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Jack winced into a squint as the C4 they'd planted on Massim-Biambe's ha'tak initiated a chain reaction and turned the ship into an incendiary blossom that filled the forward viewscreen. The blast wave sent two death gliders hurtling straight for them, lifted tail-up like stray kites on a rogue gust of wind. One exploded into a smaller, closer, brighter yellow ball as Teal'c's port cannon took it out, the brief flare of a firefly in front of a fireball. The other kept coming, a black-winged shadow looming out of the glare; Carter's starboard cannon was tracking one of the three gliders that had peeled off to flank them.
No time to retask her. Jack felt for pitch, yaw, and roll through the globe under his hands, trying to zen himself into oneness with the alien vessel, rotate it to take the impact of the two ballistic gliders farther aft where it wouldn't kill them outright. Both drives taken out by the first shots from the gliders, nothing left but the reaction control system, and that worked on principles he didn't feel in his bones the way he felt propellant-based thrusters.
"Gotcha," Carter murmured on his right, and then "Oh, shit" as her display picked up the imminent collision. They were as braced as they could be for impact; no point shouting the order. P97-954 slewed across the screen, a purple-green ball swaddled in cloud. "Talk faster, Daniel," Jack singsonged, far too low for Daniel to hear under the raking cannonfire from the remaining gliders, the hissing spew of the fire-suppression system over the crackle of exposed circuitry and cascading sparks, and then he punched a harsh "Brace for impact!" out from the diaphragm, because you gave the orders even when there was no point, as long as there was still breath to give them with.
Daniel shouted "Message -- " just as the glider hit them.
The impact jarred them down to the fillings in their teeth. The blast wave lifted them and flipped them, possibly attenuating the net impact; the external view whirled into a blur, and Jack couldn't stay focused on the head-up display, couldn't tell whether the combined jolt had overloaded the tel'tak's inertial dampeners or what his eyes were seeing was making his brain think he could feel the sickening flip-and-spin.
The spherical grey Goa'uld TV that Daniel had been using to videophone their intel home sailed sedately past Carter's right ear and smashed into electronic bits against a forward wall panel. Jack couldn't tell whether the apparent slow motion was an adrenaline effect or some product of wildly conflicting inertial forces.
" -- sent," Daniel gasped.
"Acknowledgment?" Jack said, while he zenned himself through the piloting globe and applied what brakes he had left.
"Not before impact," Daniel replied. "Um, either impact."
Jack got them stabilized. Struts creaked and groaned under the stress but didn't snap. Aft thrusters were out; whole rear end was probably crumpled up like a pop can. But the ship hadn't broken apart around them. Power was fluctuating but on. The compartment still had gravity and life support. And four lifepods.
"We're venting atmosphere, sir," Carter said. "Pretty fast."
"Still in bailing range of the planet?"
"Yes, sir."
Two gliders still out there somewhere. He couldn't find them on the display. Their god went up with the fireball. Would they bother coming back to see if the hijacked scout ship needed finishing? Escape pods would be easy pickings, but he and Teal'c could provide covering fire. "Carter, route starboard weapons to my station, then you and Daniel -- "
Two fast blips on the HUD caught his eye right before a crimson-gold explosion flared beyond them as a brighter pinprick in the viewscreen's starscape.
"Belay that," he said.
"One attempted to desert, and the other destroyed it," Teal'c said.
"And here it comes," Jack said, as the blip crawled toward them and the raptor-like silhouette came into naked-eye view, eating up the stars around it. No time for bailing now. They'd have one shot. "You got this, Teal'c?"
"I have indeed," Teal'c said, and took the shot.
For an eyeblink it was as if they were connected to their own oncoming death with a tether of energy. Then the tether retracted into the target, and the glider blew, close enough to leave a retinal burn on Jack's eyes even after the explosion dissipated and there was nothing left but charged debris and starlit dust.
"Pods," Jack said, "now," and stepped across the useless rings to double-check the status on the one closest to Daniel. Opened up fine, indicator lights looked good --
"Not this one, sir," Carter said.
Jack looked over and saw that the one closest to her station had taken a scorching hit all along one side. Soldered shut, no way it would open, forget reliably sealing again. "OK," he said, and waved her across the compartment to the one between Daniel's and Teal'c's. "That one."
