~~They say that breaking up is hard to do ~~

Daniel Jackson sat at his table and watched as Paul Davis put the bag on the floor by the front door.  He wanted to scream. He wanted to remind the man that looked too calm to be living this hell like he was right now that by leaving now, by going through that front door and out of this apartment, that he was taking with him a very big part of Daniel’s soul.

How could Paul leave like this? Wasn’t this wrenching his heart too?

Calmly, the cool Military exterior was in place as Paul turned from the bag and looked back at the man sitting at the cluttered dining room table.  Daniel’s hands were dragging his face downwards as he stared at his lover – no, make that *ex*-lover.

Paul tugged his jacket in place. Yes, yes, let’s not look shabby – you’re only breaking my heart here, damn you! “That’s the last of it,” Paul said in a quiet but clear voice. Couldn’t he even have the decency to sound distressed at the end of this six month relationship? 

With a cough Daniel dropped his hands to the table, arched his brow and shrugged.

“Daniel, don’t make this harder...” Paul started to say.

“Don’t make this..?  Excuse me?” Daniel’s voice cracked with suppressed emotions.  He rubbed his hand down his unshaven cheek. They’d been arguing all night, he felt like shit, he smelt just as badly.  He wanted Paul out of his life so that he could wash himself clean of everything they shared, scour his skin to rid it of the touch of Paul’s hands, lips, flesh..

Daniel got up from the table.  He still had to fight the urge to beg Paul to reconsider this.  He wrung his hands together tightly, making his pink skin white as he stared in disbelief at the man about to walk out on him. 

“We can still be friends.  We have to still be….” Paul looked at the hands clasped before him.  That was an impossible thought at that moment. How could Daniel want to be his friend when he was breaking his heart right now? 

“We have to work together,” Daniel said so coldly that Paul stared at him for a moment before he could respond. “We won’t be friends.”

“Daniel how can you say that?  After everything we’ve been through?”

“How can you expect anything different from me? I don’t want to end this. I don’t want you to go.  This is all your doing, Paul, not mine.  So, don’t start telling me what the hell I should do now. As of an hour ago, you lost that right!”  Daniel stepped slowly over to the door of his bedroom, the same room that they’d woken together in a few hours ago, after a sleep brought on by exhaustive arguing. They thought things might look better in the day light. They didn’t.  They fought for hours until Paul declared that it was over between them, that he would be leaving Daniel today and that they wouldn’t, neither of them, weaken to reconcile what shouldn’t be resurrected again.  Numbly, Paul stood in silence and watched him walk away.  “Let the door slam you on the ass as you go,” Daniel muttered wearily before he kicked the bedroom door shut with a loud thud. 

Paul stood alone in the apartment. He took one final look of the place in which he and Daniel had spent a wonderful six months, on and off, developing a relationship that he believed would be his last, one that would last him a lifetime. But real life had a nasty way of interfering and for the past month all they seemed to do was fight and argue. Bitch, was how Paul had referred to Daniel’s actions in the early hours of this morning.  All they did was bitch and fight at the moment and he cared too much for Daniel to let them deteriorate any further.  

An overwhelming fear coursed through him and part of him wanted to go to the bedroom, throw open the door and tell Daniel that he’d been wrong and to beg him to forgive him.  He wanted to bury himself in the lean body, feel the arms wrap around him again, delve into the mouth with his willing tongue. He shuddered at the realization that he would never again know the comfort of Daniel’s presence – and that thought had him literally taking a step towards the bedroom, but he stopped himself.  What good could come from it? Postponing the inevitable was only that – postponement. 

Maybe it was right that he felt so bereft of Daniel now. He sighed softly as he picked up the suitcase and turned to the door.  His hand was around the knob but he didn’t know if he could bring himself to open the door, let alone walk through it.   He wanted to call out, 'Daniel I’m going', and watch his gorgeous lover come and stand in the bedroom doorway, hair tousled from great sex, a shit-eating grin on his face as he wished him a safe journey back to Washington.  God! This was harder to do than he anticipated. If it hurt this much surely that meant it was the wrong decision.  Again he could imagine throwing himself into bed with Daniel, pulling the bedding over their heads and cocooning themselves from the rest of the world… They’d done that before, in a flood of laughter. He wanted Daniel so much but they were just not meant to be.  The pairing was too volatile once the personalities emerged from the honeymoon-haze. 

Maybe if he left now they could work on a friendship that didn’t border on the physical.  They had so much to talk about, barter together about, disagree on that it was impossible for Paul to accept that they would never be friends again. 

He held onto that one glimmer of hope as he twisted the knob and stepped through the door.  One day…

<The End>