Chapter Text
"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn."
(Deuteronomy 24:5)
~~~
Daniel pulled in a brook trout, right there off the end of the dock, and Jack helped him extract the hook so they could throw it back. The fish had not quite swallowed the fly, and so would live to fight another day.
The flurry of catch and release had been fun for Daniel, but had stirred up some memory or other. And Jack could tell by the way his face went all stern for a minute that the memory was not a pleasant one. Jack glanced at him under the cover of examining the fly. No. Not pleasant.
"Been a long time since I did that," Daniel said, and exchanged the pliers he'd used on the fish for his rod, which Jack had been holding. Jack was looking at him, framing a reply, when behind them, Carter's phone rang.
"Crap," Jack said, holding Daniel's gaze. "I thought I told you to turn that thing off."
Daniel moved to the corner of the dock and flicked his fly rod back and out, watching the water intently, apparently trying not to eavesdrop. Jack blatantly did, meeting Teal'c's eyes for a moment as Teal'c sat in his folding chair next to Carter. Then Jack turned and folded his arms and watched Daniel's line skate along the surface. Carter was talking to the mountain; that was clear immediately. Something was not quite right about the pond, but whenever he tried to think about that, the impression of wrongness darted away, like the shadow of Daniel's trout after it slipped from his hands. A few trout always found their way to the pond, every season, even though they were really creatures of running water. When Daniel had let it go, the little fish flickered at the surface for an instant, and then was gone, elusive as a memory.
"Well, Daniel just caught a fish, and we seem to be setting new records already in terms of how much beer can be consumed in a given afternoon. Teal'c excepted, of course."
What now? Jack thought. Stray replicator? The ZPM's started ticking? Ba'al's attacking? Because I knew the idea of a vacation with the team was just too good to be true.
"We were afraid of something like that. He's right here."
Jack swore and stepped toward her, but Carter was handing the phone to Teal'c.
~~~
Jack reached out his right hand, short-circuiting Teal'c's instinct to strike his fist against his shoulder in farewell. Old habits. Teal'c looked at the hand, took it, and they shook, and Jack was never sure later whether he stepped in, or Teal'c did, but they hugged, hard and long, there on the damp runway in the golden evening light.
"Be well, O'Neill," Teal'c said when they finally stepped apart. He turned to the little Cessna that Carter had piloted over for them all, and stepped up into the left seat.
"This isn't goodbye, you know!" Jack insisted, backing up. His answer was the slamming cockpit door. He continued to back up, until he stood, waiting, near the shabby cinderblock office building while Teal'c taxied away, and then revved the engine and pushed the plane into the sky. Grass was growing in the seams of the runway concrete. Jack waited and watched, shading his eyes, until the plane had dwindled to a shining silvery bar, flat wings outlined above the setting sun. Then he went to the rented car and drove, again, to the cabin.
When he arrived, for the second time that day, it was dark. The lights were on inside, yellow and cheerful, and he could smell Mexican spices. When he opened the door, Daniel and Carter were drinking Tecate from cans and cooking.
"Hey," Daniel said, turning and putting a beer in Jack's hand.
"So," Carter said, over her shoulder, "what name did you use on the flight plan?"
"T. Murray, of course," Jack said, drinking as he shrugged out of his coat. It was half a beer; Daniel had given him his. It was cold and smooth and perfect. There was a quarter lime floating in it. It was too sweet, this -- arriving home to the cabin to company, voices, dinner. It was like a flashback. So many years he'd come here alone, content with his memories and his ghosts. This was better. But he kind of hated to see how much better it was, because he wouldn't be getting used to it.
Daniel was back to chopping lettuce and tomatoes. "Of course the Jaffa Nation has a crisis when we've taken our first team leave in forever."
" "Team leave" if you do still consider yourself on the team, sir," Carter said, eyeing him sidelong. He was pretty sure it was meant as a joke. He chose not to respond to that at all.
"Another day, another constitutional convention.... What can I do here?"
"You can keep stirring the onion and garlic while I cube up the meat. It'll burn if you don't keep stirring it," Carter instructed, instantly all business, handing him a wooden spatula. This was food, after all. It was centrally, critically important.
"Roger wilco," Jack said.
After dinner, and the dishes, Carter was playing solitaire at the table, Daniel was writing in a leather-bound journal, slouching under the lamplight at one end of the battered sofa, and Jack was at the other end, under the other lamp, flipping at one of the many back issues of Astronomy that always made their way up here. The silence was profound; louder and more blanketing than conversation would have been. He'd put on a tape of classical favorites over dinner, but when it had run out, nothing had taken its place but the deep silence of a late summer night. The front window was open a hands-breadth, and they could hear crickets. Jack was only pretending to look at the magazine. He was, by turns, sneaking glances over his reading glasses at Daniel's profile, and beyond it, Carter's. The light over the table made the highlights in her hair glow silver. He couldn't get used to being this contented. It wouldn't do. But for now... For now he certainly could and would savor it. Savoring contentment, however fleeting, was turning out to be one of his best things.
Carter sighed, long and satisfied, and shoved her pack together. Must be all done. She stacked it, squared it up, one side, then the other. She folded her hands under her chin and stared across the bare table at the open bedroom door for a breath. For two. She glanced at Jack. She took a very deep breath and lowered her hands.
