They stepped through the 'gate to the gleam of scimitars in the sunlight; were surrounded by a group of what looked like the Mudajjan he'd had to liaise with in the eighties when the US had been working against the Russians in Afghanistan. Beyond the black-robed riders was the shimmer of the heat haze, the amber rippling of the sand, the unbearable blueness of the sky, but O'Neill only caught a glimpse of the background, much too focused on those sword points.
As O'Neill was bringing up his MP-5, Daniel was saying "Friends!" urgently while pushing down O'Neill and Carter's weapons.
O'Neill felt that familiar flash of anger at Daniel's actions. He'd darted in front of them; it would be him who got his head lopped off by a swish of steel. Four years and what the hell had changed between them?
*Everything.* A voice whispered it in his mind. Too many drinks one night and everything had changed. Jealousy, grief, the urge to comfort, to be comforted. When they'd added whiskey to that mix they'd got a cocktail so dangerous it should never have been contemplated let alone tasted.
Daniel pointed to himself and said: "Ra'figh." There was that pleading note to his voice, that look on his face which O'Neill found so hard to resist, but glancing around at those scarf-wrapped faces with only their eyes showing, he suspected they might prove a tougher audience.
Daniel looked at the riders. "Do you speak English? Aya Sho'ma...Mi'da'nid En'ga'li'si?"
"I speak a little."
That was when a guy who looked like he'd ridden straight off the pages of an illustration from the tales of Ali Baba appeared from behind the other warriors on his gleaming black horse. O'Neill stared at him in disbelief. Six-foot-two of black clad Sinbad look-alike, riding what looked like an Arabian steed. When he pulled down his scarf it was to reveal a face so unnecessarily handsome that O'Neill could only blink in hostility.
The rider pulled his horse up in front of Daniel and O'Neill brought up his gun again, very aware of how one flick of the man's wrist could see Daniel's head ten feet away, probably with a faintly surprised expression on its face.
The man inclined his head. "Sa'lam."
Daniel nodded in greeting. "Sa'lam."
"Es'mehin Sho'mana Ch'istan?" The man looked at Daniel intently as he spoke.
Daniel blinked in momentary confusion and O'Neill gathered the language he knew had evolved in the centuries since these people had been transplanted. Then Daniel's face cleared and O'Neill guessed he had managed to find an approximate translation to a dialect he recognized. It almost scared him he knew Daniel so well he could work that out just from his expressions. Daniel glanced over at him. "It's a variant of Farsi."
Daniel put a hand to his chest. "I'm Daniel Jackson. This is Jack O'Neill, Major Carter, and Teal'c.
The man nodded to them all in turn and O'Neill returned his nod with a tight one of his own.
Daniel said, "Es'meh Sho'man Ch'ist'? What is *your* name?"
At the question, the man turned to look at him, gazing directly into Daniel's eyes. "I am Prince Yusafin ibn-Zemestan. I offer the hospitality of my father's palace."
Although O'Neill was relieved Daniel was not going to have to translate everything for them, he still wished the guy hadn't had such a ludicrously sexy accent. When he turned to look at them in turn O'Neill felt at once that Yusafin's dark gaze was seeing too much. Assessing the weapon he carried, noticing Carter was a woman wearing the same clothes at them, surprised by it for about a millisecond, but already accepting it moving on. This man was a soldier. And a clever one. Yusafin met Teal'c's gaze. "Jaffa?"
Teal'c inclined his head. "I am."
"Which god do you serve?"
"I serve no god," Teal'c returned. "I have left the service of Apophis to fight with the Tau'ri against the false gods who would enslave my people."
"Too much information," O'Neill murmured but Yusafin only nodded again.
"Here, some still worship Ahura Mazdah. I do not."
"But you know what Jaffa are?" O'Neill asked the question.
"We know of them. But they do not come here any more." Yusafin swung down from his horse with what O'Neill felt was entirely unnecessary grace and nodded politely to Carter. "You will ride?"
O'Neill noticed that Carter was staring at the guy with a look on her face which answered any questions O'Neill had about whether or not she still had a fully functioning set of hormones. But at that invitation she took a step back. "Oh no...thank you."
Daniel looked surprised. "Can't you ride, Sam?"
O'Neill rolled his eyes in disbelief. Only Daniel wouldn't know that as abducting someone tricks went that one was as old as the hills.
Yusafin seemed to accept her refusal without disappointment or surprise. "I cannot ride while a woman walks. I will walk with you." He waved an arm at his followers, saying something in his own tongue too rapidly for O'Neill to catch.
Carter gave him a look of exasperation. "You don't need to - "
"In my culture, I do." He gave her a polite nod.
Carter sighed, nodded in return, then murmured to O'Neill quietly: "How's your Persian, sir?"
"I can say 'Mos'ta'rah Ko'jast' if I need a bathroom. How about you?"
She pulled a face. "Ta'va'lo'dat Mo'ba'rak' is my limit."
He didn't know that one and looked at her sideways. "What?"
She shrugged apologetically. "'Happy Birthday'."
"Oh. Useful." He shook his head. When he glanced ahead, Daniel was walking along next to Yusafin and they were already deep in conversation, Daniel was making lots of hand gestures while he stumbled over the uneven ridges of the sand. Yusafin was answering him with grave politeness while never missing a single stride. The second time Daniel stumbled, Yusafin put out a hand and steadied Daniel.
Walking behind them, O'Neill saw where his fingers so briefly touched Daniel's shoulder and felt the pressure of them as though Yusafin was touching him. He gritted his teeth and tried to think of other things but he couldn't take his eyes off the two of them for the whole journey to the palace in the sand.
*~*
He'd almost forgotten how sunlight felt upon the skin in the weeks before they came here. It had rained solidly in Colorado. Rained solidly on the last three planets they'd visited too, but here it was like...actually it was like one long Arabian Night in a storybook's most perfect oasis.
The palace of Yusufin's father stood a mile from a sea, close enough to hear the gulls calling to one another, to taste the salt on the breeze intermingling with the burnished heat of the sand. The stones of the palace were white and perfectly fitted so not a single weed could find a tendril grip. The date palms waved their fronds in the breeze and dropped sustenance into his lap when he sat beneath them for shade. Flowers bloomed in the gardens, fed by a system of irrigation better than anything he'd seen in the Middle East in his time there.
O'Neill had spent the last two weeks sending Carter and Teal'c on maneuvers to check perimeters, take soil samples, examine fortifications, search for evidence of past Goa'uld occupation, and assess whether or not the level of naqadah in the nearby mines made the planet strategically useful to a passing Goa'uld. The fact that no Goa'uld had been along for centuries had pretty much answered that one, O'Neill thought, but all the same the motions had to be gone through, and they now had a pretty impressive dossier of information to present to Hammond. Carter and Teal'c had done good. Daniel had done good. What he had done was a lot more open to question. He hadn't been prepared to leave Daniel unguarded among people who might turn out not to be friends, so had been effectively pushed into the role of hanging around the palace trying to look as if he had a useful role to fulfill while getting more and more hot and irritable.
He knew he should have given that task to Teal'c and gone off with Carter to examine the surrounding landscape, but after a moment's rather awkward hesitation he'd opted to stay with Daniel instead.
So he'd been a witness to that growing...friendship between Daniel and Yusufin. The one which was turning the Dor-Nabat into what could only be termed strategically useful allies.
Daniel was obsessed with the Dor-Nabat language and culture. Which was apparently a fascinating mixture of Persian, Arabic, Aramaic and Greek, with a variant of something that was very close to modern Farsi having emerged as the language of the upper echelons. Daniel was apparently not exactly sure how the culture had evolved but, with Yusafin's help had been tracing the history of his people back to its roots. And, of course, as the Crown Prince had insisted on giving Daniel the Royal Tour of every damned room in the whole damned palace, Daniel was apparently getting lots of useful information about these people's history, culture, and mythology.
Sitting in the garden under the shade of a date palm with the sunlight warming his feet but his shades keeping the world as dark as he could make it, O'Neill leant back against the trunk of the tree, trying to work out when everything had got so screwed up between him and Daniel.
It had all begun with Kira. No, with Sha're's death. No, it had all begun with the beginning; it was just that neither of them had known what it was then. Oh he'd known for a while it was a significant moment in his life, his first meeting with Doctor Daniel Jackson. Daniel was his best friend. A friend he'd lost then found again when he'd returned to Abydos. But how the hell had they got from there to that drunken fumble in the darkness?
He closed his eyes and he was back there. Again. The way he'd been back there so many times in the months since.
"I've been wrong about a lot of things and I know I don't always sound like I always believe you, but I do believe *in* you."
It was that look Daniel had given him, that sideways glance from under his eyelashes, as if he was afraid O'Neill was making fun of him. He'd looked so close to tears just because he'd finally gotten some affirmation. The effort of not touching him then, not putting his arms around him and saying 'Damnit, Daniel, your wife was killed, it's okay to cry.' Cry. Rage. Scream. Sob it all out. But he hadn't said it and Daniel hadn't done it. But he'd been haunted by that look all day. Daniel had seemed so young and defenseless when he looking at those things Kasuf had sent him. To anyone with an ounce of compassion in his heart, irresistible.
Even the day before Daniel had been unreachable, refusing to discuss what had happened with Kira. O'Neill had been torn between compassion for him and annoyance because Daniel was taking out on all of them something that wasn't their fault, and there was a limit to how much damned patience they could show. But then he'd gone home and thought about what it meant to lose someone, finally and irrevocably, and realized what Teal'c had already known, that Daniel deserved all their patience and more because although nothing for them had really changed, the life he'd had and the life he'd been intending to have was gone forever.
On that first mission, he'd felt a little like someone who'd let a schoolboy get rolled by a hooker until he'd realized Sha're really did care for Daniel. He didn't think being given your future bride as a gift was the best way to meet new women, and Daniel could talk about cultural differences until the cows came home, getting married to a woman you'd barely exchanged a word with, couldn't in fact exchange a word with, because you didn't speak the same damned language, was not a sensible way to carry on...But that didn't alter the fact they'd loved one another or that Daniel had lost all his daydreams of his future as well as Sha're herself when Teal'c had killed Amaunet to save his life.
Daniel was angry with him because he hadn't kept his promise. He hadn't got Sha're back. But more than that Daniel was angry with him because he didn't think O'Neill thought it was such a terrible thing that he'd lost Sha're because it had never been a proper marriage anyway. He thought Daniel would go off with anyone who looked at him twice and because Daniel's track record on that score wasn't too impressive Daniel was probably particularly sensitive on the subject.
He still remembered that so-called book SG-3 had been running on his team, with the 'Things that will never happen on SG-1' section including 'The Jaffa gets laid by anyone, ever...Major Carter gets laid by anyone, ever...O'Neill gets laid by anyone, ever...Jackson actually says 'no' to a woman who wants to jump him...' He still wasn't sure which of them should be the most offended by those categories because there had been a grain of truth in all of them, but he thought Daniel's had probably stung the most.
He'd gone into the SGC the next day absolutely determined that however difficult Daniel was, all he was going to show him was patience and understanding. Then as he'd walked into the room and seen Daniel standing there looking so lost, he'd realized it wasn't patience and understanding Daniel needed, it was respect for his dead wife, respect for their relationship, and some affirmation for himself.
That was the terrible thing about giving Daniel what he wanted. It felt so good it was positively addictive.
And you couldn't be best friends with a guy for three years and not get pretty good at knowing what he wanted. So he'd known Daniel didn't want to be alone that night. He'd known he needed to talk about Kira, and about Sha're, and he'd known that he would prefer not to be sober.
The wheel had turned full circle. He was back to being in the SGC with a Daniel who needed him because he'd lost the woman he loved and didn't know what the hell he was going to do with himself without her. So he'd done the same thing he'd done before, he'd taken Daniel home with him and got him drunk.
But in the intervening three years something had changed between them and he hadn't even realized it until it was too late. Had only known when it was too late the safety barrier was gone that made it okay for him to get Daniel drunk when he was at his most emotionally vulnerable, and when O'Neill was feeling so protective of him that it hurt...
Still remembering that warm skin against his mouth, that soap scent, the softness of short brown hair, the taste of bare flesh, O'Neill groaned and opened his eyes.
To find Daniel standing in front of him. "Jack...?"
O'Neill started. "What?"
"I didn't want to wake you."
"I wasn't asleep."
"Yusafin says you shouldn't stay out here. It's too hot. He's having refreshment sent to your room. We can talk there."
O'Neill gritted his teeth. Yusafin did stuff like this a lot. Gave orders. Daniel didn't see it like that. Neither did Carter and Teal'c. They said he was just being a good host. If Daniel told him one more time how important the concept of hospitality was to someone from an Arabic culture...
"Talk?" He got to his feet and brushed off his seat, deliberately not looking at Daniel as he did so.
"I've learned a few things."
*I bet you have.*
"What?"
Daniel looked so shocked O'Neill wondered if he'd said it aloud. He put a hand up to his head and forced a smile. "Yusafin might have a point."
"You okay?" Daniel reached out to touch him and then stopped himself.
O'Neill felt the lack of contact like a burn upon his skin. He thought of Yusafin resting his hand on Daniel's shoulder while he was showing him around that old harem place, the way Daniel had been so comfortable with the contact he hadn't even noticed.
But of course Daniel couldn't touch him because Daniel was the one with the unrequited crush. And O'Neill was the one with the gut-eating jealousy. Christ, what a mess. How the hell had he ever let things get to this point? He'd been so busy worrying about the fact he cared whether Carter lived or died, and what do you know, she was a pretty woman and he'd noticed, that he'd totally failed to avert him and Daniel getting on this road to nowhere in their friendship.
