fanfic post
Oct. 12th, 2005 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minxyTitle: One Day I’ll Fly Away and Vanish
By: Minx
Pairings: J/D
Spoilers: Mild through Beachhead (Season 9)
Notes: The title is from an icon of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paian's, we were talking about that it might mean that Jack and Daniel when apart were somehow less grounded, that they needed each other and without that faith, they were likely to lose themselves. Thanks to Sid, again, for funny insta-beta and wraith816 for arguing about apostrophes and sentence flow. Also thanks to delphia2000 for once again marvelous beta love, and rydra_wong for (amazingly synergistic) beta comments as well. All other mistakes are mine until you tell me about them and they are fixed.
Word count: 6170 total
Summary: These moments, when they understood each other, they were on the endangered list. Had been since Jack decided to leave.
One Day I'll Fly Away and Vanish
“You are an incurable romantic.” Daniel reported dryly into his cordless phone while reuniting two medium tone blue letter envelopes from different strata of his stack of mail.
“Have you read them yet?” came the disembodied reply.
“Jack, I just got home. For the first time in many moons, I might add.”
“Sam take your mail in, I hope?”
“She just got back into town, Jack. Mitchell got it for me; he was staying here. You’re taking a risk by leaving a paper trail, Mr. Incurable Romantic.”
“There aren’t any signatures or salutations,” Jack informed him needlessly, with carefully neutral tone. “If you shred the envelopes we should be fine.”
“Post office stamp?” Careful.
“Yup.” Careful careful.
“Ah, romance in the twenty-first century. I love you-- shred any evidence of me.”
“Read them yet?” There was enough yet between them for Jack’s worry to transmit over the connection.
“No, I’m talking to you. D’you want to tell me what they say?”
“If you want.”
“You’re the story teller here, you pick the story.” For a moment, the only sound was the scrape of paper on paper; the harsh rip of pages trying to deal out paper cuts. “What inspired you to write?” Writing was Daniel’s medium.
“Sara. Found some old letters unpacking and one of them was from this…argument.”
“You argued in letters?” The interest was genuine, letters forgotten, double meanings and mixed emotions shoved aside in favor of the understandable anthropological puzzle.
“No, she was a smart woman, though. Still is. Anyway. We’d yell and scream and I’d be an asshole and leave the fight realizing I had no idea what had happened or what to do and I’d get even more frustrated. Sara would leave and sit down and write to me exactly what I’d done, what that had meant and why it couldn’t happen again. I’d find the letter on the kitchen table next time I walked through.”
“Uh oh, what did I do?”
“Nothing Daniel, it’s just that I would apologize the same way and I’d usually be much better at it than trying to talk it out.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
In a series of staccato beats, Daniel glanced through the several handwritten pages. “It looks like you’re going to apologize for every disagreement we ever had.”
“Well, in summary, sometimes it’s an apology for not being able to see your point, or not being able to support it, or any time I did something wrong, that kind of thing.” The try for flippant was abandoned mid-sentence. He was still walking on eggshells.
“Jack, have you joined some kind of 12 step program or something? Because you really don’t need to do this for me.”
“I know.”
“Okay. I haven’t finished reading yet, but you’ve been forgiven for these things for a long time.”
“Still needed to be said. Written. Yadda.”
“Confessed.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re absolved,” Daniel said easily.
“And I thought I was finally over that stint in Catholic school. You, ah…” Jack paused in apparent confusion followed by a clearing of the throat and a bravado filled, “You need to hear the sins first, you know, before the absolution part. It’s a rule, I think.”
“No, Jack.” Daniel said, more thoughtfully this time. “I really don’t. But you know how I can’t resist reading stuff, so you can rest assured that I will read these, just not while I’m on the phone with you.”
“You think I have guilt issues?” Finally having succeeded in inspiring Daniel’s concern, Jack began joking.
“Better work on that if you want to have sex anymore, you know. Catholic rules weren’t made for us.” In a way, it was a more effective absolution, coming from Daniel, joking about sex.
“Sooooo.” The voice timbre changed unmistakably, “Whatcha wearing?”
Daniel’s grin crept from his mouth to his eyes and down to his hands, which carefully set down the paper. Leaning his head back, Daniel let go for the moment of the worry and confusion writhing in his brain when he thought about Jack and gave in to amusement. “Oh, it’s sexy, Jack. A long sleeve shirt buttoned all the way up, pants with pleats in them and,” Daniel deliberately dropped his voice. “Socks. That match.”
“I’m wearing my dress blues, you know.”
He knew this game. He understood where he stood with Jack at these moments. He swiveled on the couch to stretch out fully. “Just for me? Just for this phone call?”
“I wear them every day here. Pent-a-gon,” Jack sing-songed.
