Archive of Our Own

Jack lay next to him in a hotel room in Tegucigalpa. The hotel was shabby but clean, the best they could do on short notice; they'd been lucky to find two rooms during this festival week, and he and Jack had taken the one with the double bed, leaving the single for Lee. They'd left the mess in the rainforest for Burke and the cleanup crew to deal with, seen the artifact discreetly into the hands of the military, and were taking a civilian route home, paying cash and using battered secondhand luggage Jack picked up somewhere. He didn't say how he'd retrieved their passports. He didn't say what the doctors at the clinic might or might not have told him about Daniel's and Lee's physical condition, once they got them both patched up well enough to handle the plane ride. Morphine and codeine had appeared from somewhere, possibly black-market. Daniel had accepted a shot only once, right after they hiked out of the jungle, when the pain was making him black out, and he'd taken anti-inflammatories instead of codeine since. He preferred the pain to the disconnection. He didn't want his judgment impaired.

Down to briefs, they both tried to sleep. The room was by turns sweltering and freezing, as the power kicked on and off. It smelled vaguely of wallpaper glue. Daniel was trying, and failing, to count the number of times he'd slept with Jack. The number of times they'd crawled wordlessly into each other's beds, when there was nowhere else they could go, nowhere else they could sleep after trauma. The number of times they'd shared a two-man tent offworld, or slept head-to-head on transport crates in spaceship holds, or shared temp quarters, or shared guest accommodations in alien places. Daniel was trying to remind himself how much that meant to him, that default proximity, the tacit understanding in that closeness. Remind himself what he'd lose if he ever took that one step too far, crossed that invisible line.

In places like this, it was hard to tell when Jack was sleeping. He slept like a predator -- silently, no snoring, senses on alert. His breathing, awake or asleep, always had the slow regularity of an athlete's. In REM sleep, his eyes moved behind their lids, but in deeper phases he was just still. Awake, he was achingly handsome; asleep he was beautiful, the granite hardness of the features smoothed, years easing away. At home, when he was moderately safe, he'd roll over, jam down into pillow and bedding, bend his limbs, sigh into a deeper relaxation. In places like this, he slept on his back, and it was more like kel-no-reem than like human sleep. A resting state he put himself into in order to recharge for the next hard thing he had to do. Unless you caught him at the wrong moment, he'd wake from it instantly, into a crystal clarity, perfectly aware of his surroundings, balanced and prepared to react. If you caught him at the wrong moment, or were stupid about how you approached him, he'd wake hard, either his weapon or your throat in his hand, sometimes one in each. Sometimes, very rarely, he dreamed badly, and he'd jerk awake with a gasp, groping for his dogtags, as though in a terror of dying unidentified in an alien place. He was as dangerous when he was asleep as when he was awake; but when he was asleep he looked gentle, innocent, sometimes even vulnerable. When he was awake he put a veneer of affable animation over an impenetrable shell. When he was asleep he was almost translucent.

Daniel's fingertips tingled with tactile yearning to brush the soft eyelids, the long lashes. Stroke around the curve of delicate cartilage at the ear, raise the tiny feathery hairs on the soft lobe. Slide across the firm lips, watch them relax into the natural pout they'd been trained away from, into perpetual tightness, years ago. Trace the sharp, strong angle of nose, delve the scar in the brow. Touch the strong, slow pulse in the carotid artery, feel muscle and cartilage underneath it shift in an unconscious swallow. Feel breath ghost across his knuckles, and turn his hand to run those knuckles down the hard line of jaw, over scratchy stubble.

Jack was an artifact. A living artifact of his own past. The physical embodiment of a spirit that Daniel loved so deeply it bypassed words. Deep-structure. The articulation was in curves and angles of flesh. The bond went past speech. The bond went past flesh. But he was made of flesh, now, again. He was made of flesh, and he ached.

"Go to sleep, Daniel," Jack said softly, unmoving.

He listed all the reasons he thought he might have come back into this shell of flesh. He said them in his head, to see if the words sounded right.

I came back because I knew that I could do more good in corporeal form. I came back because I knew I wasn't done here yet. I came back because I couldn't help meddling and they kicked me out of heaven.

I came back because a month, a year, a decade next to you was better than an eternity of light. Even if we could never touch.

He didn't know why he'd come back.

Jack had stopped touching him, gradually, over the years. No more fond ruffling of his hair, no more too-hard squeezes of his shoulder, no more constant picking at his gear, adjusting it, checking it. No more arms thrown casually, loosely around his neck. No more affection. It was the price he paid for learning to take care of himself. But it came with bitter emotional distance. No more compliments, either. No more teasing. Ascension was the beginning of forgiveness for his failures, a necessary step on the journey. It was also just another way of running away.