"Have you always had a kingsized bed here, or is that new?" She was smiling.
"Always had it. Well, the last couple decades, anyway." He didn't attempt to explain the gnarly family history of whose idea it had been to buy it, and who had ended up paying for it. He pretended not to think back far enough to list all the occupants that bed had had over the years. Carter accepted his answer, apparently, because she was regarding him thoughtfully, her head tilted a little to one side, and he could hear her thinking. Her smile had faded to one corner of her mouth, but it was still definitely there, and her eyes were soft. She was letting her hair grow again. She had no makeup on at all. Daniel went on writing; Jack could hear the scratch of his pen.
"I guess we should see if we'll all fit, then," Carter said, and her smile broadened again, and she pushed herself up from the table and went through the bedroom door into the bathroom beyond. In a moment, Jack heard water running.
He sat there, wondering if he'd really heard what he'd just heard, or imagined it. He realized his eyebrows were up, and he looked at Daniel, hoping for confirmation that he wasn't hallucinating his fantasies now, out of a previously unnoticed senility. Daniel was still writing.
"Did you hear that?"
Daniel gave no sign.
"Daniel?"
"Mmm?"
"Daniel."
"Jack."
"Daniel..."
"Jack?" Eye contact. Good.
"Did you hear Carter just now?"
"Uh, no, actually." Daniel looked around. "Did she go to bed?" And Daniel frowned, realizing that they'd made no plans for who would get the sofa, or. What. Exactly. By now, Jack could see his thoughts arise and form and die away in the twitch of Daniel's eyebrows, in the pull of the corners of his mouth, plain as neon.
"She suggested we were all going to fit nicely in the king bed, in there."
"She did. She did?" Daniel poised his pen in midair, along with his eyebrows.
The water shut off in the bathroom, and there were faint bustling noises. Carter crossed in front of the door. Jack did a double take, because that was a lot of thigh, and the shimmer of what looked to be blue satin. Daniel was staring at him.
Jack said, "I think she was serious." Jack was interested to see how alert and invested his body was in Carter's plan. His mind was in a state of disbelief, but his body was warm, and even a bit tingly, in the appropriate places. Good to know.
Daniel absorbed all this. He carefully capped his pen, then put it and his journal on the end table. He took off his glasses and folded them and put them precisely next to the pen on top of the journal.
"I'll just brush my teeth, then," he said, and he got up, carefully, deliberately, and went on out, through the bedroom. In a moment, Jack heard water running.
He realized he was still holding his own glasses, and so, like Daniel, he folded them and put them on the table. He sat there, looking at them. Here he was, on the long downhill slide from fifty. Yet, he could still throw a punch. Ancient gene -- ha ha. One star, against impossible odds. The dust of a hundred worlds on his boots. Just a middle-aged guy with secrets, history, scars. And so. Tonight? Right here, in the closest thing to a home that he had left? A cabin in the wilderness, off the grid, off the beaten path, with two of the three people he loved most in the world. Tonight.
What felt the strangest was the calm inevitability. This should be so impossible, so sordid, so kinky. But it wasn't any of that. He supposed that by bringing them up here at all, he himself had prompted Carter's matter-of-fact statement, prompted the mundane and miraculous teeth-brushing and going-to-bed noises he was now hearing.
The "M'" in "Astronomy" was distorted and huge on the cover of the magazine, there through the lens of his glasses, there on the table. The news he had to break to them soon, now, tomorrow -- his news filled his chest. Carter had put herself to bed, in blue satin. Daniel was brushing his teeth, ready to follow. Jack drew a deep breath and released it. He closed his eyes.
The water shut off. Jack looked up. Daniel, in t-shirt and boxers, crossed in front of the door, following Carter. He didn't pause, and he didn't look out at Jack. Jack heard the bed creak again, just once.
He sat there for a while, looking at the familiar walls. The print of a painting of a water mill. A collection of old snow shoes, which Sara had thought looked artistic up there. Mismatched lamp shades. An NHL calendar from 1998, displaying September. The refrigerator compressor came on. From the bedroom, silence.
Jack got up and snapped off the lamps, and the light over the dining table. In the dark, he walked unerringly to the outside door and checked the lock. Still in the dark, he went through the bedroom and into the tiny bath. He closed the door behind him, turned on the light, and began to brush his teeth. Carter had hung a travel kit -- one of those perfectly designed ones from L.L. Bean, in pink ripstop and black mesh -- on a nail in the wall. Daniel's old-fashioned leather kit was on the back of the toilet, and he'd left his toothbrush on the sink.
Jack looked at himself in the mirror as he brushed. His heart was beating fast. He decided to take a few extra minutes to shave, just in case. The hot water felt good splashing on his face. Comforting. Calming. After, he wiped his chin, folded the towel. Pulled off his socks; pulled off his sweater and slacks and hung them on the hook on the door. He regarded himself one more time in the mirror, and snapped off the light. Then he realized he didn't want total darkness after all, and he switched on the little mirror light that they used to leave on for Charlie.
Everything was so quiet.
