The last thing Daniel wants to do is answer that question, but the way Jack is looking at him, he's not going to get out of it unless he can figure out how to disappear in the next few seconds. "No...yes, but, not in...never since..."

Jack's reaching out then, taking the glass of water and putting it out of his reach somewhere. Oh - his hands were shaking. "Take a breath," he demands, but there's an edge of concern under the gruffness that is more soothing than the tone should be able to be. Daniel obeys reflexively, managing a couple of shuddery inhales and exhales before either of them tries to speak again. 

"That was remarkably unclear," Jack says dryly, but it's not censorious, just a tired observation. Daniel knows he owes him an explanation, but finding the words is hard. He would have preferred to keep this all to himself forever, but he guesses that went out the window last week. "So you never...?"

"No, I never got punished in academia," he finally whispers, looking up. "Not as a student, and not as a professor." Jack looks baffled, and Daniel does understand. While most of the modern world has eliminated corporal punishment in the workplace - or made it an opt-in program that you can choose instead of taking marks on your record, or a pay cut, or working extra hours - academia is famous alongside the military for being one of the last sectors that has almost exclusively mandatory corporal punishment policies. The tales of students and young college instructors getting punished are as common and famous as the tales that come out of the military, and Jack's assumption that Daniel would have had similar experiences was valid. 

Except...except that wasn't what happened. 

"What do students get punished for?" he says, voice still quiet, and the question sits between them for a moment, heavy in the silence. He can almost see Jack think it through - being late to class, doing poorly on assignments, not turning things in, missing required events...avoidable things, for a young, too-eager-to-please teacher's pet. The mental picture Jack is painting, while less than flattering for who Daniel is now, is probably accurate for who he was then. "I was young when I started college, and they won't start corporal punishment in the undergrad system until you're 18 unless a parent specifically signs off on it. And that's perhaps the kindest thing my social worker ever did for me, was to refuse to sign off on it. So by the time I was 18, I'd already figured out the system, and exactly what I could and couldn't do, and where the lines were."

"But...never?" Jack's got a sort of shell-shocked look on his face as he considers what Daniel is saying. "All those years and you never slipped up, made a mistake even once?"

"No," Daniel answers. "I am - was - very good at watching people, understanding where their boundaries were, and what each of my supervisors would and wouldn't allow. And it's not like the military, Jack - I had some control over whose classes I took, and whose research programs I entered, and who I worked for. If I wasn't going to be able to work within their expectations, I could move on." When he says that, there's the slightest hint of alarm on Jack's face, so he hastens to add, "but like I said, you surprised me. I miscalculated. It won't happen again."

Another awkward silence falls, as he watches Jack chew on what he's said. The longer the silence stretches, the more uncomfortable Daniel gets - because that should be the end of it. He's given Jack all the information he wanted...now Jack should be able to let it go, Daniel will recalibrate his expectations, and they can move on. 

Jack certainly shouldn't be getting frownier, but there is a definite deep crease between his eyebrows that is just getting deeper, and that's not at all reassuring. Time for plan B. 

"Okay, if that's all, I'm going to go to bed," he says, faking a yawn. "I'll see you in the morning," he is halfway through standing up, preparing to do a nice stretch for emphasis, when Jack snaps his fingers and points at the couch. 

"Sit down."

His body obeys before his mind catches up, and he thumps back down on the couch, his heart racing, though Jack does nothing more threatening after that than look directly into his face, considering expression still firmly in place. 

"You said, 'Yes'," Jack finally says. 

Daniel shakes his head. 

"Yeah, you did. You said 'no' but you also said 'yes', and 'not in', and 'never since'."

Damn Jack anyway and the things he remembers, even when he spends so much time making people forget how damn sharp he is. Daniel crosses his arms and hunches over them a little bit, wishing he'd had Jack make the coffee, for something to hold if nothing else. "It's nothing." 

"I think that's the biggest lie you've told me this week," Jack retorts, "Try again."

Daniel can't. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, like he hasn't had anything to drink in days, and he couldn't form words if his life depended on it right now. 

"It wasn't while you were with the Air Force, and it wasn't while you were in college or working academia," Jack says slowly. "Was it on Abydos?"

Daniel can manage to shake his head, at least. 

"Before you started college, then, which as we just established was well before you were 18." Jack's voice has gone a little weird. It sounds kind of far away? "Who hit you, Danny?" 