So, time after time, he lay next to Jack and faced what he had run from. The ache was the cost of being human in a flawed, heartbroken world. You can't always get what you want, but whether or not you try, sometimes you get what you need. A presence beside you at night when it all becomes unbearable. Slow, even breathing. A rich low voice telling you to sleep, to forget, to heal.

This time, a hand reached out.

Flopped, really. Lifted up straight into the dark air, and fell lightly on his elbow, where his arm bent to support the thin pillow inadequately cushioning his head. Fingers a loose curl. Just a brush of knuckles. Weightless. The lightest touch, almost bone on bone.

A numb ecstasy went through him like a seep of morphine. The word pathetic tolled deep inside him; it was pathetic the way he wrapped his senses around the slightest touch, lived for weeks on the most offhand brush of fingers, grasped at the tiniest scrap of physical contact. A roil of terror billowed around it. His nerves sang. Inarticulate, his analytic mind weighed the odds, arranged the cumulative empirical data into opposing columns, leveled intuition against logic. He knew, he'd always known; he was kidding himself, perceiving what he wanted to perceive. Projection, sublimation, wish-fulfillment, a grievous misinterpretation of gesture. All the words that could begin it and end it, all the discarded words: Jack, I'm in love with you; is that going to be a problem? Jack, I want you to fuck me. Jack, I'm sexually attracted to you, I can live with it but I need you to be aware of what it does to me when you touch me, you're torturing me, so just ... don't. Jack, I'm going to ask for reassignment. Jack, I can't do this mixed-signal thing anymore, it's juvenile and fucked up but I can't keep working with you unless we sort it out. Jack, I shouldn't have come back. Jack, I don't want to lose you. Jack, I have to go.

All the inadequate, insufficient words, the words that didn't begin to scratch the surface of eight years of concentrated history, or the subjective realm of pain and adoration and longing he'd inhabited in the midst of it. Or how badly he wanted to end it, one way or another, even though he knew that only death could do that.

He lifted his hand, and brushed the loose fingers with his. Ran the backs of his nails up under the callused pads. Stroked once, lightly, down into the creased palm, and felt the thick, sensitive skin contract. One gesture; one ill-considered, unconsidered gesture, one moment of weakness, betraying the friendly fall of a hand with a profoundly inappropriate sensual response. One gesture, to begin and end it. When they got back, he'd put in for reassignment. There was plenty for him to do at his desk; there were plenty of offworld sites where his direction was needed. Daniel, go to your happy place, Jack had said, to short-circuit his ballistic response to a team that had cavalierly disturbed an important find. His happy place was investigating ruins and analyzing what he found. There were plenty of other linguists, anthropologists, specialists. There were people better suited to the diplomatic requirements of first contacts. He should have been reassigned long ago, both him and Sam. If they found the Lost City, the old SG-1 could have a reunion. Be designation SG-0, maybe, a temporary unit, assembled for one last all-out spectacular saving-of-the-world. And then, if they didn't get killed, he could go on with his life and his work. Maybe find out where the Ancients had gone. Maybe go there himself, the next step on his path of discovery. He was a nomad; he'd never lived anywhere very long. He'd stayed with this team, with Jack, longer than he'd stayed anywhere else. He'd come back to them when he never went back to anywhere he'd been, not for more than a bittersweet visit. If it was time to go again, a brush of fingers wasn't such a bad way to say good-bye. Jack would recoil from it, but at least he'd know. However taboo that sort of contact was in the culture Jack came from, ultimately all Daniel was telling him was that he was loved. There was a peace, a sweetness in that. Someday, when he got over being pissed and betrayed and repulsed, Jack would understand that. If they lived that long, maybe they'd share a beer one day, laugh about it. "Yeah, Honduras," Jack would say. "Man, you threw me a curve there, Danny. But I'm sorry now. I'm sorry I couldn't love you that way. It doesn't mean I didn't love you." "I know," Daniel would say, smiling gently, and they'd reminisce some more, and maybe Jack would drink a little too much and spend the night sacked out among the piles of books around his sofa, slow steady breathing in the darkness one more time. And then Jack would go home to his second wife and his family, grandchildren, home full of medals and memorabilia from his long military career, and Daniel would go back to his books and his solitary life, and it would be OK, it would be understood, it would be enough to know that love is love, that love is good no matter how strangely it manifests or how tragically it can't.

Jack's eyes were open, a dark gleam in the oblique light filtering in from the street. He didn't recoil. He didn't move his hand.

Daniel trailed his fingers over the fleshy mound of heel, callused from the kick of his P-90, and down onto the veined and tendoned wrist. Stroked into the pulse there. One last touch, before Jack reacted, grabbed his wrist, said, "Go to sleep, Daniel" -- a little rough, a little hoarse, the only evidence of how deeply he was shocked. They'd never speak of it. But when they got back, Daniel would put in for his transfer, and for once Jack wouldn't argue with him.

