Archive of Our Own

Daniel came to before the others. Jack wasn't there. He banged on the cell door for a while. Before too long, someone came. Before too much longer he had an explanation. Then Sam and Teal'c woke up.

A townsman claimed that Jack had violated his daughter. It was a transparently political ploy; Jack had been in quietly charming mode, the girl was obviously smitten, Daniel thought that even the councilor he spoke with felt that it was an outrageous claim. Still, the girl was underage, so she wasn't allowed to speak for herself -- and her father wasn't speaking for her, he was speaking on his own behalf, as a property holder, said property being the daughter. The case had been adjudicated while Jack's team was unconscious after being gassed. Punishment would be carried out within the hour.

Daniel didn't translate for Sam or Teal'c what that punishment was to be. "I'll get him out of this," he told them. Then he spoke to the councilor again. No, neither Daniel nor anyone from his team would be permitted to speak to the townsman, and most certainly not to his daughter. There was no question of persuading them to withdraw the claim, even if they could do that once judgment had been passed. But Daniel and the councilor came to an agreement.

Sam and Teal'c were confined to the cell as security against any attempt of Daniel's to free Jack and make a run for it, but they were permitted visitors, which meant that they could call on some more friendly townsfolk and continue to try to negotiate the agreement the criminal charge was meant to sabotage.

They'd taken Daniel's sidearm and knife, but they let him have a couple of things from his pack.

"Don't worry," he told Sam and Teal'c. Fully aware that a statement like that usually had just the opposite effect. Nothing he could do about that. Nothing he could about any of this but what he was doing. It was going to happen anyway. All he could do was make it happen safely, and as painlessly as he could.

They brought him naked into the room where they had Jack restrained. Jack had obviously fought hard. He was coated in sweat and seeping blood from under the restraints at wrists and ankles, chafed raw at the restraints at chest and hips. They had him gagged, a simple cloth gag pulled tight past his teeth like a bit, probably because he wouldn't keep his mouth shut when they put it on him. They had him blindfolded. That was better than a sack over the head. He'd be able to breathe better. He'd tried to saw through the gag with his teeth. The corners of his mouth were an angry red, but not bleeding. He was on his back, because the girl had supposedly been on her back. The mechanism of restraint could force a body to reproduce any position in which violation could occur.

Lex talionis, he thought. An eye for an eye. An ass for an ass. Except the charge wasn't sodomy, it was this culture's equivalent of statutory rape. But that was the loophole that had allowed him to get himself substituted. Equate Jack's military with the girl's father as the party of ownership, ignore the fact of the literal rape, and Daniel's stepping in gave the punishment a statutory dimension that had appealed to the adjudicators' sense of justice.

If only the complete lack of evidence had appealed to them somehow, too.

Daniel wasn't permitted to speak. He couldn't explain the charges, the punishment, or his quasi attenuation of it. He couldn't tell Jack why this was happening to him. The natives of this place spoke a Semitic descendant; it was possible that Jack had understood some of what they told him, but there was no way to know.

Daniel wasn't permitted to identify himself. They'd smeared some herb under Jack's nose so that he wouldn't know Daniel's scent. After Daniel had stripped, they'd checked him to be sure there were no telltale physical features. Jack knew where all his scars were, but Jack's hands were bound. Daniel didn't think that Jack would recognize the touch of his hands. Not in this context. Not against bare skin.

The observers arranged themselves at four points of the room. Their expressions were neutral but their body language spoke subtly. One shifted in discomfort -- he didn't agree with the judgment, or he didn't want to have to watch this -- and another leaned forward with prurient interest. The third stood at stiff attention. The fourth was angled away, one foot moving slightly in its shoe -- impatience and disgust.

It wouldn't have mattered if they were drooling and leering. It wouldn't have changed anything.

They weren't barbaric. The restraints were padded, although Jack had managed to chafe himself raw fighting them. The platform -- designed expressly for this -- was clean and covered in a not-too-coarse cloth. It supported his feet and lower back. His legs were spread and raised, his knees bent and locked in place, his butt presented and accessible. Straps across thighs, hips, belly, and chest were supposed to keep him from bucking. He could lift and turn his head. There was ample cushioning behind it so that he didn't, or couldn't, knock himself out.

Jack had sensed his approach and was trying to rub the triple-layered blindfold off against the cushion. It was covered in something silky, probably frictionless, and he wasn't getting anywhere. That didn't matter, either. Before he'd come to, they'd put drops in his eyes to blur his vision. The blindfold was mainly so that he wouldn't realize that and get more agitated.

A table within arm's reach sported an array of tools. The punishments these people exacted were designed to recapitulate as closely as possible the crimes that had been committed. The crimes those tools represented weren't something Daniel wanted to think about. There were two squeeze bottles of water. There was also a generous supply of lubricant. Daniel had brought hand lotion. He wasn't going to put any foreign substances in Jack's body. He should have thought to bring a canteen.

He moved to the side of the platform and laid a gentle hand on Jack's damp chest. Jack exploded inside the restraints, fighting with fierce, silent determination. Not panicked. Not wild. Absolutely deadly. If he got loose, he'd put Daniel in the hospital before Daniel could say "Stop, it's me."

Daniel lifted his hand away. Jack twisted his neck and lunged to bite him. Even blind, he nearly caught a finger. Even gagged, he could do plenty of damage; he couldn't close his jaws but he could still use his teeth.

There'd be no calming him with a friendly, reassuring pat.

Daniel had always found the controlled danger in Jack arousing, one of many things he'd never admit. Now he wanted to root for it. Don't let the bastards take you easy. But if Jack fought every touch like this, he'd rip himself apart.

Daniel moved between Jack's legs.

He spent a long time warmly, firmly stroking his immobilized thighs, a deep massage at first, easing into something more erotic. Jack was trembling with fatigue and still managed to tense against him. Daniel wore the tension down slowly. Massaged his glutes, as far as he could reach before the platform stopped him. Worked down along each arm, as far as the gagged snapping-turtle mouth would let him; Jack could break his fingers with his chin. He went back to his legs, working down his shins, up his calves. Probing and relaxing. Jack was exhausted. After a while he let himself be relaxed. Daniel knew that would change as soon as he touched him between the legs.

This was futile, if Jack understood that it was punishment. But there was an outside chance he was lying there clueless. If Daniel could trick him with cues that this was some alien pleasure ritual, it was worth a few minutes to try.

He ignored the knees, though he knew they'd be aching; massage wouldn't do much for them anyway, and no one here knew about Jack's cartilage problems. He relaxed the quads with long, delving presses of the heel of his hand. Then he moved both hands just shy of Jack's groin, and waited, so that Jack would understand.

All the muscles in Jack's body tensed and strained. When he heard Daniel squeeze lotion out onto his fingers, he went apeshit again. Still fighting pretty strongly, though it had been at least ninety minutes. God Jack, calm down, he thought. It's OK. It's OK. It's me. You're safe. He wasn't allowed to say anything. He wasn't allowed to make a sound. It was very hard to stay silent. He wondered if he should have himself gagged.

He spread Jack's cheeks and lubed him. He kept his touch somewhere between kind and clinical. Jack clenched hard. Daniel couldn't get any lotion inside him.

He went back to the massage. He nearly shouted in alarm and outrage when the observer from behind him slipped silently up, reached past him before he registered the motion, and stabbed a syringe into Jack's thigh. Daniel shoved at the man. The man was already backing away, hands raised peaceably. But the injection had gone in. Dammit, goddammit, he was trying to fucking avoid that, he didn't want him lubed or shot up with anything that hadn't come from Earth, the eyedrops had him scared enough.

The effect didn't take long. Muscle relaxant. Jack fought it as long as he could, but visibly drooped after a couple of minutes.

Now he wouldn't be able to gauge Jack's response. Now Jack had to let him in. Maybe they meant it as a kindness. Probably they did. Or they just wanted to speed up the process. But Jack couldn't communicate anything to him now. He'd been counting on the minimal communication of muscle tension. Jack hadn't made a sound, and Daniel knew he wouldn't, no matter what happened.

Well, he'd probably been kidding himself that Jack would let him do this. He'd been kidding himself that he might be able to caress him to hardness, make him want it a little, make him think this wasn't meant as an assault. Maybe that would have been a worse violation.

He stroked a little anyway. The long penis didn't stir. He gave it up and went back to lubing him. He kept his fingers gentle and efficient, stopped trying to seduce. All he could do now was use him kindly, and finish it as fast as possible.

The muscle relaxant worked on the anal sphincter, too. He focused on widening the passageway. It was very tight, untouched-for-years tight, maybe untouched-ever; that answered one question he'd never have asked. He took a very long time with the first finger, and a longer time with two. He worked his way to three. He didn't reach in for the prostate.

He got hard doing it. No help for that, and he had to be hard at some point. He lubed his right hand and then his cock, liberally. He continued to work his left hand inside Jack, a gentle rocking and rotation. Jack was completely relaxed now, and pretty stretched.

