At the Hour When We Are Trembling by frostfire_17, commentary by erda_3
Title: At the Hour When We Are Trembling
Author: frostfire_17
Fandom: SGA/SG1
Commentator: keefaq
When they get back, McConnell bitches them out for scaring him to death.
“-understand that you have intelligence I don’t, and that you’re doing important things, but Colonel, Dr. Jackson, please consider that it might not be the best idea for the two ranking-” he stumbles, “people-to risk their lives at the same time. For the mission’s sake.”
John doesn’t fall on the floor laughing, but it’s a close call. He does feel like he’s fourteen years old and he’s stayed out past curfew.
Daniel takes it for about five minutes before he says, “Excuse me, Major,” and beats it.
John changes his clothes, showers, and gets some food. He takes a nap, hits the gym, showers again, sits down and talks with a couple of the airmen about nothing in particular. Around 1200, he says, “Screw it,” and goes to find Daniel.
“What-” says Daniel, and that’s as far as he gets before John steps up and kisses him.
If he had spent any time thinking about this, he would have thought that Daniel would say no again. But Daniel’s making a desperate, low-pitched noise, and his mouth is hot and open under John’s. There was one flinch, a quick I-don’t-think-we-should twitch, but then his hands clutched at John’s shoulders, slid around his neck. And now John’s panting against Daniel’s mouth, pressed against him, kissing and kissing. When John takes a step forward and pushes Daniel back against the wall of his room, Daniel makes another noise, almost a whine, and John grins and slides down his body to the floor.
Daniel’s hands come up into his hair, and John works his zipper down and gets his cock out, and he doesn’t even know the last time he did this, but he remembers how. Daniels’s fingers clench when he tongues the head, and he lets them push him down.
And then it’s all cocksucking, wet sounds and full mouth and jaw aching slightly. Daniel’s losing it above him, just like Daniel never does, and that’s something to think about, later. John’s hard enough that he’s gasping around Daniel’s cock, and each little thrust against the back of his throat is a jolt.
When Daniel comes in his mouth, John’s brain whites out, and when he comes back, he’s sprawled on the floor on his back with the taste thick in his mouth and Daniel’s hands running over him. He’s coming almost before one of them slides between his legs.
As they’re getting themselves back together, Daniel hands John a handful of tissues. By the time he’s cleaned himself up and thrown them away. Daniel’s sitting in his chair, elbow on the desk, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. His eyes are closed. John lets himself out.
What can I say here, except, finally.
So now he’s-well, he’d almost forgotten what sex even felt like, and now he’s going through the day-briefing room, labs, quarters, briefing room, gym, labs-and he’s almost worried that someone’s going to notice, because his entire body feels open and waiting and there’s moments when he can hardly even breathe.
He jerks off in the bathroom after lunch, hand on his cock and remembering hard floor under his knees, full mouth and blank mind and Daniel being loud-and who would have thought? His thumb slides over the head of his cock as he remembers Daniel’s low-voiced fuck, and he comes into his hand, gasping.
Sex. Sex. He hasn’t felt this good in months. For most of the day, he can’t even remember what it’s been like, crushing fear and endless, pointless fighting. Brain chemistry, he thinks, is a beautiful thing.
Not to subscribe to the magical healing power of orgasm or anything, but sex does make everything look brighter, doesn’t it? It’s well past time that our heroes have something to feel good about.
He comes to Daniel’s room that night, and standing outside, he thinks, for a serious thirty seconds, that Daniel isn’t going to let him in. John’s barely seen him all day, which is probably intentional on Daniel’s part considering the size of their fallout shelter, and John’s knowledge of the inner workings of Daniel’s mind does not extend to figuring out whether he’ll be up for round two.
But the door opens, and John steps inside. There are candles, again, and Daniel’s barefoot and graceful when he closes the door behind John and runs a finger over the back of his neck.
“Hi,” John manages, and Daniel smiles.
John’s pushed back toward the bed a slow step at a time, Daniel’s hand pressing against his chest. It’s careful and deliberate and very clear, but even if he wanted to say no, John doesn’t think he could make himself open his mouth. Daniel’s eyes are fixed on him, and neither of them says anything until John’s sprawled on his back with Daniel over him.
“It’s a stupid idea,” says Daniel casually, pushing up John’s T-shirt. John arches before he realizes what he’s doing.
“It’s a stupid idea, and I shouldn’t have let it happen earlier, and I spent a long time thinking about it this evening. You were going to show up, and I was going to tell you to get out, and that would have been it. Raise your arms.” Daniel pulls the T-shirt off of him; it’s loud against his ears.
“But,” says Daniel, and runs a hand down John’s chest, “I’m sick of this. My selflessness isn’t endless, no matter what people think.” He backs up, starts pulling off John’s boots.
John takes the pause while Daniel undoes his shoelaces and thinks-he can think, sort-of-about what’s happening here. This slow, inexorable monologue (he doesn’t know where his brain was, thinking that sex with Daniel would be like sex with a normal person), and he knows where it’s going and he knows how much say he’s going to have in this. He should probably make a conscious decision about it, but that doesn’t seem important, right now. When Daniel pulls his sock off, he can feel the thumb against his instep all the way up his body.
Daniel’s external and John’s internal monologue continue all through the sex to deepen our feeling of how desperately they are clinging to each other in a world gone to hell.
“I need something to hold on to, and something to let go with. This can be both.” Daniel undoes his pants and hooks his fingers into the waistbands of the pants and the boxers underneath, and his fingernails dig into the skin of John’s thighs, sliding all the way down.
John’s thoughts about Jackson, his past, his looks, his mind, his actions are so very John. We go along thinking we’re seeing what’s happening and I keep forgetting we’re only seeing John’s viewpoint, and that that viewpoint is skewed to fit his demented mind, reflecting his demented world view. And now after about 20,000 words, we finally hear what Daniel thinks of John: “And you,” Daniel glances up at John’s face, “you’re fucking crazy. Which works, I think.”
Which is so true, but because we’ve been so completely in John’s head for so long, I didn’t really notice how crazy he’s acting, how disassociated.
And he bends down, and his tongue is tracing hot-cold patterns across John’s chest, and John gives up on his brain for the night and strains up against him, as Daniel works his way downward and takes John’s cock in his mouth.
The idea that Daniel is good at cocksucking is almost as hot as the actual blowjob, and John’s been riding the edge all day, so he almost bites through his lip keeping himself from going right over. He can’t keep from thrusting, a little, but Daniel takes it without flinching, and John lets his eyes fall shut while Daniel sucks him. He’s been waiting for this-every time he thought about earlier or slid a hand over his body or fucking brushed up against someone in the hallway, he wanted this. “Jesus Christ,” he hears himself, no control at all, and it’s so fucking good.
When he comes, he can’t keep still and he can’t keep quiet and Daniel has to hold his hips down, so hard that he can still feel the fingers after Daniel’s let go. And after that, he’s boneless, no way to even try to figure out what he’s feeling when Daniel slides a slick finger in, and a second, and a third, watching him so intently all the time. John just catches his breath and keeps his legs apart and watches Daniel’s careful, controlled movements. It takes a while, but when he starts feeling it again, Daniel catches on instantly, and chases after each twitch of pleasure until John’s starting to pant again.
John hasn’t done this in a long, long time. He likes it too much, and he knows it, and it’s dangerous to risk someone else finding that out. But now, the world’s ended, and there’s no military to screw him for getting screwed, no CO who doesn’t want a pansy in his unit, and no one’s watching but Daniel.
Daniel’s fingers are moving gently around John’s cock, and he keeps just-barely brushing John’s prostate with his other hand. And then John looks past what Daniel’s doing and realizes he’s still wearing all his clothes, and John has to close his eyes and swallow down the groan, even while he’s arching up into Daniel’s hand.
“Good,” Daniel breathes, and slowly pulls his fingers out. He wipes off his fingers and strips, leaving the clothes where they fall. He angles John’s hips up toward him, hands big and warm. John closes his eyes and waits for it.
When Daniel pushes in, the reflexes are still there; it’s easier than it should be and it barely even hurts, and he doesn’t want it to hurt more, because that would just be fucked-up-“Jesus.”
“Good,” says Daniel again, and John can hear the smile in the word. Daniel thrusts in again, hard and good. John’s slick with sweat, all he can smell is sex, and he doesn’t want to open his eyes, doesn’t want to know what this looks like, but there’s no way he can help himself, and his mouth is open and panting when he finally looks Daniel in the eye.
“You want this,” says Daniel, low and certain, his hand wrapping around John’s cock.
“Fuck you,” John manages, not that anyone could have concluded anything different-he drags in air, but he’s not going to be able to say anything else. He can’t remember why he ever thought this was a bad idea. And then Daniel hits just the right spot, and he can barely remember his name; his head’s back, he can’t breathe, it’s too fucking much. Lights behind his eyes; ringing in his ears; he comes blind and senseless and doesn’t even know if he’s making noise.
It takes him a minute to come down from it. When he can see again, Daniel’s breathing harshly, watching John like he couldn’t look away if he tried. He swallows hard, slides a hand through the come on John’s stomach, and thrusts in deep, and John can feel him coming. He shudders, and Daniel drops down onto him, hot and sweat-slick.
