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PART TWO
Daniel sincerely hoped he looked, and sounded, more confident than he felt.
Waaay more.
The silence behind him was absolute, but he didn't dare look around. He couldn't
give Jack an inch because he was going to win. He'd promised himself he
would not be passive, not any longer, he would not allow himself to merely
react. Jack had pushed him away before and he had colluded, never confronting
what was really happening between them until all his choices were gone. All but
the one Oma had offered him.
It was in the past and he was impatient of that. He was a different person now.
Jack was different too. Softer. He'd made a peace with himself, different but
perhaps no less difficult for him than the path Daniel had taken. It was the
story of their friendship, their story from the earliest days. Opposites, at
odds, coming at each other from different places, yet always coming together.
Daniel had hardened. He'd grown. He'd had to leave his life to learn it was
right for him, it was his place.
Jack was about the opposite, forced by Daniel to be more feeling, not less. A
lot of the lessons Jack had learned in the military were turned on their heads
during his time with SG-1. He went from being the one with the power, the
weapons, the technology, to being little more or less than the victim of
circumstance, of whatever was coming at them through the Stargate.
SG-1 was the team most often in the difficult position of having to make first
contact, bearing the brunt of many of the attacks made on Earth and the SGC.
Jack had had to learn to deal with being outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, outgunned
by forces vastly superior in ways he'd never imagined, never been trained to
face. His comfortable certainties had been eroded, attacked and even defeated by
all these external, alien forces he'd been exposed to.
Daniel had watched Jack's cynicism and bitterness grow in the face of repeated
failures to achieve their primary mission goals, yet he'd still forced his
friend to open himself, to feel even more. He'd helped to strip away Jack's
natural defences and felt the responsibility of this, even though he'd come to
terms with his part in it, with the blame.
Was it any wonder the two of them had turned on each other? Never meaning to,
never consciously, never dealing with the reality of all those changes affecting
them both. They'd both thrown up walls to hide the raw feelings, the losses and
disappointments.
Daniel ached now to think of them losing the one thing that had so strongly
marked their friendship, made them unique to one another. They'd lost their
ability to communicate when they'd both needed it most. That connection they'd
shared, call it comprehension or empathy or compassion, a reaching out, all of
those things, had festered.
Daniel didn't know how this would turn out. How the two of them could or would
be together. He knew only he needed to try. What he and Jack were to each other,
as friends? He saw potential for so much more. He hoped for so much more.
With all of their history, with the pain and the problems that had driven them
apart, made them realise how much they needed and valued and loved each other
exactly when it was too damned late to do anything but suffer without one
another, Jack wouldn't let himself see they'd moved on, that they could be more
to each other. He was afraid and he would fight because it was who he was. A
protector. It was his strongest instinct, his defining quality.
Jack was not always right.
"We have a lot to talk about," Daniel said firmly, opening up the digital
footage of his doorway on the laptop. He kept his eyes on the carved stone as he
spoke, trying to trace out familiar patterns and shapes in the whole. The
familiar process helped to steady him. He needed this, really, he was more than
nervous, he was scared. "I guess, I guess I'm a loner."
Jack said nothing.
"It took me all the time I've known you to realise I fit." He straightened,
consciously, in his seat. "That we fit."
He was tired of being the one to react in love, the one to be kissed. He was too
slow to find focus with other people, terribly slow. Sarah and Sha'uri, he'd
loved them, had given them all he could, little as that was, there was no
mistake in his feelings, but he'd never sought them out. Never put them first.
More lessons he'd been slow to learn, slower still to put aside blame and simply
accept. He was who he was, a loner, a scholar, a soldier. With Jack, he would be
different. He would be the man he was only just beginning to find and to know.
He was still afraid of needing Jack this much, but he was taking it, he was
open.
"Get back over here!"
Jack's abrupt, muted roar made him jump and then grin.
"Throwing in the towel already?" he asked brightly.
"No!"
"More kissing?" he offered, willing to stretch a point.
"No!" The need for discretion was severely hampering Jack's volume. He sounded
as if he were about to pop a vein.
"Then I'm busy," Daniel retorted, his eyes once more gliding over sinuous, alien
curves.
"Don't make me come fetch you!" Jack threatened.
"I think," Daniel confessed naively, conscious of a very specific stir of
excitement, a disturbingly intense, literal pang, "I'd like to be fetched."
Jack let out this outraged, strangled snort of laughter.
"See!" Daniel glanced around triumphantly. "You want this too."
"Daniel!"
"Honestly, Jack, you're safer if I stay here," Daniel advised kindly. "I really
want to kiss you again."
"Daniel!"
"Although, truthfully, what I really want is to pin you down and make you
sweat." He shot Jack a slightly apologetic look over his shoulder. "It's the
whole Air Force thing. And the tent."