He opened the door and went slowly to the bed. They'd left a corner of the covers turned down for him. He climbed in, and, inch by inch, moved until he was close to Daniel; not pressed against his back, but close. He slowly, hesitantly, ran a hand down Daniel's side, and along his hip and thigh, warm and firm under the thin blanket and spread. He heard Daniel sigh and murmur, a pleased, sleepy sound, and so he stretched his arm over until he felt Carter's ribs. He fit his arm up closer, along Daniel's, and pressed against Daniel's back. Daniel was too warm, but he wanted the heat. He wanted to be close; even too close. He listened to their breathing until he fell asleep.
~~~
"You're a cheaper date than my wife...."
Jack had talked to him for a while, and shown him the guest room, and taken himself off to bed. At the last moment it was a bit awkward, as if Jack wanted to hug him but didn't know how it would be received. Daniel was crashing; adrenaline and exhaustion and emotion and carbohydrate bonking all combining to push him to the edge. Since they'd come back through the gate, he'd felt like a sleepwalker. He'd gotten through the disorienting arrival at the mountain, talked to the doctors there, to the staff, the officers -- frightening, how much the place had changed in a year -- eaten, drunk, been driven here, dutifully looked through the spare clothes and followed along on the tour of the house. But he had been numb throughout, even when they had checked on Ferretti, numb even then.
Now, cross-legged on the floor, facing Jack's cold fireplace, he took off his glasses and mechanically bent an earpiece back and forth. At some point during the day, Captain? Doctor? Carter had fixed them for him. She'd taken them gently away, disappeared, and later she'd pressed them into his hand. They'd been neatly soldered, better than new. He examined the joint again now. He clenched his jaw against the inexorable upwelling of emotion. He was alone here. No one to see, no one he had to talk with, no social constraints, no unrelenting duties to distract him. He put the glasses on the coffee table before he could snap the hinge. He put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
He was alone. Stranded on this planet, light years from everyone he cared for, all of them in danger now, and all his fault.
Sha'uri.
Defenseless against the tide of memory and blame, he sat, feeling the tears drip along his cheeks, watching them start to make spot on the leg of the coveralls he'd been given. Funny how even in the grip of despair, he could still feel this detachment, could watch as he finally crumbled. For hours he'd been shoving himself away from the edge of this pit, but he was finally falling in. No escape.
It was a relief, in a way. He was very glad there was no one to see him. Now that he couldn't hold it back, it was actually good to feel the sharp pain in his chest, like a physical attack. It was good to stop trying to resist it in any way. The loss was his, and the blame was his, too. The pain came in waves, like the assault of sand and wind on the walls of his city. A wave would come, and then ebb, and then, another name, another memory, and the despair and the tears would begin afresh. He didn't try to move, or to hold back the private storms. He huddled on Jack's carpet, and wept.
...The first time he'd seen her, offering water, as they stood, ignorant and blind, under the bright, threatening sky, at the Abydos naquadah mine.
...Khasuf, his bravery, his strength, his stupid trust.
...The view from the bluff over the oasis, that first trading trip they'd made, weeks after Jack's team had left him. Shau'ri was still asleep, curled naked and warm and safe in their rugs, and he had gone to the door of the tent to meet the pink and golden dawn in a silence that seemed holy.
...The day they'd uncovered the hall with all the addresses, which was the day he began to brood about the gate.
Memory after memory. Wave after wave.
He started, flinching away, his heart racing, his skin prickling, at the hand on his shoulder. Jack was crouching there beside him, frowning and shaking him gently.
"You're supposed to be asleep," he said, all gruff. "It's two in the morning."
Daniel couldn't answer, but whatever Jack saw in his face somehow changed everything. Jack looked at him, and then winced, and he sat heavily down beside Daniel on his living room floor and took him in his arms. Warm, hard body, smelling of night and sweat and warm cotton. Daniel leaned, laid his wet face on Jack's shoulder, the seam of the sweatshirt creasing his cheek. He closed his eyes.
No defense against this, either. He thought perhaps he'd cried enough, but comfort from Jack brought a new kind of pain, a new and different rip across his soul. The tears welled up again, and he clamped his teeth on a sob and held Jack tightly. Jack was rocking him a little, pressing the side of his head against Daniel's.
"We'll find her," he said, and his voice was rough. "We'll get her back. Skaara, too."
How could he believe that? How could Jack's assertion, based on nothing but-- but-- Daniel didn't know what it was based on. How could Jack's assertion, based on nothing, work on him like that? Because at Jack's touch, Jack's promise, Daniel believed. He felt his wild grief change, like clouds passing when a storm is over, like that imperceptible moment when the middle of the night becomes the earliest hour of morning. He felt hope, as if Jack had given him a transfusion. It was crazy. It couldn't be real. It was a straw, and a broken straw, and Daniel grasped it. He didn't decide to grasp it. He just did. He swallowed, and shifted his grip on Jack. He remembered the night that he'd confronted Jack, when Jack had been just as desolate, just as lost, as Daniel was now -- that night in the rebels' cave on Abydos, over a year ago. Did Daniel's words that night work some magic on his new friend? Did that magic run both ways?
Daniel had no idea, but he clung now to Jack's certainty, and to his strength. He straightened, not letting go, and swiped his sleeve over his eyes. He was able to look at Jack, and the sympathetic, unguarded grief he saw in his eyes made him frown and want to weep again. This was someone whose losses were different, but equally deep. This was someone who understood.
