"Is this too much?" Jack asks.
'This' is basking in front of the fire, Jack contentedly naked, his legs
stretched out and comfortably sprawled. I'm in an old shirt of his
and nothing else, my legs wrapped loosely around him - he likes my legs -and
it's driving him insane having my bare ass just hidden by the fabric.
This, apparently, is why he made me wear the shirt. Every so often
he talks about the thrill of anticipation and undoes another button.
We're sitting close enough to hold each other, close enough for Jack to make
like a Roman emperor, demanding to be fed. Dinner is three kinds of
ice cream, chips and beer.
"It's been a week since we were together," he goes on.
"I've seen you every day."
"Off-world," Jack sneers.
"This is okay," I shrug. We're two grown men cuddling in front of
a fire. What does he expect me to say?
"For cryin' out loud, Daniel!" Jack exclaims, scowling at me as his wafer-thin
patience predictably evaporates. "Are you okay?"
My witty riposte is annihilated unspoken by a blush which seems to flare
up from my knees.
Jack's face lights up with morbid satisfaction. He smirks and insultingly
kisses my nose.
"My life didn't end just because we had sex," I snap, goaded.
Jack nods sagely, then nibbles my lip.
I put my arms around his neck and nibble back, not even attempting to play
at reluctance. I find I'm touching him the whole time, amazed and
grateful that I can, and it's good for Jack too.
"You never cease to amaze me, Dr. Jackson," Jack murmurs as he fakes me
out with the lip lock and pulls me into a comprehensive hug.
"I, um, it's a little awkward," I confess, deeply embarrassed but still
enthusiastically hugging him back.
"I figured."
I bite my lip. "You made love to me and I got
dressed."
"Not completely. No shoes or anything. And you stayed the night,"
Jack reminds me encouragingly.
"I slept with my back to you."
"Thanks for that. I was worried you were going to sprawl or something.
You weigh a ton, you know," Jack insists defiantly. He kisses my cheek.
"Daniel, it was your first time with a man, your first time with me, and
I went way over the line."
"You did not!" I argue indignantly. "You make it sound like I just
lay there and took it up the ass like the good little sex object for you
when I distinctly remember having a very good time."
"You were lovely."
"I was what?" I snarl menacingly, wrenching away from his shoulder
a trifle regretfully to emphasise my displeasure.
Jack's eyes are glittering disturbingly. He's enjoying me loving
him far too much for my peace of mind.
"You are sweet and gentle," he elaborates with annoyingly enthusiastic
approval. "I adore that about you, so suck it up and quit looking
like there's some kind of vile stench in here."
"It's the sap level rising," I explain promptly. "Wreaks havoc with
my sinuses."
"Did I hurt you?" Jack asks softly.
"A little. Maybe." I find it very difficult to lie to him even
when he knows he's embarrassing the shit out of me.
"Did you have a very good time?"
Jack had a very good time but I'm talking the talk and I guess he knows
it. I wish I didn't love him so much. I wish the habit of trust
didn't go so deep and I wish he didn't know me so well.
Jack fixes penitent puppy eyes on me. "I kept telling myself, do
not pass 'Go', do not collect-"
I punch him in the arm. "Is this about the fragility of my masculinity
or about the fact you had to keep your hands off me for a week?" I challenge
him.
"I made love to you. I was inside you, Daniel, and I didn't
even get the chance to find out if you were okay with me."
I wish for a moment I could see myself through Jack's eyes, know what it
is he sees in me. I wonder if he knows when a look from him, a word,
makes my heart slam. "You're a loud, sarcastic, grating, competitive
pain in the ass."
"Those are my good points," Jack acknowledges proudly.
"I ask myself why I got into this mess."
"I'm hot."
"I was going to say you're sensitive, tender-"
Appalled, Jack claps his hand over my mouth. "I don't like you very
much," he says bitterly.
I kiss his palm and when he smiles, I take his hand in mine, lean in and
kiss him. I can't tell him what it means to me I can do this, how
it feels to put this smile on his face. We kiss gently, like a first
kiss, tasting and a little uncertain, mostly just looking at each other.
"I'm in love with you," I tell him solemnly.
"I can't hear that enough," Jack announces after some thought.
"Even if you are too cheap to take me out to dinner on our second date."
"I already got laid on our first. The pressure is off."
"You wanted to talk. About, um, making love." I cough, attempting
to clear my throat of a possibly imaginary obstruction. "I understand
it was important to you. I also understand it will always be this
way. No matter what we feel, no matter what we want, SG-1 comes first."
Jack starts to speak and I hush him with a kiss. "I, er, I needed to
talk too."