God, Jack. I'm so sorry.

He positioned himself. The height of the platform let him stand; it could have been lowered, there were cushions for his knees, but this way he could control his own movements more precisely.

He eased himself in just past the rim of the glans, and waited a long time. Jack couldn't clench against him if it hurt. Jack's body twitched very slightly at the first penetration. He thought that was bad -- so strong an aversion response, or a pain response, that it pushed past the muscle relaxant -- but then he saw Jack's package start to firm a little, and he understood that it was pleasure, however involuntary.

Pleasure, at this point, was probably bad. Violation was one thing; penetration was one thing; making someone come against their will was something else. He thought about tugging on Jack's balls to deflate the partial erection, but that would be crueler. Maybe somewhere in Jack's brain he'd decided that enjoying this would be the best revenge. Either way, it was what it was. Let Jack respond however he responded. Just do it. Get it done.

He eased a little farther in. Everything opened to him, lubricated, relaxed. Easy. He sank in deeper and to keep from making noise he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. It was intensely tight. It felt intensely good. He'd wanted Jack for a long time. It was fucked up, massively and possibly irreparably fucked up, but the fact was that he wanted Jack, and no matter how much he hadn't wanted him like this, that response couldn't be turned off.

He eased in, rocked out a little. Eased a little farther, rocked out. Finally he was fully sheathed. His balls brushed Jack's cheeks, and he thought he would come. The observer on his right held up one finger: One entry down. The motion distracted him and he didn't shoot.

He eased out. He didn't know how long he should wait in between to let Jack ... what, relax? Take a breath? Jesus. He took a cloth from the table and wiped his hands so he could put them back on Jack's thighs relatively dry and clean. He stroked and massaged. He was desperately turned on; his hands were shaking. Mortification wrenched through him, now that the deed was done once; there was no undoing it now, he'd fucked Jack. He didn't want to come inside him. In a panicky surge he realized that they hadn't told him whether he had to. If he didn't -- if he visibly didn't, if he turned an erect cock to them after the fourth entry, displayed it -- would they make some motion to let him know he had to finish? Doing that to Jack was one more degradation than he could bear to perpetrate. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. He stroked Jack's knees, his feet. Gently massaged his toes, almost without thinking about it. His insteps. Time to go back in.

God damn it.

He telegraphed his movements as much as he could. He didn't know if that was better or worse, but he'd rather err on the side of warning him it was going to happen. If I knew fucking Morse code, he thought. He could have tapped out messages to him on his flesh. Twenty-three Terran languages plus ASL plus Goa'uld and several Jaffa dialects and fucking Perl for chrissakes, and I never learned bloody motherfucking Morse code. He held his penis against the opening to Jack's body and leaned in, to tell him he was going in. He put his arms around Jack's legs and pulled in a little, to ease what must be some strain on them by now from being spread like that. Gently, but not slow enough to be tormenting, he eased back in. All the way. Each penetration had to be all the way. From completely out to completely in.

He pulled out hard, jaws clenching on a groan, and gripped his balls and the base of his cock to stave off ejaculation. Turned instinctively away from the stimulus, lost his balance a little, ended up leaning against the inside of Jack's thigh. He was trembling, letting out silent pants so that he wouldn't audibly gasp. The moment he realized that it would all be transmitted into Jack's flesh, he hauled himself up. Crap. No control. Way, way too long since he had sex. He wished to hell he'd jerked off that morning.

He looked more closely at the table. He was relieved to find what had to be a cock ring, and not all that surprised. One of the observers, one of the most neutral ones, had been scribbling on a writing tablet. As Daniel went back to his place, wrestling the rubbery ring on, the man held up the tablet. Are you able to proceed? Daniel nodded, curtly, irritated: Leave me the fuck alone.

Two more. Halfway there. He made himself stroke again, lightly, raising the damp hairs. Then he was sorry; gooseflesh spread over Jack's skin, and he shivered, an autonomic response the muscle relaxant didn't affect. The sweat was cooling on him. He must be freezing.

OK. Two more. No problem, with the circulation cut off. He made his hands warm and soothing again. It's OK. It's almost over. He rubbed the head of his cock into place, a gentle warning that he was going back in. In his peripheral vision, he saw Jack's fingers twitch. The shot wearing off.

He eased himself in. Jack's penis filled. Must have hit the prostate, Daniel thought. He'd been trying not to. He was about to pull out when a surge of pleasure glazed him over for a second and he faltered.

Jack had squeezed him with his rectal muscles.

He must be trying to clench, trying to punish or deny the intrusion. Daniel pulled out -- very slowly, because the squeeze didn't ease up. It felt as though Jack was trying not to let him out. He kept withdrawing, and Jack kept squeezing, with a weird kind of gentle insistence. It took him a while to get out, and made it that much harder to suppress the need to come.

One more, Jack. One more and we're done. I'm Terran, I'm clean, and I'm not hurting you. That's all that matters. This isn't hurting you.

He looked up, and saw the fingers of Jack's right hand flex closed, then open.

One more. That was it. But if he was supposed to come, he'd have to do it again. He turned to the observer who'd written the note. He tried to gesticulate orgasm, couldn't, had to mime it instead. Comprehension came with a look of distaste. To Daniel's startlement, the observer said in a dry voice, in his people's language, "Ejaculation into the penitent is not required. This last penetration will complete the sentence. Proceed."

Well, they'd only told him he couldn't talk, they hadn't said they wouldn't. He glanced at what he could see of Jack's face, wondering if he'd caught any of that. It sounded like archaic Arabic spoken by someone with a Russian accent. Great. Like that would help, if Jack was catching a word here or there.

He stepped back in. Took a shaky breath. Last time. He wanted to enjoy it. His mutinous heart and his treacherous body wanted to savor this. The beautiful predator laid out for him, achingly hard. The person he loved inside there somewhere, the pleasure he could give him with the slightest change in angle of penetration, the simplest touch. He wanted to cry out against the violation he was committing and he wanted to get off so badly he could hardly see. He wanted to take off his glasses, but Jack's keen ears would pick that up. Just one more. He couldn't come, with the blood to his dick squeezed off. Well, he might come but he wouldn't shoot. He could spare him that.

He positioned himself one last time, longing to rub his cock over the tight, heavy balls, reach up to squeeze the rigid cock. At least he had the answer to a question he'd been asking himself for a couple of years. Whether he'd want what he thought he wanted from Jack if he could ever have it in physical fact. Jack was as impressive hard as he was soft. As hot and silken on the inside as he was in Daniel's hottest dreams.

He'd wanted this, for real. But not like this.

He eased in one last time. No effort at all. The passageway didn't clench against him; it felt as though it bloomed open, welcomed him. It was so sweet, so slick and throbbing, that he only barely registered the fact that Jack's hand was flexing again. He sank into halfway into heaven one last time, and almost closed his eyes, because in a minute it would end. Then he focused on what Jack's hand was doing.

It was forming the command Come in the language of military handsigns.

Daniel blinked, hesitated before he was fully sheathed.

Jack's hand did it again.

Come, it said. Come. Come.

A finger of the other hand lifted slowly to point at Daniel.

Oh god. Oh god, no.

In fumbling confusion, he pulled out. The speaking observer said, "That was incomplete penetration. Four entries were the decreed punishment. You must complete the fourth."

I know, Daniel almost snapped at him. Fuck off.

Jack's hands had relaxed. Only Daniel had registered what they were doing as anything but reflexive movement.

Jack couldn't have meant what it seemed he meant. He couldn't.

But if he did --

Daniel wrestled the cock ring off himself. Shaking so hard he had to hold on to himself to get in, balancing with a hand on Jack's leg, he pressed in.

Jack contracted on him. His hand said, Come. Come. Come.

Stifling a sound of despair and confusion and loss of control, Daniel reached up with his hands and covered Jack. Palmed his balls, squeezing them gently, rolling them in his hand, thumb stroking the sweet spot just behind. Palmed his shaft, and pumped long and slow. Bent at the knees, and angled the head of his cock up into where he thought the prostate was.

Jack came in silence, pulsing in Daniel's hands, roping his own abs with semen, bucking within the restraints. Daniel came silently, blindly into him. Pulling the hand off Jack's balls to stuff into his own mouth as a fist to bite down on. A tremor went through Jack's body as Daniel shot. Daniel forced himself still, forced himself not to thrust. When his vision cleared, he was sagging against Jack's butt and the platform, in the wide cradle of his thighs, one hand protectively covering Jack's groin, the other leaking blood onto his own lips. Jack had gone limp. Passive, for the first time on that platform. Even doped up, he hadn't been passive. Now he was melted around Daniel. Their bodies were melted together. Daniel was curled partway over him and had to pull himself back, as from the brink of a cliff, before he let his upper body collapse down onto him. He wanted to lick the sweat and semen off Jack's skin, feel the coarse hairs sand across his tongue.

