This story was originally posted as In His Eyes on Area 52. As soon as I posted it, I knew it wasn't right. This is. The story came to me while I was listening to Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know". It just screams "Jack and Daniel" to me. I'd like to thank Pie, beta, best friend, all around good girl! And big kisses to BJ and AnnO for effective and first class cheerleading, as always. Thank you also to Jude for the time she spent and the good advice she gave me on this one. And one more thank you must go to Pepe, for the benefit of her impressive ability to pick up pieces and for giving me a second chance to be happy with this story.

Another day, another address, another planet. From the way we're all hanging around, you'd think we were awaiting a train to take us to work, instead of a wormhole to demolecularise us and slingshot the bits across the galaxy. Sam settles her rifle on her shoulder, Teal'c stands quietly observing the preparations and I pretend to check my pack one more time before we go.

The SF's look tense, as only an SF with nothing to do can. In the control room above our heads, it's just another day at the office, as technicians measure things I don't need to understand, and pristine white lab coats and Air Force blues rub shoulders to make it all happen.

There is nothing routine about what we do though, despite the practiced ease with which we wait to embark. There is no such thing as a straightforward mission. The ones that look good on paper - aren't. The ones that should go well - don't and the ones where we all return without injury and with something to show for our efforts are few and far between.

In the grand scheme of things it's a miracle that we're all still here after all these missions. It's some kind of cosmic joke that SG-1, of all the teams, is the one with all four original personnel, especially given the kind of crap we have encountered. Of course it wasn't always this way. Over the years we have gained members of the team and lost them... most notably me... several times actually, a fact that Jack returns to whenever the opportunity arises.

For a little over a year I was off the team and off this plane of existence, actually. The details of my ascension are still mostly lost to me. I have copies of reports I've read a dozen times, purporting to be about my life - or lack thereof - places I popped up, people I spoke to. They're just words on paper, because I can't seem to clear the fog that forms each time I try to recall anything concrete.

It seems like a dream now; from the moment I shot out that observation window on Kelowna to the second I awoke in a cold windswept field near Vis Uban. I sometimes get flashes even now, residual images - gone as quickly as I try to grasp them. I remember the sensation of my body failing, while my mind struggled to continue. I recall explaining to Jack why I had to go, and I remember his reluctance. I know it hit him hardest but I couldn't understand the overwhelming waves of anger and pain that rolled off him as I said goodbye while his body language said something totally different; couldn't reconcile that strong facade with the bottomless grief I knew yawned behind it, so much more than for the loss of a friend.

For a double PhD I sure was slow on the uptake.

My return was eventful, if a little confusing for me to start with, but we soon settled back into the pattern that has become as natural as breathing to us; we go out, Jack pisses people off whenever he opens his mouth, we meet some new folk, I do my friendly explorer routine, we get shot at, Sam is smart, stuff blows up, Teal'c is inscrutable, we come home... usually. It's what we do, as Jack would say.

I'm standing in the gate room watching Jack now. He checks and double checks. He watches. He assesses. He frowns when he asks questions and his tension is masked at all times by his laid back demeanour – but I'm not buying it, I know him better than that now.

You see, this is the latest incarnation of our happy little band and Jack is watching us from behind the blast-proof glass of the control room. He has a silver star by his name and the responsibility for the lives of every person on this base squarely on his broad shoulders. He is watching SG-1 leave on our latest mission – and he hates it. It's in the tightness of his jaw and in the apprehension in his eyes.

Jack knows his place is here, despite his easy come, easy go front. He knows he is the best person for this job although he has never admitted as much to me. But he also knows that 95% of what we do goes on out there. And that is the 95% that SG-1 works in. He has to watch us leave, knowing that he can't be there to help keep us safe, a heartbeat and a million light years away. He says he knows I can handle myself, as can Teal'c and Sam, but I'm certain he would rather be at our sides, making sure.

