SG1 Fic: Second Chances
Second Chances
For Five Times Jack and Daniel Were Unfaithful To Each Other at sg1_five_things, but it outgrew any kind of reasonable commentfic length.
Multiple pairings (Jack/Laira, Jack/OMC, Daniel/OMC), but this is mostly about the Jack/Daniel.
3700 words, NC-17
princessofg betad me and knocked my socks off- thank you! I changed the ending completely after she was done with it, so blame me and not her.
***
The first time didn't count because Jack had no claim on Daniel. And for Jack to think he did-- well, that was just arrogance and assholery of the highest order, and Daniel had just had it up to here.
It wasn't like he actually slept with Ke'ra, anyway, from lack of opportunity if nothing else. And it wasn't like he would have, even given the opportunity, only two weeks after Sha're's death.
Which wasn't the point. The point was that he could have slept with her, and if he had, it would have been none of Jack's fucking business.
And that is why, a week after Ke'ra left, a week of alternating sniping and silent treatment, a week of humorless jokes about the Destroyer of Worlds and questionable relationship choices, Daniel finally snapped.
"Tell me, Jack," he said. "Did I make you any promises? Did I say anything to you that would imply that you had a claim on me? Can you offer anything to justify this level of jealousy?"
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but from the affronted look on his face -- such a carefully constructed facade, that -- Daniel knew it would only be "who said anything about jealousy?" and it was better to just head that bullshit off at the pass.
"I know exactly where this is coming from. Now that Sha're is gone, you think you ought to be next in line. Because you deserve it, and obviously I'm obligated to hand myself over, right? Did you really think I promised you ‘as soon as she kicks it, I'm all yours'? Did you really think it worked that way?"
That did it, stripped the fake friendly denial right off Jack's face. Daniel didn't want to look at whatever might be underneath.
"You know I want you," he said. "But my wife just died" -- he felt his throat tighten unexpectedly around the words, and hated himself for the sudden evidence of weakness -- "so would it be too much to ask for you to refrain from being an asshole for just a little while until I get my shit straightened out?"
***
The second time didn't count because Jack knew he was never going back. He stared at the rocky, forbidding plain, seeing the emptiness where his entire life had been. His rational mind ran numbers -- the time for the Tok'ra to get a ship numbered in months, the time for the ship to get him back to Earth numbered in years, still well within his lifetime -- but that didn't matter. He knew.
So he mourned the loss of a world where the bird on his shoulder gave him purpose, where there was beer in his fridge and hockey on TV. He mourned a team that moved as one and conquered all odds and a cabin in Minnesota where the fish don't bite.
He mourned a man with incredible intelligence and endless passion and captivating blue eyes. He cataloged and remembered, played through his mind every careful touch and restrained, exploratory kiss, every evening spent wrapped around Daniel, learning and nurturing this strange, fragile thing between them, while Daniel whispered in his ear, We have time, Jack. Slow down, we have all the time in the world.
And then he accepted, and then he lived. Laira offered him a place in this community, a role, an entrance into a new life, without which he would have slowly gone insane. More than that; she was kind, and wise, and beautiful, and the part of his heart that he still had to give, he gave to her.
One hundred days after his life was taken away forever, it was handed back to him. There was no possible way to explain to her the magnitude of that, the miracle of it, in a life that had taught him to hope for but never count on resurrections and second chances. But it was equally impossible to pretend that she hadn't touched him forever.
He walked away from his team without a word, when she came out to say goodbye. He knew Daniel heard him ask her to come with him. He didn't know if they were watching as he held her, but he couldn't have done differently.
Daniel followed him home when he was cleared to leave the base and stood in his living room, a little hunched, fists balled in his pockets.
"Daniel," Jack said. "I'm so sorry."
Daniel reached his hand out to cup Jack's cheek. "It's okay." The hand felt wrong, too large, different pattern of calluses. Daniel's thumb brushed over his lips and then lingered there, with a soft, sensual pressure that set every one of Jack's nerves sparking like live wires, all confusion and crossed signals and intense arousal. His eyes were fixed on Jack's face with a direct, unspoken question. An offer.
Jack let out a shuddering breath. He felt helplessly adrift in his own strange, dusty living room, didn't think he could form the answer even if he knew it. "I don't think..."
Daniel snatched his hand away like he'd been burned and started edging to the door. "Right. I understand. I guess I'll, uh."
