An Early Thaw

by Cowardly Lion

URL: http://www.stargateslash.com/asc/clion/earlytha.php
Summary: Daniel is trying to cope after the events of Absolute Power and as always Jack is there to help.

Lured by the scents of coffee and cooking, Daniel shuffled into the kitchen, a sweater tossed over the t-shirt and sweat pants that he'd slept in. Jack, fully dressed, was at the stove with his back to Daniel. He looked over his shoulder as Daniel entered.

"Coffee's ready. Mug's on the counter next to it." Jack pointed with a spatula then turned back to whatever was sizzling in the frying pan. "That's quite an impressive case of bed head you've got there."

Even half awake, Daniel could hear the amusement in his friend's voice. He grunted in reply as he filled his mug, grateful to see that Jack had also put cream, sugar, and a spoon on the counter. In his pre-caffeinated state, he'd have been hard pressed to find his way around the unfamiliar cabinets at Jack's cabin. In fact, it wasn't until he was sitting down, his chilled hands wrapped around the mug as he sipped his hot coffee, that he even noticed that the table had been set already.

Synapses were firing haphazardly, slowing his reaction time. Daniel didn't think it was any lingering after effect from the dream state Shifu had put him in, but simple ordinary sleep deprivation. Finding out he was capable of despotism and the callous disposal of his good friends had given Daniel some very sleepless nights. When he did manage to sleep, bits of the teaching dream would float up from the recesses, and Daniel would relive the deliberate decisions he'd made to send Teal'c to his death and to imprison Sam. The smug sense of righteous superiority he'd had in the dream appalled him in reality. For some reason, Daniel was even more troubled by his interaction with Jack.

Moscow was targeted and it was their own damn fault. Daniel didn't like being forced into a demonstration of power, but he seemed to be the only one with enough backbone to go through with it. In front of him, Jack pulled the weapon that Daniel had allowed him to smuggle in and fired. Jack actually tried to shoot him.

"Don't you think it was strange you got through security with a loaded gun?" Of course, Daniel had prepared for that possibility and the personal shield kicked in, but still--it was incredibly disappointing, hurtful even, that Jack would do it.

"A little." Jack showed no surprise at his failure.

Daniel couldn't help making a dig at him, wanting to hurt back. "You never were that bright."

"No."

Jack just stood there, seemingly resigned to whatever might happen next. Daniel had anticipated this moment but was still undecided how best to punish such temerity. Logic would suggest he either lock him away in obscurity as a lesson in humility or publicly execute him as a warning to others, but Daniel couldn't bring himself to follow either course. He couldn't look at his friend, look in his eyes, and give an order that would excise the man from his life. He'd have to find another way to deal with Jack.

In the days following Shifu's departure, Daniel found himself being extra nice to his friends, doing little favors if he could, even bringing each of them treats from that bakery they all liked. He kept trying to make up for things he'd only done in his mind, things they didn't even know about. Yes, they had gotten the gist of the lesson from his report, but not the details of what he'd done to whom. Still, those actions felt real to him and the guilt he carried for that phantom life felt real too, and the heaviest burden was for his treatment of Jack.

Daniel put his mug down on the table with a thump, resolutely brushing such thoughts out of his mind. They only had five days downtime, and even though they had flown up here, it still meant a day each way for travel giving him and Jack a total of three days to relax. Just as it occurred to him to offer to help make breakfast, Jack was sliding a plate full of food onto the table in front of him

"Eat up. We've got a busy day ahead of us." Jack made sure the stove was off, freshened his coffee, brought his own plate over, and sat down.

"Busy day?" Startled, Daniel paused, a forkful of scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth. "We're on vacation. It's the middle of February in Minnesota and we're knee deep in snow."

There was that grin, the one he'd heard in Jack's voice earlier. "Just because there's a little snow on the ground doesn't mean there's nothing to do."

Daniel thought of the books he'd brought; of the draft outlines of research papers lurking on his laptop waiting to be filled out. Visions of quiet days spent inside peacefully working followed by tranquil nights playing cards or chess faded at Jack's expression. A sudden horrible thought came to him.

"Oh God. We're not going ice fishing, are we?"

"Nope." Jack picked up a strip of bacon, took a bite, then used the rest to gesture. "This is even more fun than that."

"What is it?"

With incipient alarm, Daniel tried to think of any other winter pastimes Jack had ever mentioned. It wouldn't be snowmobiling--Jack grumbled about the noise and smell of the machines as well as the damage they did to the environment. Cross-country skiing was possible, but not probable--Jack hadn't done that since his academy days. Couldn't be hockey because the nearest rink was probably an hour or two away, depending on whether the small town they had driven through last night had a rink or whether they'd have to go to the larger town Jack had mentioned on the plane trip up here. Besides, Jack knew that Daniel didn't skate.