With a thump I can feel up through my feet and into the pit of my stomach, the first chevron engages. We are on our way to rendezvous with Bra'tac in the role of Earth observers to the Jaffa Alliance Conclave – nothing to worry about, a diplomatic mission. So according to the first unwritten law of Gate Travel – which states, and I quote, "Shit Happens... often" - this is a mission that will blow up in our faces and call for a lot of running and shooting stuff.

I'm still watching Jack, his eyes uncompromising as he glances between the dialling computer and the gate. The glare of the screens casts greenish shadows under his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks and in the curve of his lips. The same lips that kissed me goodbye this morning and made me promise to be careful.

He knows I'm watching him, he's making me wait for it – the thing I need before I can step through that shimmering threshold. Walter's voice announces the sixth chevron as the gate spins one more time before I go and the instant the Earth glyph is caught, Jack straightens and gives me what I need.

It's our thing and we've unwittingly been doing it for years, even before we became lovers.

The look.

We've never discussed it; we've never had to think about it.

It's ironic really that a man who has studied languages all his adult life should need an unspoken assurance so badly. But I do. We both know this could be the last time. Every time we step through that portal, together or alone, we are tempting fate. Every safe return makes the odds on it happening again a little worse.

I think the first time he looked at me like this was on the steps of Ra's temple as I held a staff weapon trained on his chest. He had looked surprised, just for an instant, when Ra gave me the weapon and ordered me to kill them, then he narrowed his brown eyes, hard and unreadable as he tried to guess my next move. I remember feeling a kind of calmness come over me as I primed the staff, and Jack's gaze became suddenly eloquent.

Trust.

It was about trust, and I couldn't drag my eyes from his for a long, long moment. Then I fired and all hell broke loose.

The second time was at his house, the night I lost Sha'uri. I was frantic. Desperate to be doing something to find her. A year on Abydos made me feel like a stranger here and I couldn't settle. I bounced around Jack's living room like a trapped moth, battering myself against the jar that imprisoned me. And he let me do it. Watched me ramble and stutter, spiralling closer and closer to the edge of despair – all the time making sure I didn't go over. At some point I paused to sip the beer he gave me and glanced at him. So much compassion in a single look, enough for me to let him take a measure of my grief. I was too fraught to fully recognise the magnitude of his gift, but was finally calmed to the point that I could sleep, if only for a couple of hours.

And belonging; I saw it in his sad, hopeless gaze on board a doomed ship, with the smell of my burned skin and pain screaming in every nerve ending, overwhelming my senses. My existence narrowed to the weight of that one word in his eyes. I told him to go – to leave me because I was done for anyway and he did in the end, but the price was evident in his face. His eyes told me we belonged together and that this was not how it should be – and I believed him enough to make the leap of faith to wanting to stay alive and finding a way to make that happen.

In a temple, on a mythical planet when Jack was preparing to take on a Jaffa army and I was fighting a battle of my own, we made the next connection. I finally understood what I had been called there to learn. I asked Jack to believe in me enough to put his gun down. God, I could see the struggle in his soul, being asked to do something so unnatural to him. But the trust that was already there was joined by something new. Understanding. With no time to argue or even explain, he recognised my conviction and believed me, denying his warrior's instinct. For the first time, I ached that it wasn't something more that his eyes spoke of.

Don't ask me when being near Jack had become so fundamental to my existence. I don't like to analyse too closely when my feelings for him made that paradigm shift from friendship to love. It scares me that I might have given up on Sha'uri and allowed myself to fall in love with Jack before she died. What kind of a man would that make me?

We were fighting the next time I saw this look. I was trying to save a race of people and so was he; sadly they were not the same one. I didn't disobey him... exactly, but I understood what I was doing would infuriate him and I did it anyway. The Gadmeer didn't want to destroy the Enkarrans – I knew that – I just needed time to find a third way – a way we could all win.

And I did, with about three seconds to spare. I didn't realise how much it had cost Jack to know I was on the ship above the bomb he had just primed, until I saw him. I had been expecting anger, shouting, sarcasm... Jack stuff. I hadn't been ready for fear, in his eyes, in his face, in the tension in his body – I must have stared, because he looked away and bowed his head, relief filling the place where the fear had been, almost as I watched. I was so shocked I don't think I even said sorry.