"No," Jack said, and caught his wrist. "Could we just…"
So they slept together, in a tangle of warm, exhaustion-heavy limbs, and Jack let the familiarity of this room, this house, this life, this man, sink back down into his bones. They stayed there, until Daniel stopped feeling wrong.
***
The third time didn't count because Daniel had left. He was gone, and worse, he had chosen to go. Had made Jack stop Selmak, in a final, unendurable demand, and then he had given Jack some horrible illusions about how he wasn't really dead. Months had gone by. He was as good as dead. Worse.
Before Daniel, Jack had gone over twenty years without sleeping with a man. For some of those years, he'd practically forgotten that he wanted it. For lots of them, he'd really thought he didn't want it, didn't want anything that could come between him and the career he was building for himself, and later, the family. There had been bad years as well, of course, but for the most part… twenty years, no problem.
Daniel hadn't been gone three months, and Jack couldn't cope.
He had the taste for it, now, knew how it felt to have that whenever he wanted. He knew what it felt like to have Daniel's mouth and hands on him, to have Daniel stretching him open and fucking him slow. He had the habit of lazy sultry Saturday-morning kisses and hard fast screws the minute they got in the door in the evening, and suddenly the celibacy that was no particular problem before seemed completely unendurable.
Maybe it was the fact that his career was more secure now and he wasn't worried about protecting a family. Maybe it was that what he had with Daniel was so much better, more addictive, than his careful, ruthlessly anonymous twenty-year-old excursions. Maybe it was that grief made him reckless. Didn't matter. No time to berate himself for his lack of self-control; the fact was that he couldn't work, couldn't function, and that had to stop.
The kid was -- dammit, he found the oldest one he could, must be almost thirty, but he couldn't think anything but "kid." The kid was skinny, scrawny through the shoulders despite all the time he obviously spent trying to put on muscle. He was blond-haired and brown-eyed and trying a little too hard to be pleasing and sincere. Jack paid his money and he took his chances.
The kid's cock in his mouth felt like manna from heaven, all hard and velvet and salty and bitter and warm. Jack lost himself in the feel and the smell and the taste and the rhythm of it, just went out of his head in dumb, unthinking bliss. He probably shouldn't have let the kid come in his mouth, but it didn't matter. (How could anything matter, when Daniel was gone?)
He stroked himself furiously, and pressed his face into the crease of the kid's thigh, breathing deep. He spilled over his own hand with a low groan, and then kicked the kid out of the shabby motel room.
Afterwards, Jack sat for a long time trying not to wonder how anyone could be having so much fun as a glowy squid that they never came back. Then he cleaned up, checked out, and went back to leading his team.
***
The fourth time didn't count because Daniel didn't remember. If he had remembered, he would have gone back to Jack in a heartbeat. If he had known, God, nothing could have kept him away. But Jack didn't tell him, maybe out of some idiotic idea that Daniel might remember and not want to resume it, or a reluctance to put pressure on, or some strange, misplaced guilt -- who knows, really.
So Daniel didn't know, and was left with only a sense of want, of something missing, a vague, dissatisfying itch under his skin.
He moved into a new apartment, and it turned out that one of his neighbors in the next building liked to lounge in the little shared courtyard reading. Daniel wasn't home a lot, in the first crazy weeks of his return, preferring to stay late at the mountain devouring every scrap of material from SG1 history. But he was home enough to follow the neighbor through a history of the modern Middle East and a guidebook to Israeli archaeology, and to enjoy the long, lean, strong lines of the man's body on the grass.
Maybe that's what I'm missing. Maybe it's just that simple.
The guy's name was Mark, and the reading was in preparation for a trip he was taking. Daniel could tell him all about how to get around Israel (sherut), what to expect in Jordan (flies), and where else to go (Tyre). They danced around each other a bit; there were cultural markers missing, signals Daniel thought he should be sending or picking up on, but they got there eventually.
The first feel of the shape of his ass under Daniel's hands brought a shock of recognition, yes please that more. He thought he had solved the mystery, especially when they got rid of their jeans and he felt Mark's cock alongside his, heavy and thick and rising fast. His body knew this, the slick-slide of lube and the motions of pressing and stretching. He knew how to drape himself over Mark, open him up while whispering filthy in his ear, slide on home.
But alongside the familiarity was the wrongness, both of them growing with every slick thrust. It was a hard, hot fuck, and there was so much pleasure but not much joy. Daniel felt himself slipping more and more out of the moment, worrying at the wrongness like wiggling a loose tooth.
