Filling In the Blanks
by Komos


"I told Sam I wouldn't help you."

The resonant timbre of Daniel's voice came through the phone into Jack's ear and went straight down his body and straight up to the tip of his dick.

He said something sarcastic about Carter and kept shaving. He'd only prompted Daniel for an answer to the puzzle to keep him on the line another few seconds -- keep that voice in his ear. Stupid indulgence; should have just let him go. Now he'd have to shake off this damned erection before he left for the mountain.

Crossword, he thought, focus, and gave Daniel a clue.

The answer didn't help at all, because it came in Daniel's voice.

He gave a vague response and hung up on Daniel. Even that last "No, the word you're looking for -- " was a melody; it kept running through his head after he killed the connection, like a pop song or a commercial jingle after he slapped the radio off.

Goddammit. He stripped the taped crossword off the mirror with more than a little irritation, wiped excess lather from his face with the hand towel on his way out, and went into the bedroom fully intending to get dressed and get his ass in to work.

He'd fully intended to pay attention to the crossword, too, to piss Carter off by filling it in with joke answers that connected; it was a sucker bet, he was good at crosswords and did them all the time when he couldn't sleep, there was a pile of Times crossword books on the base shelf of the nightstand, a collection of pencils in the drawer. He'd work on one until he was completely absorbed, nothing else in his head -- and then stop, turn the light out, settle down into the pillow. If he'd finished the one from the night before, he started the next one and left that halfway through. He stopped on purpose, because it bugged him to leave them unfinished, because that way he'd be trying to pull that synonym for "unrequited" off the tip of his tongue instead of replaying the last time the tip of Daniel's tongue swiped over his lower lip. He did crosswords so that he'd fall asleep while he wasn't looking. So that he wouldn't resort to jerking off. So that he wouldn't think about what he wasn't supposed to think about when he did that.

Crosswords were a double displacement of his lust for Daniel.

This one, this morning, had only made things worse.

Fucking bet. It was more trouble thinking up funny wrong answers than just doing the damn thing.

He let the square of newsprint flutter onto the bureau. He didn't get dressed. He lay down on the bed, naked, the cool air curling around the outside of his body, Daniel's voice still curling around the inside of his skull.

OK bye delivered in patented Adorable Mode, a cuteness that no six-foot hundred-and-ninety-pound man pushing forty should be allowed. The tongue-tripping youthful near-stutter, the way his voice went up into that boyish range when he was eager and excited, access and information and Tok'ra crystals and energy. The easygoing mid-range dipping down low to recap Jack's last Ancient experience, that thing that grabbed your head made you talk crazy nearly killed ya, the rich intonation, as if he were murmuring a reminder of intimate secrets. The tumble of planetary code designations and SG unit numbers and translating and colonnade like the liquid music of a mountain stream spilling over rocks.

In Daniel's rushed mumble, the word "repository" was aural sex.

God damn it. He hesitated for a second, then gave in, and touched himself. Just a light press, thumb and a couple of fingers. Just to see.

Christ he was hard. And his fingertips felt really, really good.

As soon as the flush of pleasure bloomed, a clingy foreboding loosened and let go of him. When he eased his touch back, it crowded in again. A bad feeling about this thing they found. A bad feeling he'd had for days now, persistent, like a low-grade fever. He'd tried to rinse Daniel's report off in the sink, stifle it in the burble of water, because he could feel it, that imminent step, the start of a forced march towards a doom he couldn't draw a bead on. The promise of his fingertips, light touches on balls and glans, erased the dark hunches like bad guesses from a puzzle. Stripped of its message, the report was just the rise and fall of Daniel's voice, stroking every erongenous zone in his brain.

This wouldn't make him too late. Just thinking about what he was about to do made his balls tighten into an ache. Couple of minutes of relief and he'd be ready to roll. Hell, he couldn't go in to work with a full load, not if the sound of Daniel talking was going to get him this wound up.

He was too shower-damp for long teasing caresses, and he needed this done fast, but he didn't want to go in sore. He swore that Daniel could tell from the way he walked. There was no difference in his movements that he could feel, but he'd walk up to Daniel and Daniel would give him one of those inscrutable, sidelong looks, gaze dropping incrementally, and he'd know that Daniel knew. Keep the friction to a minimum and maybe he'd be spared the once-over of doom.

He scooped the worn tube out of the nightstand, scrabbling past pencils and bottles of pain reliever and a mini-flashlight and condoms he must have bought six years ago that were probably dry husks inside the packaging. There were toys under a closet floorboard; he'd learned a long time ago how to take care of himself, what got him off the deepest so that he could focus on his job in the week ahead, but digging them out was too much of a production, and he didn't like to rush those sessions.