"The whole Air Force thing?" Jack repeated giddily.
Daniel glanced around enquiringly in time to catch him shuddering.
"God help me," Jack groaned heartrendingly. "I know exactly what you mean."
"And the, and the tent," Daniel insisted, frankly wondering at the erotic
magnetism of canvas. "There's a lot of camping in our future." He was drawn to
stare at Jack again, lingering over the strong lines, the experience marking his
handsome face. "A lot of lovemaking, period," he announced, decidedly.
"You've known me, what? Eight years in all? Eight? Now, out of the blue, you're
feeling the call of the wild thing?" Jack complained aggrievedly.
"Not out of the blue," Daniel corrected him, wanting to be fair. "For a while.
For a long time before I ascended, I think. I'm just, I'm slow." He frowned as
Jack strove for words. "This isn't about apportioning blame, either," he warned
him. "Stop trying to hide in irrelevancies."
"I'm not!"
"Then get over here and kiss me the way we both know you want to," Daniel
challenged him.
"I can't."
"You want to."
"I won't."
"You still want to." He turned back to his laptop. "You will," he said softly,
smiling a little.
"Credit me with some backbone."
"I credit you with being my friend," Daniel retorted coolly. "And with having a
dick."
There was another stunned silence.
"All I wanted was a game of Scrabble," Jack bleated eventually.
"I know the kind of Scrabble you like, especially after a few beers,"
Daniel admitted cheerfully. "If you want, we can try out some of those triple
word scores?"
"I don't want," Jack argued with more panic than conviction. He wanted, alright,
and they both knew it.
"I know I'm supposed to be your pure, innocent little-"
"Pure?" Jack parroted incredulously, avoiding Daniel's searching eyes.
"The thought of being the first man I've been with doesn't turn you on?" Daniel
asked politely, curious about this. While he waited for a response, he busied
himself increasing the magnification on his image and beginning his second
careful sweep of the carvings. "Because it turns me on, knowing you've nev-"
Jack cleared his throat desperately loudly.
"Assuming a lot, am I?" Daniel translated sweetly, sneaking another glance.
Jack looked as if he'd been stuffed.
"Assuming accurately," Daniel acknowledged, satisfied. It shouldn't be important
to him, but it was. He didn't want Jack to be more experienced than he was and
it wasn't only that he wanted sex to be about them both learning, together, not
teaching or pre-conceived ideas from either of them about what was good for
them. He didn't want to be a second or a third, or the latest in a long line, he
wanted to be the only man to make Jack O'Neill feel this way, the only one to
reach him.
Daniel never knew whether it was a strength or a flaw he was such a private
person, he found it so difficult to set aside his reserve. Both, maybe. Being so
bold, speaking out so strongly about his wants and desires was very difficult
for him. Exhausting. He was trying to be honest about his sexuality, his
identity. He was grateful their friendship was in this place, that they could be
bantering back and forth this way, not cutting into each other as they would
have in the past. He felt more certain than ever that they'd both grown during
their time apart and it meant a great deal to him Jack wasn't shutting him out
when they both knew that he could.
It was still easier to look at his laptop screen than it was to look at Jack and
as another heavy silence fell, he let the language draw him in. The carvings
reminded him of the organic complexity of the Celtic languages but were no more
than an echo of those. Knowing he was reaching, searching out the familiar and
not finding it, he was beginning to be excited. Seriously excited. This was a
truly alien language to him. The second, he supposed, he was trying to translate
today. It was a slight concern to him he was doing marginally better at
comprehending Jack than he was these symbols and no one in the camp was betting
how long it would be until he got Colonel O'Neill in the sack. Tomorrow could
possibly prove very embarrassing, although not more painful than his boldness
this evening.
"I know it would help you out a lot if you could get mad at me and stay mad," he
told Jack sympathetically, wanting to make it clear that he wasn't unreasonable.
The last thing he wanted was to hurt his stubbornly protective friend but he
didn't feel he had much choice in his approach. Jack was basically in need of
the metaphorical zat-blast to the ass and however he personally felt about it,
Daniel was pledged to deliver. "But I'm happy you can't. We're, I think we're
past that. Both of us are."
"I know." Jack, oddly tender in his reluctance, had to respond to this. "You're
a colossal pain in the ass, Daniel Jackson." His slightly helpless warmth
towards Daniel was a balm, a pleasure freely offered and one that was once again
dependable.
"You like that about me," Daniel spoke out, teasing again, trying his utmost to
disguise a shy breathlessness which overwhelmed him whenever he was struck by a
sense of the reality of what he was doing, finessing Jack into admitting his
feelings and then, as promptly as he could manage it, into bed with him.