What am I forgetting? What? Shit, I didn't forget about condoms, did I? No, okay. What the hell have I lost...?
Mark probably thought he was a Grade-A asshole, retreating completely into his own head like this, but the poor guy shifted and writhed underneath and apparently made it work for him. Mark came suddenly, wrenching Daniel's own orgasm out with an unexpected jolt. So wrapped up in his own mind that he hardly knew where he was, Daniel thought Jack and then oh, shit, and then, wow, do I have bad timing.
He pulled out too fast, heard Mark's grunt of pain, felt bad. "I'm sorry" -- wipe up, clothes -- "I can't explain, it's not you" -- shoes, wallet -- "I am just so sorry but I have to go" -- and out the door.
There was a hockey game playing and a pot of pasta on the stove when Jack opened the door to him. Daniel said, "Why didn't you tell me?" and pushed inside.
"Tell you what?" Jack asked, with the same horrible-liar nonchalance as always. So Daniel stepped up and kissed him, long and deep and confident.
"Oh, that," murmured Jack, and Daniel felt the shape of his smile and the relief in the muscles of his neck and shoulders. "Figured you'd remember eventually."
Daniel's body was still tired and limp from his climax, and his mind was spinning at a thousand miles an hour, threatening to fly apart. But Jack's shape against him was solid and strong, and his lips moved sure and welcoming, and it all felt so right.
***
The fifth time... well, the fifth time probably counted.
The message on his answering machine was straightforward and brutal.
"I guess you've found out already, but I've taken a post in DC. Sorry I couldn't tell you in person. Some airmen are gonna go pack up the house next week, so you should make sure to get your stuff. I guess you're pretty pissed, but I have to do this."
Jack paused, finally having the decency to sound at least a little unsure, maybe even a little regretful. "New guy's named Landry. Be nice to him, okay? Tell Sam I said hi. Just… I'll talk to you as soon as I can."
And that was all.
It's not like they said "I love you" over the phone, especially not to an answering machine. But language like that… it was…
Daniel had been dumped by postcard, during his first stint at grad school. Now he could add answering machine tape to the list.
The day after his next mission, Daniel stopped by Jack's place. That was the last straw, really, making him do the cleanup. Wouldn't want to embarrass you, would we? thought Daniel, as he made sure every pair of boxers in Jack's drawers were the same size and there was only one brand of shaving cream in the bathroom. No level of pique was worth Jack's career, but by the time he moved on to the bedside drawers, it was all Daniel could do not to put a fist through the wall. He dumped the boxes in his apartment, changed, and drove in to Denver.
Guy or girl was the next question. A girl was tempting, wipe the slate right clean, but he would be more inhibited. Anyway, easier to pick up a guy.
Daniel picked his marks and set to work with ruthless efficiency. It was easier than he anticipated. The second one he zeroed in on, a short, compact man with frosted hair and a pouty lower lip, fell with no effort at all. Daniel leaned on the bar, waited for the guy's eyes to travel slowly up his arm, across his shoulders, over his lips, to his eyes. Then he asked in his most careful, eloquent voice exactly how hard the guy liked to be fucked.
What worked on Jack worked elsewhere too, and five minutes later they were gone.
Daniel wasn't sure if he'd ever fucked someone that hard. The guy took it and bucked back against him for more, so Daniel gripped the back of his neck and forced him face down to the mattress and went harder. He left grinning and limping bowleggedly; Daniel still wanted to put his fist through a wall, but at least he didn't have the energy to actually do it.
***
That should have been it, really. Three strikes and you're out; hell, in soccer it only takes one red card. Daniel's whole life was a patchwork of rebirths, new lives, second chances, forgiveness that he knew he didn't deserve. Sooner or later the hammer falls.
By all rights, Jack should have become a mere memory. The most tangled, most unendurably intense love affair I ever had. The one nothing will ever top; the one doomed by too much pressure and too many expectations and too many competing obligations. Daniel swam through his duties at the mountain in a haze of grief and anger as Teal'c and Sam said their goodbyes and his entire life evaporated before his eyes.
Two days later Jack was waiting in his apartment. He stood up and crossed the room in a careful amble, reaching out to pull Daniel in against him.
Daniel sidestepped neatly. "Please don't try to touch me."
Jack looked wrecked. "I'm sorry. I have to -- Washington is where I'm needed now."
