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I know I said I'd post in one go, but it's too long for that. Here's the penultimate chapter, which is around 7,000 words, and there's one more to go which will be posted later today or tomorrow morning.
ETA Except rl came calling. Um. Thursday, except everyone will be eating pie. Friday... that works.
Thanks go to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
padawan_alli who kindly read this when I was stuck and helped to get me on the right track again ::hugs::
Previous parts are here
Leaving Time
Part Ten
It's over too soon, and it's awkward enough to have both of them exchanging wary glances, but Daniel doesn't pull away and Jack doesn't step back. They're standing close enough to be touching when they exhale, swaying together as if the spinning world is pushing them towards each other. The clumsy, hard press of Daniel's mouth against his has left Jack feeling on edge, half-cheated. Years of imagining this and not doing it, fantasising perfection nobly denied and fooling himself that Daniel really would know how to kiss him, what to do with his hands.
Like he had yesterday.
"Well, that was..."
Daniel's hand slips around the back of Jack's neck and this one's better; softer and wetter and Daniel's eyes slide closed when Jack finally puts his arms around him.
But they're still eying each other cautiously when they break to breathe.
Jack clears his throat, rubbing his hand up the inward curve of Daniel's back and noting the way Daniel tenses. Daniel's brittle in his arms, the fluid aggression of the day before lost in panic.
"Want to find a wall to slam me up against?"
Daniel's mouth quirks in a hesitant, rusty smile. "It did seem to -- you liked that?"
"I didn't not like it," Jacks answers obliquely.
"I wasn't expecting you to let me --" Daniel glances at Jack's shoulder, raising his eyebrows quizzically. It doesn't hurt much now but Jack's only got to touch the finger-marked skin to feel a suffocating wave of arousal. He hasn't tried to make sense of that reaction beyond knowing that it turned him on mostly because it was Daniel doing it. It's the part of his response that lies outside the connection with Daniel that's troubling him. He's too old for this much self-discovery crammed into so short a space of a time. "Why did you do that?"
Jack remembers his hand over Daniel's, shifting the placement of Daniel's fingers slightly then pushing hard --
"You didn't need any help with the other hand. You were doing just fine there. Apart from stopping just when I was about to come -- what?"
Jack replays what he just said and matches it against the change of expression on Daniel's face. They're still hugging which makes it all really bizarre but Jack's not going to be the first to let go.
"Sorry I'm not good at hurting you," Daniel says, fury rising and had it ever really gone away? "God, would it kill you to go a day without belittling me in some way?"
"You spoiled, sulky fucking brat," Jack says with feeling.
Daniel jerks free and folds his arms across his chest. "You're unbelievable, you know that?"
"Most people save that line for after I've fucked them," Jack says because he can't help it. They're fighting, and he doesn't play to lose, not ever.
"Why? Don't you tip them?"
It's so outrageously childish an insult, and therefore lacking in strength, that Jack can't hold back a splutter of laughter. "What's next, Daniel? Going to tell me I have cooties? Jesus."
"I can't talk to you," Daniel says. His hands come up, batting at the air in frustration at his inability to do what he does best.
Communicate ... Daniel, freed hands slipping across bark, face rapt and then horrified as the tree died ...
"Did you feel it?" Jack asks abruptly. "When I shot the tree?"
"The Lindess," Daniel corrects him automatically. His hands drop down to his sides and he looks away. "I don't remember much."
"Daniel." Jack's not letting him get away with that. Daniel remembered plenty when he was mouthing off to Hammond about genocide, reckless actions, and rescue missions that fucked up big-time, every time.
"No, really, I don't. I was so close to --"
"Becoming one of them?"
Daniel nods and then shrugs. "I felt the emptiness of the space where it had been. It didn't hurt in the way you mean. Just... something missing."
"A hole in the whole."
He's expecting that to get Daniel angry again, but Daniel considers it and just nods. It's the equivalent of a gold star in the circumstances.
"See?" Jack says. "We're talking. We're on a roll here."
There's a sidelong glance that says they're about to get stuck again and then Daniel walks away to sit down on the couch, sprawling out on it so that Jack's got nowhere to sit but on a chair a mile away or the floor.
He can't see himself at Daniel's feet somehow.
He takes off his coat and kicks off his shoes, hoping Daniel gets the message that he's not planning on leaving any time soon. Then he shoves Daniel's bare feet aside and sits down before Daniel has chance to regain lost territory. Daniel huffs and bends his legs so that his toes are digging into Jack's thigh, but doesn't kick Jack off, and Jack leans into the high, comfortable back of the couch and tries to relax.
"So."
"Mmm?"
Daniel sounds distracted. Jack turns his head to look at him. The room's lit by a couple of lamps, with shadows spilling out from the corners, turning some of Daniel's ornaments into freaky, creepy shapes that Jack doesn't want to look at closely. Daniel's scary enough right now with his maddening unpredictability. Four years of working out which way Daniel will jump, and making sure he's got something soft to land on when he trips and falls, and Jack feels lost again.
"Got something you want to say now I'm here?"
Not the kisses. Not how long Jack's wanted to do that to Daniel and held off. Something else. Something safe.
There's a deep breath from Daniel and then he says, "I wanted you to do a lot of things this last week or so, Jack, and I've been --"
"A pain in the ass about my failure to deliver?"
"I suppose that's a fair description."
"You betcha."
"Yes, well," Daniel licks his lips nervously, and sits up a little straighter, drawing his feet back so that they're not touching Jack. "One of them was read the notebook, because it, well, it would have saved time. I think."
"Huh?"
"It doesn't matter now. I wanted that, and I wanted you to apologise for what you did back on the planet --"
"Daniel --" Jack shoves his irritation away in favour of finishing this conversation without a fight.
"No, that doesn't matter either." Daniel's eyes are scanning Jack's face anxiously, his hands linked tightly on his bent knees. "You don't have to apologise, I suppose, just -- understand why what you did was a mistake and why I can't work with you until we get that sorted out."
"Daniel, so help me --"
"Jack -- the notebook; who besides Teal'c has read it?"
"Do you practice changing the subject like that?" Jack thinks about it, casually dropping his hand on top of Daniel's linked fingers and giving them a comforting squeeze. Daniel's gaze drops down and then up, meeting Jack's eyes meaningfully and Jack pulls his hand away. No touching? Okay. "I don't know. Teal'c took it to Hammond and told him he'd read it and there was nothing in it that anyone needed to know."
"That's not strictly true," Daniel says quietly.
"Yeah, well." Jack wishes Teal'c had lost the damned thing but it was too late now "Hammond's old school. Which means he took a copy to cover his ass, told Teal'c he'd do his best to keep it out of the official record, and said he wouldn't read it."
"Which means?"
"He read it." Jack grimaces apologetically. "He had to, Daniel. Any C.O. would have done. But he'll act like he didn't unless there was something in there that he has to deal with, and if there was, Teal'c would've said something. Don't worry about it. You can trust Hammond; when it comes to looking after his team, he's solid."
And he won't let anyone pass judgment on Daniel for going squirrelly when he thought he was about to die like that, Jack thinks.
"We're both on his team," Daniel says. He turns his head to look at Jack. "I'm not sure he can protect us both. Not when we're on opposite sides."
"We're on the same team, Daniel. Don't say that."
"Not now."
"Yes, now!" Jack gets up, needing to move. "Daniel, this inquiry -- no one but you is pushing for it. It has to happen now, but it can be rubber-stamped in a few hours if you just --"
"People died on that planet," Daniel says, his voice low and determined. "Everyone died except me."
"The only ones I care about are the people we sent through the 'gate and they died, yes, but an inquiry isn't going to change that and you know it wasn't down to anyone screwing up." Jack rounds on him, desperate to get Daniel to see it, admit the truth. "You built a fire. That's all. On that one planet, that was a mistake, but how the hell were you supposed to know that?"
"I don't know," Daniel whispers.
"And you're pissed at me, and yeah, I'm getting to see why, but to do this --" Jack stares at him helplessly. "You couldn't have talked to me about it? You had to demand an investigation? Tell them I'd fucked-up and got Foster and Talbot killed when you know damn well that's a lie?"
"You think I did that out of spite?" Daniel says slowly. "That this is me getting back at you?"
"Isn't it?"
"You think that and you're still here, trying to fuck me?" Daniel's face screws up in revulsion. "Last chance at my ass before one of us gets thrown off the programme?"