The radial pulse was strong under his fingertips.

Racing.

The world tilted. He raised his eyes to Jack's, from his new skewed perspective, and blinked. Almost, but not quite, uncomprehending.

"This is something you want?" Jack said. Low. Steady.

His body gave a minute jerk, as from a very tiny electric shock. He could feel his pupils dilate; he knew that Jack could see it. Very slowly, he nodded.

Jack rolled onto his side. Came up and in behind his hand, not moving it. Not jouncing the bed, not sending a jolt of agony through Daniel's right thigh, Daniel's tortured body. He turned his pillow, folding it to support his head. His eyes didn't leave Daniel's.

"For now," he said, "or for keeps?"

The offer in the low, straightforward question was so profound that for a moment Daniel couldn't process it.

For now -- a few minutes of pleasure to counteract the relentless pain, temporary relief of stress, physical release so that he could sleep, quiet comfort after the brutality and horror of where he'd been. Jack would know about that kind of stress relief. There'd be no price. Freely offered. Jack had been where he'd just been. Suffered for four months what he'd just suffered for four days. He would know what might help, for now.

For keeps --

For good. Forever.

I wasn't wrong, Daniel thought, not in so many words, with an awed vindication. What he'd convinced himself he'd seen only because he longed for it to be there. In two simple, almost schoolboy words, Jack had left no room for misinterpretation.

Still he hesitated. Jack's failure to offer had made the right decision easy. A career ruined. The program, the planet, the galaxy jeopardized. Sam's shining heart broken. At best, a misery of secrecy. At worst, the destruction of everything they'd dedicated their lives to. It couldn't happen. With two words, for now, he could stave off catastrophe.

He hesitated long enough that Jack repeated himself, but not in Daniel's language of words. He reached down with his free hand. Brushed his knuckles up the length of Daniel's erect penis through his briefs. Then reached up. Brushed his fingertips over Daniel's lips. A touch that stayed, as though Jack would need to feel the shape of his response, as though sound alone wouldn't be enough to make him sure.

"For keeps," Daniel breathed against those fingers. Soft fricative, curled labial, light plosive.

Jack's eyes closed, briefly, once. He swallowed; it was loud in the thick silence. The fingers trailed away; Jack laid the hand warm and sure on his uninjured thigh and cocked it open while he rolled up to his knees to straddle it. A warm palm on Daniel's stomach told him not to lift up while his briefs were rolled down, exposing his penis. Jack stroked it, once, from tip to base with all five fingers. Then he took Daniel's hips in a vise grip and lowered his head.

Daniel jerked when the warm tongue touched him, but Jack's hands immobilized him, so that he wouldn't compromise the leg wound no matter how he responded. Jack licked him warmly, wetly, with the broad flat of his tongue, and touched its tip sharp and light to the head, tracing the ridge, delving the slit, circling the eye. Then he took Daniel warmly, fully into his mouth, sucking him down to the back of his throat. Daniel choked back a warning cry and came blindingly. Jack's weight and the power of his shoulders kept his hips still; the need for stillness, for silence, made the orgasm an implosion. He clenched right down into his fists clenching the rough, cheap sheet. Later he would still be able to feel the coarse weave of that sheet, a body memory ingrained into his skin. He would search for sheets like those, and get hard when he touched them, and come into them, their coarseness scouring his cock as Jack's powerful thrusts drove his pelvis into the bed.

Jack swallowed without protest, sucked him gently clean and soft; drew off and rolled his briefs up, tucking him comfortably back the way he dressed; and then came up next to him with that same motionless movement, motion that didn't transfer into the mattress and into his leg. Eased down where he'd been, but a little closer, close enough for Daniel to feel the heat of his body. Daniel rolled his head to look at him, drugged with afterglow. Jack's eyes were soft, dark. They stayed open as Jack leaned in to press a soft kiss just over his eyebrow. He captured the hand Daniel dropped to his groin; pressed the back of it, firmly, against his erection, then moved it away, laid it on Daniel's ribs, covered it with his own hand. He closed his eyes. Go to sleep, Daniel.

Daniel slept deeply until pain woke him. Beside him, Jack snapped instantly alert, and Daniel heard his own low groan echoing back to him from the drab walls. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Jack patted his chest. Got up, rummaged for supplies, changed the dressing on his leg. Sat him up to piss into a plastic bottle, then dumped the contents into the old chain-pull toilet before he rinsed the bottle and put it back under the night table on Daniel's side. Reached for the canteen with the kit-purified water and pressed two tablets into Daniel's palm, more insistent than the last time. Waited while he took them, then eased him back into the bed, draping the sheet over him to keep off the chill of the intermitttently overcompensating air-conditioner. Daniel waited for the painkillers to take effect. Accepting the meds was no longer a question. He didn't have to keep his wits about him now. He didn't have to keep his head. He didn't have to protect himself from a high that might make him do something stupid, lying in bed beside Jack. That kind of secrecy was over. The other kind wouldn't be necessary until they left this room. He could accept the blessed relief of pain.