Sitting in the silk-draped cool of the insanely luxurious suite Yusafin had allocated him, O'Neill tried again, as he had tried every morning since the day of their first arrival, not to give in to his baser self. The trouble was his baser self had been getting the upper hand a lot frequently and his better self was obviously still recovering on the ropes from the last bout.
It was no good. Looking at Daniel he found himself once again trying to work out whether or not Daniel looked like someone who'd had sex recently.
He looked well and happy. No shadows under his eyes. Wasn't too thin. Even had a bit of color for a change. Because he was getting eight hours sleep every night in his luxurious suite of rooms across the hall, or because he was getting something else entirely?
Half a dozen of the silent barefoot servants entered the chamber, bringing jugs of wine, bread, dates, olives, cheese, dried meat, sticky sweetmeats, and various fruits O'Neill had not yet been able to identify.
Daniel smiled and nodded as they departed as silently as they had come. "Khay'ly Mo'teh'shak'er'am."
"They understand 'thank you'." O'Neill wished he sounded a little less pissy but he couldn't seem to help himself at the moment.
Daniel took an olive and glanced at him as he chewed it. "I know. I just think it's only fair to try to meet them halfway. Here." He pushed the bread across so O'Neill could reach it. "Did Sam and Teal'c check in okay?"
O'Neill nodded. "Yes. Two hours to the next call in. Did you learn anything new?"
"Yes. It's fascinating. I think this is the first civilization we've encountered which is the result of different Goa'uld bringing through different races from different eras as their individual power waxed and waned. I think the first race was brought through by Cronos and were of Dorian Greek origin. The next group seem to have been Nabataeans taken from Petra by a Goa'uld calling himself Dushara, who Teal'c hadn't heard of when I checked in with him last night, but he does know of a System Lord calling himself Marduk, who was the chief god of the Babylonians, and I think Dushara or Dusares was the Nabataean equivalent of Marduk so..."
O'Neill watched Daniel's mouth moving as he simultaneously talked and chewed. He had tasted those lips. They had been soft, warm, and yielding. He and Daniel hadn't spoken. He'd only leant forward to say goodnight, Daniel sitting on the sofa, O'Neill standing up but swaying a little because he had drunk too much himself as he tried to ease Daniel towards a peaceful oblivion, to dreams that wouldn't be of Sha're, or of Kira. At the thought of Kira something had sparked inside him, a small insanity. In the soft glow of the lamplight as he'd leant down to murmur something flippant about sweet dreams and bed bugs not biting, he'd found himself stroking the back of his finger down the side of Daniel's face. Everything had slowed down. Daniel had frozen, eyes so huge a man could drown in them, lips parting in shock and involuntary invitation. O'Neill had kissed him before he'd known he had any intention of doing such a thing. Daniel's mouth had opened and he'd found himself with his fingers touching the side of Daniel's face, his mouth brushing Daniel's.
That was the point when he should have come to his senses. The shock of those warm yielding lips should have alerted him to what he was doing, but they'd just sparked a hunger he hadn't known he had until then. He'd kissed harder, longing spiking through him from that kiss to make every nerve ending in his body tingle.
Daniel had reverberated faintly, like a tambourine an hour after it had been shaken, trembling with surprise and anticipation. His mouth had opened wider as his eyes closed, tense with wanting but full of trust. The desire had spiked only seconds after O'Neill's had ignited; flame sparking flame, Daniel sucking on O'Neill's tongue with a sudden fierce hunger that made O'Neill respond with interest.
But then Daniel had been drunk, still rebounding from the shock of losing his wife, had just finished telling O'Neill how despite everything, having sex with Kira had woken hormones he'd almost forgotten he had...Having it confirmed Daniel had slept with Kira had probably been the trigger. O'Neill had got too used to Daniel being his by default. But hadn't even known that was how he thought of him until someone else came and stepped onto his turf. And yes, he'd always known Sha're had first claim, but he was next in line. Daniel was his friend. It was his job to keep him safe. Noticing Daniel was attractive was just another way of working to keep him safe. It was a vulnerability of Daniel's which, as a good CO, he needed to be aware of. It didn't mean...
Except apparently it did. Because he hadn't kissed Daniel and then come to his senses. He'd kissed Daniel and then kissed him again. Deeper. Harder. More insistently. Fingers furrowing his hair, tongue wrapping itself around Daniel's, breathing harsh with wanting. God he'd wanted him. Jealousy. Whiskey. Insanity. Whatever combination of the three, but he had wanted him so much he'd started kissing him everywhere, finding that bare patch of skin behind his lobeless ear, his eyelid, his cheekbone, his jaw, his throat...
"... and then the last group of people were brought through by Ahura Mazdah, including the ancestors of Yusafin, who after an initial battle with the previous inhabitants became the ruling elite..."
O'Neill thought of those various Goa'uld all staking their claim to this territory by tossing their chosen slaves through the 'gate to live or die as they could on this world. "Sweet."
"I know." Daniel looked at him and O'Neill saw that Daniel did know too.
"So these people haven't had any trouble with the Goa'uld for...?"
"Centuries." Daniel took a piece of bread. "But their culture is fascinating. They've maintained a lot of Greek traditions while..."
Well he wasn't an anthropologist, but he knew what 'Greek traditions' said to him. He let Daniel burble on while looking at him covertly. Would Yusafin have resisted making a play for Daniel? No. Of course he wouldn't. After all, he hadn't, had he?
It had all been his fault too. Daniel had never thought of him like that, not consciously, until he had unlocked those doors. He was the one who had persuaded Daniel to make that transition from loving him as a friend to being in love with him. And, yes, looking back, it must have been dormant there, just waiting to be awoken, but he'd awoken it. Daniel hadn't known how much he wanted his best friend to kiss him until O'Neill had done it. Then Daniel had realized he wanted it more than almost anything in the world.
Christ, he'd made him so happy. O'Neill had woken up in a tangle of sheets, that hangover spearing his brain, groaning with confusion, and looked across to find Daniel watching him with the most serene expression on his face. For the first time in...far longer than he wanted to think about, Daniel had looked completely contented. He remembered something twisting in his guts as he gazed at him. Caring about him so much it hurt; feeling ten feet tall because he'd managed to banish that haunted look from his eyes. Then realization had kicked in. Who he was. What they'd done. All the reasons why they shouldn't have done it. He'd reached out to touch his face, saying hoarsely, "You know we can't do this again."
There had been no hesitation before that nod. "I know."
"The Air Force would..."
"I know, Jack." Daniel had rolled over to lie on his back, that irresistible little smile playing on his lips. "I know it was once-in- a-lifetime thing. It's okay."
He realized Daniel must have been thinking about it for a few hours while he'd been sleeping. Working his way through it. Daniel didn't tend to expect a lot from life these days. He'd used to be full of hope and enthusiasm and had probably believed in happy endings. Now he still believed in the triumph of the human spirit and that there was good in everyone except the Goa'uld; that principles were worth fighting for and sometimes worth dying for. But he didn't expect to be happy. So he did seem to be contented to settle for one night of love and sex and damnit, there had been a lot of passion there from both of them, and then go back to doing without, as long as the love was still there, the friendship, the knowledge that Jack would always be there if he needed him. Back then it had probably seemed inconceivable to either of them there would ever be a time when Jack wouldn't be there when Daniel needed him.
O'Neill had reached out to touch him on the face, the thought of hurting Daniel hurting worse than any wound he'd ever suffered. "Is it?"
The smile Daniel had given him had been very sweet and very sure. "Yes, Jack. It really is okay."
And it had been. Because knowing they couldn't do it again hadn't taken away the post-orgasmic glow from the fact they'd done it once. And done it so damned well too. Not the sex, which hadn't been what O'Neill thought of as the full monty anyway. He'd kissed Daniel, Daniel had kissed him back with an urgency that had taken them both by surprise. They'd dragged one another to the bedroom, pulling at each other's clothes as they did so; kissed and touched and tumbled in O'Neill's double bed, then rubbed up against one another like overheated schoolboys, hot, and urgent, and needing this like oxygen. The transition from being friends to being lovers had been frighteningly easy, a gear they'd moved up. He'd looked across at Daniel and grinned and Daniel had grinned right back because they had this now; come hell, high water, or anything else life could throw at them, they knew they loved one another as more than friends, wanted one another, even if they couldn't be together. And in the meantime they had something secret, and special, that was just for them. It had been their armor against the world.
It was there in the way Daniel curled up against him in Netu. An extra level of trust, of comfort; for the first time in their relationship feeling physically relaxed and at ease with one another. It had added an edge to his fear of what might be done to Daniel in that place, but it had also made him see Daniel as an equal, for perhaps the first time. Daniel might still be someone under his protection, but Daniel was also a take charge grown up, who was adult enough to know his own erogenous zones and find a few of O'Neill's for him as well.
He guessed that had been the honeymoon period.
"Jack...?"
O'Neill started as he realized he'd been sitting with a piece of bread in his hands, not listening to a word Daniel said for far too long now. He blinked. "Sorry."
Daniel raised his eyebrows. "Was I boring you by any chance?"
O'Neill put the bread in his mouth. "What was your first clue?"
Daniel reached across for a handful of fruit. "Well the yawning and glazed expression were something of a giveaway."
"You were saying these people had kept some Greek...practices." He darted Daniel a searching glance as he did so.
Daniel shrugged. "About an hour ago, yes."
O'Neill shrugged back. "I guess time really does fly when you're having fun."
Daniel moved to sit cross-legged, surprisingly graceful in repose, and O'Neill found himself gazing at the angle of his ankle, the arch of his foot. He remembered giving him a foot massage, Daniel saying 'Oh boy that feels so good.' Becoming one-night lovers might not have led to a sex life for them, but it had led to a hundred little intimacies; led to Daniel finally being relaxed at his touch. He had told himself the sex was an aberration and they were still just friends, but being more than friends had made their friendship even better than it had been before. He hadn't thought about having sex with Daniel, oddly enough. Not during daylight hours anyway although in the lonely heat of the bedroom he'd sometimes found his mind straying pleasurably. And he didn't think Daniel had thought about having sex with him either. It was just knowing that the other one desired them and cared for them that extra bit more which gave the warm glow, the added layer to the friendship...
But it hadn't been like this, a thousand prickles of irritation running across his skin, like being beaten with nettles. He didn't even know if it was sexual. It was more like being constantly late for an appointment. Like being stuck across the wrong side of town when he had to be somewhere else by a certain hour and knowing he wasn't going to make it.
"Do you have a headache?"
O'Neill opened his mouth to refute it and then realized Daniel was right. He did have a headache. "Yes, a little." He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing across at Daniel as he did so.
"Here."
He'd been hoping for the offer of a massage so those two Tylenol sitting on Daniel's palm weren't much of a substitute. Grimacing, O'Neill took them. "Thanks."
Daniel handed him the wine jug. "You don't look so good. Perhaps you should get some sleep."
"What are you going to be doing?"
Daniel got to his feet. "Yusafin can tell me some more about their culture."
He waited until Daniel was at the door before saying it. "About their Greek practices?"
With his hand on the door, Daniel paused and looked at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"
O'Neill shrugged. "Nothing."
"No, I don't understand. Are you...?"
"I was just trying to make conversation."
Still looking nonplussed and a little concerned for him, Daniel backed out of the room. "Okay. Get some sleep, Jack. I'll come get you in time for dinner."
Daniel closed the door behind himself very gently but there was still a terrible finality about that final click of the latch. O'Neill closed his eyes and laid back on the bed. How the hell had it come to this?
Even now he wasn't sure when it had started to unravel. He always blamed Edora and NID. They were safe enough. He'd been away for three months and had sex with someone else, then he'd come back to the Maybourne-created mess he was supposed to solve, had to lie to Daniel to protect him, and Daniel hadn't taken it well. He'd resented Daniel's resentment. Before they could patch things up, Daniel had disappeared, and from his perspective apparently O'Neill hadn't seemed too bothered about him. He hadn't noticed O'Neill trying to get out of bed when he was too sick with radiation poisoning to stand. He'd believed what O'Neill had said to Carter, about not feeling Daniel's presence, about going home for the night. He hadn't realized he was lying, or apparently taken in the fact that he *hadn't* gone home. That he'd stayed at the SGC Daniel had been haunting like a ghost. No, what Daniel remembered was that Teal'c had come back for him. That Teal'c had got up off his sick bed and collected the skull even though he thought that touching it might banish him to where Daniel was or even kill him. And, of course, if Teal'c hadn't come back for him, Daniel would never have got 'home'.
That was when O'Neill had started wondering what would have happened if Teal'c had gone home with Daniel that night after the business with Kira. If Teal'c had been the one to reach across and kiss him. If Daniel would have responded the same way. Daniel and Teal'c had got very close while O'Neill had been away on Edora apparently. Teal'c had taken Daniel's side over the NID business. Makepeace had said those two were like glue, that Teal'c hovered over Daniel protectively, giving Daniel the back up to be as much of a pain in the ass as he wanted. He'd never done that. Teal'c tended to back Daniel up come what may; even if Daniel was wrong, Teal'c still supported him out of a mixture of guilt and loyalty. At least that was how it seemed to O'Neill. Teal'c would take any amount of crap from Daniel because Teal'c had killed Daniel's wife but Daniel forgave him. O'Neill wouldn't take any amount of crap from Daniel. O'Neill thought Daniel could be wrong. O'Neill argued with him.