"I knew it." Jack grimaces and takes hold of my face. "You okay?"
he asks me tenderly.
"Getting there."
"Freaked?" he asks understandingly.
"I was so scared of the physical stuff," I admit gruffly, avoiding his
eyes. "I just," I trail off guiltily. Wanted to get it out of
the way is too close to the truth for comfort and I won't say it. "I
went too far," I decide on the least offensive alternative.
"Kind of choked on the whole friendship thing after we did the horizontal
mambo, eh?" Jack suggests, preening himself on his diplomacy.
I blink, startled by his perception and his atrocious metaphor.
"Doesn't take a genius or a tabloid problem page hack to work this one
out," Jack points out a trifle apologetically. "Straight guy gets
thoroughly laid by best friend."
"I never touched Sam!"
Jack is not amused.
"You were asking for it. It's all these embellishments.
Thoroughly
laid?" I complain darkly, scowling at him.
"You're dissing my gripping narrative style?"
"Gripping?" I snort. "Jack, I swear, you have all the self-effacing
modesty of the typical two-year old." He has the tantrums, too, when
he doesn't get his own way.
"Do we have to talk about moaning?" Jack enquires with awful politeness.
I'm outraged by his regrettably accurate recall. I mean, come on!
We have sex one time and he's talking moaning? That's - that's low!
"I would absolutely love it if you were to tell me you're normally very
quiet during sex," Jack coaxes, smiling winningly.
As a matter of fact, I have heard the kind of noise I made, once before.
On Discovery Channel.
Jack watches with unholy amusement as I flounder for any kind of response,
picks up a couple of cartons of the much-depleted ice cream and solemnly
holds one to each of my cheeks. "I'm melting, I'm melting!" he cackles.
"I don't like you either," I say sullenly.
Jack's eyes glaze over and the cartons tumble. "I can't even tell
you what I want to do with your mouth," he says thickly.
Curious about this overreaction, I find myself trying to look down my nose.
"The pout," he mumbles by way of explanation, quite transfixed.
"You're disturbing on a number of levels," I manage to get out before fielding
a very passionate kiss. Very. Very. Dear god, oh, god,
Jack can kiss. It's the way he rubs his tongue over mine. I can't
even describe why this one thing feels so good, but it does. Like he
needs to touch every part of me he can, all at once, and none of me is enough.
It's rough and sweet together, all passion and forceful, ravishing friction,
so sensuous he makes me shiver. "Jack! Jaaack," I sigh,
nuzzling his cheek when he frees me.
He kisses my ear. "And we’re moaning," he whispers complacently.
Hateful, wonderful, gorgeous man. He's nasty and he's all
mine.
"I keep coming back to this point," I blurt out.
"Which point?" Jack is rubbing my back, this loose green shirt of his slipping
from my shoulders to pool over his hands.
"I'm in love. Deeply in love. With a man. With my friend.
With you! I'm - I'm babbling. Mortified," I add unnecessarily.
"My ego loves you too."
"It's insane. Everything is wrong and it all feels sooo good."
"Especially the sex."
"Exactly!" I kiss him for emphasis. "I know the rhythm, but
everything else - you!" I gesture expansively at his gloating nude perfection.
"I won't wax," Jack informs me hastily. "Not even for you."
"I don't know what to do." Honestly? It's way more than
just melting sex.
"Pretty much anything is good for me."
"Not being able to talk for a week?"
"Which is the point I keep coming back to," Jack points out, exasperated.
"I felt as if I'd exposed too much of myself. It was too soon.
I was-" Having embarrassed myself this much, why am I balking now?
"Scared," I add in a small, wooden voice.
"You were mad at me and at you and I pushed." Jack rests his hand
over my cheek. "I wanted you so much, Daniel. I pushed.
I knew."
"It was good."
Searching my eyes, Jack nods, seeming satisfied. "Your masculinity?"
"Kind of rocky for a while there, but ultimately not so fragile."
This is the best I can do. I am not getting into my après sex
speed-dressing panic attack.
"It's a huge thing, Daniel. Huge."
"You had better not be talking about your erection," I glower threateningly.
"Making yourself vulnerable to another man sexually," Jack elaborates freezingly.
"It takes a lot of trust and even then, the pleasure, the intensity of the
orgasm is one helluva shock to the system. A lot of guys go through
life never knowing their Happy Place is on the inside."
"I can't believe we're sitting here communicating about orgasms."
Shuddering abjectly, I close my eyes in absolute pain at our unprecedented
maturity.
"As opposed to having them?" Jack whines.