"Couple more hours," Jack said, standing at the window. They would leave for the airport at dawn. Jack cocked his head, as though he'd heard something Daniel hadn't, then pulled on his pants, shoes. "I'm gonna check on Lee." Daniel listened to his steps, the spare key turning, the murmur of voices. He felt a twinge of guilt; maybe they should have pushed harder for a cot to be set up in here, or just moved the single bed in. Lee was already showing the first signs of PTSD, and he didn't have the comfort of a familiar teammate lying beside him, much less the distraction of getting head. For a weird moment, he thought maybe that was wrong; maybe that was a relief Jack would offer Lee, too, maybe he'd hallucinated Jack's words and only the blowjob had been real, a medicine Jack dispensed, in extremis, as needed. But the murmured conversation was brief. Jack came back in, said that Lee seemed OK, beyond a doozy of a nightmare; said he thought Lee'd get through it all right. Stripped back down to his briefs, and got back into bed next to Daniel. On his side, facing him, pillow doubled under his head. "That stuff kicking in?"

"Not yet," Daniel said. "God, I'd kill to be able to turn over."

"You can lie on your stomach. Want a hand?"

"No, it's OK. Just ... " It hurt so much that he didn't voice the sound that tried to grit out of him, just bore down on it, like biting leather, and got himself turned over. The relief of getting off his back after several hours almost made up for the bloom of agony. Soon the codeine would kick in, and then he'd still hurt, but he wouldn't care.

Jack untangled the sheet and fluffed it up over him. The air, as it settled, felt nice. He lay there, in a hazed half-drowse of pain, and then began to float, and knew the stuff had kicked in. Jack saw it; he smoothed a hand over his head, and closed his eyes, settling back in to sleep. Daniel watched him, listened to his breathing. Hard to tell, but he didn't think Jack was asleep. He sensed consciousness, waiting for him to sleep before it let go of its waking vigil. After a little while, Jack's eyes opened. His brow quirked. What's up?

Daniel reached down and touched Jack's erection.

Jack's eyes lost focus at the contact, and then he gave a small, sweet smile, a roll of his eyes: Sorry, whaddya gonna do. He patted Daniel's hand, went to lift it away again. Daniel drew it free and took hold of Jack's hand, turning it. Laying it on himself. Jack's laughter faded into a wary surprise, then a flush of arousal. He searched Daniel's expression with a renewed, curious assessment. He took hold of Daniel's hand, drew his own left hand out from under the pillow, and pressed Daniel's firmly into it. Then he returned his right hand to his groin, a whisper of movement under the rough, cool sheet.

Daniel watched Jack's face while he masturbated. He wanted Jack to get off, relax; he knew Jack was only doing it for his benefit. Jack was letting him watch, but after a while Jack lost himself in the watching, his focus lowering from Daniel's eyes to his lips. Daniel watched his eyes darken into liquid velvet; he tightened hard against the hand that tightened on his. He couldn't see or feel what Jack was doing under the sheet. He watched Jack's mouth tighten, his eyes crease into a wince. He watched Jack come, an intense trembling contraction into himself to keep from moving. At the moment of orgasm, his lips and tongue shaped Daniel's name, unvoiced.

It looked like maybe it wasn't the first time he'd done that. Like maybe it wasn't even the first time he'd done that while looking at Daniel's face.

Jack had kept his eyes open through the whole thing. Now he let them slide closed. He squeezed Daniel's hand, fingers threaded through; it was an apology for the bone-crushing clench when he came. Then his hand went limp. He smiled and opened his eyes. He was smiling at Daniel. Daniel didn't know why that surprised him so much. It was a heart-melting smile. Sweet, a little crooked, just a curve of lips, a hint of teeth. Daniel smiled back, tentative; very high on codeine now. Jack rubbed his thumb over the big knuckle of at the base of Daniel's forefinger, a gesture that fell somewhere between reassurance and gratitude, and went to sleep.

Jack slept for almost fifteen minutes on his side, really asleep, really relaxed, before he turned, not wholly waking, and lay on his back, lifting into the lighter sleep of awareness, watchfulness. Breathing steady, even. Features expressionless, composed.

He didn't let go of Daniel's hand. Daniel drifted on codeine half-dreams until dawn broke runny and pale and colorless over the humid city and it was time to move.

Jack got the two of them home, somehow. A series of hellish commercial flights, one guy wounded and too stoned on painkillers to be any good navigating on crutches, the other jumpy, punchy, and loopy with post-traumatic stress. The medics had confirmed in detailed shorthand what the insurgents had done to them; both he and the medics were fluent in the euphemism of abuse. They should have stayed down there a week or two while both men healed -- but there was no fucking way. He got them home as fast as he could, into the care of American doctors he trusted.