Daniel’s smile disappeared under his arm as he swung it over his face and groaned in amusement at Jack. These moments, when they understood each other, they were on the endangered list. Had been since Jack decided to leave.
****
“Daniel?” Jack entered the apartment more slowly than usual.
“Yeeeaah… coming…” Daniel emerged from his study as Jack closed the door. It was a sign of… something, that he still put down his work at home if Jack was there. At least at first. “What’s up?”
Jack had no groceries in hand, no beer, no movie. He stood in the middle of the living room staring at nothing, like he’d never been in Daniel’s home before, and didn’t know if throwing one’s jacket over the back of the sofa was allowed or not. Daniel straightened as he entered the room and noticeably slowed his momentum, stopping just inside the archway; Jack watched him helplessly out of the corner of his eye.
“You okay? Sam, Teal’c okay?”
“Yeah, um, I think. I didn’t see them.”
“You didn’t go to the mountain?”
“I did.”
For all that he had thought of saying in the car on the way to the apartment, Jack still wasn't ready. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the outline of Daniel, blurry in his peripheral vision. It was enough and too much; Jack transferred his eyes to the ceiling and stretched his neck while blearily blinking.
“Jack, you’re starting to worry me, here.” Daniel said, smiling. Jack could hear the smile in his voice. He closed his eyes.
“The Pentagon thinks I made mistakes last year commanding the base.”
“Was this a performance review?” Daniel was suitably surprised he didn’t know, and sympathetic. “Sorry, Jack, I hate those things.”
He was smiling again. Jack had given most of Daniel's performance reports and they’d been administered by the singularly grandfatherly power figure that was Hammond. Jack was sure Hammond would never hurt Daniel like this if he knew, and, frankly he probably suspected, given what he’d implied…which meant there were more reasons to do what he was doing, but it was hard to remember them now.
“They want my experience more than they want me in the field now. They don’t trust me to protect the base before I…” he drifted off. Jack had doubted his command ability more times than he could count in the past year. He couldn’t leave his career after such an insecure tenure. He wasn’t the kind of man who could live with the possibility of his own weakness.
“You aren’t in the field, Jack.” The smile in Daniel’s voice was missing. Jack straightened and prepared to take whatever Daniel needed to dish out.
Except that he was still waiting for an explanation. He was waiting for Jack to make it right, which meant Jack was going to have to lay out the pain and explain it in excruciating detail before Daniel would believe it of him. He breathed deeply and turned to face the best thing that had ever happened to him and focused on his hair.
“Hammond pulled enough strings to make a sweater and reassigned me. They need someone more objective leading the SGC and he said he needs a 2IC in Homeworld Security. Expanding role. They’re considering going public. He’s overwhelmed.” Jacks voice was losing volume, and Daniel barely twitched at the mention of the program going public, preferring to look seriously at Jack through the upper edge of his glasses.
Jack wanted to kiss Daniel, any part of Daniel. Get the look of worry and dawning horror off his face and take some comfort before things changed again, but he waited for Daniel to think. He didn’t want to; he was fairly sure that when Daniel finished thinking he would understand too much and be furious. It was easier to be selfish when he wasn’t facing the possibility of being kicked out broken.
“Homeworld Security,” Daniel said, looking for the thread of logic and finding only suspicion, “is in D.C.”
Jack was terrified. “Yeah.”
It was enough to break the preternatural stillness of Daniel’s posture. He fidgeted, and nearly paced but for keeping his eyes on Jacks face. “Retire instead. The Goa’uld are gone. Retire.”
“Hammond…” Jack couldn’t hold the position; he turned and paced further into the living room.
“You agreed. He offered retirement and you agreed to D.C.”
Jack abruptly sat in a chair and ran his hands over his head twice in rapid succession.
“Jack, tell me you didn’t agree to be reassigned to D.C.”
Hands wrapped about each other and covering his mouth, Jack turned his head to look at Daniel, brows knit in worry.
Daniel’s face slowly deadened in the silence. When he spoke, his voice was equally dead. “Go. Go to Washington. It’s probably the best thing for you.”
“Daniel, it’s not that I’m leaving—“
“Jack.” Daniel’s voice was wound up and dangerously quiet. “Is it a permanent transfer?”
“Yeah.” Jack barely voiced the word.
“Then stop talking. I don’t—just, go.” Jack didn’t know whether Daniel was kicking him out or not, but felt unequal to the task of asking. He watched Daniel turn and walk to his bedroom and didn’t breathe. For the first time since they’d been together, Jack didn’t think he was invited to follow; instead, he put his face back in his hands.
****
Daniel walked straight past the bed and into his bathroom, intent on taking a shower.
He’d lost Jack. Jack was leaving him.
Inevitable, maybe. He died on Jack once too often, maybe. There was that thing with that girl last time… maybe it had occurred to Jack that he would be okay with Daniel never coming back. Maybe he wanted that girl instead; did she live in Washington? Kerry?
