He didn't imagine it this time. He'd reached out to straighten Daniel's vest, something he'd done a million times, and the younger man had flinched and then ducked away to get hastily busy helping Carter carry something over to their MALP, leaving Jack empty-handed and increasingly confused.
Shaking it off, he shoulders his pack and grabs a bag himself, something he can take one-handed while keeping one hand on his P-90, and crosses over to where his team is carefully loading the supplies on the little overland transport.
"T?"
"All seems quiet here, O'Neill," their teammate finishes a prowling circuit of the clearing where the Stargate had deposited them.
"Neat. Take point then, and I'll bring up the rear," he looks over at the other two; Carter holds up the MALP's controls to indicate she'll be driving it, and Daniel...is gone. Oi. Jack swings around, finding their archaeologist knelt known inspecting the symbols carved into the base around the Stargate, taking rushed notes into one of his little notebooks. "Daniel, let's go, we have a limited amount of daylight to burn."
Daniel climbs to his feet without protest, in fact with only a single longing look back at the inscriptions. Weird, but Jack doesn't have time to worry about it. "Stay between Carter and me," he orders as Daniel walks past, and that at least earns him a withering glance, if not the usual snappy comeback.
It's a couple of hours hike to the place that UAV had scouted for them to camp for this mission, and even with a good ear and eye on the jungle that appears deep and green on either side of the path they are on, Jack still has plenty of brainpower left to consider when Daniel had started acting weird, skipping back over their last couple of days and weeks of missions with a critical eye. Because at first, he hadn't noticed a difference, or if he was being honest, it had been a welcome change. A Daniel who didn't argue with every order? Who didn't have a complaint, an argument, a sassy comeback for everything that came out of his mouth? Jack hadn't been complaining.
Except, it wasn't just that Daniel had toned it down a little - Jack couldn't think of a single time that Daniel had challenged him in the past week, and if he'd started too, he'd backtracked quickly or played it off as if he'd been joking and acquiesced a moment later. It was downright eerie. And combined with the way he'd been flinching away any time Jack tried to touch him, it was almost like he was afraid, except that couldn't be right. Why would he be afraid of Jack?
When it hits him, it's such a blinding moment that Jack freezes, in the middle of the trail. The rest of his team has gone about 20 yards before Daniel turns around, looking concerned. "Jack?"
"Rock in my boot," he manages to grumble, dropping to one knee to make it plausible, "I'll catch up,"
Daniel visibly hesitates. It's not protocol, and Jack can see he wants to protest and insist on waiting; he even opens his mouth to argue; but Jack can also see the moment he changes his mind. Something uncertain and - yes, fearful - flickers behind his bright eyes and he gives a short nod and turns around, following Carter and Teal'c.
Jack takes a deep breath and lets himself remember.
--------
Daniel's at his desk, hunched over three different texts and his handwritten notes from the last planet they'd visited. He's forgotten to turn on the overhead light - again - so everything is half in shadow, lit only by his desk lamp. He only looks up to blink owlishly at Jack through his glasses when Jack closes the door behind himself with a decisive SNAP.
He doesn't particularly want to be here, doing this, so he lets himself take a minute just to stand and look around the familiar space of Daniel's office, letting it ground him. Not that he doesn't agree with Hammond - they can't keep doing this. An intervention is necessary. He even understands why it's his job - Daniel is his as much as any many or woman under his command have ever been his. It's just never been one of Jack's favorite parts of being an officer.
"...Jack?" Daniel's bemused tone draws him out of his thoughts.
"Daniel."
"Do you need something?"
"Yeah, actually, kid," Jack walks closer, but he doesn't prop himself up casually on the corner of Daniel's desk like he usually would, or shove his hands in his pockets. That wouldn't do, for this. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest. "Hammond - and I - are tired of the close calls. We've talked at and to you until we're blue in the face about touching things you're not supposed to touch, and it doesn't seem to be working."
"Jack, I -"
"No, quiet," he says sharply and goes on even as he feels a twinge of guilt at the shocked look on the younger man's face. "We're past the talking about this stage, Daniel. We've tried that, we've heard all the excuses and promises, and nothing is changing. We're at the consequences stage now." Here he pauses, but Daniel just blinks at him, mouth open.
Jack had glanced at Daniel's file before he came down, and he knows this will be a first for Daniel since he came to work for the Air Force. With any luck, it'll leave enough of an impression it will be an only (though honestly, he doesn't have a lot of hope for that). Still, it can't possibly be his first time ever; Daniel had spent quite a bit of time in academia, after all, and while they aren't quite as compulsory about it as the military, it's still so common it might as well be. And every civilian member of the Stargate program had signed the Air Force's compulsory corporal punishment clause to be included, so the kid knew what he was getting himself into.
