sanity of my vessel

Jack kept finding Daniel’s things around his house, and it kept pissing him off. Daniel’s spare glasses in his medicine cabinet. Daniel’s high nerd supreme book about some dead language on his bedside table. The pieces of crap Daniel brought back from every mission, because the locals always wanted to give him their wackadoodle magic rocks or whatever. All of it was really pissing Jack off. Would it have killed the guy to clean up before he went and became a big glowing octopus in the sky or whatever the fuck he was doing now? Why was he the one landed with throwing away Daniel’s toothbrush?

He didn’t actually throw the toothbrush away. He stood in his bathroom, which was kind of gross because he was barely home enough to clean and didn’t trust anyone else not to find the M9 pistol in the bathroom cabinet or the other M9 in a plastic bag in the toilet tank. He looked at Daniel’s toothbrush, the bristles bent and worn down, the toothpaste stains. The handle said “US Air Force” and he’d obviously taken it from the base. Daniel collected stuff faster than anyone Jack had ever known, but it never seemed to mean anything to him. He abandoned objects without care. He’d been on SG-1 for five years, and yet there had always been something transient about him, like nothing tethered him down, not objects, not people, not work or a calling, nothing. In the end, Jack guessed that had been true. Daniel was a temporary visitor in their lives.

Jack put the toothbrush back in the cup attached to the mirror, next to his own toothbrush. He guessed Daniel might want it back, whenever heaven or nirvana or the dimension of all-powerful aliens dressed like Hillary Clinton got boring.

He kept catching Carter around the base getting teary and hastily retreating or pretending he hadn’t seen it. She was sad Daniel was gone; she was grieving like he was dead. Teal'c had done the rites a Jaffa did for a dead warrior, even though Daniel could hardly stand to fire a gun in anything other than selflessness. Jack was just angry. He was really fucking pissed off. Sheer rage had gotten him this far in life. It could probably carry him through whatever all of this was.

It wasn’t grief. Jack wasn’t going to grieve for someone who was enough of a massive dick to just up and leave, give up on everything he’d built. He refused. Daniel could have his grief over his dead fucking body.

He threw the rest of Daniel’s stuff into a crate in the garage, and resolved not to think about it. He had more important stuff to worry about, like when the commissary was going to start serving Fruity Pebbles and hiding from Janet on one of her “test everyone for alien antibodies” sprees. He also still had to write up his report on crashing in the Pacific Ocean, which had been traumatic enough the first time and was not going to make for fun reading, let alone writing.

He went up onto the roof that night, with a case of beer, and pretended to himself he was watching for the stars of Hydra rising over the tops of the trees. He looked through the telescope a couple of times, but mostly he drank steadily and glared up at the sky. Daniel was probably up there somewhere, so it seemed right to direct most of his anger that way.

“Fuck you, Daniel,” he said, eventually, over the last beer out of the case. That about summed it up.

The next day, there was a long briefing about crashing the Ha’tak, mostly an opportunity for officers who’d never gone off-world to yell about losing another Goa’uld ship. Jack did point out that the ship had already been diving when he’d gotten aboard, so technically he hadn’t crashed it, but that was apparently not helpful. He had a meeting with Hammond about personnel transfers and gave his opinion on a bunch of new SG team members, he half-heartedly typed up some of the report about nearly drowning, and went through the upcoming mission briefs with some of the double digit SG teams who couldn’t find their own ass with a map and needed to be reminded of basic operational training like “try not to shoot each other”.

Unfortunately, Carter then managed to corner him in the hallway outside his office. She had a bunch of detail about the salvage effort in the Pacific, a very long speech about whatever “muon-instigated wormhole dilation” was, and then, when the hallway was empty, she looked around and made a face that put him instantly on high alert. That was Carter’s ‘you won’t like what I’m about to say’ face.

“Uh, sir, I wouldn’t normally ask about this but,” Carter’s pause sounded uncomfortably close to the pauses she made before saying things like “we’re all about to die in a horrible manner” or “the universe is about to explode” or “Daniel just grabbed a radioactive bomb with his bare hands”.

“Spit it out, Carter,” Jack said, because delaying the inevitable never helped. “But I warn you, if you ask me how I feel, I will scream like a girl.”

“Uh, noted, sir,” she said. “It’s just that, the base sergeant is going to come pack up Daniel’s office soon, and I thought you might want the chance to, uh, check his things.”

Jack stared back at her. Hopefully his confused squint wasn’t too obvious. Daniel’s office was full of more local magic rocks and the Goa’uld equivalent of varsity jackets. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked. He’d been outsourcing all the hard thinking to Daniel and Carter for five years and Carter was going to have to pick up more of the slack.

Carter was looking more and more uncomfortable. Jack really hoped he wasn’t supposed to be hiding Daniel’s etchings or something. Knowing Daniel they were probably in Ancient Mesopotamian.

“Are you absolutely sure there isn’t anything, well, incriminating, in Daniel’s office?” she asked.

“Incriminating of what? Being a giant nerd?” Jack said. “I think Daniel is at peace with everyone knowing about that.” Technically, Daniel was probably “at peace” with everything now, which was extremely aggravating because Daniel had spent half a decade being a massive pain in Jack’s ass about every damn thing and he had chosen a pretty shitty time to get very cool about everything all of a sudden.

"Uh, no, sir," Carter said, sounding very confused. "It's nothing, sir."

"Okaaay," Jack said slowly. "Didn't they buy a storage unit for MIA SG personnel after the last team got stuck in another dimension? Can't the base sergeant just put the stuff in there?"

Carter was too much of a professional to even so much as blink in a mutinous way, but Jack got the message anyway. Her face went rigid, hard and blank, and Jack had the distinct feeling he’d fallen short of her high expectations, again. Now he just felt like an asshole.

“His research materials are going to the rest of the research department, sir,” she said woodenly. “But we should probably look after his personal effects.”

Jack thought suddenly about that photo on Daniel’s desk, of him on a camel, grinning at the camera. He’d had the long hair then. Jack ran a hand over his face, feeling tired. There was always more work than you thought when someone died. All the pieces that needed picked up when someone was gone. Even Daniel, who tried so hard to leave so little behind.

“Carter, sorry,” he said, because a good officer knew when he was wrong, and also Carter didn’t deserve him being an asshole when her friend had just gone to the big geek party in the sky. “Yeah, I’ll talk to the sergeant about his effects. Is there anything you want me to hold back for you?”

Carter paused, like she was surprised by the offer. “He had some work he’d been doing on the history of Jolinar,” she said. “It should have a note on it.”

“I’ll have a look,” he said. She nodded, and made as if she was about to walk away. “Hey, Carter,” he said, before she left. “Thanks.”

She smiled, the same smile he’d been seeing across from him for years now, the best damn officer he’d ever worked with. “Of course, sir.”

He managed to catch the base sergeant actually in Daniel’s office and set aside Daniel’s personal things in a box he was given. It felt too small, but apparently it was enough for the remnants of a man’s whole life, the trinkets collected on Daniel’s desk, the piles of unsorted notes in Daniel’s round child-like handwriting, the photo of Sha’re that Daniel had never put away. He found a little stone tablet, no bigger than his palm, criss-crossed in tiny triangle writing, with a post-it note that said “Sam/Jolinar?”. Jack put it all in the box, and put it in his locker, the photo of Daniel staring out at him from the top of the pile.

&&&

They'd fucked for the first time on base, which, with hindsight, was so stupid and risky and dangerous that Jack had honestly blacked out most of the logistics. His overwhelming memory was sucking Daniel's dick, three sheets to the wind on alien hallucinogens, Janet’s best pain meds and the sheer adrenaline of survival. The only thought in his head had been ‘Reciprocate you idiot, otherwise he'll never have sex with you again!’ which had seemed, at the time, like the most important thought he'd ever had.

It was during one of Daniel’s periods of staying on base, living out of a duffle bag shoved next to a bed in one of the SGC’s bland little living quarters. They’d walked out the gateroom arguing, continued the argument through their health screening and Janet giving both of them some serious drugs, Daniel managing to lecture him even with a thermometer under his tongue, and then Jack had followed Daniel to his room still arguing, most of his annoyance directed at the back of Daniel’s neck as he walked away.

“What do you want from me, Jack!” Daniel said, turning on him in the doorway of his room. “Am I just supposed to never disagree with you? I’m not joining the fucking Air Force!”

“Well, you’d be a shit airman if you did,” Jack shot back. Daniel rolled his eyes.

“That is not the insult you think it is,” Daniel said snidely. “I don’t want to be a ‘good airman’.” He put sarcastic finger quotes around the words. In the strange clarity that always came when he was in pain but not feeling it, Jack could see Daniel’s huge pupils, the thin line of his blue iris around them. They were both out of it. But Jack couldn’t see any reason to stop. It was imperative that Daniel understand him. Daniel needed to get it.

“Look, Daniel,” Jack said, stepping forward, closing the door behind him with a satisfying slam. Daniel didn’t step back, because the idiot never knew when to back down. He fought when he should run, he ran when he should fight, and he never fucking listened to Jack about it.

“Look, what,” Daniel said, as if Jack was just being exasperating or annoying and not his commanding officer trying to get him to understand proper field protocol that would probably save his life.

“You’re going to get us all killed one day!” Jack said, and Daniel was rolling his eyes again, like Jack said this stuff to be funny, and Jack just wanted him to listen, he wanted him to pay attention. He grabbed Daniel’s shoulders, as hard as he could, he just wanted to shake him, wake him up a little, get through to him somehow.

“Oh, I’m glad you’re so concerned for my welfare,” Daniel said sarcastically, already trying to fight Jack off.

They grappled for a minute, Daniel holding onto Jack’s wrists, trying to get free, and then they slammed into the hard corner of Daniel’s bed and went down in a tangle, Daniel trying to slap Jack off of him, Jack trying to pull him closer anyway, grabbing at the collar of his jacket, the back of his neck. Daniel’s body was so warm against him, and he still had the bruise high on his neck from where the asshole on P5J-whatever had grabbed him. Daniel wasn’t a wimp, and they were properly fighting now, Daniel trying to wrench Jack over, and then Jack slammed Daniel’s shoulders back onto the bed and kissed him.

He hadn’t been thinking of anything, winning, losing; he hadn’t even been thinking about fucking. But after a second of nothing, Daniel’s slack mouth against him, Jack felt his tongue push back and then they suddenly weren’t fighting, they were kissing hard and fast, Daniel biting Jack’s lip viciously, both of them breathing raggedly. They were both hot and sweaty and Daniel tasted like salt and the sharp iron tang of blood.

He seemed to want to put his hands everywhere, and he was aggressive about it, shoving Jack’s shirt up around his armpits, rubbing through his chest hair, grabbing the back of his neck, undoing the buckle of his pants.

“Jack,” he said once, just as he got his hand into Jack’s pants and around his dick.

“Shut up,” was all Jack could say back. He was on top of Daniel but only barely, both of them panting hard, and he propped himself onto his elbow, grabbing Daniel’s hand and pulling it out of his pants. “But keep going,” he said, and then spat into Daniel’s hand, pushing it back down.

For once, Daniel was apparently in the mood to listen. His wet fingers were tight around Jack's dick, no hesitation, just strong, sure strokes, root to tip, like he could pull Jack's orgasm right out of him. Jack could see his face only in very close snapshots as their chests pressed together, and Daniel moved in a whole body way, his legs pressing him up against Jack's weight, Jack moving with him. He could see Daniel's bitten lip, the abraded skin at the edge of it, the scabbed over cut on his nose. For a split second, he wondered what Daniel could see, the greying hair, the scar that cut his eyebrow, the slight bend where he had broken his nose years ago.

"Fuck you, Jack," Daniel said, not even in a mad way, no heat to it, like it was just a fact, something he just knew. Jack grit his teeth. He wanted so badly to say something back, but Daniel's hand wasn't stopping, and every muscle in his body was tight, like a rubber band pulled further and further, sure to snap.