Jack just shook his head and grinned. "It's a surprise. But I will tell you to bundle up. We'll be outside." Jack rolled his eyes. "Don't give me that look, Desert Boy. Unless you got your degree from the Oriental Institute via correspondence courses, you spent at least a couple of years in Chicago, not to mention the past few years in Colorado. You're no stranger to dealing with the cold."

Daniel hmphed. "Doesn't mean I like it."

"And yet you finally accept my invitation to the cabin knowing full well it's February."

Daniel made light of his acceptance. "Well, I figured if I turned you down again, you'd mope around the SGC for five days getting in everyone's way and Siler's got enough trouble without you interfering."

The truth was, Daniel was still trying to make up for his actions toward Jack in the dream. Plus, he'd developed a fear that if he turned down Jack's offer again, Jack would stop asking. For some reason, the idea of Jack turning away from him worried him greatly.

"Laugh it up, but you'll thank me later." Coffee slopped over the rim as Jack punctuated the sentence with his mug before taking a sip.

Daniel tried several times but couldn't get any more out of Jack. Whatever it was he was planning was obviously something he was looking forward to. There was a banked excitement lurking in the half-smile that graced his mouth. It had been a long time since Daniel had seen him looking so happy and at ease. It was a good look for him.

Daniel had always been aware, in an abstract kind of way, that Jack was an attractive man. It was a fact, filed away with no more importance than any other fact. Fine china breaks easily; cotton clothes are more comfortable; Jack is handsome; Budge is an idiot.

Now, he found himself noticing Jack. His face was closer to rugged than classically handsome. His eyes, while expressive, were small. His nose was sizable in profile and his upper lip was so thin it was nearly non-existent. Yet, put all together they made Jack a good looking man. Daniel was put in mind of the phrase the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The saying was usually attributed to Aristotle but Daniel couldn't remember whether that was true or not. The uncertainty was as annoying as it was unaccustomed and Daniel tried to recall the source.

"What?"

Daniel's attention snapped back to the man sitting across from him. "What?"

"You've been sitting there staring at me." Jack wiped his nose and mouth with his paper napkin. "If I've got a booger hanging out, just tell me, okay?"

"Oh. I, uh," Daniel stammered. "Thinking. Sorry." A fleeting upturn of his mouth that was more grimace than smile served as apology.

Jack looked at him thoughtfully, as if deciding whether to accept the explanation at face value, then grunted and resumed eating. Daniel helped himself to more bacon, wondering where this sudden fascination with Jack's appearance had come from.

Soon, the breakfast dishes were cleaned and put away and the two men were bundled up for their outdoor excursion. Daniel thought perhaps they were going for a hike around the lake. He had to admit that there was a beauty to the stark winter landscape, with bare trees layered in the deep snow. There was a solid cloud cover, giving everything an muted twilight feel even though it was barely mid-morning.

The cold hit Daniel the minute he stepped out of the door onto the porch. His cheeks stung with it where the scarf wrapped around his neck face didn't cover and his breath steamed out around him. He pulled his hat down tighter over his ears and felt the cold bite into tips of his fingers and toes right through gloves, boots, and two pairs of socks. He started for the side of the cabin where the path around the lake began, but Jack called him back.

"Mount up."

Dressed in as many layers as Daniel, Jack headed for the rented four wheel drive jeep and Daniel followed him. As they got in, Jack handed the thermos of coffee and two mugs to Daniel who put them on the floor by his feet. They said little on the drive, but the silence was comfortable. Daniel admired the austere scenery rolling by as they drove down small back roads. Here and there he saw tracks in the snow, though for the most part he couldn't tell what had made them. Fat grey squirrels scurried up barren trees as they passed, their plumed tails jerking agitatedly. Once, he caught a glimpse of three deer in the distance.

After only a few minutes, Jack pulled up at a clearing and came to a halt. The snow was smooth and flat in the clearing unlike the undulating drifts in the woods that surrounded it. There was a rectangular mound that stretched from where they had parked to about twenty feet out into the field. When they got out of the Jeep, Jack immediately opened the back door of the vehicle. Daniel came around to see what he was doing.

"While you were snoring away in your room this morning, I made a call and got us packed." Jack pulled out a small duffel bag and handed it to Daniel, then pulled out a snow shovel and a broom.

"What are we doing?" Daniel couldn't figure out why they'd need a broom and a shovel out here. He would have peeked into the bag for a clue, but found himself enjoying the mystery.

Jack's eyes gleamed mischievously. "You'll see."

