you take the blue paian

WORK IN PROGRESS. No ending yet. Don't read if you don't do WIPs.
Adult, very sexually explicit, dubious consent
~111,000 words and counting (102,129 in 2 entries plus a continuation entry with comment additions)
Slavefic, aliens make them do it, prompt from theemdash
Summary/Prompt: Daniel is sold as piece of property on a "civilized" planet and there's lots of penetrative sex.
WORK IN PROGRESS. Started out as a commentfic on LJ and kept on going. Writing continues in installments posted as comments to a continuation entry.


Come What May

At the start of round one of the two rounds of trial-by-orgasm, Jack sat like a clenched fist under guard in his little assigned side room, mentally listing the things he would never, ever do again instead of thinking about the things he was going to do, tomorrow, in round two, for the first time.

He would never, ever again lose his temper -- in public, in English, on an English-speaking planet where people took oral claims of ownership deadly seriously -- by snapping "Doctor Jackson's mine, he belongs to me, end of story, cut the crap," no matter how many calculated attempts some other dickhead team leader made to seduce his anthropologist onto another team. He would never, ever again accept what appeared to be a gift of priceless technology from a rich local eccentric with his own private army without being really, really sure he wasn't making a binding trade he couldn't undo because the offer to trade the priceless piece of technology back would be rejected. He would never, ever again set himself up to be informed by his anthropologist that in the matter of sexual property there was one technicality they could exploit to turn this civilized culture's own legal code back on them, and that said technicality entailed demonstrating that the sexual property liked his former owner better. Never, ever, ever again. Ever ever. Ever.

"Seller's remorse is tough luck except in the case of pets," Daniel had explained, this morning, from the downstairs isolation area where they'd put him once everybody agreed to the trial. "You sell your prizewinning horse or dog to your neighbor and then regret it, he has to sell it back to you only if you can prove that the horse or dog is emotionally attached to you. Sex slaves are essentially pets, but humans are capable of faking emotion, so the burden of evidence shifts to sexual performance. If you can show the magistrates that you know how to get me off more effectively than he does, they'll reverse the transaction, backed up by their military and constabulary. I'm sorry you had to go through all those meetings. I couldn't broker the deal directly -- you know, being the property and all."

"So not happening," Jack had groaned. "So, so not happening."

It was rhetorical. It meant spare me, not I won't do this. He'd already agreed, through intermediaries. He'd do whatever he had to do, whatever Daniel had negotiated for him to do. Daniel knew that. Still Daniel said, "I know you're bi, Jack. I made you a long time ago."

"So? What the fuck, Daniel -- I read your dossier too. This isn't about orientation or ability to perform, it's about violation."

"Yeah and you know I'm not really sure why he's going through with this. Either he believes he's calling your bluff, guessing that you're just looking to retrieve a possession that's valuable to you for other reasons and figuring he's got an even shot because you don't actually know what turns my crank, or he hasn't got the stomach for what it takes to successfully force me, and he sees this as his one opportunity to have me resistance-free."

"You're saying five different things there, and none of them is what I need to hear."

"I'm telling you he tried to seduce me the first night and tried to force me the second night and he failed at both and he's agreed to go ahead with the trial today instead of putting it off for the week he's allowed. He could spend a week chaining me up and using me 'til he's sick of me anyway, or experimenting with what stimulates me to give himself an edge in the trial. As violations go, I'll take these three hours over those five days, and this beats the hell out of you guys initiating military action and killing a whole bunch of people to spare me something that will not kill me. This won't kill me, Jack. What else do you need to hear?"

What the hell turns your crank, Jack had thought, but he couldn't say because they were being monitored and any exchange of information or indication that his claim was suspect would get the trial cancelled. And your hottest button sure better not be verbal. No talking allowed during the trial. No exchange of instructions, no murmuring encouragement, no "good"s or "yeah"s or "OK?"s or "not like that"s; no kibbitzing, no sex aids. Just lube and bodies and moans and groans. They'd always done nonverbal communication pretty well, but he didn't know how he was going to bring himself to look Daniel in the eyes.

He didn't know how he was going to spend the next three hours knowing some guy was fucking Daniel down the hall and not bust in there and tear the guy apart. He didn't even know how he was going to look Daniel in the eyes when he visited him in the "escrow" area again afterwards. Current owner got first shot at him. Jack could let him recover for up to three days, build up another head of steam in isolation -- accrue interest in escrow -- but he wasn't leaving Daniel in there for three days.

If he hurts you, I'll kill him, he thought. The magistrates promised to make them play safe, but Jack didn't trust anyone but the team and the SGC infirmary with Daniel's body -- not even himself. He still couldn't help the thought. And he couldn't help meaning it.

What if being hurt is what he likes? Couldn't help that thought either. Shit outta luck if your kink was dirty talk or toys or pain -- or control, for that matter; contested person was supposed to stay passive, wannabe owner was supposed to run the show. He couldn't even imagine how they judged these things when a woman was involved. He didn't want to think about it, but he tried, because there might be an angle there he could capitalize on. He drew a blank. He just didn't know.

He had no fucking idea what Daniel liked in bed, or how he was going to come out of this without Daniel feeling the adoration and yearning in every cell of his body. All he'd wanted in his bed for as long as made any difference now was Daniel. What a hell of a way this was going to be for Daniel to find that out.

He sat alone under guard in his little side chamber in the trialhouse -- his physical assurance that he wasn't spying on the proceedings somehow to get pointers from the other guy's technique -- and ground his teeth until his whole head ached.

An hour into the timeframe, he heard somebody come -- a shout and groan of orgasm muffled but still audible all the way down here.

He didn't think it was Daniel.

He shouldn't hope it wasn't Daniel. Except he should, because if Daniel was stimulated to make a sound like that, Jack's chances of getting him back without a firefight had plummeted to zero. He couldn't stand it if it was the fucker fucking him, but he couldn't stand it if it was Daniel either.

Forty minutes later, he heard it again. Same voice. Still couldn't tell. He clamped his hands over his ears and planted his elbows on his thighs and spent the second half of the time hunched over in his seat. He couldn't stand it, but he didn't have to. He wasn't standing. Gotta love technicalities.

***

Daniel looked harrowed.

Jack thought, I shouldn't have come.

"I'm glad you came," Daniel said. "I'm glad you're here."

Jack couldn't tell if the second sentence was a correction of some twisted conception of double entendre in the first.

There were ... shouts, Jack wanted to say. He couldn't say that. Couldn't ask the implicit question, was afraid of the answer he'd hear if he did, couldn't fuck this up for Daniel even more by alerting him that some of it had been audible.

"Could you hear him?" Daniel asked.

Jack's stomach clenched, icy rage and sick relief and a twist of guilt topped with a crazy flood of gratitude to Daniel for doing it for him. "Yeah," he said. "Twice. I covered my ears after that."

"La la la," Daniel said -- softly, gently.

"I'm sorry."

"For listening twice? Or for hearing it at all?"

"Either. Both. Your choice. Daniel ... "

"It was better than the alternatives."

So, you think he won you, or what? Jack ground his jaw against the stupid fucking invasive inappropriate needy crap that came into his head.

"I can't tell you what happened," Daniel said. He was looking at the wall, some bureaucrat's artwork. They had holding cells but they didn't use them in these cases, because contested slaves weren't criminals. They appropriated functionaries' offices instead. Low-level functionaries; no windows. No bathrooms, either. Chamber pot, basin, jug of drinking water, tray of rations; bedding on the floor in the corner. "I want to. I need to. But they'd halt the proceedings."

"I know."

"It's probably better anyway. Last thing you want to hear, right?"

Instead of answering directly -- the complicated truth he wouldn't have words for anyway, or the easy comfort that would have been half a lie -- Jack risked the implications of indirection and said, "Will you tell me after tomorrow, if you still want to?"

"Will you ask me to?"

Daniel O'Ballard McJackson, Jack thought, with a stray pang of affection. "Yeah."

"Good," Daniel said. "OK. Thanks, Jack."

There hadn't been a 'yes, then I will' in there.

They were silent for a long time. They sat across from each other in the plain wooden civil-service chairs. Neither of them moved. The only appreciable sound in the room was the nasal breathing of the guy on guard and monitor duty. He was sitting behind the bureaucrat's desk. A lot more of a monitor than a guard; he was half crippled in that position, barely time to shove back in the chair before Jack could incapacitate or kill him.

"It's my fault," Jack said, after a while. "What I said to Melton."

"It's my fault for not adequately evaluating the culture," Daniel replied. "Even steven."

There wasn't anything to say after that. They sat in almost complete stillness until the timekeeper came to call it. Then Daniel said, "It'll be OK, Jack."

"I know," Jack said.

"It won't kill us."

"I know," Jack said, following the timekeeper to the door.

"Jack," Daniel said.

Jack made himself turn. Made himself look Daniel in the eyes.

"It won't kill us," Daniel said -- more softly and more emphatically than before.

He meant the friendship. He meant the working relationship. He meant the longtime bond, the easy companionship, the intimacy they'd shared with no one but each other since they lost their wives and never talked about, never examined, never put stress on, it was that fragile and that critically important to both of them.

"Damn straight," Jack said, and let the timekeeper pull him out and close the door.