He had the foresight to prop himself up and push Daniel's shirt up, clumsy and desperate and then the rubber band snapped, and he came with a choked sound, the groan dying in his throat. Years of close quarters had made him quiet, if he'd ever been loud. Daniel's hand caught some of it, but the rest dripped onto his stomach, white lines over the trail of Daniel's hair.

Jack didn't let himself slow down. It was like any foolhardy charge, you couldn't stop running. Daniel went to sit up, pushing himself onto his elbows, and Jack couldn't have that. He shoved him down, Daniel letting out a surprised grunt, and Jack put his arm over Daniel's hips and used his free hand to shove down his pants and pull out his dick.

Jack had seen Daniel naked before. They'd had to have decontamination showers after getting irradiated on P4X-839, and the locals from other planets seemed to really like taking Daniel's clothes. He had a split-second of lucidness, of wondering what he was doing, and then he thought, if he pulled back now, if he stopped, Daniel would never touch him again. He had a choice. If he baulked at this jump, if he decided it was too far, then Daniel would know it was rejection, cowardice, and he'd never let this happen ever again. It was now or never, because he either did this now or never again.

He looked up, saw Daniel looking back at him, and gave him his best 'you don't scare me' smile, before licking his lips and sucking the swollen head of Daniel’s dick into his mouth. It had that tastelessness of skin, and then the strong smell of someone else's body. It wasn't getting him off, because he was spent and it didn't per se appeal to him, but Daniel was tight as a bowstring, one of his own hands clamped over his mouth. Jack sucked him, pressing his tongue at the underside of his dick, trying to imitate the strong pulling strokes Daniel had given him, with the logic that it might be Daniel's preference.

The room was nearly quiet, just the slick sound of Jack's mouth moving and Daniel breathing very hard through his nose, smart enough even now to be quiet. The shiver of danger, unfelt till now, went down Jack's spine and that, more than anything, was hot, the sense of the forbidden, the idea that even Daniel felt it, Daniel whose sense of danger was all fucked up and backwards. He knew what Jack was doing was stupid but brave.

He didn't tease or do anything fancy, just held Daniel down, not careful at all, and sucked wetly, using his tongue. At the end, Daniel fought him, pushed back against the hold like he needed, like he needed to fight something, have someone win, and then he went rigid. Jack swallowed before he could really taste it, feeling the tiny shivers across his body.

It was about momentum, in Jack's experience, like crossing a tightrope. Don't stop, don't look down, don't ask questions.

He sat up, pulled his shirt down over his chest, and then stood to redo his belt and tuck his dick away. His jacket was on the floor, not even that creased, and he put it on in one quick movement.

Daniel was lying prone on the bed, come dry on his stomach, still blinking.

"Jack," he said, like the beginning of a sentence, and Jack cut him off with a gesture, pointing a finger accusingly.

"Ah!" he said. "We are not talking about this, Daniel. You hear me? Not a word."

Daniel swallowed, pushing himself up on his elbows, no expression on his face, and then he nodded. He made no move to pull his shirt down, and Jack could see his small nipples, the muscles of his chest.

Jack locked his jaw, nodded once back, and then left, closing the door with a solid slam. He walked right out of the base, drove home at exactly the speed limit, took a shower, drank two fingers of scotch, and breathed in 4-7-8 until he fell asleep. He didn't think about it. There was nothing to think about.

At the briefing next morning, Daniel was in the room reading before they started and Jack met his eyes as he walked in. The Daniel Jack had known on Abydos would have blushed, or looked away, but instead Daniel made easy, unflustered eye contact, and smiled.

"Hey, Jack," he said. Carter and Teal'c walked in, General Hammond not far behind, and Daniel looked at him the exact same amount as normal, argued with him the same, said his name just as much as he always did, no more, no less. It was a clear message. No problem here, nothing to worry about. Daniel wasn't going to be the one who fucked this up.

&&&

They didn't talk about it, but it kept happening. Daniel got an apartment off-base, a big place with a balcony, and Sam and Jack and Teal'c helped him move and ordered pizza, sitting around his half-furnished living room, just shooting the shit. It was pretty normal. Teal'c told a long story that he clearly thought was important and Daniel was entranced by, even though Jack and Carter kept making confused eye contact. They explained drinking games to Teal'c, who was as bemused as they'd been with him. Eventually, Carter left to drive Teal'c back to the base, and Jack stayed to finish his beer. He hadn’t been thinking about anything else.

Daniel looked at him, slouched down on the sofa, long enough that Jack was going to ask him what he was looking at, but just as he opened his mouth, Daniel seemed to decide something and surged to standing, striding out the room. He took his shirt off as he went, one long smooth movement, pulled off over his head, and Jack saw the minute muscles in his back move, the smooth plane between his shoulder blades. Daniel was stronger than he seemed. It had always been true, but he’d gotten stronger recently.

Daniel left the room, into his bedroom, and Jack was sitting there, beer still in hand, explosively hard just from that one view of Daniel’s bare back. He had a second of reasonless panic, the kind from truly FUBAR missions when none of the reconnaissance was right and you were improvising for your fucking life, and then got himself the fuck under control, and drank his beer.

Daniel walked out of his bedroom, shirt off, his belt hanging open, and when he came over he leaned down and put his hand on Jack’s neck, like it belonged there, like he knew he had permission. Rage bubbled up in Jack from nowhere. He felt hot all over. He grabbed Daniel by the neck, hard, and yanked him off balance, down onto the sofa, a tangle of limbs that Jack won when he put Daniel on his back. He wanted to put a hand around Daniel’s throat, he wanted to shake him, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. Daniel just smirked back at him. He wasn’t scared. Daniel was pretty hard to scare with boring things like physical threats.

Still smiling, Daniel reached out to the coffee table. Apparently he’d gone to the other room to get lube, because he cracked open the tube and pushed it into Jack’s hand. He didn’t seem phased by any of it, just pushed his pants down, kicked them off one leg and then the other. He grinned up at Jack, and stuck out his hand, demanding, and Jack squeezed the tube, Daniel’s fingers wet and slick. They both got sticky when Daniel wrestled with the condom and Daniel laughed when Jack snatched it away from him. Jack couldn't think what was funny.

They fucked like that, Daniel on his back, one leg over Jack’s shoulder, Jack with one knee on the sofa, one foot on the ground. Daniel threw his head back and made so much noise Jack thought he was faking, showing off, letting Jack know he could make noise. Shoving it in Jack’s face that Daniel didn’t listen to Jack, didn’t take orders from him, and sure as hell didn’t keep his mouth shut for Jack’s benefit.

The fucking felt amazing, the pull of Daniel’s body, the feeling of sinking into him, but what was actually winding him up was Daniel making noise like it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, like he’d never had sex this good before. It had to be a damned lie, but it was a hell of an ego trip. Daniel's Adam's apple moving, the broken sound of his moaning, the flutter of his eyes under his closed eyelids. Jack saw it all with a sniper's eye for detail, trying to feel detached, until his body betrayed him, not hiding how overcome Daniel could make him.

In the come down, Daniel stretched his hands above his head, making a happy sound, and looking at him, lying buck naked on his own sofa, happy as a clam, really made Jack want a cigarette.

It wasn’t till he was outside, the sound of the lock turning in Daniel’s door behind him, that he realised they hadn’t said a word to each other the whole time.

&&&

Briefing without Daniel there was really fucking weird, but at least it was blessedly short without someone interrupting every few seconds. Hammond let them go after they all agreed to babysit some scientists who wanted to look at rings as a cover for getting their butts kidnapped. He was not looking forward to that one. Getting kidnapped sucked. At least Daniel wasn’t around to get mind-probed or brainwashed or glitched into another reality. Small mercies.

Major Altman grabbed him in the hall outside the briefing room to check the appropriate way to phrase “my team got literally shotgun married on PX-whatever and now we’re not talking about it” in an official report, except he wouldn’t spit it out and Jack had to sound it out from euphemism. This wasn’t his area of expertise. Normally, Daniel was in charge of writing their more sensitive reports, because anything he wrote immediately sent the brass to sleep and also because the phrase “we engaged in anthropological research” covered a lot of sins. By the time he’d sent Major Altman away with a greater understanding of creative phrasing, he had a screeching headache, and that was when Hammond stuck his head out of his office.

“Colonel, can we talk?” Hammond gestured Jack into his office, and Jack sidled in slowly. Hammond was a pretty good CO as things went, but Jack’s experience of COs was that they were best handled with extreme care.

“Yes, sir?” Jack asked, after a long pause. It was also better to let the CO do the talking.

“Jack, I want to make clear I’m saying this not as your CO, but as your friend,” Hammond started, which put Jack’s back right up. No one wanted to talk to you as a friend unless they were giving you bad news, especially not the brass.

"Sir," Jack hazarded, after another long pause. This was going to be a really long chat if Hammond was wanting him to contribute.

"Because I care about the people under my command," Hammond said, another red flag a mile high.

"I thought you weren't being my CO right now," Jack said, and then added, "Sir".

Hammond just looked at him.

"There is a normal stand-down period after a team loses a member," he said, and Jack groaned internally. It was the bench conversation! He was getting the conversation about being benched!

"Sir, my team led the mission to take the ha'tak," he said. Hammond didn't even hesitate.

"Those were extenuating circumstances, Colonel," he said. "I currently have SG-1 on official stand-down."

Now Jack did actually groan aloud.

"Sir, Daniel's not even dead! He's some glowy octopus in the sky!"

"The fact remains," Hammond said, interrupting before Jack could really get going about Daniel's new life as a zen ball of light chilling with very annoying aliens who he would doubtless get on with like a house on fire. Everyone got on with Daniel. Human-eating lizards and backwards nuclear-bomb making psychopaths and the fucking rocks in the ground found Dr. Jackson charming. "SG-1 is down a man. That has an effect on the men and women under your command, Colonel,” Hammond finished.

Jack only had one man and one woman under his command, and if he tried to talk to either of them about their emotions they would immediately clap him in irons and hand deliver him to Janet and her Snake Removal Machine.

"Carter and Teal'c are fine," he said. "They'd be happiest getting to work fighting the Goa'uld, sir."

Hammond frowned. "Jack, SG-1 is on mandatory one week stand-down, and I will need Dr. Fraiser's okay to send you back into the field. But I would like to make it clear, if you need to take additional leave, either personally or to manage Dr. Jackson's affairs, that can certainly be arranged."

Jack blinked. He didn't want the one week stand-down. Why on earth would he want more time kicking his heels and watching the Avalanche get the crap kicked out of them when Anubis was out there mind-probing people?

"Sir," Jack said, gearing up to protest. Hammond raised his hand, cutting him off.

"Jack," Hammond said in his "I am indulging you" voice. "I understand the position this puts you in. You can take any time you need."

Jack felt like he was speaking another language. When had he ever needed to take time for anything? He'd barely taken a day off after Hathor had put that snake in him. Hell, after they'd gotten that damn Ancient library out of his brain, he'd gone off-world the next morning.

"I don't believe I need any leave," Jack said. "I'd like to get back to the mission at hand."

Hammond shook his head. “Jack, there is nothing wrong with needing to take a few days in these circumstances.”

Jack knew the end of a CO’s patience when he heard it.

“Sir,” he said, since that was neither agreement nor disagreement and therefore probably safe. Hammond sighed.

“Colonel, I can make a psych evaluation mandatory,” he said, in a tone that sounded very much like a threat. Jack grimaced.

“Understood, sir,” he said. “One week stand down it is.” He gestured vaguely. “Carter probably has some doohickey she wants to nearly kill me testing.” He paused, and then hastily added, “Sir.”

“Alright, Colonel,” Hammond said, which was probably a sign he wasn’t being Jack’s friend anymore. That was how Jack liked it. George was alright, but COs were supposed to stay COs.

He made a hasty escape into the hall, hoping that Hammond’s odd expression wasn’t a sign of future uncomfortable conversations to come.

Usually in the afternoon he went to the gym with Teal’c, but he had to look around half the base to find him. He wasn’t in the gym, or his quarters, or the commissary, and he eventually found him in a storage room, meditating, surrounded by candles.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, lingering in the doorway. Very slowly, Teal’c opened his eyes and turned to look at him.

“O’Neill,” he said.

“What’cha doing?” he asked, stepping through candles carefully.