Oh God.
They’d just broken up.
Daniel got his face under the hot water as quickly as possible; stood with one arm against the wall under the shower head, the water beating on the muscle between his shoulder and neck.
He’d been alone before, but he wasn’t prepared for it this time. Didn’t see it coming. Didn’t really think he’d ever have to be alone again, not after Jack had taken the desk job. That was half-way to retirement, Jack had said, because he wasn’t good at sitting still and therefore was not long for the world of desks.
They were half-way to retirement, and openness. Or at least living together, and telling their friends. Parking in the driveway instead of 8 blocks away.
Or not.
Daniel hated the secrecy of being with a military guy, sneaking around like teenagers who could get caught out past curfew; but maybe Jack got off on that, on the danger. Maybe the idea of a happily ever after bit was Daniel’s alone.
Maybe, once again, he’d been a fool.
Daniel didn’t wash, just stood in the shower until his fingers were wrinkled and his shoulder could no longer feel the water pounding.
He toweled off perfunctorily, missing an arm and the backs of his legs in the process, and walked back through the adjoining door to his bedroom.
The sight of the bed was not welcoming. The air was cold. Daniel grabbed a pair of sweatpants from a lower drawer of his dresser and wore them like a barrier between him and Jack’s empty side of the bed.
In the first hour he lay there, he contemplated the military, Jack, how long it had been since he last wore clothes in his own bed, everything Jack had said about Kerry the CIA woman, whether he really loathed D.C. as much as he claimed and whether he loathed Daniel enough to run away that far.
The second hour, he gave up and went to make a pot of coffee.
And found Jack stretched out on the couch, with Daniel’s extra sheets and a spare blanket from the hall closet, uniform folded neatly on a chair nearby, arms folded under his head as he contemplated the ceiling.
“Didn’t I kick you out?” His voice sounded sticky, his throat was tight.
“Much as I respect that, I think you may have to bodily throw me out of this house tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because there are things…” Jack struggled for the words as he sat up on the couch, “That need to be said. And I’m going to say them badly, so I’ll just ask right now that if you throw me out, please throw my pants out too.”
Daniel looked into the kitchen, but he stayed where he was in the doorway. “What do you need to say?”
“I’m not leaving you, Daniel; I’m leaving my post in the mountain.”
“How is moving to Washington not leaving me, Jack?”
“It’s just not. It’s not another plane of existence. It’s not a planet on the other side of the universe with rough spun clothing. It’s just D.C. It’s a 4 hour flight. I checked.”
“A wormhole is instantaneous travel.”
“Okay, that’s true. But we can do this, Daniel.”
“Why, Jack?” Because Daniel had been working towards accepting that it was over, but there was already a part of him that traitorously believed in Jack and was cheering that half a continent was nothing, really.
“Why what?”
“Why everything. Why are you doing this?” He was on the verge of flailing. He was tired and emotionally worn out and he could not handle Jack being deliberately obtuse. Jack, apparently, could not stay on the couch anymore and walked into Daniel’s space.
“Do you want us to stop, Daniel?”
“Damn it, Jack! Do you?” Earlier he had kept his dignity and controlled his voice, but it seemed dignity was out the window now. He was ready to shout.
“No. This is very important, so I hope you’re taking notes.” Jack’s voice was deliberate and his bare legs were distracting up close.
“I don’t understand.” He didn’t. The urge to swing his arms and shout was gone and he felt simply defeated. He dropped his chin to his chest and stared at the wall behind Jack.
“I know. The only important thing we really need to work out tonight is that I’m not leaving you. Ever.”
“Evidence points to the contrary. And, you’ve said that before.”
“It was true before and it’s true now, Daniel.” There was a shake in Jack’s voice that Daniel didn’t quite understand, but the part of him that believed in Jack was winning over the part of him that believed all his relationship were doomed, and Daniel lifted his eyes and looked at his lover’s face. Jack was standing right in front of him, not a foot away, and yet no part of them was touching. The worry lines he’d developed during his year commanding the base were pronounced; the line between his eyebrows deep as he watched Daniel for a reaction.
Daniel let the part of him that had faith in Jack win. He softened.
Jack dipped at his knees, tilted his head up, and still without touching any other part of him, fit his mouth to Daniel’s in a strong kiss that spoke of months of practice.
He knew how much to open his mouth so it covered Daniel’s but didn’t demand, how much pressure to use so his late night whiskers wouldn’t burn. How when Daniel breathed deeply like that, and pressed back before releasing the kiss for a moment, it meant that he would initiate the next one, mouth more relaxed, the kiss deeper and more intimate. Jack reached up to touch Daniel’s face then, and down to put a tentative hand on his arm.