I’m loving this sex scene. Generally I prefer the guy with the more stereotypical masculine markers, in this case John, to be more passive in a sexual encounter. It seems to even up the relationship a bit, and to me, slash is all about the equality.
John just breathes, tastes some of the sweat on Daniel’s shoulder, comes down from the high.
John sleeps like a rock, but he wakes up at five and Daniel’s still asleep. He takes a second to be surprised at that-but, well, theoretically, Daniel has to sleep sometime.
And, at last, they sleep.
He slips out, congratulates himself on avoiding a morning after, and they go about their business.
Daniel corners him in the cafeteria-slash-briefing-room later that day. John has an instant of creeping horror at the idea that Daniel’s going to say something about last night. He wastes a second looking for escape routes, but just when he’s about to give up and take it like a man, Daniel says, “You flew a Wraith dart once, didn’t you.”
Haha. I love the idea of John frantic to escape any relationship talk.
John blinks. “Yeah.”
“Can you teach anyone else to do it?”
“Well-sure. Yeah. I guess.”
Daniel nods. “Good.”
And then he’s gone. John wonders, just for a minute, if he maybe hallucinated last night happening, but decides that a) he should have expected this [i.e., the unexpected] from Daniel, post-sex, and b) it would take someone a lot crazier than he is to hallucinate something like that.
Okay, maybe there’s another little magical healing power of sex thing here, but being in a new relationship, one where the sex is good, can really be motivating and make you feel hopeful and energetic, so I’ll buy this.
Daniel spends the rest of the day running around like a man possessed. John spends some time considering that Daniel might be possessed, but eventually figures, not likely.
Hee, yes, with their history, one must always consider possession a possibility.
John spends most of the day failing to not think about the sex.
Blowjobs, he thinks, were okay. Whatever. Nothing more than he’s done around other bases, with other guys. But the fucking-
This is the kind of non-insight I would expect from John.
That’s as far as he gets. (A lot of times. But who’s counting.) He’s good at distracting himself from things like this. Thinking about them too much never does any good, anyway.
Daniel catches him again around eighteen hundred, brandishing a laptop and seven thousand sheets of paper. Some of them have diagrams on them. “My room,” he says as he’s walking up, and goes straight past John, en route. John rolls his eyes but follows.
John drops down on the floor and helps Daniel spread the papers out around burned-out candle stubs, and listens and points things out and carefully doesn’t think about what this might mean, and says, “You realize you’re insane, right?” twelve or fifteen times. And when they’re done, he sits back on his heels and says, “Fuck me. We actually have a secret plan.”
“Remember before you get excited, we’re probably all going to die,” says Daniel.
“So what else is new,” says John, and leans in.
Daniel’s head tips back and he doesn’t make a sound while John sucks him, just closes his eyes and buries his hands in John’s hair. John swallows thickly and lets Atlantis, silver and gleaming, slip down past the back of his mind.
This is just a fantastic paragraph. It gets me every time I read it; it’s so devastatingly simple.
The next morning, Daniel does the briefing. “Group A will be going for the hangar,” he says, and now he’s watching John. “Group B will be causing mayhem over in the city.” He arches an eyebrow at John. “You want the mayhem?”
He does. And Daniel will probably have fun securing the hangar. “Aw, for me?” he drawls, and Daniel smiles a little, like he’s satisfied.
They set out. Daniel drives one of the Jeeps, John drives the other, and they split up before they reach the actual city. John and his group go in first, and Daniel’s group moves off to the private airfield that’s the object of this mission, a decent distance from the city.
“So let’s do this,” says John, and they commence with the killing of Wraith. He’s pretty much never going to get tired of blowing their dreadlocked heads off. Especially if he gets to use grenades-sometimes he wishes they’d just die after a machine gun burst.
Sometimes, it’s fun. Whenever he’s using a handgun, he’ll play let’s-see-how-many-shots. Anything over fifteen, and he starts respecting the hell out of the fucker while he reloads.
“Did you do it?” he asks Daniel, when they meet up.
Daniel’s fingers are warm and brief on the back of his neck, and he has to fight not to tilt his head back. No one else sees.
“We did it,” says Daniel.
John takes a deep breath, forgets about the touching, and grins. “We’re in business.”
So now John’s pretty much resigned himself to the fact of dying on Earth.
Okay. Whatever.
Yeah, that seems to capture John’s character perfectly.
John learned, about five minutes after they met, that Daniel Jackson could focus like a motherfucker. Mostly, he sees it from the outside-just try getting Daniel to listen to you when he’s thinking about something else. Ninety percent of the time, he doesn’t even notice enough to get pissed off. Like he’s somewhere else, or you are.
But once in a while, John’s the focus. A minute or two, pinned in place while Daniel looks at him, and considers.
John pretty much hates it.
Ha, of course he hates it.
Since there’s nothing he can do about Daniel being Daniel, and since it’s only a minute here and there, he just deals. But now they’re fucking, and-
It’s odd moments. John on his back, legs open and waiting, and Daniel stops for a second, and just watches. In the mess hall, frowning at today’s new and weird attempts at balanced meals-and catching Daniel, coffee going cold in his hand, staring. John at Daniel’s door, just standing in the hallway for a long minute, while Daniel looks at him or through him or into him, and John’s wondering wildly, what the hell is he thinking, until he breaks and has to say, pointedly, “Can I come in?”
John hates it a lot.
It turns out that, when they’re actually out to do it, capturing a Wraith dart isn’t that hard. Half the Wraith that show up Earthside don’t think twice about leaving the keys in the car, and when it comes down to it, the hardest part is John remembering how to fly it.
If he had to summarize piloting a dart in one word, it’d be one of the ones without any real consonants, like eaugh. It always feels slimy inside the cockpit, and he has do it more on instinct than anything, so he has to be paying attention with his whole body. He always walks around feeling damp and uncomfortable for a couple hours afterward.
Is this not a perfect description of the feel of Wraith ships? I feel this way every time I see one on the show.
Daniel finds the dart fascinating; he crawls all around the thing, trying to decode it or understand it or whatever the hell it is he wants, and then comes back to base and showers for an hour, which they can’t really afford. John goes and finds him, the third time it happens, and catches him still in a towel, water slicking his hair down. He looks-blanker than usual.
John recognizes that look, he’s seen it on other people, and he knows how to do this.
It isn’t hard. He has his mouth on Daniel’s before either of them says anything, and then it’s just kissing, which John has always been good at. He doesn’t go for tongue right off, just holds Daniel’s face in his hands and kisses him, long and shallow and easy, until John can feel his muscles unwinding, just a little, until he falls a step back under John’s hands. He kisses Daniel’s mouth open-he tastes like toothpaste and Altoids-tilts Daniel’s head back, pushes Daniel back against the wall.
And whoops, says his brain, that won’t work-but Daniel goes. Head back, mouth open, back to the wall. Jesus Christ, it’s hot.
And oh God, it was stupid to start fucking Daniel fucking Jackson. John drags in a lungful of air, digs his fingers into Daniel’s bare back, and holds on.
This simple little phrase, that John holds on is all it takes to remind us how John is clinging to his image of Daniel as his savior, how Daniel is all that is keeping him hanging on to his sanity, his life, his purpose, which is the plan Daniel has made for them.
They get into a rhythm. Hit a city. One group goes to wreak havoc, kill Wraith, blow up buildings, whatever. The other group finds out where the Wraith have parked their darts, and takes one. John always gets to be in group two, which is both good-he gets to fly!-and bad-he’s flying a dart-but no one else can fly the things, so.
It’s a simple plan, but really, military discipline is no longer in the Wraith vocabulary. They don’t need it for anything. They’re living in an all-you-can-eat special. As far as either John or Daniel has been able to see, since the military installations and the major centers of government were destroyed, the Wraith haven’t displayed any organization beyond hey, buddy, wanna go grab some lunch?
It works. And, against all logic, it keeps working.
John has to wonder why something hasn’t gone horribly wrong. If they’d tried this sort of thing in Pegasus, they would have been royally screwed around Dart #3.
They designate Dart 1 as Training Dart, and John spends a lot of hours teaching people to fly it. He’s tense at first, worrying about the Wraith noticing, but these days, darts are buzzing around Earth like a lot of evil mosquitoes, and no one cares about one more, even if it mostly looks like its pilot tried life-sucking someone with greater than .10 blood alcohol content.
Daniel spends a lot of time in the lab with Dr. Granville, in electronic communication with Dr. Sim, and scouting around for intelligence on more explosives and/or people who know how to make them. John is vaguely irritated at having to spend days on end teaching something he could be better at himself, when he’s always sucked at teaching, anyway. He spends some energy wishing that Daniel could help-Daniel’s had more teaching experience than John has, and he’d make little cutting comments when the students were out of earshot-until he realizes that he’s missing Daniel.
He concentrates on teaching after that, to avoid thinking about how he’s sort of disgusted with himself.
Except then Rasmussen, who’s been having a really hard time getting the hang of this fly-a-dart thing, comes in too steep and fast for a landing, and crashes.
John skids to a stop next to Training Dart and works on prying the thing open; after a second, Li and Thomsen pound up next to him and help. It’s long, agonizing minutes before they get inside, working in silence.
Rasmussen’s head is split open. They get his body out of the cockpit and bring it back to base. Neither John nor Daniel says anything at the memorial.
