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After eight years of holding himself back from making a move on Daniel and three years of working two-thirds of a continent away because he couldn't stand being that close to what he loved and couldn't protect and couldn't have, Jack dropped by Daniel's unannounced, letting himself in the way they always had to each other's homes because neither of them ever had company, and found Daniel and Mitchell buck naked and rock hard, on their knees on the living-room carpet, in mid-scramble away from the towel-draped coffee table.
The echo of a grunt still hung in the air behind the wrenching withdrawal, the wisp of a hissed shit curling around it. All the lights were on. The room had a musky, glycerine warmth.
Mitchell jumped to attention, shoulders back, chest out, expression blanked, gaze fixed just past Jack's head, erection bobbing in front of him. Another general would have been amused by that, or gotten a power buzz off it, or been turned on by it; Jack had been the other guy in this picture more than once, and he'd seen two of those reactions from the superior officers who'd walked in on him. Except for a vague appreciation for Mitchell's alacrity in mastering himself (points for reaction speed) and a peripheral admiration for Mitchell's physique and endowments (fucker's hot, and he's hung), Jack had no attention to spare for Mitchell at all. He had his hands full trying to wipe the expression off his own face. He could feel, in his cheeks and his jaw and his mouth and his eyes, the arrangement of muscle he was striving for: tolerant amusement, a glint of hardassed warning, a distancing smidgen of rug burn's a bitch on the knees, huh fellas. But he was nowhere near as fast as Mitchell. He got only as far as suppressing the deer-in-the-headlights shock before he saw Daniel, pushing up and back off the floor to get his ass on the couch, register the expression under that. Jack's face had heartbreak written all over it, and Evelyn Wood had nothin' on Daniel. Already there was no point in turning the page. Not even to hide it from Mitchell.
Daniel's front door finished its slow swing and clicked shut behind Jack as Daniel's gaze locked with his.
"Sir," Mitchell said crisply. His erection was slow in deflating, his cock still more than half hard and still raised about forty-five degrees.
"Colonel," Jack acknowledged, but didn't mock him with an "as you were" or torture him with an "at ease"; he'd be here only another thirty seconds, only long enough for his exit to look deliberate instead of freaked, and it was kinder to leave Mitchell at attention for the duration. His gaze stayed locked with Daniel's.
"Jack ... " Daniel began; all the initial insulted anger had gone from his eyes, and so had the horrified comprehension that had replaced it. They were filling with pain -- but no pity, at least. Yet. "If I'd known ... "
In his peripheral vision, Jack noted the minute flicker of confusion behind the blankness of Mitchell's stare. Mitchell was meant to interpret what Daniel had said as If I'd known you were in town, I wouldn't have been fucking my team leader in the middle of the living room, but Mitchell was a bright guy and he'd worked with Daniel for three years and he could hear that Daniel's surface statement was a carrier wave for more important information. The look of hurt on Jack's face might play as betrayal of a friendship, disappointment in Daniel for compromising a military teammate. Mitchell hadn't Gotten It yet. It was still possible to keep him out of this.
What Daniel meant was If I'd known you were in love with me, if I'd known you wanted me, I'd have come out to you and we'd have worked this through and this crappy moment wouldn't be happening. What Jack wanted to say -- or wanted Daniel to be saying, tough to be sure on that one -- was If I'd known you were bi I'd have come clean years ago, I've always been in love with you, I just assumed I had the wrong plumbing and I didn't stand a chance and there was no point laying that on you.
It was hard not to look away. Hard, now, not to look at Mitchell and try to divine the things he needed to know -- was it a one-time thing or did they matter to each other, was it a post-Ori thing or had it been going on all along, is he a substitute for me --
They were things he had no business knowing.
"Excuse the interruption," he said -- after what felt like a long, long time, but was really only a couple of eyeblinks. He held up the key, still on his key ring because working it off would take too long and giving it back would make this look too much like a break-up. "I won't take liberties with this again." Finally he gave Mitchell a hard, direct look. "As far as you're concerned I was never here."