Daniel drew a shaky breath. To be understood. To be met halfway. He was pretty sure that had never happened to him before. Ever. Another breath, and the tears were over, but he was exhausted. Wrung out. He leaned again, and put his arms around Jack again, and they sat there a while. Daniel found he could breathe deeply, calmer at last. So now he was done with tears. And soon it would be dawn, and there would be work to do, things to try. If he could get there, to the far, distant place that was the new day. He was so tired. He leaned on Jack, and tried to imagine standing up.
"Come on."
Jack's voice was brisk, yet his touch was gentle. He got to his feet, holding on to Daniel with one hand and pushing against the coffee table with the other. Daniel watched, and wondered if perhaps Jack had a bad knee, the way he moved. Then Jack pulled, and up he came.
"Come to bed. You've got to get some rest."
Jack headed down the hall to his own room, dragging Daniel with him. Daniel found he could smile. Were Jack's dormant fatherly instincts kicking in? Was Daniel his new babysitting assignment? That would just be silly, if it weren't the middle of the night after the day he'd just had. He felt punchy, insane. Everything was tilting, washed to a streaky, distorted shade by his crying. He never cried. He didn't think he'd cried at his parents' funeral. He tried to remember the last time he'd cried before today.
Jack was standing by his bed, gesturing impatiently. Daniel peeled out of his coveralls, and had to look to see what he was wearing underneath. Government issue BVDs -- a shirt and briefs. Good enough.
"Jack, I'm so sorry. I'm not usually this--"
"Get in this bed. Now."
Daniel's eyebrows went up at the command voice, but he did as he was told. The light went off, and he knew Jack was getting in the bed, too, by how it dipped and creaked. Immediately, without weighing what he was doing, he pressed in again to the comfort of that embrace. And Jack welcomed him. They settled, finding the space under the neck that accommodates an arm, finding the hollow where ribs become belly, revisiting the way a knee can nestle under a thigh. Daniel was blurry with the ebb of emotion, but the almost painful perfection of the warmth and closeness he was feeling buoyed him and kept him awake. And he became aware that Jack was still very awake, too. He ran his hand along Jack's shoulder, a caress, and squeezed his arm.
"Thank you."
Jack didn't answer in words, but lips pressed against his skull, and yearning flashed over Daniel, a purely physical, purely animal longing. God! Surreal? Inappropriate? Christ! He shifted, clutching Jack, knowing that his dick was starting to fill, a reflex, and knowing that he didn't know how to feel about that. Here they were, in Jack's bed, wrapped as close as lovers, and he knew that he wanted to be here, that it didn't feel wrong, but the chain of events that would explain or justify this was now utterly out of his reach. He'd needed Jack; Jack was here. In the moment, in the dark aftermath of hysteria, it seemed reasonable enough.
Maybe Jack was feeling something similar, because he made no effort to pull away. Daniel shifted, embarrassed by how his body was responding, and then he felt it. Jack was hard, too.
It made Daniel sigh. Relief, and he arrived in a another place inside himself where he didn't have to tighten up, a place where embarrassment was unnecessary, because this was yet another thing that was shared and understood between them. Earlier, he'd looked into Jack's eyes and been gifted with the surety that Jack shared his losses; so how could this be any different? This was shared, too; a small thing, surely, by comparison. And Jack had kissed him on the forehead, a moment ago. Jack had comforted him. Jack was here. Jack was hard; they were in bed, together.
It was night-logic, dream-logic. But it prompted Daniel to raise his chin, and turn his head enough to find Jack's mouth.
Jack started, and fumbled to cup Daniel's jaw, and they kissed, long and lingering and warm, and when the kiss broke, Jack started a new one, warmer and wetter and deeper, tasting of night, as sharp as Daniel's grief.
Daniel groaned, and pressed in with his hips, and what a blessed relief to stop thinking, to stop hurting. He fumbled along Jack's side, under the loose waistband of his sweats, seeking skin. He got a handful of Jack's ass and pulled and pushed, gasping.
"Wait, wait," Jack groaned, and he separated them long enough to yank off his shirt, shove down his sweats. Daniel, with fewer clothes on, found it easy to do the same. All that skin against his own was shocking -- an electric, living connection. Jack kissed him again -- strange, thrilling -- and Jack's hand closed around his erection. Gasping wonder, then, lips and cheeks and breath and teeth, hands stripping, pushing. Familiar as his own touch, strange as the stars, this strength, this reckless plunge into ecstasy.
~~~
Jack woke, surrounded and oriented by the familiar musty smell of family history, and was immediately glad he'd left the bathroom mirror light on, because in its faint glow he could see what had awakened him. Daniel and Carter were having sex, there beside him. His internal clock told him it was somewhere around oh-three hundred, long way until dawn, and they had pushed the covers down, and Daniel had jettisoned his boxers, and Carter's little satin pants were hanging around one ankle. Daniel was behind her, both of them on their sides, as if they'd gotten down to business while still half asleep. Jack pushed up on an elbow so he could watch the way Daniel's fingertips pressed into the flesh of her hip, moving her onto him more than he pushed into her. Carter'd half-turned her upper body so that she was almost on her chest, and had cocked her hips to get that nice deep angle that Jack remembered without wanting to remember the woman he'd last felt that with. Her nightie was up around her ribs. Daniel's head was turned to one side and he was biting his lip. Jack could hear the faint, rhythmic squishes they were making. He sighed and knew he was hard, and now fully, earnestly awake. He reached out and put his hand on the jut of bone of Daniel's hip, squeezed.