Firm hands pulled him away. He jerked hard, saw Jack's body jerk, as they were pulled apart. Someone came with a bowl and a cloth to clean Jack up, starting with his chest and belly. Someone moved to clean Daniel up and he blocked it hard, forearm on forearm. He let himself be guided out the door into the anteroom, where his clothes were. He snatched them out of the hands of the person trying to assist him and dressed fast, blanking his mind. A glance behind him just as the closing door swung around showed Jack wrenching against the restraints again, with all the power in his whipcord body, as someone tried to wipe his backside.

The muscle relaxant had worn off a while ago.

"You must speak to him," said the other observer. "Calm him, guarantee nonviolence, so that we can release him."

"I think he should knock all your goddamn heads in," Daniel said quietly, in English.

"Will you speak to him?"

"Only in our own language," Daniel said in theirs. "Only if you call off those people touching him right now."

The observer turned and called orders. The door opened; everyone left the room. Jack was still in the restraints, his ass still smeared and sticky, all of him still smeared and sticky. His chest was heaving, unable to get full breaths under the tight strap across it. A bowl was still spinning on the floor in a puddle of water.

"Jack," he said quietly. He unstrapped the chest restraint. Jack dragged in breaths through the gag. He unfastened the gag, carefully picked it out of the furrows it had dug at the corners of Jack's mouth. Jack groaned, and tried to close his mouth, and couldn't. "Easy," Daniel said. "Don't try to close your jaw, just let it relax on its own. I'm gonna take the blindfold off now, but they put drops in your eyes before you came to. Your vision will be blurry. It's supposed to pass soon." He almost said Don't freak out. Swallowed it just in time. That would have been just too stupid under the circumstances.

He removed the blindfold, very carefully. Jack groaned again and squinted against the glare. Daniel wanted to say Shh, close your eyes, smooth his hand down over the lids. He moved to the belly and hip restraints. "Yes or no: Did you understand the explanation they gave you of what just happened?"

Jack said something shapeless that might have started out as 'eah, then managed a clearer "Unh-huh."

"Are you going to beat the shit out of everyone you see, as soon as you can, you know, see, and move, and stuff?"

"Unh-unh," Jack said.

"You're not just saying that to get out of this contraption."

"Unh-unh."

"Good enough for me," Daniel said, and moved down to the leg restraints as he called through the door in the native language that Jack could safely be released, as if he would have stopped what he was doing either way.

By the time he was freeing Jack's hands, Jack had gotten his mouth closed and let his head sink into the cushion, eyes winced shut. Daniel realized there were tears stinging his own eyes, dampening his lashes. He ignored them, didn't call attention to them by swiping at them. Flooding, that was all. Release of stress. He helped Jack bend his arms, bring them in to his body.

"Water," Jack said, in a cracked voice.

"Wait 'til I can get your canteen."

He turned toward the door. Someone new was just coming in, with a bigger basin and soft cloths. A young man this time. He started toward Jack's lower body.

"Keep your fucking hands off him," Daniel said, in English, a low voice that didn't need translating.

The attendant put the things down on the floor and backed away.

In their language, Daniel told him to get Jack's clothes and Jack's canteen. The attendant came back with them right away, leaving clothes and tac vest neatly piled on the floor with boots and canteen beside them. Daniel walked toward him and he backed away.

Daniel backed him completely out of the room, shut the door in the faces of the observers, calmly cracked apart one of the stools they'd been sitting on, and jammed one of the crossbeams under the door. Someone tried it from the other side; it didn't open. There were outraged shouts, pounding fists. Gradually they died down.

Jack had rolled himself sitting. He nearly rolled off the platform. Daniel caught him with one arm. He had the canteen in the other hand. He unscrewed the cap and held it up for Jack to drink from. Jack said, "That was some heavy shit they hit me with."

Daniel didn't pretend not to understand. Technically, he supposed, he could still make out as though he hadn't been here, as though it had been someone else. He didn't know how much Jack would assume he knew or had seen of what happened, or if that statement was an indication. He braced him up without embracing him, and said, "Your clothes are here, and some stuff to wash up with."

"Hold up," Jack said. His eyes were still closed. He swayed on the seat.

"Jack, you're pretty chilled. Let's use that water while it's warm, OK?"

"Carter. Teal'c."

"They're fine. They're continuing the negotiations. This whole thing was a trumped-up charge to derail our agreement."

"Yeah, I kinda got that. After a while. All right. Gimme a hand?"

Daniel made sure he would stay upright and then brought the basin, cloths, and clothes over. He started cleaning Jack up; Jack didn't grumble protest or take the cloth out of his hand. He hissed softly when Daniel bathed the blood off his wrists and ankles, but didn't say anything. Daniel fetched antiseptic analgesic cream from Jack's gear and applied it gently to wrists, ankles, chest, belly, hips, all the chafed raw places. Dabbed it at the corners of his mouth. Jack stood for Daniel to clean up the back of him, fingers clawing in the shoulder of Daniel's BDUs. He stepped into the boxers Daniel held for him. He only opened his eyes when his pants were on, and then only to look down and try to button and buckle for himself. He couldn't manage it. Daniel did it for him, then got the T-shirt over his head, a limb-jumbled struggle, and got his jacket on him. Jack finally stopped shaking, some, then.

"Thanks, Daniel," he said. "You're a pal."

Daniel resisted the urge to pat his back. "Sure, Jack." It came out just short of irony. He didn't mean it to. Neither of them followed up on it.

With Jack sitting on the floor, between the two of them they managed to get him into polypro liners, thick socks, boots. Then Daniel hauled him to his feet, got his shirt tucked in and his jacket fastened, got his tac vest on. Jack submitted patiently. Daniel didn't know if he was thinking about the times he'd done this for Daniel. All the times he'd checked his gear, adjusted his gear, always picking at him, straightening him, fixing him. Sometimes even when he didn't need it. He handed Jack his cap, since it was easier than trying to tame the wild sweat-spiked hair, and Jack fitted it onto his head in an effort of muscular coordination. Shades went back around his neck. He looked like Jack again, more or less. If you disregarded the hazy focus of the eyes, the harrowed paleness of the face, the raw marks at the corners of his mouth.

Daniel fished a packet of ibuprofen from Jack's vest. Jack opened his mouth, grunted. Handling pills was beyond him. Daniel pressed them gently onto his tongue and gave him his canteen again.

He was surprised when Jack leaned back against the platform, dragged him close by the arm of his jacket, and took his hand. Rubbed the antiseptic cream into the bloody bite marks on his knuckles. Then looked up at his face, finally, and reached to dab cream onto his lower lip, rub it gently in. "Chewed yourself up pretty good there," Jack said quietly, and put the tube back in his vest.

"Yeah," Daniel said. His head lowered but he couldn't quite tear his gaze from Jack's. "Well."

"I don't suppose I can just slip past ol' Doc Fraiser, huh," Jack said, looking away.

"Maybe you can. But you shouldn't. You need to be checked out."

"You didn't hurt me, Daniel."

Daniel froze at the words. No sense pretending. But he had been. Or denying. Or something.

Jack wasn't.

Daniel made a grab at clinical efficiency. "You should let Fraiser be the judge of that. That injection could also have side effects. The guy came out of nowhere, Jack, I swear, they weren't, that wasn't ... "

OK. So much for clinical efficiency.

"Hey, don't sweat it. Least of my worries right now." Jack swiped at his face. His arm was rubbery. "Fuck. I can't go back like this."

"Jack ... " Anguish welled up through Daniel as he followed Jack's train of thought through all the crappy, unacceptable options.

"Hey." Jack turned fierce, focused eyes on him. Took his chin and shook it, shocking him silent. "No apologies. Christ, Daniel. That thing at the end, that rocked my world. I just have to figure out how to do damage control back home." His hand fell. He looked exhausted. "Man, I really fucking want to go home."

Daniel had never heard him say anything like that before. It swept past his surprise at the touch, the words that followed. "I'll talk to Fraiser. Maybe she can just bandage the abrasions, draw some blood, and release you. A warm shower, your own bed, some sleep ... "

Jack smiled. It was a sweet smile, gentle and sad. "Sounds like heaven. Heaven's never that easy." He cleared his throat, stood up a little straighter. "I'm gonna report this as a straight noncon, Daniel. Keep you out of it. That OK?"

"I don't -- I don't -- " Daniel faltered.

"Don't what?" Jack said, with complete and completely uncharacteristic patience.

Daniel found he couldn't even articulate it. He didn't want it to be known that Jack had been forced. He didn't want the marines, the SFs they worked with to know that that had happened to him. "I don't want ... people to ... look, at you, and ... "

Jack spared him having to say it. "Daniel, half the base knows about my vacation in the Hussein Hilton. Half the base thinks that already happened to me. It didn't, OK? But they think it did, and I don't care, and it doesn't change anything. So let them think it again. Better they should think that."