He had a lot of time to think. Ordinarily that was a bad thing. Now, not so much, except that he had to keep a lid on Lee, glare him down when he made google eyes at Daniel's head lolling onto his shoulder. Lee was a good guy, not so awestruck as whatshisname, but he still thought heroes didn't let people's heads loll onto their shoulders, even wounded semi-conscious people stoned on painkillers and mumbling in dead languages. Lee thought Daniel was a hero now, too, and he'd had ample opportunity to learn that heroes bleed, and puke, and cry, and get the runs. But apparently it still freaked him out that they drooled.

"Is he going to be OK?" he'd ask, once an hour or so, from his window seat.

"He'll be fine if you shut up and let him sleep."

"But I mean ... you know ... " He'd gesture down at Daniel's leg, which looked to be bleeding through the dressing again. Have to deal with that pretty soon. "Could it be infected?"

Jack could feel the heat rolling off Daniel's body. "Could be. I don't know what antibiotics he's resistant to. We gave him what they had. We'll be home in another five hours, Lee. Don't sweat it. Let him sleep."

He stared at the in-flight magazines without seeing them, and felt the weather and the airspeed through the skin of the plane around him, and thought about how you had to be very careful what you wished for.

Daniel was in the infirmary for a week, the team on stand-down. The right antibiotics killed the infection and broke the fever before it did him any harm, and the leg wound was soft-tissue and would heal up fine. He'd thought there might be some cracked bones under some of the bruises, hairlines anyway, and internal injuries were always a concern with beatings, but they hadn't worked him over in earnest. Four days hadn't been long enough for them to get frustrated enough for that. The electrode burns and jumper bites would take longer than the bruises to fade. It would be a while before he'd believe that if he asked for water and food he would get them.

He was a lot more damaged than Lee. Given how it played out, Jack wasn't sorry that Lee had cracked fast; he was a smart guy, good to have around, and any more trauma would have driven him out of the program. Maybe he'd tell him that sometime, if he could figure out a way. Pat him on the back, tell him it was good to have him around.

He cleared out a backlog of paperwork with intense, single-minded application. He took as much range and simulator time as he could get, worked his body to exhaustion in the gym, and arranged an instructor rotation for training the base civilians in self-defense and basic weapons, something he should have set up a long time ago; he ran the first few days of morning classes, surprising everyone, himself most of all, by being firmly patient with the gaggle of geeks who'd never done a pushup or thrown a softball. The rest of the time he spent at Daniel's bedside, beating him at cards, losing to him at chess, ragging his ass to keep him occupied when he was awake but too fatigued to read or work on his laptop; mostly sitting by while he slept, letting Carter provide the sunny smiles and intellectual stimulation when he was conscious, letting Teal'c be the emotional support.

Late at night, when nobody was around to see him lose it, he'd go back to the gym and kick the shit out of the crash pads. Every night, it did less good. After a while it felt like even the walls behind the crash pads would give, that there was nothing strong enough to take what he needed to dish out without tearing, breaking, bursting open. He drove bare knuckles into the crash pads and the fucking things gave way; it was like wearing the Tok'ra armband and putting his fist into the hanging bag. He hadn't changed into workout gear. He was slamming booted feet into steel bulkheads, about to smash his fist into concrete with all the power of his rage behind it, when he was caught, swung around.

He drove through with his left as he was turned, a close vicious roundhouse. It would have taken some liver and spleen if it landed. He was already bringing his knee up as he sensed that it would be blocked. The knee was blocked, too, the head butt dodged, the elbow redirected. He went apeshit. No holds barred. No training drill. Through the icy red haze he heard someone at nine o'clock say, "Holy shit," and someone at four o'clock slip the safety off a weapon. He knew who he was fighting. He knew the guy wasn't fighting back, although defending against his all-out assault amounted to fighting. He knew who it was. Finally he understood that he knew and was still trying to kill him. Something inside him snapped, just like a bone. The same numb oh, fuck shock. The same moment of knowing that it didn't hurt yet, but in a second it was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, in a second it was going to hurt so much you'd be this close to blowing your brains out to make it stop.

"Leave us," Teal'c said. He was breathing hard. There was a tang of sweat and not a little blood. "Close the doors." Steel swung and rolled shut. Steps receded. Then silence, except for labored breath, sandpaper breath, the bad kind of breathing that meant you were shot, you were screwed. "O'Neill."

"They hurt him, Teal'c."

"I know."

"They hurt him a lot."

"I know."

"Those fucking motherfuckers ... "

"I know, O'Neill. As other fucking motherfuckers did you. And me."

"You and me, that's different, Teal'c."

