Title: Been a Long Day
Author's LJ/DWJ: lokeis_pen 
Categories: friendship
Warnings: none
Author's Webpage/Fic list: Master list
Why this should be read:

This is a beautiful little Daniel and Jack vignette, a tag for The Fifth Race. It's short and sweet, and it's about knowledge and friendship and understanding.

“I used to wonder,” Jack said, and then cut himself off abruptly.

Daniel sipped his coffee, moved his bishop forward three spaces and ‘hmmm’d’ interrogatively. He knew better than to look at Jack while the other tried to sort out his thoughts. Chess, post-stressful situation, was more about giving them an excuse to not look at each other as they talked their way through things than it was about the game.

“I sometimes wondered,” Jack tried again, spinning his remaining knight in place, “whether it hurt, you know, being you.”

Startled, Daniel broke his self-imposed rule and looked up. “Jack?”

“You know,” Jack waved his hand at Daniel’s head vaguely. “Being you, carrying all that crazy assortment of crap in your head, languages and symbols and broken bits of pottery and stuff. I would listen to you talk and it would make my head hurt, so I figured yours should be hurting too.”

Been a Long Day