"Jack," Daniel gasped, and in that instant his thrusts speeded up, making Carter moan. "Fuck," Daniel said, and as Jack watched, Daniel hitched his hips and clutched her closer. Now it wasn't a slapping, fucking motion. Daniel pushed and Sam pushed back, and their hips were sealed together, undulating, and she groaned and he gasped, and then Daniel was coming. Jack watched him, a hand on his hip. Watched him buck and call Sam's name and collapse against her. She turned, pressing her back to Daniel, keeping him inside, and he held her tightly around the waist. She turned her head to see Jack, and Daniel let her movement shift him back. Now they were canted toward Jack, and Daniel's shoulder came to rest against Jack's chest. Sam smiled at him, slow and wicked. Jack hitched closer to Daniel and reluctantly let go of his hip, but he wanted, craved. He moved his palm to settle against the embroidered satin of her breast. The nipple was hard enough to poke him nicely. It felt sublime -- Carter under his hand, Daniel's warm length all along his front. He pushed his toes under Daniel's calf. Carter twitched and her eyes closed for a moment at the pressure of his hand. He'd surprised Daniel, made him come too soon, and so kept him from finishing her. She was still taut with arousal.
"Didn't mean to interrupt," Jack said, looking at Carter's mouth, and how her thigh fell across her crotch, not quite covering the triangle of hair. "How rude of me."
He felt more than heard Daniel chuckle. Daniel turned and nuzzled his armpit, making Jack twitch.
"Since you interrupted," Daniel said, "you'll have to take over." Sam was grinning now, and she stretched out arms to him.
"I can do that." He rolled across Daniel carefully and managed to find the mattress between them with his left knee without doing violence to any of Daniel's body parts. He leaned down to kiss Sam, and tried to stay balanced as he did, because Daniel was dragging his boxers off.
Sam's mouth was lush and soft and sweet, and, no, he hadn't forgotten it. He'd filed it away, way back in there, in a mental keepsake box like the one he used to stash in the bottom of his locker at the mountain. But he remembered, and the memory was very fresh.
Daniel was pressed against both of them now, his skin warm as sunlight. Sam had lost the bottoms of her pajamas, because her legs opened for him easily, and there was nothing in the way, nothing to tangle his feet in.
She asked him, "Were you asleep for the birth control and safe sex conversation, just now?"
"Ye-es," and Jack's eyes closed, though he didn't want them to, but they did, because she was so slippery and so hot, brimming with Daniel, and he put his face in her shoulder, and she smelled of sex and peaches and cilantro, and Daniel's hand was heavy on the small of his back. Jack pushed into liquid tightness and bit his lip and tried not to groan too loudly. Because that would be undignified.
~~~
She had that look in her eye when she showed up at his house on a smallish Harley, right after she and Thor had rescued him and Teal'c. That reckless, "watch this" look. He enjoyed her intense looks; in fact, he liked all her expressions, but he had a special fondness for the flirty or thoughtful or happy girly looks, as opposed to her soldier looks or her scientific I'm-about-to-kill-you-with-my-brain looks. Not that those weren't nice, and equally Carter, but he'd been indulging himself lately by teasing her, making her smile at him and tease him back. Yeah, it was flirting, but he flattered himself that he still had his deniability. It was true that inviting her to Minnesota had been over the line, and he knew she wouldn't say "yes," but he'd asked her because he wanted to watch her think about it, and she had indulged him.
So this was her reckless, triumphant look, the same look she'd had when she informed him they'd kicked the replicators' asses, and they didn't even have asses.
He'd just opened his second beer when he heard the unmistakable rough roar of the engine in his driveway. He'd gone outside, barefoot, to meet her halfway. She swung off the bike and pulled off her helmet -- she hadn't had time to get a haircut yet and he really liked her hair this long, though he knew it wouldn't be permanent -- and she stood there, disheveled, pink-cheeked, all in black, the helmet under her arm, with that look. For a second she reminded him of a Power Ranger and that made him smile. Goofy. He squelched it.
"Major?" he said, and raised his Heineken in salute.
"Rumor has it you have a bike in storage downtown somewhere?" She raised her eyebrows inquiringly. She was wearing red lipstick. He noticed she didn't call him "sir." It made the corner of his mouth twitch. If it were ever going to happen, which it shouldn't, of course it would have to be like this -- her making the move. Nice touch that it should involve the bikes. In his various fantasies, he'd never thought to bring in the bikes. That was Carter, though. Creative.
"Rumor is, for once, true," he said, and took a swig.
She leaned back on her heels a little. "You'll need boots," she said, and she made it sound dirty. Fabulously dirty. He smiled and gave her the beer and went in the house. He was wearing jeans, which would do, and he put on his leather jacket and the boots and carried out his helmet. Later, he was pretty sure he'd forgotten to put on socks. He either forgot them then, or forgot them later, at her place. He never found out.