"I do not."
"You told Colonel Edwards I was well worth it."
"I lied."
"He's nice. He, er, he." Daniel hitched around in his seat and demonstrated how
nice Colonel Edwards had been, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder as Edwards
had after Iron Shirt had chosen to accept their obeisance and let them live. The
man's generosity had surprised him. He hadn't felt he'd earned it.
It didn't appear Jack entirely supported this precise assessment of 'nice'.
"I was surprised in the beginning how demonstrative military officers could be
in times of severe stress," Daniel elaborated wickedly, "Even officers who
aren't you."
A surly look suggested Jack knew he was being baited. He lay down, stretching
himself comfortably out on his bunk, arms tucked behind his head.
Daniel found himself staring at the BDUs straining across Jack's crotch. It was
much more intriguing than anything unfolding behind him on the monitor screen.
"You're the only one who's ever held my hand, though," he babbled on, quite
distracted.
The fabric was shiny over the buttons, faded and creased where it traced
familiar curves.
"See anything you like?" Jack enquired politely.
"Yes." Why else would he be ogling?
"Oy."
"I really want to be over there with you," Daniel acknowledged with a faint
sigh, stoically turning back to his laptop. "You're very engaging when you don't
know whether to kiss me or kill me. I'm only sorry I didn't read this, this look
you get, sooner. We could've had a lot more fun."
"Daniel, look," Jack began, then stopped right away.
Willing to wait Jack out, Daniel patiently tried once again to focus on his
carvings, because if there was any kind of repeated pattern or symbol here, he
was damned if he was seeing it.
"God, I wish you were easier to lie to," Jack sighed. "Wanting, it's not
enough."
"You do want me, though?" Daniel's heart thudded painfully. Relief. Gratitude.
Fright. Pretty much in equal measure.
"You know I..." Jack cleared a suddenly raspy throat. "You know. In the, er, the
moment. I shouldn't, though, and I can't."
"That's where you're wrong."
"I'm not wrong."
"I need you. We need each other."
"We're friends. Can't that be enough?"
"Not for either of us, and you know it too, or your eyes wouldn't follow me the
way they do."
"I didn't mean," Jack apologised in a stifled tone.
"I'm glad that you do."
"I made peace with it. With myself."
"It's not enough," Daniel said sincerely. "I've learned that. The compromises
are too great. We have to go on."
"Together?" Jack asked heavily.
"Could you - could you bear to let me go?" Daniel asked bravely. Jack's body
jerked but he didn't look up at Daniel or speak. "I can't let you go either."
"I can't sleep with you, Daniel, and I won't. I've moved on from this place
you're apparently just finding and you, trust me, you need to move on too."
"You haven't moved so far, Jack. We kissed. We."
Jack was patient with him, careful, even smiling a little despite the gravity in
his dark, beautiful eyes. Everything he was, everything he'd learned to be,
invited Daniel's trust.
"You want to sleep with me," Daniel went on, "And even though I want it too, now
you say you won't. You're going to have to do some thinking, Jack, you're going
to have to clarify, because with the attraction you feel for me, I don't get the
distinction you're apparently making. Wanting to and not. It's the not part that
doesn’t work for me. Doing the time but not the crime." As Daniel heaped
analogies, Jack petulantly pulled the pillow over his face. "They're both sins,
if you want to look at it that way, one of omission and one of commission."
"I can't take philosophy on top of everything else!" Jack complained piteously.
"Shall I keep it simple?"
"Please."
Simple. Daniel could do simple. He could! "Want to see my scar?" he offered.
"For cryin' out loud!" Another muted roar sounded from the wounded soldier under
the pillow.
"I know that means yes."
"We're arguing in circles, Daniel," Jack sighed.
"All you have to do is give in and we can stop."
"I was just in the mood for Scrabble," Jack whined plaintively, apparently to
himself.
"I'm in the mood for sex."
"Is it really the tent?"
"Also the Air Force thing. The thought of your position at the apex of the chain
of command is disturbingly arousing to me."
"You can't say stuff like that to me."
"Why not? You above all people should applaud my strategy of using my opponent's
weaknesses against him."
"Not when your opponent is me."
"I'm making you fight both of us," Daniel explained. "You can't win a war if you
have to fight on two fronts. And," he added daringly, "a rear."
Jack emerged, somewhat wild about the eyes and cutely tufted around the
hairline, from behind the pillow to gape incredulously at Daniel. His powers of
speech seemed to have once again deserted him.
Daniel folded his arms across his chest and did his very best to look like a
stalker.
"Can't we just play a nice game?" Jack pleaded.
Daniel smiled at that. "We're playing a very nice game."
"One which doesn't involve torturing me to the point of insanity," Jack riposted
tartly.