***

Daniel looked like an art model, sitting on one hip on the big dark-covered mattress in the center of the trial chamber, legs curled to the side, a light sheet draped across his pelvis, a forearm draped across the sheet, weight on the other arm. They'd let him wear his glasses. He was watching for Jack. He was the first thing Jack focused on when he came into the echoey, mostly vacant space, although Jack was making a peripheral assessment of the armed men around the room at the same time. Four in uniform, two in some other kind of livery -- the competition's private guard, there to provide extra insurance that Jack didn't abscond with his contested property. Remote possibility that they were there to abscond with Jack's repossessed property if Jack won the judgment; he picked the guard he'd take out first before he'd taken his second step into the chamber.

Daylight reflected from the lenses of Daniel's glasses, noon light coming through big windows on the sides of the room; earth-toned moldings surrounded the windows, a subdued decoration that made the windows seem like giant eyeglasses themselves, framed, watching. He couldn't see Daniel's eyes. Thought he tensed a little when Jack appeared. The guards did, both civic and private -- straightening, balancing their weight, freeing their hands whether they were conscious of it or not. Jack had that effect on other fighting men.

The chamber looked pretty much like any courtroom set on TV, only minus all the furnishings, just ranks of chairs folded up against the walls and twelve chairs unfolded into a circle around Daniel. In them sat the magistrates, six men and six women, a variety of ethnicities and ages, all wearing colors as muted as the decor. They looked calm and impartial. Low, relaxed conversation died out as Jack approached, and the man on the far side of Daniel rose to his feet.

Jack didn't pay much attention to the recap of the situation or the recitation of the rules. If there was ceremony to observe, nobody had prepped him for it, and he was disinclined to draw this out. He was shedding his clothes when he stepped into the circle. He kept his eyes on Daniel, let his field awareness monitor the room while his vision shrank down smaller than the circle of observers, shrank down to pretty much nothing but Daniel.

Daniel's face was alert and relaxed. Overlaid on it was the expression of dark, chin-lowered wariness Jack had expected to see, or maybe saw underneath the surface of it right now; whatever was going on in there, Daniel looked like someone who was looking at an owner he trusted and preferred. No beaming smile or pleading get-me-out-of-here eyes; the first would have looked fake under the tense circumstances, and the second would have looked all wrong on Daniel. He was doing his part. Jack knew he wasn't doing his; his features were too schooled and disciplined to show the fondness he wanted them to. Fondness he even felt, for real. Not a big deal -- performance anxiety would account for it. He knelt down naked on the mattress and reached right out and cupped the side of Daniel's head, nothing he hadn't done a million times in friendly affection, and twitched a reassuring smile. For half a second, Daniel's eyes went soft, searching Jack's face; then he smiled back, a shade on the cool side of friendly, and resumed waiting for whatever Jack would do.

To Daniel's right and behind him, right beside the mattress, was a bowl of water that gave off an astringent, witch-hazely scent, flanked by soft-looking cloths the size of washcloths. To Daniel's left was a bowl of lube; they wouldn't accept Terran substitutes, suspicious of chemical stimulants, but in return for his acquiescing on that they'd agreed to the use of condoms even though they seemed to have no comprehension of STDs. Jack held up the strip he'd brought from his own gear, required items on all offworlds since Argos. Daniel gave a small shake of the head, and a deep tense place inside of Jack relaxed -- the fucker hadn't had him bareback. He knew he should wear a rubber anyway, when and if the time came. He tossed the packets back onto his clothes.

Butterflies did loop-the-loops through his belly as he came back around. His jacket was loving owner, experienced bedmate; under that was a layer of Kevlar consisting of his service vow, the hard-baked years of protecting himself from Daniel's effect on him and concealing from Daniel how he felt; under that was a rank amateur who'd never laid hands on another man's body in a sexual way; underneath it all was a soft mush of longing and vulnerability and love. If he was going to fuck up, he had to err on the side of exposing the inside; and above all he had to seem as though he knew what he was doing.

He shifted around Daniel, keeping his right hand on him, and with his left prompted Daniel to draw his legs up bent in front of him. He tucked in, legs around him, arms around him, and pulled him back into the cradle of his body. Daniel's legs opened inside the frame of his legs and under the drape of the sheet; his legs supported them, almost knee on knee. They were the same size. The same exact fucking perfect-fit size.

A ripple went across Daniel's skin, impossible to interpret. Jack pressed the side of his face against the side of Daniel's head just behind the glasses eyepiece. He squelched the impulse to nuzzle, then thought he shouldn't squelch those impulses, but didn't try to reproduce it. Daniel's arms came out from under his arms and went around his legs; Daniel's hands rested on his shins, lightly at first, then clasping. A ripple went through Jack's bones. His dick stirred, nestled in the crack of Daniel's ass, but nerves kept it from filling. It was his skin that was having an orgasm, warm ecstasy everywhere his chest and belly and arms touched Daniel's skin. He went quiet and awed inside at the feel of his bare flesh against Daniel's. He felt a tiny fissure crack open in his heart, under the continued grinding awareness that this was a performance. All show, no substance, when Daniel's body was the definition of substance, up against his.

He'd never held a man's body like this. But human bodies were human bodies; he'd held a lot of women, a couple of them people he loved, one of them someone he loved as much as the person he was holding now; he was good in bed and he was good at lovemaking and he knew what worked on him and what he liked to do for himself. He stroked up, with his left hand, the way he stroked his own chest when he masturbated, light circles spiraling across, skirting the nipples. He didn't know if Daniel's were as sensitive as they looked or if he was a take-it-or-leave-it kinda guy where vestigial body parts were concerned, but playing always felt good, and he did know for a fact that Daniel wasn't ticklish. He let his left hand roam and tease, because it felt good and because he loved this body and really wanted nothing more than to give it pleasure and because he was supposed to be proving he knew exactly how to please it, and before he could think himself out of it, think about what he was doing, he slid his right hand under the sheet, a stolen moment of privacy from the observing eyes, and down between Daniel's legs.

He dropped his face into the hollow of Daniel's neck to stifle a moan that would have come out a sob and given up the whole game. Daniel's penis came into his hand that easily, that perfectly; the tender weight of it, the fleshy softness, felt that good draped across his fingers. Inasmuch as he'd let himself think about it beforehand, he'd kind of expected Daniel to be hard the first time he touched him there, and he supposed he should be insulted or worried that he wasn't, but it was sweet, god, so sweet in his hand, the intimacy of touching him there was so exquisite, that he forgot, for those few seconds, uncertainty and concern, tactics and foresight and second-guessing; there was just Daniel's body cradled in his, open to his touch, just Daniel's skin against his mouth and nose, Daniel's sweet heavy penis cupped in his hand.

Daniel's head went back. His legs opened completely, heavily. His hands tightened on Jack's shins. He made a sound that might have been trying to be "ohhh, yesss" and was only the vowels, words rounded off to pure response. It was good response. There was no question about that. His package was firming in Jack's hand, penis slowly swelling to a size that Jack could curl his fingers around, stroke with his thumb.

It took Daniel a while to come fully hard, but once he had, his heart thundering against Jack's chest through his back, Jack's answering erection swelling between them, Jack shifted his hand up to something closer to the grip that worked best on him, and gave a gentle, experimental squeeze.

Daniel's right hand clawed on Jack's shin; his left scrabbled to drag the sheet away. So they can see, Jack thought, and circled his thumb up over the head, not really trying to work on him, no idea yet what he liked, had to take it slow, never had a dick in his hand and no biofeedback to his brain before, just to give them something to look at it, the shadowy half-forgotten circle of observers, do something that would make his touch look easy and practiced and familiar -- and Daniel made a strangled sound and jerked inside the shell of Jack's body and fountained semen over Jack's fingers.

Stunned blinking, Jack closed his eyes to hide it. He'd never expected him to go off so fast, so easily. For a few heart-pounding moments, he had no idea what to do. His impulse was to wrap him up, hug the warm postorgasmic weight of him tight, rock him a little ... and so he did, because it's what he would have done. He gave in to it, nuzzled his face into Daniel's hair, inhaled the scent of it, squeezed with his limbs. His erection throbbed against Daniel's lower back, cool against the flushed heat of Daniel's skin. He swallowed, hard, and then opened his eyes, focusing on nothing -- focusing inwards, to the feel of holding Daniel in his arms like this. A surge of hope took him by surprise before his head caught up with his gut: maybe that would be enough, maybe they'd call it, summary judgment, let's not make everyone hang around for two more hours and fifty minutes when we've seen enough. The guy orgasmed from the gentlest, slowest touch of his hand; god, he orgasmed instantly, as if he'd been primed for that touch, waiting for that touch for years. How could you see that and still have any doubt? But none of the magistrates were talking, nobody was standing up to proclaim any conclusions.

Maybe Daniel had come like that for the other guy, too. Maybe Daniel just really, really liked hands. Maybe Daniel had some preejaculation syndrome that he'd never happened to mention in the course of ordinary conversation. Maybe they'd never gotten to the question of condoms because a gentle touch was all it took to bring Daniel off, all you had to do was wait out his recovery time before you breathed on him and brought him off again. Maybe Jack was in a lot deeper shit here than he'd expected.

Or maybe the rules were the rules, and nobody was deciding anything until the three hours were up and penetration had been demonstrated at least once.

Jack was just coming down off that roller-coaster ride and thinking how nice it'd be to stay like this for a few minutes when Daniel tapped his shin lightly to be released and moved forward onto his hands and knees. As though this was what they always did. As though this was the familiar routine and he assumed they'd do what they always did, so after a pause for breath he moved on.

Jack put a warm smile on his face to erase the stark surprise of seeing Daniel put himself in that position. To see Daniel's body in that position, knees spread, balls hanging. A glistening smear of come on his inner thigh. Head dropped in submission, no need to look around to see what Jack was doing, because he knew, because Jack would do what he always did.