The best part was riding downtown behind her, frankly pressed against her slim back, one hand resting on each of her thighs. He really enjoyed that, although pushing his BMW 1000 along the mountain roads was never not fun.
They stayed out for a long time, trading off the lead, riding close, like fighters in formation, and it was dark when he finally trailed her back to her place. Once they were in the house, it was as if the long rumbling silence of their joyride had sunk into them both, filled both their heads, because they hardly said a word. They were in sync, like they always were offworld. No words were needed.
But, as she crouched over him, about to go down on him, she did take a moment to say, "I know this is a one-time thing. So you don't have to worry about that."
"Whatever you say, Carter," he'd replied, lightly, because really, he didn't need an explanation. He didn't need anything. He'd caught that lock of her hair and smoothed it behind her ear as she'd lowered her head, and he didn't say anything else the rest of the night, at least not in words, and neither did she.
Riding behind her on the way downtown turned out not to be the best part. Not even close.
~~~
Daniel started awake, to see Sam's shiny head on her stainless steel work table, a foot from his own. He groaned and sat up, reaching out and shaking her.
"Sam, wake up. Come on."
He was still furious, still frustrated, still too upset for words. He was hungry and thirsty and angry and he needed to piss and he had no idea how long he could stay in this condition without going stark raving crazy bonkers. He shook her harder. He stood up.
"Come on. Sam." She groaned, too, and sat bolt upright, pulling at her hair. He took her hand and pulled. "We have to get out of here. At least for a while. Come on."
She nodded, and he bullied her to her feet and down the halls to their locker room. She would stop, staring into space, her shirt or her jacket bunched in her hands, or just sitting, her hands poised over her laces, and he'd have to speak to her again, prompting. It had been something like seventy-two hours since they'd come back from Edora without Jack. He knew they'd been in the mountain the whole time, but he really was quite fuzzy on how much of that time they'd been asleep. But clearly it wasn't enough.
She didn't argue when he put her in his car, and she didn't argue when he shoved some apple fritters and a donut-shop cup of bad coffee into her hands. They ate as he drove, and he put his arm around her to herd her up the elevator and into his apartment.
He was crashing again by then, too, and when they half-undressed and fell into his bed, they clung together like shipwreck victims in the last lifeboat, and were asleep before they hit the mattress.
And in the gray morning, in that out-of-time hour of dreaming when nothing counts for real unless you want it to, when they made love, without words and without explanation, they both cried. She lay on her back for him, and wrapped her legs and arms around him, and held him tightly until they were done, and then all the strength went out of her grip and she sobbed, her face against his shoulder, her tears mingling with his on the pillow. It was all catharsis, heart-rending and necessary, but, for once, not lonely. They both fell asleep again, after, deeply and hard, and woke at noon of an unnumbered day. They showered, and dressed, and went back to Teal'c, and to work, because Jack was stranded, and if they couldn't figure out a way to get him home, nothing would be worth doing, ever again.
~~~
Daniel thought it was like listening to the changes in jazz, or seeing a translation fall into place, this watching them together and being present, being able to touch. Surprised out of sleep as he'd been, Jack still woke up quickly. But then, he'd always been able to do that.
He rested his hand lightly on Jack's back, on the fast-dampening undershirt, and felt each push, each rock of his hips. He watched the muscles clench, rhythmically, in Jack's ass, in his upper arms. Daniel tried to breathe through the tightness in his chest. This was too right; too perfect for words. Jack had lain right down on her, hiding his face in her hair on the far side, away from Daniel. Sam locked her arms around his back and closed her eyes. Her bent knee rested against Daniel's thigh. Daniel watched as Jack rocked into her, slow and deliberate and firm, a strange and Jack-like mix of restraint and attack. It was so beautiful that Daniel thought he might white out. He expected to be struck blind at any moment. People didn't get to do things like this. Life wasn't this good, ever. He moved, got his hand under the shirt, splayed his fingers against Jack's skin, and watched.
After a while, quite suddenly, Jack pressed himself up so that he was leaning on straight arms, and Daniel smiled at the new curve under his hand, and the groove that Jack's spine formed. Jack gazed at Sam for a few moments, and she, holding lightly just above his elbows, gazed back, lips parted. Then Jack turned his head and met Daniel's eyes, and his smile was the old smile -- unguarded, delighted, free. His hair was in messy tufts. He leaned his shoulders over and kissed Daniel, gently, briefly, and then leaned down and kissed Sam in an identical way. Daniel wanted to touch his own lips to mark the moment, but he wanted even more to leave his hand where it was, on Jack's back.
But his hand got dragged up, and up, spine, shoulder, nape, because after kissing Sam, Jack slid down, between Sam's thighs, and Daniel licked his lips at what he realized was next, and took the opportunity to wrestle Jack free of his undershirt, then sit up and shrug out of his own.