"Kel-no-mak," Teal'c said, as if this was very obvious. "It is a Jaffa tradition, when a fellow warrior has fallen."

"Right," Jack said, and then paused. "Daniel?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said, straightening up and closing his eyes again. "You may join me, if you wish."

There was a small space, just wide enough for someone to sit cross legged. "Sure," Jack said, because it was usually smart to go along with whatever Teal'c was doing. Either it was the right idea, or he'd drag you along with him whether you wanted it or not. His knees screamed at him as he sat.

"Daniel Jackson would often join me to kel-no-reem," Teal'c said, about ten minutes later. Jack hadn't been meditating at all, just sitting braced back on his hands watching Teal'c’s breathing slow and the candles burn down.

"Yeah?" Jack said, half a question, half a challenge. So Daniel had been good at this stuff, learning about Teal'c's culture, sharing something with him, chameleon-ing into something else, becoming more an alien than actual aliens. What did that mean? Where did that leave Jack? He'd seen Daniel on Abydos, with Skaara and Kasuf, this family he shared no blood with, this planet where, technically, nothing held him there. But Daniel was one of them. He asked about people's babies, their crops, their marriages. Sometimes he went to Abydos on his weekends, and Jack didn't know what he did, in that place where he was an alien.

“It has been a great honour to me for many years,” Teal’c said slowly. “That Daniel Jackson has been among my friends.”

What was Jack supposed to say to that?

“Well, he was a geek,” Jack said, and then shrugged. “But yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Kel-no-mak is a ritual to remember the deeds of a warrior,” Teal’c said, which wasn’t really a response but was pretty logical for a Teal’c conversation. Jack figured being over 100 made small talk boring. “I seek to match the honour of Daniel Jackson’s friendship by completing the ceremony. Major Carter informed me something similar is done in Earth traditions.”

“Uh, kinda,” Jack said. “We don’t really meditate on it. Mostly we tell stories about them to each other. While really drunk.”

“How then do you recall the deeds of a warrior?” Teal’c asked.

“Look Teal’c, don’t take this the wrong way,” Jack started, feeling tired. He wasn’t really up for explaining human culture to Teal’c. He’d explained Outback Steakhouse, and Denny’s, and the concept of graveyards, what a dollar bill was, what a president was, why the Simpsons were yellow if they weren’t aliens, and a bunch of other stuff, but this wasn’t his area. This was Daniel’s job.

Except Daniel wasn’t there anymore. Daniel had abdicated, he’d walked off the base, he’d abandoned his post, he’d put down his weapon and walked out into No Man’s Land, and he’d left Jack, and Teal’c and Carter and all of them, behind. He remembered the vision of Daniel, the bright light that seemed to come from everywhere, Daniel’s clear eyes looking at him, asking him to let him die. It was the most terrible thing Daniel had ever asked him to do.

Jack rubbed a hand over his face, and looked up at Teal’c, who didn’t seem perturbed by Jack’s long pause. Jack laughed, but it was dry and empty, no humour, just something his body had to do or he wouldn’t say anything at all.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “Daniel was a shit warrior.”

“I do not agree, O’Neill,” Teal’c said.

“Oh really?” Jack rolled his eyes. What did he know? Jack was only the one who’d taught Daniel to fire a damn gun. Daniel didn’t panic, but he let his emotions get in the way. And he was terrible at re-loading.

“The primary purpose of a warrior is to kill his enemy,” Teal’c said. “Daniel Jackson has been responsible for the death of many of those in service to false gods.”

If there was one area where Teal'c was red hot, it was dead Goa’ulds. “Okay, fine,” Jack said. “But he’s a terrible shot.”

That wasn’t really true. Daniel’s shooting range scores were fine. Teal’c didn’t call him on the lie but he did give him a long look, and then closed his eyes again, going back to meditation.

"Daniel Jackson has demonstrated great bravery," Teal'c said.

"You think I don't know that?" Jack wanted to throw something, but there were only candles so he settled for an angry gesture. "I said that at that damned funeral we had for him in '97."

"Indeed," Teal'c said, and, if he wasn't careful, Jack was going to throw a candle at him.

"Oh for crying out loud, fine," Jack said, feeling like, somehow, he was the crazy one. "Dr. Jackson was a great warrior and he'll go to Valhalla and shoot snake bastards for the rest of his days."

"Daniel Jackson has ascended," Teal'c said, and how did Teal'c do that? Talk like what he was saying didn't affect him, like it was nothing. "He exists on a higher plane as a being of pure energy."

"Yeah, or that," Jack said. He didn't think this meditation stuff was for him. If he was gonna sit here and think about Daniel's 'deeds' it was going to be a highlight reel of all his stupidest moments. He thought suddenly of Daniel laughing at him, their sticky hands fumbling the wrapper of the condom. Fuck this. He stood, slowly, grunting at the twinge in his knees. "Y'know, Teal'c, he picked a hell of a time to go."

"He did," Teal'c said, and then after a long pause, so long that Jack thought the conversation was maybe over. "He will be sorely missed."

Jack paused in the doorway, and looked back, Teal'c in the warm darkness, maintaining his silent vigil, trying to reach out from his alien world to Daniel's alien world, to honour his friend who was gone in the only way he knew how.

"Yeah," he said.

&&&

"I don't want to keep him in the infirmary," Janet said. "Physically, there's nothing wrong with him. In my professional opinion, he needs rest and to return to his regular routine."

"He shouldn't be alone," Carter said, and then made a face.

"Be that as it may," Janet said, crossing her arms. "I don't think the complete lack of privacy is helping."

"I'll take him," Jack said, and then squinted when they all turned to look at him. "I've got a spare room."

"Are you sure, Colonel?" Janet asked. "He's not up for anything strenuous."

"We're on stand down anyway," Jack said, which was annoying but expected. "I'll clean the gutters. He can watch."

There was a sound in the hall, and then Daniel limped into the doorway. He looked awful, big purple smears of exhaustion under his eyes, his skin nearly grey. His beard had grown in, but he hadn’t trimmed it and it was only patchy.

“Stop talking about me without me,” he said, and tried a smile, pained-looked and uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” Sam said, but none of the rest of them apologised. Jack didn’t feel bad, and Janet was a doctor, her whole job was talking about people without their permission.

“Dr. Jackson,” Janet said. “I don’t need you taking up space in my infirmary anymore. Colonel O’Neill has volunteered his spare room.”

“Has he,” Daniel said, giving Jack a strange look. Jack shrugged.

“I’ve got cable,” he said. Daniel seemed to think about it for a second.

“Okay,” he said. Sam looked like she’d expected to have to argue for longer, but Jack knew better than to waste any time when Daniel was in an agreeable mood.

“Great,” he said. “Let’s go. Doc?”

“I’ll get your prescriptions,” she said. Daniel waited till she was out of the room and then sat down heavily in one of the briefing room chairs.

“Any chance you’ll just let me just go home on my own?” he asked the room at large, staring at his hands.

“Nope,” Jack said cheerfully, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Get Carter to get whatever nerd stuff you need from your office and I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

Teal'c was in the gym, beating the crap out of some marines, so Jack said a quick goodbye, snagged his jacket from his office, and swung by the infirmary on his way out. Doc gave him a nod, a stapled together set of prescriptions and a couple little plastic bottles with the tricky caps.

"Anything to keep an eye on?" Jack asked. Janet shook her head.

"A very mild sedative he can take as needed, and something to help him sleep, that's all," she said. "Be careful with him, Colonel."

"Hey," Jack said. "I'm always careful."

Daniel was waiting for him leaning against the passenger door of the car, in green BDU pants and a crew neck, listing to the side. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. He probably hadn’t.

Jack drove them out of the mountain and into town, Daniel silent the whole way. He seemed to be thinking about something, although Jack would have felt better if he'd slept some. When they parked in the driveway and Jack climbed out, Daniel didn't move, and Jack had to open the driver's door and lean down into the car to get his attention.

"Hey, Daniel," he said. "Home. Let's get moving."

"Yeah, uh, Jack?" Daniel said, turning to look at him. Jack didn't like that tone. That was his 'I've figured out something bad' tone. Daniel barrelled on anyway. "I, uh, I don't want to have sex. Not right now."

Jack gave him the best 'you're an idiot' look he could manage. "Yeah, because you're so irresistible right now, Dr. Jackson. C'mon, Casanova, get out of the car. The only hot date you have is with Doc Fraiser's sleeping pills."

Daniel blinked at him, and then got out of the car. He trailed after Jack into the house, silent and listless. Apparently building up to that announcement had taken it out of him. Jack installed him on the sofa with a can of off-brand soda, put new sheets on the spare bed, got a glass of water for the pills, and found an old pair of his pyjamas that he left on the foot of the bed. They'd never fallen asleep next to each other at home, so he had no idea how Daniel liked to sleep. In the field, they slept when they could, covered in gore and mud and with one eye open, even Daniel.

"Okay big guy, c'mon," he said, when he came out of the hall to find Daniel tipped over on the sofa, eyes half-closed. He towed him by the upper arm, a bit alarmed at how easily Daniel went, and left him in front of the bed. He wasn't going to try undressing him. Some indignities were for extreme emergencies only.

Jack watched half of a Canucks game with the volume on low, slowly drinking a beer. He heard Daniel move around in the bedroom for a little while, and then, eventually, silence. Before he went to bed, he paused in the hall, trying to attune his hearing, but Daniel's door was closed and he heard nothing, not even the faint sound of breathing.

He thought he probably wouldn't sleep, not with someone else in his house, not with Daniel hurting from some unhealable pain, but, when he lay down, he felt it come over him like a warm wave, carried away into unconsciousness.

"Jack. Jack." Daniel was calling his name. That was normal, but the sound was coming from far away, and then suddenly as Jack fought through the mud of sleep into the clear water of wakefulness, it wasn't in his dream, Daniel was saying his name. "Jack."

As he opened his eyes, he was already half out of bed, one hand reaching for the bedside table where he kept an M9. There was a figure in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light, and between one blink and the next it came into focus as Daniel, in pyjama pants, shoulders hunched over.

In the dark, his hair a little grown out, he looked like the kid who had come back from Abydos, like the years had been rolled back. Except, as Jack’s eyes focused, his shoulders were too broad, he had more muscle now, there were scars that hadn’t been there in ‘96.

“Daniel?” he said, rolling over, pulling back from reaching for the gun. “You okay?”

“Jack?” He didn’t sound like he knew where he was. Jack remembered him with a fever on some dusty sand planet he’d forgotten the registration for, Sam trying to get him to drink water and he’d called her Sha’re. He’d thought he was on Abydos.

“Daniel, go back to sleep,” Jack said. Daniel shuffled forward, and then put a knee on the bed. Closer, he could see Daniel’s face, and a sliver of light through the curtains cut over his face, catching the shadow of his nose, the blue of one eye. His pupil contracted. He paused for a second, and then tipped over, until he was laid out on the bed next to Jack, his head just missing a pillow. He blinked, and then closed his eyes, his face going slack.

“Okay, Jack,” he said, sleepily, and then he was asleep, breath wuffling quietly. He didn’t have his glasses on, and Jack could see the little dent on the bridge of his nose. If this was where he needed to sleep, then that was fine with Jack. He punched his own pillow a couple of times, and closed his eyes. The pattern of his breathing fell in sync with Daniel’s after a few moments, and that was it.

He woke up before Daniel, and rolled out of bed as silently as possible. He ate cereal over the kitchen sink, looking out at the scruffy lawn of his backyard. Everything was quiet, no one else on the street awake. He did some mental math. It was a Wednesday. Kids would be going to school soon.

He had a small deck out the back door, and a concrete patio with a hockey net and some outdoor pucks. He put on a sweater he’d left on the back of the couch, over the shirt he’d slept in, and left the back door open while he flicked some shots into the net. Nothing fancy, just messing around, thinking about nothing. He had tickets for a game in Denver in a few weeks, and a scheduled leave day with no missions, but knowing his luck Thor was probably going to transport him out of the line for beer.