Just in case we’ve forgotten the grimness of their situation, the author reminds us. This falls with a particularly loud and painful crash after all the descriptions of the growing intimacy between John and Daniel and the almost cuteness of John missing Daniel while giving dart flying lessons.
When John comes to Daniel’s room that night, Daniel’s sprawled back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t look at John.
John is not in the mood to decode one of Daniel’s labyrinthine freakouts right now, but he sort of wants some life-affirming sex, to counter the flat blankness that was today. So he goes over and sits down on the bed and waits.
“Somewhere,” says Daniel eventually, “somewhere, in the last few years, I lost something.” He rubs his eyes, then apparently decides that isn’t enough, and presses in with the heels of his hands. “Once upon a time, I cared about individual lives-any individual innocent life-more than I cared about the greater military goal. Even if-even if the goal would save more lives, even if I understood exactly why military action needed to be taken, even if I agreed with it, if I knew lives would be sacrificed-if I knew a life would be sacrificed.” He takes a shuddering breath. “Even if it was the right thing to do. I cared more. It affected me more than the greater principle at stake.” His eyes blink open, and he stares up at the ceiling. “That isn’t true anymore. I lost it somewhere, along the way. And I doubt I’ll ever get it back.”
John’s pretty sure this is because of how Daniel took the news about Rasmussen-a surprised “Oh,” and a frown, and John could see him thinking about how this cost them a pilot and a dart, and set the plan back farther than he would have liked.
Daniel rubs his forehead. “You know, I can’t remember what he looked like?”
“Dark hair,” says John. “Kind of short.”
Daniel looks at him. “You really aren’t helping at all.”
“Want a blowjob?” John offers.
Daniel laughs, but it sounds like it’s tearing at his chest. “Yes,” he says, “thank you,” and he’s still laughing like that when John slides down to his knees and undoes his pants. He quiets down when John starts sucking, and fucks John’s throat hard-John’s going to be feeling that, and he’s not complaining-but when John stands up, still swallowing, there’s a wet trail tracing along Daniel’s temple into his hair.
Daniel’s days of work pay off; he’s got the location of a store of nukes.
“One catch,” he says. “They’re in Arizona. But I don’t want to waste a week driving.”
“No problem,” says John. “We’ll take a dart.”
There’s a second’s pause before Daniel answers-John has no idea if he’s read the reports about what can happen to people when they’re the special Wraith version of passengers-but the answer’s a yes.
Other people are not so happy.
“Look, sirs,” says McConnell, “I realize that we’re going to have to test the efficiency of the darts’ dematerializing beams sometime, but maybe you shouldn’t start the experiments with Dr. Jackson. We kind of need him.”
“I’m really not doing anything too specialized, lately, Major,” says Daniel. “Administrative things, mostly. I think you’d survive without me. Anyway, it’s safe. The Atlantis team did it and survived.”
McConnell isn’t happy about it, and most of the others aren’t, either-“which is one of the reasons we should do it this way,” says Daniel to John, “because they have to see that I’ll be fine.” “As fine as you ever are,” mutters John-but they take their orders and come out to watch when John and Daniel leave.
They get to Arizona and find a jackpot.
“Should I be disturbed that you’re this turned on by a bunch of nuclear explosives?” Daniel says, but he runs his tongue along John’s collarbone before John can answer, thus pretty much assuring his question’s going to stay rhetorical, because John is riding the high of maybe actually being able to pull this off.
John’s not asleep when the proximity alarm goes off. In fact, he’s in the room with it, having figured after lying awake for a couple of hours that if he’s not going to be sleeping anyway, he might as well let the duty guy get some sleep and take over himself.
It still takes him a minute to react. He isn’t used to having alarms. Before this, it’s always been either the Wraith haven’t found us and we’re fine, or the Wraith have found us, and we’re fucked.
But someone’s tripped the early-warning sensors around their hangar, and they have to get the fuck over there now, or forget their secret plan. John bolts out of the control room and hits Daniel’s room at a run. It’s not locked, and John takes a second to be surprised about that.
Inside, Daniel’s asleep. “Daniel,” says John, sharply. “Daniel. Wake up.”
Daniel shifts, shoves at his blankets. John finally shakes his shoulder, and that gets him a hand batting at him and a slurred, “Jack?”
“No. Daniel. It’s John. Wake up.”
That finally gets through, and Daniel sits up, squinty-eyed. “What’s up?”
“Someone’s in the hangar,” says John, and Daniel’s past him almost before he realizes.
Halle-fucking-lujah, it isn’t a Wraith. More hallelujah, it isn’t fifty Wraith. John has never fully grasped how their telepathy thing works, and he does not want to have to scrap this operation.
What it is, though, is-unexpected.
John really shouldn’t be surprised that there are ten members of the armed services left outside their base who can work as a group, but he is, somehow. They’ve been living in a bubble of non-communication, ever since Arkansas. Outside of a couple of scientists and a couple hundred thousand Wraith, they couldn’t find anyone to communicate with.
Well, now they have, and they’re guarding the entrance to Daniel and John’s very own hangar. John’s ready to step forward, but Daniel gets there first.
“Hello,” he says, and suddenly there are a bunch of automatic weapons pointed at them. “Wait,” he says quickly, and holds out his own gun, bending to put it on the floor. “These ships are ours.”
There’s a pause while the other guys digest this. John counts exactly ten, wearing fatigues, looking like soldiers. U.S. soldiers, even. Finally, one of them speaks up. “These are your Wraith darts?”
“They are.” Daniel looks confident. His voice is resolute. Of course they are; whose else would they be?
The leader’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. “Well, can I ask how you got them, then?”
Daniel’s sarcasm steamrollers over the other guy’s. John resists the urge to start keeping score. “We stole them.” The duh is hanging in the air.
“Oh, yeah?” says the guy. “You sure you aren’t one of those Wraith-worshipping cults? You sure you didn’t sell out to them to keep from being eaten? You sure you didn’t just find this hangar and now you want to keep the ships for yourselves?”
Daniel takes a visible deep breath. John can practically see the struggle not to dry-voice the guy to death, and the next words come out civil. “Look, we’re all on the same side here. We were members of the Stargate program; this is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and I’m Dr. Daniel Jackson. We’re fighting the Wraith.”
This, finally, makes the guy pause. “You’re Daniel Jackson?”
“Yeah,” says John, stepping in to press the advantage while it’s there, “he is. You’re welcome to start explaining who you are any second now.”
“Captain Timothy Granger, USAF.” The captain glances around at his men. “Any of you recognize him?” Headshakes. He calls out, “Pinhoe, Larsen! Get out here!”
Two men come running out of the hangar. Granger says, “You two worked at Cheyenne Mountain, am I right?” Quick yes, sirs. “Who is this man?” He points.
“Sir,” says one of them, “sir-that’s Daniel Jackson.”
The captain looks at the other one, who nods. “It’s Dr. Jackson, sir. Unless it’s a clone or something.”
“You’re from the Stargate program, too,” says Daniel, and blinks. His eyes are a little wild when they meet John’s-the mountain, and then Area 51, and then Arkansas, and then week after week of becoming more convinced that they were the only organized military group left in the country-John sympathizes, and takes a couple of slow, deep breaths. It could be real, it could not be real, they’ll deal with it whatever it is.
Daniel rallies a little, and says, “How did you find this place?”
“We’d heard reports of anti-Wraith activity around the Northeast. We were patrolling this area and we noticed the dart activity. It wasn’t hard,” Granger says absently. He’s frowning. “I’m not authorized to bring anyone to meet my superiors, but if Pinhoe and Larsen are vouching for you, I’ll believe them and we can talk. How big is your operation, here?”
“I don’t think we’re telling you anything until you prove who you are,” says John. Because, appearances aside, they’ve been down this road before, and it does not end well.
But he’s reeling. They have reports. Patrols. God knows what else they could have.
Granger doesn’t get angry, just says, “Fair enough. I have to report this. We can send some people back here-say, a week from today. There’ll be someone with more authority than I have, Dr. Jackson, and we’ll proceed from there.”
“Great,” says Daniel, sounding dazed.
And then the captain cracks a smile. “It’s good to hear you’re alive, Dr. Jackson. The scientists are going to be impossible-they swore you couldn’t be dead. Said you couldn’t break that long of a winning streak.”
The scientists. John can hear Daniel’s quick indrawn breath, soft and isolated in the sudden whirling of his brain. “Scientists?” Daniel asks.
“The guys we got out of Area 51,” says Granger.
“But,” says Daniel, airless, “but Area 51 was destroyed. It’s a crater.”
“No, sir,” he says. “The surface is a crater. I understand that some of the people down there rigged a shield at the last minute, made from some of the technology they had available, and kept the lower levels safe from the blast. The top area, yeah, that’s a crater. It fooled the Wraith just fine.”
John’s fists are clenching-he can’t, it can’t be this easy-this happened before-
Daniel steps forward, intense and forceful, “Do you know who-”
“Colonel Carter’s alive, Dr. Jackson,” says the captain. “She and Dr. McKay are heading the science division right now.”
Rodney. John needs to not think about this right now, because-because he’s not going to be able to think about anything else. But he can’t keep himself from, “Elizabeth-Elizabeth Weir?”
The captain shakes his head. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t heard anything about her status.”
Daniel sends him a quick, compassionate glance, and then says, “Jack O’Neill?”