"A dumping by answering machine, really, Jack?" Daniel quirked an eyebrow. "Because I left Junior High behind a really long time ago."
"It wasn't a dumping."
"Oh," said Daniel. "Is that what you think?" He circled around Jack to put his bag on the dining room table.
Jack turned to follow him with his eyes, rooted to the spot.
"I'm a coward," Jack said. "Now you know the big secret."
Daniel pulled out his laptop, didn't look up.
"It's just two years or so. Three tops, until I can be sure the guys coming up behind me don't have their heads permanently up their asses."
Daniel started unpacking his paperwork.
"It's a short flight. These guys I work for, you won't believe the jets they let me ride in." Jack winced a little, as the flatness of that joke hit.
Daniel put his hands down heavily on the table and hung his head. "I'm going to Atlantis. I leave in three days." He kept his eyes firmly down, but the pause stretched out long enough that he found himself listening for footsteps on the wooden hall floor, the sound of the front door closing.
He was so wrapped up in listening for those tiny noises, trying to memorize precisely the sound of the end of their life together, that when Jack spoke again it made him jump slightly. Jack sounded about two steps closer, and his voice was restrained to a brusque tactical analysis, ruthlessly clamped down on the emotion underneath.
"Is that where you think you're really needed?"
"Yes."
"Temporary or permanent?"
"Don't know."
Jack took a few more steps toward him. "Okay. So if it's permanent, then in two or three years I get myself posted there. Not in command; they think I'm past it for that already. Some kind of liaison crap."
"That's your plan?" Daniel asked, trying to make it sound less nasty than he felt.
"Not my favorite plan, but if you're on Atlantis permanently, it's the only one I've got."
"And if it's temporary?" Daniel allowed himself to be led down the conversational path. Too much work to fight, right now.
"Then we visit as much as possible, and in two or three years you come back and I retire and I ask you to marry me."
Daniel let all the air out of his lungs in a long, steady, controlled breath. "Bastard," he said. The silence hung heavy between them.
"You're a coward, Jack."
"Don't tell the Air Force. They'll take away all the medals."
"Wouldn't want that," Daniel said.
Jack slid his hand from the back of Daniel's neck, over his shoulder blade and along the curve of his back. It rested warm above his waistband, and Daniel felt the last coiled tension in him leak away. He huffed a small laugh and finally dropped his hands away from the papers on the table.
Jack pulled him in close and kissed him, finally. They danced an awkward waltz that left articles of clothing every two steps to the bed, but it wasn't fumbling or desperate; every touch spoke of familiar and right and home.
There was a moment of awkwardness later, as their slow build tipped over into urgency and Daniel started groaning with need. Jack rolled to his stomach, pressed his forehead into a pillow and spread his legs in mute invitation, but Daniel tugged on his hip, pulled him back over in equally wordless appeal.
"Really?" Jack said. "Thought you'd fuck me into the mattress after the answering machine stunt."
Daniel scrambled back a little at that. He struggled to clear his head enough for this. It shouldn't be done this way, through a haze of lust, but it was too late now.
"I kind of already worked that aggression out," he said, as carefully and levelly as he could. He didn't let himself drop his eyes.
Jack was silent for a slow count of three, and Daniel could see his cock flag slightly. The expression on his face was completely unreadable. Everything came crashing down, then: finally running out of second chances, the disintegration of SG-1, the idea of having to start all over again with nothing and no one. The sheer fucking pointlessness of it, all the abandonments and betrayals and personality clashes that no relationship could be expected to withstand.
Daniel felt his face twist in a sudden, unstoppable reveal. He hoped his shoulders didn't shake in those horrible seconds before he could school himself back to blank unresponsiveness.
"Hey," Jack said. "No call to go doing that."
Then Jack pressed his shoulders down into the mattress and stripped away all his defenses one by one, with hands and lips and tongue. Daniel went incoherent, felt his shoulders shake and a few hot drops of moisture squeeze out the corners of his eyes as he clutched at the back of Jack's neck and cried out in a confused jumble of Arabic and English and Spanish.
Afterwards, Daniel struggled to stay conscious as he dropped his hand down to grope for Jack. Jack caught his wrist tight, and brought it up to press a lush, hot kiss to his palm.
"No need. We have plenty of time."
So Daniel pressed his face into the crook of Jack's shoulder and slept, and Jack reached up to wrap his arms tightly around him. Because three strikes and you're out, but this isn't baseball; and second chances run out eventually, but maybe not quite yet.