"No! Daniel, that's just bullshit." Jack fights to keep the anger from his voice. "And I didn't come here for that or you'd be naked by now, because I don't think this is all one-way here."
He can see Daniel absorb that and there's a moment when he thinks they can sidestep this argument and start to rebuild whatever's left of their friendship now that they've both come close to admitting there's something between them. As close as it can get when it's something that's doomed, dangerous and going to get them both in so much fucking trouble --
He should have known Daniel wouldn't let go of his guilt that easily.
"I can't do this," Daniel says, standing up, and his voice is breaking, anger and frustration poking holes in it. "You killed them and you did it to save me, which makes it my fault, too, because I've had four years to get you to trust me, and I've failed."
Jack tries to interrupt, but Daniel's not listening. His hands are pushing back through his short hair and he's animated, flushed, pacing up and down and never getting close to Jack.
"You'll protect me, yes. Die for me, if you have to. For any of us. You'd have died trying to save Foster and Talbot because that was what you'd been sent to do, wasn't it? Rescue us?" He doesn't wait for Jack's nod. "Yes, you would. You're good at that kind of thing. And this time I didn't need you to save me, or them."
"You were about to become a tree, Daniel! I'd say you needed someone and it happened to be me."
"I was about to do something you couldn't! Become part of something so far beyond your comprehension that you were terrified by it. Easier to destroy it than to learn from it, isn't that right?"
"You asked me to kill you if that happened," Jack reminds him wearily. "Sorry if I chose you over the Lindess. Won't catch me doing that again, I promise. Next alien who wants to suck your brains out, I'll hand them a straw. Are we done here?"
He wants to go home now. Change the bed so he isn't sleeping in sheets whose smell reminds him of Daniel, crawl into it and pass out. Reminds him because Daniel had been there in spirit as Jack jerked off, desperate for a release he'd been denied, free hand coming up to grind hard into his shoulder and brush lightly over his bruised neck.
Daniel had been dying in Jack's dreams all night. He can't rest easy on those sheets.
"I could have saved them," Daniel says. "And me. I was talking to the Lindess -- oh, not in any way you'd understand --"
"You know, you can be a condescending little shit at times."
"I don't mean -- it wasn't talking, that's all. We were -- it went deeper than that." Daniel's eyes are shining and he's trembling slightly. "And I was explaining, and it was seeing that we were different from the Shalin and I could hear Simon and Julia, they were there, they were part of it, and they weren't as frightened any more, they were calling to me --"
"Oh, for crying out loud," Jack says helplessly.
Daniel looks at him. "They weren't doing that any more. Or screaming. And the Lindess was giving them a choice. I think they could have reversed what was done -- they're so far beyond us, you have no idea -- but it's nothing we can use, so don't even ask -- and they were giving me a choice, too."
Daniel sighs, regretful and disconsolate. "And then you came."
It's so petulant and ungrateful that Jack's reduced to playground rhetoric. "Want me to say I'm sorry? Don't hold your breath."
"I want you to tell me why you didn't wait! I'd told you I had something to do --"
"And you thought that was enough?" Jack gapes at him. "You mumble something vague and take off without telling me where you're going and when I find you, you expect me to realise that you're talking to the thing that's making you like -- look -- God, Daniel, it was hurting you! Spikes through your neck, through your hands, and you were changing, I was losing you --"
Words. Jack's not good at this but Daniel's so fucking stubborn Jack has to carry on, give him more.
"I'd do it again. You were dying and I'd do it again. Every fucking time. Testify that I cost you a shot at getting Talbot and Foster back if it's what you believe and not what you've fooled yourself into thinking; I don't care. You're here and that means I did my job."
"Your job is not to protect me!"
"No. It isn't. Doesn't mean I won't. You, Carter, Teal'c; all of you. Don't think you're special, Daniel, because I'd have done the same for them." Jack goes to Daniel, grabbing his arms and holding him so Daniel can't walk away. "I was ordered to rescue you, Daniel. Authorised to use whatever means necessary to get you back. You're important, Daniel. You don't seem to get that, and it's something I like about you mostly, but you are. You don't get a choice about becoming a tree. We need you human."
"I could have saved them, Jack. Maybe found some way of helping the Lindess, too."
"We'll go back," Jack promises recklessly, sure he can persuade Hammond it's needed. "Daniel, if you think there's still a chance they're alive --"
"No." Daniel shakes his head. "No chance."
"You can't know that," Jack says.
"I can." Daniel closes his eyes. "You killed a Lindess. They --" He opens his eyes. "They saw us as... disease, contagion after that. They destroyed Simon and Julia rather than risk -- I was so close."
"I didn't know," Jack says quietly. And he hadn't. He's gone over it in his head and he still can't see any way it could've gone down differently. "Daniel, you were -- you should have seen how you looked. Like a walking nightmare. And you were hurting and scared. When I found you by that tree you were minutes away from being gone and I couldn't let that happen."
"Would it have mattered that much if I had?" Daniel's voice is cool. "I annoy you, Jack. You tell me that all the time. I interfere with the mission, I complicate your life because you want me and you don't know what to do about it." He nods as Jack winces and carries on, his voice rising. "Yes, I'm going to talk about that, too. Tired of not talking about it. I kept expecting you to make an opportunity so that we could discuss it and agree to -- oh, pretend, ignore it, fuck once and move on, whatever-- but I didn't even get that, did I? You just expected that I'd play along without even asking me how I felt about it. I didn't even get that. Well, screw you." Daniel's yelling now, quivering with outrage. "Tell me what we did just now, Jack. In the kitchen. Tell me, or get the hell out of here."
It's easier than Jack expected it to be.
"We were kissing, Daniel. We kissed, dammit."
That's just starting to sink in. A deliberate kiss. Two. With nothing to excuse it, although 'heat of the moment' described it well enough.
"Thank you," Daniel says and collapses onto the couch again, strings cut, the anger discarded abruptly as if it was too heavy a burden and he's happy to be rid of it
Jack hesitates and then sits beside him, both of them moving into the same position as before, with Daniel's bare feet snug against Jack's thigh.
It's not all that comfortable so Jack slides his hand under Daniel's ankles and taps his hand against them. Daniel straightens his legs without comment and lets them rest in Jack's lap, his right heel three inches away from Jack's balls. Jack hopes that's accidental rather than tactical. He takes a slow breath and says, "So you want to talk about it?"
Jack gets a nod, but it's followed by a silence rather than a question. He wonders if Daniel feels as empty and light as he does, waiting to be filled with something new.
Daniel's ankles are warm and bony under Jack's hand and his toes curl satisfactorily when Jack strokes his thumb along a hollow of skin, carving out an 'mmm' from the quietness.
Feet aren't meant to be looked at closely. Daniel's, well-shaped enough, with a sprinkle of fair hair at the base of each toe, barely visible in the light, are starting to look alien and amusing the longer Jack stares.
"Wiggle your toes," Jack says idly, breaking the lull that's done a good job of smoothing the edges off his emotions.
Daniel obeys him, then gives a swift squirm that brings his heel closer to Jack's groin.
Giving him a narrow-eyed look and getting an innocent one back, Jack runs his finger along the top of the toes on Daniel's right foot, big toe to little, bumping down the steps and catching the pad of his finger on an uneven nail. Daniel spreads his toes reflexively and Jack tries, and fails, to get his finger between two toes.
"Jack? What are you doing?" Daniel says in his calm, reasonable voice, the one Jack sometimes thinks Daniel saves for him.
"You've got some fluff in there," Jack says. Giving up, he leans forward and blows hard on Daniel's foot, dislodging a green thread, probably from a towel as Daniel's feet smell mostly of soap. Mostly. "Got it."
"God, Jack!" Daniel lashes out, kicking and scrambling back like a cat startled from sleep.
"Hey!" Jack twists, kneeling up on the couch, and grabs hold of Daniel's legs just above the knees, staring at him in bewilderment. "What did I do?" He grins. "Are you ticklish?"
"A little," Daniel says, his voice starting off higher than normal and turning husky in the space of a syllable. "It's just -- don't do that, okay?"
Jack's brain catches up with his eyes. Daniel's lying sprawled on his back, legs spread and held open by Jack's hands, the loose T-shirt riding up to expose a strip of stomach and a point of hipbone. The soft material of his pants is blurring the shape of an erection Jack's finding it difficult to ignore.
"You know, you could write 'fuck me' on your forehead and it'd be wetting water," Jack mutters.