"Sir -- "
"That's an order, Major. Same goes for you, Teal'c. Aht!" He held a finger up before the outrage on Daniel's face could vent as words. "You too. The air you use up arguing with me could be the air I need to save my ass."
There'd be no saving his ass. It was already hard to breathe, and the release of the functional pods would probably shake what was left of the ship apart. He was only distracting Daniel while he got a grip on tac vest and T-shirt and hauled him around to push him in --
Daniel gripped back, at collar and belt, and threw himself backwards into the lifepod, pulling Jack with him. The second his weight hit the pod's rear sensors, the hatch closed, pinning Jack against him. Jack pushed with something close to hysterical strength, but his arms and shoulders were no match for the autoseal, and even as he strained to shove free, he heard the rhythmic thump-click, thump-click of safety locks engaging.
"God fucking dammit, Daniel," he ground out, right into Daniel's ear, his skull jammed bone-to-bone against Daniel's as something like an airbag swelled around them, gel cushioning that molded to their shape -- too tight, meant to buffer a single body against the jarring, but he could breathe, and if Daniel couldn't he'd fucking kill him -- and then the pod ejected, and he thanked God and Goa'uld-appropriated engineering for the padding that kept the wrenching jolt from knocking him out.
His digestive tract caught up with them just in time for the free-fall nausea to kick in. He swallowed it down, focused on breathing, focused on synching his breathing with Daniel's because when they both inhaled at the same time there wasn't enough give in the padding for either of them to fill their lungs. Daniel caught on fast, worked with him, no words exchanged. It was kind of like ... yeah, OK, it was a lot like sex. Good sex. And it was time to stop having thoughts like that two thoughts ago.
The cushioning around their heads retracted about halfway, and the pitch black was relieved by a dim glow from status lights behind Jack. Heavy insulation, minimal temperature control, doubled body heat; within a minute they were both filmed in sweat. He knew the planet was habitable and had a stargate, and he sure hoped the clouds meant potable water down there, because after this steambath they were going to be dehydrated as hell.
Assuming there was enough air for two on board this thing, and they didn't suffocate first.
Both of them startled as an attitude thruster fired, or its equivalent activated, jostling them and then pressing with maybe half a G as the pod banked onto a better trajectory. It had bare-bones navigation, bare-bones sensors -- enough to figure out where its blind, helpless, possibly unconscious occupant intended it to go, and get itself there, no matter how the ship was oriented when it was deployed. The surprise knocked their breathing out of synch, and Daniel took the opportunity to talk, saying, "Three days of life support for one average-size humanoid."
"OK," Jack said. It didn't matter right now how Daniel knew that. From Aris Boch, from research or asking Teal'c after the asteroid thing, whatever. "Ballpark ETA, half an hour, maybe less. Gonna be rough once we hit atmosphere."
"As long as we do," Daniel said. His voice was calm, but the phrasing made Jack aware of how hard Daniel's heart was pounding. Really hammering; Jack didn't know how he was keeping his breathing so regular. Panic attack? Claustrophobia? Jack had automatically tuned out the tight, wet press of bodies, the salt-sweet smell of Daniel's sweat and skin. He'd filtered out too much.
"It's OK, Daniel. We're OK. We can breathe."
"I'm not panicking."
"On three I want you take a few really deep, really slow breaths, all right?"
"Jack, I'm fine -- "
"On three." He took a breath and used about half of it to count off, so that his lungs still had some air to work with but his chest cavity wasn't fully expanded. Daniel breathed deeply, slowly. Obediently, after the standard objection. Jack shivered, a completely paradoxical response to the heat, and then realized it was from feeling Daniel's long, slow breaths bounce off the padding behind him and slither down the back of his neck.
Crap, he thought, and tried to concentrate on the tac-vest pockets digging into his arms, Daniel's watchband digging into his hip. "Better?" he said.
"Yeah," Daniel said, and this time his heartrate corroborated. "But I'm not freaking out. Just garden-variety scared."
Yeah, being shot through vacuum in a cameo locket would do that to you. Valid distinction, between panic and a legitimate fear response. Jack had been channeling fear into action for so long that he'd forgotten how it felt to be plain scared. Daniel had always dealt so calmly with the crazy shit that came their way that Jack took his courage for granted, never considered the 'scared' part of 'you can't be brave if you're not scared.' Jack had display frames full of medals citing his bravery, but he didn't conceive of himself as brave, never felt brave; he felt effective. He did what needed doing, he took pride in doing it well; he did his job. Daniel did too, and so Jack never thought.
