Fic: Colour Me In Love With You

[galaxysoup]

FANDOM: Stargate SG-1
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: Humor, Romance, slash
SUMMARY: Answer to Pink Khaki’s ‘Valentine’s Date From Hell’ Challenge. I've been told I should put a 'do not ingest liquids while reading' warning on this, and since I have no interest in having to buy anyone a new monitor, consider it placed. ;-)
SPOILERS: None.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ah, my one and (so far) only attempt at slash, also one of my few forays into humor. It holds a sepcial place in my heart, if only for the utter glee of having my wicked way with Jack's dignity.
AUTHOR'S NOTE UPON REPOSTING: This story was excellently remixed by Penknife as part of the Remix Redux challenge. You can find her reinterpretation here.

COLOR ME IN LOVE WITH YOU

I've been waiting for this so long it's ridiculous. I planned, I plotted, I dreamed... and now it's finally come. February fourteenth. Valentine's Day. With Daniel.

I have it all set up. I bought candles and that hideously expensive wine he likes but never buys because he says it's too decadent. I got him chocolate - the good stuff that comes in a shiny box with a little velvety ribbon on it. I even talked Cassie into smuggling me some of Janet's good china and silverware.

So I'm a romantic. Like this is news?

I check my watch and sigh. I know for a fact that Daniel's at least as excited about Valentine's Day as I am, maybe more. The other day I caught him translating Arabian love poetry that had zip all to do with Goa'uld alliances no matter how many big words he tried to confuse me with, and he keeps talking about baking some sort of weird Abydonian dish for dessert that's supposed to represent one soul in two bodies but apparently still tastes like chicken.

Unfortunately, it's a fact of the universe that if you get Daniel within ten feet of really interesting squiggly lines he'll lose track of everything, up to and including respiration. I'm not even kidding. I've seen it happen.

"Minus ten minutes, Daniel!"

He doesn't even look up. "Ten more- "

"No."

"Five- "

"No."

"End of the par-"

"No."

"Now?"

"Yes."

Daniel puts down his pen and gets up, heading for his jacket. "A little eager to get home, aren't we, Colonel?" he breathes, and bats his eyes at me.

I swear to God. Batted his eyes. At me. Is it any wonder I love this guy?

I let Daniel walk in front of me to the elevator, which has nothing to do with chivalry and everything to do with the view.

"So, Jack, what's this surprise you have planned?"

I steadfastly refused to tell him what we were doing for Valentine's. He made me promise he could bake his dessert, but beyond that he has no clue what's on the agenda. I do this on purpose. I've discovered that if you tell Daniel you have a surprise for him, he'll come up with endlessly creative ways to make you tell him what it is. He's almost gotten me a few times. He's good, and it's so much fun watching him try to trick me into spilling the beans that I've started getting his Christmas present by August of every year.

I smile and bounce lightly on the balls of my feet. "It's a surprise, Daniel. If I told you what it was, it would cease to be a surprise."

He gives me a resentful look. I crank up the smugness another ten notches and he laughs.

So I'm a sadistic romantic.

I speed the whole way home, hoping to get dinner set up before he arrives, but apparently Daniel's taken up rally car driving in his spare time because he somehow manages to get to his apartment, pick up his dessert, and make it to my place before I've even finished setting the table.

"You made me dinner?" His voice gets all melty and sweet and he sets down his dessert on the counter.

"Yep." I put the candles on the table.

"Candle-lit dinner?" The great thing about Daniel is that he really appreciates all these romantic gestures. I mean, he LOVES them.

"Yep." I start pouring him a glass of wine.

He gives me a steamy look strong enough to turn Apophis into mush. "Can I help?"

I give him one right back. "You can do the dishes."

He grins and turns away to fiddle with the dessert, mostly trying to hide the fact he's blushing like crazy. It's one of the perks of flirting outrageously with Daniel. He blushes at the drop of a hat.

Me, I'm just trying to pour the wine into the glass and not all over the counter, because the temperature in the room has gone up about ten degrees, and a good deal of my blood has gone south for the winter.

I push the glass across the counter to him. He takes a sip, meets my eyes, and spits it back into the glass.

I have to say I'm confused. I've never heard of that particular custom with wine before.

"Daniel?"

He's giving me a wide-eyed look, which is particularly distracting because he seems to be mostly focusing on my forehead and not my eyes.

"Jack."

Uh-oh. I know that tone. That's the excrement-about-to-hit-the-AC-unit voice that Daniel only gets when he's trying to be calm, rational, cool, collected, and not freaking out at all.

"What?"

"You're...purple."

I blink. "What?"

Daniel gestures vaguely with one hand. "Purple."

I look at my hands.

Son of a gun. That's very purple.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asks, still using that not-freaking-out-at-all-no-sir voice.

"I feel fine. I never would have noticed if you hadn't told me."

Daniel's starting to look a little green. Normal green, that is. Nothing like my Wizard of Oz on crack decor.

"Is it... all over?"

I lock eyes with him, panic, and check inside my pants.

Very purple.

And then I turn green, too.

All over.

"Mountain," Daniel says, and hustles me out of the house and into the car so fast it almost makes my head spin.

"I'm guessing it has something to do with your emotions," he babbles. "You're still green, by the way."

"Sheer, unadulterated panic," I tell him.

"Oh, okay. That's nice. Green. Green is panic. Good to know."

We break all known speed records getting back to the mountain, which despite my obvious distraction I find very informative. I had no idea it was actually possible to take a corner on two wheels.

We practically sprint to the infirmary. Daniel keeps reaching over to give me a hand, stopping himself in case I'm contagious, and then reaching again. Interspersed with this are periodic demands of "Are you sure you're all right? It doesn't hurt? Do you feel different at all?" And then he starts checking himself for strange colors.