Daniel could feel Jack fighting the urge to kiss hard enough to back him into the wall, could see him squeezing his eyes shut as he held himself back from giving everything he had. There was comfort in the kiss and Daniel wanted the comfort of being held too; he put his arms around Jack and Jack exhaled in relief and wrapped himself up in Daniel.
Daniel broke the kiss. Leaning his head back and pushing Jack gently away as the other man strained to keep the kiss, eyes closed. “Jack,” he said.
Jack straightened and opened his eyes, his hands falling reluctantly from Daniel’s skin, looking ready for devastation.
“You don’t sleep out here.” And Daniel lightly touched a hand to Jack's hip, to his back, guiding him down the hall to the bedroom. Jack followed Daniel's lead out of the doorway and then Daniel felt a tentative hand on his arm, so he let go of Jack’s torso and allowed their hands slide together as they walked.
They rarely held hands.
The atmosphere in the bedroom was heavy with sleeplessness and tinged with fear from both of them. As they both looked at the bed, Jack whispered, “Please say you’ll make love to me tonight,” and Daniel turned to look at him, unable to question whether it would be the last time. It was more formal and gentler than their usual banter, even in the bedroom, but Daniel didn’t question it. Couldn't bear to question anything for fear of the answers.
He reached slowly to take off Jack’s white undershirt, but Jack complied easily enough so Daniel moved close enough to feel Jack’s chest hair tease his nipples and reached around his waist to pull him into a kiss. Jack’s hands went to Daniel’s ribcage and then they were everywhere, checking him over to see if there were any new scars incurred during in their few hours spent sleeping apart. Daniel stilled him by running his hands around the waistband of his boxers, Jack’s erection arching against the restraining fabric, until Daniel freed it. Jack stepped out of and around his clothes as they walked together toward the bed; Daniel dropped his sweatpants as they went.
They lay on the bed carefully, as if they were strangers, afraid to scare the other off.
And then Daniel pressed up against Jack, thigh to thigh and hip to hip and chest to chest and it was Jack, and the throbbing in his groin turned to heat and electricity as their cocks rubbed together; pre-come and hair and need creating sensation and building desire as they rocked. When Daniel reached between them to fist both cocks Jack broke out of the frantic kiss to gasp “Please, Daniel. Wait, please. I want…” but he didn’t finish the request.
But Daniel knew him, and stilled with effort so he could reach over to the bedside table for lube that was in the drawer there. Straddling one of Jack’s thighs and pulling the other up for access, Daniel greased up his fingers and reached hesitantly between Jack’s legs. Feeling like the distance between them was longer than the yard that actually separated their faces, and it was too far. As Daniel pushed into Jack with his hand, he carefully leaned his body down, closing the distance and nicely creating pressure between cock and thigh. Jack arched down onto Daniel’s fingers and then up into a kiss.
The kisses were a balm on the pain of the last hour, but as Daniel moved between and underneath Jack’s legs they had to move their faces too far apart to kiss, and insecurity rushed in between them on the air. There was a moment, as Daniel ran his hand over Jack’s leg and shifted his body, when he felt like his hands were his only anchor to Jack. Then he was entering and pushing, and there was a point when it was overwhelming for each of them and they closed their eyes; but when they relaxed and the initial urgency passed Daniel looked at Jack, and leaned forward, testing the limits of Jack’s flexibility. Their mouths weren’t close enough to kiss, but they were close enough to look at each other and see nothing else: not the passion, not the fear, not the panic of sex. Daniel’s movements were hindered by how bent he held Jack, but he wanted the connection of eye contact paired with the security of that moment being inside Jack. He pulled no more than halfway out as he thrust, he did not close his eyes when sensations overwhelmed; and ultimately he and Jack both had hands on Jack’s cock to bring him to completion first.
Daniel had just enough despair left in him to displace endurance and he knew he wouldn’t last forever, but he tried to ride the orgasm as if it would be the last he’d know for a while. Tried to remember it.
He pulled out fairly quickly afterwards, and grabbed a waiting towel from under the bed to clean Jack a bit and then crashed. He would have carefully moved to his side of the bed but Jack hooked him with an arm and he settled instead into a familiar if cautious closeness.
When Jack was still in bed with him in the morning, he decided that maybe Jack was right, and the only thing that was important was that they were going to try to stay a couple, even if Daniel didn’t understand why Jack had voluntarily separated them, even if there was a part of him that was always going to be ready for this time to be the last time.
He wrote in his journal: I think he still wants me; he just doesn’t really want a relationship with me. Or not a short distance one, anyway. I must be a masochist if I’m willing to take sex and long distance in exchange for a real partner, but I think I still love him, and until I don’t, I’m just going to have walk this crazy logic path of his. God (or whatever there is out there) help me. Or maybe it’s time to ask for reassignment to Atlantis.
Part 2 is here.