It was chilly with the sun behind the trees, but as it climbed, it warmed the back of Jack’s neck and arms, his hands on his old crappy wooden stick. Inside the house, he heard the hot water heater rumble to life and the shower turn on.

Eventually, Daniel appeared in the doorway. His hair was wet. He’d found an old sweater of Jack’s, a faded logo on the front Jack couldn’t read, and he’d pulled the sleeves down over his hands, like he was cold.

“Hey,” he said, and sat down on the deck’s wooden steps. He looked a little better, without the sheen of exhaustion. “So, I slept in your room.”

“Yep,” Jack said, and flicked off a wrist shot.

“Where did you sleep?” Daniel asked, very casually.

“It’s my room,” Jack squinted at him. What was Daniel getting at here?

“Okay,” Daniel said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jack said. He hit a beautiful top shelf shot, and Daniel didn’t even appreciate it. “No, seriously, don’t mention it.”

Daniel smiled. “Sure.”

“How you feeling?” Jack asked. “No more maniacal James Bond villain dreams?”

Daniel let his head thunk against the bannister next to the steps. “I don’t think that’s what I would call it.”

“Okay,” Jack said, taking the bait. “What would you call it then?”

“A vision,” Daniel said, in that same tone of voice he used to make ridiculous things seem real. “A vision of a possible future.”

“Yeah, one that isn’t going to happen. The kid went through the gate.”

“He ascended, actually. I think. Maybe.”

Jack waved a hand. He’d gotten all the Buddhism summary at the briefing. “Which means he’s all safe and glowy now, right?”

Daniel just nodded. He didn’t look happy about it. Jack decided not to poke at it any more, and went to fish the pucks out of the net.

“Hey, you wanna come to a hockey game with me?” Jack asked, inspired, when he’d kicked them back down the patio. “Teal’c doesn’t want to come with me, he’s mad the Canucks didn’t win the cup.”

“You explained to him they don’t all get killed when they lose right?” Daniel asked.

“Oh yeah. Touchy subject apparently.”

“Makes sense,” Daniel said. “You want me to come with you?”

“Why not? What were you going to do with your leave, read more gobbledygook?”

“Actually, I was going to go to Abydos. Sha’re’s cousin is naming her baby.”

“Oh, well, I could come with you? See Skaara, look at some sand. Look at some more sand.”

Daniel snorted. “It’s very nice once you get to know it,” he said, but without any fight in it. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Jack?”

“What?” Jack flipped a puck onto his stick and bounced it a couple of times. Daniel watched his hands, not the puck.

“Do you ever think…that things happen for a reason?” he asked.

“You don’t think we’re interacted with enough over-dressed freaks calling themselves gods?” Jack said.

“Not gods,” Daniel agreed. “But what about fate? A connection?”

“Oh, give me a break,” Jack let the puck fall, and it bounced against the concrete. “I don’t think there’s some grand master plan. If there was, why on earth do my knees hurt so much?”

“I don’t know, Jack,” Daniel said, leaning back on the steps to look at the sky. “Maybe the Ascended want you to stay humble.”

“C’mon, Daniel, what’s eating you? Fate, meaning to life, what’s this all about?” Jack dropped his stick on the ground, and let himself fall onto the steps next to Daniel.

“Oh, I don’t know, my wife’s dead, there’s always that,” Daniel said, but he said it like it was an old, familiar pain, not something new. He paused, and looked over at Jack. “Shifu saw something in me, something dangerous. He knew that I couldn’t be trusted.” Daniel rolled his head back and forth like he was thinking. “That there was something in me, something dark. I saw that, in the vision Shifu gave me.”

It should have sounded silly, Daniel sitting on his back steps, in the morning Colorado sunshine, wondering aloud if he was evil. But he said it with so much blankness, like he just accepted it was true.

“I think everyone has something like that,” Jack said. Daniel shook his head.

“You didn’t,” he said. He looked at Jack. “You tried to stop me, in the vision.”

“Did it work?” Jack asked. Daniel grimaced.

“No.”

“Well, there you go. Clearly something wrong with me.”

Daniel didn’t laugh. The exhaustion seemed to be creeping back into his face.

“Sometimes,” Daniel said, and then ran a hand over his face. “I think I’m being punished. We keep going through the gate, and we keep meeting people, things, beings that sense this thing in me.” Daniel always gestured as he spoke, and now was no different, some deeply-held emotion was threatening to burst out. “And they want to cut it out, they want to make whatever it is in me that calls to them, they want to make it suffer. All these people hurt, that I couldn’t protect. Sha’re, Sarah, Shifu…”

He trailed off. Jack thought it probably would have been better if he was crying. That would have made sense. Instead, Daniel just squinted up at the sky, like this was any other puzzle his brain was working through.

“Am I being punished, Jack?” he asked. Jack winced, instinctively. What could anyone say to that?

He put a hand on Daniel’s knee, and squeezed. “No, Daniel, you’re not being punished. It just sucks.”

“Oh,” Daniel said, and then nothing else. Neither of them said anything for a long time, long enough that Jack noticed the angle of the shadows changing, just a little. Daniel’s arm and leg were warm against his, and, in the silence, Jack could hear Daniel’s breathing, see his chest rise and fall out of the corner of his eye. They didn’t speak.

&&&

Jack’s house wasn’t big but he still felt he was rattling around it like a ball in a pinball machine. He mowed the lawn, he cleaned his gross bathroom, he half-heartedly read a book. He sat down to clean the three or four pistols he had stashed around the house, but then he picked one up, released the magazine, and thought suddenly of taking Daniel to the shooting range, guiding his hands on the grip, knowing that Daniel would need this, that he needed to be able to protect himself, and Jack trusted him to do that now. Before he’d really thought about it, he turned and threw the empty gun across the room, the rage bubbling up out of nowhere.

It collided with the wall and clattered to the ground, behind his sofa, and Jack stared at it, breathing heavily like he’d just run a mile. This was the terrifying anger, that seemed to come from nowhere, no place. He recognised it, the directionless, the target gone or missing, the feeling of being motionless yet out of control.

The part of him that was rational watched as he got up, picked up the gun from where it’d fallen, and sat back down to clean it. He cleaned each one carefully, methodically. He wasn’t careless, he kept the magazines empty, the safety on, stored the magazines separately, put each gun back in the place he hid them. And then he went up onto the roof, where he didn’t keep any guns, couldn’t throw anything, and could stew in his anger to his heart’s content. He didn’t take any beer with him. He was in the crystal-clear danger zone, that time when the anger and frustration could easily bubble into something else, something worse.

It was the middle of the day. There weren’t any stars to look at. He sat in his camping chair and watched the clouds scull over the blue sky. He watched cars take left turns streets away and watched kids walk home from the school bus stop. This was the important stuff. This was what they were trying to protect.

None of it seemed real. That was the thing about the Stargate, it was so easy, just stepping through a door, that it made everything back home seem unreal, like the reality was out there. Maybe that was why Daniel had needed to go. Surely being pure energy, existing so completely you were everywhere, surely that felt real.

Without realising it, the anger and adrenaline slowly fading out of his body, he fell asleep in the camp chair, and woke up hours later, disoriented and in the dark, the phone ringing inside his house. He half-climbed, half-fell down the ladder, and went to go answer it, back to the world of the living.

&&&

If fucking on the base was dumb, fucking in the Goa’uld pleasure palace while they were all in withdrawal was, in the words of his old CO, “so fucking stupid they should keep your body for science”.

He was bored. Daniel had translated every single piece of wall he could find, they’d all gone on long walks around the dreary beach, they’d played catch and bounced the ball off the wall. They’d taught Loran every card game they could think of, and now Carter was teaching him calculus. Teal’c was meditating. Jack had lasted an hour lying on the floor in one of the abandoned rooms, staring at the ceiling, before he got up and went to go find Daniel.

He hadn’t been thinking about sex, which was the defense he would give to no one because no one would have believed it. He’d been thinking about yanking Daniel’s chain, maybe get him ranting about translation or how difficult it was to work with Jack hassling him, or, well, anything. It didn’t usually take much for Daniel to disagree with him.

Daniel was lying under one of the palace’s weird archways, his tac vest folded under his head so he could prop himself up and write in his notebook.

“What’cha doing”? Jack said, throwing himself down next to him. “Translating Goa’uld dirty flicks?”

Daniel didn’t rise to the bait. “Dirty flicks?” he asked, not looking up from his notebook. “You sound like you’re from the 50s.”

“Oh, so it is dirty,” Jack said, and shoved Daniel’s shoulder with his elbow, watching Daniel’s pen skitter across the page.

“Jack!” Daniel squawked, which had been exactly what Jack wanted, Daniel always rising to his goading. Daniel glared at him, and Jack tried to look innocent back.

“What?” he said. Daniel rolled his eyes.

“The drug doesn’t make you childish,” he said. “You’re doing that all on your own.”

“Yep,” Jack said. “Say, why didn’t the snakes put anything more interesting here? No dancing girls, or boys for the nice lady snakes, not even a tennis court.”

“I don’t think the point of this place was activities,” Daniel said, scathingly. “And I don’t think the Goa’uld have hobbies.”

“Sure they do,” Jack said. “You can’t picture Ba’al in front of the mirror, practising his lines? Every snake’s gotta start somewhere.”

“How bored are you right now?”

Jack flopped back. “Dr. Jackson, if a Goa’uld came in here right now and started ranting about being a god I'd sing Hallelujah because shooting him would be something to do.”

Daniel snorted. “You haven’t called me Dr. Jackson in a long time,” he said, quietly. Jack looked up, and met his gaze. Jack hadn’t brought up Daniel’s moment on the steps of his deck, and he certainly hadn’t initiated any conversations about helping Daniel off the balcony. A man’s mind should be his own. But Daniel’s gaze wasn’t annoyed with him, or embarrassed, just a little shy, like he was remembering how much Jack knew about him now.

“Too much of a mouthful,” Jack said, not looking away, entranced by watching Daniel blink, by the colour and pattern of his irises. Daniel seemed to have figured him out, and was leaning in, and then they were kissing, Jack’s P90 digging into their chests. Jack wasn’t bored now.

“This is dumb,” Daniel said, when they pulled apart, but he was fumbling with Jack’s P90 harness, trying to get it out of the way. He was always terrible with field equipment, he never paid attention in training, he couldn’t find the buckle, but Jack got it undone and then yanked Daniel into the v of his legs, so they were chest to chest. This was so stupid, he shouldn’t be removing his weapon off-world, he shouldn’t be losing his situational awareness, but Daniel kissed him again, and when he put his hand around the back of Daniel’s skull he could feel the curve of it, perfectly in the palm of his hand.

Daniel was a sure, confident kisser, not afraid to let the weight of his body lean down on Jack, to slide his tongue along Jack’s, very assertive. It made every ‘fuck you’ instinct in Jack go on high alert, which was all confused with being turned on, so Jack felt like he was aroused all over his body. Even his feet and hands were turned on. The palace was very quiet, and they were in a deserted corner of it, and the only sounds were the wet noises of their mouths against each other, their breathing in between kisses, Daniel’s breathy gasp when Jack used the belt loops of his BDU to hold him in place.

They’d never just made out before. They’d been fucking on and off for nearly two years, but without a plan or any kind of communication about it. He’d expected Daniel to eventually crack, give in to his inability to stop asking why, and start asking questions, but he never had. Right now, Jack was stupidly grateful for that, because if Daniel had started asking questions, they would have had to stop, but with Daniel keeping his mouth shut they could lie in this stupid Goa’uld opium den and make out.

The tiny part of Jack’s brain that was always running the odds was listening to the silence, making sure no one snuck up on them, but the rest of him was enthralled, Daniel squirming in his lap, one of his hands on Jack’s shoulder, at one point rearing back to take off his jacket and drop it on his tac vest.

He pulled Daniel back down to kiss him again, biting his lip hard and pulling their hips together, trying to move the friction along a bit.

“Yeah?” Daniel said, against his mouth.