Jack reached for the bowl of lube. He coated his dick with fingers that were gluey with Daniel's come; with a twinge of discomfort at the exhibitionism, he stroked himself lightly while he took in the view, got up on his knees and ran an appreciative hand over Daniel's ass. Daniel's ass! an inarticulate voice squawked way back in his head. You do not fondle Daniel's ass! You do not covet Daniel's ass! You do not look at Daniel's ass, you do not fucking think about Daniel's ass! Down where he couldn't see his face, his friend was on all fours waiting to take it up the ass. Maybe dreading it, if it wasn't his thing; maybe gritting his teeth, biting his cheek because this wasn't the way he swung. Guys who did the penetrating, guys who preferred the receiving end -- there were terms for those, but Jack didn't know them. Daniel would know them. He couldn't ask Daniel. He couldn't ask Daniel if this was OK and he couldn't offer to switch with him, couldn't tell him that that was an act he'd dreamed about in deepest secret all his life --

He palmed Daniel's ass, rotated his hand as he leaned past to scoop up some more lube, curled his fingers, scratched his nails up the delicious fleshy softness. He heard a sound, he thought, a breathy subvocalization from Daniel, but he couldn't be sure it wasn't somebody in the circle. If only he really knew him, really knew what the small sounds and silences meant. It was crazy to think they could do this. It was freaking nuts to think they could pull off a show of being longtime lovers when this was the first time Jack had ever touched him.

In for a penny, Jack told himself firmly, kneeing around to Daniel's left hip. He'd done plenty of women this way. He could look like he knew what he was doing now, because he did. He smeared lube up the crack, making it a caress, and heard that sound again, and was sure it was Daniel this time. It was a good sound the last time, so he hoped it was a good sound this time, not a half-stifled protest at being touched in a place he didn't like to be touched. He'd offered his ass; somebody had to do somebody that way before the time was up; Jack would rather it be him, should have rolled on his back and lifted his legs for Daniel the second he hit the mattress; too late now, they were committed, let it go. He put his left hand, sweaty now but clear of lube and come, on Daniel's back to steady him. He slid his fingers down into the crack, stroked gently up and down and around, then slid a finger in. Nothing to it. Done it a million times. His pet would love this. His pet always loved this.

It wasn't tight. Not as tight as he thought it should be. Not as tight as any of the others he'd ever slid a lubed finger into exactly like this.

He blanked his expression. He drew his finger out and pushed two in, faster than he probably should have, a hair shy of rough; he eased up and slowed down as soon as they went in, made the rest of the entry an apology, rubbed I'm sorry into Daniel's skin with his thumb, but Daniel had collapsed at the elbows and sobbed a sound into the mattress that was the exact sound Jack had stifled in Daniel's shoulder, so more was good, he got that, he gave him more, rolling his hand to fuck him with his fingers, slow and just this side of rough. Daniel kept making that sound, muffled in the bedding, and Jack's gut kept roiling with rage and jealousy, Jack's head kept swimming with images of that other guy slamming into a shout of orgasm.

The rage was reflexive and irrational and as unsuppressible as it was unexpected. He'd been kidding himself to hope the guy hadn't nailed him; he'd known the guy was nailing him, he'd known that was a requirement of the trial, he'd known what he saw on Daniel's face when he visited yesterday and what put that pale shadowed exhaustion there. Hell, maybe Daniel's ass was like this all the time, field thoroughly plowed, butt plugs or bar pickups or whoever he got wherever he got them, he'd been kidding himself to think that Daniel wasn't getting any, couldn't think about that now because it would bring a potential involvement into this, a girlfriend or boyfriend, no idea if he was seeing anybody, no fucking idea what Daniel did with what portion of his downtime he didn't spend with Jack, couldn't bring another person into this, enough people in this room already. Still the acid fury sluiced through him: rage at the evidence that Daniel had been fucked, rage at the evidence that someone else had him first, rage at the evidence that anyone had done this, anyone, and now he was going to do it again. He rode it out, plowing Daniel's ass with his fingers, keeping his face a blank slate but aware that his own fierce satisfaction at the response burned in his eyes. He collapse like that for you, you fucker? He stomped on the thought; couldn't let this turn into a dialogue between his twisted head and his construct of the competition. The sentiment stayed, hanging around him like a scent -- the growling possessiveness that got them into this in the first place.

To shake it off, he opened up his visual field. His ears and his skin and his hindbrain had kept tabs on the magistrates and guards, on the timekeeper who moved in and out of the chamber soundlessly at intervals; he even had a sense of a pair of binoculars, maybe several pairs, trained on the east-facing windows where the glare wouldn't spoil their view, people in the surrounding buildings trying to see in, but as long as it wasn't SGC personnel he didn't care, and he'd made sure it couldn't be SGC personnel. He did a quick scan of the people who were in the room -- the ones he could see without lifting or turning his head -- and there was a different kind of satisfaction in seeing that the floor show was starting to crack their impassive facades.

So look on the bright side, he told himself. Show's going well, crowd's going wild, Daniel likes fingers in his ass. No more worries about him having issues with playing catcher, not major ones anyway. Yeah, the faceplant-and-sob could have been an act, but he knew Daniel well enough to be sure that sound was genuine. Lot of similarities in the sounds of pleasure and pain, and god forgive how well he knew what Daniel sounded like in pain. He pulled out and screwed the fingers back in, and the sound came again, overwhelmed and uncontrolled, shaky and phlegmy. He did it again, and Daniel pushed into it, shuddering.

It was intensely fucking arousing. To see it, to feel it, to be controlling it; lust surged into the residual anger adrenaline in Jack's bloodstream and raised the state of his erection from hard to achingly rigid. Three fingers would go in easily, but his ring finger had a raggy nail, could feel it snagging the calluses on the heel of that hand where he'd curled the extra fingers out of the way. It was in-for-a-pound time.

Jack slid his dry hand to Daniel's shoulder and gave the suggestion of a pull. Didn't want to bring him out of hiding but in his experience a lifted ass was not so easy to get into, needed Daniel's chest to come up and his back and shoulders to level out. Daniel pushed up from his bent arms right away. A tingle ran up Jack's arm from the feel of hard bone and muscle under his hand; a tightness twinged through Jack's balls at Daniel's ready obedience. He drew his fingers out in a last firm, slow caress and slid the dry hand down to Daniel's tailbone to balance himself while he lifted one knee and then the other over Daniel's calf and got centered behind him. Daniel made a protesting sound when the lubed fingers came out, and arched his spine up into the dry hand. The cat-like arch was an act; the sound wasn't.

Jack slid the dry hand down to take hold of Daniel's hip, keeping contact with him the way you did with a horse to let it know where you were when you were messing around behind it. Daniel huffed, and it could have been a breathe-through-the-stress exhalation and it could have been another arousal sound but Jack knew, without knowing how, that it was laughter: the arching back was a send-up of the pet analogy, and Jack had answered it with the horse gesture, and Daniel was letting him know that he got the joke. He let himself smile; it almost eased the hellish tension of this thing he was about to do to Daniel that he could never undo. It almost helped.

He squeezed Daniel's hip, rubbing with his fingertips and thumb. It was I love you and I'm sorry and Hang on, buddy, we'll get through this. He didn't know how many of the messages Daniel would receive; probably just the last one. He took hold of his dick and rubbed it gently into the perineum -- he meant to tell Daniel here's where it is, no sudden moves, won't shove it in out of nowhere and he almost shot out of nowhere when his mind registered the stark anatomical maleness of what his glans was touching -- then dragged the head of it up the crack until he found the hole. The tip of his cock sank in before he'd even pushed. Daniel eased back, telling him go ahead, it's OK with a bare shift of weight; the move was subtle enough not to bend the rules but firm enough to ease the ring of muscle over the lip of the glans. Jack hadn't known if he'd be able to give the thrust that would change everything. Daniel had done it for him, sucking him in before he knew it was happening. He was in. He was already in.

He shook with the effort of not coming from the feel of Daniel's ass engulfing the head of his cock.

See, folks? Nothin' to it. Done it a million times. My pet's gonna love this. My pet always loves this.

Daniel contracted on him, trying to suck him deeper, and he grabbed both hips to still him. He understood that he was being urged to push all the way in, he squeezed to acknowledge the permission, but he had to stay very still to keep from going off. It was way too long since he'd gotten laid and Daniel's ass was slick and hot and it throbbed with the beats of Daniel's heart and if he climaxed now it would seem to be for him and it was supposed to be for Daniel, it was supposed to demonstrate the pleasure he could give Daniel. That penetrating Daniel would get him off was a given, since here he was, trying to renege on the trade; the point was to prove how much Daniel liked it. If he fumbled into orgasm like a guy who hadn't gotten any in a while, they'd have grounds to suspect that his favorite slave hadn't been servicing him much lately, and wonder why, and wonder if he ever did.

Should have started with a blowjob, he thought, then felt sick at the idea of making Daniel blow him. It wasn't enough to deflate his erection, but it knocked him back from the peak. He tried with limited success to wipe his right hand off on himself, and put it back on Daniel's hip with a somewhat better grip. He gave another squeeze, a shaky one this time, then the suggestion of a pull without really pulling; and then he pulled, slow and steady, into the slow and steady push of his hips, and watched Daniel's ass take the rest of his shaft.