After Makepeace had told him how close those two were he'd found himself watching them and wondering. Yes, they were close. Surprisingly so, given their history. He'd started to feel a little resentful. Had Daniel consoled himself with Teal'c while O'Neill was away? Was he consoling himself with Teal'c now? They were the only ones who could have a relationship that wasn't against the regulations. There was no chain of command problem; neither of them were military, and Teal'c came from a culture where swinging both ways was apparently commonplace.
He'd started to withdraw because if it turned out that Daniel and Teal'c were in a relationship it was just going to hurt too damned much. Better to put some distance between himself and that possible pain by putting some distance between himself and Daniel. Daniel's appendix going into meltdown hadn't helped. He didn't ever want to be that scared of losing someone he loved that much again. He didn't want to love Daniel. He'd panicked. Withdrawn. Looked around for some other problem to solve. Carter was safe. The regulations were clear to both of them. There had always been an attraction and they had come to care for one another far more than was acceptable in a normal Air Force unit. He would just ignore the fact he cared this much for Teal'c and Daniel as well. This was a solvable problem. It was expected. Part of what being an officer was about. There were regulations in place to deal with it. Regulations they both understood and would abide by. The fact it was a heterosexual problem had probably made it that much more acceptable to his subconscious as well. He had replaced a problem he couldn't solve and which was so strange and unfamiliar it frightened him with one that was easily solvable and even more easily recognizable.
He had also closed Daniel out of his life and hurt his feelings so much Daniel had started running off with other teams every chance he had.
He had told himself that was a good thing. They'd done something quick and meaningless, a mistake, but Daniel had fallen in love with him. Or let himself think that he had fallen in love with him. O'Neill decided to regard it as a schoolboy crush; the same kind of hero worship Carter had suffered from in the early days; something that needed to be nipped in the bud. Except, of course, he was the one who had initiated sex between them. And he was the one who could still feel that crackling potential energy between them whenever they were alone together. Heat undiminished. One touch and they might both be consumed by it. One ill chosen word and Daniel would be in his arms. He couldn't rely on Daniel to turn him down. They'd been able to flirt before. So subtle no outsider would see it; but a sense of pleasurable anticipation enhancing every moment they spent together; a quiet fire that would never flare again but which burned very pleasantly in both their memories. He'd thought the flame had fizzled out completely, but it had turned out to be only gathering fuel. When it began to burn again, the heat was painful. This time there was no pleasurable anticipation of sex they both knew they were never going to have again; there was just the sear of wanting, constantly desiring something lost to him forever.
Perhaps it was no wonder his temper had become a little short.
O'Neill closed his eyes. He slept. He dreamt of nothing to wake with the taste of ash in his mouth and Daniel's voice in his ears.
"Jack...?"
He opened his eyes. "Daniel." He tried to keep the name non-committal.
Daniel's smile was sweet. He was forgiven. That hurt too. Daniel had moved on enough to forgive him. It was just part of their friendship now. O'Neill had seduced him once. Betrayed him once. Shunned him once. Daniel had probably done some math by which he deserved it. Perhaps he thought they were even now. However Daniel had done the arithmetic, he'd clearly come to a figure he could live with. O'Neill was his friend. He forgave him. They would never be lovers again, although Daniel still loved him. But the burn was gone.
"It's dinner time."
"All I do here is sleep and eat." O'Neill sat up and ran a hand through his hair, darting a sideways glance at Daniel, trying to see if they could still make it flare between them, that fiery connection.
Daniel was looking at the pictures on the walls behind him and missed his glance. "Good practice for when you retire." He said it absently, clearly intent on translating something. "Sam and I have picked out a nice home in Florida."
"Screw that." O'Neill got to his feet and dusted himself off. "I'm retiring to Minnesota."
"Too cold." Daniel was still gazing at the walls. "You'll get arthritis."
"I already have arthritis."
"I think that might be a depiction of Marduk."
Daniel wasn't even listening to him. O'Neill shook his head. "Take the old man to the food."
Daniel gave him a fleeting smile over his shoulder. "You're not so old."
O'Neill took a chance, holding out his hands. "So? Still in pretty good shape?"
Daniel glanced at him over his shoulder before he opened the door. "Not bad."
And just for a second it was there again, that spark of mutual attraction, then Daniel was out of the door and out of sight. Out of reach. O'Neill headed after him, a part of him wondering what would happen if he caught up with him by the terrace, spun him around and kissed him in the velvet darkness of the rose-scented evening, but Daniel was moving fast and by the time he had matched his stride they were entering the dining room.
"Shab Beh'khayr, O'Neill." Yusafin inclined his head in greeting.
O'Neill grimaced. "Evening."
As always they ate cross-legged on the floor, Daniel so much more supple than O'Neill, happy to be barefoot, to eat with his fingers, at home here as he was at home everywhere. Yusafin sat at the head of the table with O'Neill on his right and Daniel on his left. O'Neill was treated with greater deference than Daniel. He was the senior member of SG-1, the leader, the warrior, and Yusafin was punctilious about making sure he was afforded every courtesy.
This meal was no different. O'Neill was offered everything before Daniel, not that Daniel minded. Daniel accepted the practices of the culture he was absorbing. Maybe that was the only way they were ever going to have sex again: if they found themselves stuck on a planet where it was traditional for the older warrior to take the younger scholar as a...Some kind of initiation ceremony...What the fuck was he thinking? Once it had been just a matter of leaning across and resting his hand against the side of Daniel's face, then feeling those warm lips yield to his. Now he was planning to make the Stargate program pimp for him?
This was his fault. He'd done this to them. Convinced himself loving Daniel wasn't what he wanted; wasn't who he was; not like that; love him as a friend, yes; protect him as a civilian, yes; but not that double burn combined; not fall in love and passion and unstoppable desire with his best friend; someone who might be taken from him by a staff weapon blast or a ribbon device flare or a malfunctioning appendix.
"You really should try some of this, Jack. It's wonderful." Daniel licked his fingers as he spoke; leaning across to offer O'Neill the bowl he'd refused with a shake of the head earlier.
O'Neill looked at the doughy looking fritters without enthusiasm. Daniel gave him an encouraging smile before turning to Yusafin. "So, the pictures in the East Chamber actually date from..."
Every meal was like this. Daniel and Yusafin trying to make him feel included in what was basically a tte tte. Meanwhile, he would sit here, uncomfortable on these damned throw pillows, mentally playing A Hundred and One Ways To Kill Yusafin. He'd never really thought of himself as the jealous type but right now he had to admit, if only in the privacy of his own head, that he was jealous as *hell*. He was jealous of the way Daniel had that light in his eyes when Yusafin explained something to him; of how connected they seemed to be; of the way Yusafin and Daniel already had their own private jokes; of how Yusafin would sit there so damned calm and so damned handsome, watching Daniel, aware of Daniel, completely unpossessive in the way people were when they were absolutely sure that something belonged to them.
It would have been a relief when the meal was over except that what came after the meal was worse. They would drink wine, with him trying to spin things out for as long as possible, but eventually the moment would come when Daniel would yawn and say that he was going to have to turn in.
Daniel gave Yusafin an apologetic smile. "I can't keep my eyes open any longer."
Yusafin bowed his head gracefully. "Kho'dan Ha'fezin, Daniel."
"Kho'da Ha'fez," Daniel murmured, getting to his feet. He looked at O'Neill. "Are you coming?"
Just for a second O'Neill felt his heart do a handstand and then he met Daniel's gaze and saw not a hint of invitation there. Daniel hadn't even realized what he said could have been interpreted that way. O'Neill looked away, not wanting Daniel to see the disappointment in his eyes. He was getting bitter. He could feel it; a hardening of his soul. If he went on like this he would no longer be the man Daniel had fallen in love with. Perhaps he already wasn't. He got to his feet and nodded to Yusafin. "Good Night."
Yusafin inclined his head. "Good Night, O'Neill."
O'Neill followed Daniel to the corridor where their chambers were situated; their separate chambers. Daniel was distracted by the tapestries, tilting his head to look at them better.
As they reached Daniel's room, O'Neill had to fight an insane impulse to take him in his arms and kiss him. He kept swinging between being brusque to hide his yearnings and having gentleness tricked from him by how much he cared about this man.
Daniel gave him an absent smile. "Night, Jack. Sweet dreams."
O'Neill reached out and touched his shoulder. "Night, Daniel." He squeezed his shoulder gently, reluctant to break that contact, slight as it was, but very aware of Daniel's body heat beneath his fingers.
Daniel gazed up at him and just for a second O'Neill thought he saw the same yearning in Daniel's eyes he felt inside, a ghostly shadow of wanting brush across Daniel's face. Daniel said softly. "Sleep well."
O'Neill removed his hand with a sigh. "Sweet dreams."
When Daniel went into his room and closed the door, O'Neill realized he had missed a moment that would never come again. He should have asked to go in, said he needed to talk to him about something, shared a drink in there, at night, with Daniel. Except...Except it wasn't enough to seduce Daniel this time. Even supposing Daniel would let him do that to him twice. Wanting him wasn't enough. Caring for him wasn't enough. He had wanted him before; cared about him all the time; even when he wanted to hit him, he cared about him, the way you did with a relative. The way you did with someone you loved.
If he ever got naked with intent with Daniel again he needed to see it through. Emotional commitment. Hiding a relationship that would make him vulnerable to NID; that would make him seem weaker to men who had previously respected him; that would make him seem like someone so busy thinking with his dick, he forgot about the regulations. It had been easy for him and Carter to decide there was no way either one of them wanted to go down that road. But with Daniel it wasn't easy. With Daniel nothing was ever easy.
*~*
He supposed he should be glad they were going back the next day because at least that meant he would never have to spend another night like this.
The walls were too thick to hear clearly. There were too many whispers of sound, none of them properly distinguishable. So, every night he didn't know if that was the door opening, the door closing, the sound of feet padding across the floor to the silk covered mattress on which Daniel would be lying. He didn't know if that was a whispered greeting he heard; or only Daniel murmuring in his sleep; or nothing more than his imagination.
But when he closed his eyes what he saw was Yusafin walking across the room and Daniel lying there silently, the sheet covering his waist but his chest bare, just the way he had looked in Jack's bed, his gaze fixed unwaveringly on Yusafin's face. He imagined Yusafin as the kind to stoop and press a kiss onto Daniel's forehead before he put his hands to Daniel's face and held him still for another kiss that was hot and sweet and tender.
He saw Daniel's fingers disappearing into that thick black hair as he returned the kiss with interest. Eyes closing as he gave himself up to that moment, that sensation, that other man. Yusafin kissing his cheekbone, jaw, a trail down his neck, licking the curve of his collarbone before beginning a slow sweet exploration of Daniel's naked body. Those broad shoulders, that smooth chest, those nubs that could be tongued to aching hardness while Daniel arched his back in response. Yusafin kissing lower, a tantalizing trail across heated skin. Daniel sighing with satisfaction as he was touched and kissed and nibbled, relaxing into the pleasure of feeling another's warm lips and fingers caressing his body after the months and months of nothingness, barely a pat on the shoulder, not even a ruffle of the hair, deprived of touch, of kindness, of affection...
O'Neill groaned aloud, rolling over in the bed.
I never meant it like that, Daniel. I never stopped caring about you. I just never stopped wanting you either, and how the hell can we get through this...?
Perhaps this was how Daniel was getting through it. Perhaps this was how Daniel was getting through it this minute. Perhaps Yusafin was in there with him and Daniel was letting him massage warm oil into his skin, letting him explore every inch of that perfect body. No confused and clumsy fumble in the darkness from Yusafin; whiskey-slurred words, uncertain fingers, and passion flaring out of nowhere like a match dropped on spilled gasoline neither one of them knew was there. No, Yusafin would be confident and practiced. Daniel would be as seduced by his certainty as much as his attraction.
O'Neill closed his eyes again and saw Yuasfin's fingers cradling the side of Daniel's face, kissing him harder now, tongue thrusting into his mouth, eliciting the response he wanted. Daniel opening his legs for him, sweat sheening his skin; the fingers of Yusafin's right hand slick with unguent beginning an intimate exploration...
He had to stop doing this to himself. What the hell was the point in torturing himself with images of a younger better looking guy than him fucking Daniel in a way that he never had and now never would, and with more skill than he would be capable of if he practiced for a decade.
A sound from Daniel's room...
O'Neill jerked upright, heart beating too fast. God, no, not confirmation. Not something that was unmistakably a moan of pleasure. Not the inescapable proof that Daniel and Yusafin were making love in the perfumed darkness there.
He listened so hard he it was a wonder his ears didn't start bleeding. Suddenly he knew what it was like to be Othello. He hated Yusafin. Hated the well-mannered courteous host who had shown them every hospitality. He wanted to put a bullet in the guy's brain. He would falsify reports. Tell Hammond this place was dangerous. No one should ever come back here. Especially not Daniel. Daniel should never be allowed to come back here.
He grimaced as he listened to his own insanity. He would do none of it. Daniel would do what he wanted to do and O'Neill would abide by his decision. He would shake Yusafin's hand tomorrow when they left and he would tell Hammond the truth about how well the man had treated them. But the depths of his own anguish almost frightened him. He had always been afraid of losing control, tried not to show his emotions, tried not to give way to them either. He'd been trying so hard to hide his affection for Daniel in the past few months he almost seemed to have convinced both of them of his indifference.
There were no more sounds from Daniel's room. There had probably never been sounds. There had probably never been anything but Daniel dreaming, just the vague whisperings of the courtyard fountain, while the moon streamed in through the open window to bathe him in silver light. And what point was there in thinking how beautiful Daniel would look in the moonlight when he could never be O'Neill's to look upon?