It was noncon. In the beginning.

"God, Jack."

"Hey, they coulda sicced some jackhammer on me. You saved my ass. Literally. You gonna be OK keeping that quiet?"

"It's your decision."

"It means falsifying a mission report. Ethical questions."

"Not really. I'm OK with that. Look, Jack, can't we just say they put you in restraints to humiliate you? I haven't had a proctological exam the last hundred times I came back from a mission, why should Fraiser -- "

"Give her some credit."

"I do. I credit her with the discretion to accept you at your word. You say no, she doesn't examine you for that, nothing goes on the record. I'd rather lie about it that way. At least make the lie count."

Jack thought about that. "Yeah. OK. Yeah." He looked up, so grateful that Daniel was taken aback. "Thanks. That's a better way."

"Sure, Jack," Daniel said again.

Their gazes held for a long time. Jack looked like there was something else he wanted to say. Then he squeezed Daniel's shoulder, hard, and turned for the door, saying something about finding out how Carter and Teal'c made out.

Sam and Teal'c had made a deal. Daniel suspected that some of the councilors agreed to it out of guilt for what had happened to Jack. Mostly it went through because the opponents had let down their guard and failed to prosecute their side, thinking that they'd killed the deal with the fabricated crime. Before they left, Daniel made sure that the handshake agreement to make a deal was written in stone, with a guarantee of diplomatic immunity for any negotiating team that followed. It was all he could, would, do; after this it would be Hammond's decision whether to risk another team for the resources available here. But they'd achieved the mission objective.

Daniel claimed he'd chewed through his lip in sympathy when he witnessed what they were doing to Jack. Jack said it was no big deal, they tranked him and strapped him down and threatened him a little bit and the only damage was what he did to himself making a fuss in the restraints. Should've just hung in there and waited for Daniel, Jack said. Should learn to hold my temper, Jack said. Maybe next time, Jack said.

Fraiser almost bought it. To the extent she didn't buy it, she let it go. She looked to Daniel with a half demand, half plea in her eyes for the truth. Daniel shrugged. Couldn't help her there. Held her gaze while it flashed through suspicion, anger, concern, guarded resignation. Just as he looked away, it smoldered into anger again. She was going to be angry with him for a while, he thought. But she let Jack go.

They'd come through this the way they came through everything, it seemed. Physically and psychologically battered, locking their private suffering up tight, completing the mission against all odds. Hammond was duly warned against the untrustworthiness of some contingents on the planet -- which, really, nothing new there -- and advised to send substantial military backup with the negotiators. And gas masks.

Daniel didn't know what the negotiators might find out about what had happened to Jack, if Hammond sent negotiators at all. But for now, for today, no one else knew. They'd kept a lid on it.

He'd deal with tomorrow tomorrow.

At midnight that night, Jack showed up at his front door.

"Why aren't you drunk and passed out on your floor?" Daniel said.

"Why aren't you at my place demanding that we talk this to death?" Jack said.

Daniel let him in. Got him a beer. Said, "Did you eat?"

"That's my line." Jack glanced at the coffee table strewn with curling shreds of candy-bar wrappers that wouldn't stay balled up. "You sure as hell didn't. Get the diner menu."

Daniel got the menu. The diner near the campus delivered all night. They ordered triple-decker club sandwiches and more side dishes than they would ever eat. Watched TV until the order came. Watched TV and ate. Watched TV and drank coffee, no more perverse than drinking beer at this hour. Daniel turned up the heat and made Jack put on an extra sweater, such a strange reversal of roles that he couldn't quite process it. He tried not to be too aware of the bandages around Jack's wrists, or the way he couldn't quite find a comfortable position to lounge in.

In the middle of a commercial for paper towels, Jack said, "Can I sleep here?"

He'd never asked that before. Usually he just sacked out on the sofa. It was seven feet long and had decent springs. Usually Daniel slept on it the next night. Usually it still smelled like Jack. Sometimes he could still feel the indentation of his body.

"Of course," Daniel said. "I guess you mean inside with me. Since you asked. I mean, since you didn't just do your keeling-over thing."

"Yeah," Jack said, looking at the TV. "I guess that's what I mean."

"OK," Daniel said. Then, after a minute, he added, "I'd like that," because he didn't understand what was going on here; he didn't know if Jack would think he was tolerating an unwelcome advance out of guilt.

They watched another two commercials. Then Daniel got up. "I'm going in," he said. "Come in when you want."

"OK," Jack said, his eyes still on the screen.

He came in about ten minutes later; Daniel heard him turning things off, checking the door locks, taking a leak, brushing his teeth. He heard the rattle of pills in a bottle, a slurp of water from Jack's cupped hand as he washed a couple down. He heard the whisper of discarded clothes. Jack got into the bed stiffly, carefully. He'd beat the crap out of himself on that platform, but he wouldn't take anything stronger than ibuprofen, same as he wouldn't drink anything stronger than beer.

Daniel was on his back. He turned on his side as Jack settled in on his, facing him. He was prepared to go to sleep; he'd close his eyes as soon as Jack did. Jack's stayed open. His breathing was a little fast. Daniel heard him swallow.

The heat under the covers was intense. The vibe was intensely sexual. Daniel didn't think he was misinterpreting it, but he didn't trust his intuition not to be clouded by his own desires. He couldn't just make a move, either to comfort with plain, warm human contact or to test Jack's receptiveness to something more. The wrong move now could fuck them up beyond all repair.

"Talk to me, Daniel," Jack said, softly.

Daniel blinked. Of all the weirdnesses he'd observed in Jack during this massively weirdass day, this might be the weirdest. But he wouldn't reject an overture like that. "I want to touch you," he said quietly, after a moment surveying himself, trying to find something to say that wasn't a lie. "I want to hold you, if that's something you need, but I've got an erection and I don't know how you'll react to that. I should have worn sweats or something. I thought you'd go right to sleep. I didn't think."

"If I touch you, the way I want to touch you, it's harassment," Jack said. His voice was low, and controlled, but hoarse. "Even if I ask you for permission."

What that implied took a while for Daniel to process. It changed everything. It took his breath away. It was impossible; it was his last chance to make excuses, to opt out, to pretend.

Reality was complicated enough, without him muddying the waters with pretense. He told the simple truth. He said, "I want you to touch me, Jack. I've wanted that for years."

"You want me to touch you in a sexual way," Jack said. Low, straight-out. Request for confirmation. "You want me to put my hand on your cock. For example."

Last chance, last chance, last chance.

Daniel said, "Yes. I do."

There was a long pause. Jack's eyes were unwavering, dark within the dark, velvet in shadows. "I've wanted that for a long time. I couldn't tell you." He worked his jaw, blinked hard a couple of times. "What happened today, that wasn't noncon. I made you when you shoved at the guy with the needle." His voice dropped. "I thought it was noncon for you, though."

Daniel's voice tightened. "I didn't want it that way. I just couldn't, you know, let them. I couldn't stop it, Jack, I couldn't -- I'm supposed to be able to talk people out of things -- "

"I'm supposed to avoid being shackled to tables while my team is locked up in a cell. Shit happens." He reached out without appearing to realize he was doing it, palmed Daniel's shoulder, squeezed. Lying naked in bed with Daniel, in a sexually charged atmosphere, still unthinkingly being the Colonel. "You did the right thing. Made the best of a ... " He registered that his hand was on Daniel's bare flesh. He didn't pull it back. His touch gentled. His thumb stroked -- up and down, then a small, light circle. He swallowed again.

Daniel closed about half the distance between them, shifting with elbow and knee. Jack's hand moved to his chest, palmed its contours. The warm skin smoothing over him, exploration and open appreciation, the big male hand, was sublime. It moved up to his neck, around to the nape. Jack closed half the remaining distance, palmed down over his shoulder blade, delved the curve of his spine with the heel of his hand. Daniel's hands were loose in front of him, knuckles brushing Jack's chest. Jack pressed on his tailbone, his spine went liquid, and their erections touched.

"Oh god," he breathed.

"Yeah," Jack said. Then: "Use your hand. On both. ...If you want."

If you want. He could say no. He could say --

He moved his right hand down, a motion familiar since before puberty, as if he were going to masturbate, alone in his bed, carefully not fantasizing the chiseled features half a foot from his, the rugged body heating the air under the covers, the clean warm scent of Jack, the breathing in the dark. He took them both in his hand, and gently squeezed.

They fit perfectly.

He closed his eyes. In a minute this might stop. The feel of dick on dick might be more than Jack had bargained for. He wasn't blindfolded now. He could see who was touching him. He might say hold up, I made a mistake, hold up.

"You still want this?" Jack said.

Jack was thinking the same thing about him.