Daniel made that sobbing sound again, no attempt to muffle it now, and then a sharper sound, an nnngg of effort or -- need. Jack gave a slow, shallow thrust, and the next nnngg was lower, more broken, breathier. Daniel's head dropped to hang between his arms, and the back of him opened and softened. It didn't feel like capitulation. It felt like the antithesis of that. It felt like begging.

Jack moved in it, short easy strokes he gradually lengthened to establish a smooth rhythm. The slide of silky heat around his aching cock was both pleasure and relief, but not nearly as much relief as the genuine hunger in Daniel's body. Every stroke was sending tremors down Daniel's flanks and up his back, the kind of motor reflex you couldn't fake. Daniel wasn't faking it. He did like this kind of sex. Jack could make this good for him, for real.

It shouldn't matter. It should only matter if it looked real to the judges. But to Jack it was the difference between the survivable and the unforgiveable. It mattered to Jack.

He kept it light and long and easy, just riding the slick coating of lube. No impact, no thrusting tight and hard up against his ass, nothing that would desensitize him or leave him sore. They might have to keep this up for a while. He'd lost sight of the next objective, if it wasn't to get Daniel to come again, which he kinda doubted it could be unless the guy could bounce back in twenty minutes, didn't expect to wave his magic wand up Daniel's ass and miraculously override biology, but he didn't sit around comparing refractory periods with the guys, had no basis for estimating, only knew that his own had been twice that even when he was a teenager. If this kept feeling good for Daniel, if he could find the right ways to change it up to vary the stimulation ...

He drew one knee in to give himself a little more height and pressed gently on Daniel's tailbone to lower his butt a fraction. Daniel let out a desperate, chesty groan and flailed an arm up behind him. With a jolt of certainty that the shift of angle had hurt him, Jack's mind read the gesture as stop, god, stop and froze his hips, but his body read the gesture as an urgent reaching-out and he was giving Daniel his hand before he had any mental space to be aware of it. Daniel's fingers scrabbled for his wrist and closed around it, hard, and pulled. Jack followed the drag on his arm, bending over, wincing because it was making the bad angle worse -- and Daniel's hand shifted to Jack's knuckles and closed his fingers overhand around Daniel's very hard dick.

Fuck, oh, fuck, so not faking it, Jack thought, and gave a combined pull and push. The deep animal sound that Daniel made this time wasn't another aural clue and required no analysis, it was a vibration that thrummed into Jack's libido and squeezed up through his testicles.

"First warning," the voice of one of the magistrates said. "Turn, please."

Jack noted the warning and ignored whatever the hell the other thing was. Had enough on his plate reacquiring the rhythm of his strokes and finding out just how hard to pull on Daniel's dick and not coming, not coming, not coming. Daniel was curling over as if he was trying to turn inside-out, and Jack had to scramble to adapt, his knees slipping on the soft cottony mattress cover. Oh, yeah, he thought, feeling it gel, feeling Daniel start to shake, come on, baby, that's it, that's it --

"Colonel O'Neill. You are required to turn."

Fucking hell! He felt Daniel go tense with confusion and conflicting input, level out from the curl, start to lift his head, and barked at the magistrate, "Say what?"

"You are required to reverse the presentation of yourself and the chattel with respect to the circle of magistrates. Please comply, Colonel."

"Jesus, lady, you pick your fucking moments."

Daniel made a low sound that warned him to back off, clear as words. Daniel couldn't speak up or gesture or do anything but stay passive and uninteractive after the big no-no of grabbing Jack's hand. Jack didn't know how many team fouls they'd be allowed before they were ejected. He was pretty sure nobody had specified a number. He ran soothing hands up Daniel's back, massaged a little around the base of his neck, trying to decide if he needed to pull out to get them flipped around.

"Upon the issue of a warning, Colonel, the perspective must be adjusted in order to ensure thorough and unbiased assessment. Manage this chattel so that he commits no further infractions and you will not be inconvenienced again."

Yeah, yeah, got it now -- you can't switch seats, you lazy bastards? He withdrew, carefully, wincing at the muscle twitch in Daniel's back, and got them turned. There was fatigue in the way Daniel went back down onto his hands, and when Jack pressed up close, more for comfort and a minute's rest than anything else, he felt Daniel's balls hanging soft. Too late he realized that his own unflagging erection might be giving too much away about him, about Daniel's persistent effect on him despite mood-killing alien slavemongers, and that pushing in close this way might be crossing a line, forget that the weight of balls on his shaft redoubled the heat in his groin. He gave Daniel's thigh what he meant as a friendly pat, just your old pal Jack here, buddy, objects in the mirror are not as opportunistic as they appear -- and Daniel obediently spread his legs.

Fuck. Fuck.

He sat back on his heels and reached for the bowl to re-lube his dick. Then he changed his mind and re-lubed Daniel's ass. Spread his cheeks with dry knuckles and held them open while he rimmed the hole with the pad of one thumb, gently fucked it with the other one. Daniel's balls drew up and hardened, Daniel's penis rose out of Jack's view. Jack worked him patiently, deliberately, waiting to start hearing those sounds again, waiting for Daniel's body to tell him that it was more turned on than it was tired and jerked around and fed up, that taking a cock wouldn't just be something it suffered because there was no choice.

There was always a choice. They could still fight their way out of here. The magistrates were easy pickings and valuable hostages. The private guard at the new two o'clock had a visible boner, the one across from him was fighting sleep, and both had an array of weaponry that would arm Jack nicely. Marine SG units were stationed down the hall and across the street from the windows; a chair flying through the glass would have them deployed and on their radios to coordinate in under ten seconds. He could extract Daniel with minimal casualties on his end and a ballpark ten wounded, three dead on theirs, depending on how much of a fuss the civic guards kicked up and how much force they were authorized to use. Or he could do what he figured his competition had probably done, suck him up and nail him deep and jerk him hard and force him to come, and win the judgement because no matter how Daniel felt about that kind of treatment, Daniel wanted to get the fuck home, so Daniel would give every possible indication that he was having a great old time.

Or he could sit here wearing his heart on his erection, gently stimulating a proven erogenous zone, petting and teasing until Daniel was worked up enough again to get pleasure from the penetration, and demonstrate to these barbaric bastards just how good he was at sex, when he set his mind to it and he had a little bit of information to work with.

Within ten minutes he had Daniel's asshole spasming, and he was this close to saying fuck the alien lube, had worse crap in my mouth and plunging his tongue in there, because if fingers could do this to Daniel then a tongue would send him into orbit. But Daniel clenched on the thumb inside him, stopping the really good wiggle-flutter Jack had going, and Jack stopped everything else and waited for the follow-up message.

Daniel pushed his ass open, canting his body back into Jack's thumb, and then contracted again, pulling. A clear and articulate ready now.

Always said you had a talent for talkin' out of your ass, Doctor Jackson, Jack thought with totally inappropriate but warming fondness, and rose up into position with half a smile on his face, relaxed, on top of this, because he was finally on the same page as Daniel. The smile faded when Daniel didn't push into the entry this time, didn't drop his head, when the sound he made as Jack breached him had an edge to it that wasn't there before. Jack reached around and found him dripping hard, felt the same tremors go through him at Jack's touch, same exact physiological responses, but something critical had changed since the interruption, and everything Jack thought he knew how to do now, thought he understood now, seeped away, useless.

He did everything he'd been doing before, and Daniel seemed just as turned on and just as ... off, just as wrong. He didn't think the spectators would pick up on it. He was pretty sure he was the only one who could hear the jagged undertone to Daniel's voice. But he couldn't keep this up, not hearing that wrongness, and he didn't know what else to do ... so he mentally threw his hands up: he let go and made love to him. Used his hands, stroking back and sides and reaching up and under to caress the nipple he could reach, stroking balls and glans with gentle, encouraging fingers; circled his hips to work the cock inside him in a way that nobody could mistake for use, a gentle, deliberate effort to stimulate without thrusting, without fucking. Daniel responded, Daniel groaned and shuddered, at times Daniel seemed on the verge of sobbing, but there was something like a snarl in the sounds, a vicious desperation. For a sick minute Jack thought Daniel had realized the truth and everything he was doing to try to fix it was making it worse; Daniel had felt the adoration and yearning in every cell of his body, everywhere Jack's flesh touched his, and instead of a teammate making the best of a crappy situation he'd become another guy trying to get a piece of Daniel, no better than the son of a bitch who had him yesterday.

Should have told him, should have come clean, should have told him right up front, Jack thought, miserable and loathing himself and knowing he couldn't afford those feelings, gonna have to shut it all down, because he had to get Daniel out of here. But if Daniel was snarling like that, he hated this, and Jack would not go on. He'd find another way. He'd blow this fucking building apart if he had to. Better Daniel should hate him for that.

Daniel would hate him for that.

He slowed his strokes, intending to wind it down and ease out. Daniel made a sound of protest, like the one forty minutes ago when Jack had pulled his fingers out, only corroded with that undertone, and turned his head a little. In one-quarter profile he looked wildly, darkly aroused, but he was frowning. He didn't get why Jack was slowing it down. He didn't get why Jack had let go of his dick, why Jack was gripping his hips again, palms on his ass so that he couldn't shove back onto Jack's dick when Jack started to withdraw.

Whatever the problem was, it had nothing to do with Jack. And as he looked at Daniel's quarter-turned head, Daniel's raised head, Daniel's head that had been raised the whole time to keep his face in view for the observers, he understood.