A vague, disconnected part of Daniel's brain notes that this time, Jack had said 'who hit you'. Before, it had always been...other terms. Spank. Paddle. Punish. Daniel had used the term 'hit', but Jack didn't. The difference, and the way he uses it now, means something. He doesn't quite understand...what...it means, but he files it away for later consideration because it is so obvious that there is a difference to Jack. 

There's nothing left but the truth. It can't hurt him anymore. "My foster father," he says, vaguely aware that his voice has taken on a slightly flat tone, as he fights to stay in the here-and-now, but it's that or he can just...go away. And Jack hadn't seemed to like that, back in his office. When Jack had finished and pulled him up off his desk, Daniel had been floating somewhere between there and here, and Jack had been rather insistent about pulling him back to the now, and not leaving him until he was all present.

In the current now, Jack is staring at him; but when Daniel looks into his face, it's not pity. He doesn't think he could have handled pity. Maybe that's what emboldens him to go on. "He liked to use his belt, but he wasn't above just swinging whatever was close by. He bought a cane, but my foster mother only let him use it once because the marks lasted too long and she was afraid they would get in trouble."

"How old were-" Jack cuts himself off, closes his eyes, and swallows hard. "No, I'm sorry, it doesn't matter. It was wrong no matter how old you were, you were a kid."

But now that they've started, Daniel needs him to know. It would be worse for him to guess. "I wasn't placed with them until I was 12. I moved to a group home about six months after I turned 15," Daniel tells him, "and then left for college when I was 16."

Jack starts to reach out, pauses, and puts his hands awkwardly down at his sides. "I'd like to...can I hold you?" he asks, and Daniel blinks. That wasn't the response he was expecting - he was expecting to be grilled for some more information, or ...actually, he doesn't know what he was expecting, but from the way he can feel his whole body tensed and braced for impact, he knows it wasn't a hug. Hesitantly, he nods. His colonel reaches out, and Daniel finds himself pulled across the couch and into Jack's embrace. Somehow, the other man seems to practically absorb Daniel, every part of them pressed firmly together.  

It's nice. More than nice; he has a limited scope of things to compare it to, but he thinks this is what safe feels like. Daniel drifts a little but it's different than before - Jack's body warm next to his, and the steady stroke of one hand up and down his back are grounding; he knows that the possibility of panic and that hazy feeling of dissociation are right there so close he could touch them, but he also thinks he could maybe face the memories that usually cause them head-on and let Jack bring him back instead. Slowly, he brings a hand up to lay on Jack's chest, feeling it rise and fall underneath his fingers. 

"You know that those people...your foster parents...were wrong, right?" Jack says 'foster parents' with such venom that Daniel is glad his juvenile files aren't part of his Air Force file, or he'd worry about homicide. Not for the first time, his heart breaks as he looks towards the pictures on the mantle, remnants of a time long past. He bets that Jack was a great dad, and would have kept being one if he'd had a real chance to figure it out. "Daniel?"

"I wasn't an easy kid to raise," he murmurs. 

"You weren't required to be. But you were a kid, so the bare minimum they were required to be was not abusive," Jack counters. When Daniel says nothing, he feels more than hears the long exhale beneath him. "Hitting kids is abuse. Disciplining adults - consenting adults - is a different beast entirely."

Daniel isn't sure. It didn't feel very different. The thought of disagreeing with Jack about it makes him a little nauseous, though; he just wants to go back to feeling safe. Jack shifts underneath him and he grabs his shirt in his free hand, a somewhat pathetic, "wait!" being yanked from his throat. The man immediately stills underneath him and then slowly resettles, his voice a calm contrast to Daniel's spiking heart rate. 

"My arm's falling asleep," Jack says, shifting Daniel a little but not moving away noticeably. He takes another deep breath, that Daniel can feel to his core. "I understand why you might not believe me right this minute, because you're not feeling very safe. I'm sorry for that - I wish I'd had the whole picture, because I would have handled last week very differently. But the point of corporal punishment isn't just to make you scared. No, you're not supposed to like it; it's supposed to be unpleasant, it's supposed to be an effective deterrent, but you shouldn't be afraid."

He chews on that for a few minutes, and Jack lets him. In the end, he keeps coming back to the same few key points. One: he doesn't want to leave the Stargate program. He's not even really willing to entertain leaving SG-1; but he won't get out of the contract while he's on an active gate team. Two: he trusts Jack, possibly more than he's trusted anyone since his parents. He doesn't want to be at odds, and he doesn't want to be nervous around him. Three: he's probably not going to manage to never do anything to get in trouble again if their missions so far are any indication. Not that he can't do better, but he knows himself, and there are times when he'll slip. 