"Sir," Mitchell repeated, because it was all that he could do.
Christ. If it had been anybody else.
Jack couldn't drag his gaze back to Daniel. The sight of him, beautifully naked and shiny with lube and still mostly hard, was burned in as it was, a searing retinal afterimage he'd have to find somewhere to put, now, some way to live with. He made it look like dismissal instead -- cut Daniel dead by not sparing him so much as a glance as he turned for the door. "Have a good night, gentlemen," he said, letting himself out; when he was on the other side of the door and had pulled it shut, he put the key back in the deadbolt and turned it, firmly enough to be clearly heard.
He took the fire stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. As he trotted down, watching his step because he still didn't trust the artificial knee, he registered the sight of himself in uniform, and almost laughed.
Poor son of a bitch. Guy's worst nightmare, to have a three-star in blues barge in on him at a time like that.
His cell phone chirped Daniel's ringtone when he was one flight from the bottom. He flipped it open and said, "Don't you have better things to do right now?"
"We need to talk."
"You need to talk your buddy down. Helluva bullet he just dodged."
"Are you in the stairwell?"
"Not anymore," he said, and then it was true, as he came out at the back of the lobby and crossed toward the front doors, hoping to hell he wouldn't run into Mitchell coming out of the elevator.
"Don't drive away, Jack."
"Don't make this a thing. Don't let it ruin your night."
"I'll come meet you. Tell me where."
"It's too late." Jack was through the doors, heading for his rental. Scanning the street for Mitchell's ride, not finding it, unless he'd ditched the 'Stang for that 300Z by the corner, but Jack hadn't really expected him to be stupid enough to park out front. "I mean that in every possible way. I'm too old for this shit, Daniel, and I have too much work to do before they put me out to pasture. Do you get what I'm saying here?"
If Daniel said no, if Daniel willfully ignored what Jack was telling him -- that he'd committed to taking the program public, that it would take years to make sure the transition was handled right and he wasn't walking away or risking a personal scandal in the meantime -- it would mean that what Daniel needed was reassurance that their friendship was still solid; it would mean that preferences notwithstanding he'd never been interested in Jack that way; it would mean that no matter what Jack said or did to avoid it, Daniel would break Jack's heart into quarters, eighths, in his attempt to relieve his own guilt for breaking it in half.
If Daniel said yes, he understood, it would mean that he accepted that they'd blown whatever shot they had with each other -- that what he wanted to chase after Jack to say was it should have been you and this changes everything and it was just a fuck, I'm not involved with him and a whole lot of other words that Jack was telling him, loud and clear, he could not afford to listen to.
Jack was damned either way. He got into the driver's seat of the car that wasn't his and hauled the door closed and locked it and waited in the muffled silence of the vehicle, wondering if he'd stepped into one of those commercials about the cell-phone calls that were dropped at the most humiliating moment.
"I love you, Jack," Daniel said at last, barely a whisper through the breathy, distant sound of the connection.
Make that sixteenths, Jack thought, and turned the ignition. "Back atcha, buddy," he said -- gently, because he did, with all his heart. "You have a good weekend. I'll see you next month when I'm in for the mother of all inspections."
"Jack," Daniel said. Not a plea; a naked sound of pure, bleak anguish.
"Daniel," Jack said, a soft admonishment that was all he could give over an unsecured line, that was all he could give ever -- willing, willing Daniel to hear the message carried in those two syllables: Go be happy. All I ever wanted for you was happiness. Give me that and we'll call it square. Give me that and don't make a fuss about it.
A shadow-shift in the light from the lobby snagged his eye, and then both doors burst open and Mitchell came striding out of the building.