Daniel had been holding his head up the whole time since they turned because the fucking audience had to see him lose his shit in sexual ecstasy and the exposure enraged him. That was the darkness in his voice, the torn-metal edge. He was performing for these people and he despised it. If it were only an act, he wouldn't care -- but circumstances had forced him to expose the raw insides of himself, because that was where the stuff was they demanded to see in order to give him back to Jack, so vitriol dripped from every wordless sound he made.

It was poisoned candy. It was absolutely typical of Daniel.

Jack bent over him, pressed his face into Daniel's back, the closest he could come to a kiss, the closest he could come to saying Danny, it's OK, it's OK now. He wrapped arms around his ribs, his belly, and hugged. It was a strained and awkward position. Daniel made a strained and uncomprehending sound. Jack reached up, past Daniel's head, and got two fingers on Daniel's glasses. He pulled, but couldn't get them off one-handed at this angle. Daniel turned his head to help, strained to twist his neck enough, helping without understanding what the hell Jack was doing. For a brief second, Daniel could see Jack's eyes in his peripheral vision, and Jack could see his. For that second, they were both very still. Then Jack got the glasses off, and set them carefully off to the side. He pushed up from Daniel's shoulders to get the weight of his chest off him. Daniel's head went back to quarter-profile. Jack put one hand on the back of Daniel's neck, and with the other reached down and pulled on Daniel's elbow to break the rigid lock of his arm. Startled, Daniel sagged to that side but didn't go down. He bent the other elbow, flexed it, evened himself out, still holding himself up.

Jack pressed on the back of his neck, slowly but with a grip and pressure that would accept no resistance. There was no resistance past the first moment of surprise. Daniel let Jack push him. He collapsed his elbows. He turned his face to the side. Hand wrapping his spine and his throat and his carotid artery, Jack pressed his head down into the mattress, and held it there, and thrust.

All the muscles in Daniel's face relaxed. His mouth opened, his tight expression eased, his eyes closed. Jack thrust again, watching him, and he groaned, deeply, the sound partially absorbed by the cushioning. The edge was gone from it. His voice was beautiful. His face was beautiful, wincing in pleasure. They could still see him, but he didn't have to see them anymore. Forced onto his face by Jack, he could let them go.

Jack thrust one more time into Daniel's raised, throbbing ass, and held there. He reached under and smoothed his hand over Daniel's penis, took it in a regular grip. He worked it firmly, gently up and down, straightarmed up off the hand on Daniel's neck, looking down at him. There's only me now, he told Daniel softly, silently. Only us. He jacked Daniel steadily, and Daniel came.

Daniel shouted into the mattress right before he shot, and then sobbed. Jack kept working him, half blinded by the feel of ass contracting around his dick. Partway through the orgasm, Daniel started bucking up into him, digging a furrow up the mattress on each side with the heels of his hands, trying to push deeper into Jack or push Jack deeper inside him. Jack had to drag the hand off his neck and plant it to one side to balance. He moved the other hand off Daniel's twitching dick and cupped his balls with it, gave them the little gentle rhythmic squeezes he liked to give himself. The feeling of masturbating combined with the stimulation on his dick was abruptly too much, and he felt orgasm surge up. He jerked out, sudden and fumbling, and he and Daniel cried out at the same time. His hips came right back to lock against Daniel. He emptied himself with his dick down the crease of Daniel's ass, Daniel's balls against his glans. Daniel shouted and then shot; Jack was the opposite. He shot and then the orgasm really ripped through him. Before he greyed out, he heard his own sound echo back to him, and he knew they hadn't just heard that down the hall, they'd heard it across the fucking river.

If it was recognizable as his voice, he was never gonna hear the end of it from the Marines.

Daniel came down from it twitching and panting but otherwise unmoving. He would stay under Jack with his face in the mattress and his ass in the air until Jack repositioned him. Jack moved his hand the six inches from Daniel's balls to the front of Daniel's thigh and pressed. Daniel collapsed as readily as before, sliding his legs back and sinking flat with palpable gratitude. Jack went with him, more heavily than he'd have liked, then groaned at how strange and wonderful it was to lie on someone as big as he was. Even with all the muscles melted, Daniel's frame supported his weight easily.

It was too good. Too tempting to stay like this. What would an owner do? Not roll away into his own space, not roll off onto his back the way you rolled off a one-night stand or an escort you had no permission or invitation to cuddle up with, or even the way you rolled off a spouse you knew trusted in your love and wouldn't feel hurt or rejected. A considerate owner would shift to the side but stay close to affirm possession; a possessive slaveholder would shift to the side but stay draped over, demanding the body contact that was his prerogative. Jack shifted to the side, getting his legs out from between Daniel's legs, getting his weight off Daniel's back, but stayed draped over, right leg bent over the back of Daniel's left, front against Daniel's side, wet sticky groin against Daniel's hip, elbow on Daniel's spine, hand between Daniel's shoulder blades.

Arms still stretched over his head, Daniel struggled in the undertow of postorgasmic coma, dragging himself awake every time he started to go under. Jack tried to soothe him off to sleep, rubbing go on, it's OK, I'm here into Daniel's back with his palm, but Daniel fought stubbornly, invisibly. Jack tried to keep his head up, but in this position his neck started to ache and he hadn't slept much the night before and the explosive orgasm really had knocked him on his ass, and he finally just said fuck it and eased his face down to rest on Daniel's shoulder, soft bunched muscle and skin under his cheekbone. He wouldn't sleep, for real -- he might catnap but he would keep watch -- but when he let the weight of his head settle, he felt Daniel let go.

Probably it just meant that Daniel had refused to sleep until he did. Probably it just meant that Daniel had been waiting for a clearer message about whether his CO had determined that it was OK to kill some of this time with a snooze.

Probably Daniel was keeping his head in the game, and Jack should do the same. So something momentous had just happened, in his tortured little world of private infatuation. So what? It was just sex, it wouldn't kill them, yadda.

He took a survey of the magistrates in his field of vision, one by one. It startled most of them, offended a couple. Viewee wasn't supposed to become the viewer, guy on trial wasn't expected to make uppity eye contact. Several faces were still flushed from the turn-on of what they'd just seen. One of them looked disgusted, a couple looked bored. Every expression flattened back into neutrality after the first blink. It was like drawing a line along a fence with a paintbrush.

***

He was still half draped over Daniel, half dozing, half keeping watch, when Daniel snorted awake fifty minutes later. There'd been no reason to roust him for another performance. The magistrates napped or shuffled papers around in their laps. Jack doubted that anybody kept the show going for three hours non-stop, real lovers or not. He was wondering idly about the protocol for basic needs -- taking a leak, wiping up come before it crusted all over everything. He wasn't motivated to find out. He was very thirsty, could really use a bottle of water -- hadn't carried any in, unusual oversight, pre-trial jitters worse than he'd realized -- but he didn't want to drink theirs or risk them calling one of his people in here to deliver a canteen. "Jeeze, Jack, what the fuck happened in there? Thought it was a courtroom proceeding. You know what that shout sounded like?" wouldn't be a serious problem, would even provide an opportunity to derail suspicion. He'd toss back something like "You should hear me when L.A. Law's on the tube," and everybody would get a chuckle and forget about it until some legal thing came up on another offworld and they remembered to rib him about his imaginary courtroom kink. One of his jarheads walking in on this would be something else altogether, even Geis or Chapman, who were out to him and their COs and their units.

Speaking of which -- now that Daniel was approximating consciousness, he needed to move. He'd indulged himself, stayed where he was, it was no position to spend a watch in but this wasn't really a watch and mostly he worried that if he let himself lose physical contact he wouldn't be able to bring himself to initiate it again. But dozing on him -- too space-invasive, too cuddly. He lifted his head and leg away as if they'd never been there and shifted onto his side. Left his hand where it was, where it had been for the past half-hour, on the small of Daniel's back.

Daniel made a thick, muddled sound and pulled his arms down, and Jack thought he might have to be stopped from asking what time it was or where they were, but generally Daniel woke knowing exactly where he was and with a good sense of time; he'd traveled most of his life and was probably more surprised to wake up somewhere familiar than in some tent or barracks or spaceship hold, or on a come-spattered king-size mattress on the floor of an alien courtroom with twelve people staring at him.

Daniel just grunted into the mattress, a fuck I do not want to wake up now sound. In a minute he would, and then it was showtime again.

Jack wanted to be done. They'd shown what they had to show; he didn't see how they could make their case any more persuasively, and he was wrung-out from the painstaking tension and multi-layered deception and emotional seesaw that got them there, really not up for a repeat. Psychologically or physically; he was good for twice in a night on a good night, twice in three hours was not gonna happen. But he had to assume it was in their interest to make their case again, if Daniel was capable of it. A blowjob was his best bet, however unskilled he was, and he trusted himself to keep his personal motives out of it, but if their positions were reversed he wouldn't be comfortable seeing his teammate suck him, and what he didn't trust was his disinclination to put Daniel through any more than he already had. He'd decided to reserve oral sex for a back-up plan and try another handjob in that first position. It put Daniel back on display, which he didn't like but was part of the deal. Maybe he could tilt his head back or something. The main thing was, Jack would be behind him again. He hadn't looked Daniel directly in the face since he'd walked in. He thought maybe it would be better if they kept it that way until they were walking out.

Daniel rolled onto his side, facing him.

Ah, crap.

It left Jack's hand on his waist. Daniel had tucked his far side under him instead of heaving up off his face and away. Jack processed that immediately -- the way Daniel stayed under his hand. Subconscious instinct, probably; old habit from sharing a bed with someone whose hands he wanted on him. Or maybe recent habit. Or just playing his part.