Skin was simpler. Skin was faster. He slicked up and got down to business.

The first long, sweet squeezes were good. Very good. Heat swelled through his groin and he arched into his hand ... and the motion of thrusting himself up into his own grip made him conscious of how it was his own grip, and how it wasn't sex.

Didn't matter. He needed this. He was doing this. Not going to stop now. Couple of minutes late; let them wait. Did feel good. Felt real good. Maybe he should do this more often. Just him and his skin getting reacquainted. Screw the glove and the plugs and the vibes. Screw the crosswords. Screw the porn he couldn't stand to look at anymore. Screw the mental lockdown he could never maintain anyway.

He bent his knees and spread his legs and moved his dry hand down between them. Never liked the feel of lube on his balls; forgot how much he liked the way flesh caught on flesh, the scratchy pleasure of hair against skin. He cupped himself, squeezed and rolled, then gave a few long, petting tugs.

OK, way more than good now. He turned his left hand and gave his balls a good pull and held it; he pumped his right hand fast over the lube, not too tight. Felt the burn begin in his forearm, savored it. Angled his hand a little, secured the grip, increased the pressure 'til he was fisting himself. Worked up to double the speed. Yeah ... oh yeah ... oh yeah ...

When he hit the peak of crap too good too good can't hold it, he rolled onto his side, then into a facedown hump; he twisted his right hand, hard, up over the head, and came with a groan, his ass in the air, his face in the bedding, his left hand cradling his balls. He finished himself fast, thumb and two fingers on the shaft just under the head, a blur of motion through the sweet slickness, milking it.

The groan echoed back to him in his mind's ear. At the tail end of it was a sound somewhere between a sigh and a word. The word was something like a name with the first and last consonants filed off.

He pretended he hadn't heard.

He wanted to lie there, let it soak through him, but he'd spattered himself pretty good and he'd have to rinse off in the shower.

He thought, Three minutes. Just three minutes. It felt so good to just be still, his skin flushed through with warmth. It wouldn't kill them to wait three more minutes. But if he lay here any longer, he'd be imagining a warm weight in the bed beside him, a familiar hand running down his spine, the brush of a gentle, hungry mouth across his shoulder. Skin that wasn't his.

No. He rolled over and up off the bed, stripped the creamed comforter and stuffed it into the hamper, ran the shower very cold. Toweled off fast and hard, threw some clothes on, threw the spare quilt over the bed, snatched up the stupid crossword, drove to the mountain. In the parking bay, he spent two minutes filling the squares in with random answers, to make it look as though he'd been doing something. Then he went in.

He had no idea what time it was. A lot later than he'd thought. The three of them were standing there like parents up waiting for a teenager who'd missed curfew, an array of crossed arms and arms akimbo and watch-tapping. Daniel quantified his lie and his lateness with snotty sternness; not off to a good start here. Jack flourished the crossword at Carter as he pushed past; he knew there was humor buried somewhere in the fact that she was more outraged by his bogus answers than by his lateness, but he couldn't zero in on it. Harper and Reynolds hid their snarky grins just in time; the general took the tone with him that you'd take with a tardy cadet, and Jack was almost surprised not to hear "Drop and give me twenty, airman."

Fifty. He'd have given himself fifty if he showed up with an attitude like his.

Once the briefing was under way, Jack could barely look at Daniel, and he couldn't push his attention onto anything else. He was defocusing on purpose. He knew he was doing it, and he didn't care, except that his own private excuse wasn't cutting it anymore, and the combined reactions of his team and his CO were seeping in: He was never late. He was always where he said he'd be when he said he'd be there. He wasn't like this. Why the hell was he being like this?

He tried to wrestle his attention back to the room. Hammond had said that he was surprised Jack would be willing to go on this mission after what happened before. Who said anything about willing? They did what they had to do. This thing could be the key to defending the planet against the Goa'uld. What was he gonna do, say, No, I still have nightmares about that last time, send someone else? This was what his team did. This was what his team was for.

Then, fervently and out of nowhere, while Daniel was singing an aria about knowledge and the known universe and saving the galaxy, Jack thought, I don't want to leave you. He kept feeling it, with a desperate wild strength he couldn't quell, while he wasn't listening to Carter explain the headsucker to Reynolds and Harper, while he wasn't looking at Daniel.

When Daniel said something about primitive physiology, and Jack lobbed a knee-jerk "Eeeasy, fella" warning across the table at him, and Daniel mouthed a silent apology in return, Jack realized what it was.

He wasn't going to make it through this one. The mission briefing had transformed the vague foreboding into cold, hard certainty. He'd known it would do that, and he'd looked for any way he could to delay it. Even wildly out-of-character passive-aggressive irresponsibility.

