The Art Of Communication

by Berty

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asb/berty/artofcom.php
Summary: "So to have his sweet, totally non-sexual, quirky and, let's face it, flaky best friend make a move had completely blind-sided Jack. To the extent that he hadn't said "Wait" until the door had long since banged shut behind Daniel. "

"Hey."

Jack paused before he answered in kind. "Hey."

"Where are you?"

Jack frowned and wiped his eyes in a weary but comfortingly familiar gesture. He found he used it most often when talking to Daniel. "In bed," he replied cautiously, wondering if this was a trick question.

"Whatcha doin'?" Daniel asked sounding almost...playful?

"Guess," Jack said shortly. A glance at the clock had confirmed his fears that this was indeed stupid o'clock and that he couldn't possibly be expected to keep up with "The Brain" at this hour.

"Errrr..."

Jack sighed and gripped his cell phone more tightly, imagining it was Daniel's neck. "Sleeping, Daniel. I was SLEEPING."

"Oh, right." Did he sound disappointed?

"Was there a reason for this call, Daniel?" Jack asked patiently. He flopped onto his back and began to thump his forehead gently with his fist. Many of his conversations with his civilian consultant left him feeling the need to do this, and the fact that this was a phone call gave him the opportunity to indulge himself.

"Well...er...that is..."

"Okay. G'night then..."

"No! Wait! Jack, wait. There is a reason." Daniel's sigh sounded like it came all the way up from his toes.

Jack waited quietly, sure he knew what was coming next.

"I wanted to apologise," Daniel murmured. His previous high spirits were gone, replaced by this tired, subdued tone. Just as Jack had expected.

"No need, Daniel. It's..." Jack cast around for a platitude to feed his friend. He couldn't say "no biggie" because it was. He couldn't say "one of those things" because it wasn't. "Let's just leave it 'til the morning, we'll talk and sort this all out."

"Why not now?"

"Because I'm sleeping! And you should be too. This will all seem more manageable in the morning." Great, now he was turning into his damn mother.

"You might not have been," Daniel muttered, a little petulantly.

"What?"

"You might not have been. Sleeping, I mean."

"What else would I have been...?" Jack bit off the last part of his sentence at Daniel's snigger.

"Are you SURE you're Daniel Jackson? I mean implying that I'm...not sleeping and..."

"Kissing you."

"Yeah," Jack agreed quietly. "That." The silence that followed quickly became uncomfortable. Jack shrugged the quilt over his shoulders and sighed. Unbidden, his fingers came up to his lips and traced the shape of Daniel's kiss. He hadn't seen it coming and he could only imagine what he'd looked like when Daniel had drawn back and stared at him.

Jack's tongue slipped between his teeth and touched his lips, seeking a hint of Daniel lingering there, just like Daniel had for Jack's flavour when he'd pulled away earlier this evening. Then his eyes had darkened with shame, embarrassment and fear and he'd bolted, leaving Jack standing speechless in his living room.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I thought...that is I imagined that maybe you felt the same. I was obviously mistaken."

"Daniel..."

"You're right; this is not the time to be getting into this. I'm sorry I woke you. I just wanted to know that you..." Daniel sighed once more, "...were still gonna talk to me," he finished softly.

"Idiot," Jack growled good-naturedly.

"Not arguing," Daniel muttered. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Okay, and Daniel..." Jack paused, about to say something along the lines of "It's okay, we can sort this out", when he heard weird, wet noises on the line. "Where are you?"

"In the bath," Daniel replied quickly.

Oh... damn. Jack started the thumping thing again with his fist. He wondered if it might dislodge some of the images exploding in his mind in glorious Technicolour. Images of Daniel, wet, warm, soapy, relaxed and naked in the bath. Jack could see the curve of Daniel's neck as he lay back with his eyes closed, see the wet hair slicked back off his face, see the trickle of water bead down over his Adam's apple and gather speed as it meandered across his smooth broad chest...

"...JACK?"

"What?" Jack found his own fingers following the path of the imaginary droplet across his own chest and he snatched them away quickly.

"You okay? You falling asleep again?"

"Kinda."

"I'll leave you to it then," Daniel said, but didn't hang up. This time the silence was less heavy and it gave time for Jack to frame his thoughts.

"Daniel," he began, "Isn't this a weird sort of time for a bath?"

"I was too keyed up to sleep," he explained. Jack could hear the slight sounds of Daniel moving in the warm water. Little splashes and ripples punctuated his sentences for him.

Jack's mind wandered back to the water drop and tracked it as it rolled slowly down the centre of Daniel's chest and finally joined the brimming bath of lazily steaming water. His imagination left the drop and stayed with the skin, gliding lower, over a tight stomach and pausing to consider the appendix scar Daniel refused to show him. Then lower still into the thick crop of dark hair at his groin, wet and curled.

Jack hissed a little as his hand closed around his cock, already hard and hot.

"I thought a hot bath might help me relax a bit. Seems to be working. Think I'll stop wallowing and go to bed."