He opened his eyes. Jack looked serious and intent. His eyes in the dark were a deeper dark. His face was close. Just a few inches away, on the other pillow. Daniel said, "Yes."

Jack's hand left his back. It moved between their bodies to close over both heads and partway around his hand. Daniel let out a breath, a soft huh, at the firm, warm touch of Jack's palm on the head of his penis. Jack was touching himself too. His fingers working into Daniel's hand, his thumb roughly grazing Daniel's fingers. "You like it gentle," Jack said. Squeezing him gently in the crease of his palm.

"Not always," he said. There was no short answer to that question. What he wanted now, what he wanted in theory, what he did to himself sometimes, pumping himself raw into this bed to make the need stop, riding the knife edge between pleasure and pain. Now he wanted to melt in the warm arousal. He wanted to come into Jack's hand, just from the touch of it.

"But now," Jack said, watching him. "You want it gentle. Slow." He squeezed, gently rocking his hand.

Daniel's eyes slid half shut. "Yes."

Jack slid his hand down and closed his fingers around the head of Daniel's cock. Daniel could feel his pulse against Jack's fingers. The head throbbed with blood. Jack's fingers lifted, stroked it. Then his hand moved down to grasp Daniel's shaft, pushing Daniel's hand off it. The hand was warm and sure. It gave a long, slow pump. Then another. Daniel felt himself flush deeply. Jack was touching him. Masturbating him. Slow and sure.

"Oh god," he said, with a ragged shred of voice to it now. "Jack."

"Could you come from this?" Jack asked.

"Yes," he said. "I will. Soon." Jack's hand palmed up over the tip of his cock the way it used to palm up over his head sometimes, rough gentle affection, and his own hand tightened hard on Jack's shaft, involuntary response as the beginnings of orgasm swelled up through his groin. "Sorry," he murmured, easing his grip. "Very soon."

Jack's thumb nudged the heel of his hand. "Do that again."

Daniel opened his eyes. Tightened his hand.

"More," Jack said. "Higher."

Daniel shifted his grip up to take in more of the head, and tightened it.

"Ah. Ah, yeah," Jack said. His face tightened. He swallowed. "Yeah." His hand pumped Daniel, long and slow and sure, strong and warm. Just gentle enough. Just firm enough.

Heat bloomed through Daniel's body. "Jack, I'm ... I'm ... " He let out a low sound.

Jack's left hand went around the nape of his neck. He pressed his brow to Daniel's. "Do me hard," he said. "Very hard. Fast. Tight."

The low order went straight down to Daniel's groin. His hand was trying to tighten anyway, trying to jerk, convulsively, as he got close. He let it go, working Jack fast and tight, working skin over what felt like muscle, cartilage, bone. Jack's hand on him didn't change. Slow and warm and sure, thumb firm along the underside, slow gentle pumping. He swelled and contracted. "Jack -- now -- "

He felt as if he were coming in slow motion. He felt every pulse well up through him as a discrete event. He was suspended in the swell, lifted into an endless moment of now i'm coming now right now i'm coming, Jack's warm slow sure hand pulling more and more out of him. His own right hand didn't stop; it worked Jack faster, a coarse staccato counterpoint to the long suspended note of his climax. His hand got slick; he'd drawn his hips back when he started to come, trying to curl over, and Jack had pulled him out straight, aimed him into his own hand, into Jack. He pumped longer through it, tip to base and back, long strokes through his own come. Jack's touch eased but maintained the same slow tempo, coaxing, prolonging. Everything was drenched in come.

"Harder," Jack said. The vibration of his low, rich voice went directly into Daniel's skull through their pressed foreheads, thrumming in the bone. "Harder."

Daniel tightened his hand and doubled the speed of his strokes.

Jack's head twisted, his face jamming down between the pillows. "Harder," he growled. "Harder, harder -- ah, god, Daniel -- " One hand clenched on Daniel's neck; the other groped for his hipbone and dug in. He came with a groan, spasmodic jabs of his hips, cock spurting hard against Daniel's stomach. As it eased off the peak, his grip softened and he pulled Daniel against him, wrapping around him, shuddering.

Daniel's face came up against Jack's neck as Jack's chin lifted; his lips touched Jack's skin. Daniel went very still, shocked by the full-body contact, flesh on flesh. Then, with a low moan, he burrowed in. No point pretending. No point keeping the restraints on.

"Daniel," Jack murmured, all limp heavy sated limbs, hands warming over him, soothing. "Jesus. Daniel."

Daniel didn't have words. He opened his mouth, tasted Jack's throat, the earthy flavor of skin under salt sweat and a spatter of come. He tongued Jack's pulse, slowing and steadying; felt the deep, strong beating of his heart. He gave a low moan, and felt it come back to him through flesh and bone. He shifted closer, a slipslide of semen, a tangling of legs. In years of alien experiences, he'd never felt anything so strange, or so wonderful.

The semen was going to dry scratchy and sticky in a lot of hairy places, but he couldn't bring himself to get up, and Jack seemed to have no intention of moving. Daniel went deeply to sleep, and when he woke up, with dawn seeping through the blinds, Jack was wiping him with a warm washcloth, gentle and firm. It felt like a tongue. He hardened a little. Jack kept wiping him, that same slow sure hand, and he came up under it, still half asleep and deeply aroused.

"Dressings," he managed. "Bandages."

"Changed 'em," Jack said. "The creamed ones anyway. Shhh."

He closed his eyes, bathed in warmth, basking in a kind of attention he'd never even dreamed of getting from Jack. Long caressing swipes of wet nubbled cloth, over his chest, over his nipples, up the insides of his thighs, over the palm and knuckles of his right hand, down and around each finger. Between his legs, a warm caress over his balls, up the length of him. He was so hard now he felt his own pulse throbbing in it.

"I want to go down on you, Daniel," Jack said quietly, easing the washcloth away and dropping it over the side of bed. "Can I?"

"Mmm," Daniel murmured, because even the word "yes" was more than he could manage as his body went molten with desire.

Jack's mouth closed over him in a slide of tongue, big and hot and sweet and unmistakably male. Jack took it all in, lips meeting the fingers he slid around the base of it, and sucked deeply and gently, as though he loved it. He used his mouth the same way he'd used his hand, just as slow, just as sure. Daniel was starting to come from the first moment, a slow warm surge into ecstasy. He reached down for Jack to let him know he was close; his fingers brushed a shoulder. Jack slid his mouth up, a delicious shift of suction to the head, and stroked his balls, and gave the shaft a long slow squeeze. Daniel came in a sweet, endless swell, fisting the sheets, a sound he'd never made before choking out of him almost without breath. Jack swallowed with fluid ease, and the movement of it kept Daniel coming even after he'd gone boneless, soft sparkles of afterclimax tingling through his body and down his limbs.

Jack slid his mouth away, leaving him limp and clean, and rested his head on Daniel's belly, one hand warm on his thigh.

After a while, as the room turned rose-gold with sunrise, Daniel said, "Do you want me, Jack?"

"Of course," Jack said, low and easy.

"I mean do you want to ... "

"I know what you mean. Yes, I want to do that."

Daniel stroked fingers through the soft, spiked hair. "You're hard?" he said, because with Jack curled down where he was, he couldn't tell.

Jack uncurled, coming up beside him, propped on an elbow. Hand warm on his belly now, where his head had been. Warm brown eyes looking calmly into his. "You just came in my mouth," he said, with a faint smile. "What do you think?"

"I think either you're pretty turned on, or you're trying to figure out a way to politely get out of this so you can throw up."

The smile grew a little and sweetened, which wasn't most people's reaction to the mention of vomit. Jack moved his hand up to Daniel's chest, pressed an impressive erection gently into his thigh, and said, "Yes, I want you. The way you mean." He turned his arm and pillowed his head on his bent elbow, shifting a little closer. "Now go back to sleep. Don't lose the high."

"That's not very fair to you," Daniel said, rotating his knuckles slightly where they lay against Jack's hip.

"I'm good, Daniel," Jack said, closing his eyes. "Mr. Happy's happy right where he is. We've got a day off. Go back to sleep."

Daniel reached over with his free arm and pulled the blanket across to cover them; the sheet had gotten rucked up, and he didn't want to move to tug it free. It was easy to let sleep pull him down. He didn't want to; he wanted to feel Jack push up inside him, he wanted to sleep on his face, limp and thoroughly fucked and still full of Jack, with Jack's weight pressing him down into dreams. But Jack understood what was on offer, and he'd declined. When he woke up, maybe, he'd ask Jack why. When he woke up, maybe, he'd press him on it.

But when he woke up, the room was warm with angled sunshine, bars of it striping them like liquid gold, and Jack was sprawled across him, snoring softly into his neck, and all he wanted to do was hold tight to this impossible moment.

"You're thinking too loud," Jack grumbled into his neck. "No thinking."

"I'm not thinking," Daniel said. "I'm just lying here."