The captain shakes his head again. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.”
Daniel lets out a breath. “All right. Fine. Should we-have some way to get in contact with you?”
“I’m not authorized to give away contact information, sir, not to anyone. We’ll find you.”
“Well, then, okay,” says Daniel. “Get back to your base.”
“Yes, sir,” says Granger, and he and his men move out.
John and Daniel and Thorman and Li stand around and stare at each other for a while.
“You think they’re who they say they are, sir?” Li asks eventually.
“No idea,” says John. He wants to believe it, he wants, he wants-he remembers the crazy eyes and Davis’ desiccated husk. And there’s no question it could be a trick-get a bunch of guys, dress them up in USAF uniforms, build up a trust, find out if there’s anything more to the operation, wipe them all out from space once all necessary intelligence has been gathered. Dangle Rodney and Carter in front of them to mess with their heads a little more.
It could be true, though. It could be.
“Let’s get back,” says Daniel finally, and they go.
The big question: the operation.
“They could be genuine,” Daniel says. “Maybe we should hold off-Sam could show up next week, and then we’d know for sure.” He’s holding a pen, and he keeps glancing down, staring at it like it holds the secrets of the universe.
John makes an effort at skepticism. “Darts could show up next week. Or tomorrow. And even if they are from the Stargate program, if they have Carter and McKay or not, there’s no guarantee they’re all going to think this is a good idea. And if they’ve got a full colonel or a general, or even a member of the government, they can tell us what to do.” John thinks about that: good, bad, good?
“They can tell you what to do,” says Daniel.
“Okay, so they’ll think they can tell us what to do,” says John. “But who knows how many of the troops will stay with us if there’s a member of the Joint Chiefs hanging out in Oregon or wherever?”
“Point,” says Daniel.
“And it could be a trap,” says John.
“And it could be a trap,” says Daniel. “If it is, and if they’re gathering information instead of just confirming our location so they can wipe us out tonight, then they’ll probably take as much time as they said they’d take, to avoid suspicion. Can we do this inside of a week?”
“Darts?” says John.
“Twelve,” says Daniel. “Check.”
“Personnel?”
“Pilots, doing okay, according to you. Numbers, about three people per dart.”
“Explosives?”
“With that last stash from Arizona, plus what Granville’s been working on, plus what Dr. Sim sent us, we have at least enough for twelve Hive ships.”
John takes a deep breath. “Okay. Looks like we’re doing this.”
They haven’t really sat down and talked about how this is a suicide mission.
Of course, John’s gone on plenty of those and survived, but he doesn’t usually have quite this long to think about it before, planning and arranging and training and building up to go out and get himself and a few dozen other people killed.
And Daniel-
Daniel actually comes to John’s room a couple of nights later, which is new. He’s quiet and intense, and he fucks John carefully, with great concentration. John makes a lot of noise. Daniel doesn’t.
Afterwards, they’re lying tangled up on John’s bed, and Daniel says into his shoulder, “I’m sick of this.”
“What?” says John intelligently.
Daniel rolls onto his back. “I’m wondering if I’ll come back this time.” Dry chuckle. “And I feel ridiculous about it. But I’m still wondering.”
“Oh,” says John, and thinks about it. “How many times-”
“Really depends on how you count,” says Daniel.
John drops it, and after a second, Daniel goes on. “I’m hoping the Ancients are done with me by now, but…” he opens a hand. “No idea.”
That gets John’s attention away from post-sex glow. “You’re hoping?”
He feels Daniel’s shrug. “I’m tired. More to the point, I’m sick of being killed and brought back.” He pauses, shifts against John’s side. “I used to think that Ascension was…it. The point. The meaning. Whatever. Now…I’m almost looking forward to dying and staying that way. Then at least I could have some peace.”
“I mostly don't think about dying,” says John. “It gets in the way.”
Daniel’s quiet for a while. Eventually, he says, “Good advice. Do you want to fuck me?”
“What?” says John, startled. They haven’t done this yet. He’d figured that either Daniel didn’t like it, or getting fucked was an item in the list of his many, many issues.
“I’m not going to say it again,” says Daniel quietly.
“Yes,” says John on a breath, and then stronger, “yeah. Yeah, I want to fuck you.”
“Good,” says Daniel, and rolls onto his stomach in one graceful motion. He’s naked, and John reaches out to run his hands over his back, watch him as he arches a little and keeps arching, as John moves his hands further down.
Daniel really wants this. The idea is so intensely hot that John has to take a second to breathe, before grabbing for the lube.
Daniel’s responsive, mostly. He resists in little hiccups, like he’s forgotten, just for a second, that he wants it, tensing and twitching a little around John’s fingers in his ass. But the rest of the time, he’s pliant under John, letting John spread him and touch him and finger him, his head resting on his folded arms.
When John slides into him, Daniel’s eyes are closed. He tenses up, all over-his fists clench, even, and John freezes, waiting. And, after a second, Daniel breathes, and relaxes, and John starts moving again, slowly.
It’s hard to believe he’s fucking Daniel. He would have sworn that Daniel was wound so tight that a good fucking would break him into pieces. Instead, he’s pushing back onto John, fingers curling into the mattress, sweat darkening his hair.
He’s absolutely silent, though. It’s almost reassuring, that there’s something a little weird about it.
I think it’s a little weird too, in the way that is well matched to this characterization of Daniel, a characterization in which all the crap that has happened actually has had a long term affect on him.
They spend the next day briefing. Or, Daniel briefs, and John sits and makes peanut gallery comments and doodles and tries to work out how to translate im in ur base, killin ur doodz into Wraith, just so he can send it to all the queens right before they detonate the bombs.
Probably the funniest paragraph in the whole story.
It’s possible he’s getting a little punchy.
“Three-man crews, except for McConnell and Vautour, and Colonel Sheppard and myself,” says Daniel, and, “By now, you all should have memorized the best structural points for setting the bombs,” and, “Security is lax, but none of us can take on an entire Hive ship ourselves, so don’t be seen,” and finally, “Get out alive if you can. But the mission takes first priority.”
Despite all the worst-case speculations, it’s possible that the guys from the hangar were telling the truth. Daniel agrees with him, so that evening, they head over to the hangar and leave a note.
Daniel lets John write it. Gone on a secret mission, he puts. If we’re not back when you get this, we’re probably all dead. Feel free to take advantage of the confusion. Wish we could have gotten to know you guys better.
“It’s good to know we aren’t depriving Earth of its last defense by going to our deaths,” says John, and it’s funny, but it’s also true. “They can pick up the good fight right where we left off.”
“Lucky them,” says Daniel.
Objectively, John would really rather not die. He would especially rather not die if suddenly he is not the only Atlantean alive on Earth. But-continuing Atlantean tradition, if nothing else-if he has to die, nuking a whole fuckload of Wraith is a pretty good way.
“So we’re probably going to get killed tomorrow,” says John.
“Your point?”
“If you have any last sex requests, make them now.”
Daniel looks at him for a little longer than is comfortable, and finally says, “Do you want me to fuck you?”
“Hey,” says John, because yes, but that isn’t the point. “I asked you.”
“I don’t see why-”
“Come on,” he says. Letting Daniel argue is not the way to go, if John wants to hear something real. “There has to be something you want.”
He gets Daniel to stop and think about it, which is progress. But then a while goes by, and Daniel’s still thinking.
“So?” he says finally.
Daniel frowns. “I don’t know,” he says, and he’s laughing a little, but not like it’s funny.
“You don’t-”
“I don’t know,” Daniel repeats. “Presented with the option of any sexual act I could desire, I am at a loss.” He glances up. “Is that sad?”
“Daniel-”
“It’s sad,” Daniel says. “It’s about par for the course, though. I-” he shakes his head. “Could you just-” He drops down on the bed, lies back. “Come here?”
In case you were feeling this was all about the sex, we’re given a chance to enjoy the intense intimacy between them here. It makes sense character wise that Daniel is able to ask for this, to admit it isn’t just sex. John is able to go along as long as he doesn’t have to say anything.
John goes. Daniel tilts his head back for a kiss, keeps his eyes closed, opens his mouth when John does. His legs fall apart, but he doesn’t seem in a hurry to do anything, just reaches up, pulling John down against him.
All they do is kiss and rub up against each other, but it’s hot as hell, somehow. All fun, no work; John could do this all day, sweat and kissing and riding this long plateau of pleasure. Daniel’s eyes are still closed, his head back, his mouth open. And when he comes, he says John’s name.
Sweet.
The next day, twelve of them get into their darts while the rest wait on the ground. John looks down at the group standing there, waiting to be swept up and disintegrated and stored in the memory of a Wraith dart, and sees them frightened, freaked-out, furious. Daniel’s looking up, standing apart from the little groups, waiting for John.
“All right,” says John. “Let’s do this.”
He waits while McConnell goes. Then Thorman. Asato. One after the other, passing over the crowd and sweeping up another couple of guys, until all of them have gone and Daniel’s the only one left standing.
“Okay,” says John to himself. “Don’t fuck this up.” And he circles around and starts his pass, engages the beam and dematerializes Daniel into the dart computer.
John hates flying the darts, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s flying, and now he’s accelerating up and out into space for the first time in months, watching the sky darken from blue to black, the stars coming out, darts sparkling all around him.
And sure, he’s probably flying to his death, but that’s pretty familiar by now.