For the rest of the briefing he made noises where it seemed like he was supposed to, stating the obvious, needling Daniel -- all stuff he could do in his sleep. Then Hammond gave them a go, and the meeting broke up, and he came out of the fugue. Doom shmoom; job to do, get with the program. He was back in lockstep with his own fate. His little crazydance in the middle hadn't broken him out of formation. Hard march ahead of him. Get the show on the road.

Daniel gave him a funny look as the briefing room emptied. Some of it was that little sidelong not-smirk. The bastard knew. He'd known the moment Jack came out of the elevator. Must have pheromone receptors tailored to out Jack's self-indulgences. But there was an edge to it this time. As if that maybe-still-more-glowy-than-they-all-adm

itted brain of his had caught a whiff of that stinking doom, too.

Jack snapped, "What?," and Daniel blinked and said, "What?," and Jack went and got geared up. A few hours later he was slamming Daniel against an ancient pillar, snarling that he was the last person who could stick his head in that thing. Then the wall boxed his ears and zapped his eyeballs, and he came around to the sound of explosions and weapons fire, and then he was running, and then he was back telling Hammond he did it again, and after the infirmary it was everybody pretty much agreeing that there was nothing they could do but wait, keep trying to contact incommunicado allies, yadda yadda.

If he left now, he could still catch The Simpsons. He didn't want to know that Daniel was working all night looking for a solution that wasn't there. He didn't want to be in the mountain at all. He hadn't even wanted to come in today.

He went home, watched TV, drank some beers then stopped bothering; he started the three thousandth letter to his ex and balled it up after the salutation and tossed it. He stayed up 'til dawn watching the stars and not imagining that Daniel was beside him watching them too. He crashed on his couch in his clothes for a few blessed hours and was woken by a knock on the door.

Carter come to agonize through the inevitable. He'd really, really hoped they could just skip this part. He'd planned to spend the day sorting stuff into boxes and feeling like a shit for all the people he wasn't phoning. Kinda wanted to make a start on that.

He couldn't talk about what Carter needed to talk about. The very fact that he couldn't, wouldn't, should have been his answer all by itself. Hadn't she learned anything from Hanson? It wasn't the lunatic fringe that attracted her. It was the challenge of an impossible nut to crack. The fantasy of the man she'd find inside if she could ever work the hard shell open.

That guy's not in here, he thought, sucking at his beer, wishing to hell the doorbell would ring, the phone, a smoke alarm, anything.

Then something in the way she looked at him, after he told her that defending the planet would be worth his life -- or maybe something in the way he said it, something that wasn't heroism or flippant bravado but some fluke of accidental honesty ... For a moment he thought that maybe they were going to surprise each other. For a fraction of a second he thought that maybe they saw each other clearly -- just for the briefest instant -- and that she was going to tell him she was sincerely sorry things hadn't been different but she'd seen what the right guy looked like now and she only wished there'd been someone right for him. Or something to that effect. Something along those lines.

Then came the rap on the door, the disingenuous "Hel-loo," the rest of his team riding to the rescue with bogus excuses and doughnuts, and the moment was gone.

He was almost sorry. Then he wasn't; she'd been trying to ask about Sara, and if she'd been thinking of going anywhere near the question of whether he'd contacted her then it was a damn good thing the cavalry had come. Then he was sorry; he had stuff to box up, laundry to do, last thing he wanted was to host his own goddamn wake. Would have been OK if there hadn't been a pressure mine on the table, everyone picking their way around the fact that his brains were toast. Would have been OK if Daniel wasn't so fucking cute when he was pretending to be stoned on two bottles of stout, all the while guiding the conversation, greasing the social wheels, making an awkward situation tolerable. It might even have ended after pizza if Hammond hadn't swung by to drop his bombshell before the delivery came. Then they had to gripe and worry about that while they ate, and then they had to play a few hands of cards to take their minds off it, and it was almost eight by the time Carter said she'd left Pete on his own long enough and Teal'c caught a ride back to the mountain with Hammond.

"I'll get out of your hair," Daniel said, taking the steps to the hall, jingling his keys in his pocket. "I know that was torture for you, Jack. Teal'c said it would be dishonorable to let you stew on your own. I lied about that. Sorry. I swear I'd have let you stew in peace."

"Stick around for a while," Jack said. "Come up and look at the stars with me." Too late, he thought, Way to keep the guy from making a graceful exit. He winced, and glanced down to hide it, rubbing at some non-existent shmutz on the turntable cover. "Or is there somewhere else you have to be?"

"There was a dinner party. I phoned in regrets a few hours ago." Daniel was still standing at the top of the steps, still jingling his keys.

Jack went back to the couch and sat down, feeling worn and weary. "Daniel, there's some stuff we should straighten out."

