Bone Deep by Destina Fortunato (NC-17)

[paian]

Rec Category: Jack/Daniel
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson
Category: SG-1, slash, Daniel/Jack, Daniel Jackson, Jack O'Neill, angst, episode-related, established relationship
Warning: Owchiness, spoilers for 'Menace'
Author on LJ: destina
Author's Website: Destina's Stargate Fiction
Link: Bone Deep


Why This Must Be Read: Because, like all of Destina's fic, it's a doozy.

Clean-up after the events of 'Menace' is a big job -- there are replicator bits everywhere, and it's critically important that every single one of them be found. The fallout in Jack and Daniel's relationship, which is crumbling into pieces like the replicators, may be impossible to clean up. 'Bone Deep' makes the logistical aftermath both entree to and mirror image of the psychological aftermath.

Destina always writes outstanding Carter, and the embedded-flashback scene between Jack and Carter carries as much weight as the Jack/Daniel that follows. As much as Jack's perspective and Daniel's don't always agree, Jack's and Carter's perspectives on Daniel don't always agree. Pitting a bitter, irritable Jack (who knows that heartbreak's right around the corner, waiting to ambush him, and knows that he'll walk around that corner anyway) against a strong-willed, very military Carter lets both characters shine in ways that I wish we got to see in J/D fic more often.

If you have a fic!kink for break-up sex, this is the fic for you. About the heartbreak, I can't even say that it hurts so good -- it just hurts. But it says things about the characters, for themselves and in relationship to each other, that wouldn't be nearly as persuasive and insightful portrayed any other way. They're rich things, and true things -- and that turns it back around, because that's why they hurt so much. Jack and Daniel are famous in both canon and fanon for their wordless communication, and in this fic, subtly but strikingly (I don't realize it until I'd come to the end, and then it hit me), no dialogue is directly exchanged between the two of them. The fic is also a chilling foreshadowing of 'Meridian,' the more striking because I'm pretty sure 'Meridian' hadn't broadcast yet when it was written. And as a lead-up to 'Meridian,' like the episode 'Menace' itself, it's a killer in a J/D context.

All this, and only about 2800 words.

Excerpt:

The house is dark when he arrives. He doesn't expect to be greeted at the door, but a light on in the kitchen would be nice. It makes Jack vaguely nervous, sets his teeth on edge in ways he never expected. Sure, he's come home alone a thousand times to empty rooms, but he'd thought those days were behind him. Since Daniel moved in, everything has changed. Or maybe it hasn't, and he's just been too blind to notice.

He switches on the hall light and listens for tell-tale signs of occupation. Funny word to pick - occupied territory, a place that's his and yet not his, an uncharted place that is still wild, where there are barriers and fences and...oh, yes, land mines, scattered everywhere in his path.

It's a danger he's faced before. None of it can hold him back.

"Daniel?" he says, softly, listening for a reply. There is only silence.