Daniel looks perplexed, then pleased, and does something that has him ranking as high as air on the necessary for life scale. Jack can't quite work out the details -- more skin on show, maybe and Daniel's lip's pinked up from being bitten, and shiny from being licked -- but what had been accidental is now purposeful, and it should make Daniel less attractive because he's playing Jack, but it doesn't.
It's because Daniel's trying to seduce him, and doing a damn good job of it by anyone's standards, that Jack's hard. Too long thinking he was alone in the insanity of falling for someone on his team not to be pleased to be proved wrong.
Which doesn't make this less insane.
Slowly, and with great care, he removes his hands from Daniel's body and kneels back between Daniel's legs. The couch isn't wide enough for that, not really, and Daniel's foot slides off. He braces it on the floor, looking open and wanton, and yeah, maybe he's overdoing it with that not-very subtle tilt of his hips in invitation and challenge but Jack's dick's not inclined to take away points for it.
"Can we just --" Jack makes a time out signal with his hands and prays Daniel doesn't pout because that would be overkill and he doesn't want anything to spoil this.
Daniel frowns and says, "Why?"
Good question.
"It's not going to solve anything if I fuck you through the couch, Daniel."
"It'll take care of my erection and yours and I was assuming after yesterday that it would be me who..." Daniel lets his words die away which Jack would put down to shyness if it wasn't for the way Daniel hooks one hand behind his head, turning the pale, tender skin of his inner arm towards Jack.
Not shy.
"I'll arm wrestle you for who goes on top." Jack reconsiders. "Maybe tossing a coin's fairer."
Daniel smiles, stares up at the ceiling, and brings his free hand to rest on his thigh, fingers drumming gently. "Heads I win, tails you lose?"
"Huh?"
"I can fuck you without having to move from this position," Daniel points out. "And you'd still be on top."
Images slam and collide with unspoken words in his mind and Jack feels heat rise and roll over him. His skin knows just where Daniel's hands would be if they fucked like that and the knowledge is almost enough for him to feel the firm, sure grip.
"Yeah, I would." His cock's hard enough to make talking an effort. This hard, it should be buried deep in something, even if it's only the draughty haven of his fist, with words not a requirement. And in company, like now, his mouth should be too busy to talk ... Jack shudders, shallow breaths keeping him from getting audible at the thought of what it'd be like to kiss Daniel's belly, lick it, drag his teeth over it and feel Daniel tense and writhe, the muscles hardening for Jack to trace with his finger and chase with his tongue.
His face must give him away because Daniel makes a small, pained sound, eager and impatient, before he stops fucking about with his audition for centrefold poses and props himself up on his elbows.
"And I wanted this, if you're wondering. The kissing and the fucking, although maybe the bed would be better. But not until you'd --"
"Read the notebook. Yeah, well I think that might have to wait and you've only got yourself to blame for that." Jack fingers the ragged tear at the neck of Daniel's T-shirt, the back of his knuckles brushing Daniel's collarbone. Another few washes and the rip will unravel far enough that Daniel will have to mend it or discard the shirt. "Anyone ever tell you that you're not that good at planning stuff? And if I ripped this off you, would you mind?"
"No, I think it's more that you have a natural talent for disrupting my plans," Daniel says. "And, yes, I would."
"Why?" Jack asks, picking idly at the tear. "Could get you a new one from stores."
"I could get my own new one, thank you. I like this one."
"It's not yours," Jack says. He reaches behind Daniel's neck and yanks at the loose material until he can read the label. "Size too big." He's starting to think -- "Daniel, is this mine? The one I snagged when we were climbing up that escarpment and they were throwing stones at us?"
Daniel stares at him, wide-eyed. "You think I'm wearing your old T-shirt to bed? Want to check under my pillow for a photo of you that I kiss before drifting off to sleep?"
"Okay, okay, no need to --" Jack's flustered now, feeling ridiculously put-out.
"For God's sake, Jack! It's mine. It got issued when stores were out of my size and when I got a replacement I brought it home because it seemed a waste to just throw it out. The collar got ripped in the laundry." Daniel glares at him. "And I sleep naked."
"Well, good for you!"
Daniel's mouth twitches. "You're upset, aren't you?"
"No." Jack lies. "You're not the sentimental kind."
"No, I'm not," Daniel agrees easily. "But you are."
"Can we make this something we never mention again?" Jack asks plaintively.
"That's getting to be a long list of off-limit topics." Daniel hesitates. "This -- is it something we can do, Jack? Nothing's changed. In fact, this is a terrible time for you to even be here."
"Because of the inquiry?" Jack sighs. "Yeah, it is. And, no, we can't do it, but I think we're going to anyway."
"We don't have to," Daniel says quietly. "I'm not angry that we can't fuck; I understand the reasoning behind it, in part at least."
"It doesn't make any difference," Jack says. "Whether we --"
He stumbles over what comes next and gets a nudge from Daniel's heel and an amused 'Say it.'
"Make love," Jack says, turning the words into a challenge. "Whether we do or not, I've still got a head full of stuff that could get me in worse trouble than I am now if people knew, and I'm still going on missions with you when I should've got you transferred the hell away from me months ago. Years." His hand tightens around Daniel's ankle. "I thought I was handling it but you had to go and almost die on me again, didn't you?"
"Sorry," Daniel murmurs. "I hadn't realised it was such an aphrodisiac."
Jack makes a lemon-sour face and Daniel has the grace to look repentant. "You've got this reputation for being so fucking nice, Daniel. Why don't you try living up to it?"
"I'm sorry." This time it sounds sincere. "I've been so angry with you since we got back; had so many fights with you in my head..."
"Are you angry now?" Jack pushes up the loose material of Daniel's sweat pants, fingers spread wide as he caresses Daniel's calf. Daniel's still hard, or hard again; Jack's not sure which and he doesn't care. Doesn't care that this might count as cheating to get the answer he wants either; Daniel deserves it after that crack.
"I can want to fuck you when I'm angry with you, Jack. I wouldn't read too much into this." Daniel sounds amused as he runs his fingers slowly over the solid promise of his erection, gasping slightly as his smile slips away, replaced by an inward look of concentration.
Years of fantasies about what Daniel will look like on the verge of climax get discarded as Jack watches him fight for control, his eyes darkening, half-closed, full lips parted.
"Been a while for you, has it? Anyone would do?"
"Save the fishing for when you're at your cabin."
Daniel slips off his glasses, reaching over his head to drop them on a side table. Jack gets an eyeful of skin again. It's skin he can be genuinely indifferent to when Daniel's showering beside him and they've got company, but flashed at him like this in brief, teasing flickers, it's torture.
"Answer the question, Daniel."
"Which one?"
"Are you still angry with me? For any of it?"
Daniel wriggles down a little, forcing Jack's hand higher up his leg. "Yes, but my capacity to forgive where you're concerned is fairly high. It has to be."
"Goes both ways, Doctor Jackson," Jack says.
Daniel makes an indistinct murmur and reaches for Jack's hand, pulling Jack down on top of him and then forcing Jack's hand to take a handful of his T-shirt.
"Take it out on this," he says.
"Oh, you bet I will," Jack says. The angle's useless and the cotton's tougher than it looks, so he abandons the attempt to do it one-handed and sits up, straddling Daniel, which is distracting, and ripping the T-shirt from neck to hem with a flourish.
Daniel arches his eyebrows. "Feel better?"
Jack stares at Daniel's chest, feeling possessive about the skin he's revealed. "Kind of like Columbus."
"In what way?"
Jack rubs his finger across Daniel's lips until Daniel obligingly opens them, sucking at it with a swirl of his tongue that sends a shudder through Jack. He pulls his finger free, suffering an indignant scrape from Daniel's teeth as they snap closed, and draws a spit-damp 'X' on Daniel's chest with it.
"Claiming territory I've discovered," he says smugly.
"At least you didn't label it virgin territory," Daniel murmurs teasingly.
Jack shrugs, equally uncomfortable with the idea that Daniel is or isn't experienced when it comes to sleeping with a man.
"You're not going to ask, are you?"
"Don't ask, don't --"
"Finish that sentence and I'll close my borders," Daniel says, the joke failing to rob the words of their sharpness. "So fucking sick of hearing that."
"Sorry. No, I'm not going to ask. Or I wasn't." It occurs to him that maybe they should talk about some things, but he's unsure where to start. The closed-mouth kiss and the hand job with added kink don't mesh and he only knows that Daniel's going to have to be the one taking the lead because he sure as hell isn't ready for another fight about his over-protectiveness.
