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minxyTitle: The Eye is not Satisfied with Seeing
Pairing: Cam/Teal’c
Setting, spoilers: S9 (tag for Arthur’s Mantle)
Warnings/Rating: none (slash), NC-17
Word count: 3800
Authors note: Searching out the elusive title and prose that Cam would know led me, on a brilliant beta tip, to read Ecclesiastes and become really attached to several verses that each showed up in title or thoughts or dialog somewhere in there. They are listed at the bottom of this post, if you’re interested.
Thanks: to beta-extraordinaire![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rydra_wong, who is not only extremely capable with the grammar, but also the p0rn, and the themes, and the canon, and the characters, and the appropriate naming of fics. What would I do without her? I ask you. Abuse semi-colons at the very least.
This is fortaselby.
~~~
It wasn’t that different; it’d been hard to tell from the beginning that something was wrong, until someone failed to linger over you as their eyes tracked across the room, then didn’t hear what you said, didn’t recognize your personal space and walked right through you, man. That was a dead giveaway, when they walked through you. Cam hated the weirdness of that, and so started ducking out of the way. Tried to avoid picking things up, because he couldn’t, anyway, and it was all very freaky and it distracted him from the task at hand. He couldn’t avoid the lack of eye contact, though; no one saw him, and that was disconcerting.
It was that moment when Teal’c had turned, and looked at him. That was when Cam knew this would be one of those mostly happy endings.
Wait for them to figure it out, Sam had said, but she had meant the wrong people.
They had fought, he and Teal’c, not quite back to back, since there was only one enemy, but side-by-side, and that was probably just as well, because they each needed to feel they could have held their own ground. The sentiment was there, though, in the clear air between them, it was easier with you there.
And maybe also, less understood, a gratitude for being found, being sought, being saved; though neither could have said with certainty who was the object, and which the knight in shining armor.
Maybe it wasn’t important who saved whom.
It was good, though, that they walked back home on different sides of a gurney, because that hand up, back to his feet, he could still feel indented into his palm, the fingerprints in his skin. And Cam didn’t need the distraction of knowing he could be touched, would’ve wanted to reach out and make sure he could touch back, and that would have been inappropriate. He could still feel Teal’c’s gaze on his shoulders like sunlight. Like he could see the dust in the air kicked up by Air force issue boots on Alien pine needles, could feel it on his skin when he walked through a cloud of it.
Back in the SGC, deep under a mountain, in artificial light, in recycled air, sterile infirmary curtain walls and controlled environmental conditions, he underwent tests to make sure he was really back. Interminable hours while Teal’c sat in Cameron’s place with the only living member of the Sodan; possibly on deathwatch, certainly in isolation as they tried to prevent infection while he healed and they sorted out his future drug dependency.
He tried to regain the happy-ending euphoria doing housekeeping things like taking a meal with Jackson and Sam, scheduling the inevitable dressing down with Landry, only to feel that much more exhausted, just able to list back to his quarters on his own engine, unsure whether his sleep would be restful under what the pamphlets all called survivor’s guilt.
The world took a self-righting tilt when he realized Teal’c was already there, casting shadows bigger than the room could hold. He should have candles, Cam thought, the light would be softer, and Teal’c belongs in rooms with candles.
“Hey,” he said in a sigh of breath, shrugging out of his shirt and hanging it in his wardrobe as T rose in a stately way and turned to face him. “Haikon?”
“Will survive to recruit and teach a new generation of Sodan.” Teal’c’s voice was low, like they were sitting across a meditation candle. “He requests your assistance in this matter.”
“Because everything else I’ve done for them has turned out so well.” Cameron’s eyes throbbed, his head weighed down by the patient overseeing of his education by a Sodan who would be cut down by his brother.
“Because of you, the knowledge will survive. That is the result that matters at this time.”
“You’re making a knowledge is stronger than weapons argument?” Cam asked, the memory of the glances of a dozen children bright in his mind, all watching him fall spectacularly to the ground and get up to fall again; a hundred townspeople who accepted his fate and watched him go to it, they thought. He had let them look, as though the honor was theirs, to see him as they saw fit. He thought at the time that he could earn their respect and deserve it, and that would be something to write home about. All vanity and vexation of spirit, Grandma.
“Jaffa do not expect to live to old age, nor do we expect to die free. The Sodan fought the Orii, and died free.”
He knew Teal’c was looking at him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look back, instead addressing the floor; but he let Teal’c look, as he’d allowed the Sodan to do, and tried not to think too hard about what he would see. But the SGC security personal he would not trust to understand.
“You been here long?” Cam asked, eyes hitting the edge of the door. He reached back and tap it completely shut, with a satisfying click of the latch.
“I will not stay long enough to arouse suspicion.”
Cam couldn’t help smiling at that, which might have been the point, so he played along, looking up. “On whose part?”
Teal’c may have smiled at that. Cam decided to take it as an opening, and turned to face him in the room, taking in the clean bandage on Teal’c’s shoulder, the dirt on the thighs of his BDUs, the gunpowder on both hands. “Why’d you swing at me so fast, on the planet? It’s not like you to go overboard.”
“Have you not heard of the law of Murphy, Colonel Mitchell?”
Well that was sweet, if what he meant was that swinging hard somehow would create a greater likelihood that he wouldn’t make contact. Cam didn’t particularly subscribe to the Church of Murphy, though, and he didn’t really think Teal’c would either. “You were aiming to knock me out if I was blustering my way into the more dangerous job, weren’t you?” On impulse, he strolled a bit closer, in stocking feet, to see T’s reaction up close. “When have I ever not admitted when you were the better man for the job?”