By: Minx
Pairings: J/D
Spoilers: Mild through Beachhead (Season 9)
Notes: The title is from an icon of
paian's, we were talking about that it might mean that Jack and Daniel when apart were somehow less grounded, that they needed each other and without that faith, they were likely to lose themselves. Thanks to Sid, again, for funny insta-beta and wraith816 for arguing about apostrophes and sentence flow. Also thanks to delphia2000 for once again marvelous beta love, and rydra_wong for (amazingly synergistic) beta comments as well. All other mistakes are mine until you tell me about them and they are fixed.Word count: 6170 total
Summary: These moments, when they understood each other, they were on the endangered list. Had been since Jack decided to leave.
One Day I'll Fly Away and Vanish
“You are an incurable romantic.” Daniel reported dryly into his cordless phone while reuniting two medium tone blue letter envelopes from different strata of his stack of mail.
“Have you read them yet?” came the disembodied reply.
“Jack, I just got home. For the first time in many moons, I might add.”
“Sam take your mail in, I hope?”
“She just got back into town, Jack. Mitchell got it for me; he was staying here. You’re taking a risk by leaving a paper trail, Mr. Incurable Romantic.”
“There aren’t any signatures or salutations,” Jack informed him needlessly, with carefully neutral tone. “If you shred the envelopes we should be fine.”
“Post office stamp?” Careful.
“Yup.” Careful careful.
“Ah, romance in the twenty-first century. I love you-- shred any evidence of me.”
“Read them yet?” There was enough yet between them for Jack’s worry to transmit over the connection.
“No, I’m talking to you. D’you want to tell me what they say?”
“If you want.”
“You’re the story teller here, you pick the story.” For a moment, the only sound was the scrape of paper on paper; the harsh rip of pages trying to deal out paper cuts. “What inspired you to write?” Writing was Daniel’s medium.
“Sara. Found some old letters unpacking and one of them was from this…argument.”
“You argued in letters?” The interest was genuine, letters forgotten, double meanings and mixed emotions shoved aside in favor of the understandable anthropological puzzle.
“No, she was a smart woman, though. Still is. Anyway. We’d yell and scream and I’d be an asshole and leave the fight realizing I had no idea what had happened or what to do and I’d get even more frustrated. Sara would leave and sit down and write to me exactly what I’d done, what that had meant and why it couldn’t happen again. I’d find the letter on the kitchen table next time I walked through.”
“Uh oh, what did I do?”
“Nothing Daniel, it’s just that I would apologize the same way and I’d usually be much better at it than trying to talk it out.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
In a series of staccato beats, Daniel glanced through the several handwritten pages. “It looks like you’re going to apologize for every disagreement we ever had.”
“Well, in summary, sometimes it’s an apology for not being able to see your point, or not being able to support it, or any time I did something wrong, that kind of thing.” The try for flippant was abandoned mid-sentence. He was still walking on eggshells.
“Jack, have you joined some kind of 12 step program or something? Because you really don’t need to do this for me.”
“I know.”
“Okay. I haven’t finished reading yet, but you’ve been forgiven for these things for a long time.”
“Still needed to be said. Written. Yadda.”
“Confessed.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re absolved,” Daniel said easily.
“And I thought I was finally over that stint in Catholic school. You, ah…” Jack paused in apparent confusion followed by a clearing of the throat and a bravado filled, “You need to hear the sins first, you know, before the absolution part. It’s a rule, I think.”
“No, Jack.” Daniel said, more thoughtfully this time. “I really don’t. But you know how I can’t resist reading stuff, so you can rest assured that I will read these, just not while I’m on the phone with you.”
“You think I have guilt issues?” Finally having succeeded in inspiring Daniel’s concern, Jack began joking.
“Better work on that if you want to have sex anymore, you know. Catholic rules weren’t made for us.” In a way, it was a more effective absolution, coming from Daniel, joking about sex.
“Sooooo.” The voice timbre changed unmistakably, “Whatcha wearing?”
Daniel’s grin crept from his mouth to his eyes and down to his hands, which carefully set down the paper. Leaning his head back, Daniel let go for the moment of the worry and confusion writhing in his brain when he thought about Jack and gave in to amusement. “Oh, it’s sexy, Jack. A long sleeve shirt buttoned all the way up, pants with pleats in them and,” Daniel deliberately dropped his voice. “Socks. That match.”
“I’m wearing my dress blues, you know.”
He knew this game. He understood where he stood with Jack at these moments. He swiveled on the couch to stretch out fully. “Just for me? Just for this phone call?”
“I wear them every day here. Pent-a-gon,” Jack sing-songed.
Daniel’s smile disappeared under his arm as he swung it over his face and groaned in amusement at Jack. These moments, when they understood each other, they were on the endangered list. Had been since Jack decided to leave.
****
“Daniel?” Jack entered the apartment more slowly than usual.