"Strip poker?"
Jack just about managed to turn another snort of laughter into a growl. Daniel
told him it was cute and then a shout for "Dr. Jackson!" went up in the camp.
Astonished, he got to his feet and stooped to lift the tent flap. A hand clamped
vice-like on his shoulder, he took the jacket and Beretta thrust at him, then
Jack moved out past him, his P-90 raised as he ducked out of the tent. Daniel
followed immediately, finding everyone spilling out of their tents, armed,
milling and confused.
"Dr. Jackson!"
Daniel stepped out from behind Jack's sheltering, over-protective bulk and
headed off towards the caller as another shout went up. He broke into a run,
Jack cursing as he emerged out from behind the relative cover of the C.P. tent
onto completely open ground.
"Daniel!"
"Doctor!"
The whole camp seemed to be hard on Daniel's heels as he ran towards the cliff
face and their excited sentries.
"Look up, to the top, the top!"
Daniel looked up automatically, astonished when he saw a silvering radiance
bathe the rock at the top of the escarpment. He glanced around and for the first
time saw Odokai's moons in the clear night sky, three of them, the central moon
larger than its two satellites.
"That's amazing," he called out to Jack as he and Teal'c peeled away from
Edwards and Lorne, focused on restoring order as there was no immediate threat
for the men to respond to.
He staggered to a halt, mouth falling open as the cliff face seemed to burst
into flame, a clean, sweeping sheet of radiance its entire expanse. Wild-fire
raced down, burning the rock to silver, to stars, three moons at the centre,
their rays streaking down to strike the faces of two tall, armoured men standing
either side of the door, outstretched hands clasped. One had a crown and a
sword, the other a sword and a bow, long hair spilling down their backs,
flickering in an unseen breeze.
Daniel stopped breathing, looking everywhere at once, awestruck as each image
burst from the rock. Trees bordered the men, graceful, rich with fruit. An army
of archers and swordsmen, much smaller in scale, stood among them, poised on the
brink of fighting, or ceasing fire, Daniel was uncertain. At the extreme edge of
the escarpment, to his left, there was a tall, angular city, perhaps ruled by
the man who wore the crown. Mirroring that, on the right, stood a single tree,
its roots artfully probing into the ground at the foot of the cliff, its
uppermost branches reaching the top.
"Incredible!" Daniel gasped. "Monumental." Literally!
"I have never seen a sight such as this," Teal'c echoed his stupefaction.
"Yes, you have," Jack instantly countered, still pissed at Daniel's regrettable
independence in the field and showing it. "You two dragged me to "Lord of the
Rings" five times and made me buy you both the two-disc and the four-disc DVD
sets. Only difference here is budget."
Daniel and Teal'c looked at one another and then they both looked at Jack.
"You think the Odokai are pulling a bit of a Nox act on us?" Jack asked,
back-pedalling from the bitching thing into the colonel thing as fast as dignity
allowed.
"The Nox weren't starving their elderly and their children to add that extra
touch of realism to the pastoral illusion," Daniel said somewhat crisply.
"Indeed," Teal'c intoned, still eyeing Jack broodingly.
"Good point," Jack conceded. "Not the Odokai?"
"I don't know."
"We have encountered races which appear to have regressed technologically
before, O'Neill," Teal'c reminded him.
"What in hell?" Colonel Edwards demanded, hustling over to join them, his
rasping voice intrusive and grating.
"Daniel doesn't know what in hell. All he knows is he wants it," Jack informed
him. "Get someone up here with that video camera."
"We're not talking Steven Spielberg, you know," Edwards snarked. "God knows how
much, or more likely how little of this we'll actually pick up."
"Just get the guy up here to record all this before Daniel blows a gasket."
"I can't tell if this is history or if it's an allegory," Daniel interrupted,
instantly quashing the chit-chat. "We have a city-dwelling culture on one side,"
he gestured expansively. "An arboreal people on the other. Are they clashing or
evolving? Is this the history of one society or the merging of two? If it's one
society, which came first, the city or the arboreal? Are the Odokai the
scattered remnants of one or other or both of these cultures? Is it a
celebration or commemoration of a tragedy? Are these deities or leaders? I can't
tell." His voice was thick, shivering with excitement as he turned impulsively
to Jack. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"You know, back at the Academy, they never said there'd be days like this,"
Edwards commented more or less to himself. He squeezed Daniel's shoulder, making
him jump. "I never saw anything like it," he said quietly, when Daniel looked
around questioningly.
"It is beautiful," Teal'c agreed sincerely.
"I didn't train for this," Edwards said awkwardly, his eyes straying to the
silver-sheened army among the trees. "And I don't know that I like it. But." He
cleared his throat, aware of his thronging, gawping men. "Whatever you need," he
promised, distantly.