Jack grunted in a non-committal kind of way. His mind was leaping ahead of Daniel, watching him step, pink and dripping from his bath, little pools of water forming on the tiles at his feet, watching his muscles flex and ripple as he dried himself off, imagining the stray drips sliding down Daniel's legs, getting trapped in the short hairs there.

Jack gave himself an experimental stroke, slow and gentle, and bit his lip to staunch the groan. Christ! He was so turned on, he felt almost dizzy.

"Jack, is everything okay?" Daniel's voice was smooth and low and really, REALLY not helping.

"Fine," Jack breathed, wondering how sick it was to be jerking off over your best friend's voice while he had no idea.

"As long as you're sure," Daniel agreed easily. "I'll leave you to get on with your...sleeping."

Jack didn't trust himself to say anything. Daniel knew what he was doing. He should hang up, roll over and squash his hard-on to an untimely death - after all that's what he'd done earlier when Daniel's kiss had knocked his feet out from under him. He knew he should stop the easy movement of his wrist, ignore the feel of blood pumping around his body, making him feel alive, but he couldn't. It was so good...it was so GOOD.

Jack had been fighting this for months. Subliminally repressing feelings for Daniel had become something of an art form for him. Convincing himself that there was no way in which Daniel could be his, he had ruthlessly put aside his desire and channelled his energy into SG-1, only letting the affection that one might show for a friend emerge. And he'd got good at it - almost had himself believing it.

If it hadn't been for the nights.

Jack never consciously conjured pictures of Daniel in his mind, but whenever his guard slipped, they were there. Too many nights Jack had awoken with the ghost-touch of Daniel's mouth on him, the image of his solemn blue gaze dancing in his mind's eye and the lingering scent of his hair on the pillow. And with guilt-clumsy hands Jack would bring himself off and fall into a shame-filled sleep with the younger man's name still staining his lips.

It wasn't that Jack thought Daniel was a total innocent; he'd grown up an awful lot since he'd joined the Stargate programme. Jack just had the feeling that Daniel didn't struggle with his sexuality the way he always had. The few encounters that his friend had had with sex since Jack had known him were all of the soft and curvy variety - and Jack had the suspicion that he hadn't even gone looking for those. No, Daniel was just one of those people who didn't miss sex if it wasn't there.

So to have his sweet, totally non-sexual, quirky and...let's face it...flaky best friend make a move had completely blind-sided Jack. To the extent that he hadn't said "Wait" until the door had long since banged shut behind Daniel.

So he'd locked up the house, brushed his teeth, got into bed, shouted his most choice profanities into his pillow and worked out how long it was until it was a civilised time to call Daniel to apologise for his lack of response. And to make sure Daniel was okay because he looked like he'd regretted his action the second he'd stepped back.

"Night then," brought Jack back into the moment.

"Daniel, wait," he muttered. He took his hand out of his shorts and pulled in a deep breath. "You weren't mistaken."

The pause at the other end of the line was unnerving. Even the sloshing sounds had stopped. Jack closed his eyes imagining Daniel's look of surprise and wondered if his heart really had stopped or if it just felt like that.

"I know," Daniel said quietly.

"You weren't supposed to. I would never expect you to do anything out of some misguided sense of loyalty or friendship."

"I wouldn't."

"I can deal with it, okay? You don't need to do ANYTHING. This is my problem, not yours. I don't want you to change your behaviour in any way just because I'm... because I have..."

"I didn't."

"Right. Because that would just about suck most of all. I mean, we've been friends for a long time and you've never known about me before, so there's no reason why you can't just ignore it. I can sublime...submil...pretend - forget about it, see? And we can carry on as normal."

Jack knew he was babbling, and that his arguments were both pathetic and unworkable. But he was fucking well going to try. "We've got too much history for us to walk away from, just because I'm fucked up and... I dunno... I'm having a mid-life crisis or something. If you just give me a chance, I can be your Jack again. Not in the biblical sense. I mean the old Jack, you know?" he trailed off miserably, wiping his face with his hand and smelling the musk of his own arousal on his skin.

"Are you finished?" Daniel asked patiently after a lengthy pause.

"Yes."

"Do you want to know what I think?"

"No."

"I think it's too hot for covers, Jack. I think you should kick them off."

Jack blinked at the voice in his ear. Was that... was that DANIEL? It had the same depth as Daniel's voice, the same smoothness to the vowel sounds but it was somehow...hotter. "Daniel, what are you doing?" But Daniel ignored him again.

"And Jack, I don't think you WERE sleeping, were you?" he asked slyly. Jack wouldn't have corrected him, even if he had had spit in his mouth to do so.

"I think you're wide awake. And I think your t-shirt is a little sweaty, Jack, because I'm thinking you're hot. Isn't that right?"

Oh, yes! Hotter than the hinges of hell. Stupidly, Jack nodded at the phone.

"Why don't you take it off? You'll be more comfortable without it," Daniel continued in that slutty, low voice that commanded Jack's full attention.

Jack dropped the phone, quickly sat up and slid his shirt off, then lay back down again, eagerly pressing the phone back against his ear.

"Better, isn't it?" Daniel asked.

Jack made an incoherent noise, but was too enthralled to be embarrassed about it.