Daniel came down the steps, a slight frown creasing the skin between his eyes. They'd already talked about arrangements; funeral, house, who to contact -- all that had been set up years ago.

"What did Sam say to you?" Daniel asked, sounding even more tired than Jack felt.

"What?" Now Jack frowned. "Carter? She said she should have stuck her head in that thing. I told her it went down the way it had to."

"That's all? She didn't say why?" Daniel took a couple of cautious steps closer, put his hands on the back of the Windsor chair that Hammond had sat in.

"What did she say to you?" Jack asked warily, figuring that if there was a why he didn't know about, she must have told Daniel earlier. They were on the phone with each other all the damn time.

"Nothing," Daniel said, leaning on the back of the chair. "Nothing today. It doesn't matter. Go ahead. What do we need to straighten out?"

Jack was confused, exhausted, his hackles up, and he'd lost his nerve. "Forget it. Go on, go enjoy what's left of your weekend. Thanks for stopping by."

"I'd rather stay, actually," Daniel said. "I was leaving because I thought you'd want me to."

No, Jack thought, when his stomach did a slow roll. Take it at face value. At friendship value. There isn't any other value. "Well, I'd rather you stick around. So?"

"So, OK," Daniel said, and favored him with a smile that made Jack suddenly, shockingly, happy. So happy that even recognizing how unfamiliar the feeling was couldn't make him feel it any less.

They cleared the pizza debris and bagged the recycling. Daniel made coffee and filled a thermos. They climbed up and looked at the stars for a couple of hours. Daniel fell asleep sitting upright in his lawn chair on the roof deck. Jack woke him with a gentle hand on his head. One last liberty.

"Jack," Daniel said, before he really knew where he was.

"Come on," Jack said, warm and kind. "I'll make up the couch for you."

Daniel just about made it down the ladder and inside. He looked poleaxed with fatigue.

"How much sleep have you actually gotten in the last two days?" Jack asked, handing bedding down from the linen closet and giving Daniel a spin-push toward the living room.

"I don't know. Couple of hours."

"Jeeze, Daniel." Jack wrestled a quilt and a pillow off the top shelf and followed Daniel inside to find that he'd set the folded sheets on the couch and was turning around.

"Jack, I can't do this," he said softly.

"What, impose? You haven't stayed here since your last lifetime."

"I can't ... "

Daniel stopped. Jack dumped the quilt and pillow onto the chair and put his patient attentive face on again. It took more effort now than it had with Carter.

A flash of smile -- not the happy one anymore -- crossed Daniel's face. "I want to keep you company, Jack. I really do. I meant that when I said it. Someone should be here, in case you, you know, in the middle of the night. And Sam wanted me to stay. There's even a poetic symmetry to it, me staying here, like when you took me in that first night I was back on Earth."

"Different sofa," Jack said.

"Yeah, and that's good, you know that other mattress really sucked."

"Nobody ever slept on it but you. You should have told me."

Again the pained smile, there and gone. "I need to go, Jack. I can get Teal'c, if you think another forty, fifty minutes won't -- "

"No driving," Jack said, not kidding around. "You're halfway to Coma Land."

"I can't -- " Daniel stopped again, and then said, "I can't spend the night here, Jack."

Jack felt as if he'd swallowed a lead sinker. A line full of cold lead sinkers. He tried to say I'm sorry but couldn't. Not for the first time. Like his mouth was designed to fail whenever he tried. "I didn't mean to -- " he managed, then swore. "I'll drop you home. Come on."

"You didn't mean ... ?" Daniel prompted, unmoving.

He knew. Daniel knew. He'd always known. The sidelong glances. The not-quite-smirks. And still with the innocent act, still with the oblivious shtick. God damn it. "You're getting some kind of vibe off me, right? Putting up with it, tolerating it? But sleeping in my house is pushing it too far. I'm -- " Mouth failure. Liplock. Not the kind of liplock he'd have ... "I thought I was handling it." He grimaced and turned away, headed for the phone table where his wallet lay next to the keys to his truck.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about a form of harassment. Honest to God, Daniel, I never intended that. Come on. I won't maul you in the truck, it's only a ten-minute drive."

"Stop. Stop. Wait."

Jack twisted around hard, arms swinging. "What?"

"You think I thought you were coming on to me?"

"No," Jack said, in an obnoxious snarl. "If I came on to you I wouldn't offer you the fucking sofa, now, would I?"

They stared hard at each other for a good twenty seconds.

"What just happened?" Daniel asked softly.

"I don't know. A mistake. Misunderstanding. Come on. I'm taking you home." He changed his mind, put his wallet and keys down. "No, screw that." He picked up the phone. "I'm calling a taxi. You have cash on you? I can -- "

"Jack. Put the phone down."

