Fic posting: Penumbra (C/S/D, NC-17)

[minxy]

Title: Penumbra
Pairing: Threesome, Sam/Daniel/Cam
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 4500
For: synecdochic in the Through the Gate Darkly Ficathon (dark_gate)
Prompt: The rest of SG-1 -- a little less stable than they might otherwise appear in canon -- pulling Cameron into their utterly fucked-up coping mechanisms: getting some of that shiny enthusiasm a little tarnished. Sam/Daniel/Cam with Sam and Daniel toying with Cam would be awesome.
A/N: Thanks to magically synergistic betas rydra_wong and kellifer_fic.

***

Cam’s cap was bothering him; the wind was picking up and whistling underneath the brim when he turned towards the mountains, but shoving it up a few inches only served to scratch his forehead. Entertaining though that was, he turned out of the wind, his back to the mountains and the dark grey clouds rolling over them.

"Anyone else remember the MALP indicating nice clear, sunny weather?" he shouted over to Sam and Daniel, crouched in the dubious windbreak of ruins collapsed and weathered.

Jackson was absorbed in making rubbings of symbols that had long ago given up the ghost, and Sam was mothering some scientific something or other; neither so much as looked up in response. He jutted his chin across them to Teal’c, in the universal call for a huddle. Teal’c came quickly.

"This wind is picking up and it’s bringing with it what appears to be one hell of a storm system," Cam yelled, gaining at least Daniel’s attention.

"There’s wind?" Daniel asked, looking between Cam and Teal’c for confirmation, which Teal’c provided with a nod of the head. Sam looked up.

"You see? This is why I get to command sometimes, especially on the scientific missions: it’s my keen sense of observation." Cam directed the yell mostly to Teal’c, as Daniel had turned away to confirm for himself that the weather was lousy, and Sam was looking thoughtfully up into the sky.

"Wow, lightning," Daniel stated, tilting his head slightly. "That could be a problem."

"How’s that?" Cam asked, gauging the distance across the plain to the Gate.

"Oh, you know, grassland, lightning, superconducting Gate…" he mused, in a detached sort of way.

"Sam, hello," Cam crouched in front of her and snapped once to get her attention before thinking better of it, "We’re bugging out. We got a storm on top of us in maybe thirty; can we get your stuff packed and all of us through the Gate before then?"

Sam’s eyes snapped to attention as Daniel said, "what makes you say thirty minutes?" She joined him in peering at the storm system cheerfully blinking yellow-white and back to grey. The air around them crackled with electricity.

"We can’t make the gate, even if we leave the equipment, that lightning could bridge to here," Sam said, "We’ve had bad luck with spikes of energy and gate activation…"

"Right, Antarctica, and that time Teal’c got stuck in the buffer…" Reevaluating, Cam did an about face and scanned the horizon. "Any suggestions on how we could maybe not be second tallest scarecrow in the cornfield?"

"There were the secondary ruins in the canyon." Daniel offered in Sam’s general direction, rubbing his eyes from underneath his glasses frames with the hand not smudged black.

"How low in the canyon? If it rains, we don’t want to be caught in a flash flood." Not that Cam really had any other options.

"Well, this looks to be a repeating pattern, given the state of these buildings, it seems unlikely that buildings in better condition are in danger of greater weather damage." Daniel raised his eyebrows and then turned his attention back to the rocks around him. Looking for lightning strike marks or something, Cameron guessed.

"Let’s go," he said, pulling on his pack and looking at Sam’s equipment for anything small enough to grab and go.

"Leave it," she said, clipping her own pack on her shoulders with an audible snap and turning to help Daniel roll long pieces of paper.

The lightning flashed everything into reverse silhouettes and Cam saw Teal’c flinch away from it. "Teal’c," he said, his voice lowering a little, "you remember where these ruins are Jackson’s talking about?"

He got a slow head nod in response and a hot glance; Teal’c didn’t like weakness.

"Take point, get moving. Scout a location that might stay dry." Jackson and Sam were wrapping up; Teal’c wouldn’t get much of head start. Cam stepped over the half wall of ruins remaining to help them along and almost tripped on a piece of Carter’s equipment. With the rapidly fading light, everything blended too much into the stone.

*

By the time they’d hiked the couple of klicks to the secondary site, Cam was having trouble picking his feet up out of the mud. He’d dropped far enough behind to lose sight of Carter and Jackson helping each other through the winding path between buildings. The sight of Teal’c holding up a doorway to a building with an amazingly intact roof and chimney, no less, was as welcome as a hot shower and a fluffy towel.

