[personal profile] catspaw
Given all the extreme ficciness that's being going on all over the damn shop, *and* the coolness of said fic, I kind of hesitate to post this poor little thing. But hey, what the hell - it's done, it's dusted and I'm posting it anyway and pottering off to do something useful rather than endless twiddling. Like, oh, I dunno, wax the freezer and defrost the car or something. Or maybe vice versa works better.




Daniel's gaze skewered Jack like a butterfly on a pin.

"Flagpole fondling, Jack? Flagpole fondling? Are you at all familiar with the concept of subtext?"

"I didn't --"

"And you tugged your jacket down. Don't try to deny it, I saw you quite clearly."

"That was --"

But Daniel was on a roll and was not to be trifled with. With one imperious hand he shut Jack up as effectively as if he'd used a ball gag.

"Put flagpole fondling and jacket hem tugging in the same context - the context being me getting dumped naked on my ass again by Oma - and what sort of impression do you think any onlookers are left with?"

"Well, I'd --"

Obviously a rhetorical question, since Daniel scarcely paused for breath.

"And we had onlookers. Boy, did we have onlookers. Bra'tac and Teal'c were smirking, Jack. Smirking. I've never seen Bra'tac smirk before. Not at me, anyway, and it's not an experience I'd care to repeat any time soon. And Sam went pink and looked away."

"Now hold on just a minute here," Jack protested. "You can't read anything into that - the smirking was just a guy thing. Locker room stuff. Like you said, you'd just been dumped naked on your ass again. And Carter pinks up at the drop of a hat. Kinda bizarre in a woman her age, particularly when she's been in the military for so long, but there ya go. I guess it's nothing she can help."

"She was rolling her eyes," Daniel said, with exaggerated patience.

"She does that all the time!" Jack's protest was vehement.

"Not in that precise context," Daniel snapped, folding his arms across his chest and returning with determination to his original point. "One thing you learn in archaeolinguistics, context is everything."

"One thing I've learned from my time with SG1 - context is open to interpretation --"

"Ya think?"

Jack threw up one of his hands. "Will you let me get a word in somewhere along the line?"

Daniel frowned and shut his mouth with an audible snap, briefly extricating one hand and flapping it in a 'gimme' gesture before he folded his arms again.

"Thank you," Jack said.

"No, don't thank me," Daniel replied coolly. "I'm fascinated to hear what possible justification you can come up with for camping it up in your office when I reappeared in those precise circumstances. You go right ahead, I'm sure it's gonna be good."

"Okay," Jack said generously. "I'm prepared to admit that you might have a point - a small one - over the subtext thing --"

"Thank you, I thought so."

Jack's eyebrows rose at the interruption and he gave Daniel an exasperated grimace as Daniel defiantly lowered his chin and glared back at him. Jack's face cleared.

"You look hot when you do that."

"What?"

Shrugging one shoulder in Daniel's general direction, Jack repeated with a small twitch of his lips, "You look totally hot when you do that. That chin lowering thing you do. Makes you look --"

Daniel's eyes flashed dangerously. "Still waiting here, Jack. Stop misdirecting, start explaining."

Jack pulled himself out of his incipient fugue with a theatrically obvious effort. "Yeah. As I was in the middle of saying before you interrupted me - again," he said with heavy emphasis, "you maybe have a point over the subtext thing. But you've pointed out time and time again over the years - people see what they want to see."

"Only until they get a blatant wake-up call. I'd categorise fondling and tugging as pretty blatant, wouldn't you?"

"Except for the circumstances. Which render any suggestiveness null."

"How the fuck do you work that out? I'm stark naked, you take one look and start pulling down your jacket and jerking off a pole. How much more overt could you get?"

"And that's where the context comes in." Jack was starting to look a little - not smug exactly, but definitely self-satisfied. Daniel countered that with a slight grinding of his back teeth, but waited nonetheless for the extension of this statement with no comment save a bare twitch of one eyebrow when it wasn't immediately forthcoming. Instead, Jack's expression changed, until he was looking at Daniel with the slight air of a teacher waiting for his brightest pupil to solve a particularly challenging puzzle.

Daniel's irritation started to take a slightly different tack. Jack obviously expected him to be able to work it out for himself, so it couldn't be that hard, could it? His brow furrowed in thought before he shook his head in frustration. It was hopeless: O'Neill logic was always convoluted. But logic now, that sparked a sudden thought.

"Reductio ad absurdum?"

Jack nodded his head sagely. "That too, sorta. But mainly man management. And elaborate double bluff. Misdirection at its finest. We're on base, in my office, four career military, one of them a Brigadier General - what's the mindset there, given the context?"

As Daniel opened his mouth to speak, Jack continued, "Exactly. About as far removed from the sexual as it's possible to get. Teal'c and Bra'tac are in guy mode, ready to tease. The jacket thing buys into that - it says 'there but for the grace of God' as far as they're concerned, even if you and I both know that the sight of you naked gives me an instant hard on."

Daniel was starting to look slightly mollified and Jack pressed his advantage.

"So the jacket works well - it has two desirable outcomes. It deflects attention from teasing you and from my hard on by putting us in the same camp."

Daniel mulled it over. Okay, that was probably a fair - fairish - assessment.

"And the fondling? And Sam?"

Jack punctuated his points with his fingers.

"One, the last thing Carter was thinking about right then was the state of anybody's crotch, given the situation. Two, she expects me to be a smartass after all this time. So she's right now convincing herself that what I was doing was looking round for something to cover your dignity and making excruciatingly obvious and unnecessary penis jokes while doing it."

"Something you do have something of a reputation for, I agree."

"And she'll have a lot of fun thinking up ways to make my life hell for it into the bargain," Jack said cheerfully. "Give her half an hour and she'll be too busy doing that to think any more about it. Win/win again."

Daniel nodded slowly to himself as he thought it over. Viewed in this light, the whole debacle did make some perverted sort of sense.

This time, Jack's grin was smug. "There ya go. Now will you shake your tail and get showered? You've been MIA for a while, your flagpole and mine definitely have some unfinished business. And since we're talking logic, it seems appropriate to blow this pop stand ASAP."




Also - some limericks. Just because ;-) And thanks to Joy for providing the missing part of the first one :-)



Jack said, "No bones about it (no pun)
Whenever we're having some fun,
Just one look at his mouth
And my mind heads down south -
And doesn't come up 'til he's done."


* * * * *


"It's about time that we hit the sack -
'Cause I'm feeling horny," said Jack.
"So, what say we fuck?"
Daniel said, "You're in luck.
I do too. Go lock up. Hurry back."


* * * * *


Giv'n a brainpan the size of a planet,
You'd think Sam would realise that Janet
Is a far better catch
Than Colonel Crosspatch.
Besides, he is Daniel's, god damn it!


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