He had a grip on a fistful of Jack’s jacket and wasn’t letting go, but his other hand skimmed the top of Jack’s pants, and then took a handful of his dick. Daniel had big hands. It was very inelegant, Daniel’s hand groping him through his pants, but Jack wasn’t an elegant guy and it felt good. He groaned, and Daniel let him muffle it into his mouth, pushing their tongues against each other. It felt good everywhere, like Daniel had a direct line from his dick into his brain stem.

He tried to thrust up into Daniel’s hand, trying to get more friction, and Daniel didn’t let him, just leaned his whole bodyweight onto Jack’s ribs and kept rubbing at him, slowly, maddeningly, long strokes that made the soles of Jack’s fucking feet tingle. He wanted to drum his heels against the ground, yell, scream, maybe just headbutt Daniel in the face and jerk himself off.

He settled for biting Daniel’s lip, really hard, enough that Daniel yelped and reared back, his surprised, affronted expression worth it just on its own. Jack grinned back at him, unrepentant.

“Don’t dish it if you can’t take it,” he said, and then choked when Daniel squeezed his dick, harder than was comfortable.

“What was that?” Daniel said, because he was an asshole and he wanted Jack to suffer. Jack was going to kill him, and then he took it all back, Daniel was the best, Jack was going to get him a medal, somehow, he had to have done something in the last four years worth a medal, because he’d finally undone Jack’s belt and put his hand on Jack’s dick.

Finally, finally, he didn’t tease him. He stroked Jack firmly, no messing around. The sensation didn’t make sense for a second, and then Jack rearranged it in his brain and realised that Daniel had gun calluses now, enough that Jack could feel them.

A shrink would have had a fucking field day with him, if he ever had the self-destructive urge to tell anyone that it was that that made him lose it, the realisation that Daniel was stroking him with the hand he squeezed the trigger with, the calluses Jack had made him develop. As he came, Daniel let him breathe the air from his mouth, a kiss so messy and uncoordinated it was just wet breath against each other.

Daniel cleaned him up with one of the bandanas he still kept in his tac vest, even though he hadn’t needed them since he cut his hair. Jack only moved to tuck himself away, and then flopped back, staring up at the underside of the Goa’uld arch. Daniel lay down next to him, not lying on him but his head leaning against Jack’s shoulder.

“Not reciprocating?” he asked, very dry, and Jack made a vague noise.

“In a minute,” Jack said. “I want a cigarette.”

“I don’t pack those,” Daniel said, patting his leg, and sounding extremely smug. Jack supposed it was probably deserved.

“Any requests?” he asked, rather than answer that. Daniel sighed.

“We haven’t fucked in ages,” he said, like he was thinking about ice cream or dead languages or whatever else got his weird egghead going.

“No can do,” Jack said, waving his hand at Daniel and missing him by a mile. “I’m spent. And I don’t pack condoms in my tac vest.”

“Damn,” Daniel said. “Maybe we should start.”

“Well, I’m not asking Fraiser about it,” Jack said, which made Daniel laugh. It was good to see him laugh, the lines on his face crinkling. It didn’t make him look younger, because young Daniel had been serious, occasionally full of wonder, but always very aware of the heavy mantle he was under, of the weight he was carrying. Alien drug addictions notwithstanding, Daniel had been getting lighter, over the years, like the burden didn’t drag so heavily anymore.

“Okay, what is on the table then?” Daniel asked, turning towards him with some intent. He ran a hand across Jack’s stomach, over his shirt. “C’mon, you’re killing me here.”

“I think you’ll live,” Jack said, but turned to let Daniel kiss him and started working at his belt. Never let it be said Jack O’Neill didn’t reciprocate. He got Daniel’s belt open, his briefs down at the top of his thighs. The muscles in Daniel’s legs were satisfyingly firm, and Jack squeezed his balls, the rough scratch of his pubes, and then spat in his hand and stroked Daniel’s dick, rolling his palm over the head, feeling the wetness when Daniel choked and his dick twitched.

“Jack, c’mon,” Dainel groaned.

“Don’t rush me,” Jack said, and gripped Daniel’s dick harder.

Daniel always reacted blatantly to everything, and there was something endlessly interesting about his reactions, the wrinkle between his eyebrows, the flicker of his eyelids. He never gave into it easily, he seemed to like to fight it, as if it was painful and good at the same time. Jack stroked him, playing carefully with the head of his dick, the pronounced ridge, and he thought about watching Daniel's face when they fucked, the way Daniel seemed to go someplace else, completely overcome.

"You want to fuck me sometime?" Jack asked, because he'd never really been interested in it before, not even after nearly two years of fucking Daniel pretty regularly, but thinking about how much Daniel liked it had made the thought float across his brain. It didn't seem like a bad idea.

"Jesus fuck," Daniel said, too loudly, convulsing, and Jack instinctively slammed a hand over his mouth and gripped his dick harder, stopping his obviously oncoming orgasm in its tracks. Vindictively, Daniel bit him.

"Now?" Daniel asked, a little strangled, when Jack drew his hand back. Jack eyeballed him.

"No," he said, not adding 'obviously, you idiot'. "Sometime."

"Oh," Daniel said. "Okay then. We can do that. We can definitely do that."

For a second, neither of them moved, frozen in this odd place where Jack still had his hand on Daniel's dick and Daniel was really hard, but they were just staring at each other, like they were waiting for the other to jump one way or the other. Finally, Daniel jumped.

"Can I fuck your thighs?" he said, very fast and all in a rush.

"What?" Jack said, because he didn't know what that meant. "How?"

"Uh, you put your legs together and I, uh, fuck you that way. Not inside," Daniel was holding very very still, poised like a deer in a hunter's view.

"And that's nice?" Jack asked. It sounded ridiculous.

Daniel nodded, too many times, swallowing obviously. Jack stared at him, because the suggestion was obviously insane, except having his hand on Daniel's dick was also insane and was this that much crazier? Not really, in the scheme of things.

"You are a weird man," Jack said, and then shrugged. "Okay."

Daniel managed to use his apparently very impressive brain to realise Jack was not in a debating mood, and didn't ask him if he was sure. He just surged up, grabbing Jack in a very aggressive kiss, and started trying to roll him onto his side. They wrestled for a moment, still kissing, Jack not going even as Daniel pushed and pulled at him. He made a frustrated noise, and Jack grinned and bit his lip, before rolling over onto his side, pulling Daniel with him. Just as long as he knew Jack was doing this because he wanted to, not because Daniel was making him.

Jack's belt was already undone and Daniel wrapped a hand around him to fumble with his zipper and push his pants down, just down his thighs. It felt weirdly revealing, especially with Daniel behind him, even though he'd been completely naked around Daniel probably hundreds of times. After getting dragged around by the Unas, Daniel had come home with him, pushed him onto the bed, and ridden him like an animal, like he'd been possessed, even as Jack looked at the scrapes and bandages across Daniel's chest. They'd both been naked then, stripped down to nothing, just new injuries and old scars.

Behind him, Daniel spat, and then Jack felt his wet fingers between his legs, which was a very weird and unpleasant sensation and he was about to tell Daniel to stop, before Daniel put his forehead between Jack's shoulderblades and choked out, "Fuck, Jack, oh my god." Maybe Jack could roll with it for a little longer.

Daniel made another very undignified sound, and then Jack felt the press of his dick between his legs, a very weird, backwards kind of feeling that made Jack instinctively press his legs tighter together, which apparently made Daniel go crazy. He groaned brokenly, and Jack could feel his wet mouth against the back of his neck, pressing as close as he could, like there was a way to get closer, break the laws of biology and chemistry and get inside Jack’s clothes with him.

Daniel moved his hips, at first slowly and then more confidently, and it stopped feeling weird and started feeling like Daniel's dick was dragging over parts of him that Jack hadn't even realised existed. It felt shivery and forbidden, like getting to second base in the back of his truck with Abigail Gerwitz when he was 17, or when Paul Marshalls had dared him to get his dick out in the basement of his parents’ house and they'd ended up jerking each other off.

Then the head of Daniel's dick nudged up against his balls, once and then again and again, each of Daniel's careful hip pushes making him shiver all over, his legs as tight together as he could make them. He couldn't look down because that would be worse, then he might see just the glimpse of Daniel's dick coming between his legs, he might see the flushed head against his balls, his soft, spent dick that really, really wished it could get with the program. That would be worse.

He stared resolutely at the stupid wall of Goa'uld nonsense, and Daniel mouthed at his neck, moaning constantly. His dick was both hard and soft between Jack’s thighs, the skin gliding gently, and each thrust moved it over skin that grew only more and more sensitive.

Daniel grabbed his hip, hard, holding him in place as his hips worked, and that made Jack feel like he should be turned on, like he should be hard and gasping and maybe actually asking Daniel to fuck him, because if this is was the diet version than what did the full fat one feel like? Was more even possible?

“Daniel,” he said, not sure what he was going to say yet, and then Daniel’s hips stuttered and his grip on Jack’s hip tightened.

“Please, Jack, let me, please,” he said, very quietly, as if Jack had been about to ask him to stop, when he probably had been about to ask him to keep going, and that was really a fucking trip, Daniel asking him, begging him to not do anything at all, just let Daniel keep going.

Daniel’s hand left his hip and came round, encircling them both. For second, Jack thought he was maybe going to try and get Jack hard, no mean feat at this age, or maybe just cop a feel, but he had his dirty bandana in his hand. Almost tenderly, he held Jack’s dick and balls up against his body, and then his hips pushed all the way forward, Jack did catch a glimpse of his dick, red and flushed and very thrilling for just a glimpse, and Daniel came, very noisily, catching the spurts in his bandana.

For a second, they just breathed together, Daniel taking in big gulping breaths that Jack felt against his back, and then Daniel flopped backwards.

“Oh god,” he said, sounding fucked out. “That was amazing. I haven’t done that since summer camp.”

Jack didn’t know what he’d expected Daniel to say but it wasn’t that.

“Summer camp?” he asked, feeling a bit hysterical, trying to get his pants up and turn over at the same time. Daniel waved a hand vaguely. He hadn’t tried to tidy up, he’d just fallen where he laid, and there was a stray strand of come drying on his thigh.

“Yeah, it was this program for kids in the system,” he said airily. “They used to stick like 30 of us in a cabin and pretend we were thinking about our potential.” He sighed happily. “We fucked around a lot.”

“How old were you?” Jack asked, horrified. Daniel shrugged.

“Sixteen, I think,” he said. Jack stared at him. When Jack had been sixteen, he’d been avoiding his mother’s lectures about church and trying to get Georgia Snyder to kiss him. Apparently, Daniel had figured things out a little faster, which was drastically rearranging many of Jack’s assumptions. His head hurt just thinking about it.

“Sixteen?”

Daniel looked at him, frowning. “Yeah,” he said. “What?”

Jack lay down and stared at the ceiling, putting his P90 harness back on from feel, rather than looking.

“Huh,” was all he said. “And you did,” he paused, and then kept going, because if he was something, it certainly wasn’t chickenshit, “that - at summer camp?”

“Sure,” Daniel said. He’d finally stopped lying there with his dick out, and was doing up his belt. “We couldn’t figure out anything complicated, but we were pretty determined.”

“I bet,” Jack said, squinting at Daniel. If Jack had put money on anything, it would not have been on Daniel being a sexually successful teenager.

Daniel was visibly basking in the afterglow, looking more satisfied than Jack had seen him in weeks. Jack thought maybe he should have been smug, or proud of a job well done or something, but he couldn't feel that when it didn't seem to have much to do with him. This was something that had special resonance for Daniel, but Jack was still trying to understand why it had been good in the first place.

"You didn't learn any survival skills at summer camp?" he asked, instead of anything else. Daniel rolled his eyes.

"Jack, it was summer camp, not basic training," he said, but he was smiling.

Daniel told a long summer camp related story, about outwitting some camp counsellors, that Jack listened to dubiously. Daniel never talked about his childhood or adolescence. None of them did, because there were usually bigger items on the agenda, like not dying, but Jack had got the impression, he didn't know where from, that it was a sore subject for Daniel, something he avoided deliberately.

But Daniel told the story, featuring not a single responsible adult, with his hands waving and his face animated. He laughed as he ended it, and Jack gave him a squint, wondering where this Daniel had come from.