Sam and Daniel were holding each other’s packs and looking lost in the center of the room.

"I don’t suppose anyone’s had a moment to check for a stash of firewood around here?" he asked the quiet room, his voice subdued under the rush of rain on the roof.

"Old stool there, benches," Jackson said. Nobody moved to get them.

"Let’s move this table to the side, build a fire, dry out." Cam wrapped his hands around rotting wood and waited for someone to grab the other end. Eventually it was Teal’c who picked it up with dead-eyed indifference. They screeched their ends into approximately the right place with more aversion to the sound and need for it to be over than accuracy.

They were moving, but they moved like zombies.

Daniel eased a retrieved stool apart with a well-placed downward shove as Sam rummaged quietly in her pack at the hearth for paper and matches. There was a cloud of dust that kicked up as Jackson dropped the wood that smelled musty to Cam even halfway across the room; Sam turned her head away and lost the color from her face.

"Anyone else feel…" Daniel began, rubbing his forehead hard with a hand he must have wiped off, Cam thought, or he’d be smelling the mold and must from the chair.

"Bad?" Cam finished for him, giving up and sitting down with his back to the wall and debating putting his head between his knees.

"Indeed," Teal’c said, almost wavering where he stood.

"It’s getting painful," Sam said, lighting a match and forcing her eyes open to watch the movement of her hands against paper, in space, around wood, carrying fire. "But it’s more the other stuff. Light."

"Smells, sounds." Cameron watched Sam drop the match into the fire and turned away from it, barely able to keep her eyes open. She looked…bad. "Can a storm do that?"

“Huh, you know…” Daniel was taking off his glasses and rubbing his whole face now. “Aren’t these signs of a migraine?”

When they thought he had migraines, then they thought he was crazy, and they were wrong on both counts. Cam thought, worried about his sudden inability to string together a coherent sentence. "Drugs. Now." He looked up at Teal’c, "You too, no back-talk."

*

No one made camp, or bothered to roll out their sleeping bags. They just dropped silently more or less where they stood and lay against their packs, back to the fire. Cam figured it was a good sign when he realized the cold seeping in through the floor was bothering him more than the noise from the fire, and that he’d had his eyes open for a while without the firelight off the back wall being too bright. He was just starting to think about rolling out his bedding and sussing out whether the others were up to helping set up a real camp when Teal’c lurched stiffly to his feet, walked carefully to the doorway and retched. His body looked decapitated as he leaned his shoulder into the frame, head outside the building. Cam watched the rise and fall of his shoulders indicate his breathing was evening out as his walked up beside him.

"T? You okay there, buddy?" He was fairly sure Teal’c had cringed, though the movement was muted. The air outside smelled wet and electric, the patter of rain a constant drum-beat.

"Do not speak," Teal’c said, voice grainy and low. Cam saw cast his eyes sideways to look at him, then squeeze shut as lightning flashed bright and painful in the doorway. He wondered if Teal’c knew who he was in that moment, but wasn’t sure it was necessary to be recognized as long as Teal’c let him help.

Cam rested his hand lightly on Teal’c’s shoulder, the heat through his jacket magnetically attractive. Teal’c leaned into the touch himself before turning a greener shade of pale. He lifted Cam’s hand from his shoulder and took a step back, but left his hand on Cam’s forearm, the weight he rested on it increasing by increments.

He looked terrible.

When he started moving, it wasn’t back to the others, or anywhere near the light. Instead, Cam followed the light pulls on his arm in a completely silent dance towards the second room in the house, behind the fireplace.

Cam figured Teal’c retreating was a sign to bring out the heavy hitters, and left him lying on cold stone to go back to his pack for the med kit. Jackson was awake, and myopically staring at the far wall, but Sam still had her eyes firmly shut and her hands in fists. He tried to stay silent for her, but the clicks of his pack had her knitting her brows together, and the scrape of nylon as he pulled out Teal’c’s sleeping bag sent her into a fetal position.

He pulled the medkit out slowly to minimize the sounds, and whispered as he told Sam he was giving her the good drugs. Head nods exchanged with Jackson confirmed that he was feeling better.

He fought dizziness for a few moments when he stood up to find Teal’c.

He didn’t try to narrate what he was doing as he disinfected a patch of Teal’c’s skin; Cam was pretty sure Teal’c didn’t really care anyway, and he was far too distracted himself by the static electricity tingling in his fingertips where they rested against Teal’c’s skin. He wondered, if he held on, placed his palm flush against the man, if his hair would stand on end. He looked up to find Teal’c’s head turned away from him, though, and suddenly became aware of the smell of their rain-soaked and sweat-stained jackets. He reluctantly pulled his hand away from Teal’c’s skin to tug the jacket off his wrists and shoulders, tucking him into his sleeping bag and carrying the jacket back to the fire to dry.