"I've done this before, I'm clean, I don't want to rush you but there are condoms and lube in my bedroom if we need them, and the rest is none of your business," Daniel says in a clipped rush that sounds a little rehearsed.
"Well, that was very --" Jack bends his head and licks the patch of skin he's been tormented by for the last hour. Clean skin. He wishes he'd caught Daniel before his shower, body sleeked with the residue of the day. " Informative. Ditto, by the way." He sits up and slides his hands inside the waistband of Daniel's sweat pants. "Up."
He waits until Daniel's naked, apart from the torn T-shirt, to take a good look at him, and discovers that when he thought he knew what Daniel looked like naked, he'd been wrong. He knows the shape of Daniel's hands and how his fingers crook around a pen; knows the lines of the back of his neck and the shape of his ears, curving tightly to meet his scalp. He can stare at them, un-remarked and safe, and so he's learned them by heart.
Everything else he's only been able to grab at, jigsaw-piece-jumbles of split-second glances that he's pieced together into patchwork into a paint-by-numbers Daniel to jerk off with.
This is better. No surprise there. He looks first, not at Daniel's face, or his cock, but at the skin he remembers being thickened and warped by the invading alien growth. There had been a place on Daniel's chest --
Nothing remains. The skin's smooth, the light tan interrupted by a freckle here and there, dusted with a scatter of hair low on Daniel's belly. By the time Jack's got that far down he can't miss the emphatic thrust of Daniel's cock and he doesn't try. He's close enough to smell the heady, ripe smell of arousal, trapped in the tight creases of skin, released as Daniel parts his legs as wide as he can.
But he has to look again before he touches, tastes, and it's worth it.
The ripped T-shirt's definitely coming off if Daniel turns onto his belly. Jack wants that long, solid stretch of skin exposed more than he wants the visceral clench of muscle in the pit of his stomach when he remembers tearing the shirt open. For now, though, with Daniel spread out on his back, the ragged T-shirt's the salt and lime that's making Jack's mouth prickle with saliva, soft and heavy against his tongue.
His body's waking up in a dozen different ways, stirring from enforced sleep, and hungry. The clothes he's wearing feel bulky, hampering him, but he can't spare the time to strip them off and Daniel's so ready --
There's a pale sheen across the head of Daniel's cock, leaking across the rumpled, retreating foreskin. Jack touches the tip of his tongue to it, tasting it curiously, feeling a sense-memory surge forward, clamouring to be recognised.
Daniel makes an inarticulate sound and grabs at him, one hand sliding through Jack's hair, the other, by chance, maybe, clutching at Jack's shoulder. "Jack!"
Jack rotates his shoulder gently into Daniel's grip and lets Daniel push his head down lower.
He never had thought that they'd make it off the couch to the bed.
Daniel's cock wedged far back in his mouth when Daniel's tongue hasn't done more than flirt with his lips should be disconcerting but Jack's getting used to the dichotomy that is Daniel and he negotiates a retreat with an admonishing slap on Daniel's flank.
"Gotta breathe, Daniel," he grumbles softly, his palm cushioned on the springy bush of hair around the base of Daniel's cock, thumb and fingers holding it steady.
"Which is why you have a nose," Daniel says snippily.
Jack bites him, teeth sinking far enough into flesh to leave white dents that fill and darken as he watches. "Got teeth, too."
Daniel rubs at his thigh with a thoughtful push-scrub of his fingers and doesn't comment. His hand stays there and Jack kisses it, moved by an impulse he can't explain, feeling the convex slipperiness of fingernails against his lips and mouthing the bent-up knuckles until they flatten and a single finger works its way past his teeth.
Jack allows the intrusion, thinking ahead and knowing it's going to be difficult to say 'no' to anything Daniel wants to do to or with him. Daniel's too curious not to stray past limits Jack drew in black, zigzagging wildly around what worked for him, but Jack's more worried about his own competitive nature taking him to places he doesn't really want to go. He pictures Daniel exploring a multitude of kinks with a thoughtful frown, lips pushed out in a contemplative pout, and chokes on ill-timed laughter.
Daniel's finger pauses and then hooks firmly in the corner of Jack's mouth, tugging it inexorably to the side.
"Suck me," he says, wiping his finger across Jack's cheek in a flickering caress.
"What?" Jack doesn't mind doing it -- wants to do it -- but hearing Daniel tell him to is something else again.
"Suck my cock, so I can come," Daniel says with the clarity of the desperate. "Get on with it or get out of the way and let me --" His hand snakes down and Jack, after a stupefied second where he allows Daniel to get in a blurringly fast few strokes, growls and peels Daniel's hand away.
"I'm right here, Daniel ..."
Unbelievable. This is a man who can spend hours working on the exact meaning of one word and he's turned into a demanding, pushy, impatient --
Jack gives Daniel's dick one defiantly slow lick, dragging his tongue across and around, up and down, and then engulfs it in a rush that tears a muffled groan from Daniel. He squints up and sees Daniel's hand wedged between his teeth.
"Sound-track helps," he gets out between succulent mouthfuls and then he shuts up and Daniel gets noisy.
He's forgotten too much to make it as good as it could be, but he gets the impression that Daniel's in a mood to be forgiving about this, no matter how many other grudges he's still hugging close. Even a collision between incisor and cock doesn't get him anything but a whimper from Daniel.
There's no time to regain a level of expertise that, if Jack's honest about it, was never that high. He's done this enough that he knows swallowing beats spitting and his mouth will taste of come even after he's brushed his teeth. Not enough to be sure he'll be the best Daniel's had though, which he hates.
Daniel's hands are touching him now, light touches Jack guesses are supposed to reassure them both; I'm fine, you're doing fine, don't stop, oh God, tapped out in a code of gently tugged and twisted strands of hair and scribbled on skin over and over until Jack knows he'll still be marked in red tomorrow and his scratched skin will sting in the heated water he'll have to stand under, washing Daniel away.
By the time Daniel's panting, chanting out Jack's name on a rapidly rising note, his thumbs are hard points pressed into Jack's collarbone and the heel of one foot is scraping down the back of Jack's calf.
It's all confined and constricted by the couch; Daniel's half off it as it is, and Jack's slid sideways himself, one foot flat on the floor, his leg muscles screaming for a release that's going to have to wait on Daniel's.
Bed, Jack promises himself. Next time they do this on the bed.
He opens his eyes when he realises they're shut and sees the thicket of hair around Daniel's cock rushing up and receding, a trail of spit winding through it, silver-dark. He's got the squish and roll of Daniel's balls under the heel of his hand and that's all he's planning to do because suddenly this is too sudden and he's floundering and lost, the insistent beat of blood in his cock thrumming through him, disorientating him.
Daniel's hand slips to cup the back of Jack's neck, stroking it once and then clamping down as his body jerks and shudders.
Jack loves this and always knew that he would. Daniel. Daniel losing it, cock getting impossibly harder, spunk pulsing up and spurting out to swirl and fill Jack's mouth as he fights to swallow, his abused throat muscles protesting.
Like this, making sounds that aren't words in any language, Daniel's his, reduced to base level, genius mind wiped clean as his body rocks and squirms and clutches, helpless and strong.
When Daniel quiets down, Jack opens his mouth and laps at Daniel's cock as it glides past his lips, taking the taste of it deep and cleaning up the final leaking drops of come until Daniel sighs and shudders and murmurs his name.
By the time Jack's lying beside him, squashed and uncomfortable, both of them grunting as they try to accommodate themselves to the space, he's got a smile on his face that won't go away and an overpowering need to cuddle close that even the assault on his ribs from Daniel's elbow can't quench.
They settle down on their sides, Daniel wrapped around him with a tenacity that borders on ferocious until the kisses Jack's layering onto his hair and temple gentle him down and the hand that isn't trapped under Jack begins to roam.
"Jack?"
"Mmm?"
"Why are you still wearing clothes?"
"I don't know," Jack admits. "Never seemed like a good point to take them off."
Daniel's hand burrows between them, searching out Jack's erection, not forgotten, by Jack at least, but taking care of Daniel had come first.
"Now? Is now good?"
Jack pushes Daniel's face up so he can kiss him. "I can wait."
Daniel's tongue is warm and wet and stroking over Jack's a moment later. Third time lucky, or maybe Daniel's just better at kissing when he's relaxed. Jack's eyes close, only to snap open when Daniel pulls away an inch or two.
"Jack?"
"What?"
"Take off your clothes." Daniel starts to undo Jack's shirt one-handed, fumbling with the stiff buttons. "Now. Because I can't."