“Yeeeaah… coming…” Daniel emerged from his study as Jack closed the door. It was a sign of… something, that he still put down his work at home if Jack was there. At least at first. “What’s up?”
Jack had no groceries in hand, no beer, no movie. He stood in the middle of the living room staring at nothing, like he’d never been in Daniel’s home before, and didn’t know if throwing one’s jacket over the back of the sofa was allowed or not. Daniel straightened as he entered the room and noticeably slowed his momentum, stopping just inside the archway; Jack watched him helplessly out of the corner of his eye.
“You okay? Sam, Teal’c okay?”
“Yeah, um, I think. I didn’t see them.”
“You didn’t go to the mountain?”
“I did.”
For all that he had thought of saying in the car on the way to the apartment, Jack still wasn't ready. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the outline of Daniel, blurry in his peripheral vision. It was enough and too much; Jack transferred his eyes to the ceiling and stretched his neck while blearily blinking.
“Jack, you’re starting to worry me, here.” Daniel said, smiling. Jack could hear the smile in his voice. He closed his eyes.
“The Pentagon thinks I made mistakes last year commanding the base.”
“Was this a performance review?” Daniel was suitably surprised he didn’t know, and sympathetic. “Sorry, Jack, I hate those things.”
He was smiling again. Jack had given most of Daniel's performance reports and they’d been administered by the singularly grandfatherly power figure that was Hammond. Jack was sure Hammond would never hurt Daniel like this if he knew, and, frankly he probably suspected, given what he’d implied…which meant there were more reasons to do what he was doing, but it was hard to remember them now.
“They want my experience more than they want me in the field now. They don’t trust me to protect the base before I…” he drifted off. Jack had doubted his command ability more times than he could count in the past year. He couldn’t leave his career after such an insecure tenure. He wasn’t the kind of man who could live with the possibility of his own weakness.
“You aren’t in the field, Jack.” The smile in Daniel’s voice was missing. Jack straightened and prepared to take whatever Daniel needed to dish out.
Except that he was still waiting for an explanation. He was waiting for Jack to make it right, which meant Jack was going to have to lay out the pain and explain it in excruciating detail before Daniel would believe it of him. He breathed deeply and turned to face the best thing that had ever happened to him and focused on his hair.
“Hammond pulled enough strings to make a sweater and reassigned me. They need someone more objective leading the SGC and he said he needs a 2IC in Homeworld Security. Expanding role. They’re considering going public. He’s overwhelmed.” Jacks voice was losing volume, and Daniel barely twitched at the mention of the program going public, preferring to look seriously at Jack through the upper edge of his glasses.
Jack wanted to kiss Daniel, any part of Daniel. Get the look of worry and dawning horror off his face and take some comfort before things changed again, but he waited for Daniel to think. He didn’t want to; he was fairly sure that when Daniel finished thinking he would understand too much and be furious. It was easier to be selfish when he wasn’t facing the possibility of being kicked out broken.
“Homeworld Security,” Daniel said, looking for the thread of logic and finding only suspicion, “is in D.C.”
Jack was terrified. “Yeah.”
It was enough to break the preternatural stillness of Daniel’s posture. He fidgeted, and nearly paced but for keeping his eyes on Jacks face. “Retire instead. The Goa’uld are gone. Retire.”
“Hammond…” Jack couldn’t hold the position; he turned and paced further into the living room.
“You agreed. He offered retirement and you agreed to D.C.”
Jack abruptly sat in a chair and ran his hands over his head twice in rapid succession.
“Jack, tell me you didn’t agree to be reassigned to D.C.”
Hands wrapped about each other and covering his mouth, Jack turned his head to look at Daniel, brows knit in worry.
Daniel’s face slowly deadened in the silence. When he spoke, his voice was equally dead. “Go. Go to Washington. It’s probably the best thing for you.”
“Daniel, it’s not that I’m leaving—“
“Jack.” Daniel’s voice was wound up and dangerously quiet. “Is it a permanent transfer?”
“Yeah.” Jack barely voiced the word.
“Then stop talking. I don’t—just, go.” Jack didn’t know whether Daniel was kicking him out or not, but felt unequal to the task of asking. He watched Daniel turn and walk to his bedroom and didn’t breathe. For the first time since they’d been together, Jack didn’t think he was invited to follow; instead, he put his face back in his hands.
****
Daniel walked straight past the bed and into his bathroom, intent on taking a shower.
He’d lost Jack. Jack was leaving him.
Inevitable, maybe. He died on Jack once too often, maybe. There was that thing with that girl last time… maybe it had occurred to Jack that he would be okay with Daniel never coming back. Maybe he wanted that girl instead; did she live in Washington? Kerry?
Oh God.
They’d just broken up.
Daniel got his face under the hot water as quickly as possible; stood with one arm against the wall under the shower head, the water beating on the muscle between his shoulder and neck.