For Five Times Jack and Daniel Were Unfaithful To Each Other at sg1_five_things, but it outgrew any kind of reasonable commentfic length.
Multiple pairings (Jack/Laira, Jack/OMC, Daniel/OMC), but this is mostly about the Jack/Daniel.
3700 words, NC-17
princessofg betad me and knocked my socks off- thank you! I changed the ending completely after she was done with it, so blame me and not her.
***
The first time didn't count because Jack had no claim on Daniel. And for Jack to think he did-- well, that was just arrogance and assholery of the highest order, and Daniel had just had it up to here.
It wasn't like he actually slept with Ke'ra, anyway, from lack of opportunity if nothing else. And it wasn't like he would have, even given the opportunity, only two weeks after Sha're's death.
Which wasn't the point. The point was that he could have slept with her, and if he had, it would have been none of Jack's fucking business.
And that is why, a week after Ke'ra left, a week of alternating sniping and silent treatment, a week of humorless jokes about the Destroyer of Worlds and questionable relationship choices, Daniel finally snapped.
"Tell me, Jack," he said. "Did I make you any promises? Did I say anything to you that would imply that you had a claim on me? Can you offer anything to justify this level of jealousy?"
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but from the affronted look on his face -- such a carefully constructed facade, that -- Daniel knew it would only be "who said anything about jealousy?" and it was better to just head that bullshit off at the pass.
"I know exactly where this is coming from. Now that Sha're is gone, you think you ought to be next in line. Because you deserve it, and obviously I'm obligated to hand myself over, right? Did you really think I promised you ‘as soon as she kicks it, I'm all yours'? Did you really think it worked that way?"
That did it, stripped the fake friendly denial right off Jack's face. Daniel didn't want to look at whatever might be underneath.
"You know I want you," he said. "But my wife just died" -- he felt his throat tighten unexpectedly around the words, and hated himself for the sudden evidence of weakness -- "so would it be too much to ask for you to refrain from being an asshole for just a little while until I get my shit straightened out?"
***
The second time didn't count because Jack knew he was never going back. He stared at the rocky, forbidding plain, seeing the emptiness where his entire life had been. His rational mind ran numbers -- the time for the Tok'ra to get a ship numbered in months, the time for the ship to get him back to Earth numbered in years, still well within his lifetime -- but that didn't matter. He knew.
So he mourned the loss of a world where the bird on his shoulder gave him purpose, where there was beer in his fridge and hockey on TV. He mourned a team that moved as one and conquered all odds and a cabin in Minnesota where the fish don't bite.
He mourned a man with incredible intelligence and endless passion and captivating blue eyes. He cataloged and remembered, played through his mind every careful touch and restrained, exploratory kiss, every evening spent wrapped around Daniel, learning and nurturing this strange, fragile thing between them, while Daniel whispered in his ear, We have time, Jack. Slow down, we have all the time in the world.
And then he accepted, and then he lived. Laira offered him a place in this community, a role, an entrance into a new life, without which he would have slowly gone insane. More than that; she was kind, and wise, and beautiful, and the part of his heart that he still had to give, he gave to her.
One hundred days after his life was taken away forever, it was handed back to him. There was no possible way to explain to her the magnitude of that, the miracle of it, in a life that had taught him to hope for but never count on resurrections and second chances. But it was equally impossible to pretend that she hadn't touched him forever.
He walked away from his team without a word, when she came out to say goodbye. He knew Daniel heard him ask her to come with him. He didn't know if they were watching as he held her, but he couldn't have done differently.
Daniel followed him home when he was cleared to leave the base and stood in his living room, a little hunched, fists balled in his pockets.
"Daniel," Jack said. "I'm so sorry."
Daniel reached his hand out to cup Jack's cheek. "It's okay." The hand felt wrong, too large, different pattern of calluses. Daniel's thumb brushed over his lips and then lingered there, with a soft, sensual pressure that set every one of Jack's nerves sparking like live wires, all confusion and crossed signals and intense arousal. His eyes were fixed on Jack's face with a direct, unspoken question. An offer.
Jack let out a shuddering breath. He felt helplessly adrift in his own strange, dusty living room, didn't think he could form the answer even if he knew it. "I don't think..."
Daniel snatched his hand away like he'd been burned and started edging to the door. "Right. I understand. I guess I'll, uh."