"He is the gentlest soul you or I will ever know, but he is strong. Perhaps stronger than either of us."

"And what the fuck did it get him? More pain. Why didn't he just fucking give it up? Why couldn't he just cave? Why did the fucking asshole have to be strong?"

Teal'c didn't reply. Jack sank down, in a shriek of knees, onto a crash pad that had slid halfway down onto the floor, its straps burst off. "They hurt him."

"Yes. And you killed them. Now they are dead."

"It's not enough."

Teal'c sank down next to him on the pad. They sat and watched their blood drip onto the gray floor. "I know," Teal'c said.

Daniel half-woke to hear Janet's voice, Jack's, Teal'c's.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Workout got a little rough."

"A workout?"

"We were sparring, Doctor Fraiser."

"Have you heard of boxing gloves? Have you heard of headgear?"

The rustle of gauze, the glug of antiseptic, the squish of a freezepack.

"Colonel O'Neill claims that such items are for pussies."

"Another sexist comment like that and I'll work you over myself."

"Wusses. I said wusses. You know Teal'c and English."

"Daniel Jackson would no doubt inform you that 'pussy' as a pejorative term for the weak or cowardly derives from 'pussycat,' not a vulgar term for the female anatomy or the female sex."

"Teal'c, you're scarin' me, buddy."

"Either way it's no excuse for this, Colonel."

"You gonna report it to Hammond?"

"Ordinarily this is the sort of behavior I'd be obligated to report to you, sir. Do you know how much I hate it when you make me report you to yourself?"

"Ow! I'm getting a picture, Doc."

"If you wake up Doctor Jackson, I'll have both your asses in Hammond's office first thing."

"Thanks, Doc."

"Thank the extra work SG-9 dumped in my lap. You'd have been at the duty nurse's mercy otherwise, and I'd be in a bubblebath sipping mint tea and reading a trashy novel right now."

"Stop right there, Major. I'm not wearing groin protection, either."

"Yes, I'm well aware of that, Colonel. Speaking of which, are there any testicular ruptures I need to know about, or can we skip that part of the exam?"

"I'm good. You good, Teal'c?"

"My genitalia is unharmed, O'Neill."

"All right. Teal'c, I'm releasing you. But you only drill your trainees tomorrow. No demonstrations till after the weekend."

"Understood, Doctor Fraiser."

"Hey, Teal'c."

"O'Neill."

"Thanks, buddy."

Daniel kept his eyes closed and his back turned as Teal'c came over in a rustle of curtain and stood by him for a few moments. When Teal'c left, he rolled onto his stomach and made a sincere effort to go back to sleep, but he could still hear the low murmur of voices from across the room.

"You know, if you wanted to score a bed here so you could stay with him, you could have just asked permission. I know you've been sleeping in temp quarters."

"It was sparring, Janet. It got a little out of hand. It happens."

"Sure. Two seasoned men with more control than professional prizefighters. Here, I'm going to butterfly this one, you can trade it for a Band-Aid in the morning."

"Ow. Ow ow ow."

"Pussy."

"Wuss. I'm a wuss."

"You're a headcase. I won't bother to suggest a psychiatric consult."

"I just had one."

"I hear those get a bit violent sometimes. And you'll tell me where to shove a Valium, too?"

"You know I can't take that stuff."

A sigh. "All right. Strip down, take the bed next to Daniel's. You're in for observation, possible concussion, I'll clear you first thing. Which means I have to get in early, in case my martyrdom has escaped your attention."

"You're not a martyr, you're a saint."

"And you know the consequences if you wake him up."

"He sleeps better when I'm here."

"Yes. I know. I'll be here for another hour if you need anything. Get some rest, Colonel."

"Thanks, Doc."

Their voices had nearly lulled him back to sleep. He twitched when the curtain was opened on one side, then breathed deeply and sank down, hearing Jack's familiar steps. The rustle of cloth, the slide of weight. He would have liked to feel it in the mattress under him. He imagined that he could feel it through the connection of floor.

"Go to sleep, Daniel," Jack said softly.

"Mm," he said, and did.

He wanted to bring Daniel back to his own place so he'd have all his stuff to play with for the second week of recuperation, but on Sunday Daniel said, "No. Your house," so Monday morning they packed up his laptop and all the books and printouts that Jack and two airmen could carry and he carted them home in his truck. Though at liberty, he was on call, and Hammond had him paged twice just to check that he hadn't turned the beeper off or tossed it in a corner. Teal'c drew an assignment with SG-11 for the week, and Carter went out on Prometheus. He puttered around the place, catching up on month-old chores -- doing ripe laundry, cleaning out the fridge, taming the yard. He should have a cleaning service, a landscaper, people to come in and do this stuff regularly, but he didn't like to have anyone in the house or on the grounds without him there. Didn't much like it when he was there, either. With the exception of special events like Daniel's wake that first year, he never had anyone over, and when people came over he kept them at bay on the deck. Back when casual sex was something he did, he did it far from here; he'd never brought anyone home. Only Daniel had ever stayed here overnight.