Jack sighed, punched the disconnect, put the cordless back in the handset.

"Handling what, Jack?"

"Nothing. Nothing you need to know about. Forget I said anything. Blame it on the Ancients." He turned. It was hard to look at Daniel. Suddenly, it was almost as hard as it was when he ascended. Letting go. "Look. You're wiped. I'm wiped. The cab company's star-five on the speed dial. You have my keys, just turn the deadbolt when you leave. You want to stay, stay. Do not drive -- that's an order, goddammit -- and for god's sake don't send anyone over here. OK? I'm hitting the sack."

He left Daniel standing there. He went back to his bedroom and lay down in his clothes, on his back, his arm over his eyes, waiting to hear whatever he heard. Daniel's voice on the phone with the taxi service. The sound of Daniel locking the door behind him and getting into his Jeep. After a while he thought Daniel must have just sacked out on the couch without opening it. That was fine. That was what he should do, except that it was too short for him and he'd be grumping about a backache in the morning, and there'd be no end on the goddamn questions in the morning, and Jack loved the sight of Daniel sleepy and rankled in the morning, and it would only be worse when he finally left.

Nothing he could do about that now. Nothing he could do about his own fuckup. Let it go. Plenty of other things to lose sleep over right now.

Daniel padded to the door of the bedroom in his socks. "Suppose I came in with you?" he said, as if the conversation hadn't ended.

"That wasn't one of the options," Jack said, not moving his arm.

"I'm asking if it is."

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Actually, I think I do." Daniel came into the room.

"You really don't," Jack said, moving his arm off his face.

"I really do," Daniel said, kneeing onto the bed and stretching out beside him.

"You are not coming on to me," Jack said flatly. If this was curiosity -- or, worse, mercy -- he'd fucking kill him.

"Well, no," Daniel said. "If I were coming on to you, I wouldn't have come in here in my clothes, would I?" He laid his hand on Jack's ribs. Massive breach of personal space, even for them. "I'm still waiting for an answer."

Jack felt a tremor go through his belly and knew that Daniel could feel it. "What was the question again?" he said, weakly.

"Can I sleep with you."

"Yeah. Of course." Cursing himself for a miserable coward, he said, "I never sleep right when you're not around, Daniel."

"Can I sleep with you with no clothes on. Can I touch you. Like this." He slid his hand under Jack's shirt, rubbed a warm, slow circle over Jack's skin.

"Now you're coming on to me," Jack said stupidly, and winced, waiting for Daniel's soft, low, dry voice to murmur, No shit, Sherlock ...

Daniel said, "Should I stop?"

Out of all the clear and obvious things that Daniel had said over the past few minutes, should I stop was what finally got through. Or maybe it was the hand. The long-fingered, capable hand, sending a message Jack could tune out when it came as a sound, but not as a touch.

There was no misinterpreting that touch.

"No. God, no. Daniel -- " He rolled onto his side, froze for the merest hair of a second, then threw an arm around Daniel's neck and hauled him close. "I didn't know."

"Neither did I," Daniel said, breath soft and hot on his ear, hand sliding around to his back. Long, soft fingers on his spine. "Go figure."

"I don't know what I'm doing. I mean -- Fuck."

"Neither do I," Daniel said. "I think we can figure it out."

"You might not like it."

"I'll like it. Believe me." Daniel drew back. The planes of his face were striking in the oblique light. "Can we take our clothes off now?"

Jack sat halfway up and stripped off his pullover, then arched back to get his pants off. Daniel had unbuttoned his shirt and was sliding it off. He pushed out of his slacks, peeled his socks off, then took off his glasses and handed them to Jack. "Nightstand. You have any lube, while you're over there?"

Jack laid the glasses down carefully and opened the drawer. "Moving kind of fast here," he said quietly.

"Be prepared," Daniel sang, gently mocking. Jack hadn't been a Boy Scout, but Daniel never stopped teasing him as if he had.

"There's condoms too," Jack said. "Old, though."

"Do I need you to wear one?" Daniel asked, running a finger back and forth under the elastic of Jack's briefs, just over his hip.

"Who says I'm the, uh ... wearer?"

"I know you'll like it that way. I know I'll like it that way. Go with the sure thing."

"How do you know something like that?" He was mesmerized by Daniel's face, by the play of his finger back and forth, by his quiet certainty. But he'd said ...

"The answer to that would fall in the realm of TMI. Do we need to use protection, Jack? This body has never had sex, so the question is for you."

Jack had some trouble coping with what this body has never had sex did to his body. "No. Been a couple of years. Lot of tests between."

Daniel's brows went up, but he didn't comment on the length of time. He was looking down at the swelling in Jack's briefs, running his finger around to the front of the elastic, just shy of the dampening spot. "I've seen you naked routinely for years, but I've never seen you like this."