“There is no guarantee that I would have been in this case,” Teal’c said, voice tight, “you had a great advantage. Still, I could not take the chance that your perceptions may have been inaccurate.”
“And so once you established that you couldn’t hurt me, you figured he couldn’t either.” Teal’c nodded, once. “And you let me make the call.”
“I have never seen a man or Jaffa move at such speed while firing with such accuracy, it is unlikely that I or any other would have survived.” Teal’c raised his eyes to the wall behind Cam, who immediately felt the loss.
“Well, thank you,” he said, moving away and back and turning sideways to the wardrobe as though it were his locker as he unbuckled his belt, “I’m glad you were standing by to rescue my ass but right now, I need to think about something that’s not related to the destruction of the Sodan. So, if you don’t mind, no more talking shop.”
Teal’c caught his arm, grip warm and strong and wrapped around the seam of his short sleeve; fingers long enough to tease the valleys between muscles in his upper arm, palm wide enough to cradle his bicep. “Colonel Mitchell,” he began.
“Right now,” Cam interrupted, addressing the well-manicured, if dirty, fingernails just grazing over his skin, “I need you to call me Cameron. Just for today. Failing that, you really don’t need to say anything.”
The vibrations from his voice faded into the quiet of the room. Trust Teal’c to take a phrase like ‘you don’t have to say anything’ literally, but it was a nice quiet, or would have been if Cam hadn’t still felt so small.
His loose belt buckle jangled tunelessly at the wardrobe as Teal’c pulled with a light pressure on his bicep, pads of his fingers separated enough to each be felt individually. Cameron let his arm be hooked and pulled then pushed across, let himself be pivoted around almost face to face, to see and be seen, to be touched, Teal’c’s arm between them like a crossbeam.
Teal’c had heat. It radiated out six inches from his skin in all directions, raised the temperature in the room when he was in it, Cam could feel it on his arm, shoulder, hip where it was close enough, across his chest where Teal’c forearm was near, over his cheek as Teal’c murmered something with softened consonants and the exhaled half-heard words ghosted across his skin. Cam wanted to step closer, into that heat and warmth and let it make him real and present; instead he pulled his head up wearily to look for some explanation of why they were standing in this exhausted version of the Jaffa arm-clasp, only to find Teal’c’s eyes focused, not on him, but on some unseeable thing between them.
“What was that?” Cam’s voice felt far too tired, after a day of shouting and not being heard. He wasn’t up for cryptic conversations, couldn’t figure out what to do with the mountain of a man standing so close he could have stood chest to chest with him if he turned a bit more into the embrace, could have kissed him if he tilted his head properly, could throw him down if he planted his foot right, used the hand on his arm for leverage, was lucky.
“I offer the comfort of a warrior’s arms,” Teal’c recited with more breath than sound, “I ask for the same in return.” There was a melodic sort of upturn in the sound of the last words, but Cam couldn’t make out if they were poetry or a formal request; probably both, knowing the Jaffa and their traditions, but he didn’t have the slightest clue what to say in reply.
He tilted his head a bit to the side and waited.
The warmth on his arm, across his chest and pouring down his hip in waves was nothing to the heat in Teal’c’s gaze, his breath, his mouth on Cameron’s. There was a shift in stance and they were closer, standing, leaning, striving closer. Cam felt Teal’c’s arm pressed against his ribcage, the scrape of belt loops on the backs of his knuckles; wondered if his hands would be burned if he turned and buried them under the hem of Teal’c’s shirt, pressed them hard against skin.
He exhaled sharply as Teal’c released the awkward grip that kept his arm between them like a spacer and swung it down and over the front of Cam’s trousers, brushing fabric and catching a button and teasing. Teal’c’s hand turned, cupping Cam’s groin warmly and pressing welcome into hardness. Cam wove on his feet and fell forward to Teal’s hands and mouth, felt his shoulders relaxing and his jaw opening, felt Teal’c’s teeth on his lips, tongue deep in his mouth.
Cam felt the first pressure of real need, fingers digging into the muscle at his shoulder, mouth opened so wide it was on the edge of painful, of a push that arched his neck back, required a surge back to stay upright just as his hands began to seek purchase in fabric, as his fingertips brushed the edges of gauze and medical tape. He closed his hand as far as he could around Teal’c’s upper arm, just under the bandage; braced him there as he tugged himself out of the kiss. He regretted slowing it all down, but he could still feel Teal’c’s breath on his neck as he carefully maneuvered the shirt off without jostling the burn wound. They’d been fighting the clock all day, but now they could risk calling a time out.
Their remaining clothes were removed without such delicacy, and without speaking. Still, it seemed like the air was buzzing with white noise: clothes rustling, sheets being pulled back, mattress taking weight.
There was, Cameron thought as he watched Teal’c climb onto the bed next to him, incredible beauty in strength and in scars. Though he’d grown used to thinking of his own as painfully earned medals of honor he didn’t display for others often, it wasn’t the pretty beauty, the sweet kind, but he was awed, nonetheless, watching the play of light over skin and scars. On Teal’c, the only marks you could see were recent, and Cameron could name them without asking about the crossed lines of the closed pouch, the proof of stitches across more recent wounds that Teal’c’s body would never have had to bear witness to if he’d still carried a symbiote; they were no less impressive in number, though, for only being the collection of a few years. He was beautiful, and they were beautiful, and Cam didn’t know if Teal’c could name the scars he saw before him, or needed to, but Cameron basked as hands roved over his skin, his scars, his abs, shivered in turn as blunt nails ran lightly through the downy hair that grew there and hardened almost past endurance at the sight and feel of Teal’c’s warm dark hand closing around his cock, trapping the heat there; he almost choked as he swallowed an exclamation that might have been too loud for his tired throat.