"Aww, jeez, Edwards," Jack griped. "Why don't you just go back to your tent and
break out the Indiana Jones DVDs? You're one small step away from
breaking out the costume, hat and bullwhip."
"Is the central placement of the moons of significance, DanielJackson?" Teal'c
asked, coming over to stand by him.
"That's a good question, Teal'c." Absently, Daniel pushed his glasses up his
nose. He couldn't tear his eyes away if a mothership were landing on his head.
"I have no idea."
"There are guy moon gods," Jack said gruffly, sounding as if he wished he could
keep his yap shut.
"Guy moon gods?" Impressively, Edwards managed to convey the presence of
incredulous metaphorical quotation marks around this pronouncement.
"You never see the History Channel?" Jack snapped, looking extremely
self-conscious. "When you hang out with an archaeologist, these things happen
from time to time."
"What things?"
"Specials."
"And I bet they never clash with a really big game," Edwards said sarcastically.
"He's no respecter of a man's remote," Jack responded coldly, disclaiming all
responsibility for any educational value his TV viewing might coincidentally
contain.
"So, do you watch these specials in your Indy get-up, O'Neill?"
"Aww, like you never got caught maxing out your credit card on the home shopping
network!"
"Will you two shut up!" Daniel ordered indignantly, cutting into these
promising hostilities.
"It's not as if the cliff has a sound-track, Daniel," Jack attempted to excuse
himself. He immediately thought better of it. "Shut up," he ordered Edwards. "He
can't hear the mythic ambience for you yakking."
A small, excited man with glasses like windshields hustled past them, wielding
the camera with enthusiasm and a few mumbled whimpers.
"Didn't that guy get eaten on 403?" Jack demanded, doing an irritable
double-take.
Daniel was quite pleased to see Jack jumpy. It was nice to have proof he was
happening to him.
"Clearly not," Teal'c remarked sarcastically, pointedly watching the small man
frame a shot.
It was clear Jack was out of favour with Teal'c. He was a big fan of repeat
showings and a mainstay of the multiplex at the Chapel Hills mall. For him, a
fine movie matured much like a fine wine, and was meant to be enjoyed just as
lingeringly.
Daniel was glad Teal'c was on his side. It would help ensure Jack continued to
be both jumpy and, publicly at least, malleable. Content with his stalking
prowess to date, he filed Jack in his list of things to do and got back to
ogling the monumental cliff art. It was gorgeous but it was also, so far as the
SGC were concerned, only the appetiser. They still wanted in. They wanted
whatever was behind the cliff, not pretty pictures of what was adorning it. He
turned impulsively to Jack. "Do you rappel?"
"Not nearly hard enough," Jack muttered darkly, scowling at him.
There was a short, confused silence where everyone nearby looked interestedly at
Jack, trying to work out what planet he was on and who it was he wanted to turn
off.
"Rappel not repel." Daniel enunciated carefully, happily aware it was more a
question of which tent Jack was in, and he was guilty as charged on the second
count. "A, two 'p's. You know? Rappel."
With a surreptitious, viciously accusing look at Daniel, a badly rattled Jack
glowered hatefully until their inconveniently curious audience prudently melted
away.
"Rappel down cliffs," Daniel elaborated unkindly with only the slightest quiver
in his voice. "I was thinking those clasped hands?" He pointed to the two
warriors or kings or legends or whoever they were, towering above them. "Those
clasped hands are the logical place to start looking for a way in."
"Why?" Jack demanded mulishly.
Feeling distinctly naughty, Daniel snagged Jack's hand and warmly clasped it in
evidence, suppressing the embarrassed, macho, covert tugs Jack made to get free.
If Jack could kiss him, he'd survive having his hand held by him. "It's the only
part of the fresco where the two halves of the design touch," he explained
patiently, firmly holding on. "And also the only place where the two men at its
metaphorical heart touch."
Ants in his long-legged, nicely filled pants, Jack appeared to think Daniel was
doing this on purpose, right in front of Edwards and Teal'c and everyone who
hadn’t melted nearly far enough away from the unfolding drama. Jack was right.
Daniel was rather enjoying being a stalker. He was quite good at this ambush
predator thing, when he set his mind to it. Having made his point – that Jack
had better just watch out – he finally, magnanimously let go.
"Shouldn’t one of the men do it?" Major Lorne enquired tactlessly, appealing to
the good sense of his C.O. Edwards.
"Jack's not that old," Edwards replied with manifestly false innocence, dulcet
eyes wide and unconvincingly candid. He immediately thought better of this. "And
if he is too decrepit to shin down that cliff, I'm sure Hammond can find a nice
desk for him someplace quiet back at base."