"No," Jack said, and caught his wrist. "Could we just…"
So they slept together, in a tangle of warm, exhaustion-heavy limbs, and Jack let the familiarity of this room, this house, this life, this man, sink back down into his bones. They stayed there, until Daniel stopped feeling wrong.
***
The third time didn't count because Daniel had left. He was gone, and worse, he had chosen to go. Had made Jack stop Selmak, in a final, unendurable demand, and then he had given Jack some horrible illusions about how he wasn't really dead. Months had gone by. He was as good as dead. Worse.
Before Daniel, Jack had gone over twenty years without sleeping with a man. For some of those years, he'd practically forgotten that he wanted it. For lots of them, he'd really thought he didn't want it, didn't want anything that could come between him and the career he was building for himself, and later, the family. There had been bad years as well, of course, but for the most part… twenty years, no problem.
Daniel hadn't been gone three months, and Jack couldn't cope.
He had the taste for it, now, knew how it felt to have that whenever he wanted. He knew what it felt like to have Daniel's mouth and hands on him, to have Daniel stretching him open and fucking him slow. He had the habit of lazy sultry Saturday-morning kisses and hard fast screws the minute they got in the door in the evening, and suddenly the celibacy that was no particular problem before seemed completely unendurable.
Maybe it was the fact that his career was more secure now and he wasn't worried about protecting a family. Maybe it was that what he had with Daniel was so much better, more addictive, than his careful, ruthlessly anonymous twenty-year-old excursions. Maybe it was that grief made him reckless. Didn't matter. No time to berate himself for his lack of self-control; the fact was that he couldn't work, couldn't function, and that had to stop.
The kid was -- dammit, he found the oldest one he could, must be almost thirty, but he couldn't think anything but "kid." The kid was skinny, scrawny through the shoulders despite all the time he obviously spent trying to put on muscle. He was blond-haired and brown-eyed and trying a little too hard to be pleasing and sincere. Jack paid his money and he took his chances.
The kid's cock in his mouth felt like manna from heaven, all hard and velvet and salty and bitter and warm. Jack lost himself in the feel and the smell and the taste and the rhythm of it, just went out of his head in dumb, unthinking bliss. He probably shouldn't have let the kid come in his mouth, but it didn't matter. (How could anything matter, when Daniel was gone?)
He stroked himself furiously, and pressed his face into the crease of the kid's thigh, breathing deep. He spilled over his own hand with a low groan, and then kicked the kid out of the shabby motel room.
Afterwards, Jack sat for a long time trying not to wonder how anyone could be having so much fun as a glowy squid that they never came back. Then he cleaned up, checked out, and went back to leading his team.
***
The fourth time didn't count because Daniel didn't remember. If he had remembered, he would have gone back to Jack in a heartbeat. If he had known, God, nothing could have kept him away. But Jack didn't tell him, maybe out of some idiotic idea that Daniel might remember and not want to resume it, or a reluctance to put pressure on, or some strange, misplaced guilt -- who knows, really.
So Daniel didn't know, and was left with only a sense of want, of something missing, a vague, dissatisfying itch under his skin.
He moved into a new apartment, and it turned out that one of his neighbors in the next building liked to lounge in the little shared courtyard reading. Daniel wasn't home a lot, in the first crazy weeks of his return, preferring to stay late at the mountain devouring every scrap of material from SG1 history. But he was home enough to follow the neighbor through a history of the modern Middle East and a guidebook to Israeli archaeology, and to enjoy the long, lean, strong lines of the man's body on the grass.
Maybe that's what I'm missing. Maybe it's just that simple.
The guy's name was Mark, and the reading was in preparation for a trip he was taking. Daniel could tell him all about how to get around Israel (sherut), what to expect in Jordan (flies), and where else to go (Tyre). They danced around each other a bit; there were cultural markers missing, signals Daniel thought he should be sending or picking up on, but they got there eventually.
The first feel of the shape of his ass under Daniel's hands brought a shock of recognition, yes please that more. He thought he had solved the mystery, especially when they got rid of their jeans and he felt Mark's cock alongside his, heavy and thick and rising fast. His body knew this, the slick-slide of lube and the motions of pressing and stretching. He knew how to drape himself over Mark, open him up while whispering filthy in his ear, slide on home.
But alongside the familiarity was the wrongness, both of them growing with every slick thrust. It was a hard, hot fuck, and there was so much pleasure but not much joy. Daniel felt himself slipping more and more out of the moment, worrying at the wrongness like wiggling a loose tooth.