O'Neill closed his eyes and didn't dream as he didn't sleep but stayed awake listening to some night bird calling, the breeze ruffling the fronds of the date palms, and the faint salt-flavored echo of the sea.
Daniel's voice was only slightly muffled by the hood of his coat. "Jack if you sing 'Walking in a Winter Wonderland' one more time, I am *going* to kill you."
O'Neill looked around in mock hurt. "You don't like my singing?"
Daniel gave him one of those looks O'Neill was sure he practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. "You sound like a duck being strangled."
O'Neill shrugged. "Everyone's a critic."
"Your singing is not tuneful, O'Neill."
O'Neill held out an arm to encompass the blinding whiteness of the landscape. "But isn't this great? Frostbite and hypothermia. All for a very modest pay check and with the prospect of imminent death thrown in on every mission. Could we have a better job?"
Carter gave him a sideways glance. "Not every planet can be a tropical paradise, sir."
"I noticed that."
Daniel said stubbornly, "The markings on that building were like the writing in the chamber on Ernest's World. As they weren't Asgard or Ancient, that means this was once a world inhabited by either the Furlings or another group of the Nox. If we could make contact with the Furlings..."
"If we could make contact with the Furlings, what?" O'Neill countered. "Ten gets you fifty they'll only tell us they have a policy of...limited benevolence, don't like interfering in the ways of humans, and then pat us on the head and send us home without so much as a candy bar."
"There are more important things than technology."
"Yes, I'll remind you of that the next time Apophis tries to blow up the entire planet and we don't have anything with which to stop him."
Daniel rolled his eyes. "If it's all the same to you I'd rather have the old Military versus Civilian argument in the warm when I have a drink inside me to dull the pain."
O'Neill remembered the kick of that Eurondan liquor, his conscience nagging at him like a bad tooth. He had always been less than nice to know when he wasn't happy with his own actions. He wasn't always a very pleasant drunk either. He looked across at Daniel but the younger man was peering at the doohickey Carter was showing him, trying to work out how long it would take them to reach the temple-place the UAV had spotted. Sometimes he'd really found it hard to understand why Sara had loved him. He was finding it even harder to believe that Daniel still did. Maybe a year ago, he had. But a year ago O'Neill had been a supportive friend who treated him decently, showed him consideration, listened to his opinion, cared about his feelings. Was that who O'Neill was these days? From Daniel's point of view maybe O'Neill was someone else entirely now. Someone he'd got over? Moved on from? Carter had been someone with a crush on him once, but she wasn't now. The scales had certainly fallen from her eyes with a vengeance. What if the same thing had happened with Daniel?
He looked around at the landscape. Everything snow-blanketed in all directions; the distant darkness of a forest; the blue-iced peaks of mountains beyond. And in the foreground this river, wide and fast, a black ribbon through the whiteness. According to the meteorological readings in which Carter was putting so much score, they had a ten hour window to get to the bridge, cross the river, find the temple, videotape the inscriptions, and then get back before the snow started up again. Apparently the weather was predictable here. Blizzard. Pause. Blizzard. Pause. Like an alien Alaska.
"This place is like Narnia."
They all turned to look at him then. Three blank expressions.
"You know...always winter but never Christmas?"
The blank expressions didn't flicker. He stared at them in disbelief then turned to Daniel. "You have heard of Narnia, right?"
Daniel frowned. "Was that P3X-219?"
Christ, hadn't his foster parents even read him 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe'? What kind of fuckawful childhood had Daniel had? As O'Neill's face reflected his horror, Daniel grinned suddenly. "Of course I have. Honestly, Jack, I know you think I have a few gaps but..."
O'Neill turned to find Carter and Teal'c smirking at him as well. Okay, maybe he tended to think of Carter as someone who had spent her childhood playing with her Junior Science Kit and Daniel as someone who never got his head out of a book on Egyptology, and Teal'c...well damnit Teal'c was an alien, he was entitled to assume he didn't get their cultural references!
"Yes, very funny." He strode ahead of them.
Daniel caught up with him in a few minutes, giving him one of those assessing looks, trying to work out how mad he was. "It was a joke," he offered. "You always act like we don't know anything normal people know."
"You don't know anything normal people know," O'Neill told him forcefully. "None of you are remotely normal and you never will be."
"Must be why we like you. Birds of a feather."
He darted a glance at him and saw the affection in Daniel's eyes. Mockery too, but the affection behind it undeniable. He almost said 'Why do you still like me after what I did to you?' but bit it down. Daniel was the one with the crush, right? He was the one keeping a reasonable distance between them to give Daniel time to work through it, get past it. He was doing this for Daniel's own good, because they couldn't stay on the same team if it was a problem and it was up to Daniel to stop it being a problem. He'd worked through his feelings for Carter -
*Which were a fuckin' sham and you know it.*
Shut up. No they weren't. She's a very attractive woman.
*Granted.*
I find her very attractive.
*Granted again. You'd have to be blind not to.*
I love her.
*Yes, you do. And she loves you. You also love Teal'c. And Daniel. As does Carter.*
I'd like to sleep with her.
*You *have* slept with Daniel.*
In a different universe I could fall in love with Carter.
*But this isn't a different universe. This is your universe. And in this universe Carter isn't the one you fell in love with.*
I'm not in love with Daniel!
*Really?*
I would never let myself fall in love with Daniel. It wouldn't be fair to him or to me. He's under my command, he's too emotionally dependent on me as an authority figure in his...
*Yadda, yadda, yadda. Are you buying any of this crap because I'm sure as hell not?*
Fuck off and die.
*You fucked Daniel.*
No, I didn't. That suggests...penetration. We just...rubbed up against each other a little. And anyway, I was drunk. It had been a bad day...
*You missed out 'My wife doesn't understand me...'*
He's my best friend. I love him, yes, but as a friend.
*Funny, Kawalsky was your friend but I don't seem to remember you rubbing up against him...*
It wasn't how you're saying it was!
*You seduced him then you dumped him, you piece of shit. How else was it?*
Mutual comfort. Between two consenting adults. No strings attached. No promises made. No promises broken.
*You could have comforted him with a few kind words but you chose to kiss him then screw him. You panicked and you ran away, you coward. You got too close and it scared you. Because life would be so much simpler if he was female, wouldn't it? You thought you were heterosexual and what do you know, it turns out you're not quite as heterosexual as you thought you were. Lying awake night after night fantasizing about your best friend doing it with other men being a bit of a clue. Not to mention getting drunk and kissing him then waking up with him in your bed...*
"Jack?"
He blinked from the blinding whiteness of the snow and turned to look at Daniel's concerned face. "What?"
"Are you okay?"
No, he was in misery every minute of every day because he couldn't have him, even though he could have him. It was because he could have Daniel that he couldn't bear to be close to him. Because he was terribly afraid that if he asked the question the answer Daniel gave him would be 'yes', and even more afraid that it might now be 'no', and he didn't know which one was more unbearable.
He forced a smile. "Fine."
Daniel looked at his watch. "Six hours before it starts snowing again."
O'Neill shrugged. "Let's hope your damned temple place is worth it."
*~*
O'Neill looked at the bridge and grimaced. It had looked more substantial on the readout from the UAV, but the weather had not been kind. It was made of some white metal, delicate and full of twirls and ornaments. As beautiful and about as durable as an ice sculpture.
Daniel also made a face. "Well, at least it's not a rope bridge." His words made a mist in the air and he had that bled white look he always got in cold weather. He was too much a child of the desert to thrive in these conditions and he was shivering but stubbornly determined.
O'Neill went to the edge and looked down. They had been climbing steadily all day and at times the river had been a hundred feet beneath them. He supposed he should be grateful it was only about twenty feet down in this particular spot. The fast flowing torrent of the lowlands was invisible under a sheet of ice here, but he had a more than sneaking suspicion that a hundred and eighty pounds of USAF colonel landing on it would crack it as effectively as a cannonball.
"We'd better do this one at a time. I'll go first."
As Daniel opened his mouth to protest, O'Neill forestalled him. "If it won't take my weight it sure as hell won't take Teal'c's."
"Exactly why I was going to suggest Sam and I go on alone and you and Teal'c wait here."
O'Neill looked Daniel up and down. Two inches shorter did add up to a few pounds lighter, he had to admit. And if Daniel had Carter with him he'd have a soldier on his six. And that damned bridge did look about as substantial as birthday cake frosting. He glanced across at Carter and noticed that her nose was red and she was looking a little translucent with the cold herself. It bothered him sometimes how alike Carter and Daniel were. He'd tried to kid himself he'd slept with Daniel because Carter was off limits but as Daniel was off limits himself that didn't really compute. And it was starting to seem more and more likely he had only convinced himself he had an illicit passion for Carter because he was in denial of his illicit passion for Daniel.
"Sir, I think Daniel's right." Fortunately oblivious of his thoughts, Carter nodded at the bridge. "It does look a little shaky but it seems a waste of time to come this far and not get a look at that temple. Daniel and I can be there and back in a couple of hours."
O'Neill looked down at the ice-covered river. "Great. Teal'c and I can practice our curling." He scratched his jaw. "Okay, but if a little old lady talks to you, no going back to look at her gingerbread cottage."
Carter and Daniel exchanged one of those long suffering glances he sometimes got a bellyful on missions. Carter made one of her 'You're perilously close to being ga-ga' faces while nodding. "Understood, sir."
"We'll be back in a - "
Daniel' sentence was drowned out by a mournful howl which rang out through the stillness.
It was answered in seconds by other howls, all sounding decidedly wolf- like, and all sounding decidedly hungry. He had a horrible feeling that was a scout for the pack just announcing that dinner was served.
Teal'c raised his staff weapon. "On Chulak that would not be a good sound."
"I'm guessing it's not too good here either. And no way in hell am I splitting the team when something which sounds that hungry is out there looking for the buffet." O'Neill looked at the fragile bridge, the pitiless white landscape, then made the mistake of meeting Daniel's eyes. Damn, but that boy had his puppy dog begging to go for a walk look perfected. "Okay, we go look at the damned temple, but we go together. And I go first."
As he stepped onto the bridge, O'Neill hoped that it wasn't obvious how tensed he was for the whole thing to collapse underneath him, or how warmed he felt inside from that look of gratitude Daniel had given him.
As he walked across the bridge he had to remind himself that he had never been able to refuse a begging look from Daniel, even back in the days when sleeping with him had been the last thing on his mind. If it was a danger to the integrity of the team, it had been a danger to the integrity of the team from Day One. In fact from before Day One. From the day he had falsified his report so Daniel could stay behind with the woman of his dreams. From long before the day he had let Daniel on his team despite the fact he had no military experience whatsoever and barely knew which end of a gun was up.
He could feel the metal creaking and groaning a protest with every step. It felt as though it was buckling and he had to keep looking straight ahead, making himself acknowledge that although it might quake and whimper beneath him, it was in fact taking his weight without collapsing under the strain.
It was definitely getting colder. He could feel himself getting brittle with it, skin raw, hair damp with coming snow. This damned temple had better be worth it.
He stepped off the bridge, turned around and beckoned to Daniel. "Okay, you next." Seeing Daniel grimace at the drop to the ice below, he added, "It's a piece of cake."
The groaning and creaking from the bridge was even worse this time. And it didn't seem to be just a token protest. It sounded more like...death throes. The structure was shivering with the impact of Daniel's steps, swaying ominously while its metal struts shrieked a protest. As the whole thing shuddered from another step, O'Neill realized that unstable as it had felt when he was walking across it, the bridge looked even worse to an onlooker. The whole structure was shivering like a mirage. No way in hell was it going to take Teal'c's weight. As the bridge swayed as though it was on ropes, he stepped forward, saying urgently, "Daniel, screw this. Turn around and go back."
Daniel flashed him a quick look and then just nodded. He turned around and began to walk back across the groaning structure without a word of argument.
*Fuck*, O'Neill thought. *He must be scared.*
He looked across at Carter and Teal'c's anxious faces, trying to ignore the sound of tortured metal squealing a protest with every pace Daniel took. O'Neill went to the edge and peered down at the struts holding it up. When he saw how badly the center one was bending, he hissed in anxiety. Trying to keep his voice calmer than he felt, he said, "Daniel. Run for it."
"What about you?" Daniel moved at the same steady pace, only the rigidity of his body language betraying how tense he was.
"I'll find another way."
"Sir, there is no other way," Carter called across. "According to the UAV there's no other bridge and the river is too deep to ford for at least twenty miles in all directions."
"If he doesn't run, he might not make it," O'Neill retorted.
"And if I do run I'll bring the bridge down and you'll be stranded," Daniel grabbed at the handrail as the bridge gave another terrifying lurch.
"Daniel, just get off the damned bridge! Now!"
As the words left his mouth, the center strut crumpled like tissue paper. It happened so fast O'Neill had only a blur of images and sounds: the shriek of metal, Carter's cry of warning, Teal'c throwing out a hand as though he could reach Daniel despite the ten feet still between them, the white metal twisting and buckling, Daniel being hurled over the handrail as the bridge collapsed underneath him. The sound of his desperate yell of Daniel's name was drowned out by the thunderous crash of the bridge smashing into the ice; the ice cracking like a rifle shot and Daniel sinking into the black water beneath the broken white surface.
"Oh my god, Daniel!"
"Daniel Jackson!"
He didn't waste breath shouting Daniel's name again, too busy ripping off his pack and dropping it as he sprinted along the river bank, trying to work out how to reach him as the water snatched Daniel up and dragged him down into its freezing depths.