He left his hand there. It felt like taking a massive liberty. He overrode the twitch to pull it back. A former owner would leave it there. It was a line of communication. Daniel would get that. That was probably what Daniel's tuck had been telling him.

Daniel's sleepy eyes were calm and aware. They moved back and forth slowly, searching Jack's eyes. Probably reading the whole what the fuck do I do with my hand thing there, in the between-blinks second it took to run its course.

Jack tried a wry, reassuring smile.

Daniel didn't return it. His gaze dipped down to Jack's mouth, traveled slowly back up. He examined Jack the way he examined half-familiar glyphs on a wall: trying to read in Jack's face the historical narrative of Jack's experience in that first hour, for the context to know where things stood now. On a mission, he'd do this for hours, until at some critical point he'd straighten or stiffen or give a little shake of excitement and call Hey, guys! without taking his eyes from the inscriptions, without realizing that wherever the other two were, Jack was right there, watching him ...

This was a mission.

Jack was right here, watching him.

Daniel's head went back a fraction, and this close up, within this stillness, it was the equivalent of snapping back from a blow. His expression blanked the way tough men's did as they were hit in the face with a fist. He blinked, and his head gave a minuscule shake, like the shake his body gave when what he was looking at came clear, and Jack knew that he was busted -- Jack knew that in watching Daniel he'd failed to maintain his own expression, failed to manufacture something to replace the wry smile that Daniel had ignored, let it fade, forgotten, to leave the raw feeling underneath visible. All Daniel needed was three unguarded seconds.

If he was going to fuck up, he was supposed to err on the side of exposing himself to the judges. Not by giving Daniel those three unguarded seconds. Not to Daniel.

His gaze never leaving Jack's face, Daniel's lips parted as if to shape the words Um ... Jack? in lieu of calling out. Jack's hand was there before he could blink again, index finger pressing his lips still. Just shake your head, Jack thought. Shake your head and I'll understand that we're done here, just don't tip them off before I can --

Daniel's lips went tender and yearning under his finger. Daniel's eyes went soft and hurt. The breath he'd taken came out against Jack's skin in a barely voiced "ohhh." The same sound he'd made the first time Jack touched him between the legs.

... as if he'd been primed for that touch, waiting for that touch for years ...

Sense-images tumbled through Jack's mind. The turn of Daniel's head as he avoided the Jack half of Jack's statement about violation. The ripple across Daniel's skin when Jack's naked body embraced his. The faceplant, the sobbing groans, the body pushing into him, onto him, the tremors that couldn't be faked or suppressed. Daniel rolling to stay under his hand. The brief instant of softness in Daniel's eyes when Jack knelt naked in front of him and cupped his head, quickly concealed. The softness Daniel was trying to veil now, with Jack's finger on his lips.

How could you see that and still have any doubt?

How could he have seen that, heard that, felt that and not have known?

Daniel's brows were furrowed, his eyes creased at the edges. How else could he interpret Jack's silencing finger but as Shut up, pretend you never saw that and his own melting arousal as the most inappropriate possible response? How long had Jack been training him with that finger and 'Aht! Don't start!' and the same sharp half-wild look?

They'd always done nonverbal communication pretty well -- when they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, side by side, barely glancing at each other, facing something else. They'd built an entire relationship on peripheral vision. Turn them to face each other and you got two magnets pushing to arm's length, two guys conversing with the shadows in the corners of their eyes. Talking past each other on a delay instead of talking to somebody else in unison, the messages hopelessly overlaid and scrambled.

Jack shifted his hand before Daniel's eyes could close and shut him out -- slam a door Jack hadn't known was there. He curled his index finger away, furled the fingers that had been inside Daniel, shouldn't be touching his mouth with those anyway, and touched the pad of his ring finger lightly to Daniel's lower lip, catching it just before Daniel's mouth closed. Daniel went still, returning a flat and fearless eye contact -- staring at Jack but reacting to a shadow Jack off to the side, a distorted Jack-echo whose soft underbelly he'd seen, whose soft underbelly he was, a cornered brutally repressed military Jack he'd concluded that he'd threatened and now expected an aggression response from, staying absolutely still so that that Jack wouldn't tear his throat out.

Jack stroked the pad of his finger across Daniel's lip. Touch as delicate as he could make it without not touching at all. When he got to the end, Daniel's mouth had opened enough, in reflex or a show of obedience, that Jack's fingertip could brush into the curve and around. He started across the upper lip, bending his wrist all the way back to keep the torn nail from catching. His fine motor control was suffering; the touch trembled. When he came around the other corner and stroked across the bottom lip again, it was more a trail of tiny feather-soft dabs than a caress.

He tried to keep looking right into Daniel's eyes, tried to bare his soul and offer it up, but felt his face tightening with the effort of dropping his defenses. Sometimes the only way to relax a muscle was to tense it first, deliberately, but that wasn't an option here. He dropped his gaze instead, watched his finger stroking the lips he hadn't let himself dream about, let his fascination and curiosity distract him, incidentally gave himself a minute to take inventory: Daniel knew, now. Daniel might, maybe, possibly, have been keeping the same goddamn secret, but bad timing and crossed wires had raised Daniel's shields. The fallout had to be deferred to a future that would probably never come, the way the 'later' in 'we'll straighten this out in private later' never did, but he had to come up with a temporary fix. They had less than an hour to win the judgment that would get them out of here without bloodshed, and there was nearly an hour left for a reason. You could bet your ass the other guy had used every minute of his time.

He glanced lower, couldn't help himself, and saw that what he was doing to Daniel's mouth was giving Daniel a hard-on. Something about him turned Daniel's crank, all right, and it was a hell of a crank. When he chanced another look up, he saw that what he was doing to Daniel's mouth was torturing him. Turning him on without telling him anything. Saying five different things, none of them what Daniel needed to hear. His goddamn face wouldn't cooperate, wouldn't show what he'd been hiding now that it could do some good. OK, no surprise there. He was who he was. But Daniel was suffering the arousal of Jack's touch, and Jack would call this thing right now if he couldn't make that right.

Jack followed his finger with his mouth. Had to fix this, couldn't use words, actions spoke louder anyway. Yeah, he said with the breath-light brush of his lips over Daniel's. Stroking the upper lip with his lips; the lower lip, back and forth, back and forth; breathing into Daniel's open mouth. Yeah you read me right. Yeah I clicked into mission mode. Yeah I'm a hardass when I do that. I didn't know about you. Still don't know about you. Am I reading you right? Is this OK? Is this OK, Daniel? This? This? He didn't think Daniel heard him, didn't think the messages were getting through, but after a minute of zero response, Daniel released a low, hoarse moan, and tipped his mouth to offer it to Jack.

Jack sank into it, his hand falling away. No tongue, no suction, no demands, just his lips fitting themselves to the curve of Daniel's. He breathed through the corners of his mouth, then through his nose as their heads shifted and found the right angle and their mouths sealed. In the hot, wet darkness inside, where no one could see, Daniel's tongue slid aggressively across to find his. Daniel moaned again, licking over and under Jack's tongue, trying to suck.

Jack moaned back, sinking deeper, pushing when that wasn't deep enough. Daniel's jaw was dense and hard, Daniel's whole face was harder, more muscular than any face he'd ever kissed, Daniel pushed back, and if he'd ever let himself pretend this could ever happen and thought there'd be violins and angels singing if it did, he'd have been wrong. It was an argument. It was You didn't tell me, you son of a bitch and I'm telling you now and That's not good enough. It was the yelling match after it hit you how stupid and needless the close call was. He pushed his body against Daniel's, and Daniel pushed back so hard that to maintain the illusion that he was in control Jack had to get on top of him, get some leverage, fumbling a hand out at the same time to nudge Daniel's glasses away so they didn't get rolled on. Daniel's hard dick and balls went rock-hard when Jack rolled him, and he shouldn't smile, he really should not smile right now, it would send more wrong messages than a drunken telegraph operator, but he couldn't help it. Smiling hardened his mouth in a different way, and Daniel groaned and pushed into it even harder. Then he was laughing into Daniel's angry, demanding mouth, silent delighted laughter that puffed against Daniel's cheek, and Daniel was grudgingly starting to smile back, and it stopped being a fight or a kiss so much as two laughing faces jammed together at the mouth, god, look at this, look at us, how crazy is this.

Jack knew he should pull up now, get a real look at Daniel, and he opened his eyes, intending to do that, but smiling had changed the shape of Daniel's mouth in an amazingly sexy way, and he started to kiss into it instead. The blur of mattress and glasses and chair legs and feet was distracting, and he slid his eyes closed again, savoring the delicious curve and stretch of Daniel's lips. Exploring the shape changed their shape; they softened and pursed, drinking in the attention. He was kissing Daniel. He was lying on Daniel, lying naked on a very naked Daniel, on a very male Daniel, a protuberantly male Daniel, flat chest and abs rising and falling under his, hard quads pressing his soft inner thighs, hard cock and balls pressing the tingling heavy drape of his soft package. He rolled his hips to get more of that hardness, to feel himself shift and slide over it, and Daniel's belly quivered with the coiled tension of lying still instead of thrusting up into him, Daniel's quads tensed to steel bands that testified to how powerful those thrusts would be. He pushed his hand up into Daniel's hair, realized what he was doing after he did it, couldn't undo it. Jack liked women with a mane of hair he could bury his hand in, wife had known that, cut hers short after she left him -- anthropology Daniel had noticed the tendency and ribbed him about it, fertility indicator this and control point that and domination the other thing -- last thing he should have done here was the hand-in-the-hair thing, damn thoughtless habit -- but the short spiky silkiness between his fingers was exquisite, and Daniel's body was going molten under him, heating and softening, yielding, and he realized that some communication had just happened on an animal level, passed a message way, way under the conference table. Anthropology Daniel could have described it but anthropology Daniel wasn't who Jack's body was talking to. Jack's spent plumbing couldn't send the involuntary message Jack would have liked, but the uncalculated accidental slip of a hand could, and had.