Teal’c’s mouth quirked in a grin Cam could see for half a second before he turned to reach for something at the foot of the bed and took his hands off of Cam in the process. Cam breathed in some cool air and calmed enough to recognize the tube in Teal’c’s hands that looked like it’d been lifted straight out of the infirmary. To fill the empty space he said, “I hate to bring it up, but you did ask Dr. Lam before you walked off with her medical supplies, yes?”
“Making such a request is preferable to stating a need for lubrication supplies on an acquisition form,” Teal’c replied as he twisted the lid of the tube.
“Yeah.” Cam almost laughed; the man was full of surprises. Then his hands were full of Cam, cool lube on hot skin and wide palms alternating deliberate strokes up the shaft of his cock and carefully over the head and Cam’s mouth was open but the sounds he made were quiet and wordless.
Then Teal’c began turning his hands, curving his strokes around instead of just up, extending the touch to balls, behind them to skin, to opening. Cam’s breath came hotter and faster, and Teal’s hands stopped alternating, one of them remaining on Cam’s cock, the hand big enough that more than more than half the shaft was wrapped in heat and fingers strong and wide enough to feel like waves running over his skin. He stroked with a finesse around the head that enveloped then gave way in what felt like small explosions, fist collapsing in around the rim to hit the sweet nerves underneath and ride the shaft back up with increasing firmness. Cam was just recovering his stuttering breath after the change in touch when he felt a wide finger at his opening and he knew either he would come like lightning, or he would come apart as it slid in and curved and arced and twisted and pressure built outward and gathered in every muscle in his body; he worked his jaw like he could breath more air in, harder, could ease the tension of it out in small aching sounds if he just opened his mouth farther, but it only led to ragged gasps and more heat pooling in his chest and his stomach and his groin.
The strokes on his cock began to match his breathing and started coming harder and faster; a turn of the wrist of the other hand let the pad of the finger find the right spot as palm pressed in from the outside, both pulsing the pressure and growing in strength each time.
Cam groaned hoarsely once, twice, as every muscle in his body tightened. He grasped Teal’c’s thigh, bedclothes, drove his head back into the pillow on the bed as he hit the limit, seized up and came; pressure and tenseness and stress and mourning leaving behind only a melted pleasure, the strength of it overwhelming and stunning. He didn’t want it to end.
He didn’t remember closing his eyes, he didn’t remember Teal’c’s hands leaving him, but Cam looked up and blinked to see Teal’c coming back toward him with a towel from the washroom, as impressive backlit as he was when he turned and revealed a thick and unacknowledged erection. “Hey,” Cam said, mustering will into his boneless body as the bed creaked and dipped and Teal’c began drawing wide cool lines over his body with a washcloth. He ran a hand up Teal’c’s thigh to his hip, then down to grip probably a little too relaxedly over Teal’c’s straining cock. “It’s not time to wrap up just yet.”
“That is not necessary,” Teal’c replied with control.
“None of it was necessary, I want to,” Cam said, raising himself up on his elbow. Teal’c’s breath was still coming in light gusts from his mouth and Cam wanted to feel the current around him. “Don’t make me take you down.”
He got an eyebrow raise that he thought for a moment might be a challenge, but then Teal’c’s mouth quirked in a smile that let Cameron see his teeth, and he pushed himself up to kiss fiercely at that grin, and pull at his shoulder to get him closer, tug the towel out of his hand and drop it somewhere off the side of the bed without looking. Teal’c half watched Cam, head tilted down towards his chest as Cam pulled back a few inches and leaned on an arm, waiting; it took only seconds before Teal’c followed and reaquired the light, opened mouthed kiss. Cam smiled widely in the kiss, but Teal’c seemed not to notice; when he eased himself back, Teal’c followed, bracing himself over Cam but letting his lower body’s weight fall on him, a thigh, wide and warm, working inbetween his own.
Teal’c’s kisses were fast, now Cam was done teasing, jaw working in a quick rhythm and breath gusting in bursts over Cam’s face and eyelashes. Cam ran his hands over Teal’c’s body with a touch hard enough to be a massage, thumbing nipples, pressing pecs, running the hot pads of his fingers over the muscle definition of his sides and back. He hooked a hand over Teal’c’s shoulder, grabbed an elbow and eased a thigh up to press against ass and leg and maybe between, all to ease T onto his side, half laying on Cam, hip to hip and skin touching.
It let Cam kiss back with leverage, rocking them back and forward with the fierceness of the embrace; let him sneak a hand between them and grasp Teal’c’s cock properly this time. He had only the chance to squeeze it carefully before Teal’c groaned hard into his mouth, clamped a hand around Cam’s waist and he had to let go; had to let Teal’c thrust hard up the smooth part of his abs right above the leg joint. He kissed hard at the expression of yearning on Teal’c’s face, slid his hand down Teal’c’s spine a vertebrae at a time, to his lower back where he pressed in time with Teal’c’s thrusting, urging their chests and abs and pelvises together, closer.
Teal’c body stilled as he came, mouth pressed in a hard kiss, brows knit and fists clenched, arms clamped around. Afterwards, he relaxed with a breath he deliberately inhaled and released, and Cam watched his face ease into a wide smile, eyes only half open. Cam gently kissed that smile too, then eased his arms out from under the embrace and let Teal’c fall back against the pillows, propping his own head up on an elbow and counting the seconds it took for Teal’c’s breath to return to normal as the come cooled on their skin.