*~*
As he ran he was aware of the snow piled high on the branches of the conifers, that as his bank dipped closer to the water's surface, so on the opposite bank it was climbing higher and higher, lifting Carter and Teal'c away from the river and their drowning teammate. The only person who could possibly get to Daniel was him, and even then it was going to need a miracle.
Daniel broke the surface again, tossed like a piece of driftwood, struggling and gasping; that was good, he was conscious again, but the weight of his sodden clothes kept pulling him under and the current was so fast, the water so paralyzingly cold. O'Neill caught a glimpse of Daniel's white shocked face, and then he was dragged under again. There were rapids beyond, a minifalls with rocks like dragon's teeth. O'Neill had noticed them on the way up, trying to assess the fishing. If Daniel went over there he would break his back for certain. They would never be able to get him home alive.
Carter and Teal'c's cries were fainter now. The terrain was taking them up higher and higher, Daniel would be a helpless black dot in the water to them. He could almost taste their despair, could feel them willing him to get there, to save Daniel, somehow, to find a way, however impossible it seemed, to get Daniel back, the way they always got each other back from the brink.
His chest was on fire, blowtorched from within by the heat of his laboring lungs then frost-seared by every breath he dragged in from the freezing air. He was aware of where Daniel was on the periphery of his vision, needed to know he was keeping pace with the river, but needed even more to find a way to reach him.
The tree leaning drunkenly out from the bank was the only possible chance and O'Neill threw himself at it, hauling himself up while conifer twigs clawed at his eyes, a blur of green momentarily interrupting the brightness, before he had crawled rapidly out onto the overhanging branch, wrapped his legs around it and let himself drop, arms outstretched to grab anything he could, fingers reaching desperately. As he did so, his P-90 slid off his shoulder and fell into the torrent. He didn't even care.
As he swung down, he saw a dark form bob out of the freezing torrent and grabbed.
Every muscle in his body screamed a protest at the pull of Daniel's sodden deadweight tearing at his arms. He couldn't do this. Christ, Teal'c would be hard pressed to do this. But he had to.
"Daniel...!" he hissed it at him breathlessly. He needed Daniel to wake up. He needed Daniel to help him. "Daniel...?" He had managed to grab hold of Daniel's jacket and was dragging him up by the scruff but the torrent was trying to tug the unconscious man back out of his grasp. Daniel wasn't moving and for all O'Neill knew he wasn't breathing either, he was just this waterlogged thing pulling O'Neill's arms out of their sockets.
"Daniel!" As his yell elicited no response, he looked around for inspiration. He wasn't physically strong enough to pull Daniel up and onto the branch he was hanging from, not without Daniel waking up and giving him some help. He looked at the upside down bank. About six feet away. If he got up enough momentum he could swing Daniel towards it, hope that enough of his body landed on the side, and that he could get back there before Daniel slithered back into the river. It was a less than ideal solution but he needed to get Daniel somewhere flat and dry and start performing CPR. Fast.
With every muscle in his body aching a protest, he tried to build up some momentum, finding it almost impossible to do so when anchored by a sodden deadweight of Daniel, but getting up enough of a pendulum swing to throw him in the direction of the bank. As he heard the soft thud of Daniel's body hitting the earth, he was already hauling himself up onto the branch and crawling along it at a speed a monkey could have envied. He reached land just as Daniel was sliding back into the water and grabbed desperately for the scruff of his neck again. More muscles yelled at him as he dragged Daniel out of the river and onto the bank, his body shaking from the aftermath of every muscle being stretched like elastic.
Daniel was bone white, limp as a dead fish, but not blue yet. Not going to be blue either because he wasn't going to lose him.
He pinched his nose closed and breathed into his mouth, looking to see Daniel's chest rise. Except it didn't.
"Shit!" O'Neill hastily turned him onto his side and thumped him between the shoulder blades. Thumping him again as nothing happened. Then Daniel's body convulsed as he retched up what looked like several pints of river water onto the bank.
"Daniel?" O'Neill checked for a pulse, fingers clumsy on his neck.
There was more retching and coughing, more water spewed onto the ground, but then he felt it, a faint flutter beneath his fingertips.
"Daniel!" He slapped his face lightly. "Daniel, wake up."
Daniel came back to consciousness coughing and gasping as he rolled onto his back. "Jack...?"
"I'm right here." O'Neill cupped his hand to Daniel's face, feeling the chill of his skin. "And you're going to be okay. But we have to get you warmed up." *Quickly*.
The crackle of the radio made Daniel start in confusion.
"Sir?"
He was hauling a disorientated Daniel to his feet as he answered. "Here, Carter. I've got him. He's breathing."
"Oh thank god. Is he okay?"
"He's going to get hypothermia if I don't get him out of these clothes."
"There are some caves in the forest above you, O'Neill." Teal'c's voice sounded calm on the surface but O'Neill caught the underlying tension there. Daniel had scared the hell out all of them this time.
"About six hundred feet up." Carter was clearly also trying to keep her voice steady with limited success.
For the first time he looked up and saw the rest of his team. Two lonely little figures stark against the high cliff the other side. There was a little hole in the rocks a few feet beneath them; a dark irregular shape in which a peregrine could be nesting. They were both looking at him through their field glasses. He waved.
"What happened?" Daniel looked around in confusion.
O'Neill hung onto his arm grimly. "The bridge collapsed. Come on."
"What bridge?"
"Never mind." He began to haul Daniel up into the forest. There was an animal track which made things a little easier, but the ground was steep and the lower branches of the conifers clawed at their faces. He touched the radio again. "Carter, you and Teal'c head back for the gate. Get a medical unit and an engineering team. Whatever you need to get some help to us across that river. I'm taking Daniel up to those caves."
"We'll be as quick as we can, sir. Over and out."
He could hear the raw tension in her voice and shared it himself. Cold water was a killer. That was one of the first things they taught you in a field unit. Never cross it unless you had to. Never wade or swim when the water was of a low temperature because it could kill you. The ice on that damned river had been an inch thick before the bridge had smashed through it.
O'Neill looked at his watch. "Five hours until the snow, right?"
"What snow?" Daniel was still gazing around at the forest as though he'd never seen it before. He was also shivering uncontrollably. "What happened, Jack?"
O'Neill darted a look at him. Daniel was stumbling, water dripping from him, his breath a pale mist in the darkness of the forest. The sky overhead was white and pitiless, a massed cloudbank of snow just waiting to be shed. He said conversationally, "The symptoms of hypothermia are irrational behavior, slowed responses, failure to respond to instructions and poor coordination. Which is going to make it a little tricky to spot in your case."
Daniel gave him a blank look. "Where are we going?"
"There are some caves up ahead." He tightened his grip on Daniel's arm and pulled him after him faster. Daniel was missing his footing with almost every other pace. Another fit of shivering reverberated through Daniel and into O'Neill. "We'll get a fire going. Get you warmed up."
Daniel stared around at the woods again. "Warm would be good." He tried to summon a smile but the way his teeth were chattering rather spoilt the effect.
O'Neill tried to keep the anxiety out of his face, forcing himself to sound calm. "Just hang in there, Daniel."
"I'm really cold."
"I know."
Daniel looked down at his clothes. "And wet."
O'Neill held up his arm to ward off the whip-thin conifer twigs trying to lash at his face, tugging Daniel down underneath the branch. "Falling into a river will do that."
"Can we rest?" Daniel looked longingly at the bare earth underneath a particularly impressive conifer. "If I could just sit down for - "
"No!" He hadn't meant to say it so sharply. "No resting, Daniel. Not until we reach the caves."
Daniel gave him his wounded puppy look. "But, Jack..."
He hauled him after him roughly, increasing their pace still further as fear made him brutal. "You rest, you die."
"Wow," Daniel muttered. "I know you get to punish people who disobey orders, but that seems kind of harsh."
O'Neill tried to smile but his face seemed to have forgotten the actions. When he looked up, the sky seemed lower, as if it had a ton of snow it was just waiting to drop down the back of their necks.
*~*
The journey definitely qualified as a nightmare. Daniel squelching, shivering and stumbling along beside him with barely any idea which way was up, getting more disorientated with every pace, while O'Neill felt the air getting colder and colder. It hurt to breathe in, like inhaling icicles but there was sweat trickling down his spine from the effort of hauling Daniel through steep uneven terrain. He tried to remind himself that Daniel's body would be throwing everything it had into maintaining his core temperature, while his mind persisted in reminding him of how bad an idea over-exertion was for anyone suffering from hypothermia. But this was like a textbook of bad ideas: plunge into freezing water aggravated by having to stay in wet clothes, plus exertion, plus wind chill factor as the coming snow was given an advance guard of freezing wind snaking through the trees to greet them.
Teal'c could have thrown Daniel over his shoulder and carried him but O'Neill couldn't. All he could do was grab a handful of Daniel's sodden jacket and haul him after him at twice the speed Daniel was fit to manage. He felt like a total bastard, and seeing those glimpses of Daniel's confused blue eyes as he looked at him, he guessed that was exactly how he seemed to Daniel as well. But he had to get him into the cave, get him dried off and warmed up, before the snow and the night began to fall. Otherwise Daniel was going to die.
"Look up." He tugged at him to get his attention, having to fight an urge to slap him on the face.
"What?" Daniel still had his head down, trudging wretchedly, every step squelching his sodden feet in his sodden boots.
"The caves Carter and Teal'c saw."
Daniel raised his head, blinking irritably until he focused on the dark mouth just visible through the trees. At least O'Neill hoped he could see it, but without his glasses on, perhaps that was just another shadow amongst a hundred other shadows.
Daniel said, "There were wolves."
"Yes." O'Neill darted a glance at him. "Lots of wolves."
"Do you think that's their cave?"
For a moment O'Neill's heart lurched and then he shook his head. "They were on the other side of the river."
"What about bears?"
"What about letting me worry about that?" O'Neill had already decided that he didn't care if there was a family of grizzlies in there; the cave was rightfully his and Daniel's for the night.
"You're not supposed to disturb them when they're hibernating."
He gave Daniel a look of exasperation and then realized Daniel wasn't trying to be annoying for once, he was just clinging on by his fingernails and automatically recycling what information he had relevant to the situation as a comfort impulse. O'Neill had a sudden vision of a dazed orphaned child holding onto a book on Egyptology and telling his foster parents a hundred useless facts about dead pharaohs to try to ward off the inescapable truth that his mother and father had died horribly right in front of him.
"You're not going to die, Daniel."
Daniel gave him a shocked look, teeth chattering, shivering violently. "No?"
"No." O'Neill couldn't have more emphatic about anything than the fact Daniel wasn't going to die.
"I lost my pack."
"I know."
"You don't have yours."
"No. I had to ditch it to catch up with you." If he hadn't, he would never have reached him in time, he knew that. But now he would have been very glad of the dry clothes nestling in the bottom of it. It couldn't be helped. A leader made split second decisions, right ones or wrong ones, and then lived with the consequences. He also circumvented the problems he'd created. "But we have our vests."
Daniel looked down at his vest as if he'd never seen it before. "How does that help?"
"Firelighters. Space blankets. It's enough." It had to be enough. He dragged some more icy air into his lungs, feeling the sweat prickling through his hair as they reached the plateau. The cave gaped at them, chill, black and unfriendly, but the air was dangerous with the scent of coming snow. O'Neill transferred his grip on Daniel's jacket to his left hand, and then hauled Daniel after him into the darkness.
*~*
He did what had to be done automatically. Helping Daniel out of his sodden jacket and t-shirt, then zipping Daniel into his own dry jacket and sitting him down in a corner. "Keep your pants on," he ordered. "And your boots. Stay awake."
Daniel looked at him in confusion and O'Neill winced at the bewildered look on his face. He was used to seeing Daniel's brain ticking over at three times normal speed. Now he looked like a guy who'd just had his first acid tab and was watching the pink elephants dancing.
"Trust me," he said.
Daniel kept his gaze fixed on O'Neill's face, nodding dumbly.
He gathered the firewood in a blur of panic, grabbing an armful of fallen branches and dead cones while the icy air seared his bare arms. He couldn't stay without his jacket for long without getting hypothermia himself. Nothing was dry; too much snow on the ground; but it was wood and it would burn. Even though he was back in the cave in record time, Daniel's eyes were closed. Swearing, O'Neill threw his armful of firewood onto the floor and threw himself across the cave to slap him lightly on the face. "Daniel! Wake up! And stay awake, damnit!"
Daniel opened his eyes just as O'Neill was committed to another slap of his face, flinching from the blow in confusion. He looked at O'Neill with shocked eyes. His expression said: You hit me. Why?
O'Neill held up a finger, trying to sound calm. "Stay awake."
He built the fire while trying to keep an eye on Daniel, yelling at him as his eyelids drooped. "Daniel!"
Daniel jerked back into wakefulness as another fit of shivering tore through him. "Where are we?" he asked dazedly.
"We're safe." O'Neill said it forcefully. Trying to convince both of them. "We're safe now."
"I'm so tired..."
He used a magnesium firestarter to get the kindling to light, encouraging it by blowing on it gently. Then pulled the emergency blanket from Daniel's vest and spread it out on the floor by the fire. Daniel's head was drooping again and he gave him a shake. "Come on, up. Out of those clothes."
Daniel stared at him in confusion. "You told me not to take them off."
"That's because even wet clothes are better than no clothes in sub-zero temperatures, but now I'm going to get you warm. Okay?"
Daniel nodded dazedly. "Okay."