He gave up Daniel's mouth reluctantly and pushed onto his arms to look down at him. Daniel looked stunned and ravished and hungry, not so much a deer as a fox in the headlights, and Jack was pretty sure he looked the same. They stared at each other for several long breaths, the holy shit of it catching up to them. Jack could feel the realignment like a palpable click, the teeth of slipped gears biting back into mesh, the blessed relief of a dislocated shoulder popping back into the socket, grinding pain easing off, relatively functional arm again.

Daniel's face said, So? What now?

Jack's face tried to say I was thinkin' blowjob and it turned out that wasn't something you could say with your face. Daniel raised a puzzled, amused eyebrow, and it occurred to Jack that he wasn't sure how well Daniel could see his face, so he reached over and snagged his glasses to offer them back. Daniel made no move to lift the arms stretched down his sides -- deliberately made no move, his mouth curving slightly and insolence dancing in his eyes, making a game out of the passive-chattel rule -- and while temporarily derailed by the aching heat that sent through Jack's loins and gut, Jack somehow got them flipped open one-handed and slid them back on, a last gentle press of the nosepiece to seat them firmly.

There was a way better way to say 'blowjob,' and he made a start at it by putting some weight on his knees and shifting his body down. He watched Daniel carefully while he did it, looking for any hint of a wince or a headshake, and all he saw was a flush and dilating pupils, so he shifted a little more. That put his face right over the center of Daniel's chest -- kinda sorry he'd pocketed his tags now, would have liked to see them brush his skin, drag down his body -- and he bent his head in the direction of a nipple, eyes angling up to stay on Daniel's as Daniel's head turned and tilted to follow him without lifting. Daniel's lips parted and his breathing quickened, so Jack closed his lips around the sharp nipple and tugged gently off, and Daniel's flush deepened and his heartbeat got strong enough to transfer through his ribcage into Jack's forearm, so Jack licked it a couple of times and then sealed his mouth around it and sucked.

Daniel's abs contracted and he let out a surprised grunt and lifted off his shoulders with a wide unfocused look of fuck, Jack, I'll come, I'll fucking come from that, jesus. And Jack thought about it while he rode the surge up and back down and kept sucking, he craved the first taste of Daniel's cock so much his tongue curled and his mouth watered but he considered sucking him into orgasm just like this because who knew that was even possible, and how fucking triumphantly deliciously good would that be, and how conveniently that would save him from demonstrating his own inexperience, and he was adaptable use-any-tools-that-come-to-hand commando guy and this was a gift on a platter.

But he'd had another thought brewing in the back of his head since before he broke the kiss, since he'd felt the muscular aggression of Daniel's tongue. The press of eyes was unrelenting, and however impartial those magistrates made themselves out to be, they were an audience and they weren't immune to being swayed by the best show. Anybody could hold a guy down and suck him off, and chances were that other sucker was a lot better at it than he would be. Daniel had already shown how responsive he was to Jack's touch -- was showing it right now, groaning through his teeth as Jack eased off the sucking and soothed the swollen nipple with light circles of his tongue. But there was one thing Jack could do that not just anybody could or would do. Something he had to at least try, to make this hellish fucking sick exhibition of how much Daniel loved being used into a thing that wouldn't kill them on timer delay after they got home. Something he was so sure that other guy could not or would not have done that he was going to stake this entire trial on it.

He pushed upright, and reached over to snag the bowl of lube and bring it up onto the mattress close to hand. He greased up Daniel's dick -- Daniel's beautiful, slender dick with its sweet upward curve -- watching Daniel's eyes instead of admiring what he was touching the way he wanted to just sit and admire it and play with it, not playing with it because he knew it would go off, watching the dawning comprehension in Daniel's eyes to make absolutely sure there was no flicker of revulsion at the end of it, only the oh my fucking god that he expected and the do you know what the hell you're doing? that he wouldn't answer in case the spectators were breaking the code and starting to translate the conversation.

He couldn't fuck Daniel again with his dick, but that didn't mean he couldn't fuck Daniel.

He'd fucked Daniel under unthinkable circumstances, and he was going to make damn sure that Daniel got to fuck him back.

He scooped up some more lube and greased his hole, liberally, outside and in. He pushed two fingers into himself and held them there, let Daniel see him holding some number of fingers there so in the moment of entry Daniel wouldn't deflate with the conviction that his dick was causing pain, until the dull burn subsided and he could work them around, get himself loosened up for three. He pushed three in before he could easily take them so he could hold them there for longer, work his ass on them -- clench the muscle he wanted relaxed until it stayed relaxed when he let it go. He couldn't fake an exhibitionist streak for Daniel, wouldn't pretend it got him hot to finger-fuck himself in front of a roomful of people, but there was no question that Daniel liked watching it, face flushed and dark-eyed and lax-mouthed, dick and balls staying hard and tight under Jack's left hand, and when his own fingers started to feel good he let it show, and the helpless, throaty moan that Daniel let out doubled the pleasure.

He shifted up along Daniel's body into his best estimate of position, one knee in front of the other, pushing Daniel's arms out of the way. He needed to grab Daniel's hand and place it on Daniel's dick, needed Daniel to hold it up for him while he wriggled around looking for the angle, this was ambitious enough as it was, but he wasn't risking another warning now and no fucking way was he rotating himself and the chattel again. He had to twist way around to reach far enough down behind him to get hold of it, and holding it left him tilted to the right, had to give up the idea of pulling his ass cheek open with his left hand, couldn't reach it now. Should crouch over him, he thought, would be a damned embarrassing position but more effective than this, but his knees wouldn't hold him, they were griping at him already as it was. He found he couldn't aim Daniel's dick from this angle either, not the way he was used to taking aim with things; had to stretch his arm away from his ass to get the right grip, and that defeated the proverbial purpose. He snugged it between two fingers instead, made a kind of sheath to guide it, and tried to ease the hole down over it.

On the first try it slid up his ass crack without locking in, on the second it slid forward behind his balls and nearly slipped out of his fingers, but on the third he moved his hand and angled his body just right and it popped in and slid halfway up his ass.

His vision frizzed. His limbs went weak. He groped blindly for Daniel and flailed through air. For a few seconds he was completely debilitated. He'd expected some discomfort, wasn't doing this for himself anyway, had some dim conception that the in-and-out would feel nice if they managed to get that far, knew the thought of dick in his ass had turned him on since he first found out people did that, knew he liked his hole stroked and played with. He hadn't expected pleasure. Not pleasure like this.

It spread down his thighs and up his back and through his intestines in rolling twinges. After the first few seconds, his body adjusted to the unbearably sweet pressure, and the twinges eased off enough for him to lean forward to get his hands on Daniel and angle the inside of his body better, take more of it into him. But when he moved, the pleasure intensified, right back to the level where it started, and he was left gasping, poised with it three-quarters in him, his arms hanging loose between his legs.

The flicker of Daniel's eyes focused his gaze. Daniel was fighting through a blur of ecstasy to search his face; Jack had seen him fight through a haze of pain the same way, trying to solve a problem while injuries or torture dragged at his attention. Pain, pleasure, indistinguishable; Daniel was looking for the smallest sign to tell him which it was for Jack. He must be as weak with this as Jack was, most of his dick sunken into a virgin tightness, but Jack heard his heels slide to dig into the mattress, saw his elbows brace: his hips were pinned laterally by Jack's thighs, but he'd eel out from under in the next heartbeat if he saw any indication that Jack was martyring himself to this.

Even that slight movement sent waves of pleasure through Jack's ass, more than enough to make him groan, he'd never been a keep-the-noise-down kinda guy, and he couldn't say 'good' or 'OK' or 'god, don't pull out,' so he fell back on the only thing left to him, all hail the military: he gave a sloppy thumbs-up.

Daniel laughed. It was voiceless and breathy with relief but it was a real laugh and it jiggled his dick into a series of completely unintentional microthrusts and Jack groaned again, pitifully, trying to sink down farther. He'd leaned forward too much, inaccurate mental picture of his internal anatomy, too much pressure in the wrong place, and that felt as good in its own way as it was uncomfortable but he was hungry to have it all inside him, it kept feeling better the farther up it went, so he straightened up, swinging his arms around behind him to balance with fingertips on Daniel's thighs, holding the bright sunrise of Daniel's smile in the center of his field of view, and pushed all the way down.

His body tried to melt from the inside out. Daniel's tried to curl, legs drawing up, head and shoulders lifting off the mattress. Jack felt an intense urge to pull him the rest of the way up into a clinch, gripped the muscled thighs now supporting his lower back to stop it, no idea if their bodies could bend that way, should so, so, so have been watching gay porn all these years, reading sex manuals in some unsurveilled bookstore without putting purchases on his credit record, might even have done it if he'd ever thought he would ever in his life ever actually do this. Daniel's hands fisted the mattress cover as he groaned back down, fighting his own urges to reach out, touch, grab. Fighting his own urge to come? Jack didn't want this to end -- it had only just started, and every breath, the smallest shift, sent another twingeing throb of ecstasy through him -- but the pleasure he was feeling wasn't triggering a drive to orgasm. He was as soft as before, and kind of aroused by his own softness, by how good the smooth warm skin of Daniel's abs felt under his balls, by how intensely sexual the penetration felt anyway, how turned on he was by the hardness filling his ass without having to be hard or get hard himself. But that hardness was Daniel, and Daniel was groaning through gritted teeth again, and fisting the covers.