He’d been alone before, but he wasn’t prepared for it this time. Didn’t see it coming. Didn’t really think he’d ever have to be alone again, not after Jack had taken the desk job. That was half-way to retirement, Jack had said, because he wasn’t good at sitting still and therefore was not long for the world of desks.
They were half-way to retirement, and openness. Or at least living together, and telling their friends. Parking in the driveway instead of 8 blocks away.
Or not.
Daniel hated the secrecy of being with a military guy, sneaking around like teenagers who could get caught out past curfew; but maybe Jack got off on that, on the danger. Maybe the idea of a happily ever after bit was Daniel’s alone.
Maybe, once again, he’d been a fool.
Daniel didn’t wash, just stood in the shower until his fingers were wrinkled and his shoulder could no longer feel the water pounding.
He toweled off perfunctorily, missing an arm and the backs of his legs in the process, and walked back through the adjoining door to his bedroom.
The sight of the bed was not welcoming. The air was cold. Daniel grabbed a pair of sweatpants from a lower drawer of his dresser and wore them like a barrier between him and Jack’s empty side of the bed.
In the first hour he lay there, he contemplated the military, Jack, how long it had been since he last wore clothes in his own bed, everything Jack had said about Kerry the CIA woman, whether he really loathed D.C. as much as he claimed and whether he loathed Daniel enough to run away that far.
The second hour, he gave up and went to make a pot of coffee.
And found Jack stretched out on the couch, with Daniel’s extra sheets and a spare blanket from the hall closet, uniform folded neatly on a chair nearby, arms folded under his head as he contemplated the ceiling.
“Didn’t I kick you out?” His voice sounded sticky, his throat was tight.
“Much as I respect that, I think you may have to bodily throw me out of this house tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because there are things…” Jack struggled for the words as he sat up on the couch, “That need to be said. And I’m going to say them badly, so I’ll just ask right now that if you throw me out, please throw my pants out too.”
Daniel looked into the kitchen, but he stayed where he was in the doorway. “What do you need to say?”
“I’m not leaving you, Daniel; I’m leaving my post in the mountain.”
“How is moving to Washington not leaving me, Jack?”
“It’s just not. It’s not another plane of existence. It’s not a planet on the other side of the universe with rough spun clothing. It’s just D.C. It’s a 4 hour flight. I checked.”
“A wormhole is instantaneous travel.”
“Okay, that’s true. But we can do this, Daniel.”
“Why, Jack?” Because Daniel had been working towards accepting that it was over, but there was already a part of him that traitorously believed in Jack and was cheering that half a continent was nothing, really.
“Why what?”
“Why everything. Why are you doing this?” He was on the verge of flailing. He was tired and emotionally worn out and he could not handle Jack being deliberately obtuse. Jack, apparently, could not stay on the couch anymore and walked into Daniel’s space.
“Do you want us to stop, Daniel?”
“Damn it, Jack! Do you?” Earlier he had kept his dignity and controlled his voice, but it seemed dignity was out the window now. He was ready to shout.
“No. This is very important, so I hope you’re taking notes.” Jack’s voice was deliberate and his bare legs were distracting up close.
“I don’t understand.” He didn’t. The urge to swing his arms and shout was gone and he felt simply defeated. He dropped his chin to his chest and stared at the wall behind Jack.
“I know. The only important thing we really need to work out tonight is that I’m not leaving you. Ever.”
“Evidence points to the contrary. And, you’ve said that before.”
“It was true before and it’s true now, Daniel.” There was a shake in Jack’s voice that Daniel didn’t quite understand, but the part of him that believed in Jack was winning over the part of him that believed all his relationship were doomed, and Daniel lifted his eyes and looked at his lover’s face. Jack was standing right in front of him, not a foot away, and yet no part of them was touching. The worry lines he’d developed during his year commanding the base were pronounced; the line between his eyebrows deep as he watched Daniel for a reaction.
Daniel let the part of him that had faith in Jack win. He softened.
Jack dipped at his knees, tilted his head up, and still without touching any other part of him, fit his mouth to Daniel’s in a strong kiss that spoke of months of practice.
He knew how much to open his mouth so it covered Daniel’s but didn’t demand, how much pressure to use so his late night whiskers wouldn’t burn. How when Daniel breathed deeply like that, and pressed back before releasing the kiss for a moment, it meant that he would initiate the next one, mouth more relaxed, the kiss deeper and more intimate. Jack reached up to touch Daniel’s face then, and down to put a tentative hand on his arm.
Daniel could feel Jack fighting the urge to kiss hard enough to back him into the wall, could see him squeezing his eyes shut as he held himself back from giving everything he had. There was comfort in the kiss and Daniel wanted the comfort of being held too; he put his arms around Jack and Jack exhaled in relief and wrapped himself up in Daniel.