Jack took the shovel over to the long mound and started clearing a path down the center of it. It looked like a board walk. But what was a board walk doing out here in the middle of nowhere and why make it so short? At the end of the mound, Jack switched from shoveling one narrow lane and cleared off the entire end of the boardwalk. The rest of the field was about two feet lower than the walkway. Daniel watched as Jack stood on the walkway and started shoveling the field itself. After he had cleared a couple of feet, he tapped on the ground with the shovel. Instead of the dull thump of galvanized steel on frozen dirt, Daniel heard a metallic thunk. Intrigued, he moved forward holding the straps of the duffel in one hand and the broom in the other.

"Perfect." Jack looked satisfied. "Daniel, we are going skating."

Taken aback, Daniel blurted out, "Ice skating? Outside?"

Jack cocked one eyebrow and gave him the look such an inane statement deserved. Since Daniel's mind had tagged and identified the scene as a meadow in winter, he hadn't been prepared for Jack's announcement. Parameters shifted, reset, and he realized that the clearing was actually a frozen pond and the boardwalk was a small dock. As he stood next to Jack, Daniel could see the iced over surface of the water. The ice was opaque white and looked solid.

"Sorry." Daniel shrugged one shoulder, hampered by the things he carried. "What I meant was, why here and not by the cabin? The lake is frozen by the shore."

Instead of answering, Jack waved at the bag then the dock. "Set that down for now. We've got some grunt work to do first. I'll clear off the snow and you come along behind me and sweep it clear. There's not much snow on the pond, so it shouldn't take too long to make a decent sized rink."

Daniel did as he was told and for a while they worked together in silence. It was amazing how quiet it was out here. The area around Jack's cabin was dotted with wildlife management areas, places set aside to preserve a variety of habitats for the benefit of plant and animal species. There were no sounds of traffic, no background city noise. There was only the creak of bare branches as the wind whispered through them, the crunch of dry snow underfoot and under shovel as Jack pressed it into a mound outlining their rink, the hushed scratch of the broom laying bare the ice, the rustle of their coats as the fabric scraped against itself. The snow around them absorbed every noise, muffling it until the sound of their own movements seemed loud to Daniel's ears.

As he swept, Daniel thought again about Shifu's dream. Thought about the his actions in the dream and the depth of his waking reaction to them. It had been a long time since he had felt something so strongly.

After Sha're's death he had dreamed. Each night he would see Sha're once more, desperately trying to communicate with him as she had the day that she and Amaunet had died. In his dream her words were garbled and indistinct. He knew message was important, but he couldn't quite hear it. He would lunge for her, try to grab her hard enough to hold on to her before she could be sucked back into an empty corner of her own mind while Amaunet wielded the hand device that was killing him. That's when Daniel would wake, pulse pounding, sitting up in bed with his arms stretched out before him as he reached for Sha're, shouting her name. Then he'd collapse back into his bed, heartsick anew at her loss.

The pain of reliving her death had been destroying him slowly so he'd very deliberately, very carefully, boxed it up, sealed it, and set it away from him. It hadn't been easy. He'd had to work on it for weeks before he finally had it locked down where it couldn't hurt him anymore.

It wasn't until now that he realized he'd shut everything off. He'd tamped down all of his emotions, all across the board, and had been living on mute. He'd been numb so long he had forgotten what it was like to really feel. Until Shifu reminded him. It was like waking up in bed one morning thinking everything was normal then realizing his arm had fallen asleep. The pins and needles feeling as circulation returned to the insensate limb was agony to experience, but without it, the arm would never come back to normal. Daniel hoped this emotional version of pins and needles passed quickly.

Luckily for him, Jack was there to help Daniel pick up the pieces. Help him relearn how to be alive. Jack was becoming a constant in his ever-changing world, the one person he could always rely on and the thought made him glad.

Daniel's nose was running a little with the cold and he couldn't feel the end of it anymore. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the temperature had dropped. The cloud cover was definitely thicker and he thought it might snow. His toes hurt from the cold as did his fingers, but he didn't care. There was something soothing about being alone here, just him and Jack with nothing else in the world to intrude. Jack's presence was enough to make Daniel relax, feel protected. Cared for. He found himself paying more attention to Jack as he shoveled the snow than to his own task.

He really was lucky to have such a good friend.

"Okay. I think that'll do it." Jack spoke just above a whisper, but it rang out in the stillness around them.

They had cleared a rink about forty feet long by thirty feet wide. Guessing at the pond's dimensions from the location of the trees that surrounded it, Daniel estimated the rink took up nearly a third of its surface.

"Coffee?" he asked hopefully as he made his way back to the dock.