"You're thinking," Jack insisted. "Stop it. We'll talk later."

"I don't need to talk," Daniel said. "I'm just lying here."

Jack said mmph and shifted in closer, moving his head in something very close to a nuzzle. For a while it seemed that he was dozing. Then he said, "OK, it's later. Let's talk."

"Hell just froze over."

"Good thing I can skate. You wanna make coffee?"

"I don't want to move. I like it here." He took a chance; he thrust a little, against where Jack's erection was cradled in the hollow of his hip. He felt Jack's balls tighten, and a delicious answering contraction in his own.

"See, now, that's moving," Jack said. Daniel could feel the grin against his neck, and he smiled. Then Jack sobered. "Daniel, no pun intended, but I need you to be really straight with me. Can you do that here, or is it easier out at the table with some clothes on?"

"Here's good," Daniel said. He felt himself go numb inside, a trick he'd picked up when he was eight. Emotional Novocaine, so he wouldn't feel the drill go in.

"A lot of stuff just happened," Jack said. "I want more stuff to happen. If this is a one-off, I need to know that. Before any other stuff happens."

"I don't want this to be a one-off," Daniel said.

Jack's heartrate doubled. Daniel noted the metabolic change dispassionately, from the numbness he'd retreated into, a defense mechanism so old that there was no circumventing it. He was hard, Jack was hard; Jack's heart was racing, his skin had gone damp; they were just facts. Whatever Jack asked him now -- whether he could handle sex without affection, whether he understood that Jack just didn't love other guys that way, whether he could be satisfied to know that Jack loved him but not that way -- he could answer clearly and calmly, because he wouldn't feel anything in response. The pain would be time-release. He wouldn't feel it 'til Jack was gone.

He waited for the question, so he could answer and be done with it.

"I want to make love to you," Jack said. "I don't know if you can handle that from another guy. Or from, you know, me personally. I think I can keep it to a buddy fuck if that's what works for you. No strings, no pressure, blow off steam, relax and get off with somebody who has the same security clearance you do, friendly affection an ancillary benefit. But I love you. That didn't just happen overnight, and it's not going to go away. If that's too heavy for you, too sloppy for you, you should tell me now."

Through his numbness, Daniel was stunned. The clear part of his mind couldn't process the information. He couldn't comprehend that his most closely cherished, most long-abandoned dream was offering to come true. "Um ... that's not too heavy for me," he managed.

Jack waited. When Daniel couldn't formulate more of a response, he said, "But?"

"There's no 'but.' I, um ... I thought you were going to say something very different. I kind of shut down. I want ... what you said, I just ... can't ... "

Jack pushed up on one arm and looked down at him. "Can't what?"

Daniel felt as though he were choking, drowning. "Can't ... um, feel ... "

"Can't return those feelings? It's OK, Daniel. But you have to say it. I need a verbal here."

"I can't believe you're talking about feelings," Daniel said, looking away, a last desperate flailing attempt to keep it all from rushing in on him.

"If I can do it you can do it," Jack said. "Just tell me, Daniel. Once and for all. Then I'll fuck you. That's what you asked me for this morning, right? I'll make it good for you. No mush, no sap. I won't embarrass you. We'll fuck and then we'll grab a bite and I'll get out of your hair, and next downtime maybe we'll do it again, and that's fine. There are worse ways to live."

"If you're so sure of what I'll say," Daniel said in a near-whisper, "why are you making me say it?"

"This is too important to screw with by making assumptions, and I don't know what the hell is going on in your head unless you tell me."

It was like the wind howling outside the door, all the pain he'd shut out for all the years clamoring to get in, just waiting for him to open the door a crack so it could smash through it and flatten him. "I return the feelings, Jack," he said. "How could I not be in love with you? Everyone's in love with you. Everyone wants you, everyone wants something from you. Why should I be an exception? I tried to be your friend, but I didn't do a very good job, we're so fucking different, and then one day I realized I'd crossed a line, I'd fallen for you just like everyone else ... " He couldn't go on. He couldn't look at Jack. He'd put everything he had into keeping this from him, making sure he never saw the faintest sign of it. He felt the way Jack had looked after he'd ungagged him and unbuckled him from the contraption. Bound and gagged so long that once he could move, speak, get up, he was incapable of it.

"We're not that different," Jack said quietly, after a while. "We're the same in all the wrong ways." His hand came up. Daniel thought that he was reaching to force his head around, make him face him. But it was just to run coarse fingers through his hair. Daniel let out a low moan, melting under the rough affection. Jack bent his arm, dropped his head, turned his lips against Daniel's ear as Daniel's head turned toward him without urging now. "It's mutual, Daniel. All of it. The doubts, the lines, the feelings."

Daniel arched under Jack, twisting to thrust into him. A hoarse groan seemed to be the only answer he was capable of. A harder, more demanding thrust.

"Vaseline," Jack said. "Mineral oil. Something."

"Drawer," Daniel said, flinging an arm out toward the nightstand. He couldn't reach it. Jack shifted over him, rummaged blind through broken pencils, aspirin bottles, junk. Came back with it as Daniel turned over. "No fingers," he said. "Just go in."

"Daniel -- "

"You won't hurt me. I do myself that way, I'm used to it. I want you to open me with your cock."

"Jesus, Daniel." Jack's forehead dropped onto his shoulder blade. Daniel heard him slicking himself, heard the tube thump onto the mattress on the other side of him. He spread his legs and lifted up as Jack shifted over him. Jack braced on one arm and reached down between them; nosed himself into position; pushed a little, looking for the angle. When he had it, he pressed steadily.

Daniel's breath drew in sharply as he was breached. For a few seconds it wasn't sexual at all; it was like someone pushing a grape into his ear. Then a spasm of heat ran up his body, and he moaned, trying to push back on it, get more of it into him. Jack pressed again, and started to fill him. He groaned into the pillow. It got better the more of Jack was inside him. He'd craved this with a hunger he didn't understand. He felt almost full, almost satisfied. A little more ... just a little more ...

"Oh god," he burst out when the fullness touched his prostate.

Jack's body spread over him, enveloping him. Hands slipping under to grip his shoulders, rock-hard thighs up against the backs of his, chest on his back, face buried in his hair just behind his ear. Jack pushed all the way in and rocked there, his hips pushing against Daniel's ass, rubbing his cock into the bed. Spasms ran up Daniel's legs, through his body, up his arms; he was trembling all over, his lips were trembling. "Oh, man," Jack said, low and hoarse, into the base of his skull. "That's it. That's it." He rocked deeper, his long muscular body tightening. "Come on. Come on me."

Daniel tried to say deeper, but he was coming, clenching in orgasm, he couldn't get words out, only groans. Jack was clenched on him, hips pushing into his in short throbbing jabs, and a burst of unbearable pleasure, a flood of fullness up into him, was Jack coming into his body. It felt as though their flesh had melded, bone and muscle and ecstasy indistinguishable. The same way it had felt back on the planet, when he came inside Jack.

The feeling persisted even as the climax ebbed. He was blanketed in Jack, filled with Jack. No one to wrench them apart -- not physically, anyway. Not this very second.

They lay that way for a long time, not speaking. Jack's elbows were taking enough of his weight that Daniel could breathe. Daniel's arms were stretched up around the pillow, his knuckles loose against the headboard; he wasn't sure when that had happened. He could feel Jack's steady heartbeat through his back.

Jack stirred, and kissed his ear. The light touch of his lips sent a deep shiver through Daniel's body. He wondered if he'd ever feel that on his mouth, or if that was one line Jack wouldn't cross. "You want me off you?" Jack asked softly.

"No," Daniel said. Then, still drunk on afterglow: "Never."

He felt Jack's smile against the curve of his ear. "Never's good."

Jack settled back in, and Daniel felt him fall into a light drowse.

Relief seeped through him, easing the last shreds of tension that orgasm hadn't reached. If Jack had been going to freak, this was when it would have happened. He'd have been polite about it, gentle when he pulled out, but he'd have been out and into the shower as fast as he could manage. Instead he seemed blissfully content to stay like this, dozing. His long penis was still stretched up inside Daniel. Daniel contracted on it, gently, and from somewhere inside his drowse Jack gave a low, happy murmur.

Daniel opened himself to sleep, but he'd had enough sleep, and he only floated in a soft drowsy contentment. His mind wandered lazily. He finally wondered, finally let himself wonder, how many times Jack had done this before. Jack was so matter-of-fact about sex that there was no way of telling. Could have been once or twice when he was young, or dozens of times, fast hard stress relief in bunkers or barracks. Could have been hundreds of times, with women. He thought he might have been the first to enter him, and he wondered if Jack would ever want him to do it again. Not a very auspicious beginning, forced bondage sex in front of strangers. Kind of hot, in retrospect, but he had to be careful about that. Despite what Jack had said -- that rocked my world; that wasn't noncon; you did the right thing, you made the best of a bad ... -- the shame still lingered. He didn't know if they could or should eroticize the memory of it. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know Jack's sexual history. He didn't know if he wanted to tell Jack his.