Part Eleven
ETA Except rl came calling. Um. Thursday, except everyone will be eating pie. Friday... that works.
Thanks go to
padawan_alli who kindly read this when I was stuck and helped to get me on the right track again ::hugs::Previous parts are here
Leaving Time
Part Ten
It's over too soon, and it's awkward enough to have both of them exchanging wary glances, but Daniel doesn't pull away and Jack doesn't step back. They're standing close enough to be touching when they exhale, swaying together as if the spinning world is pushing them towards each other. The clumsy, hard press of Daniel's mouth against his has left Jack feeling on edge, half-cheated. Years of imagining this and not doing it, fantasising perfection nobly denied and fooling himself that Daniel really would know how to kiss him, what to do with his hands.
Like he had yesterday.
"Well, that was..."
Daniel's hand slips around the back of Jack's neck and this one's better; softer and wetter and Daniel's eyes slide closed when Jack finally puts his arms around him.
But they're still eying each other cautiously when they break to breathe.
Jack clears his throat, rubbing his hand up the inward curve of Daniel's back and noting the way Daniel tenses. Daniel's brittle in his arms, the fluid aggression of the day before lost in panic.
"Want to find a wall to slam me up against?"
Daniel's mouth quirks in a hesitant, rusty smile. "It did seem to -- you liked that?"
"I didn't not like it," Jacks answers obliquely.
"I wasn't expecting you to let me --" Daniel glances at Jack's shoulder, raising his eyebrows quizzically. It doesn't hurt much now but Jack's only got to touch the finger-marked skin to feel a suffocating wave of arousal. He hasn't tried to make sense of that reaction beyond knowing that it turned him on mostly because it was Daniel doing it. It's the part of his response that lies outside the connection with Daniel that's troubling him. He's too old for this much self-discovery crammed into so short a space of a time. "Why did you do that?"
Jack remembers his hand over Daniel's, shifting the placement of Daniel's fingers slightly then pushing hard --
"You didn't need any help with the other hand. You were doing just fine there. Apart from stopping just when I was about to come -- what?"
Jack replays what he just said and matches it against the change of expression on Daniel's face. They're still hugging which makes it all really bizarre but Jack's not going to be the first to let go.
"Sorry I'm not good at hurting you," Daniel says, fury rising and had it ever really gone away? "God, would it kill you to go a day without belittling me in some way?"
"You spoiled, sulky fucking brat," Jack says with feeling.
Daniel jerks free and folds his arms across his chest. "You're unbelievable, you know that?"
"Most people save that line for after I've fucked them," Jack says because he can't help it. They're fighting, and he doesn't play to lose, not ever.
"Why? Don't you tip them?"
It's so outrageously childish an insult, and therefore lacking in strength, that Jack can't hold back a splutter of laughter. "What's next, Daniel? Going to tell me I have cooties? Jesus."
"I can't talk to you," Daniel says. His hands come up, batting at the air in frustration at his inability to do what he does best.
Communicate ... Daniel, freed hands slipping across bark, face rapt and then horrified as the tree died ...
"Did you feel it?" Jack asks abruptly. "When I shot the tree?"
"The Lindess," Daniel corrects him automatically. His hands drop down to his sides and he looks away. "I don't remember much."
"Daniel." Jack's not letting him get away with that. Daniel remembered plenty when he was mouthing off to Hammond about genocide, reckless actions, and rescue missions that fucked up big-time, every time.
"No, really, I don't. I was so close to --"
"Becoming one of them?"
Daniel nods and then shrugs. "I felt the emptiness of the space where it had been. It didn't hurt in the way you mean. Just... something missing."
"A hole in the whole."
He's expecting that to get Daniel angry again, but Daniel considers it and just nods. It's the equivalent of a gold star in the circumstances.
"See?" Jack says. "We're talking. We're on a roll here."
There's a sidelong glance that says they're about to get stuck again and then Daniel walks away to sit down on the couch, sprawling out on it so that Jack's got nowhere to sit but on a chair a mile away or the floor.
He can't see himself at Daniel's feet somehow.
He takes off his coat and kicks off his shoes, hoping Daniel gets the message that he's not planning on leaving any time soon. Then he shoves Daniel's bare feet aside and sits down before Daniel has chance to regain lost territory. Daniel huffs and bends his legs so that his toes are digging into Jack's thigh, but doesn't kick Jack off, and Jack leans into the high, comfortable back of the couch and tries to relax.
"So."
"Mmm?"
Daniel sounds distracted. Jack turns his head to look at him. The room's lit by a couple of lamps, with shadows spilling out from the corners, turning some of Daniel's ornaments into freaky, creepy shapes that Jack doesn't want to look at closely. Daniel's scary enough right now with his maddening unpredictability. Four years of working out which way Daniel will jump, and making sure he's got something soft to land on when he trips and falls, and Jack feels lost again.
"Got something you want to say now I'm here?"
Not the kisses. Not how long Jack's wanted to do that to Daniel and held off. Something else. Something safe.
There's a deep breath from Daniel and then he says, "I wanted you to do a lot of things this last week or so, Jack, and I've been --"
"A pain in the ass about my failure to deliver?"
"I suppose that's a fair description."
"You betcha."
"Yes, well," Daniel licks his lips nervously, and sits up a little straighter, drawing his feet back so that they're not touching Jack. "One of them was read the notebook, because it, well, it would have saved time. I think."
"Huh?"
"It doesn't matter now. I wanted that, and I wanted you to apologise for what you did back on the planet --"
"Daniel --" Jack shoves his irritation away in favour of finishing this conversation without a fight.
"No, that doesn't matter either." Daniel's eyes are scanning Jack's face anxiously, his hands linked tightly on his bent knees. "You don't have to apologise, I suppose, just -- understand why what you did was a mistake and why I can't work with you until we get that sorted out."
"Daniel, so help me --"
"Jack -- the notebook; who besides Teal'c has read it?"
"Do you practice changing the subject like that?" Jack thinks about it, casually dropping his hand on top of Daniel's linked fingers and giving them a comforting squeeze. Daniel's gaze drops down and then up, meeting Jack's eyes meaningfully and Jack pulls his hand away. No touching? Okay. "I don't know. Teal'c took it to Hammond and told him he'd read it and there was nothing in it that anyone needed to know."
"That's not strictly true," Daniel says quietly.
"Yeah, well." Jack wishes Teal'c had lost the damned thing but it was too late now "Hammond's old school. Which means he took a copy to cover his ass, told Teal'c he'd do his best to keep it out of the official record, and said he wouldn't read it."
"Which means?"
"He read it." Jack grimaces apologetically. "He had to, Daniel. Any C.O. would have done. But he'll act like he didn't unless there was something in there that he has to deal with, and if there was, Teal'c would've said something. Don't worry about it. You can trust Hammond; when it comes to looking after his team, he's solid."
And he won't let anyone pass judgment on Daniel for going squirrelly when he thought he was about to die like that, Jack thinks.
"We're both on his team," Daniel says. He turns his head to look at Jack. "I'm not sure he can protect us both. Not when we're on opposite sides."
"We're on the same team, Daniel. Don't say that."
"Not now."
"Yes, now!" Jack gets up, needing to move. "Daniel, this inquiry -- no one but you is pushing for it. It has to happen now, but it can be rubber-stamped in a few hours if you just --"
"People died on that planet," Daniel says, his voice low and determined. "Everyone died except me."
"The only ones I care about are the people we sent through the 'gate and they died, yes, but an inquiry isn't going to change that and you know it wasn't down to anyone screwing up." Jack rounds on him, desperate to get Daniel to see it, admit the truth. "You built a fire. That's all. On that one planet, that was a mistake, but how the hell were you supposed to know that?"
"I don't know," Daniel whispers.
"And you're pissed at me, and yeah, I'm getting to see why, but to do this --" Jack stares at him helplessly. "You couldn't have talked to me about it? You had to demand an investigation? Tell them I'd fucked-up and got Foster and Talbot killed when you know damn well that's a lie?"
"You think I did that out of spite?" Daniel says slowly. "That this is me getting back at you?"
"Isn't it?"
"You think that and you're still here, trying to fuck me?" Daniel's face screws up in revulsion. "Last chance at my ass before one of us gets thrown off the programme?"
"No! Daniel, that's just bullshit." Jack fights to keep the anger from his voice. "And I didn't come here for that or you'd be naked by now, because I don't think this is all one-way here."