He had to unlace Daniel's boots for him, the younger man's fingers too clumsy with the cold to work, even had the complicated action of undoing laces and buttons clearly not been totally beyond Daniel in his present hypothermic state. It seemed to take forever to get him out of his clothes - *It was a hell of a lot faster last time you wanted to get Daniel naked, eh, O'Neill?* He wondered what was with that sonofabitch leering voice in his subconscious. If he could have got in there and hit it with a lump hammer he would definitely have done so, because with his teammate and damnit, best friend, dying of the cold, cheap reminders about their one night stand were not what he needed to hear. But he did finally get Daniel where he needed him to be if there was any hope of saving him, naked between two space blankets with O'Neill's jacket as a pillow to cushion what might well be a complicating concussion.
There was just a moment's hesitation before he stripped off his own clothes. He was going to use his body heat to save Daniel's life. That was what this was about. Trying to get his internal heat back up to a temperature where Daniel would survive. He didn't know a better way than this. The fact he'd once been naked with this man under entirely different circumstances had nothing to do with the current situation. Swearing under his breath, O'Neill pulled off his briefs and tossed them onto the pile of his clothes by the fire. A second later, he was gingerly lowering himself onto Daniel's cold bare flesh and wrapping the second emergency blanket around them.
Oh god, it was like lying on an icicle. Daniel was so cold. Cold as porcelain in winter; cold as the dead. No, not the dead, because Daniel wasn't going to die. Not while Jack O'Neill had a breath left in his body with which to warm him. He cupped his left hand behind Daniel's neck, trying to thaw it, resting his forehead against the younger man's. He could feel his own cold limp groin resting against Daniel's, the chill of that frozen skin touching his. He worked his right leg between Daniel's thighs, rubbing the pit of Daniel's stomach with his right hand at the same time. Where else? Wrists. Small of back. Armpits. He'd have to warm him up piecemeal.
"Stay awake." He breathed it into the side of his face.
"Okay." Daniel focused on him for the first time in a while. "I'm cold." He sounded surprised by the realization.
"Do you know why?" Jack reached for his wrists and crossed them across Daniel's chest, rubbing his arms briskly as he did so.
"No." Daniel blinked in confusion. "Where are we?"
"We're safe." O'Neill said it with even more determination. "Carter and Teal'c have gone for help." He was going to forget about the night that was coming in. The night their briefing had stressed they needed to avoid at all costs because of the way the temperature plummeted like a dead bird falling from the sky. Forget about the blizzard scheduled to start in an hour's time. He rubbed Daniel's chest with his hand while rubbing his inner thigh against Daniel's to warm it, pulling Daniel's face in against his to try to warm his chilled cheek. Daniel was still so cold; like something deep-frozen.
When he closed his eyes he saw the bridge crumpling, Daniel falling, the ice cracking with the sound like a gunshot behind a bedroom door...
"Not this time..." He said it aloud as he rubbed feverishly at Daniel's stomach. "Not this time..."
*~*
Outside the cold was killing; the snow a relentless veil, turning the dark forest deadly white. In here they had created their own country, sheltering in a tent of space blanket. His socks had dried first and he'd put them on Daniel's feet, anchoring the upper blanket under Daniel's wool-clad heels. Daniel had whimpered with the relief of those warm socks covering his cold toes. The same way he had whimpered with the relief of being gradually thawed out by O'Neill's ministrations, pressing against O'Neill's body, blindly seeking the warmth and comfort he offered, like a day-old puppy instinctively knowing where safety lay.
Warming the small of his back was the weirdest. He was working his way through the key body parts to which he needed to apply warmth and it was the last one on his checklist. He found himself straddling a Daniel he'd just rolled onto his stomach. Pressing his face into the back of Daniel's neck, cursing that haircut for the first time, the exposure of that vulnerable skin. When he breathed on the back of Daniel's neck to warm it, Daniel giggled suddenly; an odd drunken little sound O'Neill hadn't heard since...Daniel giggled like a schoolboy. He'd forgotten that in the intervening months. A very young sound given the extremely adult nature of the situation in which he had last heard it. With his limp cock lying on the chilly curve of Daniel's disconcertingly rounded little ass, it was not a good time to remember Daniel giggling or squirming against him. How ticklish he was. The places he liked to be touched. Forbidden knowledge. Stuff he should never have known. Certainly stuff he had no right remembering now.
Cursing under his breath, he rubbed Daniel's back briskly. This wasn't a massage. This was nothing like a massage. Damnit.
*Oh god, Jack, right there...*
That had been then. This was now. That had been after sex relaxation with a lover. This was a life-saving technique performed upon a friend. Daniel's skin was so soft and smooth, the muscles hard under fine flawless skin, but so cold, so very cold to touch...
All the same it was a relief to turn him over onto his back before lying on top of him again; compromising as this position was, it didn't seem quite as salacious as the other one. The way Daniel burrowed back into his warmth made him blink back inexplicable tears. He had no idea where they'd come from, or why. But as Daniel sought his warmth, sighing with relief as he pressed his face into the curve of O'Neill's throat, the cold tip of Daniel's nose thawing on contact with O'Neill's skin, he found the tears coming, hot and salt and foolish.
"Jack..."
He hadn't realized he was drifting off until Daniel whispered his name.
O'Neill opened his eyes. "Daniel?"
For the first time it *was* Daniel, and not some befuddled hypothermia victim, who looked back at him red-haloed by the firelight. Daniel's somewhat bewildered but undoubtedly comprehending blue eyes.
"What's going on?"
O'Neill automatically checked Daniel's temperature again. He touched Daniel's stomach, then reached for his wrist, trying to ascertain how warm he felt. It was the ability to generate heat internally that had to be restored. For the first time it felt as if Daniel was putting out heat of his own rather than just absorbing O'Neill's.
Daniel gulped. "Um...why are we...? Why are you...?"
If they'd never had sex he could have joked about this being a particularly complicated seduction technique Teal'c had taught him, but under the circumstances it really didn't seem appropriate.
"You went into the river. You had hypothermia."
Daniel continued to gaze up at him. "Oh."
O'Neill reached between Daniel's thighs. He'd kept his leg jammed in there for hours, trying to defrost that frozen skin and it seemed to be working. He pressed his palm against the inside of Daniel's right thigh and for the first time felt warm skin, blood vessels generating heat again, not just losing it. He felt up higher, reaching across to touch the inside of Daniel's other thigh.
Daniel made an incoherent sound and O'Neill looked at him. "What?"
"You're...um...oh god, sorry..."
O'Neill stared at him in non-comprehension. "For what?"
Then he felt something hard pressing against his stomach. He felt Daniel flush right down to his toes, saw the younger man close his eyes in embarrassment.
"Sorry," Daniel breathed. "It's just a...reflex."
"Don't worry about it." O'Neill tried to disguise how flattered he was. "Wish I had reflexes that good. Must be a youth thing."
Daniel opened his eyes to give him a rueful look. "Sorry."
"Actually, I'm the one who should apologize. I've got so used to warming you up, I sort of forgot you might have an opinion on the subject."
Daniel glanced down at himself in disgust. "I don't think it does have an opinion. Just a reaction."
"Well I'm going to take it as a sign that you're no longer suffering from hypothermia."
"I think that would be a given, yes."
O'Neill did have to admit it was both embarrassing and pleasant to find himself in this situation. Lying on top of a naked hypothermic Daniel who barely seemed to have any idea who or where he was to warm him, was one thing. Lying naked on top of a warm and responsive naked Daniel was...different.
"Thanks by the way." Daniel added.
O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "For...?"
"Saving my life, and...saving my life."
"That's what friends are for."
Daniel's erection was staying just as hot and insistent and O'Neill had to admit he really liked it that way. O'Neill's naked body was clearly something Daniel's naked body found arousing. O'Neill's warm hand on the inside of his thigh had been enough to make Daniel hard in a few seconds. That was pretty damned gratifying.
"No, really I owe you a big one."
O'Neill felt that erection pressing against his groin and his cock was starting to respond. Now that his gut terror of losing Daniel was fading, it was getting literally harder and harder not to be aware of all the places Daniel's naked skin was touching his naked skin.
"Well that definitely feels like a big one to me."
He couldn't believe he'd just said that aloud. He'd just meant to think it. He stared at Daniel in horror. "Sorry, I was just..."
Daniel's raised his eyebrows. "Um...thank you, I think." He scratched his jaw. "Well...this is embarrassing."
"It was fine when you were unconscious," O'Neill returned.
"I'll think boring thoughts. It's not you, I swear, it was just...a surprise."
O'Neill held his gaze. "Okay, now I'm hurt."
Daniel blinked in confusion. "What? Why?"
"You're saying if it had been Teal'c touching your inner thigh you'd have got a hard on?"
"I - " Daniel frowned at him. "I don't know."
"Well think about it. I want to know."
Daniel rolled his eyes. "Damnit, Jack. I wake up and find you lying naked on top of me feeling between my legs. It was a little difficult not to respond."
"So it was me you responded to?"
Daniel gave him a look of blistering reproach. "Jack..."
"I want to know, Daniel."
"What, so you can kick me off the team?"
A punch in the solar plexus would have hurt less. O'Neill stared at him dumbfounded. "Is that what you think?"
Daniel looked away, trying to keep his voice even. "I know it was a drunken mistake to you. I accept that. I know you don't actually find me...desirable, it was just a combination of factors that made you..."
O'Neill could hear his own heart slamming against his chest. Daniel's body was a smooth muscular warmth against his now. It was hard to believe they had ever been cold because their skin was burning now. "What factors do you think it was?" He was surprised his voice sounded so cool and controlled because cool and controlled was sure as hell the last thing he felt right now.
Daniel darted him another look of hurt annoyance, clearly feeling O'Neill was being a bastard making him spell it out like this. And now he knew what Daniel thought this was. A life lesson. O'Neill wanting Daniel to face up to the truth so they could both move on.
"Okay, fine, you want me to do this, I'll do it. You felt sorry for me. I'd just lost my wife. I was triggering your lame duck radar like crazy and you wanted to make me forget how miserable I was, a comfort impulse gone wrong. You were pissed off about Kira and there is a part of you that sees all of us as not just your responsibility but maybe even your property. You don't like to share us with the outside world. Kira had strayed onto your turf, you felt like re-establishing your property rights. And probably most of all, you hadn't been getting any in a *long* time so when I responded to your kiss your cock just told you there was some warm willing flesh around and not to worry about the name attached to it." Daniel moistened his lips, eyes hurt and defiant in equal measures. "Sound accurate to you?"
O'Neill looked at him for a long moment. "Yes, I'd say that was a pretty accurate assessment." He kept gazing into Daniel's eyes, seeing the flash of disbelieving pain in them that O'Neill had just said that to him, kept gazing, and gazing, made sure his next sentence was so clearly enunciated even Daniel couldn't miss it. "Oh except for the one little thing you missed out."
Daniel looked away first, turning his head away the same way he had on Euronda, clearly having to fight tears pricking at the back of his eyelids. His voice sounded muffled but recognizably bitter. "What's that? That you're *straight*?" He emphasized the word as though it was loathsome.
"No." O'Neill put his hand to Daniel's jaw, gently turning his head so Daniel had to meet his eyes, wanting him to see the truth of what he said. "You missed out the fact that I love you."
For a second shock flared in Daniel's eyes, an unbearable flicker of hope, and then he lowered his gaze, saying a little unsteadily. "I know you do, Jack, as a friend. You've been the best friend to me I've ever known, and I'm grateful for your friendship, I swear I am. I know you can't offer me more than that, and it really is okay, it's just that I need a little more time to..."
O'Neill didn't know if he was taking advantage of a wounded teammate or not here, but he couldn't think of a quicker way to get his point across. Still holding Daniel's face steady, he bent and kissed him, slowly and tenderly, on the mouth.
When Daniel didn't respond, he brushed his lips across Daniel's lightly, then fitted his mouth back to Daniel's, pressing a little harder against the soft warmth of his lips. When that still elicited no response, he pulled back and looked down.
Daniel was staring at him as if he was the Headless Horseman. O'Neill raised an enquiring eyebrow. "Daniel...?"
"Don't do this to me again." Daniel spoke rapidly. "I can't go through this again."
"I love you." O'Neill said it again. "Not just as a friend, and a teammate. I love you the way I loved Sara. It just...took me a while to admit that to myself."
Daniel still looked wary as a deer in headlights. "Jack, please. You don't know what it did to me last time. I thought I'd lost you when the ship fell into the sea. I waited so long for them to hook up the gate, and then when you came back through it, I found I'd lost you anyway. You looked at me and there was no warmth there."
"I was angry with myself."
"Well it sure felt a hell of a lot like you were angry with me."
"I know." He touched Daniel's face, needing to feel the warmth against his fingertips. "It was never your fault. None of this was your fault. It was mine every step of the way. But I do love you. If you don't believe anything else, believe that."
Daniel pressed his face against O'Neill's hand. "You didn't make me fall in love with you, Jack." He could feel Daniel's fear of the comfort he offered; the terrible seduction of it; a warmth that might be withdrawn at any moment. He stroked his thumb in a gentle circling motion on Daniel's cheekbone. Daniel licked his lips. "Actually, that's not true. You did make me fall in love with you. You bastard."
"Sorry." O'Neill bent his head to breathe in the scent of Daniel's hair. For a moment he was perplexed by the way it didn't smell of almonds, the way it usually did, and then remembered Daniel's total immersion in freezing river water. But he could remember the scent of it. The way Daniel's skin smelt, his hair smelt, the way his aftershave mingled with sweat when they were on missions, the unique combination of tastes, sensations, sounds and smells, that combined to form his sensory memories of this man. He knew him so minutely. Had known him so minutely for so long now. Knew him with such intensity; such buried hunger. Perhaps this wasn't True Love, but if not it was so close to it as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. He couldn't stop himself kissing the top of his head. "Daniel..." It was a different name now. Even seconds before, it had been the name of his best friend. Suddenly it was the name of the person he loved.