It’s familiar to us, too.
Part 5
Author: frostfire_17
Fandom: SGA/SG1
Commentator: keefaq
When they get back, McConnell bitches them out for scaring him to death.
“-understand that you have intelligence I don’t, and that you’re doing important things, but Colonel, Dr. Jackson, please consider that it might not be the best idea for the two ranking-” he stumbles, “people-to risk their lives at the same time. For the mission’s sake.”
John doesn’t fall on the floor laughing, but it’s a close call. He does feel like he’s fourteen years old and he’s stayed out past curfew.
Daniel takes it for about five minutes before he says, “Excuse me, Major,” and beats it.
John changes his clothes, showers, and gets some food. He takes a nap, hits the gym, showers again, sits down and talks with a couple of the airmen about nothing in particular. Around 1200, he says, “Screw it,” and goes to find Daniel.
“What-” says Daniel, and that’s as far as he gets before John steps up and kisses him.
If he had spent any time thinking about this, he would have thought that Daniel would say no again. But Daniel’s making a desperate, low-pitched noise, and his mouth is hot and open under John’s. There was one flinch, a quick I-don’t-think-we-should twitch, but then his hands clutched at John’s shoulders, slid around his neck. And now John’s panting against Daniel’s mouth, pressed against him, kissing and kissing. When John takes a step forward and pushes Daniel back against the wall of his room, Daniel makes another noise, almost a whine, and John grins and slides down his body to the floor.
Daniel’s hands come up into his hair, and John works his zipper down and gets his cock out, and he doesn’t even know the last time he did this, but he remembers how. Daniels’s fingers clench when he tongues the head, and he lets them push him down.
And then it’s all cocksucking, wet sounds and full mouth and jaw aching slightly. Daniel’s losing it above him, just like Daniel never does, and that’s something to think about, later. John’s hard enough that he’s gasping around Daniel’s cock, and each little thrust against the back of his throat is a jolt.
When Daniel comes in his mouth, John’s brain whites out, and when he comes back, he’s sprawled on the floor on his back with the taste thick in his mouth and Daniel’s hands running over him. He’s coming almost before one of them slides between his legs.
As they’re getting themselves back together, Daniel hands John a handful of tissues. By the time he’s cleaned himself up and thrown them away. Daniel’s sitting in his chair, elbow on the desk, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. His eyes are closed. John lets himself out.
What can I say here, except, finally.
So now he’s-well, he’d almost forgotten what sex even felt like, and now he’s going through the day-briefing room, labs, quarters, briefing room, gym, labs-and he’s almost worried that someone’s going to notice, because his entire body feels open and waiting and there’s moments when he can hardly even breathe.
He jerks off in the bathroom after lunch, hand on his cock and remembering hard floor under his knees, full mouth and blank mind and Daniel being loud-and who would have thought? His thumb slides over the head of his cock as he remembers Daniel’s low-voiced fuck, and he comes into his hand, gasping.
Sex. Sex. He hasn’t felt this good in months. For most of the day, he can’t even remember what it’s been like, crushing fear and endless, pointless fighting. Brain chemistry, he thinks, is a beautiful thing.
Not to subscribe to the magical healing power of orgasm or anything, but sex does make everything look brighter, doesn’t it? It’s well past time that our heroes have something to feel good about.
He comes to Daniel’s room that night, and standing outside, he thinks, for a serious thirty seconds, that Daniel isn’t going to let him in. John’s barely seen him all day, which is probably intentional on Daniel’s part considering the size of their fallout shelter, and John’s knowledge of the inner workings of Daniel’s mind does not extend to figuring out whether he’ll be up for round two.
But the door opens, and John steps inside. There are candles, again, and Daniel’s barefoot and graceful when he closes the door behind John and runs a finger over the back of his neck.
“Hi,” John manages, and Daniel smiles.
John’s pushed back toward the bed a slow step at a time, Daniel’s hand pressing against his chest. It’s careful and deliberate and very clear, but even if he wanted to say no, John doesn’t think he could make himself open his mouth. Daniel’s eyes are fixed on him, and neither of them says anything until John’s sprawled on his back with Daniel over him.
“It’s a stupid idea,” says Daniel casually, pushing up John’s T-shirt. John arches before he realizes what he’s doing.
“It’s a stupid idea, and I shouldn’t have let it happen earlier, and I spent a long time thinking about it this evening. You were going to show up, and I was going to tell you to get out, and that would have been it. Raise your arms.” Daniel pulls the T-shirt off of him; it’s loud against his ears.
“But,” says Daniel, and runs a hand down John’s chest, “I’m sick of this. My selflessness isn’t endless, no matter what people think.” He backs up, starts pulling off John’s boots.
John takes the pause while Daniel undoes his shoelaces and thinks-he can think, sort-of-about what’s happening here. This slow, inexorable monologue (he doesn’t know where his brain was, thinking that sex with Daniel would be like sex with a normal person), and he knows where it’s going and he knows how much say he’s going to have in this. He should probably make a conscious decision about it, but that doesn’t seem important, right now. When Daniel pulls his sock off, he can feel the thumb against his instep all the way up his body.
Daniel’s external and John’s internal monologue continue all through the sex to deepen our feeling of how desperately they are clinging to each other in a world gone to hell.
“I need something to hold on to, and something to let go with. This can be both.” Daniel undoes his pants and hooks his fingers into the waistbands of the pants and the boxers underneath, and his fingernails dig into the skin of John’s thighs, sliding all the way down.
John’s thoughts about Jackson, his past, his looks, his mind, his actions are so very John. We go along thinking we’re seeing what’s happening and I keep forgetting we’re only seeing John’s viewpoint, and that that viewpoint is skewed to fit his demented mind, reflecting his demented world view. And now after about 20,000 words, we finally hear what Daniel thinks of John: “And you,” Daniel glances up at John’s face, “you’re fucking crazy. Which works, I think.”
Which is so true, but because we’ve been so completely in John’s head for so long, I didn’t really notice how crazy he’s acting, how disassociated.
And he bends down, and his tongue is tracing hot-cold patterns across John’s chest, and John gives up on his brain for the night and strains up against him, as Daniel works his way downward and takes John’s cock in his mouth.
The idea that Daniel is good at cocksucking is almost as hot as the actual blowjob, and John’s been riding the edge all day, so he almost bites through his lip keeping himself from going right over. He can’t keep from thrusting, a little, but Daniel takes it without flinching, and John lets his eyes fall shut while Daniel sucks him. He’s been waiting for this-every time he thought about earlier or slid a hand over his body or fucking brushed up against someone in the hallway, he wanted this. “Jesus Christ,” he hears himself, no control at all, and it’s so fucking good.
When he comes, he can’t keep still and he can’t keep quiet and Daniel has to hold his hips down, so hard that he can still feel the fingers after Daniel’s let go. And after that, he’s boneless, no way to even try to figure out what he’s feeling when Daniel slides a slick finger in, and a second, and a third, watching him so intently all the time. John just catches his breath and keeps his legs apart and watches Daniel’s careful, controlled movements. It takes a while, but when he starts feeling it again, Daniel catches on instantly, and chases after each twitch of pleasure until John’s starting to pant again.
John hasn’t done this in a long, long time. He likes it too much, and he knows it, and it’s dangerous to risk someone else finding that out. But now, the world’s ended, and there’s no military to screw him for getting screwed, no CO who doesn’t want a pansy in his unit, and no one’s watching but Daniel.
Daniel’s fingers are moving gently around John’s cock, and he keeps just-barely brushing John’s prostate with his other hand. And then John looks past what Daniel’s doing and realizes he’s still wearing all his clothes, and John has to close his eyes and swallow down the groan, even while he’s arching up into Daniel’s hand.
“Good,” Daniel breathes, and slowly pulls his fingers out. He wipes off his fingers and strips, leaving the clothes where they fall. He angles John’s hips up toward him, hands big and warm. John closes his eyes and waits for it.
When Daniel pushes in, the reflexes are still there; it’s easier than it should be and it barely even hurts, and he doesn’t want it to hurt more, because that would just be fucked-up-“Jesus.”
“Good,” says Daniel again, and John can hear the smile in the word. Daniel thrusts in again, hard and good. John’s slick with sweat, all he can smell is sex, and he doesn’t want to open his eyes, doesn’t want to know what this looks like, but there’s no way he can help himself, and his mouth is open and panting when he finally looks Daniel in the eye.
“You want this,” says Daniel, low and certain, his hand wrapping around John’s cock.
“Fuck you,” John manages, not that anyone could have concluded anything different-he drags in air, but he’s not going to be able to say anything else. He can’t remember why he ever thought this was a bad idea. And then Daniel hits just the right spot, and he can barely remember his name; his head’s back, he can’t breathe, it’s too fucking much. Lights behind his eyes; ringing in his ears; he comes blind and senseless and doesn’t even know if he’s making noise.
It takes him a minute to come down from it. When he can see again, Daniel’s breathing harshly, watching John like he couldn’t look away if he tried. He swallows hard, slides a hand through the come on John’s stomach, and thrusts in deep, and John can feel him coming. He shudders, and Daniel drops down onto him, hot and sweat-slick.
I’m loving this sex scene. Generally I prefer the guy with the more stereotypical masculine markers, in this case John, to be more passive in a sexual encounter. It seems to even up the relationship a bit, and to me, slash is all about the equality.