"So, let's get this over with, and we can move on," Daniel's still staring at him like he's grown a second head, but Jack figures this is like the jitters of young soldiers in a new command; when the babies are coming out of academy and basic and have only ever gotten it from their most trusted training officers and they first get into trouble with a new CO, and that first time they feel like the rug's been ripped out from underneath them. You just have to get through it, prove to them that it's not the end of the world with the new guy, and then they settle.
So he reaches out and grabs Daniel's arm, tugging him to his feet and pulling him over to his side of the desk, where there is just barely two square feet of space to bend him over without ruining any precious artifacts. And he does, pushing his unresisting teammate down over the surface of his own desk, but not before he efficiently divests Daniel of his BDU pants, leaving him in just his boxers.
He leaves a hand planted on Daniel's back, as much comfort as restraint. "I'm going to give you 12," he says sternly, "next time it'll be double that. Don't reach back, I don't want to hit your hands."
Jack had his implement of choice in his pocket, and he takes it out now; a short, well-oiled leather strap. About half the width of his palm and just long enough to catch both cheeks without much wrapping. It packs a hefty sting without being heavy enough to leave deep bruises; it leaves the miscreant regretting their actions for long enough, but it isn't cruel. Jack knows plenty of COs who favor instruments meant to strike fear, but he's never felt the need, and in fact, tends to steer quite clear of those people in his professional and personal life. They tend to be assholes all around.
He takes careful aim and lands the first of the twelve stokes across the top of Daniel's butt with a measured, medium power, and feels him go stiff underneath his hand. He gets three more in - a quarter of the way - before his scientist finds his voice.
"Wait! Jack, wait!" He does pause, the silence expectant, and gives Daniel a moment because he can hear him struggling to get any breath to speak. When he does, he sounds confused at first but turns angry as he goes on. "What are you...you can't...stop!"
Jack shakes his head, even though Daniel can't see it, and lands the fifth stripe just below the first four, with just a hair more strength behind it than before. "I can," he says, then just as firmly after he lands the sixth stroke, "and I will. You aren't military, but you signed this paperwork just like everyone else who works here, Daniel, and it's clear that talking about this issue wasn't getting through to you."
He underlines that by landing two strokes to the top of Daniel's thighs, though he pulls the weight behind them considerably, and it earns him two wet yelps before he sees Daniel swing his arm around and shove it in his mouth. He's run out of territory to cover and number nine brings him back to the top of Daniel's butt. "I don't like doing this, and I don't want to, but I will if you give me no other choice."
He doesn't want to draw it out. He wants it over with, to move on; he draws his arm back and lands the last three strokes just a bit harder, spread out across the fleshiest bottom part of Daniel's butt for a stinging reminding over the next few hours, hating but accepting the way the kid jerks silently in his hold. God, done. He sticks the little strap back in his pocket, and then puts his hand back carefully on Daniel's back, wanting to let the archaeologist guide this part at least a little bit. Some soldiers want the hug and the reassurance, others just want to salute and be left to lick their wounds in private. He figures he owes Daniel the same courtesy of choice, though he thinks it'll probably be the first.
"Alright, we're done. You did good, clean start, c'mon kid." Jack carefully levers Daniel off the desk when he makes no moves of his own, glancing down into a face that still looks a bit shocked. "You're okay, Danny. Pull up your pants, that's a good man," he seems to be following Jack's orders now on autopilot, so Jack decides that he's just going to go in for the hug and if Daniel doesn't want it, he'll say so. He wraps his arms around him and sighs. "Just...don't do it again, yeah?"
--------
Standing slowly from his crouch, Jack starts down the trail after the others, his brain almost entirely on this problem. Thinking back on it, it was textbook corporal punishment for the Air Force. Mild, even; not for Jack who doesn't rely on severity to get his point across, but certainly even by regs it had been not even more than what would have been handed out to a Cadet at the Academy.
But Daniel hadn't reacted any of the ways Jack had expected him to at the time - he hadn't begged past that one brief plea, or cried during. He hadn't pulled away from Jack's embrace when he pulled him up, but he hadn't returned it or even leaned into the offered comfort.
Jack is certain that, physically, he hadn't injured him beyond a well-earned sore butt.
He's also certain that, somehow, he'd fucked up royally. Because despite how reasonable that all sounds, the fact is, that before he'd strapped him, Daniel wasn't afraid of Jack. And now he is.