Cam drifted back to the main space into the draft of the front entryway and noticed a door, mostly off its rails, that none of them had thought to close. He weakly shifted it as he fought his reaction to the sour vinegar smell of bile and vomit. The closed door reduced the next bright yellow-white flash to the rectangle of the doorframe, muted the rumble of thunder that rolled over them; Cam figured that would have to be enough.

He moved back to Sam and Daniel feeling spent. He built up the small flame with the wood they had left, trying and failing to muster the energy to fetch more. Sleeping bags would keep them warm enough until he or Daniel could deal with the fuel situation. Sam looked to be ignoring the pop of the fire, which was an improvement, and had relaxed her hands. He set about rolling out the sleeping bags, hoping that Sam was improved enough to cope with the noise.

That much he thought he could handle.

*

Cam and Teal’c’s jackets were spread out over deflated packs near the fire and Daniel was finishing rolling out the sleeping bags as Cam struggled Sam into a sitting position on her bedroll. He slipped his arm under her jacket to hold her up as he pulled the cuff of her jacket over her hand, and he could feel where the coolness of the dirt floor had seeped into the damp fabric. It was in direct contrast to the heat of her body as she breathed against his shirt and rested her forehead in the crook of his neck.

"Why did you leave?" she asked him, possibly too quietly for Jackson to hear.

"Was looking after Teal’c. He’s in rough shape." Cam switched the embrace to hold her with his other arm and slipped his fingers between her wrist and the other jacket cuff. Next to them, Daniel unzipped his own sleeping bag.

"You left us.” Sam looked at him with wide eyes and blown pupils as he one-handedly draped her jacked over her pack and held her up with the other hand. "Jack, we need you here."

Cam heard Daniel pause as he settled back into his bag. The rustling as he finished scooting around was a little more careful afterwards. Cam himself blinked a few times, deciding it was one thing to not be recognized, but another to answer to someone else’s name.

"I’m Cameron, Sam. Brunch fiend, maker of the best pie you’ve ever had and leader of this currently disastrous mission, but I haven’t left you anywhere."

Her skin under his as he laid her back on her roll and slid his arms away felt like silk to his sandpaper. He was almost relieved when she cupped the back of his elbows and set the hair on his arms on end. When she kissed him it was nearly anti-climactic.

"Sam," Daniel said conversationally, causing Cam to break out of the chaste kiss and think, she thinks I’m Jack, his face inches from Sam’s. His mouth was still tingling, his heart was pounding. "That’s not actually Jack, you know."

Cam stared at Sam’s blown pupils, looking back at him steadily and said, “What the hell was between you guys, anyway?” He felt Sam’s legs press against his, one ankle hooking around his calf and holding him there. He watched her turn her head and look at Jackson, watched the pulse in her temple. What. The. Hell.

"We aren’t enough, Daniel. Why is that?" Her tone was soft enough that Cam almost kissed her again to make it better, turned and saw Jackson’s eyebrows raise in the center. He wondered why it looked like an accusation had been made.

“Mourning, bad timing… maybe we just needed a catalyst.” Cam knew enough to recognize Jackson offering options.

“Coping,” he added, answering his own question. Sam was already shaking her head in rejection, which rasped her hair against the nylon bag and tickled Cam’s ear.

“"You never wanted me, Daniel." She turned back to Cam and he felt the bright sparks of her touch travel up the back of his neck and into his hair. "Maybe we do need a catalyst."

She kissed him slowly, but with hard pressure against the back of his head, pressing his lips against his teeth, and sometimes hers too. Her other hand edged underneath his t-shirt and splayed cold fire on his ribs as she pressed her palm into his skin. He wanted to press into her touch, wanted to warm her hands and feel his skin prickle and dance, but he also wanted to hear his own name. He grabbed her wrist to still her hand. "Sam," he said carefully, "I’m not Jack."

Cam felt her release his head with her other hand as she said, "I know," with wide-eyed sincerity, and damn, but he couldn’t find the breath to challenge her. She scraped the backs of her knuckles through the bunched folds of t-shirt to his belt and he hoped that she wouldn’t prove him wrong by calling out the wrong name.