“What you said earlier, was it the same thing in Goa’uld?” Cam asked quietly. Teal’c nodded and repeated the lines. Cam was silent for a moment before he said, somewhat incredulously, “It rhymes in Goa’uld?”
Teal’c’s eyes crinkled in amusement, but somehow it was very important to Cam that Teal’c had just seduced him with poetry, and he was quiet for some time, reaching out to place a hand on Teal’c’s chest, running his thumb over a collarbone, in the hollow of his jaw.
Teal’c turned minutely into the touch and looked directly at Cameron for a moment before visibly gathering himself and saying, “I should return to my quarters.”
“I have no idea how to teach Jaffa fighting techniques I studied for a week to warriors who’ve been training longer than I’ve been alive,” Cam replied, light fingers running over Teal’c’s face and tattoo. “I don’t even know what techniques are unique and what are common to all Jaffa. What if I suck?”
“You may begin by teaching me.” Teal’c’s eyes closed contentedly as Cam’s hands stilled over his brow bone. “I will assist you, if you wish, once Haikon chooses the first students.”
Cam watched him closely for several moments, sure Teal’c was aware of the scrutiny and allowing it for mysterious reasons of his own; he’d never seen him so at his ease, not even on movie night. “Woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up,” he murmured, earning a half a smile for his trouble. He ducked his head and traced lines down Teal’c’s chest. “If two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?” he continued softly, drawing graffiti over the pouch scars and through drying come.
Eventually, Cam withdrew his hand, and retrieved the discarded towel from the side of the bed, erasing the come-drawings and removing all visible proof of their encounter from Teal’c’s body. He pulled the towel back, and Teal’c nodded once, got up from the bed, silently tidying and dressing, the smell of sex and dirt and guns and heat rippling in waves around the room as he moved.
“Tomorrow at 10 hundred we shall begin,” he announced, hand on the door, waiting.
“It’s a date,” Cam agreed, getting up himself to take a shower.
He saw Teal’c nod before they disappeared through different doorframes.
~~end~~
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Ecclesiastes,1:8 (King James version)
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. 2:11
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? 4:9-11
Pairing: Cam/Teal’c
Setting, spoilers: S9 (tag for Arthur’s Mantle)
Warnings/Rating: none (slash), NC-17
Word count: 3800
Authors note: Searching out the elusive title and prose that Cam would know led me, on a brilliant beta tip, to read Ecclesiastes and become really attached to several verses that each showed up in title or thoughts or dialog somewhere in there. They are listed at the bottom of this post, if you’re interested.
Thanks: to beta-extraordinaire
rydra_wong, who is not only extremely capable with the grammar, but also the p0rn, and the themes, and the canon, and the characters, and the appropriate naming of fics. What would I do without her? I ask you. Abuse semi-colons at the very least.This is for
taselby.~~~
It wasn’t that different; it’d been hard to tell from the beginning that something was wrong, until someone failed to linger over you as their eyes tracked across the room, then didn’t hear what you said, didn’t recognize your personal space and walked right through you, man. That was a dead giveaway, when they walked through you. Cam hated the weirdness of that, and so started ducking out of the way. Tried to avoid picking things up, because he couldn’t, anyway, and it was all very freaky and it distracted him from the task at hand. He couldn’t avoid the lack of eye contact, though; no one saw him, and that was disconcerting.
It was that moment when Teal’c had turned, and looked at him. That was when Cam knew this would be one of those mostly happy endings.
Wait for them to figure it out, Sam had said, but she had meant the wrong people.
They had fought, he and Teal’c, not quite back to back, since there was only one enemy, but side-by-side, and that was probably just as well, because they each needed to feel they could have held their own ground. The sentiment was there, though, in the clear air between them, it was easier with you there.
And maybe also, less understood, a gratitude for being found, being sought, being saved; though neither could have said with certainty who was the object, and which the knight in shining armor.
Maybe it wasn’t important who saved whom.
It was good, though, that they walked back home on different sides of a gurney, because that hand up, back to his feet, he could still feel indented into his palm, the fingerprints in his skin. And Cam didn’t need the distraction of knowing he could be touched, would’ve wanted to reach out and make sure he could touch back, and that would have been inappropriate. He could still feel Teal’c’s gaze on his shoulders like sunlight. Like he could see the dust in the air kicked up by Air force issue boots on Alien pine needles, could feel it on his skin when he walked through a cloud of it.
Back in the SGC, deep under a mountain, in artificial light, in recycled air, sterile infirmary curtain walls and controlled environmental conditions, he underwent tests to make sure he was really back. Interminable hours while Teal’c sat in Cameron’s place with the only living member of the Sodan; possibly on deathwatch, certainly in isolation as they tried to prevent infection while he healed and they sorted out his future drug dependency.
He tried to regain the happy-ending euphoria doing housekeeping things like taking a meal with Jackson and Sam, scheduling the inevitable dressing down with Landry, only to feel that much more exhausted, just able to list back to his quarters on his own engine, unsure whether his sleep would be restful under what the pamphlets all called survivor’s guilt.
The world took a self-righting tilt when he realized Teal’c was already there, casting shadows bigger than the room could hold. He should have candles, Cam thought, the light would be softer, and Teal’c belongs in rooms with candles.
“Hey,” he said in a sigh of breath, shrugging out of his shirt and hanging it in his wardrobe as T rose in a stately way and turned to face him. “Haikon?”
“Will survive to recruit and teach a new generation of Sodan.” Teal’c’s voice was low, like they were sitting across a meditation candle. “He requests your assistance in this matter.”