He had a feeling that Jack liked seeing Sam still dressed in just the top of her babydoll pajamas, which were satin with spaghetti straps. Daniel loved to look at the mysterious swell of breasts pulling against the fabric, and he figured Jack would enjoy that as much as he did. Why naked was better for men, and half-naked in lingerie was perfect for women, Daniel did not pause to analyze now, because Jack was leaning on his elbow, leaning away from Daniel as if to share the display, and looking down at Sam, drinking in the view, taking his time, contemplating, and then kissing randomly, carefully, at times craning his neck -- her inner thigh, then the spot where soft skin separated and darkened and where pressure would deliciously hit the root of her clitoris, and then lower, right beside her opening. Sam had trimmed her hair quite short, so that it didn't curl and didn't obstruct any of the little folds and whorls and crinkles; it was different than Daniel remembered. Her hair was pale, though darker than the hair on her head. Each one of Jack's careful, intimate kisses made her fist the sheets and flinch her hips toward Jack, and she was holding back, Daniel could tell. Her chest rose and fell as she began to pant. He couldn't take his eyes off Jack for long, but he took a moment and rolled to her, kissed near her navel where the satin had ridden up, and then he made sure his shoulder and arm were touching her while he leaned up again to watch.
Jack had closed his eyes. The outrageousness of getting to see this, getting to watch Jack tongue Sam, was making Daniel's cock twitch and try to fill again, though it would be a little while before intention and desire could count for much. He licked his lips and shivered. Delicate, expert, how Jack alternated kisses with careful licks. He nudged the folds of skin aside with his mouth, because his hands were busy -- he was still leaning on one elbow, and his other hand was gently moving inside Sam. Two fingers, Daniel saw, pushing in and out. She was very wet; most of it was him. Sam tensed and then shivered hard, and Daniel drew breath, and Jack nuzzled in more firmly, his mouth sealed against her now, no more teasing. He had a knee under him, to keep his dick from being squashed against the bed and to keep himself from sliding off the foot of the mattress. Daniel noted the curve of his spine, the solid swell of his ass. So much to touch, finally, finally -- both of them, right here. At last. Unbelievable. Too much.
He had to look again at Jack's mouth, Sam's sex, tearing his gaze from the sprawl of Jack's body. She was starting to moan -- gasping, rising notes, louder and louder, and when she came Jack stayed with her, pulling his fingers free and holding her hips, pressing his mouth against her, his tongue still moving. The sounds she was making were wordless, a string of "ah's", and she clutched Jack's head with one hand and flailed for Daniel with the other, trying to curl. Jack stayed with her through the first wave of her orgasm, but then he moved, not quickly, but with purpose. He dragged his mouth away, in increments, up and over her mound, and he was smiling. He knelt up, got a hand on her shoulder and pushed her flat again, making Daniel move, too. Daniel watched, still touching them, half sitting. Then Jack pushed into her again, and she came again, immediately, on the first thrust; Daniel could see it -- how she shivered strongly, almost a convulsion, and how it left her limp and helpless. Jack leaned on one arm and cupped her face and went for it, frowning, intent, so handsome, so focused.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, moving faster. Daniel was panting, too, his dick finally catching up with the rest of him, half hard again with the watching. Sam was moaning, her hands, loose as a rag doll's, fallen to the sheets beside her head, and then Jack groaned, "Daniel," and held his last push, dropping his head, finishing, as Daniel had said, what Daniel had started. Daniel leaned in and put his forehead against Jack's hot shoulder. Daniel closed his eyes.
After a bit, Sam raised a floppy hand and pulled on Jack's other shoulder, and he slowly lowered himself onto her again. She sighed and held him, a one-armed hug, because Daniel had her other arm trapped. Daniel lay down, too, and pressed himself against them, and slid an arm across Jack's sweaty back. Daniel closed his eyes again and listened to them breathing, and smiled and twitched his hips, pressing his new erection against their sides, not a demand at all, but more of an acknowledgement. Sam stirred, turned her hand and found his shaft, snuggled her palm up to him, squeezed, and he snuggled back.
"Oh my god," she said lazily. "Oh, god." Jack chuckled. "Oh, shit," she said, and wiggled. "Let me up."
Jack instantly obeyed -- Daniel felt the bunch and shift of his muscles. Jack was so organic -- when he moved, he moved all at once, whole, like a cat. Daniel always felt so much less graceful, by comparison -- like a reticulated dinosaur or something, chunking along, a section at a time. Jack turned to his side and slid between them, and Sam sat up and lurched out of bed. Daniel got his arms around Jack's waist and pulled him close as Jack's hands settled on his forearms. He wanted to watch Sam on her journey around the foot of the bed. It would have been a sight -- her long legs, bare ass, the satin, but Daniel couldn't move and his eyes wouldn't open. He put his nose in Jack's hair and just breathed.
Jack inquired, "You okay, there?"
" 'M fine. No worries." Jack's neck tasted like pepper. Daniel smiled and Jack's hands tightened. Soon they heard the toilet, and then the shower. Sam said, "Oh my god," again, several times, but muffled by the water and the curtain.
Jack went on, "I could sleep. Could you sleep?"
