, although in hindsight, he should have considered the 5 or 6 messages Major Davis had left on the answering machine.

"Daniel, are you there? Pick up. It's me, Paul…"

"Daniel, is something wrong? Call me…"

"It's me again. Have you gotten my other messages?"

"Daniel, it's Paul. I've called the mountain, but nobody will give me a straight answer. What's wrong?"

Jack, heavily in denial himself, had imagined Major Davis' interest to be purely business related. Of course the man would be upset at the runaround he got from the SGC. They were a highly top secret operation, but Major Davis was their liaison, he deserved to know.

And now Jack realized that Paul had deserved to know for so many other reasons besides that. For the only reason that mattered really.

God, he wished Daniel had told him…

But he, himself, had proved unworthy of Daniel's confidence. And he knew why really, knew the entire falling apart of their friendship could be pinpointed to a single two month span of time, shortly after Sha're's death.

Jack should have known Daniel wasn't ready, should have known they were too incompatible. As friends, they could agree to disagree, finding a common bond as brothers in arms, risking their lives for each other. As lovers, it had been a disaster. Maybe they had killed the relationship themselves, become stifled in each other's company, having no one else to cling to but each other, no other outlet for pain and anger but each other. After they had mutually ended the affair, Daniel had suggested some distance from each other and well, they had never gotten close again.

Now, Daniel was gone and Jack was driving his truck through the outskirts of the ‘Springs at midnight, a box on the front seat, to find the hotel Hammond's secretary had been persuaded to give him. He was off to the side of the lover of his ex-lover, how fucked up was that? But Paul deserved to have closure.

He found the place easily enough, but sat in the parking lot for a good ten minutes before he got up the courage to go inside. She had said room 412, so he slipped past the desk, trying to look as nonchalant as he could with a cardboard box hefted on one hip.

The man who answered the door paid little resemblance to the cool, levelheaded negotiator Jack knew from the briefing room. Paul was dressed only in a pair of sweat-pants, his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, his hair fallen out of its usually well-groomed state. "C-colonel O'Neill?" he gasped. "How? Why?"

"Can I come in, Major?" Jack asked, gesturing to the box, "This is getting kinda heavy."

Paul stepped back, allowing O'Neill to step into the ruin of a hotel room. Looked like Paul had been drinking by the sight of the half-empty bottle of scotch on the table. Drinking and maybe throwing things around, if the chair on its side and cracked ashtray next to it were any indication. 

Jack put the box on the table, pushing aside the bottle and glass to make room. He was conscious of Paul's eyes on his back. Finally the younger man spoke. "With all due respect, Colonel, what are you doing here?"

Now that was an interesting question. What could Jack say? ‘I know you and Daniel were secret lovers?' ‘I loved him too.' And that really, was the entire heart of the matter. Jack had loved Daniel too. He understood more than Paul would ever know.

"These are some of Daniel's things," he answered instead. "I thought you might want some of them." He shrugged knowing it wasn't really his place to offer this man anything. But it was the only way he could even begin to broach the emotional divide.

Paul seemed angry with him. "You said he wasn't dead. How can you just give away his private things?"

"I think he might want you to have some of them." Come on, Davis, grab a clue, would you? I know, you know, just trust me for crying out loud.

Paul took a tentative step over and peered into the top of the box. He pulled out the first item – Daniel's tan sweater. Jack had never washed it, so it still slightly smelled like the archaeologist – a bit musty like the books and artifacts Daniel had loved, with that unique spice that simply screamed "Daniel Jackson."

He had others, giving this one away was no hardship.

Paul gripped the sweater tightly for a moment, then put it down neatly on the table. Not showing weakness, eh? Jack could respect that, when he just knew the major wanted to hug the object, bring it to his face and breathe deeply.

The next item was a photograph, still in the frame, of a much younger Daniel in Egypt. Paul smiled faintly at it before putting it too down. The rest of the box was filled with books. At the first one, Paul laughed, it was a well worn copy of The Golden Bough. He quoted something softly, under his breath, so soft, Jack had to strain to hear it. "It is better, far better for the world, than men should do right from wrong motives than they should do wrong with the best intentions." (i)

God, now that reminded him sharply of Daniel and Jack had to swallow down his grief suddenly. He hadn't expected this to be so hard on himself as well. Daniel wasn't dead, dammit.

Paul set the book down and peeked over the edge of the box. The remaining books were all the same size and color. He lifted one out and opened it, flipping through the pages of beautifully written script. "These are Daniel's private journals," he breathed.

"The ones nobody can read," Jack grumbled. "There's only five of ‘em. I think he started them recently. Writing about something he didn't want anyone else to see."

Paul closed his eyes and rested the closed book against his chin. Oh yeah, he knew exactly what Daniel had been writing about. And it hurt to give those books away, hurt more than he could explain. He would never be able to read them, so he didn't understand why they were so important to hold on to.

"Thank you," Paul said softly, and for the first time that night, sounded as if he meant it.

"Yeah, well, um, whatever," Jack stumbled over words like he usually did when things got intense like this. Daniel would stumble right along with him sometimes, but they often understood each perfectly anyway. That, however, had been before, before a lot of things had come between them.

He turned to go, after all, his work here was done. Paul probably wanted to be alone, wanted to linger with whatever essence of Daniel remained within these objects he had touched.

Paul's voice stopped him as he reached the door. "I understand… he was your friend 
too."

So many things could be read into those simple words. Was Paul saying that he knew? Knew his misery and despair was shared? Knew Jack had loved Daniel, if not wisely, then not well either. "Yeah," he breathed, hand braced on the doorframe.

"Would you like a drink, Jack?" he asked, finally calling the colonel by his given name. "Maybe some coffee, and we can talk about him. Remember him."

Jack turned back and Paul wasn't looking at him. So the major had gotten it after all. He wasn't alone in his loss, never was. And now Davis was sending out the tiniest tendrils of friendship. Just enough to show he was serious, nearly too much if he were to be turned down.

But that wasn't in Jack's game plan – to come all this way and refuse this man his friendship. They both had loved Daniel, loved and lost him. It was finally time to wish their friend well and bid him good bye. "Yeah, that would work," Jack finally said, peeling off his leather jacket while Paul set up the electric coffee maker most hotel rooms came with nowadays. Not the good stuff, by any means, but a good place to start.

End

(i) Quote is from James Frazer, who wrote the Golden Bough, but this particular quote is from a different work