The fabric being pushed down his hips scraped like knives and felt like fire. Sam’s fingers over the same skin were still cool, and trailed scant bright trails over the front of his thighs. He gasped when she touched his cock unceremoniously, jerked back out of the kiss when he couldn’t get enough air with his mouth pressed to hers.

His fingers flexed into the grit of the floor as she pulled on him, sending lightning through his pelvis and spine. He shut his eyes and dropped his head to rest it on Sam’s collarbone. He barely heard Jackson say, "It was that he wanted you more, Sam."

"No," Sam said, her voice close and reverberating through his skin, higher pitched than usual, "He wanted you more, Daniel."

There was a beat before Cam felt Jackson’s shoulder behind his, arm over his back, short hair brushing his cheek, and Sam’s hand stilled to an easy grip. Cam lifted his head, pinned to Sam, and watched Daniel change the tilt of his head and kiss Sam open mouthed and heatedly.

It was mesmerizing, and not at all as sweet as his fantasies; he was glad he was being held down, or he might have run.

Sam’s head rocked back and he felt her hair against his forehead, moved his body to the side before she hit him accidentally. Her leg caught at his, though, and kept their feet tangled; the angle pulling his belt sharp across the back of his knees, his shirt caught at her and twisted around him.

Cam’s chest, his shoulder, his legs, his cock missed their touch, though Sam’s hand draped loosely around him and her fingers lightly rested on his inner thigh where her grip had relaxed. He felt their absence like ice, where they had been pressed against him and now were not; air cold like the ground seeping into his skin from all directions.

Cam reached out a hand and worked it between where Daniel and Sam met at their waists, but there was too much fabric there. He slid his hand under Daniel’s shirt, ran the back of his hand over hard muscle and scant hair, caught a nipple and ran it along the valley between the backs of his fingers.

Daniel turned to look at him, his eyes dark and his mouth just barely smiling. "Not like this, Daniel," Cam heard himself say.

"Yes like this," Daniel replied and then he was pulling back, sitting up and taking his shirt off and Cam was left reaching, needed to touch. His hand fell to rest on Sam’s shirt, warmed by the contact with Daniel, pulled out of its tuck in her pants. Cam pressed his palm against her stomach like an anchor, wrist resting over her belly button.

Cam thought he heard Sam gasp, he thought he heard them say something, but he could only focus on more skin, more contact, more electricity, more touch. He slid his hand up under her shirt, fabric pulling every hair on his arm upright in turn, fingers working under the band of her bra.

His entire forearm rested on her torso, the delicate skin of his inner arm against the rise and fall of her ribs. His fingertips wrapped around the curve of her breast, the elastic dug into his hand. It was almost enough to keep him grounded, to keep him from noticing that his leg was lifted from hers for a moment.

Sam arched up off the sleeping bag, leading Cameron’s arm up and away, and Cam only belatedly realized that Daniel had worked her lower clothes off, was cupping her while he removed his own belt one-handed.

“Wait,” said Cam, wanting his own clothes off, the twist of his shirt into his torso gone, the cut of his pants across the back of his legs relieved, but he couldn’t finish the sentence because Sam turned her head and tightened her grip on his cock. He gave up and kissed her knowing this time the touch of his tongue to hers would be electric.

He felt a leg press against his, push his calf close against Sam’s, wished it was skin to skin.

"It’s what she wants," he felt spoken over his shoulder, the air running in swirls around his ear and cheekbone. Sam groaned long into his mouth, pressed hard into his lips and began pulling at him with a regular rhythm. Cameron was almost in pain from the intensity of the sensation.

Daniel’s leg pressed against Cam’s in time with the way Sam stroked his cock. Cam’s hand spasmed and he moved his fingers off her breast into the ridges of her ribs, pulling her body tight against his chest and kissing her hard. She raised her free hand to his head and ran light fingernails over his scalp. Cam convulsed as the bright tracks through his hair overwhelmed, and wondered for a brief moment if Sam knew his hair wasn’t grey, if she cared.

But then one of them groaned and he felt Sam seize up, her lower body curling up around his elbow. Her hand moved out of his hair to brace on Daniel’s shoulder and dig fingertips into smooth skin and flexed muscle. She was breathing hard, heaving his arm with each inhale.

Cam pulled his arm back and ran his palm down her skin, when she exhaled and froze, he said, "Are you feeling that too? That electric thing with touch?" and watched her knit her brows and drop her mouth open as he stroked his palm heavily down her belly to her pubic bone. She groaned for him.

Daniel’s body brushed against the back of his knuckles, the pace slow and hard, rocking Sam’s pelvis and holding her up for a count before pulling back out of the thrust. Cam rested his head on Sam’s shoulder and watched his own fingers card through her hair, watched her grip on his cock match Daniel’s thrusting, watched them all move together and apart.