"Mm hm." Daniel was half there already. He'd stayed up way too late the night before the trip, trying to meet a research deadline for another team. But this. He wouldn't have missed this, wouldn't have missed the sleepy beginning of it, when Sam had slid out of her briefs and onto his convenient erection. Somewhere in there, they had talked, too, but it was all muddled in his head now, Sam and Jack and the satin of their skin. Daniel heard Sam's footsteps, and realized he'd dozed a minute, because he hadn't heard the shower shut off. He opened his eyes in time to see her half-damp hair, her contented smile, the swing of her breasts as she leaned over the bed to wipe up Jack with a towel she'd brought. Jack grunted happily and let her do it, then lay flat on his back and put a hand on her shoulder so she could lean over him to get to Daniel. Daniel smiled, watching her hitch a knee up on the bed and reach over Jack. She was beautiful -- the curve of her narrow waist, her heavy breasts. He felt warm scrubbing, and he raised a hand and brought her head in so that he could kiss her again.
"Love you," he murmured, as she pulled away, and she just grinned wider and kept wiping at him.
He lost the battle against exhaustion entirely then. He so, so hated to miss any of this, but he was only dimly aware of Jack settling against him again, of Sam coming back to bed. Jack was in the middle now, taking his place. Warm skin against his, skin under his hands, silence all around him, Daniel slept.
~~~
He'd sat outside her house, one night, about four months after Kelowna, for about an hour. Jack had gotten quite a bit drunker than he should have, and then had gotten in the truck and headed over there. Really not like him, and against every bit of better judgment he had. He just sat there in the truck in the cold, at the curb, looking at her dark house. Somehow he couldn't get out and go up to the door, though he knew that if he did, the door would open for him. He knew it would.
A light came on as he watched, and then he saw the blinds move. He sighed. Incredible. She was awake. Somehow, she knew someone was here, was outside, was watching. When he saw the front door move, the line of black forming around the blank white rectangle of wood, opening, he gritted his teeth, turned the key, and drove away. He couldn't help looking in the mirror once, as he pushed the truck around the corner. The street light showed him that she was standing at her gate, very still, looking after him.
They never talked about it. But that look in her eyes; the judging, hating look, the look that meant she was sure he wasn't missing Daniel enough, that he somehow had failed them by not caring enough, by not breaking -- that look in her eyes was gone.
~~~
Sam lay awake for a long time, revived by her shower, Jack's arm a warm weight across her belly. When she'd come back to bed after hanging up the damp towel, she'd found two pillows that had been knocked to the floor and she grabbed them both, so that she could prop herself high enough, next to Jack, to get an arm over him to touch Daniel, too. It was uncomfortable, and she couldn't sleep like that, but she wanted to be touching them both. She heard them both drop off, and soon after that Jack shifted in his sleep so that his head was tucked practically under her chin. His arm tightened around her, then relaxed. But she was too happy and too overwhelmed to stop thinking yet.
For once, she'd followed her instincts, followed her heart, and she'd been right. She'd not talked herself out of this, and she'd been right.
The unique times, long past now, that she'd previously been with both these men couldn't have been more different, from each other and from tonight, but those two events had that one thing in common: Both times she'd been acting on instinct, not thinking. Just doing what seemed right to her gut.
When she'd pushed herself at Jack, that one time, years ago, she'd been happy, brave, reckless. On the other hand, before that, when she and Daniel had fallen together, it had been to salve their shared misery. When Jack had been taken from them, they had turned to each other, as if Jack had meant something to them that they could only heal together.
She'd wondered about Daniel and Jack, what they, perhaps, had done or were doing, secretly, and now, she didn't have to wonder any more if there was something there besides the tough-guy flirting. Now she knew. Watching Jack kiss him while he was inside her had shoved her three quarters of the way to orgasm, before Jack ever put his mouth on her. She closed her eyes.
She'd gone out on various limbs, in the past, risked a lot, had them both, and then had accepted that it couldn't go on, couldn't be part of the day to day. She couldn't be their lover, not more than once, anyway, but she had them anyway -- had both of them, all the time. Because she had the team. So she'd taken what she could, filed the memory away, and tried to do the right thing afterward and move on. She even tried to find love, to find what her three guys, married men all, had found, once upon a time -- what even Janet and Mark and her dad had somehow found, but it eluded her. It hadn't worked, but she had really tried. She knew her dad had seen through her dogged determination to love Pete Shanahan; Selmak, too, though they had misunderstood what was going on. It wasn't their fault that they could never understand this.
No one could, except Teal'c, who knew everything there was to know, she was certain, already. He would know exactly what had happened here, and he probably would have been in on it, too, except for the emergency on Dakara.
So no one could understand. But they didn't have to, because it was no one's goddamned business.
Tonight, she had been the precipitating event, the catalyst, and she'd only invited it now because of the quiet, cataclysmic news the mountain's grapevine had brought her, right before they'd left. So in the morning, she'd pretend to be surprised when Jack talked to them, and it would all work out somehow. She clung to that, and to what she had, just for tonight, for forever, just here, right here and now in this bed.
And, truly -- Jack had had a hand in this, by planning the trip in the first place, frat regs be damned, and Daniel was complicit by simply agreeing, by letting down his formidable defenses. She might have been the proximate cause, but the entire chain of causality that had led them here involved them all, and its links led away on lines so complex she would never figure them out, nor even bother to try. Because it was enough. They were here -- three of them, at least -- and it was enough.
She closed her eyes and breathed, feeling the tears so close to the surface. She put a hand over Jack's wrist, petted Daniel's head once more, and turned to her side. She let the tears slide out as she snuggled her back to Jack's front, settled comfortably, and waited for morning.