Later, when Lotan was asked to join the Enkarans on their new world, Jack finally met my eyes. Acceptance. Recognition that he and I would always differ on some issues, but we were ultimately on the same page. And relief. Although he hadn't been the one to save me this time, overwhelming relief that the difference between his way and my way hadn't gotten me killed.

This time I had to look away.

The final piece of the puzzle happened, aptly enough, in the gateroom. We had just wished Jonas goodbye and I was only just keeping a lid on the flood of information that assaulted me as my life came back into focus after my fall from grace. Memories and images bubbled up out of the depths of my mind, becoming clearer every moment.

Standing there, my hands deep in my pockets, face turned to the now-quiet gate, I suddenly remembered how Jack had felt when I had ascended, when I had turned to tell him that I didn't know if we would ever see each other again. The shock of it rocked me back on my heels... literally. I made some inane remark about us getting paid for what we did and turned to smile at him to cover my stupefying confusion. And there it was in that melted chocolate gaze... just as I had remembered.

Love.

He loved me. Finally. I'd been waiting for so long to see it, I almost missed it when it showed up.

I don't know how I made it through the rest of that day. I don't remember leaving the base and I don't remember driving to his house. I seemed to awaken as he opened his front door. There was a suppressed excitement about him, almost as if he'd known I was coming. He smiled gently at my wide eyes and my shaking hands and took me inside his home... and his heart. We talked for four hours straight that evening, as the last six years of my life fell into place.

The rest, as they say, is history.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to have your SO as your CO. We took a few missions to find some sort of balance and even now, having to be on guard all the time is wearing on both of us. We can't have pet names for each other in case they should slip out in a briefing. We never arrive on base together. We always keep at least a desk between us all day – it's hard but it's necessary.

And we can't say goodbye the way we want to, each time I have to go.

So we have this... this... 'look'.

It encompasses all the things I've seen in him over the years, trust to understanding to love and all points in between. All this and more. For one second I am not Dr. Jackson and he is not 'the Man'. In that one second glance I see the look on his face when he talks to me in the mirror over my shoulder when I shave; I see his surprise when he has carbonised yet another steak on the barbeque; I see the gentleness of him when he talks to Cassie about her Mom and I see the self-satisfied spark that flares when he thinks he has a hilarious put down to shut me up with. It's the way his eyes are when he's made me come for him, the way they smile at me when I am woken with kisses and coffee and the way they glitter in the private darkness of our bedroom when he wants me.

In that one second spark of knowing between us, held in that look, I add this morning to all the things his eyes tell me. His gentle lips kissing sleep from my eyes, his warm familiar hands stroking the softest of awakenings from my drowsy, heavy body. His hot breath touching me, writing the shape of my name on my skin and the shape of his on my heart. His quiet, loving words as he moves beneath me, accepting me, urging me on, needing this connection, this affirmation, so if the worst should happen... And then his arms surrounding me as we fall together into the welcoming light. All this in a one-second glance that no one sees and no one marks.

A place only we know.

A place where one second and a lifetime, are one and the same.

The escalating whine from the gate fills my ears as Jack's eyes slide away from mine and back to the screens that tell him what destination is taking me away from him again, for a while. The wash from the wormhole rushes down the ramp and then retreats, beckoning to me, a silver blue invitation that I don't want to pass up just yet.

I shrug my pack onto my shoulders to cover the almost physical loss of Jack's attention, blinking a few times to remind myself where I am. Then I smile at Sam and without a backward glance, we follow Teal'c up the ramp in unison.

I don't think I will ever get used to the Jack-shaped gap in our formation. I'm not exactly worried, but it always felt reassuring to have him at my shoulder. I feel the touch of Jack's eyes on my back with each footstep, his gaze settles softly like a benediction and a prayer. Sam and I hit the event horizon in synch and as the inexorable pull of the wormhole takes me I realise that Jack also knows what our eyes tell each other.

Wait for me.

I'll be back soon.

I love you.

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