“Because everything else I’ve done for them has turned out so well.” Cameron’s eyes throbbed, his head weighed down by the patient overseeing of his education by a Sodan who would be cut down by his brother.
“Because of you, the knowledge will survive. That is the result that matters at this time.”
“You’re making a knowledge is stronger than weapons argument?” Cam asked, the memory of the glances of a dozen children bright in his mind, all watching him fall spectacularly to the ground and get up to fall again; a hundred townspeople who accepted his fate and watched him go to it, they thought. He had let them look, as though the honor was theirs, to see him as they saw fit. He thought at the time that he could earn their respect and deserve it, and that would be something to write home about. All vanity and vexation of spirit, Grandma.
“Jaffa do not expect to live to old age, nor do we expect to die free. The Sodan fought the Orii, and died free.”
He knew Teal’c was looking at him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look back, instead addressing the floor; but he let Teal’c look, as he’d allowed the Sodan to do, and tried not to think too hard about what he would see. But the SGC security personal he would not trust to understand.
“You been here long?” Cam asked, eyes hitting the edge of the door. He reached back and tap it completely shut, with a satisfying click of the latch.
“I will not stay long enough to arouse suspicion.”
Cam couldn’t help smiling at that, which might have been the point, so he played along, looking up. “On whose part?”
Teal’c may have smiled at that. Cam decided to take it as an opening, and turned to face him in the room, taking in the clean bandage on Teal’c’s shoulder, the dirt on the thighs of his BDUs, the gunpowder on both hands. “Why’d you swing at me so fast, on the planet? It’s not like you to go overboard.”
“Have you not heard of the law of Murphy, Colonel Mitchell?”
Well that was sweet, if what he meant was that swinging hard somehow would create a greater likelihood that he wouldn’t make contact. Cam didn’t particularly subscribe to the Church of Murphy, though, and he didn’t really think Teal’c would either. “You were aiming to knock me out if I was blustering my way into the more dangerous job, weren’t you?” On impulse, he strolled a bit closer, in stocking feet, to see T’s reaction up close. “When have I ever not admitted when you were the better man for the job?”
“There is no guarantee that I would have been in this case,” Teal’c said, voice tight, “you had a great advantage. Still, I could not take the chance that your perceptions may have been inaccurate.”
“And so once you established that you couldn’t hurt me, you figured he couldn’t either.” Teal’c nodded, once. “And you let me make the call.”
“I have never seen a man or Jaffa move at such speed while firing with such accuracy, it is unlikely that I or any other would have survived.” Teal’c raised his eyes to the wall behind Cam, who immediately felt the loss.
“Well, thank you,” he said, moving away and back and turning sideways to the wardrobe as though it were his locker as he unbuckled his belt, “I’m glad you were standing by to rescue my ass but right now, I need to think about something that’s not related to the destruction of the Sodan. So, if you don’t mind, no more talking shop.”
Teal’c caught his arm, grip warm and strong and wrapped around the seam of his short sleeve; fingers long enough to tease the valleys between muscles in his upper arm, palm wide enough to cradle his bicep. “Colonel Mitchell,” he began.
“Right now,” Cam interrupted, addressing the well-manicured, if dirty, fingernails just grazing over his skin, “I need you to call me Cameron. Just for today. Failing that, you really don’t need to say anything.”
The vibrations from his voice faded into the quiet of the room. Trust Teal’c to take a phrase like ‘you don’t have to say anything’ literally, but it was a nice quiet, or would have been if Cam hadn’t still felt so small.
His loose belt buckle jangled tunelessly at the wardrobe as Teal’c pulled with a light pressure on his bicep, pads of his fingers separated enough to each be felt individually. Cameron let his arm be hooked and pulled then pushed across, let himself be pivoted around almost face to face, to see and be seen, to be touched, Teal’c’s arm between them like a crossbeam.
Teal’c had heat. It radiated out six inches from his skin in all directions, raised the temperature in the room when he was in it, Cam could feel it on his arm, shoulder, hip where it was close enough, across his chest where Teal’c forearm was near, over his cheek as Teal’c murmered something with softened consonants and the exhaled half-heard words ghosted across his skin. Cam wanted to step closer, into that heat and warmth and let it make him real and present; instead he pulled his head up wearily to look for some explanation of why they were standing in this exhausted version of the Jaffa arm-clasp, only to find Teal’c’s eyes focused, not on him, but on some unseeable thing between them.
“What was that?” Cam’s voice felt far too tired, after a day of shouting and not being heard. He wasn’t up for cryptic conversations, couldn’t figure out what to do with the mountain of a man standing so close he could have stood chest to chest with him if he turned a bit more into the embrace, could have kissed him if he tilted his head properly, could throw him down if he planted his foot right, used the hand on his arm for leverage, was lucky.
“I offer the comfort of a warrior’s arms,” Teal’c recited with more breath than sound, “I ask for the same in return.” There was a melodic sort of upturn in the sound of the last words, but Cam couldn’t make out if they were poetry or a formal request; probably both, knowing the Jaffa and their traditions, but he didn’t have the slightest clue what to say in reply.
He tilted his head a bit to the side and waited.
The warmth on his arm, across his chest and pouring down his hip in waves was nothing to the heat in Teal’c’s gaze, his breath, his mouth on Cameron’s. There was a shift in stance and they were closer, standing, leaning, striving closer. Cam felt Teal’c’s arm pressed against his ribcage, the scrape of belt loops on the backs of his knuckles; wondered if his hands would be burned if he turned and buried them under the hem of Teal’c’s shirt, pressed them hard against skin.