He can see Daniel absorb that and there's a moment when he thinks they can sidestep this argument and start to rebuild whatever's left of their friendship now that they've both come close to admitting there's something between them. As close as it can get when it's something that's doomed, dangerous and going to get them both in so much fucking trouble --
He should have known Daniel wouldn't let go of his guilt that easily.
"I can't do this," Daniel says, standing up, and his voice is breaking, anger and frustration poking holes in it. "You killed them and you did it to save me, which makes it my fault, too, because I've had four years to get you to trust me, and I've failed."
Jack tries to interrupt, but Daniel's not listening. His hands are pushing back through his short hair and he's animated, flushed, pacing up and down and never getting close to Jack.
"You'll protect me, yes. Die for me, if you have to. For any of us. You'd have died trying to save Foster and Talbot because that was what you'd been sent to do, wasn't it? Rescue us?" He doesn't wait for Jack's nod. "Yes, you would. You're good at that kind of thing. And this time I didn't need you to save me, or them."
"You were about to become a tree, Daniel! I'd say you needed someone and it happened to be me."
"I was about to do something you couldn't! Become part of something so far beyond your comprehension that you were terrified by it. Easier to destroy it than to learn from it, isn't that right?"
"You asked me to kill you if that happened," Jack reminds him wearily. "Sorry if I chose you over the Lindess. Won't catch me doing that again, I promise. Next alien who wants to suck your brains out, I'll hand them a straw. Are we done here?"
He wants to go home now. Change the bed so he isn't sleeping in sheets whose smell reminds him of Daniel, crawl into it and pass out. Reminds him because Daniel had been there in spirit as Jack jerked off, desperate for a release he'd been denied, free hand coming up to grind hard into his shoulder and brush lightly over his bruised neck.
Daniel had been dying in Jack's dreams all night. He can't rest easy on those sheets.
"I could have saved them," Daniel says. "And me. I was talking to the Lindess -- oh, not in any way you'd understand --"
"You know, you can be a condescending little shit at times."
"I don't mean -- it wasn't talking, that's all. We were -- it went deeper than that." Daniel's eyes are shining and he's trembling slightly. "And I was explaining, and it was seeing that we were different from the Shalin and I could hear Simon and Julia, they were there, they were part of it, and they weren't as frightened any more, they were calling to me --"
"Oh, for crying out loud," Jack says helplessly.
Daniel looks at him. "They weren't doing that any more. Or screaming. And the Lindess was giving them a choice. I think they could have reversed what was done -- they're so far beyond us, you have no idea -- but it's nothing we can use, so don't even ask -- and they were giving me a choice, too."
Daniel sighs, regretful and disconsolate. "And then you came."
It's so petulant and ungrateful that Jack's reduced to playground rhetoric. "Want me to say I'm sorry? Don't hold your breath."
"I want you to tell me why you didn't wait! I'd told you I had something to do --"
"And you thought that was enough?" Jack gapes at him. "You mumble something vague and take off without telling me where you're going and when I find you, you expect me to realise that you're talking to the thing that's making you like -- look -- God, Daniel, it was hurting you! Spikes through your neck, through your hands, and you were changing, I was losing you --"
Words. Jack's not good at this but Daniel's so fucking stubborn Jack has to carry on, give him more.
"I'd do it again. You were dying and I'd do it again. Every fucking time. Testify that I cost you a shot at getting Talbot and Foster back if it's what you believe and not what you've fooled yourself into thinking; I don't care. You're here and that means I did my job."
"Your job is not to protect me!"
"No. It isn't. Doesn't mean I won't. You, Carter, Teal'c; all of you. Don't think you're special, Daniel, because I'd have done the same for them." Jack goes to Daniel, grabbing his arms and holding him so Daniel can't walk away. "I was ordered to rescue you, Daniel. Authorised to use whatever means necessary to get you back. You're important, Daniel. You don't seem to get that, and it's something I like about you mostly, but you are. You don't get a choice about becoming a tree. We need you human."
"I could have saved them, Jack. Maybe found some way of helping the Lindess, too."
"We'll go back," Jack promises recklessly, sure he can persuade Hammond it's needed. "Daniel, if you think there's still a chance they're alive --"
"No." Daniel shakes his head. "No chance."
"You can't know that," Jack says.
"I can." Daniel closes his eyes. "You killed a Lindess. They --" He opens his eyes. "They saw us as... disease, contagion after that. They destroyed Simon and Julia rather than risk -- I was so close."
"I didn't know," Jack says quietly. And he hadn't. He's gone over it in his head and he still can't see any way it could've gone down differently. "Daniel, you were -- you should have seen how you looked. Like a walking nightmare. And you were hurting and scared. When I found you by that tree you were minutes away from being gone and I couldn't let that happen."
"Would it have mattered that much if I had?" Daniel's voice is cool. "I annoy you, Jack. You tell me that all the time. I interfere with the mission, I complicate your life because you want me and you don't know what to do about it." He nods as Jack winces and carries on, his voice rising. "Yes, I'm going to talk about that, too. Tired of not talking about it. I kept expecting you to make an opportunity so that we could discuss it and agree to -- oh, pretend, ignore it, fuck once and move on, whatever-- but I didn't even get that, did I? You just expected that I'd play along without even asking me how I felt about it. I didn't even get that. Well, screw you." Daniel's yelling now, quivering with outrage. "Tell me what we did just now, Jack. In the kitchen. Tell me, or get the hell out of here."
It's easier than Jack expected it to be.
"We were kissing, Daniel. We kissed, dammit."
That's just starting to sink in. A deliberate kiss. Two. With nothing to excuse it, although 'heat of the moment' described it well enough.
"Thank you," Daniel says and collapses onto the couch again, strings cut, the anger discarded abruptly as if it was too heavy a burden and he's happy to be rid of it
Jack hesitates and then sits beside him, both of them moving into the same position as before, with Daniel's bare feet snug against Jack's thigh.
It's not all that comfortable so Jack slides his hand under Daniel's ankles and taps his hand against them. Daniel straightens his legs without comment and lets them rest in Jack's lap, his right heel three inches away from Jack's balls. Jack hopes that's accidental rather than tactical. He takes a slow breath and says, "So you want to talk about it?"
Jack gets a nod, but it's followed by a silence rather than a question. He wonders if Daniel feels as empty and light as he does, waiting to be filled with something new.
Daniel's ankles are warm and bony under Jack's hand and his toes curl satisfactorily when Jack strokes his thumb along a hollow of skin, carving out an 'mmm' from the quietness.
Feet aren't meant to be looked at closely. Daniel's, well-shaped enough, with a sprinkle of fair hair at the base of each toe, barely visible in the light, are starting to look alien and amusing the longer Jack stares.
"Wiggle your toes," Jack says idly, breaking the lull that's done a good job of smoothing the edges off his emotions.
Daniel obeys him, then gives a swift squirm that brings his heel closer to Jack's groin.
Giving him a narrow-eyed look and getting an innocent one back, Jack runs his finger along the top of the toes on Daniel's right foot, big toe to little, bumping down the steps and catching the pad of his finger on an uneven nail. Daniel spreads his toes reflexively and Jack tries, and fails, to get his finger between two toes.
"Jack? What are you doing?" Daniel says in his calm, reasonable voice, the one Jack sometimes thinks Daniel saves for him.
"You've got some fluff in there," Jack says. Giving up, he leans forward and blows hard on Daniel's foot, dislodging a green thread, probably from a towel as Daniel's feet smell mostly of soap. Mostly. "Got it."
"God, Jack!" Daniel lashes out, kicking and scrambling back like a cat startled from sleep.
"Hey!" Jack twists, kneeling up on the couch, and grabs hold of Daniel's legs just above the knees, staring at him in bewilderment. "What did I do?" He grins. "Are you ticklish?"
"A little," Daniel says, his voice starting off higher than normal and turning husky in the space of a syllable. "It's just -- don't do that, okay?"
Jack's brain catches up with his eyes. Daniel's lying sprawled on his back, legs spread and held open by Jack's hands, the loose T-shirt riding up to expose a strip of stomach and a point of hipbone. The soft material of his pants is blurring the shape of an erection Jack's finding it difficult to ignore.
"You know, you could write 'fuck me' on your forehead and it'd be wetting water," Jack mutters.
Daniel looks perplexed, then pleased, and does something that has him ranking as high as air on the necessary for life scale. Jack can't quite work out the details -- more skin on show, maybe and Daniel's lip's pinked up from being bitten, and shiny from being licked -- but what had been accidental is now purposeful, and it should make Daniel less attractive because he's playing Jack, but it doesn't.