"What are you thinking?" Daniel whispered tentatively.
"Just feeling grateful your name isn't Melvin."
Daniel looked at him in confusion. "What?
O'Neill gazed into his eyes. "I'm grateful the person I love has a name as beautiful as he is. Okay? Mushy enough for you?"
Daniel looked at him from under his eyelashes. One of those unreadable specials. "You might want to work on your sweet talk."
"Agreed." He pressed his lips to Daniel's temple, closing his eyes as he did so. It was easier with his eyes closed. Then he was with the Daniel of his fantasies. The one he remembered from their drunken fumble in the bedroom; the one he had tortured himself imagining getting naked with Yusafin. That Daniel felt like this: soft and warm and yielding; smooth skin over hard muscle; the point of a hipbone, the unexpected jut of an erection hot and demanding against his belly. He felt Daniel inhale, a quick intake of breath, and that cock pressing against his thigh wasn't getting any softer. It was such a long time since anyone had wanted him as much as this. But if he opened his eyes he was going to be looking at his friend. The guy he drank beer with; watched hockey with. And that was going to be a little embarrassing.
"If we do this, everything's going to get...messy." But he kept kissing a trail down Daniel's face as he said it, feeling the way with his lips, cheekbone, the beginning of stubble, sideways a little to feel the edge of a lobeless ear, then down to his jaw.
"We'll get a cleaner." Daniel gave another little exhalation, back arching in response to O'Neill's kisses.
"You know the kind of messy, I mean." O'Neill opened his eyes and okay, this was definitely Daniel, but now Daniel's eyes were closed so it wasn't as if they were making eye contact. Daniel with his eyes closed was incredibly beautiful without being too disconcertingly obviously his best friend. He ran his fingers through Daniel's hair before holding his jaw steady to press his mouth against those soft warm lips he'd been dreaming about. This was okay. This was kissing Dream Daniel. Not too silly or as embarrassing as basically hitting on his male friend when sober. And this Daniel was being very responsive, was naked, and had a hard-on; three things his best friend definitely didn't usually tend to be when in his company.
Daniel opened his eyes. "I've never thought of you as a guy who was afraid to break the rules, Jack."
O'Neill gulped. This was Daniel. His friend Daniel. He was lying on top of Daniel kissing him. This was...weird. "I just think we...shouldn't rush things."
Daniel's skin was red-lit by the dwindling firelight, a burnished tone which suited him so much better than ice-cold blue. "We've known each other for five years. How is this rushing things?"
O'Neill looked down at the man lying underneath him and god he wanted him. Wanted Daniel, his naked fantasy lover. Wanted that guy he'd got drunk and slippery with. And okay, yes, he wanted the Daniel he worked with every day too. He was just more embarrassed about wanting that guy. There had always been things about their relationship which had rung a few warning bells. He'd occasionally listened to the two of them talking and realized how uncomfortably like an old married couple they sounded. But he'd told himself that was just because Daniel was non- military. Naturally he didn't have the same relationship with him as Kawalsky, or even Teal'c...Yeah right. His relationship with Daniel was and always had been in a category entirely of its own, and having sex with Daniel was probably not much weirder than anything else about the way they were together. But it did create problems that Daniel needed to be aware of before they made the weirdness a concrete and permanent part of their relationship.
"Okay. It's not exactly...rushing things. It's just..."
Nothing was ever simple with Daniel. Nothing ever had been. But the truth was that on every mission they had ever been on, he had favored Daniel. Daniel was the civilian. That meant he didn't get told to obey orders the way Carter did; he got asked to comply with O'Neill's wishes; he wasn't expected to just sink or swim in a survival situation, he was given extra protection, not just by O'Neill, but by Carter and Teal'c as well. Hammond expected him to take extra care of Daniel. Everyone took extra care of Daniel, and not just physically, emotionally as well. Even Jacob at his most sarcastic never showed Daniel the rough side of his tongue. Daniel had no real idea of how the ordinary Air Force worked because he'd never been exposed to it. He got the special Daniel-modified version. If someone started telling Daniel about 'don't ask, don't tell' he'd give them a lecture about its inherent hypocrisy and probably quote some Athenian code at them for good measure. But being fucked over by the military wasn't fun. Being beaten up by homophobes wasn't fun either. Doing twenty years in Leavenworth for sodomy would probably be the least fun of all.
O'Neill licked his lips. "Daniel. I have always admired your honesty."
"You have?" Daniel looked unconvinced. "You've hidden it very well then."
O'Neill grimaced. "Okay, I've always *noticed* your honesty. What I'm not too sure about is what your lying and cheating is like."
Daniel looked him in the eye. "After four years of hanging around with you, pretty good actually."
Half of him wanted to start kissing Daniel all over, while his cock had even more urgent ideas. The other half was squirming with embarrassment at the fact they were lying here naked together. He suspected he was already single-handedly responsible for corrupting someone who, left to his own devices would never have strayed off the straight and narrow. Not that he felt it was a 'bad' thing he'd done in making Daniel fall in love with him, if that was indeed what he'd done; but he did concede that life would be a lot easier for Daniel if Daniel had never thought of him as anything other than a friend. Trying to keep Daniel at arm's length while he got over his 'crush' had been unkind and ineffective. Falling in love with Daniel himself hadn't been particularly intelligent as moves went, but it had at least been honest. However, the parts of him that had always wanted to keep Daniel safe were still operating at full beam now. Being in love with Daniel he could live with. Making love to Daniel was looking actively desirable. Getting Daniel hurt or banished from a job he loved was something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
"Okay, well, rather than say...we go back to base, you tell the world we're now doing the dirty and it's time the hypocritical and nonsensical rules of the Good Ol' US Air Force were changed to accommodate us, would you maybe consider..."
"Lying and cheating?" Daniel met his gaze candidly. "Okay."
O'Neill stared at him in surprise. "Just...'okay'?"
Daniel shrugged. "The Air Force rules on 'don't ask, don't tell' are not something I approve of so...circumventing them by any means doesn't seem to me to be an immoral act."
O'Neill had to think about that for a minute. Did he think those rules were fair? No. Did he think the rules relating to him and Carter were fair? Yes. So what was the difference? That favoring Carter, a fully- trained highly efficient Air Force professional on a mission because of an unacknowledged or acknowledged passion might get the civilian on his team killed, but that favoring the civilian on his team, something he had always done, and always would do, as a good CO to compensate for Daniel's inferior military skills, was unlikely to get Carter killed. Did that wash? Kind of. Was he being a hypocrite? Probably. Did he think that he was going to start treating Daniel differently because of this? Well, it would be impossible for him to get more protective of Daniel than he already was because Daniel always had scared the crap out of him on dangerous missions anyway, and losing Daniel was something he'd known he couldn't bear for years now. Losing any of his team was something he couldn't bear. What was more likely was that in over-compensating for his new relationship with Daniel he might be less protective. Well that might get Daniel killed, but he doubted it, because Carter and Teal'c were every bit as protective of Daniel as he was, so they would pick up any shortfall. Okay. Probably a certain amount of hypocritical and unethical behavior being indulged in here but this still seemed like the best solution for keeping the team together and not making Daniel or himself unbearably miserable.
"Jack...?"
Daniel was looking anxious.
O'Neill made a face. "So we're going with the lying, cheating, hiding our feelings when anyone is looking, not telling anyone and keeping it off base and on world strategy, right?"
"What about Sam and Teal'c?"
O'Neill looked Daniel in the eye this time. Definitely his friend Daniel, but also this rather disconcertingly beautiful young man with very large blue eyes in which a guy could easily lose himself if he wasn't careful. Okay, still embarrassing but kind of pleasurable as well. "I definitely don't think you should be having sex with either of them."
Daniel returned his gaze unblinkingly. "If I raise my knee six inches..."
"We don't need to tell them." He answered swiftly. "We can't tell Carter because of the regulations and there's no need to tell Teal'c." *Ever. Especially not the part about you being someone who sleeps with guys. No reason for Teal'c to know about that. Supposing he doesn't know it already. Which he doesn't. And that really is a don't ask, don't tell scenario, because if you ever have I would find it so hard not to hate him, and next to you he's my best friend in the world; and I'd really want to swat you one, and you happen to be the person I'm in love with, so definitely something I just don't want to know...*
Daniel had that little dent between his eyebrows as he puzzled over the matter. "I don't feel comfortable lying to them."
"You're not going to be lying to them. You're just not going to be telling them something. Completely different."
"Okay." Daniel said it in his 'we can argue about this later' voice. But he did at least say it.
O'Neill gazed down at him and realized his heart had got tight in his chest. He was feeling breathless, scared. He couldn't decide if he was having a heart attack or a common or garden variety panic attack. When Daniel reached up and touched his mouth, the spasm of pure longing that went from his brain all the way to his loins, told him this was love. And desire. Oh boy, lots of desire. The same burning wanting he'd felt in the white walled misery of Yusafin's palace. He closed his eyes and sucked on Daniel's fingertip and god it was sexier than any act performed in a freezing cold cave between two space blankets had a right to be. He sucked harder and felt Daniel give a little convulsion. O'Neill opened his eyes and looked down at the man between his legs with undisguised hunger. Daniel looked torn between shocked, fascinated and flattered. He swallowed. "Jack...?"
"Daniel." He kept looking at him. Yes, this was Daniel, yes this was his friend, and yes, this was embarrassing, but this was also the guy he was in love with and wanted, oh god, wanted like volcanoes wanted to erupt, like tidalwaves wanted to engulf, an unstoppable force of nature that couldn't be reasoned with or diverted by any means.
"We're off world and on a mission." Daniel was still gazing right back at him as if he was hypnotized, and that very impressive erection certainly wasn't displaying any lessening of interest. In fact as O'Neill's own interest swelled and hardened against it, Daniel was looking like someone in the kind of physical pain which really needed to be alleviated and soon.
"And so?"
"You just said..."
He couldn't look anywhere except into Daniel's eyes. Even by the firelight he could see the pupils darkening and expanding. "This would be the exception that proved the rule."
Daniel broke the eye contact first. As O'Neill moved his hips enough to make his erection brush lightly across Daniel's, the younger man closed his eyes, emitting a groan as he arched his back in response.
O'Neill lowered himself on top of him slowly, moving his hips in one long slow glide that sent erect and aching flesh in pleasurably agonizing friction with its equally erect and aching counterpart. Daniel arched his back again, murmuring something that even a Goa'uld would have found suitably reverent.
O'Neill reached up and stroked Daniel's hair back from his forehead. It was short enough to fight his fingers now, defiant little strands that were determined to lay down flat on Daniel's forehead and tried to spring back there. Still with his eyes closed, Daniel swallowed and moistened his lips. O'Neill watched that tantalizing flicker of pink tongue and felt another spasm go through his groin, then felt his heart give another of those odd little convulsions as he took in just how incredible Daniel looked like this, impossibly young and vulnerable, but unbreakably beautiful, that silken strength beneath him, smooth, hot and irresistible. He bent his head and kissed his eyelids reverently, stroking his thumb along Daniel's jaw as he did so, feeling the stubble tickle his fingertips, inhaling the scent of him, trying to absorb the sensation of him, so familiar and so strange, so undeniably male, so indisputably what he wanted, loved, and needed. "God, Daniel...I'm..."
Long eyelashes flickered upwards and he was gazing into those soul- wrenchingly blue eyes. "What?"
O'Neill grimaced in embarrassment. "Scared to death."
"Good." Daniel gave him a wince of a smile in return. "That makes two of us."
"What if we fuck this up?"
Daniel moistened his lips again. "What if we don't?" Daniel inhaled as though steeling himself for something then O'Neill felt warm fingers stroke a line through his chest hair before a thumb brushed lightly across his left nipple.
He inhaled sharply. "Okay, I'm convinced." He bent his head again and sucked at Daniel's neck. The response was an immediate thrust of naked and aroused archaeologist body against his. He sucked harder and Daniel's body jerked into his again. He liked those incoherent noises Daniel was making. And yes, with a part of his brain he knew he definitely couldn't leave hickeys on Daniel's throat, but god he really wanted to, and Daniel really seemed to want him to as well, because as he gently bit down, Daniel gave a strangled moan and jerked spasmodically underneath him. Their groins were clashing clumsily, not the hot sticky glide they'd managed in their last attempt at being lovers, but a jangle of scrotum bruising scrotum and cock glancing off cock. They needed to calm down a little and work out a rhythm but right now he just wanted to feel every part of his body rubbing against every part of Daniel's. He wanted them to meld, melt, dissolve into each other's bones, he wanted them to...
"Oh god, Jack, oh god, oh Jack, you...Wolf."
Oh he liked that. Wolf was good. He could definitely get into being called a...It occurred to O'Neill that Daniel had suddenly gone very still. And not the kind of stillness before orgasm overtook him, just flat to the floor, not moving, still. "Danny?" O'Neill opened his eyes and looked down at a face that was turned towards the cave entrance just as he felt Daniel's erection wilting against his thigh.
"Daniel?" Unwillingly, he followed Daniel's gaze and saw what was blocking out the light from the cave entrance. An enormous grey wolf stared back at him without expression. "Ah..." O'Neill winced. "You know I always perform better without an audience."
"Me too." Daniel carefully licked his lips. "Especially an audience who looks as if it wants to eat me."