He exhaled sharply as Teal’c released the awkward grip that kept his arm between them like a spacer and swung it down and over the front of Cam’s trousers, brushing fabric and catching a button and teasing. Teal’c’s hand turned, cupping Cam’s groin warmly and pressing welcome into hardness. Cam wove on his feet and fell forward to Teal’s hands and mouth, felt his shoulders relaxing and his jaw opening, felt Teal’c’s teeth on his lips, tongue deep in his mouth.
Cam felt the first pressure of real need, fingers digging into the muscle at his shoulder, mouth opened so wide it was on the edge of painful, of a push that arched his neck back, required a surge back to stay upright just as his hands began to seek purchase in fabric, as his fingertips brushed the edges of gauze and medical tape. He closed his hand as far as he could around Teal’c’s upper arm, just under the bandage; braced him there as he tugged himself out of the kiss. He regretted slowing it all down, but he could still feel Teal’c’s breath on his neck as he carefully maneuvered the shirt off without jostling the burn wound. They’d been fighting the clock all day, but now they could risk calling a time out.
Their remaining clothes were removed without such delicacy, and without speaking. Still, it seemed like the air was buzzing with white noise: clothes rustling, sheets being pulled back, mattress taking weight.
There was, Cameron thought as he watched Teal’c climb onto the bed next to him, incredible beauty in strength and in scars. Though he’d grown used to thinking of his own as painfully earned medals of honor he didn’t display for others often, it wasn’t the pretty beauty, the sweet kind, but he was awed, nonetheless, watching the play of light over skin and scars. On Teal’c, the only marks you could see were recent, and Cameron could name them without asking about the crossed lines of the closed pouch, the proof of stitches across more recent wounds that Teal’c’s body would never have had to bear witness to if he’d still carried a symbiote; they were no less impressive in number, though, for only being the collection of a few years. He was beautiful, and they were beautiful, and Cam didn’t know if Teal’c could name the scars he saw before him, or needed to, but Cameron basked as hands roved over his skin, his scars, his abs, shivered in turn as blunt nails ran lightly through the downy hair that grew there and hardened almost past endurance at the sight and feel of Teal’c’s warm dark hand closing around his cock, trapping the heat there; he almost choked as he swallowed an exclamation that might have been too loud for his tired throat.
Teal’c’s mouth quirked in a grin Cam could see for half a second before he turned to reach for something at the foot of the bed and took his hands off of Cam in the process. Cam breathed in some cool air and calmed enough to recognize the tube in Teal’c’s hands that looked like it’d been lifted straight out of the infirmary. To fill the empty space he said, “I hate to bring it up, but you did ask Dr. Lam before you walked off with her medical supplies, yes?”
“Making such a request is preferable to stating a need for lubrication supplies on an acquisition form,” Teal’c replied as he twisted the lid of the tube.
“Yeah.” Cam almost laughed; the man was full of surprises. Then his hands were full of Cam, cool lube on hot skin and wide palms alternating deliberate strokes up the shaft of his cock and carefully over the head and Cam’s mouth was open but the sounds he made were quiet and wordless.
Then Teal’c began turning his hands, curving his strokes around instead of just up, extending the touch to balls, behind them to skin, to opening. Cam’s breath came hotter and faster, and Teal’s hands stopped alternating, one of them remaining on Cam’s cock, the hand big enough that more than more than half the shaft was wrapped in heat and fingers strong and wide enough to feel like waves running over his skin. He stroked with a finesse around the head that enveloped then gave way in what felt like small explosions, fist collapsing in around the rim to hit the sweet nerves underneath and ride the shaft back up with increasing firmness. Cam was just recovering his stuttering breath after the change in touch when he felt a wide finger at his opening and he knew either he would come like lightning, or he would come apart as it slid in and curved and arced and twisted and pressure built outward and gathered in every muscle in his body; he worked his jaw like he could breath more air in, harder, could ease the tension of it out in small aching sounds if he just opened his mouth farther, but it only led to ragged gasps and more heat pooling in his chest and his stomach and his groin.
The strokes on his cock began to match his breathing and started coming harder and faster; a turn of the wrist of the other hand let the pad of the finger find the right spot as palm pressed in from the outside, both pulsing the pressure and growing in strength each time.
Cam groaned hoarsely once, twice, as every muscle in his body tightened. He grasped Teal’c’s thigh, bedclothes, drove his head back into the pillow on the bed as he hit the limit, seized up and came; pressure and tenseness and stress and mourning leaving behind only a melted pleasure, the strength of it overwhelming and stunning. He didn’t want it to end.
He didn’t remember closing his eyes, he didn’t remember Teal’c’s hands leaving him, but Cam looked up and blinked to see Teal’c coming back toward him with a towel from the washroom, as impressive backlit as he was when he turned and revealed a thick and unacknowledged erection. “Hey,” Cam said, mustering will into his boneless body as the bed creaked and dipped and Teal’c began drawing wide cool lines over his body with a washcloth. He ran a hand up Teal’c’s thigh to his hip, then down to grip probably a little too relaxedly over Teal’c’s straining cock. “It’s not time to wrap up just yet.”
“That is not necessary,” Teal’c replied with control.
“None of it was necessary, I want to,” Cam said, raising himself up on his elbow. Teal’c’s breath was still coming in light gusts from his mouth and Cam wanted to feel the current around him. “Don’t make me take you down.”