The opposite wasn't true. Daniel's morning wood, and his disregard of it, was infamous. He always woke hard, and he always woke starved for caffeine, and in his search for coffee he never cared who saw him hard or how many wisecracks they made about it. When they were stuck in temp quarters, he'd stumble into the shower with a rampant erection, washing it along with the rest of him. He had the utmost respect for other people's privacy, but he thought nudity was an absurd taboo. He and Carter had conspired to lift the locker-room segregation about four years in.

"Did you want to?" It was Jack's last stab at disbelief, at finding out whether he had this completely wrong, whether he was inhabiting some parallel reality in which Daniel's finger wasn't sliding back and forth under the waistband of his briefs right over his dick.

"Yeah," Daniel said. "A lot. For a long time." He slid his finger down further, almost touching. His thumb brushed the cotton. Circled the damp spot.

"Take them off me," Jack said, his throat thick.

Daniel pulled the elastic out to clear his erection and pushed the briefs down past Jack's knees, then slid out of his own as Jack kicked his the rest of the way off. Daniel stretched out again, on his side, head pillowed on his elbow, and looked Jack over. His gaze didn't linger on Jack's penis; he gave it the same savoring appreciation he was giving Jack's legs and chest and shoulders, Jack's arm draped over his side, Jack's hand holding the tube he'd taken from the drawer. As if it wasn't the novelty of arousal that did it for him, but having the whole package laid out for him. Bared to him.

"You can touch me, you know," Daniel said, fingers playing over a crease in the bedding. "You can do anything you want to do."

Jack supposed that made it pretty clear that he'd been looking Daniel over the same way.

Anything you want -- it was straight out of a fantasy, it was too much. He'd pop at the first touch. "I don't have a lot of control right now."

Daniel nestled his head more comfortably in the crook of his own arm and raised his gaze. "OK. Here's what I want. If it doesn't work for you, say so. I'm really intensely turned on right now. If you want to just touch for a while, that's fine, I'd love that, but I'm going to come right away. I'd rather roll over and just feel you push up into me. I want to come that way. Do other stuff later. If you want."

"That'll hurt," Jack said, so hot he could barely talk. "It won't feel the way you think."

"It won't hurt. Just use a lot of lube and don't go too fast. Trust me."

Jack hesitated. "Daniel ... I ... "

Daniel closed his fingers around Jack's where they'd gone lax around the tube. His thumb gave a gentle, sultry rub across Jack's knuckles. Jack imagined how that would feel across the tip of his cock, soft skin on soft skin, and he almost choked on his own hard swallow.

"Yeah," Jack said. "OK."

Daniel rolled onto his stomach, arms over his head, face turned toward Jack. "I started masturbating with sex aids a few months ago. I had one in me last night. I don't need fingers or anything."

Jack palmed the curve of Daniel's butt, thinking about the things he put inside himself and how they felt, thinking about Daniel doing the same. Crazy stuff skating across his mind without words. That he didn't ever want Daniel doing that again unless he was watching. That he wanted it to be his hand slowly pushing the --

Daniel cleared his throat and said, "I hope that didn't, um ... "

So that was the TMI. Jack was relieved and aroused. "No. That, ah ... " He moved up onto his knees, between Daniel's. Daniel spread for him, slowly. Jack laid the lube aside and ran both hands over the muscled ass, up into the curve of lower back. "God. Daniel."

"Yeah," Daniel said softly. "Here too."

Jack grabbed the lube, flipped the cap, slicked himself heavily. Same thing he'd done the morning before, but rendered alien by the change of context. Daniel lifted a little, spread his legs wider. This is nuts, Jack thought; they should kiss, make out -- hell, get some sleep before they ... But Daniel had been very clear about what he wanted. Jack wanted what Daniel wanted. In this position, he knew more or less what he was doing. And Daniel, laid out for him like this, presented to him like this, all warm smooth skin and hard bones and defined muscle ... Jack had to get up against it, push as close to it as he could, fit himself to it, into it ...

He took his weight on his left arm, poised over Daniel, and used his right hand to guide himself, nosing upward until he sank into yielding flesh that bloomed open in invitation, then contracted, then bloomed again, mouthing him. It was slick now from his rubbing, and hot, but too tight, too small -- the urge to force his way in was intense. He let out a harsh breath.

"Just push," Daniel said.

Jack forced care and control through every cell of his body and pushed. He couldn't get in. The angle was wrong. Smaller target than he was used to, not so forgiving. He adjusted his dick with his hand and tried again, but it was just as Daniel adjusted his hips, and Jack caught muscle again instead of hole, and Daniel grunted.

"Crap," Jack whispered. "Sorry."