"Yeah. And not in a good way." Moving very carefully, O'Neill slid off Daniel and reached for one of the branches at the base of the fire, hissing as the heat singed his fingers before he managed to tug the branch loose. As the wolf padded into the cave, O'Neill leapt up yelling and waving the burning branch.
The wolf regarded him for a moment out of contemptuous yellow eyes and then turned and padded out of the cave again, but it hadn't looked exactly frightened. Still waving the branch, O'Neill edged towards the cave entrance.
As soon as he was away from the blaze, the snow-chilled air wrapped itself around him like a shroud. Glancing out of the cave he found the entrance surrounded by a semi-circle of wolves, all very large and hungry-looking. They all turned their heads to look at him and blinked when he waved the branch. Assessing their attitude, he suspected that if he ran at them yelling and waving the fiery branch, they would probably scatter. To a distance of about twenty feet. Then they'd come back. They had none of the nervous energy he had observed in wolves in North America. They found him interesting, and at the moment his strangeness and the fire was keeping them off, but the fact he smelt unmistakably like food was holding their attention despite their fear, and familiarity was probably going to breed contempt very quickly.
Something warm draped itself around him as Daniel wrapped the space blanket around his shoulders. O'Neill clutched it gratefully in fingers that were already stiffening with the cold. At least his erection was no longer a problem. A pack of hungry wolves playing gooseberry was clearly almost as good a libido douser as sub zero temperatures chilling one's bare flesh.
"Can we get more firewood?" Daniel asked the question quietly. He sounded calm but when O'Neill turned to look at him he saw the glimmer of a nervous smile, the pallor of that flawless skin. Daniel was wrapped in the other space blanket but already looked chilled through.
O'Neill looked at the leader of the wolves and it looked back at him. He could practically see its mind ticking over: risk assessment, judging comparative strength pound for pound. A mercenary in Wily Coyote form. Even if he and Daniel went out there back to back, waving fiery sticks around he didn't think it would be enough. This pack looked fit and well despite their hunger and as they were almost twice Earth size it was likely their usual prey were as well. They looked like wolves used to dealing with things a lot scarier and better equipped than two unarmed humans. He shook his head. "If we step outside, I think they'll pull us down. In here, with the fire, we stand a better chance."
"And when the fire dies down?" Daniel looked over his shoulder at the blaze, which already appeared half the size it had seemed to O'Neill ten minutes before.
"We'll have to hope Carter and Teal'c get back before then." O'Neill took in the fact that Daniel was shivering. "Your clothes should be dry by now. Let's get dressed. Stay warm." *Stay alert. Stay ready for anything these guys decide to throw at us.*
*~*
He would never have believed that sitting by a campfire with the person he loved could be such a nerve-wracking experience. But then having a dozen hungry wolves outside waiting for the fire to burn down or them to fall asleep so they could eat them did tend to take the shine off even the best of company.
At least they were both dressed in warm dry clothes again and with the blankets wrapped around them there didn't seem too much danger of them falling victim to hypothermia. Daniel was looking like his friend again. His very beautiful friend, but definitely the guy who came over on the weekend so they could watch sports and drink beer, not someone he got sweaty and naked with. He guessed it was still going to take a while to make that transition. Dating guys was certainly weird in that way. Even when women were fully clothed there was kind of an awareness of them as people who were naked under those clothes. With guys, no, that had never come up before. With Daniel it did. How typical of Daniel to have to be the exception.
O'Neill ducked his head to look at Daniel sideways. "You okay?"
Daniel shrugged. "Given that we're waiting to be eaten by wolves when the firewood runs out, not bad."
O'Neill looked at him, trying to memorize everything about him. Daniel's bangs were sticking up a bit. O'Neill licked his fingers and reached across to flatten them down onto his forehead. Daniel looked mildly surprised but not offended. O'Neill briefly touched Daniel's face, the skin smooth against his fingertips. If they died here, life really sucked. They'd never even had sex. Not proper grown-up sex. They'd only done the horny schoolboy thing, and they hadn't even done it very competently. He was going to die all sexually conflicted and mid-midlife crisis without even having had any proper sex out of it.
"This sucks."
Daniel blinked at him in mild curiosity. "Which part?"
"The dying part."
Daniel wrapped his arms around himself. "We're not dead yet."
"We're not naked in bed together in a nice warm house either." O'Neill noticed one of the wolves standing in mouth of the cave and brandished a burning branch at it. "Get lost, Rover!"
The wolf gave him a level look of contempt then turned around and padded out.
"Would you like to be?" Daniel darted him a look and then carefully averted his eyes, giving an unconvincing shrug. "Naked in bed together I mean?" The glance he stole back was a dead giveaway he wasn't exactly indifferent to O'Neill's answer.
O'Neill shrugged. "Wouldn't exactly object, no."
Daniel carefully didn't look at O'Neill. "Well, shall we fix something up?"
O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "Why not? How about, just for a change...you come around tomorrow night at seven sharp."
Daniel looked at his watch. "Actually, it is tomorrow, Jack. As it's light outside it must be Friday."
"Okay, come round tonight then."
"Okay." Daniel scratched his jaw. "Wolves kill prey before they eat it, don't they?"
"Definitely." O'Neill threw a glowing stump of stick at the cave entrance as another wolf stuck its head round. "Rip your throat straight out. You don't feel a thing."
Daniel grimaced. "Great." He shifted uncomfortably. "These wolves are probably so unafraid of us because they haven't encountered humans before. Which suggests the indigenous population must have died out a long, long time ago for the local fauna not to have even a memory of our species."
"Oh." O'Neill shoved his hands into his pockets. "Right." After a pause he realized his nose was itching too much to ignore. He scratched it. "So, am I the only guy you've ever...?"
Daniel scratched his jaw. "Is that important to you?"
"No. Just curious. You know. Making conversation." O'Neill saw there were now two wolves standing in the cave entrance. He threw a burning branch at the biggest. "Take a hike, Fido!" As it retreated he shrugged as he didn't care. "I just wondered if...you know...maybe when I was away, you and Teal'c...?"
"When you were away having sex with Laira on Edora?" Daniel countered carefully.
O'Neill shifted uncomfortably. "That would be when, yes."
"Would it bother you if we had?"
"No." He said it too quickly. He could hear how unconvincing that sounded.
"Good."
He darted a look at Daniel but his expression was unreadable. He had his sphinx look on; inscrutable, maddening, unnecessarily beautiful. O'Neill felt a spasm of mingled lust and irritation, for the first time successfully identifying that rogue extra element that had so often been wrapped around his irritation in the past. No wonder Daniel always seemed twice as annoying as other people some days. It finally made sense.
"'Good' because you did or just generally 'good'...?"
Daniel shrugged. "Well, let's be honest here, we're neither of us coming to this pure as the driven snow. It's not exactly love's young dream. We've both been in relationships before."
"True." *Irrelevant, damnit! I don't care how many women you've slept with. I want to know if there were any other men. And I particularly want to know about Teal'c because I don't think I can compete with him and I'd like some kind of assurance I don't have to.*
"When you were off world with Sam and Teal'c, did you...?"
It took him a moment but as he realized what Daniel was asking he stared at him in confusion. "With Carter or with Teal'c?"
"Does it make a difference?"
He thought the matter over. "No. Except..."
"Except what?"
"No way in hell would I sleep with Teal'c."
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't."
"Why not?"
O'Neill couldn't put it into words. Did he think Teal'c was handsome? Yes. Did he think Teal'c would know where he kept all his erogenous zones? Yes. Did he think the sex would be scary, strange, and probably ultimately quite satisfying? Yes. Did he want to have sex with Teal'c? No. No. No. "Because...I wouldn't."
"That's not an answer."
O'Neill reached across and kissed him on the cheek, trying to see if he could kiss Daniel casually without it being too embarrassing. Well almost, he'd managed to brush his lips across his cheekbone and although it was a little embarrassing it was also pretty pleasant. "I'm not big on self-analysis."
"But..." Daniel broke off as O'Neill's lips brushed his face to look at him in pleased confusion. He had clearly liked being kissed but had no idea why he just had been. "You can't just make statements and then not give reasons." Daniel made a circling motion with his right hand.
"Watch me." O'Neill shrugged. "Daniel, you're dating a guy now, get used to it."
There was a pause before Daniel said conversationally, "So, you're saying you didn't sleep with Teal'c but you did sleep with Sam?"
"No!" O'Neill looked at him in indignation. "I'm saying I didn't sleep with either of them."
"So why the qualifier?"
"Because I wouldn't sleep with Teal'c but I would sleep with Carter. If we weren't in the Air Force."
"And did you?"
He gave him a look of exasperation. "I just told you I didn't."
Daniel averted his gaze. "What about when we were in the factory?"
"No."
"What about when we were...looping?"
"No. That would be unethical." He winced inwardly as he remembered that kiss which had seemed such a good idea when he was out of his mind with boredom and pissed off at the world that was doing this to him. Now it felt like a shabby thing to do to a friend.
"So you didn't do it because you thought it would be wrong, not because you didn't want to?"
"Daniel, if you and Carter got stuck on the intergalactic equivalent of the Blue Lagoon with no hope of rescue, and she was willing, are you honestly telling me you wouldn't sleep together?"
Daniel shifted uncomfortably. "No."
"Okay, what if it was you and Teal'c? Would you sleep together?"
Daniel shifted again. "That would be up to Teal'c."
"If Teal'c asked you and there was no hope of rescue would you say 'no'?"
"No." Daniel glared at him. "Okay? No, I wouldn't. I'd probably say 'yes'. I'd say 'yes' to Sam and 'yes' to Teal'c but that doesn't mean I spend every day thinking about them naked."
"Right then we have established that whereas you would sleep with *all* of your teammates if asked, I would at least turn down one of them."
"Which proves?"
"Nothing whatsoever. I was just making a point."
"What point?"
O'Neill glared at him. "No point. This is a pointless conversation. I haven't slept with Carter or Teal'c and neither have you, right? Right?"
Was that a flicker of evasion in Daniel's eyes before he shrugged? "Right."
"Okay then. So we don't need to waste time agonizing about them as potential rivals."
"I wasn't."
"Good." O'Neill darted another look at him. "Glad to hear it." He looked at his watch. "Where the hell are those two anyway?"
Daniel was looking at the fire. He hugged himself tighter. "Jack...If we don't..."
"We will." There weren't enough words in the world for him to say everything he was feeling, and even if there had been he would have probably picked the wrong ones. He could show Daniel that he loved him as more than friend in that bedroom if he got a chance to, the way he'd shown him in the past that he loved him *as* a friend when a friend who loved him was who Daniel had needed to put his arms around him.
"But if we don't, I want you to know, I..."
"I know." O'Neill looked across at him, letting him see what he didn't want either of them to have to say aloud. "Me too."
Daniel gave him a sweet smile. "Just as long as you know."
"I know." He reached across and brushed that sticking up bit of hair down again. "You too, right?"
Daniel nodded. "I do now."
O'Neill ruffled his hair, gently, disordering it more. "To infinity and beyond."
Daniel's smile got even sweeter. "Well who needs Omar Khayym when he can have Buzz Lightyear?"
O'Neill grinned at him, getting one of those insane heart-rushes that just occurred from time to time, inconveniently or illogically; enjoying the realization that here, in the cold of this cave, with the fire burning down, and the wolves outside waiting to split their bones and suck the marrow from them, he was happy and so was Daniel, because they were with one another and they were in love. It was stupid, but it was also kind of satisfying.
He abruptly leant across, cradled Daniel's face in his hands, and kissed him, properly, deep and slow and tender, keeping his eyes open even as Daniel's automatically closed.
"Colonel!"
The sound of a rapid burst of gunfire into the air made them both pull back. O'Neill sighed. "Carter, your timing is lousy."
Daniel was already getting to his feet. "We're being saved, Jack. Don't knock it."
O'Neill got up, looking down at the fire in time to see it fading to a red glow with barely a flame left to flicker. "Okay, not so lousy." He could hear the sound of more gunfire, could picture the wolves running off into the forest as the cavalry arrived. He touched Daniel on the arm. "Seven o'clock tonight."
"I'll try not to be late or straight," Daniel returned expressionlessly.
O'Neill leant forward to kiss him again and came up a solid palm against his chest holding him off. Daniel's voice had barely a tremor. "Hey, Sam. Good to see you."
"Daniel! You're okay?" She was the first there, eyes huge with anxiety. Her gaze flickered briefly to O'Neill but then went straight back to Daniel. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine, thanks to Jack..."
He let the sound drift over him. As he raised his eyes to the cave entrance he met Teal'c's eyes and saw the Jaffa understand everything in one look, one moment. O'Neill returned his gaze, still not knowing if he was looking at a rival or a friend. As Teal'c gave him a gentle nod, relief at seeing them both alive undisguised despite the undercurrents of his comprehension, O'Neill realized that he was looking at both. Perhaps Teal'c loved Daniel the way O'Neill loved Daniel, but Daniel didn't love Teal'c the way he loved O'Neill, and Teal'c was big enough to perceive it yet not to hold that against either one of them. As O'Neill reached the entrance, blinking from the chilly light outside he reached out and patted Teal'c on the arm. "Thanks for getting here."
Teal'c inclined his head. "You are welcome, O'Neill." He looked over O'Neill's shoulder to where Daniel was still talking nineteen to the dozen with Carter. "Daniel Jackson appears to have recovered."
"Yeah, he's okay. He was a little chilly for a while there but I got him thawed out. He should be fine."
"You did well."
And he couldn't help it; hard as he tried there was a spasm of pride because Teal'c sounded genuinely approving an