He got an eyebrow raise that he thought for a moment might be a challenge, but then Teal’c’s mouth quirked in a smile that let Cameron see his teeth, and he pushed himself up to kiss fiercely at that grin, and pull at his shoulder to get him closer, tug the towel out of his hand and drop it somewhere off the side of the bed without looking. Teal’c half watched Cam, head tilted down towards his chest as Cam pulled back a few inches and leaned on an arm, waiting; it took only seconds before Teal’c followed and reaquired the light, opened mouthed kiss. Cam smiled widely in the kiss, but Teal’c seemed not to notice; when he eased himself back, Teal’c followed, bracing himself over Cam but letting his lower body’s weight fall on him, a thigh, wide and warm, working inbetween his own.
Teal’c’s kisses were fast, now Cam was done teasing, jaw working in a quick rhythm and breath gusting in bursts over Cam’s face and eyelashes. Cam ran his hands over Teal’c’s body with a touch hard enough to be a massage, thumbing nipples, pressing pecs, running the hot pads of his fingers over the muscle definition of his sides and back. He hooked a hand over Teal’c’s shoulder, grabbed an elbow and eased a thigh up to press against ass and leg and maybe between, all to ease T onto his side, half laying on Cam, hip to hip and skin touching.
It let Cam kiss back with leverage, rocking them back and forward with the fierceness of the embrace; let him sneak a hand between them and grasp Teal’c’s cock properly this time. He had only the chance to squeeze it carefully before Teal’c groaned hard into his mouth, clamped a hand around Cam’s waist and he had to let go; had to let Teal’c thrust hard up the smooth part of his abs right above the leg joint. He kissed hard at the expression of yearning on Teal’c’s face, slid his hand down Teal’c’s spine a vertebrae at a time, to his lower back where he pressed in time with Teal’c’s thrusting, urging their chests and abs and pelvises together, closer.
Teal’c body stilled as he came, mouth pressed in a hard kiss, brows knit and fists clenched, arms clamped around. Afterwards, he relaxed with a breath he deliberately inhaled and released, and Cam watched his face ease into a wide smile, eyes only half open. Cam gently kissed that smile too, then eased his arms out from under the embrace and let Teal’c fall back against the pillows, propping his own head up on an elbow and counting the seconds it took for Teal’c’s breath to return to normal as the come cooled on their skin.
“What you said earlier, was it the same thing in Goa’uld?” Cam asked quietly. Teal’c nodded and repeated the lines. Cam was silent for a moment before he said, somewhat incredulously, “It rhymes in Goa’uld?”
Teal’c’s eyes crinkled in amusement, but somehow it was very important to Cam that Teal’c had just seduced him with poetry, and he was quiet for some time, reaching out to place a hand on Teal’c’s chest, running his thumb over a collarbone, in the hollow of his jaw.
Teal’c turned minutely into the touch and looked directly at Cameron for a moment before visibly gathering himself and saying, “I should return to my quarters.”
“I have no idea how to teach Jaffa fighting techniques I studied for a week to warriors who’ve been training longer than I’ve been alive,” Cam replied, light fingers running over Teal’c’s face and tattoo. “I don’t even know what techniques are unique and what are common to all Jaffa. What if I suck?”
“You may begin by teaching me.” Teal’c’s eyes closed contentedly as Cam’s hands stilled over his brow bone. “I will assist you, if you wish, once Haikon chooses the first students.”
Cam watched him closely for several moments, sure Teal’c was aware of the scrutiny and allowing it for mysterious reasons of his own; he’d never seen him so at his ease, not even on movie night. “Woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up,” he murmured, earning a half a smile for his trouble. He ducked his head and traced lines down Teal’c’s chest. “If two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?” he continued softly, drawing graffiti over the pouch scars and through drying come.
Eventually, Cam withdrew his hand, and retrieved the discarded towel from the side of the bed, erasing the come-drawings and removing all visible proof of their encounter from Teal’c’s body. He pulled the towel back, and Teal’c nodded once, got up from the bed, silently tidying and dressing, the smell of sex and dirt and guns and heat rippling in waves around the room as he moved.
“Tomorrow at 10 hundred we shall begin,” he announced, hand on the door, waiting.
“It’s a date,” Cam agreed, getting up himself to take a shower.
He saw Teal’c nod before they disappeared through different doorframes.
~~end~~
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Ecclesiastes,1:8 (King James version)
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. 2:11
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? 4:9-11
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Date: 2006-03-24 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 09:03 pm (UTC)On a weird side note, to what "ship war" are you referring, exactly? What bizarre wankery is going on now?
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Date: 2006-03-24 09:19 pm (UTC)http://kylielee1000.livejournal.com/111464.html?thread=920936
*g*
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Date: 2006-03-24 09:20 pm (UTC)The world's smallest ship war is the good natured rivalry that the Cam/Daniel and Cam/Teal'c slashers got goin' on. Or, I should say, maybe 4 of my friends got goin' on. But really, we're all slashers, and we all appreciate teh pretteh, so in the end it's just a way to encourage each other to write more, faster. *g*
For example, my friend
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Date: 2006-03-24 09:43 pm (UTC)Lovely.
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Date: 2006-03-24 10:09 pm (UTC)I'm glad you trust me enough to read him. That's pretty cool.
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Date: 2006-03-24 09:54 pm (UTC)Oh, ahahah, Cameron, you wish.
This is so great! So characterisation-y and smutty and yay! Is not terribly good with words right now, sorry. Just take YAY as joy for Cameron/Teal'c goodness :D
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Date: 2006-03-24 10:10 pm (UTC)Glad you went 'yay!'
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Date: 2006-03-24 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 10:51 pm (UTC)So perfect a resolution to what happened in the episode and so very them.