Daniel broke the kiss. Leaning his head back and pushing Jack gently away as the other man strained to keep the kiss, eyes closed. “Jack,” he said.
Jack straightened and opened his eyes, his hands falling reluctantly from Daniel’s skin, looking ready for devastation.
“You don’t sleep out here.” And Daniel lightly touched a hand to Jack's hip, to his back, guiding him down the hall to the bedroom. Jack followed Daniel's lead out of the doorway and then Daniel felt a tentative hand on his arm, so he let go of Jack’s torso and allowed their hands slide together as they walked.
They rarely held hands.
The atmosphere in the bedroom was heavy with sleeplessness and tinged with fear from both of them. As they both looked at the bed, Jack whispered, “Please say you’ll make love to me tonight,” and Daniel turned to look at him, unable to question whether it would be the last time. It was more formal and gentler than their usual banter, even in the bedroom, but Daniel didn’t question it. Couldn't bear to question anything for fear of the answers.
He reached slowly to take off Jack’s white undershirt, but Jack complied easily enough so Daniel moved close enough to feel Jack’s chest hair tease his nipples and reached around his waist to pull him into a kiss. Jack’s hands went to Daniel’s ribcage and then they were everywhere, checking him over to see if there were any new scars incurred during in their few hours spent sleeping apart. Daniel stilled him by running his hands around the waistband of his boxers, Jack’s erection arching against the restraining fabric, until Daniel freed it. Jack stepped out of and around his clothes as they walked together toward the bed; Daniel dropped his sweatpants as they went.
They lay on the bed carefully, as if they were strangers, afraid to scare the other off.
And then Daniel pressed up against Jack, thigh to thigh and hip to hip and chest to chest and it was Jack, and the throbbing in his groin turned to heat and electricity as their cocks rubbed together; pre-come and hair and need creating sensation and building desire as they rocked. When Daniel reached between them to fist both cocks Jack broke out of the frantic kiss to gasp “Please, Daniel. Wait, please. I want…” but he didn’t finish the request.
But Daniel knew him, and stilled with effort so he could reach over to the bedside table for lube that was in the drawer there. Straddling one of Jack’s thighs and pulling the other up for access, Daniel greased up his fingers and reached hesitantly between Jack’s legs. Feeling like the distance between them was longer than the yard that actually separated their faces, and it was too far. As Daniel pushed into Jack with his hand, he carefully leaned his body down, closing the distance and nicely creating pressure between cock and thigh. Jack arched down onto Daniel’s fingers and then up into a kiss.
The kisses were a balm on the pain of the last hour, but as Daniel moved between and underneath Jack’s legs they had to move their faces too far apart to kiss, and insecurity rushed in between them on the air. There was a moment, as Daniel ran his hand over Jack’s leg and shifted his body, when he felt like his hands were his only anchor to Jack. Then he was entering and pushing, and there was a point when it was overwhelming for each of them and they closed their eyes; but when they relaxed and the initial urgency passed Daniel looked at Jack, and leaned forward, testing the limits of Jack’s flexibility. Their mouths weren’t close enough to kiss, but they were close enough to look at each other and see nothing else: not the passion, not the fear, not the panic of sex. Daniel’s movements were hindered by how bent he held Jack, but he wanted the connection of eye contact paired with the security of that moment being inside Jack. He pulled no more than halfway out as he thrust, he did not close his eyes when sensations overwhelmed; and ultimately he and Jack both had hands on Jack’s cock to bring him to completion first.
Daniel had just enough despair left in him to displace endurance and he knew he wouldn’t last forever, but he tried to ride the orgasm as if it would be the last he’d know for a while. Tried to remember it.
He pulled out fairly quickly afterwards, and grabbed a waiting towel from under the bed to clean Jack a bit and then crashed. He would have carefully moved to his side of the bed but Jack hooked him with an arm and he settled instead into a familiar if cautious closeness.
When Jack was still in bed with him in the morning, he decided that maybe Jack was right, and the only thing that was important was that they were going to try to stay a couple, even if Daniel didn’t understand why Jack had voluntarily separated them, even if there was a part of him that was always going to be ready for this time to be the last time.
He wrote in his journal: I think he still wants me; he just doesn’t really want a relationship with me. Or not a short distance one, anyway. I must be a masochist if I’m willing to take sex and long distance in exchange for a real partner, but I think I still love him, and until I don’t, I’m just going to have walk this crazy logic path of his. God (or whatever there is out there) help me. Or maybe it’s time to ask for reassignment to Atlantis.
Part 2 is here.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-22 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-22 10:42 pm (UTC)Which is kind of funny, but really I'm not into pain like that. LOL.
Love that icon of yours, so glad you liked the fic!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 03:39 am (UTC)Okay, on to part two...