"Not too cold are you? Might be a little cool on your skin. Did your nipples get hard?" Reflexively, Jack ran a hand over his pecs, carding through his greying hair with shaking fingers. If his nipples hadn't been hard before, they sure were now. The burning ache was back, low in his belly as his hand skimmed lower over his stomach and caught at the waistband of his shorts.

"Are you touching yourself, Jack? Because I am."

Fuck! Jack's fingers scrabbled with the elastic and dived beneath the sweat damp cotton and clamped around his twitching, aching cock.

"Daniel," Jack groaned as his fist picked up its previous rhythm. "Why are you doing this? Are you teasing me?"

"Just having a conversation with a friend," Daniel said quietly and Jack could hear strain in his words as if they were catching in his throat.

"This isn't the kind of conversation you have with a friend," Jack gasped, feeling the spiralling sensation of his lust coiling itself about him.

"No. So what does that make me then, Jack?" Daniel panted.

Jack squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying not to imagine Daniel's slim, clever fingers working on his own cock, the long, slow, gliding strokes matching Jack's own.

"Take your shorts off, Jack."

Jack stood up shakily, and with one hand pushed the restrictive cotton off his hips. He let them drop to the floor of his bedroom and stepped out of them. Instead of returning to his bed, he walked to the door and quietly opened it, stepping into the cool, dark hall.

"What does it make me, Jack? Tell me," Daniel pushed, his breathing becoming ragged. Jack heard the unmistakable splash of someone getting out of a bath, and he moved faster, unerring despite the darkness, feeling his flesh turn to goose pimples at the combination of the cold air and the sounds on the phone.

Jack saw the subtle light spilling into the hall and pushed the door open.

"Tell me, Jack," Daniel whispered.

Jack crossed the bedroom silently and closed his cell as he arrived in the bathroom doorway. "Mine," he replied.

Daniel hadn't switched on the bright overhead lamp, only the light over the mirror, and in the subdued reflection, his skin glowed, the sheen of water on him still where Daniel had yet to dry. Jack watched as the younger man turned to face him.

Daniel's cheeks were flushed and his eyes glittered with the darkness of desire. His hand stilled on his dick, but a lazy thumb swept across the head deliberately causing a ripple under the skin of his belly.

Jack closed the gap between them, never losing Daniel's eyes. He reached up and took the phone from his friend's fingers, flipped it closed and tossed it into a pile of towels.

"Mine," he repeated and locked a hand through the short, wet hair at the back of Daniel's head. He drew Daniel's lips to his, softly rubbing his own mouth back and forth over the smooth wetness there. He aligned his body slowly with Daniel's, incrementally bringing them together; mouths, chests, thighs. He reached between them and wrapped his hand around Daniel's, then carefully removed it from his cock, only to bring his own cock to rest beside Daniel's against his belly.

Deliberately and languidly he twined their joined fingers around both of them and began to pump them together. Daniel staggered slightly, but Jack backed him up against the wall and braced them both with his free hand beside Daniel's head. The younger man clutched at Jack's back, kneading the warm skin he found there.

They were both so close, their shared words and their solitary fingers having brought them too far already for this to be anything but the grand finale. They kept up their pace, never faltering as Jack kissed Daniel deeply and thoroughly, snatching breath where they could.

The clean smell of Daniel's damp skin overlaid the unmistakable scent of sex. He was cool to the touch, solid in Jack's fist and hard everywhere their bodies touched. The deep, throaty growls Daniel accompanied their kisses with were unravelling Jack's mind, making him demented, making him moan right back into his mouth.

It was Daniel taking control of the kiss that did for Jack. The younger man's hand slid up Jack's back and into his hair, yanking at it to get the angle of his head right to allow Daniel access to Jack's mouth. Daniel forced his tongue deep into Jack's mouth possessively, staking his claim, and Jack groaned and came over their fists and their bellies.

Daniel took up the slack as Jack's movements became jerky and uncoordinated, and he milked every drop from Jack as he tugged the last few strokes he needed to join him.

Daniel was still coming as Jack lowered them both to the bathroom floor, twitching and trembling. He feathered kisses on Daniel's eyes, on the fluttering pulse where his jaw met his neck, on his panting mouth.

"God, Jack, God!" Daniel murmured over and over against Jack's lips while his heart stopped hammering in his chest.

The chill from the tile floor seeped into them before either of them was really ready to stand. Jack snagged a clean towel and tenderly if wearily wiped the worst of the stickiness from their skin. Leaning into each other, they stood and weaved their way to Daniel's bed.

"Need another bath," Daniel laughed softly as he worked his head into the pillow he shared with Jack.

"Don't know I'd survive it, Daniel," Jack muttered, "But I'm willing to give it a try."

"In the morning," Daniel promised.

They settled down to sleep, finally, after having worked out what went where and what was comfortable. Sleeping side by side they were used to; sleeping twined together was new... nice but new, and it would take some fine-tuning.

"Just so I know..." Jack began after a quiet minute, "...what is it we're doing here?"

"I dunno, Jack," Daniel slurred sleepily. "When I know, I'll call you..."

Fin