It was claustrophobic in here. It was fucking terrifying in here. "Beats the hell out of being up there," Jack said.
He felt Daniel's smile against his cheek, under where the glasses dug into his temple. "You're welcome."
And I can't say I mind the company. Crossing a line there; keep that to himself. Focusing on Daniel had helped him calm down too, eased his tight-strung nerves so he could rest up for what could be a long haul to the gate if they survived the landing, but now that he'd taken the physical filter off, he couldn't seem to put it back on. Inappropriate awareness of long thighs, flat abs, breath and heartbeat and scent, the clingy wetness of cotton, the rich low resonance of Daniel's voice ... no. The awareness wasn't inappropriate. Basking in it, savoring it, reveling in it, storing it up for a private fantasy reenactment if he ever made it back to his own bed, that would be inappropriate, and that he could control. Circumstances didn't do this very often, shove it right up in his face like this, literally -- right up in his groin, for cryin' out loud, the heavy swell of Daniel's package right the fuck up against his -- and he could keep the taking-pleasure-in-it switch flipped off.
"Shit," Daniel said softly.
"What?" Jack said. The diffuse light from the status indicators looked greenish, but he couldn't see the indicators themselves. "Something go red on the readout?"
"No, it's all green, it's fine, I'm just ... What's the most repulsive thing you can think of?"
Ah, OK -- looking for distraction, because the situation was crashing in on him again. "A Gould, I guess."
"Not even nearly repulsive enough."
"Harry Maybourne?"
"Something really gross. Rhinoceros snot. Elephant pus."
"You find African wildlife digusting?"
"Cute banter so not helping."
"Tell me about the last artifact you found. Everything. In detail."
"Of all the times for you to ... " Now he was laughing, which didn't help Jack at all, either in keeping that switch flipped off or in figuring out what was going on with him. "I'm not having a panic attack, Jack, I'm getting an erection."
"Oh," Jack said. Then, as he started to feel it, "Oh, boy."
"I need maggot-infested wounds here. Bloated corpses. Flesh-eating disease."
"You're a goddamn anthropologist. Nothing grosses you out."
"Well, I hope having somebody else's boner jammed in your crotch doesn't gross you out, because I'm losing this battle."
As neutrally as he'd ever spoken in his life, Jack said, "Nothing grosses me out either."
"It's just a reflex thing, OK? Just ... try to ignore it. Wright gets hard from wormhole transit. Matthews gets hard every time he fires an automatic weapon. Solomon -- "
"Gets hard under heavy bombardment, I know. Didn't know that about Wright. That's pretty funny."
"He gets a lot of shit about it."
"I'm not gonna give you shit about this."
"Yeah, you are."
"No, Daniel, I'm not." He tried to keep his voice clear and steady, because it was important to him for Daniel to believe that, but at this point talking was doing more harm than good; his voice sounded strained, and anything either of them said sent vibrations down their tight-jammed bodies and into the lengthening hardness that was pressing right up against his penis. Even breathing rubbed it against him; the two pairs of pants were doing fuck-all to muffle it. Pleasure tingled through his groin, irrepressible, unswitchoffable. "It happens. Nothing you can do about it, no big deal." He took a breath; no choice now, he could feel the rush of blood, the tissue filling, he had to say something. "It's about to happen to me too, so you do me the same courtesy, we'll call it square."
He could feel Daniel's surprise in every inch of hard body pressed against him. He could feel Daniel's teeth clamp on the questions that surged up.
"I'm bi, Daniel. This turns me on. I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do about it."
Daniel started to say something, then stopped, then said, "Huh."
"Of all the places to come out, right?" Arousal made the heat and tight breathing space twice as bad. Joking made the breathlessness worse. When Daniel didn't laugh or crack the first hint of a smile, worry about the ways that he might revise something in their previous history into harassment, no matter how irrational and unfounded and unfair that revision would be, pissed him off and made it worse still. He couldn't do this right now. He couldn't have this conversation in an evacuation pod minutes away from entering atmosphere. "We'll talk about it later. Just breathe now. This shit's making me light-headed."