"I will accompany you, DanielJackson," Teal'c announced, tiring of the
time-honoured, traditional USAF pissing game.
"Accompany?" Jack stiffened up.
"Accompany?" Edwards echoed him, eyeing Daniel in fascination. "You, er, you do
that stuff?"
"I'm sure you don't mean to be insulting," Daniel responded mildly. "I imagine I
can do as much, if not more, 'stuff' than you can."
"Special ops trained," Jack commented idly, jerking a thumb towards himself and
then Edwards.
"Oriental Institute trained," Daniel reminded him evenly.
"Military precision." Jack was warming to this new game, which at least didn't
involve touching.
"Archaeological precision," Daniel countered. "Which means everything is in
fewer pieces than when I found it and sometimes in working order by the time I'm
done. That's a helluva lot more than you can say."
"I..."
"You've broken suns, Jack. Suns."
"Suns?" Edwards, an easy military mark, registered awe.
Preening, Jack buffed modest fingers against the sleeve of his jacket. The SGC
offered a lot of career opportunities for those who believed in better living
through ordnance.
Teal'c was still disenchanted with the denizens of the US Air Force. He turned
his back on Jack and asked Daniel what time he wanted to start out for the slow,
steep climb through the dense trees – he recommended the left as being slightly
less precipitous terrain – flanking their precious cliff.
"I suppose it'll have to be after breakfast," Daniel admitted grudgingly. "Not
because of the food or anything. Sadly, the light doesn't get good early enough
in the day we can avoid making those menu choices."
"Am I talking to myself?" Jack asked, possibly rhetorically. "Have I not
registered disapproval and dismay at the idea of Daniel rappelling down
anything?"
"Nope," Daniel said cheerily. "You just got mad when Teal'c invited himself
along with us." Not that he was jumping for joy himself. Much as he liked
Teal'c, he'd been looking forward to trapping Jack neatly on the end of a rope
and talking dirty to him.
"A word, Daniel?" Jack took Daniel firmly by the shoulder and steered.
Teal'c's suggestive look implied he was willing to make something of this if
Daniel were so inclined. Daniel was inclined to make something of it himself. He
was inclined to make Jack just as soon as they were back in the tent.
Ambush, he told himself. Ambush. Ambush.
He was ready when Jack propelled him into the tent, turning smartly on his heel,
bracing himself to pounce as Jack popped up like a cork through the tent flap.
"Talk to the hand, Jack!" The archaeologist was busy, faking him out.
Jack gaped at the offending hand while Daniel tangled them hard at the lips. He
kissed Jack. Jack kissed him back, gulping and greedy, spit and sweet, sweet
feeling. It was necessary, their mouths together, together, more than breathing,
more than sense and rules. No world outside them, their mouths, this tent.
"You see?" Daniel panted as Jack fought them both. "You see?"
Kissing, again. Feeling, all the feeling, pouring out. The two of them.
Necessary.
They stumbled, side by side. Sat.
"None of your reasons make sense," Daniel argued passionately. "You're not that
man."
"I lost you once." The man was stubborn.
"We're not the same. Not the same."
"You don't make sense!" Jack snapped, angry for his lost control, the mockery
his body made of his verbal refusal to love Daniel.
"I wasn't lost. Not when I was with Oma. I was looking. Trying to find answers."
"What answers?" Jack was resentful even of the mention of Oma Desala's name. She
was...not quite an enemy. Complicated. For Jack, it was personal.
"I was looking for you," Daniel said it straight out. "All the things I couldn't
see and couldn't face when I was alive. All the confusion and grief."
"I don't want to hear this." Jack made no move though.
"You have to." Daniel took a deep breath. "Because all my answers were here.
With you."
"Daniel," Jack breathed his name.
"I love you." Daniel took hold of Jack's arm, needing and wanting the contact,
the touch of Jack. "I didn't see how that could be my path. It never felt – it
was never right. Not for me. I loved you..."
"More?" Jack was quick and angry. Afraid.
"Differently." Daniel glanced tentatively at Jack and then away. Jack at least
was listening to him. "I loved you. I saw you. I wanted..."
"Me?"
"You. It was all from me. That's what I couldn't handle. That was the
difference." It wasn't easy for Daniel to say these things, to open himself up
this way, but he had learned some things. He could do it finally. "It doesn't
mean I loved Sha'uri less because she wanted me, she chose me. I was – I was
passive. People happened to me, I can't put it any better than that."
Jack softened some, leaning his weight into Daniel for a warm moment. "I was
there, remember? I saw some of those people 'happen'."
"I didn't know myself," Daniel said soberly. "I had to learn."
"You had to die?" Jack asked harshly.
"I had to."
"Because of me?"