"You started this."
"I'm just pulling this New Age sensitive crap to get you into bed.
Talk is cheaper than dinner."
"Ordinarily, that would be a good save, but as I'm practically naked in
your lap, here?"
"It better not be me who gets the rug burn."
The bickering makes it all so much easier. The truth is, I'm having
a hard time adjusting. This - being with Jack like this - is great.
I can cope with everything when it's just the two of us alone. Together,
we're real, we make sense.
When other people are around, that's when I start to lose it. When
Jack is the colonel, when he's in command, I'm painfully aware I can't feel
his skin inside me, I can't know the look he has when he comes or hear his
difficult, loving words. It's not a question of respect or compromising
his authority, I've always had latitude as his friend, his acknowledged
equal. I do know all these things though and they're on my mind the
whole time. Jack is my friend and now he's my lover and I find I can't
have one without the other. I'm not able to separate out the two and
it has me very uncertain.
"This is weird," I sum up my confusion with my customary articulacy.
"I know!" Jack agrees heartily. "When we were off-world, were you
thinking about my ass the whole time?"
"Were you thinking about mine?"
"That's not new."
"Maybe all that will get better," I suggest optimistically.
Jack nods slowly, not noticeably convinced. "Can't get worse."
"Having, um - "
"Access?" Jack brightly fills in the blank, sliding his hands down to reverently
cup my ass.
I have to admit to myself I can kind of see where he's coming from, wondering
if I'm okay with him. Us. This. Our relationship is sexual
now, every word, every look and gesture charged. Jack will be
talking to Sam or whoever but his eyes are on me the whole time. I
used to think it meant friendship, now I know it's that and something more,
much more, tangible evidence of Jack's very deep feelings for me. I
can't lose this awareness and I don't quite know how to react, whether to
see it or let it pass.
"It's such a cliché," I grumble, "having to wrestle with my sexuality."
"I need to be in love like I need a hole in the head," Jack observes clinically,
weighing in to the brewing bitch-fest.
We can only do sappy so long, although the fact we're doing sappy at all…"I
guess we feel too much." I don't know why this surprises me in any
way. I've been in love with Jack for a while.
"Always did. It's kind of a giveaway, when you think about it."
"I think about it all the time." I still don't get what he means.
Jack rolls his eyes and pats me pityingly. "Random example here.
You may be the kind of guy who routinely remembers other guys' birthdays,
Daniel. I'm not."
"Oh." I feel vaguely resentful of this value judgement. Do
I lose testosterone points for it or something?
"Have I ever missed your birthday?"
"I always thought that was because Sam is your subordinate and Teal'c doesn't
do birthdays and, um, stuff." It sounds at this point as if I never
really thought about this at all.
"Do I look like the kind of Special Ops-trained psycho who lives to wrap?"
His hands snapping, Jack sarcastically mimes tying a big, blowsy bow.
"You do it very badly," I assure him hastily.
"Doesn't it tell you everything I do it at all?"
I'm smiling. I can't help it.
Jack's lips twitch, then he's smiling too. "You should not matter
this much, you little shit, an infuriating fact of my life for which I blame
you."
"Your ridiculous susceptibility bites." I mean, come on! "It's
not like I do anything." I have no wiles at all. If I own his
ass, it's purely because he wants me to.
"You're you."
"You want to get laid
bad," I marvel, all breathy and shaken and
not hiding it too well.
"Sweet and nice," Jack observes reflectively, his smile widening.
"Who knew?"
Moments like this, when I know how much he loves me, he makes my heart
slam. My hands in his hair, I draw him near and kiss him, moving my
mouth over his. I want his taste, I want his touch. I've been
waiting. A week. More. I'm trembling and it's as much about
Jack as me. I make him happy. It's pathetic, I know, but having
the power to affect him this much, it - it thrills me.
"I won't give you up," I promise breathlessly then Jack steals a sweet,
searing kiss with single-minded intensity.
"Even though it's weird and you're freaked and I'm horny the whole time?"
"So? I respond with dignity. "I'm horny too."
I tighten my legs around him, hold all of him to me as I kiss him hard,
wide-eyed, greedy for his every reaction as we taste and tease, tormentingly
touching tongues. Playing chicken even with a kiss, seeing who'll crack
first and lunge. So us. His eyes heating, Jack helps the shirt
to fall down my back, his smile pure Cheshire Cat. He knows he has me,
the prick, rug burn and all.
Maybe I don't know what I'm doing, but the why is clear. Jack is
worth anything, all I can give. Maybe we aren't picture-book
perfect, but we're working it through.
FINIS
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