Slowly, he sits up and back. Not all the way, still sitting practically right on top of Jack, but far enough that he can look into his friend's face when he asks, "Are you going to do it again?"

Jack looks back at him, brown eyes solemn, for what feels like an eternity before he responds. "I will if I have to," he says quietly. "In the end, that will always be up to you and the choices you make."

"You said..." Daniel squeezes his hands together in his lap, hoping they won't tremble. It's bad enough that his voice shakes. "You said you would have handled it differently?"

"Yeah," Jack agrees. "I wouldn't have used the strap, for starters. I don't need it to get my point across, and anything that reminds you of your foster father is going to be off the table. And when I manhandled you - I thought it would help if we just got it over with quickly, but I think that was probably the opposite of helpful, wasn't it?"

"Strap?" Daniel asks, faintly. He doesn't remember seeing what Jack had used on him - considering it now, and in the time since, he did think it hadn't hurt as much as he'd remembered the wild swings of his foster father's belt, but he'd just sort of decided maybe Jack hadn't been swinging as hard or that maybe as an adult he hadn't felt it as much. 

"Mmmhm," there's something a little sad in Jack's eyes, like he's realized how little Daniel was there, mentally, when he was getting punished, and he can connect that now to why that was. "It's a lot like a belt, but shorter, so I have more control over what I'm doing. But I'm not going to be using it on you again, so you don't have to worry about it."

"What will you..." Daniel pauses and rephrases it in his head. "I need to know what will get me punished," he says carefully. He feels hot, embarrassed to even have this conversation, but when he steals a look, Jack is just looking serious and steady, and clearly ready to have this conversation - wherever it's going.

"I thought you said my expectations were clear," he says, turning slightly to face Daniel.

"No, I said I was clear about how you feel about me...touching stuff." Daniel shakes his head. "But I still don't understand why this particular time was...too much. When will the next thing turn from a warning to something more than a warning? Do I get one warning? Two? Does it change based on the offense?" He's not aware that he's squeezing and digging his nails from one hand into the other until Jack is reaching out, disentangling his hands and settling his own hands over Daniel's to pin them down to his knees, and breathing very intentionally in a way that is clearly meant for Daniel to emulate. "I can't handle unpredictable, Jack." he forces out. 

"Okay. Alright," he nods. "Some of this is going to be communication - I'll do better about telling you where the lines are, and when you're about to cross them. That's my job. But it's a two-way street, kid. You've got to talk to me when you're not sure, or when something I am doing is freaking you out. If in doubt, you ask. Got it?"

"Yeah, Jack" 

"So. Part one, communication. Part two, I'm gonna simplify my expectations for you. You paying attention?" What can he do but nod, tentatively but then more enthusiastically as his stomach drops at the stern look he's getting in return. Jack's still got his hands pinned gently to his legs, or he would be tempted to flee to the other side of the room to escape that look. "One, you don't do anything that puts you in unnecessary danger. Our job has inherent risk, but if you make it any riskier I'm not going to be happy. Two, you follow direct orders. If you don't agree with something you can respectfully let me know and we'll find a time to talk it through, but if I'm giving out direct orders, they're not suggestions. Third, you don't lie to me. I can't make good decisions if I don't have all the information - and that goes for circumstances like last week just as much as missions - a lie of ommission is still a lie if it affects your health and well-being, a mission, the program...just don't do it."

"Those three things are..."

"Spanking offenses?" Jack supplies, when Daniel trails off, unable to finish the sentence. "Yes, every time. If something else is going to go on the list, and it doesn't fall under one of those three rules, we will talk about it. I'll make my expectations clear and I won't surprise you with anything. But those are the big ones. You think you can handle three rules?"

"Yeah, I...yeah. I can do this," he agrees, and Jack gives his hands a little squeeze before releasing them. 

"We can do this. I'm on your side, Danny." 

He takes a deep breath - the first true deep breath he feels like he can take since they left the base all those hours ago. The anxiety isn't gone, but the framework they've established helps. He can work within those rules. He can work so well within the rules - it doesn't matter that Jack would 'do everything differently' because he's not going to have any reason to do anything ever again anyway. Now that he understands the rules, he's not going to break them.

(Later, he'll be so, so glad he didn't say that part out loud to Jack, because at least when he fails he doesn't also have to live down that broken mental promise.)