The corridors were empty when Jack finally emerged from his meeting. Four hours of budgets, resources and pen-pushing bureaucrats from the Pentagon had stretched his patience to the limit. Not one of the men in that room had ever stepped through the Gate, but they had all thought they were qualified to put the SGC under the microscope and complain about their 'casual wastage of resources'. They had been more concerned with the equipment left behind on missions that went bad than the lives that had been lost on those missions. That made his blood boil and his jaw ached from gritting his teeth so he did not yell at them. For once he was so deep in his thoughts that he did not see anything around him - a marching band could have been practising in the corridor around him without him noticing. All his attention was still focused on the meeting he had just left.
Jack stopped by the locker room to dunk his head in a sink of cold water before continuing towards his office. The frustration and anger he felt every time he came out of one of those meetings always gave him a headache. The only thing that had stopped Jack shouting at the uniformed idiots was Hammond's presence at the end of the table and the knowledge that the General had a few more hours of it while Jack, as only a Colonel, could leave when there were no more questions for him.
The mission in two days time, even though it was only a survey mission, was beginning to look like heaven.
Stepping into his office, Jack dropped into his chair and tiredly ground his fists in his eyes. There was a pile of reports to go through but all he really wanted to do was go to bed and stay there for a week, preferably with Daniel asleep beside him. It was already a bad day, and he was barely halfway through it. After a moment, Jack sniffed and lowered his hands. For some reason, he could smell coffee.
On his desk he found a steaming mug of coffee and a plate with a large slice of lemon meringue pie. Jack felt a smile begin to tug at his mouth when he spotted the piece of paper propped up against the mug with Daniel's distinctive scrawl. There was no greeting or signature, but it was not needed. Jack knew Daniel's handwriting almost as well as his own.
'You looked like you need this. I have a departmental meeting this afternoon - when do we ship out again? - but I thought we could have dinner tonight. My place, I'll cook? Drop round any time after six.'
Some of the tension and frustration melted away. It was not much, just coffee and pie, but Jack felt a warm glow start in the vicinity of his heart and flow through his body. This was part of the reason why he loved Daniel and was willing to take the biggest risk he could imagine to be with him. Daniel cared about him and could make him feel better with just a note and a snack.
Jack knew he had a dopey grin on his face but he was powerless to wipe it away. Instead he sipped his coffee and pulled one of the reports towards him, thoughts of dinner and Daniel keeping the depression from settling in again.
Maybe today was not such a bad day, after all.
*finis*