"Coffee," agreed Jack. "And then the lacing up."

They stowed the broom and shovel in the Jeep, then sat on the end of the dock, mugs firmly in hand. Daniel hunched over his, determined to absorb as much of the heat as he could. Jack sat with his limbs tucked in, conserving heat, but not hunched up as Daniel was.

"Lake ice can be tricky," Jack said, finally answering Daniel's question. "By the shore, the water's shallow enough that you can get a good solid layer of ice, but as you go out into deeper water, it gets thinner. Sometimes it's hard to tell how thin until it's too late. If the ice seems to bend under you, back slowly off of it. If it's black instead of white, stay off it altogether."

Daniel looked at the ice in front of them to verify that it was all white. He hadn't felt it bend under him at any time, either.

"Lake's are subject to more wind, too," Jack continued. "The wind effect means the ice can be rippled and uneven. Makes for tough skating. What you need is a pond like this. Shallow so it freezes nearly solid and sheltered so it freezes smoothly."

"Are we in one of the wildlife areas or is this part of your property?"

Jack shook his head. "This is the Miller's pond. I called Ed this morning to get the conditions and his permission. There've been Millers here for even longer than there've been O'Neills at my place. Ed and I used to hang out together every summer, roaming the area like a couple of wilderness boys and getting into all kinds of stuff. We'd leave home at day break and come back at sunset, covered in dirt and smelling of swamp mud. Pockets full of frogs and what not. My grandmother used to swear we took years off her life."

Daniel smiled at the image. "So, you haven't changed a bit then?"

Laughing, Jack finished his coffee. "Ready?"

Daniel hastily drained the last of his coffee in one gulp. "Ready."

Jack opened the duffel and pulled out two pairs of men's skates. One pair was made of brown leather and the other was a faded white. Both were battered and worn but the blades were sharp and shining.

"Here," Jack said as he handed Daniel the white pair. "These are in better shape."

Daniel took them and put them beside him on the dock. His cold fingers were clumsy and slow as he tried to untie his boots.

"Oh, hang on." Jack rummaged in a side pocket of the duffel. "I almost forgot this."

He handed a metal hook to Daniel who stared at it, then back at Jack.

"You're an archeologist. Figure it out from context." Jack laughed when Daniel gave him the finger. Okay, Mister Cranky. It's a button hook. Hold it like this."

Jack quickly showed him how to use the tool on the laces. Soon they both had their skates on, though Jack double-checked Daniel's laces and tightened them up a bit more at the ankle, warning him that strong ankles were critical for proper skating.

"Sit here for a second while I get my bearings, would you?" Jack asked.

Rising from the dock, Jack set out on his skates. His first few steps were jerky until he found his stride. His lean body exuded grace and strength as he went gliding around the edge of the rink. He skated past Daniel then, without slowing down, he turned his body. He was moving in the same direction as before but was skating backward with as much as ease as he had skated forward.

He slid to a stop in front of Daniel, his eyes alight with excitement. His cheeks were flushed and he was grinning from ear to ear, clearly enjoying himself.

"C'mon." Jack put a hand out to Daniel. "Let's teach you how to skate."

Daniel let Jack pull him to his feet. He was wobbly at first. It took more leg muscle then he'd thought it would just to stand in place. Jack held his hands while he got his balance.

"For the first go round, you can hang onto me," said Jack. "Now, you'll be pushing off with your back foot, so place it at an angle. Yeah, that's good. You saw how I was moving my feet out to the side, right? As you glide that front foot forward, it'll go off to the side a bit so that when it becomes your back foot it'll be at the right angle to push off for the next stride. These are hockey skates so there's no toe pick on the front."

Under Jack's tutelage, Daniel became an ice skater with Jack gliding backward for every stride Daniel took forward. As they moved slowly around the rink, a light snow began to fall. After one circuit around the ice, Daniel was doing well enough that Jack could let go. Jack would skate beside him for a few steps then zoom off, do some figure eights or skate in reverse before joining Daniel again. Jack told outrageous stories of scrapes he'd gotten into during his visits here and Daniel shared stories of his own.

Jack did a quick turn to skate in reverse directly in front of Daniel. His gloved hand cupped the back of Daniel's neck as Jack leaned in to touch his forehead to Daniel's, then he was off again around the rink. Daniel's eyes were watering from the cold. It had been a while since he could feel his feet or his face though his his fingers hurt. Skating through the gently falling snow, laughing with Jack, the world dwindled down to the two of them and Daniel felt warm to the core.

Finis

Author's Note: I really appreciate feedback. Also, check out my J/D friendship fic under Catsmeow at The Alphagate http://www.thealphagate.com/viewuser.php?uid=381