John just breathes, tastes some of the sweat on Daniel’s shoulder, comes down from the high.
John sleeps like a rock, but he wakes up at five and Daniel’s still asleep. He takes a second to be surprised at that-but, well, theoretically, Daniel has to sleep sometime.
And, at last, they sleep.
He slips out, congratulates himself on avoiding a morning after, and they go about their business.
Daniel corners him in the cafeteria-slash-briefing-room later that day. John has an instant of creeping horror at the idea that Daniel’s going to say something about last night. He wastes a second looking for escape routes, but just when he’s about to give up and take it like a man, Daniel says, “You flew a Wraith dart once, didn’t you.”
Haha. I love the idea of John frantic to escape any relationship talk.
John blinks. “Yeah.”
“Can you teach anyone else to do it?”
“Well-sure. Yeah. I guess.”
Daniel nods. “Good.”
And then he’s gone. John wonders, just for a minute, if he maybe hallucinated last night happening, but decides that a) he should have expected this [i.e., the unexpected] from Daniel, post-sex, and b) it would take someone a lot crazier than he is to hallucinate something like that.
Okay, maybe there’s another little magical healing power of sex thing here, but being in a new relationship, one where the sex is good, can really be motivating and make you feel hopeful and energetic, so I’ll buy this.
Daniel spends the rest of the day running around like a man possessed. John spends some time considering that Daniel might be possessed, but eventually figures, not likely.
Hee, yes, with their history, one must always consider possession a possibility.
John spends most of the day failing to not think about the sex.
Blowjobs, he thinks, were okay. Whatever. Nothing more than he’s done around other bases, with other guys. But the fucking-
This is the kind of non-insight I would expect from John.
That’s as far as he gets. (A lot of times. But who’s counting.) He’s good at distracting himself from things like this. Thinking about them too much never does any good, anyway.
Daniel catches him again around eighteen hundred, brandishing a laptop and seven thousand sheets of paper. Some of them have diagrams on them. “My room,” he says as he’s walking up, and goes straight past John, en route. John rolls his eyes but follows.
John drops down on the floor and helps Daniel spread the papers out around burned-out candle stubs, and listens and points things out and carefully doesn’t think about what this might mean, and says, “You realize you’re insane, right?” twelve or fifteen times. And when they’re done, he sits back on his heels and says, “Fuck me. We actually have a secret plan.”
“Remember before you get excited, we’re probably all going to die,” says Daniel.
“So what else is new,” says John, and leans in.
Daniel’s head tips back and he doesn’t make a sound while John sucks him, just closes his eyes and buries his hands in John’s hair. John swallows thickly and lets Atlantis, silver and gleaming, slip down past the back of his mind.
This is just a fantastic paragraph. It gets me every time I read it; it’s so devastatingly simple.
The next morning, Daniel does the briefing. “Group A will be going for the hangar,” he says, and now he’s watching John. “Group B will be causing mayhem over in the city.” He arches an eyebrow at John. “You want the mayhem?”
He does. And Daniel will probably have fun securing the hangar. “Aw, for me?” he drawls, and Daniel smiles a little, like he’s satisfied.
They set out. Daniel drives one of the Jeeps, John drives the other, and they split up before they reach the actual city. John and his group go in first, and Daniel’s group moves off to the private airfield that’s the object of this mission, a decent distance from the city.
“So let’s do this,” says John, and they commence with the killing of Wraith. He’s pretty much never going to get tired of blowing their dreadlocked heads off. Especially if he gets to use grenades-sometimes he wishes they’d just die after a machine gun burst.
Sometimes, it’s fun. Whenever he’s using a handgun, he’ll play let’s-see-how-many-shots. Anything over fifteen, and he starts respecting the hell out of the fucker while he reloads.
“Did you do it?” he asks Daniel, when they meet up.
Daniel’s fingers are warm and brief on the back of his neck, and he has to fight not to tilt his head back. No one else sees.
“We did it,” says Daniel.
John takes a deep breath, forgets about the touching, and grins. “We’re in business.”
So now John’s pretty much resigned himself to the fact of dying on Earth.
Okay. Whatever.
Yeah, that seems to capture John’s character perfectly.
John learned, about five minutes after they met, that Daniel Jackson could focus like a motherfucker. Mostly, he sees it from the outside-just try getting Daniel to listen to you when he’s thinking about something else. Ninety percent of the time, he doesn’t even notice enough to get pissed off. Like he’s somewhere else, or you are.
But once in a while, John’s the focus. A minute or two, pinned in place while Daniel looks at him, and considers.
John pretty much hates it.
Ha, of course he hates it.
Since there’s nothing he can do about Daniel being Daniel, and since it’s only a minute here and there, he just deals. But now they’re fucking, and-
It’s odd moments. John on his back, legs open and waiting, and Daniel stops for a second, and just watches. In the mess hall, frowning at today’s new and weird attempts at balanced meals-and catching Daniel, coffee going cold in his hand, staring. John at Daniel’s door, just standing in the hallway for a long minute, while Daniel looks at him or through him or into him, and John’s wondering wildly, what the hell is he thinking, until he breaks and has to say, pointedly, “Can I come in?”
John hates it a lot.
It turns out that, when they’re actually out to do it, capturing a Wraith dart isn’t that hard. Half the Wraith that show up Earthside don’t think twice about leaving the keys in the car, and when it comes down to it, the hardest part is John remembering how to fly it.
If he had to summarize piloting a dart in one word, it’d be one of the ones without any real consonants, like eaugh. It always feels slimy inside the cockpit, and he has do it more on instinct than anything, so he has to be paying attention with his whole body. He always walks around feeling damp and uncomfortable for a couple hours afterward.
Is this not a perfect description of the feel of Wraith ships? I feel this way every time I see one on the show.
Daniel finds the dart fascinating; he crawls all around the thing, trying to decode it or understand it or whatever the hell it is he wants, and then comes back to base and showers for an hour, which they can’t really afford. John goes and finds him, the third time it happens, and catches him still in a towel, water slicking his hair down. He looks-blanker than usual.
John recognizes that look, he’s seen it on other people, and he knows how to do this.
It isn’t hard. He has his mouth on Daniel’s before either of them says anything, and then it’s just kissing, which John has always been good at. He doesn’t go for tongue right off, just holds Daniel’s face in his hands and kisses him, long and shallow and easy, until John can feel his muscles unwinding, just a little, until he falls a step back under John’s hands. He kisses Daniel’s mouth open-he tastes like toothpaste and Altoids-tilts Daniel’s head back, pushes Daniel back against the wall.
And whoops, says his brain, that won’t work-but Daniel goes. Head back, mouth open, back to the wall. Jesus Christ, it’s hot.
And oh God, it was stupid to start fucking Daniel fucking Jackson. John drags in a lungful of air, digs his fingers into Daniel’s bare back, and holds on.
This simple little phrase, that John holds on is all it takes to remind us how John is clinging to his image of Daniel as his savior, how Daniel is all that is keeping him hanging on to his sanity, his life, his purpose, which is the plan Daniel has made for them.
They get into a rhythm. Hit a city. One group goes to wreak havoc, kill Wraith, blow up buildings, whatever. The other group finds out where the Wraith have parked their darts, and takes one. John always gets to be in group two, which is both good-he gets to fly!-and bad-he’s flying a dart-but no one else can fly the things, so.
It’s a simple plan, but really, military discipline is no longer in the Wraith vocabulary. They don’t need it for anything. They’re living in an all-you-can-eat special. As far as either John or Daniel has been able to see, since the military installations and the major centers of government were destroyed, the Wraith haven’t displayed any organization beyond hey, buddy, wanna go grab some lunch?
It works. And, against all logic, it keeps working.
John has to wonder why something hasn’t gone horribly wrong. If they’d tried this sort of thing in Pegasus, they would have been royally screwed around Dart #3.
They designate Dart 1 as Training Dart, and John spends a lot of hours teaching people to fly it. He’s tense at first, worrying about the Wraith noticing, but these days, darts are buzzing around Earth like a lot of evil mosquitoes, and no one cares about one more, even if it mostly looks like its pilot tried life-sucking someone with greater than .10 blood alcohol content.
Daniel spends a lot of time in the lab with Dr. Granville, in electronic communication with Dr. Sim, and scouting around for intelligence on more explosives and/or people who know how to make them. John is vaguely irritated at having to spend days on end teaching something he could be better at himself, when he’s always sucked at teaching, anyway. He spends some energy wishing that Daniel could help-Daniel’s had more teaching experience than John has, and he’d make little cutting comments when the students were out of earshot-until he realizes that he’s missing Daniel.
He concentrates on teaching after that, to avoid thinking about how he’s sort of disgusted with himself.
Except then Rasmussen, who’s been having a really hard time getting the hang of this fly-a-dart thing, comes in too steep and fast for a landing, and crashes.
John skids to a stop next to Training Dart and works on prying the thing open; after a second, Li and Thomsen pound up next to him and help. It’s long, agonizing minutes before they get inside, working in silence.
Rasmussen’s head is split open. They get his body out of the cockpit and bring it back to base. Neither John nor Daniel says anything at the memorial.
Just in case we’ve forgotten the grimness of their situation, the author reminds us. This falls with a particularly loud and painful crash after all the descriptions of the growing intimacy between John and Daniel and the almost cuteness of John missing Daniel while giving dart flying lessons.