Daniel worked at the coffee table, lay back on the sofa and read, drank Cokes and ate junk food, watched infomercials and game shows. They didn't talk much. He made them sandwiches for lunch; he'd shopped over the weekend and laid in a stock of everything he could think of. Including lube (what he had was squeezed nearly dry, testament to frequent association with his right hand) and condoms (what he had had sat at the back of the nightstand drawer so long there was an honest-to-god layer of dust). Safety first. Be prepared. He didn't think they'd be needed; but if they were. In midafternoon, Daniel said something vague about turkey and tryptophan and crawled into unconsciousness for two hours on his bed. He tried to keep puttering; gave up, and lay down next to Daniel on the comforter. He woke suddenly, surprised that he'd slept at all, more surprised at how deeply he'd slept. Daniel was sitting on the edge of the bed, back to him, the plastic drugstore bag lifted from the base shelf of the nightstand to the mattress beside him. The bag was empty; the Astroglide box weighted it into itself. Jack could hear the box of Trojans turning in Daniel's fingers.

"They didn't rape me," Daniel said quietly.

"I know." Jack waited a minute, then reached down on his side and snagged the wastebasket. Nudged Daniel's back with it, and held it out. After a brief pause, the box clunked into it. Jack gestured to the nightstand. After a longer hesitation, Daniel opened the drawer. Set the depleted lube on top with a wry smile just visible in profile, then looked sidelong at Jack with his brows raised. Jack gestured again. Daniel dug back, past pencils and Tic-Tacs and mace and a mini-maglite and bottles of pain reliever, and found the strip of packets. Looked at them for a second, swirling his finger through the dust. As if they were an artifact. An archeological find. He swallowed, chewed his lower lip. Then he dangled the strip over the wastebasket and slid his gaze again to Jack. Jack nodded. The condoms dropped into the basket.

Jack set the basket back on the floor. He was hard as a rock, so hard it ached, crossed painfully under the zipper of his jeans. Ten days ago he'd have long since rolled over to conceal it, gotten up, dealt with it one way or another. Ten days ago he'd probably have been able to will it not to harden in the first place, but ten days ago he wasn't watching Daniel handle boxes and strips of condoms. Now he just waited for Daniel to put the lube back where he found it, get up, go back to work.

Daniel unboxed the tube of Astroglide. He put the box in the plastic bag, and rolled over his own hip, on the good side, to scooch over Jack and drop bag and box into the wastebasket. He laid the tube on Jack's sternum and reached down to pop the button of his fly. When he drew the zipper down, muscling it past the resistance of swelling underneath it, Jack arched, and groaned, and nearly came. Reflexively he turned his face away. Daniel drew it back with a brush of fingertips on his jaw and chin. He watched Daniel's face, calm and serious and focused, as he popped the cap of the lube. Daniel glanced at him, tilted his head in a clear gesture. Jack hooked thumbs into his waistband and pushed the jeans and briefs off his hips. Daniel's lubed hand curled just above his cock and slid down the length of it from head to base; all the blood drained from his limbs and his head and swelled up through his groin. His vision grayed. Daniel leaned over him, pumping long and easy through the gel, all the way up and down. His hand was as big as Jack's, but smooth. The touch was familiar, expert. Firming. He knew he was making some kind of sound, trying to tell Daniel something. He groped blindly for Kleenex he thought was somewhere on the closer lampstand. Daniel said, "Leave it." He caught a flash of smile, soft blue eyes, and then Daniel blurred away from him and Daniel's mouth closed over the head of his cock. Daniel, lube, he tried to protest, but his brain was melting. Daniel sucked him gently, with a tease of tongue, then a lot of tongue, hand pumping the slick shaft in double time, and he came before he could drag Daniel off him, flooding his mouth, jerking helplessly, clawing at the shoulder of T-shirt he'd caught lunging for the collar. "Oh, fuck," he gasped, "oh god," or that's how it started, but it came out more like oh fuuh, oh gaaa, and then all he was aware of was ecstasy, pulse after sweet pulse, and Daniel's mouth sucking it out of him, Daniel's hand pumping it out, so that he was still spasming for long seconds after he was usually done. Holy crap, how long since he'd come like this? He'd wanted this for a long time, but he'd had no idea what the hot, wet silk of Daniel's mouth would feel like, the practiced touch of his hand, the chemical reaction of their skin. He came down slowly; Daniel came off him slowly, came up licking a smear from his bottom lip, and sank down beside him with his eyes closed. One hand flopped against his chest, elbow tangled with his; the lubed hand curled up against the T-shirt over his belly. Jack let his head fall back, and floated.