For nearly ten minutes, they just breathed, synching it up, in/out and out/in. As close to having him as you'll ever get, O'Neill, a vicious, angry, slimy voice in his head said without words. Might as well enjoy it. In fact the pleasure was nearly unbearable, Daniel's erection shifting slowly and rhythmically against his, Daniel's breath caressing his neck, Daniel's heart beating into his chest. Daniel's hand had fisted in his collar -- where Daniel had gripped him to pull him in here, the hand that had draped limp over the shoulder of his tac vest until now, elbow jammed in between Jack's arm and the rest of that side of his vest -- but Daniel didn't seem to be aware of it, and Daniel should bite the bullet any way he could find. It was too much stimulation to ignore and too little to trigger an orgasm that no matter how embarrassing would at least put an end on the damn thing. Jack could not will his hard-on down, and whatever Daniel's was a reflex response to -- the heat, the confinement, the adrenaline crash, the terror of smashing like an egg when they hit the surface -- he couldn't alleviate either. He wasn't enjoying this. He couldn't have enjoyed this if he tried. But it still felt good. Bitterly, traitorously good.
Just when Jack had opened his own mouth wider to ease the breaths in and out more smoothly and keep himself from whining, Daniel let out a low, agonized sound. Jack closed his eyes, winced deeply, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Daniel. It won't be much longer."
"It's not your fault," Daniel said.
"It's no one's fault, but the fact remains that I'm rubbing something into you you'd really rather not have rubbed into you, probably at all and definitely not in a sensitive spot."
"You're not doing it on purpose, I'm doing it to you too, and you have nothing to apologize for."
"You're miserable. That's enough."
"I'm miserable because it feels great and I'm trying not to have an orgasm."
Jack blinked, processed. "Seriously? Jeeze, Daniel. Just come then. Rub off on me, if you can move that much. I can't promise I won't, you know, react, but if that doesn't bug you, it's fine. It's probably a good idea. You'll be pre-loaded with endorphins for the ride down."
"No."
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it. No meant no. "OK."
They just breathed, in synch, for a long time, maybe five or six more minutes, and then Daniel said, "If it were anyone else, I'd say hell yes, we should both do it. But if it were anyone else in here, I wouldn't have gotten hard in the first place."
Jack was silent for a while, as that sank in, as a long, low oh, shit went through him, exactly what Carter had said when she saw that glider about to slam them, exactly what every pilot said before an imminent, probably fatal collision. Then he opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
"So I won't rub off on you, Jack, because I can't trust myself to do it ... objectively. I also have zero play in my hips, and I've got enough you-related baggage to handle without adding that kind of experience to it. But mostly it would just be wrong."
Jack flailed between telling him everything, because he wanted to, and telling him nothing, because it would compromise both of them. "So the reflex thing was ... "
"A lie. And you bought it, which makes my confession extra super specially ironic, because if you didn't recognize this when my body was betraying me right between your legs, chances are you never would. But it's out now. Of all the places, huh?"
"You could have left it at 'no.'"
"And have you convince yourself later that it was because you were violating me somehow, and then refuse to talk about it, freeze me out, and wind up kicking me off the team? I'd rather be kicked off for the truth, thanks."
"Hammond wouldn't let me kick you off. The thing is, Daniel -- "
A warning klaxon cut off his own confession, as if the gods of the U.S. military could hear it coming and pushed the cosmic buzzer to drown it out. A Goa'uld version of Generic Telephone Voice started saying three words over and over, none of which was 'kree' and therefore none of which he knew, but the bumpy ride of atmospheric entry kicked in just as Daniel was trying to translate for him, juddering Daniel so hard that the English came out gibberish, and he could only hope that they meant 'Hang on, folks' and not 'Structural failure imminent!' or 'Oxygen levels critical!' or any other variant of 'You're so screwed!'
The gel cushioning expanded again to protect their heads and pushed them even closer together, but it only buffered against serious injury, and the juddering extended all over and was going to get worse before it got better. And that was rubbing their dicks together like two sticks to start a fire. After the half-hour of torturous buildup, the pleasure was blindingly intense, hard friction and unrelenting pressure, their bodies shaking against each other and with each other, no way to stop it or slow it down. Jack felt like a match dragged up a nubbled wall. Not a damn thing the match could do but burst into flame.