When John comes to Daniel’s room that night, Daniel’s sprawled back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t look at John.
John is not in the mood to decode one of Daniel’s labyrinthine freakouts right now, but he sort of wants some life-affirming sex, to counter the flat blankness that was today. So he goes over and sits down on the bed and waits.
“Somewhere,” says Daniel eventually, “somewhere, in the last few years, I lost something.” He rubs his eyes, then apparently decides that isn’t enough, and presses in with the heels of his hands. “Once upon a time, I cared about individual lives-any individual innocent life-more than I cared about the greater military goal. Even if-even if the goal would save more lives, even if I understood exactly why military action needed to be taken, even if I agreed with it, if I knew lives would be sacrificed-if I knew a life would be sacrificed.” He takes a shuddering breath. “Even if it was the right thing to do. I cared more. It affected me more than the greater principle at stake.” His eyes blink open, and he stares up at the ceiling. “That isn’t true anymore. I lost it somewhere, along the way. And I doubt I’ll ever get it back.”
John’s pretty sure this is because of how Daniel took the news about Rasmussen-a surprised “Oh,” and a frown, and John could see him thinking about how this cost them a pilot and a dart, and set the plan back farther than he would have liked.
Daniel rubs his forehead. “You know, I can’t remember what he looked like?”
“Dark hair,” says John. “Kind of short.”
Daniel looks at him. “You really aren’t helping at all.”
“Want a blowjob?” John offers.
Daniel laughs, but it sounds like it’s tearing at his chest. “Yes,” he says, “thank you,” and he’s still laughing like that when John slides down to his knees and undoes his pants. He quiets down when John starts sucking, and fucks John’s throat hard-John’s going to be feeling that, and he’s not complaining-but when John stands up, still swallowing, there’s a wet trail tracing along Daniel’s temple into his hair.
Daniel’s days of work pay off; he’s got the location of a store of nukes.
“One catch,” he says. “They’re in Arizona. But I don’t want to waste a week driving.”
“No problem,” says John. “We’ll take a dart.”
There’s a second’s pause before Daniel answers-John has no idea if he’s read the reports about what can happen to people when they’re the special Wraith version of passengers-but the answer’s a yes.
Other people are not so happy.
“Look, sirs,” says McConnell, “I realize that we’re going to have to test the efficiency of the darts’ dematerializing beams sometime, but maybe you shouldn’t start the experiments with Dr. Jackson. We kind of need him.”
“I’m really not doing anything too specialized, lately, Major,” says Daniel. “Administrative things, mostly. I think you’d survive without me. Anyway, it’s safe. The Atlantis team did it and survived.”
McConnell isn’t happy about it, and most of the others aren’t, either-“which is one of the reasons we should do it this way,” says Daniel to John, “because they have to see that I’ll be fine.” “As fine as you ever are,” mutters John-but they take their orders and come out to watch when John and Daniel leave.
They get to Arizona and find a jackpot.
“Should I be disturbed that you’re this turned on by a bunch of nuclear explosives?” Daniel says, but he runs his tongue along John’s collarbone before John can answer, thus pretty much assuring his question’s going to stay rhetorical, because John is riding the high of maybe actually being able to pull this off.
John’s not asleep when the proximity alarm goes off. In fact, he’s in the room with it, having figured after lying awake for a couple of hours that if he’s not going to be sleeping anyway, he might as well let the duty guy get some sleep and take over himself.
It still takes him a minute to react. He isn’t used to having alarms. Before this, it’s always been either the Wraith haven’t found us and we’re fine, or the Wraith have found us, and we’re fucked.
But someone’s tripped the early-warning sensors around their hangar, and they have to get the fuck over there now, or forget their secret plan. John bolts out of the control room and hits Daniel’s room at a run. It’s not locked, and John takes a second to be surprised about that.
Inside, Daniel’s asleep. “Daniel,” says John, sharply. “Daniel. Wake up.”
Daniel shifts, shoves at his blankets. John finally shakes his shoulder, and that gets him a hand batting at him and a slurred, “Jack?”
“No. Daniel. It’s John. Wake up.”
That finally gets through, and Daniel sits up, squinty-eyed. “What’s up?”
“Someone’s in the hangar,” says John, and Daniel’s past him almost before he realizes.
Halle-fucking-lujah, it isn’t a Wraith. More hallelujah, it isn’t fifty Wraith. John has never fully grasped how their telepathy thing works, and he does not want to have to scrap this operation.
What it is, though, is-unexpected.
John really shouldn’t be surprised that there are ten members of the armed services left outside their base who can work as a group, but he is, somehow. They’ve been living in a bubble of non-communication, ever since Arkansas. Outside of a couple of scientists and a couple hundred thousand Wraith, they couldn’t find anyone to communicate with.
Well, now they have, and they’re guarding the entrance to Daniel and John’s very own hangar. John’s ready to step forward, but Daniel gets there first.
“Hello,” he says, and suddenly there are a bunch of automatic weapons pointed at them. “Wait,” he says quickly, and holds out his own gun, bending to put it on the floor. “These ships are ours.”
There’s a pause while the other guys digest this. John counts exactly ten, wearing fatigues, looking like soldiers. U.S. soldiers, even. Finally, one of them speaks up. “These are your Wraith darts?”
“They are.” Daniel looks confident. His voice is resolute. Of course they are; whose else would they be?
The leader’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. “Well, can I ask how you got them, then?”
Daniel’s sarcasm steamrollers over the other guy’s. John resists the urge to start keeping score. “We stole them.” The duh is hanging in the air.
“Oh, yeah?” says the guy. “You sure you aren’t one of those Wraith-worshipping cults? You sure you didn’t sell out to them to keep from being eaten? You sure you didn’t just find this hangar and now you want to keep the ships for yourselves?”
Daniel takes a visible deep breath. John can practically see the struggle not to dry-voice the guy to death, and the next words come out civil. “Look, we’re all on the same side here. We were members of the Stargate program; this is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and I’m Dr. Daniel Jackson. We’re fighting the Wraith.”
This, finally, makes the guy pause. “You’re Daniel Jackson?”
“Yeah,” says John, stepping in to press the advantage while it’s there, “he is. You’re welcome to start explaining who you are any second now.”
“Captain Timothy Granger, USAF.” The captain glances around at his men. “Any of you recognize him?” Headshakes. He calls out, “Pinhoe, Larsen! Get out here!”
Two men come running out of the hangar. Granger says, “You two worked at Cheyenne Mountain, am I right?” Quick yes, sirs. “Who is this man?” He points.
“Sir,” says one of them, “sir-that’s Daniel Jackson.”
The captain looks at the other one, who nods. “It’s Dr. Jackson, sir. Unless it’s a clone or something.”
“You’re from the Stargate program, too,” says Daniel, and blinks. His eyes are a little wild when they meet John’s-the mountain, and then Area 51, and then Arkansas, and then week after week of becoming more convinced that they were the only organized military group left in the country-John sympathizes, and takes a couple of slow, deep breaths. It could be real, it could not be real, they’ll deal with it whatever it is.
Daniel rallies a little, and says, “How did you find this place?”
“We’d heard reports of anti-Wraith activity around the Northeast. We were patrolling this area and we noticed the dart activity. It wasn’t hard,” Granger says absently. He’s frowning. “I’m not authorized to bring anyone to meet my superiors, but if Pinhoe and Larsen are vouching for you, I’ll believe them and we can talk. How big is your operation, here?”
“I don’t think we’re telling you anything until you prove who you are,” says John. Because, appearances aside, they’ve been down this road before, and it does not end well.
But he’s reeling. They have reports. Patrols. God knows what else they could have.
Granger doesn’t get angry, just says, “Fair enough. I have to report this. We can send some people back here-say, a week from today. There’ll be someone with more authority than I have, Dr. Jackson, and we’ll proceed from there.”
“Great,” says Daniel, sounding dazed.
And then the captain cracks a smile. “It’s good to hear you’re alive, Dr. Jackson. The scientists are going to be impossible-they swore you couldn’t be dead. Said you couldn’t break that long of a winning streak.”
The scientists. John can hear Daniel’s quick indrawn breath, soft and isolated in the sudden whirling of his brain. “Scientists?” Daniel asks.
“The guys we got out of Area 51,” says Granger.
“But,” says Daniel, airless, “but Area 51 was destroyed. It’s a crater.”
“No, sir,” he says. “The surface is a crater. I understand that some of the people down there rigged a shield at the last minute, made from some of the technology they had available, and kept the lower levels safe from the blast. The top area, yeah, that’s a crater. It fooled the Wraith just fine.”
John’s fists are clenching-he can’t, it can’t be this easy-this happened before-
Daniel steps forward, intense and forceful, “Do you know who-”
“Colonel Carter’s alive, Dr. Jackson,” says the captain. “She and Dr. McKay are heading the science division right now.”
Rodney. John needs to not think about this right now, because-because he’s not going to be able to think about anything else. But he can’t keep himself from, “Elizabeth-Elizabeth Weir?”
The captain shakes his head. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t heard anything about her status.”
Daniel sends him a quick, compassionate glance, and then says, “Jack O’Neill?”
The captain shakes his head again. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.”