"What?" Daniel asked, when he noticed how Jack was looking at him.

"Nothing," Jack said. He paused and then clapped him on the thigh and sat up. "C'mon, let's get back to the team."

"Oh goodie," Daniel said. "Do you think Sam's moved on to wormhole theory yet?"

"The kid'll have a Nobel Prize before the week is up."

Jack resettled his P90, feeling a lot more comfortable with it on, even in this abandoned palace, and headed back to the central room where they'd made camp.

"Colonel, guess what?" he said, when Carter was in earshot.

"What, sir?"

"I caught the good Dr. Jackson napping!" he crowed, Daniel already protesting.

Carter gave him a speaking look very essential for any kind of successful military life. It acknowledged that he was full of bullshit but that informing him so would be against military discipline and she was too much of a professional to behave in such unseemly ways, unlike him. He was an expert in those looks.

"You are such an-" Daniel cut himself off as Loran entered the room, and settled for "pain."

Jack put a hand over his heart.

"That wounds me," he said, and Daniel shoved him. They had four more days of alien brain-fuckery detox, and Jack didn't think he'd be bored for any of them.

&&&

Being on stand-down unfortunately did not exempt Jack from the requirement of going to work. He went to the firing range, emptied several clips into cut-outs, and then ended up in his office trying to correctly phrase his report about crashing in the Pacific. He was trying to play down how close they'd come to drowning, because if Janet thought he’d nearly died she’d try and examine him again. It was a fine balance, since Carter would also file a report and he couldn't tell her to play it down, since she'd promptly do the opposite to make sure he did actually get checked out.

After about twenty minutes of him agonising over this, Carter knocked on his open office door.

"Sir, this is the report on Ascended beings," she said.

He looked at her. He looked at the file. He looked back at her.

"Did I request this?" he asked. Carter shook her head.

"No, sir," she said. "Janet did."

"Ah." Made sense, since she probably didn't want to make a habit of her patients turning into glowy orbs.

"I thought you might want to read it, sir." Carter was looking at him strangely, and smiling. Jack squinted at her.

He took the file from her slowly, and nodded. “Thank you, Major.”

He stared at the empty doorway for a moment after she left, and then flicked the file open. Without Daniel's flair for including mythology and galactic tittle-tattle where tactical information should have been, the summary was brief. Ascension was a process of becoming pure energy, the Ancients had been obsessed with it, there was a lot of incomprehensible stuff about physics that he'd leave for Carter to get excited about.

The second page was where they hid the juicy stuff, and he skimmed some conjecture on what the Ascended were capable of. Credible accounts of something people thought were Ascended calling thunder and lightning, smiting the unworthy, blah blah blah. Great, just what he needed, more self-important gods running around, now with extra Daniel. He paused over one line, and had to read it several times before it sunk in.

All evidence suggests that Ascended are aware of the actions of beings on lower planes of existence, and are able to intervene in their lives.

He closed the file, very calmly, and breathed through his nose, long slow breaths. His adrenaline was going, something like panic or fear or anger bubbling underneath it, and years of training were taking over. The details of his office, the piping on the wall, the spartan desk, were in harsh relief, like under a very bright light. Able to intervene in their lives, huh? Well, Jack was going to see about that.

He had meetings for the rest of the day, but the steady, eerie calm didn’t leave him. He always worked best with clear objectives, and this was as clear as they came. Daniel was not inaccessible, he wasn't dead, he wasn't beyond the veil. He was out there, somewhere, and if Jack knew Daniel, if he knew the nosey, knowledge-obsessed curiosity-killed-the-cat idiot, he knew Daniel was listening. And he'd always been able to get a reaction from Daniel.

He took the box of Daniel's things home from his locker that night, giving Carter a wave on his way out. He felt positively cheery.

He spread it all out on the foot of his bed, looking at each item one by one. A lot of it was notes that didn’t make sense to Jack, scribbles in other languages, but he found Daniel’s most recent mission notebook at the bottom of the box. Jackpot.

“Okay Daniel!” He said, in the direction of the ceiling. “I’m going to read your diary now! Your deepest, darkest secrets! It’s going to be very embarrassing for you!”

He waited a second, but nothing happened. Well, time to get out the big guns. He flopped back on the bed to prop himself against the headboard. Daniel took notes on every mission; he had since Abydos, and Jack knew if he was going to figure this out, Daniel would have written it down.

They’d had a lot of life-threatening stuff happen in the last six months, but Daniel’s notes always seemed to skip over those parts. His account of all the Russians getting themselves killed in the creepy pyramid was mostly about the dead language he’d found, and skated over all the screaming and dying and creepy snake bullshit. The only hint was a single line at the bottom of the page, cramped where Daniel had run out of space. It said only “Went home with Jack.”

They had gone home together. Daniel had followed him home, both of them driving their own cars, and they’d eaten Chinese food in Jack’s living room. They’d had sex, more quietly than Jack was used to, and he had a mental image of Daniel getting dressed in the dark, Jack watching him, Daniel’s crooked smile as he gave Jack a weird, awkward wave and said, “Goodnight, Jack.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Went home with Jack?” he asked, out loud. “Is that all? That’s a bit insulting.”

Nothing happened. Jack glared at the ceiling. Trust Daniel to be contrary about being contrary.

He flicked through Daniel’s notes some more. Sometimes a page would end only with “Jack” as if Daniel had stopped in the middle of a sentence, only there was never anything on the next page. Jack had to back-calculate furiously, he hadn’t been meticulously tracking his life, and he couldn’t figure out what it was meant to mark. It wasn’t when they’d had sex, because it was written under missions where Jack hadn’t even thought about touching Daniel, entries on dates when they hadn’t even both been on the same planet. He was totally lost, no compass, no stars, no fucking clue.

He set the notebook aside. He wasn’t going to learn anything from Daniel’s cryptic, twisty mind leaving him cryptic, twisty messages. He wasn’t going to solve this working like Daniel. He was going to solve this by being himself.

He surged up to his feet, and looked again in the box. He thought of everything he’d ever argued about with Daniel about, shrugged, there was no going back now, and started throwing shit. He broke artefacts, he shredded notes, he threw Daniel’s favourite pens across the room. Finally, after weeks of restraint, he let himself be out of control.

Eventually, the only things left to smash were photos and things that even Jack’s rage thought were out of bounds. He set the photo of Sha’re aside safely on the bookshelf, and paused looking at the photo of Daniel in Egypt. He looked so young, so much so it felt voyeuristic, looking at a Daniel Jack had never met, this version of him that had never been through a Stargate.

He sat, without meaning to, at the end of his bed, and rubbed at his forehead, pressing on his temples. He had a headache. It has been only three weeks ago that they'd fucked in this exact bed, Daniel's favorite thing, or at least what Jack thought was Daniel's favorite thing, since they'd never really talked about it; Daniel riding him, jerking himself off. Daniel had kissed him afterwards, lying in Jack's bed naked, like he belonged there. They'd argued about whether the report from SG-6 on their most recent mission was an interesting find worth checking out, Daniel's position, or a pointless goose chase that would be a waste of time, Jack's. Daniel had ended up reading his book, a finger tucked into the index as he flicked back and forth, and Jack had gone to take a shower.

Now every memory was fraught. Had Daniel been thinking about leaving? Had he been considering the necessary steps on the path to not needing anything, not books, not opinions on SG-6's mission reports, not his own side in Jack's bed?

Had he needed to work at it, not needing things, or had it come naturally? Had he already felt like those things meant nothing to him?

God, Jack had sat outside that temple on Kheb, setting fucking Claymores and holding his gun, doing fucking nothing, while inside Daniel set about the deliberate sabotage of cutting every tether between himself and life. Jack had trusted him, had believed his job was to defend Daniel and the information they needed, when what he should have been doing was putting Daniel over his shoulder and running for the Stargate as fast as possible. Jack had let it happen. He'd let Daniel go.

There was nothing left to throw, nothing to smash in impotent, useless rage, unless he wanted to get started on the bed where Daniel had kissed him so many times.

Well, that was one thing that had never failed to get Daniel's attention. Jack had tried everything else. He stood up and took his shirt off. Sex it was.

Jerking off half-dressed always felt weird. He stepped around the mess of Daniel’s stuff that he’d shredded, and climbed onto the bed, peeling off his socks and unbuckling his belt. Jack wasn’t the best communicator. He and Daniel had argued about a lot. Sex was probably the one thing they had never argued about, because they’d never talked about it. He shoved off his pants, his temper surging again. Fuck Daniel, fuck his stupid plane of pure energy, fuck the fact he was clearly getting into Jack’s head. Jack could jerk off in his own bed if he wanted to. If Daniel was being a inter-dimensional peeping tom, that was his fucking business.

He sat back, fisting his dick. He was half-hard, just from thinking about Daniel, and he had two years of memories to fall back on. A man couldn’t be held responsible for the things he thought about with his dick out, and no one would ever know that Jack thought about Daniel’s back, that first view of it in Daniel’s apartment, that he thought of Daniel’s clear eyes looking at him, laughing at him, not afraid of anything. Fuck.

He didn’t do anything fancy, he was in his own damn bed in his own damn house. He stroked himself, thinking about Daniel, and he was there, at the edge, after only a moment. He felt hot all over, he grit his teeth and stroked himself firmly, steadily. He wasn’t here to screw around, he was here to prove a point. Daniel had liked to touch his chest, the scar over his ribs. He didn’t think about that.

Daniel over him, Daniel between his legs sucking his dick, Daniel’s big hands and the dent on his nose from his glasses and the look in his eyes when he'd come home with Jack, like he was planning something.

It hit Jack hard, a full body blow that made him curl up, his dick pulsing in his hand, come in a damp pool on his stomach.

The window slammed open and then the door, wind blowing past in a furious rush, two quick gunshot-like noises, bam bam, the door swinging on its hinges. The orgasm transmuted straight into adrenaline, like a starting gun had gone off, and Jack dove over the bed, pistol from the bedside table in hand, safety off, crouched and ready. Sirens were going off in his head, screaming about threat assessment. He had launched straight into strategic awareness, every sense of his body on high alert.

The window was still open, and Jack could see the leaves of the tree outside, very still. There was no breeze, and even on a windy day a gust couldn’t unlatch his window and turn the handle on his bedroom door. Slowly, he grabbed a box of kleenex off the bedside table and chucked it underhand at the window. It hit the wall, and fell to the ground, wonderfully un-vaporised. Okay, so not about to get shot, probably. He took a slow breath, trying to calm down. He was still naked, and his dick was very confused about the orgasm and then sudden life-threatening primal fear very close together.

Skin prickled on the backs of his knees, the hair on his arms standing straight up. He didn’t ignore his instincts and they were screaming that something was up. Someone was watching him.

“Daniel?” he asked, after a long moment of breathing and listening. Nothing happened and then, slowly, Jack would have even said sheepishly, his window closed.

He stood up, clicked the safety on and then, just for good measure, released the magazine. “Daniel, you have got to be fucking kidding me,” he said. He was incandescently, furiously, angry, and he felt like he was going to start laughing at any moment, a bubble of fizzy joy trapped in his stomach.

A breeze flipped up the corner of his bedsheet, impossible for a room with a closed window, and Jack sat down, his legs going out from underneath him. He’d thought he was holding it together, but his hands were shaking. Daniel wasn’t gone. He wasn’t gone.

He sat at the edge of his bed for a long time, breathing quietly, the empty pistol loose in his hand. His come dried into disgusting flakes on his stomach, the adrenaline faded, he got cold, but he stayed. Eventually he laughed, dropping his head into his hands. Daniel wasn’t gone.

&&&

Now that he had all the information, now that he was sufficiently briefed, now that Daniel had fucking clued him in, Jack started seeing Daniel everywhere. Every time they got lucky, every time there was a breeze where none should have been, Jack’s brain went off like a siren, screaming Daniel was there, Daniel was there, Daniel was there with them. He was jumping at noises, twitchy as hell. He shot a goddamn bird on a milk run recon mission with one of Daniel’s potential replacements and Carter gave him a look like he better warn her if he was going to lose his mind so she could either cover for him or salvage the wreckage of her career. She was a goddamn brilliant officer and the only reason Hammond hadn’t twigged that he was fucking off his rocker was because she was covering for him pretty furiously, and Teal’c would rather set himself on fire than so much twitch in the direction of disloyalty.