It's because Daniel's trying to seduce him, and doing a damn good job of it by anyone's standards, that Jack's hard. Too long thinking he was alone in the insanity of falling for someone on his team not to be pleased to be proved wrong.
Which doesn't make this less insane.
Slowly, and with great care, he removes his hands from Daniel's body and kneels back between Daniel's legs. The couch isn't wide enough for that, not really, and Daniel's foot slides off. He braces it on the floor, looking open and wanton, and yeah, maybe he's overdoing it with that not-very subtle tilt of his hips in invitation and challenge but Jack's dick's not inclined to take away points for it.
"Can we just --" Jack makes a time out signal with his hands and prays Daniel doesn't pout because that would be overkill and he doesn't want anything to spoil this.
Daniel frowns and says, "Why?"
Good question.
"It's not going to solve anything if I fuck you through the couch, Daniel."
"It'll take care of my erection and yours and I was assuming after yesterday that it would be me who..." Daniel lets his words die away which Jack would put down to shyness if it wasn't for the way Daniel hooks one hand behind his head, turning the pale, tender skin of his inner arm towards Jack.
Not shy.
"I'll arm wrestle you for who goes on top." Jack reconsiders. "Maybe tossing a coin's fairer."
Daniel smiles, stares up at the ceiling, and brings his free hand to rest on his thigh, fingers drumming gently. "Heads I win, tails you lose?"
"Huh?"
"I can fuck you without having to move from this position," Daniel points out. "And you'd still be on top."
Images slam and collide with unspoken words in his mind and Jack feels heat rise and roll over him. His skin knows just where Daniel's hands would be if they fucked like that and the knowledge is almost enough for him to feel the firm, sure grip.
"Yeah, I would." His cock's hard enough to make talking an effort. This hard, it should be buried deep in something, even if it's only the draughty haven of his fist, with words not a requirement. And in company, like now, his mouth should be too busy to talk ... Jack shudders, shallow breaths keeping him from getting audible at the thought of what it'd be like to kiss Daniel's belly, lick it, drag his teeth over it and feel Daniel tense and writhe, the muscles hardening for Jack to trace with his finger and chase with his tongue.
His face must give him away because Daniel makes a small, pained sound, eager and impatient, before he stops fucking about with his audition for centrefold poses and props himself up on his elbows.
"And I wanted this, if you're wondering. The kissing and the fucking, although maybe the bed would be better. But not until you'd --"
"Read the notebook. Yeah, well I think that might have to wait and you've only got yourself to blame for that." Jack fingers the ragged tear at the neck of Daniel's T-shirt, the back of his knuckles brushing Daniel's collarbone. Another few washes and the rip will unravel far enough that Daniel will have to mend it or discard the shirt. "Anyone ever tell you that you're not that good at planning stuff? And if I ripped this off you, would you mind?"
"No, I think it's more that you have a natural talent for disrupting my plans," Daniel says. "And, yes, I would."
"Why?" Jack asks, picking idly at the tear. "Could get you a new one from stores."
"I could get my own new one, thank you. I like this one."
"It's not yours," Jack says. He reaches behind Daniel's neck and yanks at the loose material until he can read the label. "Size too big." He's starting to think -- "Daniel, is this mine? The one I snagged when we were climbing up that escarpment and they were throwing stones at us?"
Daniel stares at him, wide-eyed. "You think I'm wearing your old T-shirt to bed? Want to check under my pillow for a photo of you that I kiss before drifting off to sleep?"
"Okay, okay, no need to --" Jack's flustered now, feeling ridiculously put-out.
"For God's sake, Jack! It's mine. It got issued when stores were out of my size and when I got a replacement I brought it home because it seemed a waste to just throw it out. The collar got ripped in the laundry." Daniel glares at him. "And I sleep naked."
"Well, good for you!"
Daniel's mouth twitches. "You're upset, aren't you?"
"No." Jack lies. "You're not the sentimental kind."
"No, I'm not," Daniel agrees easily. "But you are."
"Can we make this something we never mention again?" Jack asks plaintively.
"That's getting to be a long list of off-limit topics." Daniel hesitates. "This -- is it something we can do, Jack? Nothing's changed. In fact, this is a terrible time for you to even be here."
"Because of the inquiry?" Jack sighs. "Yeah, it is. And, no, we can't do it, but I think we're going to anyway."
"We don't have to," Daniel says quietly. "I'm not angry that we can't fuck; I understand the reasoning behind it, in part at least."
"It doesn't make any difference," Jack says. "Whether we --"
He stumbles over what comes next and gets a nudge from Daniel's heel and an amused 'Say it.'
"Make love," Jack says, turning the words into a challenge. "Whether we do or not, I've still got a head full of stuff that could get me in worse trouble than I am now if people knew, and I'm still going on missions with you when I should've got you transferred the hell away from me months ago. Years." His hand tightens around Daniel's ankle. "I thought I was handling it but you had to go and almost die on me again, didn't you?"
"Sorry," Daniel murmurs. "I hadn't realised it was such an aphrodisiac."
Jack makes a lemon-sour face and Daniel has the grace to look repentant. "You've got this reputation for being so fucking nice, Daniel. Why don't you try living up to it?"
"I'm sorry." This time it sounds sincere. "I've been so angry with you since we got back; had so many fights with you in my head..."
"Are you angry now?" Jack pushes up the loose material of Daniel's sweat pants, fingers spread wide as he caresses Daniel's calf. Daniel's still hard, or hard again; Jack's not sure which and he doesn't care. Doesn't care that this might count as cheating to get the answer he wants either; Daniel deserves it after that crack.
"I can want to fuck you when I'm angry with you, Jack. I wouldn't read too much into this." Daniel sounds amused as he runs his fingers slowly over the solid promise of his erection, gasping slightly as his smile slips away, replaced by an inward look of concentration.
Years of fantasies about what Daniel will look like on the verge of climax get discarded as Jack watches him fight for control, his eyes darkening, half-closed, full lips parted.
"Been a while for you, has it? Anyone would do?"
"Save the fishing for when you're at your cabin."
Daniel slips off his glasses, reaching over his head to drop them on a side table. Jack gets an eyeful of skin again. It's skin he can be genuinely indifferent to when Daniel's showering beside him and they've got company, but flashed at him like this in brief, teasing flickers, it's torture.
"Answer the question, Daniel."
"Which one?"
"Are you still angry with me? For any of it?"
Daniel wriggles down a little, forcing Jack's hand higher up his leg. "Yes, but my capacity to forgive where you're concerned is fairly high. It has to be."
"Goes both ways, Doctor Jackson," Jack says.
Daniel makes an indistinct murmur and reaches for Jack's hand, pulling Jack down on top of him and then forcing Jack's hand to take a handful of his T-shirt.
"Take it out on this," he says.
"Oh, you bet I will," Jack says. The angle's useless and the cotton's tougher than it looks, so he abandons the attempt to do it one-handed and sits up, straddling Daniel, which is distracting, and ripping the T-shirt from neck to hem with a flourish.
Daniel arches his eyebrows. "Feel better?"
Jack stares at Daniel's chest, feeling possessive about the skin he's revealed. "Kind of like Columbus."
"In what way?"
Jack rubs his finger across Daniel's lips until Daniel obligingly opens them, sucking at it with a swirl of his tongue that sends a shudder through Jack. He pulls his finger free, suffering an indignant scrape from Daniel's teeth as they snap closed, and draws a spit-damp 'X' on Daniel's chest with it.
"Claiming territory I've discovered," he says smugly.
"At least you didn't label it virgin territory," Daniel murmurs teasingly.
Jack shrugs, equally uncomfortable with the idea that Daniel is or isn't experienced when it comes to sleeping with a man.
"You're not going to ask, are you?"
"Don't ask, don't --"
"Finish that sentence and I'll close my borders," Daniel says, the joke failing to rob the words of their sharpness. "So fucking sick of hearing that."
"Sorry. No, I'm not going to ask. Or I wasn't." It occurs to him that maybe they should talk about some things, but he's unsure where to start. The closed-mouth kiss and the hand job with added kink don't mesh and he only knows that Daniel's going to have to be the one taking the lead because he sure as hell isn't ready for another fight about his over-protectiveness.
"I've done this before, I'm clean, I don't want to rush you but there are condoms and lube in my bedroom if we need them, and the rest is none of your business," Daniel says in a clipped rush that sounds a little rehearsed.