"Because of me," Daniel corrected him patiently. "I left myself with no choices,
Jack. I did that to myself as much as – more than it was done to me. Ascension
was supposed to be the ultimate truth, the ultimate path, but it wasn't for me.
I really did have to lose everything to understand that here, this life, is
right for me. That I belong here. That this is my place. I had to connect with
myself before I could be open to someone else."
He tried to smile and faltered, shy now because it mattered so very much to him
that Jack understand.
"I didn't know who I was. I had to learn to know and more than that, I had to
accept. That's what I learned when I was with Oma." He hesitated, conscious of
the hole in his mind, the slippery, sullen evasions of his dreams and the wall,
difficult and alien, he knew was there. "That's what I believe," he corrected
himself quietly, trying to be honest. "Just like I believe I made a choice to
come back. To effect change. To actually be the person I...I..."
This was difficult. He had come a long way, he did think he was more of a man
now than he had been, more, more himself. He had never been able to talk, not
about himself. He was drying up now. "I don't mean to hurt you, Jack," he
promised faithfully. "I don't mean to force you. I just can't...I have to do
this, that's all. I have to tell you."
Jack took hold of Daniel's face and kissed him very gently.
"Be with you," Daniel sighed, putting his arms around Jack.
"You know I feel..." Jack muttered desperately. "You know."
"I know I'd like to hear you say it," Daniel admitted in a small voice, not
quite on the ropes yet.
"I love you."
It was thrilling to hear the words, the admission. Jack didn't even sound as if
Daniel were pulling teeth. He was still open, still honest. Daniel found himself
quaking with relief and sheer gratitude. It was all too complicated right now
for unalloyed joy, but he hoped that would come.
"I won't let you take responsibility for me, Jack," Daniel insisted, implacably
tender. "I take it for myself. I promise you, I won't let you hurt me any more
than I'm going to let you run from me. No more hiding, no more lies or
misunderstanding, not for either of us. It's time for truth."
Jack didn't know what to do or to say, but for now he wasn't running or hiding
from all of this. He was hearing Daniel. It was the start of dealing.
"It's our time." Daniel had to give himself credit for doing really well with
all of this. He might be purple in the face, crucified with embarrassment and
remembering with crystal clarity how far and how fast he used to run from all
this emotional intimacy stuff, but his sorry behind was still on the bed and his
stiff lips were still moving.
"You should come with a federal health warning and your own twelve-step
programme," Jack declared with some bitterness.
"Does that mean we get to have sex now?" Daniel enquired, just in case.
"No."
"Then I think I should get back to my fresco. People will talk."
"People will?" Jack sputtered. "People! After the way you – back there? People?
I don’t know how you have the nerve!"
"Years and years of watching you and all the evil things you do," Daniel replied
promptly, prudently getting to his feet and backing off to a safe distance while
Jack strove for sanity. "Plus, you know, I really, really want to have
sex with you. If that means torturing you into submission?" Recovering some
balance, he managed to smile this time. "It's a dirty job and I'm very happy
you're making me do it."
Watching the metaphorical steam burst from Jack's ears, Daniel withdrew –
tactically – from the tent. It was tactical. He wasn't running scared or
anything like that. It was just, he had work to do. His fresco was waiting.
Teal'c was waiting too. "I have directed the individual with the video camera to
repeat the pattern of filming you had determined was appropriate when the
daylight recording of the cliff face was made."
"Thank you!" Daniel said brightly, beaming appreciatively at his friend. He had
the sense of being ahead of life on points, not a feeling he'd had very often.
"What's his name?" he asked, watching the small man with the large glasses
bustling back and forth.
"I do not recall."
"Me either," Daniel admitted, shamefaced. "You'd think anyone who looked so, um,
distinctive would be easy to remember."
"Not in this case."
"What do you think of the fresco?"
"I believe O'Neill may have made a valid point about the budgetary
requirements."
"He'll be amazed to hear it."
Grinning, Daniel folded his arms across his chest and fell into companionable
step with Teal'c as he walked to the farthest limit of the fresco, signalling
himself ready to accompany Daniel on a slow, meticulous inspection of its
wonders. "Although, I have to admit he may have inadvertently made a good point
too." He glanced up at Teal'c's serene face. "Did anything you observed of the
Odokai lead you to suspect they had the resources to construct a monument like
this?"
"It did not."
"Me either. In fact, it's pretty frustrating they couldn't even guess at its
meaning. With this exact location in regular, frequent use as a communal fishing
camp, I'm astonished that its history isn't a significant element of their oral
traditions. Or at least the Odokai version of the après fishing campfire
boast-and-bitch fest."
"Perhaps it is not their history," Teal'c suggested, with a measuring look at
the carved city above them.