He came groaning through his teeth, spurting into his shorts, paralyzed by ecstasy inside the immobilizing gel. Daniel cried out a second later, and Jack got his head tilted just enough to touch his lips to Daniel's ear, say something he hoped came out sounding like Daniel's name, something else he hoped came out sounding like I love you. Daniel's fingers released their clench on his shirt and groped to his neck, closed on skin, and he said Daniel's name again, a whispered moan. They'd both gone boneless, sopping wet with each other's sweat, and the ride got easier even as the pod shook harder, limp bodies absorbing the shocks.
Everything went still. Jack drew breath to say This is it, we'll hit now and I love you, I have always loved you, and the impact knocked the breath out of him, pressed them down so hard that the gel under Daniel squeezed out and around Jack's sides and back and he felt the metal bottom of the pod's interior against his knuckles before the cushioning equalized itself. He registered the sound and quality of the impact belatedly. Not the smash and hiss of breaking water or the sucking squish of sliding into marsh; the single, deep, hard thud of the capsule lodging itself in earth.
The gel retracted away into holes in the molded interior, and the safety locks undogged with a series of thumping clicks, but the hatch didn't open.
"The thing is what?" Daniel said, as if nothing had happened. His voice calm and steady, although his heart was pounding against Jack's.
"The thing is, it's mutual. I love you. I have always loved you. I am bi, but I got hard because you did. Because you're you."
"Huh," Daniel said. Then, "Really?"
"Really," Jack said.
"You can't love me," Daniel said. "I'm not allowed."
"Daniel, we just had explosive simultaneous orgasms in a lifepod during a crash landing. I think we can do anything the hell we want."
"We did get the intel."
"And blow up the ship."
"Saved countless Tok'ra."
"And probably Earth."
"OK. Yeah. I take your point. I don't know if we can open this hatch, though."
"I think it stays closed in case the occupant's unconscious. Keep 'em safe from whatever's out there, until they come around and they can deal with it. See if there's a button or something."
"There's a square thing. It's blinking blue."
"Any other lights on?"
"Just the green ones that were on before."
"Give it a try then."
With the gel retracted, Daniel had just enough wiggle room to get his arm up and over without Jack having to dislocate his own shoulder. He pushed the button, and the hatch unsealed and opened, leaving him lying on top of Daniel in a scorched, wet, muddy, steaming escape pod in a drizzling rain in a purple meadow.
Jack pushed up on his arms. They blinked at each other in the daylight, breathed in at the same time. The first lungful of fresh air was glorious, heady with the scents of damp earth and growing things. Daniel's eyes went misty with the bliss of it, but his gaze stayed fixed on Jack.
A slamming thud about fifty feet away made them both jerk hard, and was followed by a second thud about fifty feet in another direction.
"That'd be Carter and Teal'c," Jack said.
"Guess we should get up now," Daniel said, raising his brows to indicate that he couldn't get up until Jack did.
Jack looked at the rain beading on his glasses, sprinkling his face, his damped-down bangs, his lips. It felt like hours since he'd seen Daniel's face.
"If you're going to do it, you better make it quick," Daniel said, laughter curving his lips and dancing in his eyes.
Jack lowered his head and touched his mouth gently to Daniel's. "Later," he promised.
"Later," Daniel acknowledged, and then Jack was unkinking himself, half-climbing and half-falling out of the pod, trying not to touch the sides in case the friction of reentry had left them hot enough to burn flesh, and Daniel was sitting up with his eyes wide, and pointing.
Jack turned. "Well, I'll be." The three pods had landed in a perfect equilateral triangle around the stargate. "Thing had better navigation and sensors than I thought."
He gave Daniel a hand out and a quick once-over as he heard the hatches on the other pods unsealing. Soaked from hair to boots and getting wetter in the rain, no giveaway stains on the front of his pants.
"O'Neill," Teal'c called, stepping up to the side of his pod to jump down. "Daniel Jackson. I am relieved to see you well."
"We're fine and dandy," Jack called back. "Barely squashed at all."
Carter hopped out of her pod and called over to him, grinning, "Hell of a ride, huh, sir?"
Jack smiled as Daniel came up beside him and they headed for the DHD. "Oh yeah," he called in return. Then, not looking at Daniel, but so low that only Daniel would hear, "Hell of a ride."