Goddammit, Jack thought, genuinely angry, this close to shoving out of the car and telling the guy to grow up and get over it and get the hell back upstairs, stopping himself because it was none of his fucking business and maybe it was just a casual screw and not a big deal to walk away from and who was he to tell people how to live their fucked-up lives. He'd made it clear there'd be no repercussions; he wasn't going to stand at the curb reiterating that to the whole neighborhood. Shouldn't have been letting his fucking teammate fuck him anyway. Should have gotten in the Unrequited Lust for Daniel Jackson line with the rest of us. They'd been teammates for three years and they'd work it out or they wouldn't, team was going off active status anyway, retiring their number, keep them around for a while to parade in front of the press and the UN and then they were on their own, free to pursue their own professional goals, where they should have been three years ago, he'd never meant for it to go down like this, he'd set them free --
Mitchell wasn't hunching off down the street, melding into the shadows while he walked to wherever he'd stealth-parked whatever he was driving these days, and he wasn't heading for that Z at the corner; he was coming around the car Jack was sitting in, with Daniel suspended in the breathy, distant silence of can't bring myself to end this call, eight stories up and two cell towers and a satellite bounce away from the 202 phone Jack held against his ear.
"I'm gonna have to call you back," Jack said quietly, and folded the phone shut as Mitchell came to stand by the driver's-side window. Jack took a minute to think about whether to roll the window down before he did. He could smell the adrenaline and aggression through the glass; but he was 99 percent sure Mitchell wasn't packing, and empty-hand he had the advantage in the vehicle.
Mitchell kept his hands fisted in the pockets of his leather and angled his body to make eye contact without leaning on the car. "He didn't know, sir."
A liquid chill went through Jack's gut. "You're out of line, Colonel."
"Yes, sir. But now he knows, and I saw the fallout and now I know too, and if you don't have the balls to go up there and fix it and fuck the consequences, you really are the washed-up old desk jockey you're afraid you are. Sir."
The chill iced over hard, and Jack's bones settled into themselves, and the world went very still as all the ambient evening noise fell away from conscious perception. "Kinda stretchin' it on that latitude thing, dontcha think?" he said, in a mild, soft voice.
"Yes, sir," Mitchell said, and Jack could read it all in the eyes, the body, the face: Mitchell knew what he was fucking with, and it scared him shitless, but this mattered enough to be worth it to him. The light in his eyes wasn't brave defiance. It was cold determination.
Jack flung a forearm over the steering wheel and an elbow over the doorframe and blew out a harsh breath, letting go of the aggression. "Aw, hell, Mitchell. If it's like that ... "
If it's like that ... if you love him so much that you'd risk your ass fucking with a guy like me because you think you've finally figured out what it is he wants and I'm standing in the way of him getting it ...
He blinked, and the end of the thought changed to ... then you're a better man than I am.
When had he turned into a guy who wouldn't risk his ass fucking with forces a lot older and more powerful than he was? When had "strategy" and "priorities" and "the bigger picture" become euphemisms for cowardice?
"It's like that," Mitchell said. "And I am outta here. Sir."
Jack watched Mitchell disappear himself into the night, then flipped his phone open and thumbed two keys. When Daniel said "Where are you?" he said "Leave the door unlocked" and snapped the phone shut. His hands were shaking. Funny. Had to be thirty years since the last time they did that.
After a while, he cut the ignition, got out of the car, and went back into the building. He took the stairs again; couldn't face the slow, motionless elevator ride going up any more than going down. Daniel's hallway smelled of new paint and old carpet. He had a corner apartment, the same one he'd rented at the start of the program, Jack had seen it for rent again after the thing with Osiris when Daniel was looking to bail on that little ranch he'd never liked and Daniel had jumped on a five-year lease with the rent automatically deducted -- so he wouldn't lose the place the next time he disappeared for a few months or a year -- from the bank account stuffed to bursting with unspent pay that Jack was always trying to get him to put in some kind of half-decent mutual fund, and the door was all the way at the end. Walking the length of hall gave him a chance to catch his breath. Out of condition in more ways than one. Lot he was gonna have to work on, next few months.
From the end of the hall, the door looked dark, new, unbreachable. From up close it was the same old door -- same forest-green paint, same dinks and scratches.
Jack stood for a long moment on the threshold, then lifted his hand to the knob, turned it, and went in.