"They could be identified with the arboreal people depicted on the other panel
of the fresco," Daniel agreed. "But if this is a record of some historical
encounter with the city dwellers, it should be remembered in histories, plays,
songs, even myth."
"Perhaps the Odokai keep their culture private," Teal'c offered.
"So private it never comes up in conversation? Ever?" Daniel responded
doubtfully. The SGC had had the people under surveillance for quite a while
before the first team came through the Stargate and made contact. He looked up
again, smiling. "It's a mystery," he said softly.
"To which I am confident you will find the resolution."
"Opening the doors into whatever's behind this cliff will be a start."
"O'Neill has signified his willingness to blast a way in."
"That's only his idea of motivating me."
The small man whose name they couldn’t remember rushed up and handed Daniel the
camera. Then he skirted Teal'c nervously and bolted for the barracks tents.
"Thank you!" Daniel called after his fleeing form. "That was quick," he said,
surprised.
Teal'c bowed modestly.
"Thank you," Daniel snorted, shaking his head disapprovingly. "You're as bad as
Jack."
"I am worse," Teal'c stated with magnificent finality, raising a supercilious
eyebrow.
Refusing on principle to encourage either of them, Daniel refused to rise to the
bait, instead turning his attention to memorising the glorious sweeps and curves
of sinuous, shining silver.
"This never, ever gets old," he murmured distractedly, suddenly seeing the
strong parallels between his archaeology and his, for want of a better
descriptor, soul searching. Painstaking re-creation of a buried, barren past,
sifting reality from the lies of history, myth and legend, constructing a truth
grounded in evidence. Only this time, the truth he'd found had been an inner
truth, a gift of perspective that was finally allowing him to see some good in
himself, in who and what he was.
He was beginning to find a happiness previously only expressible, conceivable,
through his scholarship. Happy. Him! He wanted to get back to the tent and
aggravate Jack some more.
"You mind if I?" he hinted to Teal'c, edging away.
Smiling beneficently, Teal'c inclined his head.
Clutching the precious camera protectively to his chest as he trotted
purposefully across the camp, Daniel was fairly confident he could upload his
digital footage and provoke Jack into a frenzy, preferably of the sexual kind.
Man, he was discovering, could not live by uploading alone. Not this man,
anyway.
Jack greeted his arrival with a loud groan and a piteous collapse on his cot,
clutching the pillow over his face.
"That's the nicest thing you've said all day," Daniel said cheerfully, busily
interfacing camera with computer.
When the data transfer was complete, he decided the quickest way to check the
small frightened man had captured all the shots he needed for an accurate,
comprehensive comparison was to superimpose the new footage over the already
captured daytime footage. Calling blessings down on Sam's oblivious head, he fed
both files into her computer modelling software – so user-friendly and intuitive
it was guaranteed to be even Jack-proof – layering the silver lines of the
fresco over the crisp, clean contours of the sunlit rock. He saw immediately
that the match was phenomenal, surely no accident!
"This is amazing! Jack, you have to come see this."
"No, I don't. I'd like to go on with my mid-life crisis right here, thank you
very much."
"Mid-life?" Daniel queried, not about to let a golden opportunity to harass
pass.
Jack emerged from behind his pillow. "I hate you," he stated clearly, for the
record. Then he pulled the pillow back over his face.
"But it's engineered! The cliff-face. The whole thing! Look..."
"I've made my position on looking clear."
"Jack, I'm serious. The whole damned cliff-face was engineered, carved precisely
to frame the silver metal, mineral, chemical, compound, paint or whatever the
hell it is. It's a perfect fit! Perfect. That's no accident, it's technology."
"Technology?" Jack's position on shiny new toys was possibly open to
negotiation. The pillow twitched responsively.
"Something big and honkin'," Daniel said the magic words firmly. "You only have
to look at the scale of the fresco."
"It's not as big as Mount Rushmore."
"I hate you too," Daniel informed his love, turning grumpily back to his
monitor. On his third painstaking comparison scan of the superimposed images, he
made a discovery. A gap. Contours strongly marked but curiously not outlined in
silver. He looked carefully at the specific, excluded contours. Very, very
carefully, deciding they weren't so much a gap as a, well, a presence. He looked
again, his eyebrows going up. A tumescence, even.
Wanting to be sure his somewhat Jack-fixated imagination wasn't playing dirty
tricks on him, he took a screen-print of the salient points of the fresco and
pasted it into Photoshop. Then he opened the paint tool, picked out an
offensively lurid yellow, and carefully traced the outline of the contours that
should have been tastefully framed in silver.
"Jack?" he said eventually, when he was absolutely, positively, unequivocally
sure. "You really need to come look. I think I just found the way in. The hands
aren't the only things touching."
| Part 1 | Part 2 |
Part 3 |
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