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Date: 2006-03-25 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 11:15 pm (UTC)wonderful detail about the sodan and his future. and this is very fine: "the memory of the glances of a dozen children bright in his mind, all watching him fall spectacularly to the ground and get up to fall again; a hundred townspeople who accepted his fate and watched him go to it, they thought. He had let them look, as though the honor was theirs, to see him as they saw fit. He thought at the time that he could earn their respect and deserve it, and that would be something to write home about. All vanity and vexation of spirit, Grandma. "
you've made the loss of all of those people very real and such a part of what will make him what he is becoming.
i adore the way you've shown teal'c responding to cameron here. and heh, murphy's church indeed.
sweet, and guh, and delightful for teal'c to smile.
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Date: 2006-03-25 06:54 am (UTC)I liked the idea that Cam is very keenly aware of how he is perceived, and that it would mean a very great deal to him that Teal'c was not surprised that he was there. That somehow it wasn't just about seeing him, it was about an understanding of how he would behave, how he would act; incorporating that into his mindset about the team and his place would feel a lot like that reset to reality, where you're still making sure you're in the right place, second guessing things you used to take for granted.
And then you realize that while all that was happening an entire people died, and it wouldn't be a coincidence that it was after that that normally careful Teal'c would proposition normally rule-following Cameron, and that they would both welcome the comfort.
And what a smile if just writing it lights up the page, yeah? I loved writing Teal'c smiling.
Thank you for the amazing feedback.
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Date: 2006-03-24 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 01:34 am (UTC)THANK YOU!! {{{hugs like crazy}}} ...Oh, this is so perfect. I *adore* this. (pauses to adore fic some more)
(nope, still adoring)
(moves on to adoring *you*)
(this may take a while...)
*g*
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Date: 2006-03-25 06:59 am (UTC)*clears calendar so as to be available for adoration*
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Date: 2006-03-25 02:56 am (UTC)And, sheesh, it makes perfect sense, since Daniel is busy having phone sex with Jack. :-P
I hope Teal'c is feeling teh luv....
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Date: 2006-03-25 07:01 am (UTC)*ignores the pun*
Glad you liiiiiiked it. Tag team smut! Teal'c needs much more love. I hope to see lots and lots of loving for Teal'c in this season and the next.
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Date: 2006-03-25 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 05:25 pm (UTC)Lovely.
*g* It's also very, very pretty smut.
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Date: 2006-03-26 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 12:17 am (UTC)I enjoyed this immensely, especially the tension between them that sex doesn't quite erase.
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Date: 2006-03-26 01:02 am (UTC)Yeah, I think these two very strong guys would need to feel like there isn't a need, exactly, that they'll be fine just on their own, but if you're offering...? And that leads to not reaaaally knowing what it is they've just started (which Teal'c would be much more accepting of; Cam, on the other hand, will need to name it at some point) or whether it will continue.
Cam will probably do something quite impetuous at some point, which Teal'c will totally be expecting (or roll with), but they still won't talk about it until one day Teal'c will quietly break up with Ishta telling her that he can't do the fuck-buddies thing any more, and Cam will know nothing about that until Daniel very not-subtley tells him about it (and Sam elbows Daniel viciously in the ribs).
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Date: 2006-03-27 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-03-27 01:23 am (UTC)So many of the things that came to mind as I read this have already been said. Great character voices, palpable heat, lovely words. Beautiful.
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Date: 2006-03-27 03:29 am (UTC)It was that moment when Teal’c had turned, and looked at him. That was when Cam knew this would be one of those mostly happy endings.
Honestly, this was where you hooked me. I love the ease and grace of this, and the easy exchange and release of power between them. Really gorgeous. Made my whole evening. :D
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Date: 2006-03-27 04:15 am (UTC)LOL, I feel like I've been so blatant about this fic, it not having the 'Jack/Daniel NC-17' call sign that really brings down the house; I'm happy you found the fic by whatever means, though, and to've made your evening. *blushes*
Thank you for nice nice f/b.
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Date: 2006-03-27 06:16 pm (UTC)And I hope you don't mind, but as Teal'c said “I offer the comfort of a warrior’s arms,” Teal’c recited with more breath than sound, “I ask for the same in return”, I suddenly had a picture of him saying the same thing to Jack, mid-first season, and Jack turning him down; hating to do so, knowing how much Teal'c just needed *connection* at that point, far away from anything familiar, but unable to help that way. And that story has a very sad ending, but it leads to this, eight years later, Teal'c finding someone he can fight with, a fellow warrior, who can finally let this be, between them.
So, thanks, both for your lovely story, and for creating a second one in my head.
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Date: 2006-03-27 07:19 pm (UTC)Have you read
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Date: 2006-03-27 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 10:47 pm (UTC)Also, must remind myself to thank my beta yet again for telling me to clarify stuff that led to the writing of a couple of moments you picked out. Thanks for the feeeedback! Warrior-date is a marvelous term. Hee!
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Date: 2006-03-29 08:30 pm (UTC)Oh, so lovely. Teal'c is right on, and Cameron, too.
Teal’c raised his eyes to the wall behind Cam, who immediately felt the loss.
I love Teal'c. Thank you for this. :)
Now, back to stuff and things. But this was a wonderful way to spend my break.
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Date: 2006-03-30 07:26 am (UTC)Happy to provide a fic-break.
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Date: 2006-03-31 04:21 am (UTC)I love this; in fact I've read it a bunch of times since I saw it posted. The characters ring true, and oh, yeah, hot! But also comforting and slightly sad too. This is a keeper. :D
(and I can't manage html code either. d'oh!)
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Date: 2006-03-31 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-11 06:46 am (UTC)