"Well, that was very --" Jack bends his head and licks the patch of skin he's been tormented by for the last hour. Clean skin. He wishes he'd caught Daniel before his shower, body sleeked with the residue of the day. " Informative. Ditto, by the way." He sits up and slides his hands inside the waistband of Daniel's sweat pants. "Up."
He waits until Daniel's naked, apart from the torn T-shirt, to take a good look at him, and discovers that when he thought he knew what Daniel looked like naked, he'd been wrong. He knows the shape of Daniel's hands and how his fingers crook around a pen; knows the lines of the back of his neck and the shape of his ears, curving tightly to meet his scalp. He can stare at them, un-remarked and safe, and so he's learned them by heart.
Everything else he's only been able to grab at, jigsaw-piece-jumbles of split-second glances that he's pieced together into patchwork into a paint-by-numbers Daniel to jerk off with.
This is better. No surprise there. He looks first, not at Daniel's face, or his cock, but at the skin he remembers being thickened and warped by the invading alien growth. There had been a place on Daniel's chest --
Nothing remains. The skin's smooth, the light tan interrupted by a freckle here and there, dusted with a scatter of hair low on Daniel's belly. By the time Jack's got that far down he can't miss the emphatic thrust of Daniel's cock and he doesn't try. He's close enough to smell the heady, ripe smell of arousal, trapped in the tight creases of skin, released as Daniel parts his legs as wide as he can.
But he has to look again before he touches, tastes, and it's worth it.
The ripped T-shirt's definitely coming off if Daniel turns onto his belly. Jack wants that long, solid stretch of skin exposed more than he wants the visceral clench of muscle in the pit of his stomach when he remembers tearing the shirt open. For now, though, with Daniel spread out on his back, the ragged T-shirt's the salt and lime that's making Jack's mouth prickle with saliva, soft and heavy against his tongue.
His body's waking up in a dozen different ways, stirring from enforced sleep, and hungry. The clothes he's wearing feel bulky, hampering him, but he can't spare the time to strip them off and Daniel's so ready --
There's a pale sheen across the head of Daniel's cock, leaking across the rumpled, retreating foreskin. Jack touches the tip of his tongue to it, tasting it curiously, feeling a sense-memory surge forward, clamouring to be recognised.
Daniel makes an inarticulate sound and grabs at him, one hand sliding through Jack's hair, the other, by chance, maybe, clutching at Jack's shoulder. "Jack!"
Jack rotates his shoulder gently into Daniel's grip and lets Daniel push his head down lower.
He never had thought that they'd make it off the couch to the bed.
Daniel's cock wedged far back in his mouth when Daniel's tongue hasn't done more than flirt with his lips should be disconcerting but Jack's getting used to the dichotomy that is Daniel and he negotiates a retreat with an admonishing slap on Daniel's flank.
"Gotta breathe, Daniel," he grumbles softly, his palm cushioned on the springy bush of hair around the base of Daniel's cock, thumb and fingers holding it steady.
"Which is why you have a nose," Daniel says snippily.
Jack bites him, teeth sinking far enough into flesh to leave white dents that fill and darken as he watches. "Got teeth, too."
Daniel rubs at his thigh with a thoughtful push-scrub of his fingers and doesn't comment. His hand stays there and Jack kisses it, moved by an impulse he can't explain, feeling the convex slipperiness of fingernails against his lips and mouthing the bent-up knuckles until they flatten and a single finger works its way past his teeth.
Jack allows the intrusion, thinking ahead and knowing it's going to be difficult to say 'no' to anything Daniel wants to do to or with him. Daniel's too curious not to stray past limits Jack drew in black, zigzagging wildly around what worked for him, but Jack's more worried about his own competitive nature taking him to places he doesn't really want to go. He pictures Daniel exploring a multitude of kinks with a thoughtful frown, lips pushed out in a contemplative pout, and chokes on ill-timed laughter.
Daniel's finger pauses and then hooks firmly in the corner of Jack's mouth, tugging it inexorably to the side.
"Suck me," he says, wiping his finger across Jack's cheek in a flickering caress.
"What?" Jack doesn't mind doing it -- wants to do it -- but hearing Daniel tell him to is something else again.
"Suck my cock, so I can come," Daniel says with the clarity of the desperate. "Get on with it or get out of the way and let me --" His hand snakes down and Jack, after a stupefied second where he allows Daniel to get in a blurringly fast few strokes, growls and peels Daniel's hand away.
"I'm right here, Daniel ..."
Unbelievable. This is a man who can spend hours working on the exact meaning of one word and he's turned into a demanding, pushy, impatient --
Jack gives Daniel's dick one defiantly slow lick, dragging his tongue across and around, up and down, and then engulfs it in a rush that tears a muffled groan from Daniel. He squints up and sees Daniel's hand wedged between his teeth.
"Sound-track helps," he gets out between succulent mouthfuls and then he shuts up and Daniel gets noisy.
He's forgotten too much to make it as good as it could be, but he gets the impression that Daniel's in a mood to be forgiving about this, no matter how many other grudges he's still hugging close. Even a collision between incisor and cock doesn't get him anything but a whimper from Daniel.
There's no time to regain a level of expertise that, if Jack's honest about it, was never that high. He's done this enough that he knows swallowing beats spitting and his mouth will taste of come even after he's brushed his teeth. Not enough to be sure he'll be the best Daniel's had though, which he hates.
Daniel's hands are touching him now, light touches Jack guesses are supposed to reassure them both; I'm fine, you're doing fine, don't stop, oh God, tapped out in a code of gently tugged and twisted strands of hair and scribbled on skin over and over until Jack knows he'll still be marked in red tomorrow and his scratched skin will sting in the heated water he'll have to stand under, washing Daniel away.
By the time Daniel's panting, chanting out Jack's name on a rapidly rising note, his thumbs are hard points pressed into Jack's collarbone and the heel of one foot is scraping down the back of Jack's calf.
It's all confined and constricted by the couch; Daniel's half off it as it is, and Jack's slid sideways himself, one foot flat on the floor, his leg muscles screaming for a release that's going to have to wait on Daniel's.
Bed, Jack promises himself. Next time they do this on the bed.
He opens his eyes when he realises they're shut and sees the thicket of hair around Daniel's cock rushing up and receding, a trail of spit winding through it, silver-dark. He's got the squish and roll of Daniel's balls under the heel of his hand and that's all he's planning to do because suddenly this is too sudden and he's floundering and lost, the insistent beat of blood in his cock thrumming through him, disorientating him.
Daniel's hand slips to cup the back of Jack's neck, stroking it once and then clamping down as his body jerks and shudders.
Jack loves this and always knew that he would. Daniel. Daniel losing it, cock getting impossibly harder, spunk pulsing up and spurting out to swirl and fill Jack's mouth as he fights to swallow, his abused throat muscles protesting.
Like this, making sounds that aren't words in any language, Daniel's his, reduced to base level, genius mind wiped clean as his body rocks and squirms and clutches, helpless and strong.
When Daniel quiets down, Jack opens his mouth and laps at Daniel's cock as it glides past his lips, taking the taste of it deep and cleaning up the final leaking drops of come until Daniel sighs and shudders and murmurs his name.
By the time Jack's lying beside him, squashed and uncomfortable, both of them grunting as they try to accommodate themselves to the space, he's got a smile on his face that won't go away and an overpowering need to cuddle close that even the assault on his ribs from Daniel's elbow can't quench.
They settle down on their sides, Daniel wrapped around him with a tenacity that borders on ferocious until the kisses Jack's layering onto his hair and temple gentle him down and the hand that isn't trapped under Jack begins to roam.
"Jack?"
"Mmm?"
"Why are you still wearing clothes?"
"I don't know," Jack admits. "Never seemed like a good point to take them off."
Daniel's hand burrows between them, searching out Jack's erection, not forgotten, by Jack at least, but taking care of Daniel had come first.
"Now? Is now good?"
Jack pushes Daniel's face up so he can kiss him. "I can wait."
Daniel's tongue is warm and wet and stroking over Jack's a moment later. Third time lucky, or maybe Daniel's just better at kissing when he's relaxed. Jack's eyes close, only to snap open when Daniel pulls away an inch or two.
"Jack?"
"What?"
"Take off your clothes." Daniel starts to undo Jack's shirt one-handed, fumbling with the stiff buttons. "Now. Because I can't."
Part Eleven
Tags:
- fic,
- jack/daniel,
- sg-1,
- slash