I'd laugh if I wasn't in danger of hyperventilating. There's something deeply disturbing about watching the family jewels turn green.

We skid into the infirmary and almost run Frasier over. She takes one look at me, drops her clipboard, and says "What the f-"

And she says I have bad language.

It takes Frasier about ten minutes to get us calmed down. She sits me on a bed, takes a blood sample, makes Daniel breathe into a paper bag, and sends him off to get his translations from the planet we visited this morning, which I think is pretty much busy work but gets him out from under her feet. My green fades to a sickly tint, which Frasier finds fascinating.

"It must rely on the intensity of your emotions," she says. "That's terrific."

I start thinking very hostile things about scientists and turn red. Frasier gets the message and wanders off to play with her stethoscope, but not before Carter walks into the infirmary. She locks eyes with me, makes a weird sort of squeaky noise, and books for the hall. I can hear her laughing from my bed.

"Okay, I think I know what's going on," Daniel says, coming in with an armful of papers. He gives me a double-take.

"You're red," he says, unnecessarily.

"The fact had come to my attention," I tell him crisply. He glances back at the hallway, where I can still hear Carter killing herself, and his mouth twitches.

"Don't you start," I tell him.

"Red is angry," he says, and immediately looks very serious and not at all amused.

I glare. "Red is very angry," I say, pronouncing each word distinctly. Daniel retreats a few feet and gives me a weakly reassuring smile.

I want Teal'c. I could really use a little of that Jaffa poker face right now.

"I've called General Hammond," Frasier says. "Why don't you wait for him, Daniel, and then tell us what you've found."

Swell. Maximum humiliation.

General Hammond walks in followed by Teal'c supporting Carter. She's calmed down a bit but she's deliberately not looking in my direction and she's still making little wheezy noises. Teal'c, on the other hand, can't take his eyes off me. He's grinning like a maniac.

I hate my life.

"Doctor Jackson, report," General Hammond says. My red fades to a sort of sullen smolder, kind of like a bad sunburn.

"All right." Daniel shuffles a few papers. "Well, bear in mind this is only a rough translation, but I think this... Jack, did you touch any of the pillars in the temple we visited?"

"Yeah, I think so. The middle one."

Daniel coughs. "Okay, that does explain it. From what I can figure, the race that built this temple had a lot of problems showing their emotions, and they made these pillars as a sort of aid."

"What do you mean, Doctor Jackson?" the General asks. I'm still trying to ignore Teal'c, who's still staring. It's making me uncomfortable. And yellow.

Daniel shuffles a few more papers and coughs again. "Well, they decided if they showed their emotions as colors, it would be easier to communicate, I guess." He gets that far-off look he always gets before hypothesizing wildly, and rapidly loses track of the seriousness of the situation, i.e. that until I stop resembling an escapee from the Muppets there is no frigging way Frasier is going to let us enjoy our candle-lit dinner. "It's actually quite fascinating. I wonder if the inhabitants of the planet ascribed colors to emotions, or if it was a random byproduct of the transformation? I mean, when you think about it, our own language often uses colors to express emotions. 'Green with envy', for one, or 'seeing red'..." he finally notices that everyone's staring at him and immediately tries to look as innocent and blameless and focused as possible.

The General frowns and gets the discussion back on track. "Why didn't you discover this while you were on the planet?"

Daniel heroically doesn't look in my direction. "I only had a limited amount of time, sir, so I taped the inscriptions and was going to translate them when we returned to Earth."

Translation: Jack was bored and he made me cut corners.

"But it's temporary, right?" That is so all I care about right now. We can talk about mission protocol later, when I don't look like Jack the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat.

"Um, yes." Daniel shuffles a few more papers. "It should wear off in a few hours. Oh, this is interesting - the different pillars were apparently for different uses. Jack, which one did you touch?"

"The middle one, like I said."

"Right." He turns the paper around, mutters something, and starts scribbling. We wait patiently.

"Okay, that one was..." his voice cracks and I turn a concerned blue-gray. He's obviously still a little panicked, poor kid.

He clears his throat. "They all had different meanings, you see," his voice gets strained "and the, um, the middle one..." he trails off and puts one hand over his mouth. I'm starting to turn green again. If Daniel can't even say what it is it must be really bad.

"Daniel?" I prompt. He waves one hand. His shoulders start to shake suspiciously.

"Daniel." I'm using the don't-mess-with-me-voice now.

Daniel looks up reluctantly. There are tears running down his face.

He's laughing?!

I turn red.

Daniel claps both hands over his mouth and accomplishes an undignified sort of slither down the wall, shaking uncontrollably.

"Doctor Jackson?" But even the General's command voice can't make Daniel stop now. He takes his hands away to give the General an answer and loses it completely, which sets Carter off again too because Daniel having hysterics is damn funny even without the added bonus of a mood ring for a CO.

The General and Frasier exchange concerned looks. Frasier picks up Daniel's scribbles.

"The middle pillar..." A weird look crosses her face, and she drops the paper and hurries into her office, slamming the door behind her. I snatch up the page before anyone else can get to it, and scan Daniel's cramped handwriting.

"The middle pillar..." I find the right place. My jaw drops. "Was for particularly bashful young ladies?" I blurt out.

Daniel and Carter both convulse, well on the road to asphyxiation. Teal'c lets out one deep guffaw and sinks down on the floor next to Carter. The General holds out for another few seconds, struggling mightily, then leans on one of Frasier's gurneys for support and howls.

I pull the curtains around my bed and sulk.

Apparently, terminal embarrassment is orange.

FINIS