He hadn’t jerked off this much in years, and he realised, one night, come drying on his stomach, that the reason he hadn’t jerked off much over the last several years wasn’t any normal reason, like he’d been busy going to other planets and saving the world, but because he’d been fucking Daniel for going on three years and hadn’t fucking needed to.

Sometimes he wondered if Daniel was laughing at him, up there in the enlightened higher planes.

He was beginning to realise that he had not held onto Daniel as tightly as he should have, had perhaps not been clear enough that he wanted to hold onto him. It was the same grim, dawning sensation as realising you'd walked into a trap, the enemy around you, out-gunned and out-manned. Only it was Daniel who had out-maneuvered him, Daniel who had the tactical sense of a fucking toddler and yet had pulled off the final trick that proved Jack wrong.

He’d never told Daniel that he could stop running. He had thought Daniel knew that. He’d been wrong, and Daniel had proved him wrong in the most spectacular way possible. That was Daniel, always wanting to have the last word.

He kept jerking off, on top of the bedsheets like it would help Daniel see more, even though nothing strange or unexplainable happened again. He’d had his sign, the message from the great beyond that Daniel wasn’t gone, but he was greedy, he wanted more, he wanted Daniel in his life, by his side, in his bed. He wanted Daniel back. Jack had never been good at being told things were impossible.

He dreamed of Daniel, not remembering the details, but when he blinked awake, the sun streaming through his bedroom window, he thought for a second he saw Daniel leaning over him, without his glasses, in the sweater he had worn on cold days. Jack reached out for him and then he blinked again and he was awake, in his cold bed, and there was no one else in the room.

Well, now that he had Daniel’s attention, he thought he knew what the game was. Daniel thought he could cut himself off from the world; Daniel thought he could run away from everything including Jack and their mission and their fucking relationship. Jack was clear-eyed enough to see that now, he and Daniel had been together and no one had thought to even suggest it to him until Daniel was well beyond his reach. Once he had him back, Jack was never letting him out of his sight ever again. He was keeping that idiot locked down.

They took a few more of Daniel’s potential replacements on milk run missions, to visit the Tok’ra, to talk to some Jaffa allies, to look at empty Goa’uld ruins they’d been to a hundred times before and every time Jack was thinking, hey, Daniel’s watching, might as well put on a show. He mouthed off to the Tok’ra, he said some spectacularly stupid bullshit to the Jaffa, he did some death-defying nonsense with a crevasse and ropes and a near-death plunge into freezing water in the Goa’uld ruins. He knew Carter thought he was having a breakdown, and there was probably a psych evaluation in his near future, unless he could get kidnapped or put in stasis or beamed away by the Asgard at a convenient moment. But he wasn’t losing it. He was being perfectly logical. He needed to hold Daniel’s attention on him. He needed it like he’d never needed anything before.

“Are you quite well, O’Neill?” Teal’c asked, when he fished him out of the river at the edge of the Goa’uld ruins. Carter was making the definitely-not-replacing-Daniel guy use his inhaler. Jack coughed and spat up some river water.

“Oh, never been better, Teal’c,” he said, pushing himself onto his hands and knees. “Never been better.”

&&&

Janet made him get an antibiotic shot and take two days rest to recover from the river incident. It was a welcome reprieve from the procession of idiots the brass thought were even close to Daniel on a bad day. If he had to look at another nerd in BDUs and realise he might never see Daniel like that again, he was going to shoot someone. Not in the face, just in the foot.

He went home, exhausted and with two fingers splinted where he's jammed them, and barely managed to undress before falling face first onto his bed and crashing into sleep.

He knew he was dreaming immediately because he was in the hallway of his house but the light was all wrong, sun streaming through a window that never got daylight, the angle totally invented. His brain went to immediate high alert, because this looked like his house but it couldn't be his house, and he had to be asleep. The splint was off his fingers, and he was wearing civilian clothes, jeans and an old shirt.

Daniel walked through the door into the hallway and Jack went for him, just dove and grabbed him by the front of his sweater, shoving him against the wall. He didn’t feel like a dream, he felt as real and human as ever.

“Daniel, I am going to kill you,” he said, because he was.

“Hi Jack,” Daniel said, and smiled at him, cool as a fucking cucumber, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “How’s it going?”

Jack wanted to shake him, he wanted to shake him and scream and maybe throw the mother of all tantrums because he knew it wasn’t real, the feeling of Daniel’s shirt under his hands, the stubble on his cheeks, none of it was real, but he settled for kissing him, hard. Daniel’s head cracked against the wall with a satisfyingly human sound. Jack didn’t feel bad. He wasn’t real anyway.

Daniel’s mouth was soft for a split second, and then pushed back against him, sucking on his tongue, their teeth clashing. It sizzled through Jack, he’d missed this, and they pushed and pulled at each other for a moment, not able to agree on a direction. Jack pulled himself away. He was breathing hard, Daniel was too, their chests rising and falling in the same rhythm, and Jack couldn’t figure out what he wanted, whether he wanted to wrestle Daniel to the floor, whether he wanted to punch him. Not a single impulse in his body agreed.

"Jack," Daniel said, when neither of them moved for a second. "You have to stop, you have to stop trying to get my attention."

“Over my dead body,” Jack said, and unbuckled Daniel’s belt. “If you wanted me to stop bothering me, you could have died.” He looked up, meeting Daniel’s gaze. “Otherwise, I’m not going to stop. Not ever.”

And then he went to his knees, ignoring the ominous sound of his joints cracking, reminding them sternly that this wasn’t real and gently fished Daniel’s half-hard dick out of his boxers, letting the elastic dig in under his balls.

“God, Jack, I should have known,” Daniel said, but he didn’t sound exasperated, and when he put a hand in Jack’s hair, his touch was soft, not pushing Jack away, and then, gently, said, “yeah, go for it.”

Apparently his dream memory was pretty good. Daniel tasted good, salty and slick already, leaking wetly when Jack stroked him and then he tongued the underside of his dick, slowly, gently, exploring, getting reacquainted. He paused, the thick head of Daniel's dick resting in the divot of his soft palate, and looked up. Daniel's fingers stroked his hair, his eyebrows, and they didn't shake, didn't falter. It took a lot to knock Daniel truly off kilter. He was the world's best improvisor, he'd 'yes, and'-ed himself into space for god's sake, he was the best patter man in the whole fucking galaxy.

His eyes were so blue, and he wasn't wearing his glasses. He was wearing the sweater he'd worn the day Sha're died, like he had needed to put on a big a neon sign screaming "I'm a civilian!!" in big letters. Was this how Daniel saw himself? Were they inside a dream of Daniel's, a space he'd carved for himself?

He closed his eyes and took Daniel’s dick fully into his mouth, pressing past his gag reflex, breathing shallowly through his nose. He sucked hard, building up to a constant rhythm, sinking into the physical challenge, in, suck, out, breathe. Daniel didn’t stay quiet and he kept touching him, stroking Jack’s hair, his cheek, everything he could reach, but it was all far away, it was just him and Daniel’s body, his chin slick with spit. If anything, Daniel got harder in his mouth, until it was like he was thrumming with blood, and Daniel was gently thrusting into his mouth, moaning thickly in a steady rhythm, more and more intense each time.

Jack wanted to grin in victory, because even in a dream Daniel couldn’t get enough of this, even in a dream Jack could make Daniel make that choked off sound of desperation. He grabbed Daniel’ships, hard and firm, and didn’t let him move as he went down as far as he could, letting his throat do all the work, trying to close around the desperate length of him. Daniel shook under him, not able to move, and then Jack pulled back, a long trail of saliva stretching from his mouth, dirty in the best way.

“Fuck, Jack,” Daniel choked, and then barely got his hand around his dick before he came with a long exhale, shielding Jack’s face from any fall-out with his fingers.

Jack coughed, turning his head to the side. “Thanks,” he said. Daniel was trying to catch his breath, still gulping for air.

“Don’t mention it,” Daniel said, like it was a joke, and wiped his hand on his own stomach, leaving a sticky smear.

“Where are we?” Jack stood, and put his hands in his pockets. “This isn’t my house.”

Daniel grimaced. “How’d you tell?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Light’s all wrong,” he said. “Is this your memory?”

“Sort of,” Daniel said, and didn’t elaborate. “Look, Jack, you need to stop trying to get my attention. I’m not supposed to get involved.”

Well, that sounded like grade-A Dr. Jackson, PhD bullshit. Jack gave him a dark look.

“Who says I’m trying to get your attention?” he asked, and Daniel rolled his eyes.

“Don’t be like that,” he said. Jack was definitely going to kill him, just as soon as he figured out how to get him properly alive.

“Don’t be like what,” Jack asked, feeling violence move through him, overcome, and he wanted to just sock Daniel in the jaw, he wanted to push him against the wall and hold him there. Daniel looked back at him, like he was a dangerous animal in a cage, like his violence was just an interesting personality quirk, an entertaining show, a fucking funny joke.

“Jack, you have to let it go,” Daniel said. “Accept it.”

Jack’s head hurt, and the sense of unreality was getting worse. Even Daniel didn’t look real, in civilian clothes, without his glasses, like a different man, one Jack didn’t know. He wanted the one he did know. He wanted the Daniel in BDUs and a stupid hat, the Daniel who’d saved his life a hundred times and come back from the dead and who had still eaten takeout in his living room, the man who’d left his toothbrush in Jack’s bathroom.

He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, trying to push away the pounding behind his eye socket. He looked at Daniel watching him.

“When have I ever just accepted something?” he said. “You didn’t fuck a quitter, Daniel.”

Daniel’s expression twisted. Jack supposed it was probably the wrong phrase, it made it sound so crude, so empty. But boyfriend sounded silly, and they weren’t married, and Jack didn’t have words for what Daniel was to him.

“Jack,” Daniel started, and Jack cut him off with a swipe of his hand, stepping in close, shouldering into his personal space, nearly nose to nose.

“Did you go to all this trouble of getting inside my head just to argue with me?” he asked, very quietly, and there was a pause of just a moment, a sliver of silence, and Daniel looked at his mouth.

They surged together, into sudden explosive motion. Daniel grabbed his shirt, and their mouths slammed into each other. You couldn’t call it kissing, it was too angry, both of them trying to get the upper hand.

They stumbled back, Daniel manuevering them through the bedroom door, and fell down onto the bed, half-wrestling and half-fucking. Daniel pushed up Jack’s shirt and shoved down his pants and ran his mouth over everything, Jack’s nipples, his stomach, the inside of his thighs, his balls. It was electric, Jack’s body nearly crackling with it, the coursing need, the want, Daniel’s body against his.

God, he’d missed this. He’d known he missed Daniel, but he’d missed this too, Daniel’s body, the sex, Daniel’s long legs and his big hands. They kissed, no elegance, just the wet slide of their tongues against each other, all of the sensation sliding into each other, Daniel’s hands on him, their mouths, the sound of their breathing. He wrestled with Daniel’s shirt, wordless, suddenly gripped by the desperate need to see Daniel naked, to get him out of those stupid civilian clothes. Jack wanted to grab onto him and hold on.

“Fuck, Jack,” Daniel said, surfacing briefly, and Jack didn’t want him to surface, he didn’t want him to talk. He hadn’t gotten to say goodbye, not really, because no goodbye was ever enough. He rolled them, getting Daniel on his back, and stripped his own clothes off, half-braced over Daniel.

Daniel laughed at him, his face creasing, and got naked and then shoved Jack onto his back and sat on his hips, his dick curving up in front of him, his chest flushed. He had that wicked smile of his, the joyful, victorious one, getting away with something.

“Where’s the lube?” Daniel asked, and Jack squinted at him.