What am I forgetting? What? Shit, I didn't forget about condoms, did I? No, okay. What the hell have I lost...?
Mark probably thought he was a Grade-A asshole, retreating completely into his own head like this, but the poor guy shifted and writhed underneath and apparently made it work for him. Mark came suddenly, wrenching Daniel's own orgasm out with an unexpected jolt. So wrapped up in his own mind that he hardly knew where he was, Daniel thought Jack and then oh, shit, and then, wow, do I have bad timing.
He pulled out too fast, heard Mark's grunt of pain, felt bad. "I'm sorry" -- wipe up, clothes -- "I can't explain, it's not you" -- shoes, wallet -- "I am just so sorry but I have to go" -- and out the door.
There was a hockey game playing and a pot of pasta on the stove when Jack opened the door to him. Daniel said, "Why didn't you tell me?" and pushed inside.
"Tell you what?" Jack asked, with the same horrible-liar nonchalance as always. So Daniel stepped up and kissed him, long and deep and confident.
"Oh, that," murmured Jack, and Daniel felt the shape of his smile and the relief in the muscles of his neck and shoulders. "Figured you'd remember eventually."
Daniel's body was still tired and limp from his climax, and his mind was spinning at a thousand miles an hour, threatening to fly apart. But Jack's shape against him was solid and strong, and his lips moved sure and welcoming, and it all felt so right.
***
The fifth time... well, the fifth time probably counted.
The message on his answering machine was straightforward and brutal.
"I guess you've found out already, but I've taken a post in DC. Sorry I couldn't tell you in person. Some airmen are gonna go pack up the house next week, so you should make sure to get your stuff. I guess you're pretty pissed, but I have to do this."
Jack paused, finally having the decency to sound at least a little unsure, maybe even a little regretful. "New guy's named Landry. Be nice to him, okay? Tell Sam I said hi. Just… I'll talk to you as soon as I can."
And that was all.
It's not like they said "I love you" over the phone, especially not to an answering machine. But language like that… it was…
Daniel had been dumped by postcard, during his first stint at grad school. Now he could add answering machine tape to the list.
The day after his next mission, Daniel stopped by Jack's place. That was the last straw, really, making him do the cleanup. Wouldn't want to embarrass you, would we? thought Daniel, as he made sure every pair of boxers in Jack's drawers were the same size and there was only one brand of shaving cream in the bathroom. No level of pique was worth Jack's career, but by the time he moved on to the bedside drawers, it was all Daniel could do not to put a fist through the wall. He dumped the boxes in his apartment, changed, and drove in to Denver.
Guy or girl was the next question. A girl was tempting, wipe the slate right clean, but he would be more inhibited. Anyway, easier to pick up a guy.
Daniel picked his marks and set to work with ruthless efficiency. It was easier than he anticipated. The second one he zeroed in on, a short, compact man with frosted hair and a pouty lower lip, fell with no effort at all. Daniel leaned on the bar, waited for the guy's eyes to travel slowly up his arm, across his shoulders, over his lips, to his eyes. Then he asked in his most careful, eloquent voice exactly how hard the guy liked to be fucked.
What worked on Jack worked elsewhere too, and five minutes later they were gone.
Daniel wasn't sure if he'd ever fucked someone that hard. The guy took it and bucked back against him for more, so Daniel gripped the back of his neck and forced him face down to the mattress and went harder. He left grinning and limping bowleggedly; Daniel still wanted to put his fist through a wall, but at least he didn't have the energy to actually do it.
***
That should have been it, really. Three strikes and you're out; hell, in soccer it only takes one red card. Daniel's whole life was a patchwork of rebirths, new lives, second chances, forgiveness that he knew he didn't deserve. Sooner or later the hammer falls.
By all rights, Jack should have become a mere memory. The most tangled, most unendurably intense love affair I ever had. The one nothing will ever top; the one doomed by too much pressure and too many expectations and too many competing obligations. Daniel swam through his duties at the mountain in a haze of grief and anger as Teal'c and Sam said their goodbyes and his entire life evaporated before his eyes.
Two days later Jack was waiting in his apartment. He stood up and crossed the room in a careful amble, reaching out to pull Daniel in against him.
Daniel sidestepped neatly. "Please don't try to touch me."
Jack looked wrecked. "I'm sorry. I have to -- Washington is where I'm needed now."