"I'll stop helping," Daniel said through a smile Jack saw in profile, a smile that made him look just like the Daniel that Jack had first met -- the way he talked through that smile all the time, his bright eyes a little wary, a little dazed, a little distant, the smile a greeting and a weapon and a crutch --

Daniel had left his hips hiked slightly up. Jack pushed again, slowly, braced for failure, and sank halfway in.

He gasped Daniel's name, and Daniel said "OK, it's OK, it's -- oh -- " as if there were no air in his lungs.<

There was no resistance inside him, only tightness -- intense, mindblowing tightness, and the feel of muscle shifting, taking him. Daniel knew how to work something up inside him. Daniel had said he wouldn't help, but he was helping anyway.

Much more helping and Jack was going to blow. He gave just a little more -- more careful now of pulling his own trigger than of giving more than Daniel could take.

Daniel bucked as the head crossed his prostate, then contracted hard, and Jack stopped, panting, waiting, not coming, not coming; then everything softened and opened, suddenly, and Jack was sinking in until his groin pressed Daniel's cheeks.

It was like drowning, the disbelief of drowning, this can't be happening. Jack dropped his head and eased down onto both elbows. Daniel's bare skin came up against his. Jack groaned through his teeth, and pressed with his hips, feeling himself move inside Daniel's body, feeling all that bare skin flush with pleasure, drinking in the low, long melody of Daniel's moan. He rubbed and gently rocked and it was Daniel. He breathed in and it was Daniel. It was Daniel.

He pushed his face against Daniel's ear, nuzzled gently. Trying to connect; trying to distract himself. Not yet, not yet, not yet ... "Tell me," he said, low and hoarse. "How to move."

"You don't have to move at all," Daniel said, a soft rush, a spill of words. Jack lifted his head; Daniel's eyes were open, very wide, as if what he felt up deep inside him had opened a view to some far place, but suddenly they squeezed shut, very tight, a creased wince like anguish, and Jack felt him contract all up inside himself, as if his body was trying to muscle itself inside out. Daniel said "Jack I'm coming, oh god I'm coming, oh god oh god," a full-voiced cry.

Jack wrapped Daniel's orgasming body in his warmth and his weight and his strength, Daniel's ear under his cheek, Daniel's biceps under his hands, Daniel's ass against his groin. Daniel's thighs closed around his as Daniel's body tried to push itself through the mattress, shaking with contained thrusts; Daniel's calves slipped over his and their knees locked. Daniel's moans were high and helpless, with harsh grunting aftertones. Jack came, in the middle of it, with no warning; locked on Daniel, he pulsed deep in his body, and he couldn't tell whose spasms were whose anymore; there was no beginning or end to them, they were one blended, clenching muscle, one pelvis jerking in quick small uncontrollable thrusts, one body shaking and spasming, heaving and moaning, slowing, panting. One melted heap.

"Holy shit," Daniel gasped into the bedding, after a long time.

"Yeah," Jack said. He tried to stroke his nose down Daniel's sideburn, and realized the seeping wet wasn't sweat; he wanted to twist his head but there was nowhere to rub it off. He gave up and let his face rest against Daniel's. Breathed in with him, and out. "Yeah."

"It still feels good," Daniel said, in a soft slur of happy amazement, and when he smiled Jack could feel the contraction of cheek against his face.

"Yeah," Jack said, surprised too. It felt wonderfully good, heavy and drowsy and safe, his skin still warmly flushed, his softening dick comfortably sheathed, and all that Danielness up against him. Legs cradling his. Flesh under his hands. This was just where he'd lain yesterday morning, in almost exactly the same position. It felt like a different room, a different world. Not a fantasy made real, but reality finally being what it was supposed to be.

He relaxed into it, savored it; but after a while the air began to feel too cool on his shoulders and back, and he became aware of the shallow rise and fall of Daniel's back. "Too much weight?" he said, against Daniel's cheek.

"It's starting to be, now," Daniel said.

Jack lifted his hips; despite painstaking care, for him it was still an unpleasant, eely stretch and too-sudden pop, but Daniel gave a soft moan of something like pleasure, and made the sound again when Jack moved off him only halfway, staying half draped over. He reached past to scrabble at the quilt, drag over what they weren't lying on, get Daniel mostly covered. "We should get under this before you fall asleep," he said, and was just starting to feel weird about how colonel-on-an-offworld-mission the statement sounded when he realized how close the reaching had brought his face to Daniel's, his mouth to Daniel's.

"You don't have to," Daniel said softly.

"You don't want to?" Jack said.

"I want to," Daniel said. "I really want to. But it's OK. I understand that's ... not ... "

Jack covered Daniel's lips with his lips, a gentle press, a rephrasing of the question. Daniel's lips went soft, and parted. Jack sank deeply into the sweetness of Daniel's mouth.