“How do I know? We’re inside your brain,” He half-rolled over anyway, reaching for under the bed, where he normally left it. He groped with his fingertips for a second, Daniel a dead weight on his hips, and then his fingers brushed the old plastic bottle and he rolled back, his abs heating up. He smacked it into Daniel’s hand, because Daniel liked to do himself, and then he watched Daniel do himself. It wasn’t a whole production, Daniel didn’t need to fuck around, they were both turned on and hard and Jack watched Daniel’s dick bouce slightly as he moved, the drop of come at the tip as he fingered himself.

Then Daniel looked up and slicked up Jack’s dick and Jack had to rapidly get his brain online to keep it together as Daniel sank down onto his dick, very slowly but without stopping, until Jack could feel him clenching around his dick, could feel every hot inch of the inside of Daniel’s body and he had to bite his own tongue to hold off from coming right then and there. Fuck, Daniel was deadly, his whole body on display, and he was shameless, he never seemed to be embarrassed.

Helplessly, Jack grinned at him, grabbing onto his thighs because he needed to hold onto something, as Daniel set a punishing pace,until they were wrapped around each other, Jack with his feet braced on the bed just trying to keep up as Daniel made each thrust a clear, definitive statement: he was getting his.

Jack grunted and white-knuckled the sheets, trying to hold on. Daniel was using his legs to lift himself, again and again, and every movement was like a hot wave through Jack’s bloodstream. He wanted to come, he wanted to hold Daniel still and fuck him, but he also wanted Daniel to get his, and those warring impulses combined to have him breathing hard underneath Daniel, both of them sweating, Daniel’s face twisted in pleasure and pain and desperate frustration. Jack wanted to hold the moment forever, and then he couldn’t hold it any longer and got his feet underneath him to fuck up into Daniel harder, chasing the feeling of perfect friction.

Daniel made a high, pleased noise, listing to the side like a boat taking on water. He wasn't even trying to meet Jack's thrusts anymore, was just jerking himself hard, his shoulders curled over and his hand moving on his dick. Jack watched the head of his dick, wet and red, emerge from the circle of his hand again and again, entranced, trying to match the rhythm. His legs were screaming, every muscle straining.

"Oh, fuck, Jack," Daniel gasped. Jack caught a glimpse of his blue eyes, wet at the corners, and then he curled over truly, shuddering all over, coming in long white lines over his hand and Jack's stomach.

"Holy fucking shit," Jack said, his own voice sounding far away. Daniel was spasming around him, clenching down and then relaxing, and it was good and really fucking dirty.

In a surge of movement, Jack pulled out, turned them both over so Daniel was on his back, smiling and pliant post-orgasm, and in a single dirty, sexy, spiny-tingling slide pushed back into him. Daniel groaned happily, stretching his hands above his heads, bracing against the headboard. Jack could read the play just fine. He put his fucking back into it. Daniel seemed to know what he wanted and came alive underneath him, groaning wildly, shaking his head, still soft and covered in come.

That was too much for Jack and he came like a hard blow to the back of the head, nearly painful, with stars in his eyes. Underneath him, Daniel laughed, and that was what filtered through, Daniel laughing, the blurry glimpse of his smile, and then Jack flopped down next to him on the bed.

“Ow,” he said, after a moment, and Daniel patted his shoulder.

“Still got it, old man,” he said, in a patronising tone, and Jack blindly flapped a hand over to hit him in the face.

“Oh fuck off,” Jack said, and then struggled up to sitting. “Am I going to disappear from here when I wake up?”

Daniel peered up at him from the bed. “You want to leave that bad?”

Jack sighed, and then dragged a hand over his face, grateful for the split second of lonely darkness. “Don’t give me that, Daniel,” he said, tired and mad and pathetically grateful to have Daniel lying next to him, even if it wasn’t real, even if it was Daniel projecting a false reality into his head.

“What?” Daniel had the gall to look offended.

“You left us,” Jack said, surprised at his own voice, poking Daniel’s bare chest with a finger. “You left first, Daniel.”

Daniel blinked at him, for just a second, baffled and confused, and Jack let his hand drop.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said, turning to swing his legs off the bed, and picking his shirt off the ground. It was easier with his back to Daniel, without the familiar image of Daniel happy and relaxed in Jack’s bed. “I want you to come back.”

Silence. Well, that was it. Jack put his shirt on, and found his boxers and pants on the floor where he’d kicked them. Daniel could zap him back into his own bed in a second, could wake him up from this painfully close to real dream. Why was he fucking rooting around on the floor for his clothes?

“Jack,” Daniel said, from behind him, and then Jack felt his hand against his back, between his shoulder blades. “I - I didn’t know.”

Jack wanted to laugh. “Wow,” he said, to his hands. “I figured something out before you.”

He stood, and Daniel hadn’t moved, hadn’t put any clothes on. One of his feet was braced on the bed, and Jack could see the muscle of his inner thigh, the soft hairless skin. His arm stretched out, where it had dropped, reaching out for Jack, carelessly, casually.

“I didn’t leave for nothing,” Daniel said, looking up at him. “I wanted to ascend. I’m doing something important here, something worth doing.”

“SG-1 is something important,” Jack said, and he supposed they both knew he meant that he was important.

Daniel’s tongue wet his bottom lip as he paused, and then he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. Where had this passivity been for every one of their arguments for the last five years? Jack wanted to shove him, pick at him, do something, anything, to make him fight back.

“Did you think you could just walk out and I’d let you?” Jack asked, feeling his temper rising. He could be half-dead, out of his mind, blindfolded, deafened, lost and losing it, and Daniel would still be able to piss him off. “That I wouldn’t come get you? I’ve dragged you out of weirder shit than this before.”

Daniel’s baffled expression was back, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him that Jack would try to get him back. Well, Jack was going to show him. The best teacher was experience.

“I don’t leave men behind,” Jack said, crossing his arms. “I don’t leave you behind.”

Daniel shook his head. “You can’t win this fight, Jack,” he said. Something was happening at the edge of Jack’s vision, a fading of the light, like everything was getting less and less defined, reality softening. Trust Daniel to try and win an argument by kicking him out of his own mind.

“Watch me,” Jack said, and woke up.

He threw a pillow at the ceiling, just to make his point, but he didn’t think Daniel was listening. It didn’t matter. Jack knew where he stood. Daniel had got himself into some mess, and Jack was going to get him out.

&&&

He managed to find Teal’c and Carter in the commissary, and brought his lunch over to sit across from them. Carter had a big manila envelope in her hands, and some papers on the table in front of her. Teal’c was steadily working his way through the contents of his tray, which was about the GDP of a small country.

“What’s that, Carter?” he asked. She turned the envelope over in her hand, and made a face.

“It’s from Daniel’s lawyers, sir,” she said. Jack paused, spoon halfway to his mouth.

“What, he’s suing us from the great beyond?”

“Not exactly, sir,” she said, her mouth twisting in a pained expression. “It’s his will.”

“His will,” Jack said slowly.

“Uh, yeah,” Carter said, and pushed the piece of paper towards him. “Apparently they had to notify me when he was declared….MIA.”

Jack skimmed the letter. It really was from Daniel’s lawyers.

“Why did you get a letter?” he asked. “I didn’t get a letter.”

“Um, I’m his executor,” she said, and it sounded like when Jack had to absolutely drag the bad news out of her on missions, it sounded like she was saying 'the gate's not working' or 'bogies incoming' or 'there's no time, sir'. “They have to wait a couple years, um, before.”

“Before what?”

Carter looked at Teal’c, as if he was going to save her from whatever she was avoiding saying. Jack knew that was a dead end. Teal’c was never gonna save anyone from digging their own hole.

“Before General Hammond declares him BNR, sir,” she said. “Then they send me his will and I have to do what it says, apparently.”

“How come you get his will?” Jack said, trying to stab his food. It was very unsatisfying, since it was minestrone. “I’m his CO.”

Carter made a face that Jack couldn’t interpret. The last thing he needed was Carter feeling sorry for him.

“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “It’s not a message from him or anything, it’s just paperwork.”

Stupid paperwork. Why did everyone insist on acting like he was dead? They’d all watched him turn into a big ball of light. “How come you didn’t get a letter before? Daniel’s been MIA more times than I’ve had hot dinners.”

“I think we’re all usually MIA at the same time, sir,” Carter said. “And this time, uh, it’s been a few weeks.”

That was at least accurate, although Jack had never thought he’d be wishing he was MIA with Daniel.

“Well, enjoy having to deal with all his books,” Jack said, which at least made Carter smile. She let him eat more of his lunch and then gamely changed the subject. They were benched again while the brass tried to produce more potential Daniel replacements, and Carter was trying to get them all to go to Antarctic to look at apparently very scientifically interesting ice. He would have thought she’d had enough of that when he’d broken his leg in the crevasse and they’d both nearly died, but there was no accounting for taste. Well, at least the ice would probably be more interesting than the inside of his office, and the travel time would be good for problem-solving the Daniel shaped problem occupying his time. Maybe he could fall in a crevasse again and Daniel could come hang out for a bit.

He walked Carter back to her office after lunch, the manila envelope from Daniel tucked under her arm, and then they paused in the doorway.

“Uh, sir, Daniel didn’t only send me a letter,” she said, sheepishly. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me to give it to you in the commissary.”

Jack squinted at her. “What, am I gonna have to solve riddles for it?”

Carter smiled. “No, sir,” she said. “I just thought it was personal. I haven’t read it or anything,” she said, in a rush. “I wouldn’t do that. Just, it’s from Daniel for you.”

“Alright, Carter, it’s fine,” he said, and took the surprisingly small half-fold of paper from her when she fished it out of the envelope. “Thanks.”

“No problem, sir,” she said, as he was turning away. “We all miss him.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We do.”

He didn’t read the note until he was back in his office, with the door closed. Daniel had a pretty good grasp on operational security after years of not blabbing about the murderous aliens, but he wasn’t the most trustworthy when it came to regulations. The last thing Jack needed was to get accidentally court-martialed, again.

He leant against his desk and slowly unfolded the letter, braced for the worst. It wasn’t that bad.

Jack,

If you’re reading this, then I’ve been MIA for a little while. I figure if you haven’t been able to get me back, then I’m probably not coming back. I’m sorry, because I’m sure it’s probably a little my fault, and I hope you don’t blame yourself. You’ll have done everything you could.

Sam’s the executor of my will. She can deal with all my books. But there’s a couple things I’ve left for you. Please go to Abydos and explain what happened to Skaara and my father-in-law. They deserve to know.

I’m sorry I had to go first. I always figured we’d probably all go together, when our luck ran out, but I guess mine ran out first.

Wherever I am, I miss you Jack. I love you very much, probably more than I ever realised, probably since we first went through the Stargate together and thought we’d never come back.

I’m sorry I couldn’t stick around to tell you.

Love,
Daniel

Jack folded over the piece of paper, feeling sickly glad. This was the letter Daniel had thought Jack would read over his grave, and only then had he thought it safe enough to write it down, that he loved Jack, had always loved him, that they loved each other. He’d thought the only safe place was from the distance of the grave, and Jack would have called it cowardly if he hadn’t known for sure that Daniel had been trying to protect Jack, had been silent for Jack’s benefit and not his own.

But Daniel had written it down, he’d committed it to paper, Jack had the words right in front of him and there was no going back from that. Daniel had thought that this was the letter for his death but he’d been wrong and Jack had him dead to rights.

He looked up, looking vaguely at the ceiling of his office, where he always thought Daniel must be.

“Jackson, you are not getting away from me that easily,” he said, grinning. “I’m getting you back and we are going to talk about this.”

For a second, nothing happened, and then the lights in his office flickered and Jack knew he’d won. He didn’t leave a man behind, he’d never left a man behind, and Daniel least of all. Maybe that was why they worked. Daniel ran away, and Jack couldn’t help but chase him.

He stood, carefully folding Daniel’s letter up into tiny quarters and putting in it his breast pocket. He was going to ask Carter what she knew about the physics of ascension and how to get Daniel back, and he’d never met a problem Carter’s impressive brain couldn’t solve.

The lights flickered again, and Jack felt like his smile was splitting the sides of his mouth.

“If you wanted to argue with me, you should have stayed on this plane of existence,” he said, smugly, because he was going to win every single argument with Daniel from now on and he knew it. “See you on the flipside, Daniel.”