"A dumping by answering machine, really, Jack?" Daniel quirked an eyebrow. "Because I left Junior High behind a really long time ago."
"It wasn't a dumping."
"Oh," said Daniel. "Is that what you think?" He circled around Jack to put his bag on the dining room table.
Jack turned to follow him with his eyes, rooted to the spot.
"I'm a coward," Jack said. "Now you know the big secret."
Daniel pulled out his laptop, didn't look up.
"It's just two years or so. Three tops, until I can be sure the guys coming up behind me don't have their heads permanently up their asses."
Daniel started unpacking his paperwork.
"It's a short flight. These guys I work for, you won't believe the jets they let me ride in." Jack winced a little, as the flatness of that joke hit.
Daniel put his hands down heavily on the table and hung his head. "I'm going to Atlantis. I leave in three days." He kept his eyes firmly down, but the pause stretched out long enough that he found himself listening for footsteps on the wooden hall floor, the sound of the front door closing.
He was so wrapped up in listening for those tiny noises, trying to memorize precisely the sound of the end of their life together, that when Jack spoke again it made him jump slightly. Jack sounded about two steps closer, and his voice was restrained to a brusque tactical analysis, ruthlessly clamped down on the emotion underneath.
"Is that where you think you're really needed?"
"Yes."
"Temporary or permanent?"
"Don't know."
Jack took a few more steps toward him. "Okay. So if it's permanent, then in two or three years I get myself posted there. Not in command; they think I'm past it for that already. Some kind of liaison crap."
"That's your plan?" Daniel asked, trying to make it sound less nasty than he felt.
"Not my favorite plan, but if you're on Atlantis permanently, it's the only one I've got."
"And if it's temporary?" Daniel allowed himself to be led down the conversational path. Too much work to fight, right now.
"Then we visit as much as possible, and in two or three years you come back and I retire and I ask you to marry me."
Daniel let all the air out of his lungs in a long, steady, controlled breath. "Bastard," he said. The silence hung heavy between them.
"You're a coward, Jack."
"Don't tell the Air Force. They'll take away all the medals."
"Wouldn't want that," Daniel said.
Jack slid his hand from the back of Daniel's neck, over his shoulder blade and along the curve of his back. It rested warm above his waistband, and Daniel felt the last coiled tension in him leak away. He huffed a small laugh and finally dropped his hands away from the papers on the table.
Jack pulled him in close and kissed him, finally. They danced an awkward waltz that left articles of clothing every two steps to the bed, but it wasn't fumbling or desperate; every touch spoke of familiar and right and home.
There was a moment of awkwardness later, as their slow build tipped over into urgency and Daniel started groaning with need. Jack rolled to his stomach, pressed his forehead into a pillow and spread his legs in mute invitation, but Daniel tugged on his hip, pulled him back over in equally wordless appeal.
"Really?" Jack said. "Thought you'd fuck me into the mattress after the answering machine stunt."
Daniel scrambled back a little at that. He struggled to clear his head enough for this. It shouldn't be done this way, through a haze of lust, but it was too late now.
"I kind of already worked that aggression out," he said, as carefully and levelly as he could. He didn't let himself drop his eyes.
Jack was silent for a slow count of three, and Daniel could see his cock flag slightly. The expression on his face was completely unreadable. Everything came crashing down, then: finally running out of second chances, the disintegration of SG-1, the idea of having to start all over again with nothing and no one. The sheer fucking pointlessness of it, all the abandonments and betrayals and personality clashes that no relationship could be expected to withstand.
Daniel felt his face twist in a sudden, unstoppable reveal. He hoped his shoulders didn't shake in those horrible seconds before he could school himself back to blank unresponsiveness.
"Hey," Jack said. "No call to go doing that."
Then Jack pressed his shoulders down into the mattress and stripped away all his defenses one by one, with hands and lips and tongue. Daniel went incoherent, felt his shoulders shake and a few hot drops of moisture squeeze out the corners of his eyes as he clutched at the back of Jack's neck and cried out in a confused jumble of Arabic and English and Spanish.
Afterwards, Daniel struggled to stay conscious as he dropped his hand down to grope for Jack. Jack caught his wrist tight, and brought it up to press a lush, hot kiss to his palm.
"No need. We have plenty of time."
So Daniel pressed his face into the crook of Jack's shoulder and slept, and Jack reached up to wrap his arms tightly around him. Because three strikes and you're out, but this isn't baseball; and second chances run out eventually, but maybe not quite yet.