They kissed for a long time, a warm undemanding slide of tongues, a slow shared exploration. It was a neck-aching angle for him, and Daniel knew it; after a while his mouth firmed and curved out of the kiss, and he rolled onto his side, sliding out of his warm double drape of Jack and quilt. "Next time we turn the covers down first," he said, and sat up.

"Next time we lay a tarp down first," Jack said, surveying the wet terrain as Daniel rolled out of bed and padded off to the john.

He went out and got the quilt from the guest bedding still piled out in the living room. The creamed spare wouldn't fit in the hamper already stuffed with the big down comforter he'd put in there yesterday; he muscled it down as far as it would go and left the lid sticking up and got back into bed grumping to himself about the laundry he hadn't gotten a chance to do, about the hot-water bill he probably wouldn't have to pay anyway.

Daniel came back and slid in with him and pushed right into his arms, pushed lips right up against his, pushed tongue into his mouth. He groaned, and wrapped around, arms colliding with Daniel's as Daniel tried to wrap around him the same way; they were the same size, both too big to tuck in, both bigger than what either of them was used to gathering up close. They stayed on their sides, rubbing, sliding, stroking; both ravenous for touch. They kissed and sucked and licked and petted and squeezed, and Jack started to push on top and then rolled back to pull Daniel on top of him instead, and Daniel covered him and plundered his mouth and pushed his legs apart and rubbed his soft, heavy package against Jack's, and Jack arched into it, intensely aroused to be mounted and spread, intensely frustrated by his unresponsive plumbing, dizzy with the rush of sexual heat his body couldn't rise to. They rolled to the other side in a tangle of bedding, with something like a deep, shared sigh, and settled in tight, mouths releasing, lips still brushing.

"Daniel," Jack started, when his head had cleared a little, when their heartbeats had slowed down. Then he couldn't get the rest out.

"Me too," Daniel said, with a soft smile, a slow blink. "Don't sweat the verbal stuff, Jack."

"I might not even be speaking English when I wake up."

"Then you can say it in Ancient," Daniel said, against his mouth. His voice was getting slurry, sleepy. "You're such a prick about helping me with that lexicon, maybe this ... will ... "

Daniel was asleep in the middle of the sentence.

Jack lay there with him for a long time, feeling the weight in the bed with him, the breath, the warmth. The more-than-just-himselfness; the somebody-elseness; the person-he-wantedness. He thought it should make him sleep, but he couldn't let go; the inside of his head felt scratchy, as if somebody had stuffed it with Brillo pads. After an hour, he couldn't stand the rattle of his own thoughts, and with a soft huff of ironic laughter he disengaged enough from Daniel to reach down to the base shelf of the nightstand and snag one of the spiral-bound books, get a pencil and the little flashlight from the drawer.

He woke up with a memory of finishing a second crossword, under the covers to keep the light from waking Daniel. He was on his side, up against Daniel -- warm, bare Daniel, who had the puzzle book propped against his drawn-up legs and the flashlight tucked in the crook of his far shoulder and was scritching away with the pencil.

Jack blinked at the puzzle. It was the one he fell asleep in the middle of. A third of the boxes were filled in with his capital lettering, heavy and dark and busy with connectors because he didn't lift the pencil completely off the page. Another third were completed in Daniel's, light and and clean and precise because he did.

"You don't know what opera the duet 'Dio, che nell'alma infondere amor' is from?" Daniel said.

"I didn't get that far," Jack said, vague prickly irritation not enough to offset his response to the sound of Daniel's perfect, lilting Italian.

"You got the ones before and after."

"I skip around." Jack blinked more sleep from his eyes and said, "If you out me to Carter you're a dead man."

"I'm not going to out you, and I wasn't challenging you. That opera's the answer to 29 Down. I don't know anything about opera. 29 Down is the one I'm up to. See? I do them in order."

"Don Carlo," Jack said, and elbowed up to see better. He was going to need reading glasses soon; how much was that going to suck? But propped on Daniel's thighs, the book was just the right distance. That secret, at least, he could keep for a little longer.

Daniel filled in the squares, then moved the pencil point to the next Down clue.

An aircraft-related clue jumped out at Jack from the other column, and he said, "64 Across is 'aileron.'"

"I'm not up to that one yet. Order, remember?"

"Give me that," Jack said, reaching for the pencil, and Daniel held it away from him and said, "Get your own."

Jack twisted around to the nightstand and came back with another pencil. Daniel angled the puzzle to accommodate the angle of Jack's arm. Jack tucked in close and rested his chin on Daniel's shoulder.

They finished the puzzle together.

^^^^^^^

end

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