He eased his fingers in and around Sam, wet his finger low and pressed into her clit with strokes that started in time with Daniel, then shifted to faster, doubletime. Sam cried out and held her pelvis up as Daniel tried to pull back; he stayed deep inside and surged, pressing Cam’s fingers tight against Sam’s body and setting off bursts of sparks and release in Cam’s hands and fingers. Sam squeezed her eyes shut and gripped Cam’s cock, stilling her motions and squeezing in time with their rocking.

Cam tried to breathe.

Sam relaxed her body and dropped her head back but Daniel stayed deep inside, keeping Cam’s hand trapped and causing Sam to seize up again periodically, but Cam managed shuddering breaths. At least she hadn’t called out the wrong name.

When she relaxed her tight hold on his cock, it felt like electric shocks to his pelvis, traveling up his spine to knock the wind out of his lungs. Daniel pulled back and released his pressure on Cam’s hand against Sam’s clit and Cam dragged wet fingers up her skin.

He meant to say, "Sam, please," but it came out as breathless pleading grunts as he wrapped his arm around her and began thrusting into her hand, her shoulder under his cheek.

He felt Daniel shift them and rest his weight differently, his body leaning more on Sam as he resumed thrusting. Cam felt a hot hand run liquid fire from the hem of his shirt down his hip and thigh and squeezed his eyes shut as he thrust into Sam’s hand.

Daniel’s hand ran back up his hip and over his ass. Cam’s breath caught in his throat. He heard Daniel say low in his ear, “You’re feeling touch more strongly? That’s interesting,” and slid his fingertips into the cleft. Cam opened his eyes to see the top of Daniel’s head, feel the hand on his ass turn and shift to run down the cleft and back, feel and see the rhythm falter and speed up.

He heard himself say, “Daniel, please.” Felt Daniel bite his shoulder through the fabric, hand gripping Cam’s ass as he surged hard into Sam and pulled back to do it again.

Daniel’s hand palmed him, squeezed, and pulled Cam towards them, touching the head of Cam’s cock to Sam’s skin on the other side of her fist. He groaned, pressing his forehead to her shoulder, the head of his cock to her thigh and his ass into Daniel’s palm, and came. The sensation of coming bright painful release, Sam’s scent suddenly everywhere; Daniel’s hand feeling like it was also stroking his back and hip and thigh.

He came out of it aware of the smell of sex and come and Sam’s hair shampoo, knowing that the bags would have stains until they got them washed, that the doctors would find come on Sam if they looked post mission in the exam, would find the mark on his shoulder whether or not they went looking for it.

He had no idea how they would explain this if asked. He had no idea why it had happened to begin with, but he thought he understood why Jack’s hair turned grey with them, like this. He thought he might understood why Jack left.

He was far too tired to deal with the implications. He crawled over where Sam and Daniel lay tangled and grabbed the lonely sleeping bag on the other side, pulling it open over the three of them and finding a space behind Daniel to sleep.

He tried pressing up against Daniel’s back, but the bright tingling electricity was almost nonexistent.

*

He awoke to silence. The fire had burned out; the rain had stopped.

Light spilled across the floor and Cam turned over to see that Teal’c stood backlit in the open doorway.

The light was bright, and Cam had to blink twice before his eyes adjusted at all. He rubbed a hand over his face and stood, fastening his pants and belt without thinking and walking up to Teal’c in the doorway to look at the mostly recovered weather.

He put a hand on Teal’c’s shoulder, causing him to turn and step back out of the contact.

"I am sufficiently recovered, Colonel Mitchell," he said, "we should leave this planet."

"You feeling up to a hike? You looked pretty bad last night,” Cam said, and then broke off to rub a hand over his face again.

There was a pause, and Cam’s head was still bowed when Teal’c said, "My senses remained heightened; however, I believe I am capable of reaching the gate."

"Right," said Cam, looking at the ground outside the door, then the ground inside and by the still sleeping Sam and Daniel. "You want to wake them, or should I?"

"It is not my place to disturb their rest," Teal’c said, and turned before Cam could look up, walking back to the room he’d spent the night in, pack in hand.

Cam looked at Sam and Daniel, still sleeping under a single hill of nylon bag. He wondered if he could find the voice to wake them, and what he would say if he did. He wondered who they would see.

***

Comments

[live-momma.livejournal.com]

Guh. And wow. But mostly just guh.

Marvelous!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Hee! Thank you.