He was jolted awake by the fact that he'd been sleeping at all; he never dozed off like that. He was tucked up clean and dry inside his briefs, jeans buttoned and zipped; he caught a lingering scent of soap, and knew he'd find a washcloth wrung out and drying on the towel bar in the shower. How the hell had he slept through that? Damn -- he'd have liked to be awake for that. It came to him slowly how little real sleep he'd gotten since they got word that Daniel was nabbed. It came to him more slowly, and very permanently, how deeply he trusted, to sleep like that. His body had known it was Daniel's hands on him. His body trusted those hands, and hadn't bothered to wake him up.

The lube was capped and tucked away with the older one in the drawer. A glass of water stood on the nightstand. The lamp on that side was on, a dilute goldenness within the ruddy golden light of late afternoon. Daniel must have thought he'd sleep till dark.

He got up, feeling like deliciously energized cooked linguini, relaxed and stimulated. He drank off the water and padded out in his socks to put the glass in the kitchen. Daniel was hunched over his laptop at the dining table, lost in what he was doing. "Hey," he said, smiling; but his attention was fixed on the screen.

Jack came up behind him, laid hands on his shoulders, started working thumbs and fingers into the knots of muscle. Daniel's shoulders melted under his touch and his hands slid away from the keyboard, but the knots didn't yield. "Jeeze," Jack said. "You're lookin' at some major RSI here, pal."

He was happy when Daniel remembered to eat; getting him to remember to see the base massage therapist regularly was asking way too much. On the other hand, Jack seemed to have permission to take care of this himself now. An old fantasy faded under the reality of actually doing it. Yeah, he could get used to this. Moany coming noises and all.

Jack worked on him for a while. In bed sometime he'd lay him out flat and do it right, but for now it was just nice to have the time, the privacy for this. In his experience, people gave massages as foreplay, moving on to sex just when it was getting really good, teasing with a promise of real relaxation and then whipping it away in favor of a completely contradictory stimulus. He delved and coaxed and squeezed until the seized muscle gave way, smoothed out, and then he rubbed some more just because he knew it would feel good, and then he combed fingernails down the back of Daniel's head and neck just because he wanted to. The shiver and involuntary sigh made him smile.

"Blinds," Daniel said, slightly slurred, settling his head back straight on his shoulders and his fingers over the keyboard again.

"Fuck 'em," Jack said. "They're gonna discharge me for a neck rub?" Then he was running down the list of beverages he could offer to get Daniel, since beer and wine were out until he finished the cycle of antibiotics. It was the first time they talked about surveillance, and the last time for a while.

That night, in bed, Jack ran his tongue over every mark, every fading bruise, every injured place. Old scars got the same treatment as new ones; the shadow of a staff blast Daniel could still feel in his chest sometimes, the puckered length of his appendectomy scar, the places where the first of the radiation burns had bloomed. Daniel was glad Oma hadn't sent him back healed, but had sent him back whole, scars and all; it made him feel less sullied by what happened in Nicaragua. He was only adding new scars to old, not ruining the gift of a perfect new body. Jack remembered them all, remembered the location of each one; his tongue told Daniel that, and told him that he knew what had been done to him more recently, and made it all blur together in one slowly building swell of pleasure. Jack rimmed him for a long time, one hand over his hand where it cradled his injured leg; the hot, wet tongue teasing and circling, the long warm licks, went as far beyond pleasure as torture had gone beyond pain. When the tongue hardened and thrust into him, flanked by gentle lips and gusts of damp, hot breath, it was sexual codeine; it didn't heal the wounds, it didn't ease the pain, it didn't cleanse the memory, but it felt so wondrously good that he just didn't care anymore. "Jack, please," he begged, forever later, when Jack came up and eased his legs down, "please, please fuck me." Jack's forehead dropped onto his ribs and a shudder went through him. But he shook his head, and brushed his hand over the bandage, then stroked his balls, his cock, started jerking him, deep firm strokes that worked the skin over the erectile tissue underneath, thumb rubbing a slickness of precome through the slit, and he came in a sobbing tremble, remembering that there could be pleasure like this, that a mortal life subject to agony and cruelty could be gifted with ecstasy, too. Jack turned him and held him still and thrust hard and fast into his belly, curved rigid cock delving through smears of semen, and came on him with a wrenching groan, and that was the hardest it could get until he healed, that was how it had to be, all hands and tongues and lips and fingers, until these latest wounds were scars, too. But later, when he came up again inside Jack's mouth, Jack slid lubed fingers into him, gently fucking him, stroking silver shivers of ecstasy through his prostate, and that was close, so close to what he needed to feel, and he came harder than he ever had in either life, and it was Jack's hand and it was Jack's mouth, warm human flesh, Jack's flesh, and it was enough. For now, it was enough.