"Oh, crap," Jack murmured, surfacing. "Think the endorphins just wore off." He kissed Daniel's ear again, a little harder than last time, a little longer. "I wanna stay in. I wanna come up again like this. I want to switch and do it the other way again. But I hurt all over."

Daniel blinked against the pillow. Except for the equally surprising statement on the planet about wanting to go home, he'd never heard Jack say anything like that. He roughed off pain, he cracked wise about it. He never honestly admitted it, just like that.

Jack O'Neill in bed was very different from the Jack O'Neill he'd known for all this time.

When the gloves come off, he thought, his mind still half in its lazy wander. When the uniform comes off. When the restraints come off.

"Go ahead and pull out," Daniel said, but couldn't help a low unh as Jack withdrew, his body jerking a little as it slid out of him on a trickle of fluid. Jack ran fingers up into his hair and shifted to the side. Daniel shuddered at the flow of cool air; the sun had moved up over the building and the room was chilly, but Jack had kept him warm, and he hadn't realized. No wonder Jack was achey. "I'm OK," he said, answering the inquiry in Jack's hand.

"You always say that," Jack laughed. "Sometime I'd like to hear the truth from you."

"That is the truth." He rolled on his side and dragged the pillow down to support his neck. "It just felt a little weird. Coming out more than going in." He took a breath; couldn't stop his gaze from falling to Jack's chest, avoiding his eyes. "That was ... the first time. That way. With someone else." He winced.

Jack rubbed his shoulder, down his arm, up around over his shoulder blade. Warm and sure. "This where we trade histories? 'Cause I could use a couple ibuprofen and a hot shower."

"I'll make coffee," Daniel said, and sat up -- a little reluctantly, because it meant Jack's hand sliding off him and away, and a little awkwardly, as moving to get out of the bed made him suddenly aware of the two of them in it, their bareness, the rucked covers, the musky tousle of a place where a lot of sex had just happened. "You want some?"

"Does the Pope wear a funny hat?" Jack said, sitting up more slowly. He actually drank more coffee than Daniel did, but Daniel seemed to be the only one who noticed that.

"I'll see what there is to eat, too," Daniel said, lingering while Jack got his legs over the side of the bed, one by one. "I can run out to the coffeeshop and bring something back."

Jack waved a hand at him, fully aware that Daniel was waiting to see if he'd need help getting up. "Coffee. Breakfast recon. Go."

There were eggs, frozen waffles, and half a loaf of unpetrified bread, so Daniel put the coffee on and then joined Jack in the shower. Jack was just standing under the hot water, holding the soap, not even trying to lather up. Letting the warmth soak into his muscles enough to give him some range of motion, maybe. Waiting for the sting of the water on the abrasions to fade, definitely; Daniel winced at the sting of spray on his lip and his knuckles. "Maybe we should wrap you up again," Daniel said, taking the bar of Ivory from Jack's hand. At least it wasn't the deodorant soap Jack used at home. "This stuff's gonna hurt."

"Nah," Jack said. "More important to keep it all clean." He looked a lot worse in the light from the window and the overhead -- the bruising had come up lividly across his legs and torso and under the angry red abrasions and cuts on wrists and ankles.

"I feel like I did this to you," Daniel said.

"You didn't." Jack gestured at the soap. "You gonna help me out with that, or you wanna give it back?"

Daniel did more than help him out. He soaped Jack all over, slowly and gently, recognizing partway through that he was making love to him. Pressing close, after most of it was done, and laying his cheek on Jack's wet, streaming shoulder, rubbing lather up and down the muscled length of his back, over the bony knob of his spine at the base of his neck and up into the shave of hair at his nape, down again to his ass, squeezing and kneading. "I have some warming oil," he said, finally, lifting his head. "Massage oil. I can use it on the back of you, later. It might help with the soreness."

Jack came out of his resting brace against the tile and turned, more easily than before, to rinse his back, to pull Daniel close. "And then?" he said, his gaze falling to Daniel's lips.

"Uh," Daniel said, leaning in, entranced, yearning. "Then you, uh ... " Take a nap? Get up and do jumping jacks? Jack's mouth was so close ... so close, and flirting with his, tilting a little as if to get a good angle and then tilting a little the other way, not quite feinting, not quite committing ... "Jack, are you ... "

"Yeah," Jack said, soft and low. "Hold still."

"OK," Daniel said, and then Jack's lips were pressing to his upper lip, closing on it -- kissing, with exquisite gentleness. Kissing around the curve of it, as Daniel's mouth opened for him, and then coming partway round the bottom lip. Stopping before the bitten part, pausing, and then kissing that too, even more lightly -- feather-light, breath-light, the tenderest taste.

The care in it melted Daniel down to his toes while the ghost of pain ignited a burn in his groin, a twinge of desire for Jack to suck, right there, right where it hurt. He moaned, more breath to it than voice, and Jack ran the tip of his tongue across it, just a little more firmly, enough to deepen the burn into an ache.

"And then?" Jack said again, into Daniel's open, yearning mouth.

"Anything," Daniel said. "Anything you want ... "

Jack kissed his top lip, bottom lip. "And then I want to give the other thing another shot. Without the bondage gear this time."

And that was how, after a lot of deep, slow, wet kissing that stopped only because the hot water was running out and made Daniel marvel that he'd ever doubted Jack's inclinations regarding kissing, and a brunch that Daniel spent in a state of tingling arousal, erection rubbing sweetly into his sweats, they ended up back in the bed in the middle of the afternoon, Jack half on his side with one leg comfortably bent and Daniel's slick fingers working slowly, gently inside him, the scent of massage oil warming the air. Jack's body was deeply, beautifully relaxed, and velvety-hot around Daniel's fingers, slick and soft and sensitive. Daniel could sense the arousal building in it, but receptive and passive were hard to distinguish sometimes --

And just like that, his head was back in the punishment chamber on the planet. The pressure to perform, the pressure to stay hard but not to take pleasure in it, the tension of painstakingly gauging Jack's responses, the abuse he was participating in under an all-too-thin veneer of justification --

"Daniel," Jack said.

-- the guilt at being unable to help taking pleasure in it, the horror of seeing Jack bloody and trapped, the beauty of seeing Jack buck and fight --

"Daniel," Jack said.

Daniel's fingers were faltering, Daniel's erection was faltering. "I'm sorry -- "

"Come up here, willya? I don't want to roll over. Get up here, get your head up here where I can talk to you."

Daniel obeyed, pushing close against Jack's back, not sure if he should pull his fingers out, curling them and gentling them while he got himself settled with his face alongside Jack's, his cheek against Jack's sideburn and jaw, in as tight as he could get without moving his arm out from between them. "I'm sorry, I'm being stupid, you're the one who ... "

"Being fucked up by a fucked-up situation offworld is not stupid. Do you want to do this? I mean, I can feel the flag running down the flagpole back there, so maybe not right now, but is this not your thing? Did I push you into this?"

"No." Daniel pressed his face down into Jack's neck. "I've wanted this for a long time."

"But now it's all tangled up with what happened."

"It just felt like that for a minute. It's OK now. But now the mood's gone."

"Trust me, Daniel, the mood is not gone." Jack gave a push with his butt, and Daniel's fingers woke up, reflexively pushing back, stroking, and Jack half-groaned, "Oh, yeah. Plenty of mood here."

The oh, yeah ran in a flush of heat down Daniel's body, filling his cock against the back of Jack's thigh. He thrust with his hips to rub it into Jack, keeping his hand steady, and Jack pushed into the movement, and for a while it got good, sweetly painfully good, the muscular rub and thrust of their big bodies against each other, around the vulnerable sweetness his fingers were buried in -- but then he floundered again, faltered, as if the wind had gone out of him.

Because he'd been about to pull his fingers out and push his cock in. Because he'd been focused intensely on Jack's body, what Jack's body was telling him about what Jack wanted. Which was how it should be, what he should do, except it felt too much like -- even with his face right up against Jack's, even with Jack's body pushing into him, working with him, begging him for it, it felt too much like --

"OK," Jack said. "It's OK, Daniel."

"It's not OK," Daniel said -- snappish, frustrated with his softening dick, with his fucked-up head that wouldn't let him do this simple, pleasurable thing without sabotaging him ... furious, in fact, fucking furious at what happened, what was still happening in the back of his head. "You need this and I can't do it for you. Don't tell me we can stop and try again another -- "

"Hey." Jack pushed all the way up onto his side and reached behind him to take hold of Daniel's hand and keep it in him. "Want, Daniel. Want as in wanted you for years, want as in wanted this kind of sex my whole life but only ever slept with one other person I wanted it from and she couldn't give it to me or I didn't know how to ask her for the ways she could. Not need as in need to prove something." He twisted a little more, trying to see Daniel's face with his face shoved right up against Daniel's. "Daniel."