Daniel lets out a breath. “All right. Fine. Should we-have some way to get in contact with you?”
“I’m not authorized to give away contact information, sir, not to anyone. We’ll find you.”
“Well, then, okay,” says Daniel. “Get back to your base.”
“Yes, sir,” says Granger, and he and his men move out.
John and Daniel and Thorman and Li stand around and stare at each other for a while.
“You think they’re who they say they are, sir?” Li asks eventually.
“No idea,” says John. He wants to believe it, he wants, he wants-he remembers the crazy eyes and Davis’ desiccated husk. And there’s no question it could be a trick-get a bunch of guys, dress them up in USAF uniforms, build up a trust, find out if there’s anything more to the operation, wipe them all out from space once all necessary intelligence has been gathered. Dangle Rodney and Carter in front of them to mess with their heads a little more.
It could be true, though. It could be.
“Let’s get back,” says Daniel finally, and they go.
The big question: the operation.
“They could be genuine,” Daniel says. “Maybe we should hold off-Sam could show up next week, and then we’d know for sure.” He’s holding a pen, and he keeps glancing down, staring at it like it holds the secrets of the universe.
John makes an effort at skepticism. “Darts could show up next week. Or tomorrow. And even if they are from the Stargate program, if they have Carter and McKay or not, there’s no guarantee they’re all going to think this is a good idea. And if they’ve got a full colonel or a general, or even a member of the government, they can tell us what to do.” John thinks about that: good, bad, good?
“They can tell you what to do,” says Daniel.
“Okay, so they’ll think they can tell us what to do,” says John. “But who knows how many of the troops will stay with us if there’s a member of the Joint Chiefs hanging out in Oregon or wherever?”
“Point,” says Daniel.
“And it could be a trap,” says John.
“And it could be a trap,” says Daniel. “If it is, and if they’re gathering information instead of just confirming our location so they can wipe us out tonight, then they’ll probably take as much time as they said they’d take, to avoid suspicion. Can we do this inside of a week?”
“Darts?” says John.
“Twelve,” says Daniel. “Check.”
“Personnel?”
“Pilots, doing okay, according to you. Numbers, about three people per dart.”
“Explosives?”
“With that last stash from Arizona, plus what Granville’s been working on, plus what Dr. Sim sent us, we have at least enough for twelve Hive ships.”
John takes a deep breath. “Okay. Looks like we’re doing this.”
They haven’t really sat down and talked about how this is a suicide mission.
Of course, John’s gone on plenty of those and survived, but he doesn’t usually have quite this long to think about it before, planning and arranging and training and building up to go out and get himself and a few dozen other people killed.
And Daniel-
Daniel actually comes to John’s room a couple of nights later, which is new. He’s quiet and intense, and he fucks John carefully, with great concentration. John makes a lot of noise. Daniel doesn’t.
Afterwards, they’re lying tangled up on John’s bed, and Daniel says into his shoulder, “I’m sick of this.”
“What?” says John intelligently.
Daniel rolls onto his back. “I’m wondering if I’ll come back this time.” Dry chuckle. “And I feel ridiculous about it. But I’m still wondering.”
“Oh,” says John, and thinks about it. “How many times-”
“Really depends on how you count,” says Daniel.
John drops it, and after a second, Daniel goes on. “I’m hoping the Ancients are done with me by now, but…” he opens a hand. “No idea.”
That gets John’s attention away from post-sex glow. “You’re hoping?”
He feels Daniel’s shrug. “I’m tired. More to the point, I’m sick of being killed and brought back.” He pauses, shifts against John’s side. “I used to think that Ascension was…it. The point. The meaning. Whatever. Now…I’m almost looking forward to dying and staying that way. Then at least I could have some peace.”
“I mostly don't think about dying,” says John. “It gets in the way.”
Daniel’s quiet for a while. Eventually, he says, “Good advice. Do you want to fuck me?”
“What?” says John, startled. They haven’t done this yet. He’d figured that either Daniel didn’t like it, or getting fucked was an item in the list of his many, many issues.
“I’m not going to say it again,” says Daniel quietly.
“Yes,” says John on a breath, and then stronger, “yeah. Yeah, I want to fuck you.”
“Good,” says Daniel, and rolls onto his stomach in one graceful motion. He’s naked, and John reaches out to run his hands over his back, watch him as he arches a little and keeps arching, as John moves his hands further down.
Daniel really wants this. The idea is so intensely hot that John has to take a second to breathe, before grabbing for the lube.
Daniel’s responsive, mostly. He resists in little hiccups, like he’s forgotten, just for a second, that he wants it, tensing and twitching a little around John’s fingers in his ass. But the rest of the time, he’s pliant under John, letting John spread him and touch him and finger him, his head resting on his folded arms.
When John slides into him, Daniel’s eyes are closed. He tenses up, all over-his fists clench, even, and John freezes, waiting. And, after a second, Daniel breathes, and relaxes, and John starts moving again, slowly.
It’s hard to believe he’s fucking Daniel. He would have sworn that Daniel was wound so tight that a good fucking would break him into pieces. Instead, he’s pushing back onto John, fingers curling into the mattress, sweat darkening his hair.
He’s absolutely silent, though. It’s almost reassuring, that there’s something a little weird about it.
I think it’s a little weird too, in the way that is well matched to this characterization of Daniel, a characterization in which all the crap that has happened actually has had a long term affect on him.
They spend the next day briefing. Or, Daniel briefs, and John sits and makes peanut gallery comments and doodles and tries to work out how to translate im in ur base, killin ur doodz into Wraith, just so he can send it to all the queens right before they detonate the bombs.
Probably the funniest paragraph in the whole story.
It’s possible he’s getting a little punchy.
“Three-man crews, except for McConnell and Vautour, and Colonel Sheppard and myself,” says Daniel, and, “By now, you all should have memorized the best structural points for setting the bombs,” and, “Security is lax, but none of us can take on an entire Hive ship ourselves, so don’t be seen,” and finally, “Get out alive if you can. But the mission takes first priority.”
Despite all the worst-case speculations, it’s possible that the guys from the hangar were telling the truth. Daniel agrees with him, so that evening, they head over to the hangar and leave a note.
Daniel lets John write it. Gone on a secret mission, he puts. If we’re not back when you get this, we’re probably all dead. Feel free to take advantage of the confusion. Wish we could have gotten to know you guys better.
“It’s good to know we aren’t depriving Earth of its last defense by going to our deaths,” says John, and it’s funny, but it’s also true. “They can pick up the good fight right where we left off.”
“Lucky them,” says Daniel.
Objectively, John would really rather not die. He would especially rather not die if suddenly he is not the only Atlantean alive on Earth. But-continuing Atlantean tradition, if nothing else-if he has to die, nuking a whole fuckload of Wraith is a pretty good way.
“So we’re probably going to get killed tomorrow,” says John.
“Your point?”
“If you have any last sex requests, make them now.”
Daniel looks at him for a little longer than is comfortable, and finally says, “Do you want me to fuck you?”
“Hey,” says John, because yes, but that isn’t the point. “I asked you.”
“I don’t see why-”
“Come on,” he says. Letting Daniel argue is not the way to go, if John wants to hear something real. “There has to be something you want.”
He gets Daniel to stop and think about it, which is progress. But then a while goes by, and Daniel’s still thinking.
“So?” he says finally.
Daniel frowns. “I don’t know,” he says, and he’s laughing a little, but not like it’s funny.
“You don’t-”
“I don’t know,” Daniel repeats. “Presented with the option of any sexual act I could desire, I am at a loss.” He glances up. “Is that sad?”
“Daniel-”
“It’s sad,” Daniel says. “It’s about par for the course, though. I-” he shakes his head. “Could you just-” He drops down on the bed, lies back. “Come here?”
In case you were feeling this was all about the sex, we’re given a chance to enjoy the intense intimacy between them here. It makes sense character wise that Daniel is able to ask for this, to admit it isn’t just sex. John is able to go along as long as he doesn’t have to say anything.
John goes. Daniel tilts his head back for a kiss, keeps his eyes closed, opens his mouth when John does. His legs fall apart, but he doesn’t seem in a hurry to do anything, just reaches up, pulling John down against him.
All they do is kiss and rub up against each other, but it’s hot as hell, somehow. All fun, no work; John could do this all day, sweat and kissing and riding this long plateau of pleasure. Daniel’s eyes are still closed, his head back, his mouth open. And when he comes, he says John’s name.
Sweet.
The next day, twelve of them get into their darts while the rest wait on the ground. John looks down at the group standing there, waiting to be swept up and disintegrated and stored in the memory of a Wraith dart, and sees them frightened, freaked-out, furious. Daniel’s looking up, standing apart from the little groups, waiting for John.
“All right,” says John. “Let’s do this.”
He waits while McConnell goes. Then Thorman. Asato. One after the other, passing over the crowd and sweeping up another couple of guys, until all of them have gone and Daniel’s the only one left standing.
“Okay,” says John to himself. “Don’t fuck this up.” And he circles around and starts his pass, engages the beam and dematerializes Daniel into the dart computer.
John hates flying the darts, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s flying, and now he’s accelerating up and out into space for the first time in months, watching the sky darken from blue to black, the stars coming out, darts sparkling all around him.
And sure, he’s probably flying to his death, but that’s pretty familiar by now.
It’s familiar to us, too.
Part 5