"Give me my hand back. Maybe I can jerk myself hard."

Jack let go of his hand, but said, "Please don't take your fingers out."

Daniel paused, his wires thoroughly crossed, angry at things he couldn't even identify, yearning for Jack, aching for Jack, hungry to fuck but with his dick only half hard, determined to do this for Jack and feeling like an idiot with two fingers half inside him and Jack twisted around like that, the whole point of this position was that it put no strain on any of the wrenched muscles --

"Stroke," Jack said.

"Jack ... "

"Push in, all the way, and keep stroking," Jack said.

Daniel slid his fingers all the way back in, and stroked in tiny circles. It felt mechanical to him, mechanically following instructions, but a fresh flush heated Jack's skin and Jack moaned, "Yeah, god yeah, like that," and then, "Pull out again, stroke around the outside," and then, "Good, fuck, that's so good -- push in again, in and out, fuck me, slowly, fuck me," and by then Daniel was fully, throbbingly hard again, and he got it, he understood what Jack was doing, the way Jack was using his voice, the way Jack was opening his interior experience to him, opening the really vulnerable part of himself to connect them, and Daniel was moaning, too, and mouthing down to suck on Jack's neck, and fucking him deeply and slowly with his fingers, and it was good, it was so good, and it kept being good because Jack kept telling him how good it was, keeping him in the moment, soothing his doubts away before they could re-form by moaning how much he loved this, how much he loved Daniel's hands, Daniel's touch, how much he wanted Daniel inside him.

"Do you want three?" he murmured, against Jack's ear.

"Want your cock," Jack said, a raw hoarseness to his voice now. "Wanted your cock in me for as long as I can remember ... "

Daniel gave one last sultry push with his fingers and then slid out to lift his cock up, angled his hips to position it and found it sinking in before he'd even nosed around to find the hole. It was effortless and perfect and he groped up to Jack's hip more to stop himself from plunging in than for leverage to pull, but Jack threw an arm back and over his arm and his hip and pulled at him and said, "Daniel, Daniel, god, push, all the way, push, push."

Daniel pushed, slowly, steadily, and Jack groaned and pulled Daniel's arm around him, squeezing until Daniel squeezed, until Daniel was holding him tight and locked flesh-to-flesh against the back of him. Daniel's hips came up against his ass last of all, fully sheathing his dick in Jack's body, and Jack pushed Daniel's hand down flat on his lower abs, just above his groin, and pressed to make Daniel press, to get Daniel buried just that little bit deeper inside him.

"Oh my god," Jack said, on a gasp. "God, Daniel, god." He contracted, and groaned deeply, his head going back. His hand on top of Daniel's was shaking. "I didn't know -- what I was feeling -- the last time. Too much -- I didn't get. I was trying not to like it. Trying not to get off on you. Trying to get you off, not even sure if that was worse, just hoped, you'd understand you had permission, if you wanted it ... "

"I wasn't supposed to want it," Daniel said, hot and close against Jack's ear. "But I did. I do." He squeezed, and pressed, and through Jack's moan he said, "Is it angled right? I don't really know ... where the ... "

"It's good, you're good," Jack said, and then took a shuddery breath and said, "It's the pressure, it's the ... There's pressure on the gland, I can feel that, it's ... I can't describe it, it's ... like that feeling right before you shoot, like that twinge in your balls only ... up inside, but that's not ... what ... "

"It's the penetration you like," Daniel said, with a very deep, very slow push.

"Yeah," Jack said, an almost helpless gasp.

"Being spread. Being filled."

"Yeah ... "

"You wanted cock up your ass."

"Your ... cock ... "

"You wanted me to fuck you. Deep ... and slow ... like this ... "

"Yeah ... yeah ... oh, fuck, like that, don't stop, don't stop ... "

Daniel had gotten him turned partway down onto his face again, used his thigh to get Jack's leg pushed back up again into a loose bend to balance him. He moved his hand up Jack's body as they settled into the position, stimulated the nipple he could reach with gentle fingertips, then chased the tremors back down Jack's chest and abs until the backs of his fingers brushed down the top of Jack's dick. "Can I stroke you?" he asked softly, his lips on the back of Jack's ear.

"Lightly," Jack said, breathless and muffled but clearly audible. "Just tease. Don't make me come yet."

Daniel teased Jack's cockhead with feather-light pulls, reached under to fondle his balls. His fingertips were still silky with lube and ran smoothly, lightly up Jack's shaft, and back down, and up again. He traced the lip of the glans with a delicate fingertip, stroked up the slit, and Jack trembled and moaned deep into the mattress. That tremble going through Jack's body was one of the most erotic things Daniel had ever felt, and he became aware of how rigidly hard he was, taut and swollen inside the tight heat of Jack's ass.

He moved a little more, reflexively, and Jack's soft litany of yeahs and ohs opened into a hoarse groan and "Daniel, I gotta come."

"Tell me how," Daniel said, low and gentle against Jack's ear.

"Just jerk, a little ... jerk me, fast, not too hard ... yeah, oh fuck yeah, yeah, like that -- faster -- yeah ... "

"More cock too?" Daniel said, as low and close as he could get to Jack's ear, his fingers speeding up on Jack's shaft, knowing what the answer was, sensing that saying it would push Jack over.

"Slow," Jack said, begging now. "Slow, slow ... "

"Slow," Daniel acknowledged, already doing it, thrusting slow and slick and sweet, once and then again and then again, jiggling his fingers fast and light just under the head of Jack's cock. "Tell me, Jack. Say it. Say, 'Fuck me, Daniel ... '"

"Fuck me," Jack groaned, his ass and his dick contracting, his whole body contracting. "God, Daniel -- fuck me -- fuck me -- "

Daniel fucked him, three long slow steady strokes, and Jack came with a shout, then a sobbing groan, and then said "Hard hard now really hard Danny hard" and Daniel sank deep into Jack's spasming ass and squeezed Jack's dick tight in his hand and jerked him, very hard, very rough, understanding, now, finally, in a lightning flash of comprehension, how orgasm happened for Jack and what he needed done to him while it was happening. He almost came, just from that, just from the feel of Jack's pulsing cock in his tugging, twisting fist, but it wasn't quite enough stimulation on his cock, and so when the bucking eruption subsided and Jack's moans had gone soft and wet and breathy and he was gentling his hand, his dick was left taut and throbbing in the soft, spent sweetness of Jack's ass, and he was shaking with the strain of not thrusting.

"As hard as you need to," Jack said when he had the breath. "Want you to. Want to feel it."

"I don't need it hard," Daniel said, his voice sounding vague and soft and strange, and then the last restraints on him slipped away and he came with three slick, easy, exquisite thrusts into the thick, beautiful heat he'd been pulled out of, before, before he could appreciate it. He came saying Jack's name, over and over again, because he could, because he could make noise this time, because he was done holding back, because what happened to them was over and past and this was how it was going to be from now on, no more doubts and no more guilt and no more second-guesses.

"Are you sore?" he said, when he could think again, and talk, because it was the first thing that came into his mind, the first thing he cared about.

"I'm sore the way your lip was sore when I kissed you," Jack said, with a smile in his voice.

"Have you been waiting to pull out that line this whole time?"

"The minute you asked if I was sore, yeah." Daniel felt the smile get bigger. "I know you wanted me to suck on it."

"God. I really did."

"Well, my ass is kinda sore, and I want you to fuck the daylights out of it pretty much as soon as you can get it up again."

"And will you suck on my cut lip?"

"Very gently."

"Then I'll fuck the daylights out of your sore ass very gently. If I can ever get it up again. Which at this moment seems doubtful. Should I get off you?"

"You're not really on me."

"I mean do you want to shift around. I mean, how are you feeling, are you OK, do you hurt, do you want more Advil, is there any way I can talk you into taking something stronger OK no that's what I thought."

"Yeah. That's what I said."

"Yeah. So, nap?"

"Nap," Jack said. After a couple of minutes, when they'd gotten a little shifted around so that Jack was half on his back with Daniel still behind but now half under him and they were both comfortable and had some covers pulled across them, Jack drew in a deep breath to say something -- about how they still had a lot to talk about, about how they had to come clean with Fraiser, Hammond, their team, about the risks he was willing to take and the risks he didn't want to expose Daniel to -- and Daniel lifted his hand to brush a finger lightly over Jack's lips. Not to stop him, not to silence him, because in private they were done with that kind of suppression and restraint now, for good. Just to let him know that Daniel knew, and it was OK, and there was time, and they'd work through it together.

Later, the touch said.

Jack's lips curved into a smile against Daniel's fingertip, then kissed it. Jack sank contentedly back into the warm, supportive cradle of Daniel's body, and Daniel closed his arms around Jack, and closed his eyes.