The abs under Jack's balls were quivering the way they did when Daniel was trying not to thrust. Maybe he was just trying not to thrust, trying to follow the rules or trying not to do anything that Jack might not be ready for, must have sussed by now that Jack had never done this before. It occurred to Jack, with staggering belatedness, that he didn't actually know whether or not Daniel had done this before, had assumed at least the same equivalent experience with women that Jack had, had assumed at least a few innings on the pitcher's mound with the men listed in his background check, had assumed most guys switched off, had assumed a million things without remembering that he knew jack shit about this -- but there was no question that this felt as good for Daniel as it did for him, and it was supposed to feel good for him, it was supposed to make him come, so why the hell was he locking down instead of letting it rip?

Maybe he wasn't locking down. Maybe Jack wasn't doing enough and he was trying to come without moving, trying to psych himself into an orgasm. But he was sipping breaths now and the shape of his winced-shut eyes was no, not yet or plain old no. Maybe he didn't want to shoot into Jack and had no way of telling him that and was praying for Jack to pull off so he could let go. When he'd shot he'd pulled out of Daniel without a thought; sitting down on him like this, he wasn't giving Daniel that option. But the Daniel he wouldn't have dreamed of shooting a load in was a different Daniel. Daniel knew he was a different Jack. Daniel would trust him to make this choice. Crap, he can't be waiting for me to get hard again, can he? Daniel had to know that if it hadn't happened by now it wasn't likely to happen in the next ten minutes either. Maybe he was fighting tooth and nail to stay passive until Jack took some action to bring him off. The challenge was to show how well he knew how to please his pet, and Jack hadn't actually done anything yet; successfully impaling himself on a hard dick for the first time in his life might be a victory for him but wouldn't go far in impressing the --

The magistrates.

Jack hadn't forgotten them; he'd pushed them off to the sides of his awareness. He knew the timekeeper was due for another pass and he knew the position and status of each guard and he knew which magistrates had their legs squeezed together and which ones were silently tapping their feet, and none of it mattered unless he had to shift tactics. A flying fuck, a rat's ass, whatever there was to give he didn't have it. Their scrutiny was irrelevant. He didn't care.

Daniel did. That was what Jack had forgotten.

And Jack had overlooked one critical thing: He was watching Daniel too.

Watching Daniel and expecting his own private performance. Watching Daniel and expecting Daniel to melt for him, to glaze with orgasmic bliss for him, because he knew now that Daniel wanted him back. Watching Daniel and calculating how to initiate that melting bliss.

It was what you did in bed with any partner, if you were a considerate lover who paid attention. But they weren't partners. They weren't lovers. They just had the same unresolved thing for each other. Sitting on Daniel's dick hadn't resolved it, just made him expect something from Daniel that he hadn't earned.

Jack wanted to try moving on him. He could feel his own body's ignorance of how to move, no muscle memory of this kind of sex, but he was an athletic guy who picked up physical stuff fast and if he took it slow he could figure it out without bending the dick inside him in a way it couldn't bend, and he was dying to move because it felt so good, just breathing felt good with that up in him, his own pulse felt good, and he was pretty sure that if he moved it would make Daniel come no matter how bad the gridlock was in Daniel's brain. He wanted to grab Daniel's face, turn it towards him, make him open his eyes, make him focus. Emotionally he longed to be the sole focus of Daniel's attention, and his team-leader role was to keep his specialist from zoning out on him right before the finish line. He wasn't doing those things because that would be forcing him. But he was still forcing him. He was watching him. He was forcing Daniel to submit to being watched.

He brought his arms around in front of him and tipped forward enough to reach Daniel's face. He stroked down Daniel's cheek and over his lips: I love you, Daniel.

Daniel turned his face in to Jack's palm, his wince deepening, and kissed a little, softly: I love you too. That's why this sucks.

Jack stroked his thumb along Daniel's stubbled, stubborn jaw: I know.

Daniel rolled his head straight and fixed Jack with a look of wan resolve. Jack smiled gently in return, and closed his eyes.

He could practically hear the creak of brows pulling together. Daniel knew his sexual and emotional response was a mission objective, all his growling and struggling had been about forcing himself to get over it, wrestling his own issues into submission so that he could come spectacularly for Jack and end this; Jack's abrupt suspension of the surveillance made him frown. Jack dropped his head, and laid his hands on Daniel's chest. Immediately evident that he couldn't curl over enough to get his mouth on the nipple he was targeting, but the head-drop was a submissive gesture in itself, an I'm-not-staring-at-you-anymore gesture in itself, and Daniel's heartrate surged under his hands; and if his tongue and lips couldn't reach, his hands could.

He licked one thumb, and then the other, and applied them to both nipples as he pushed from his thighs and eased back to get his ass sliding up and down on Daniel's cock.

It took almost all his concentration. Head down and eyes closed turned out to be good for that. His ears kept tabs on the room, which vibrated with a kind of electrified silence. Daniel had made an oh god sound as soon as Jack started to move, and arched off his shoulders, looking for more pressure from Jack's thumbs. Walk and chew gum, Jack thought, rubbing firmer circles around the hard nipples while he felt his way into the up-and-down. Didn't have a lot of play in this position, didn't have the technique to make use of it anyway, short and careful was the only way to go, and even that was so much stimulation that he faltered a couple of times, overcome by the rolling, nerve-tingling sensations, the sweet lubed slide. The more his spit dried on Daniel's chest, the rougher his thumbs got and the less breathless and more voiced Daniel's sounds got; the slower he moved his ass, the more he took in on every downstroke, the deeper they got. That was good. Slow was good. Slow let him feel every inch of penetration. Slow let him feel like he was taking it for the first time all over again. He could do this all night, he thought. He could do this as long as Daniel could stand it. He wondered if Daniel would ever want him to, and flinched away from the thought, a thought he knew he'd been trying to have for a while and until now his subconscious was too smart to let form. Keep it in the moment. Keep it in the room. Whatever his supervision had felt like to Daniel, this had been way more than a subsidiary mission objective for a while now. Keep a lid on that. Focus. Up, down. Across, around.

God it was good. It was so fucking good. He didn't know when his mouth had opened, when he'd started panting out hoarse moans. A sudden need to feel more nipple in his fingers made him shift his grip to pinch and roll, and Daniel's hips jerked up in a stuttered thrust that sent fireworks through his guts. God, god he wanted more of that, wanted to lift halfway and hold there and let Daniel fuck him. If he couldn't have more of that, he just wanted more, so he eased down and then pushed, trying to grind his sit bones into the soft hollows of Daniel's hips. He had to lean back to make it really good, to really dig in, and he was twisting Daniel's nipples when he leaned past his own reach and his fingers tugged off. He could almost feel the burn it left behind. He could hear it in the sharp, guttural sound that Daniel let out.

He pushed his hips around in a slow circle, concentrating his way through it because it wasn't a way his hips naturally moved, and he felt Daniel start to come. Not audibly, not even psychically, but physically -- Daniel's dick changed somehow, thickening, tightening down, and he felt it, felt coming i'm coming communicated like a shout through every nerve ending in his ass. It made him feel like he was going to come too -- heartrate jumping, muscles thrumming, a bloom of perspiration at the base of his spine. He only had time to register all that, to think that he should do something about it, move more or hold still, before the real shout punched the air in front of him. Then Daniel was pulsing inside him, ejaculating inside him, an unbelievable throbbing stimulation of hypersensitized tissue with an extra, indescribable kick to it that had him groaning as if he were coming. His dick twitched, trying to fill, as if a thumb had pressed a button right behind his balls, and he curled over his own contracted abs, thinking Oh, great, now it happens and Keep it down, keep it down because he was groaning as loud as Daniel and they had to hear Daniel and he had to not drown him out.

He choked his voice down to a wheezy whine, focused on slowing and deepening his breaths. He'd grabbed onto his own thighs, hands clawing; he unstuck his fingers one by one. Daniel's dick twitched, once, and his fingers clamped again as even that small movement set off a pleasure cascade, and he had to start over. His ass felt thick and full and wet and spongy, sheathing Daniel's still-hard cock; he wanted to put fingers into it, find out how it felt, rub around in the intense sensitivity; he wanted to roll them both over before Daniel's dick got soft because he didn't know what was going to come out when Daniel's dick did and he didn't want it to come out all over Daniel. He couldn't execute a maneuver like that unless Daniel helped -- unless Daniel put a lot more muscle into it than Daniel probably had right now -- and he didn't really have the muscle either. He was shaky and tingling and weak with a kind of halfway-there arousal; the stimulation footprint of the kick in the nuts was fading, but his balls felt tight and his dick was still trying to get hard.

He stayed where he was, eyes closed, while Daniel's moans tailed off to huffs and the twitches in Daniel's body eased away. He thought about clenching his ass just as Daniel's dick slipped out, but he didn't trust himself to nail the timing and he didn't know if Daniel's dick would slip out and he didn't know how tight he could clench. He couldn't feel the erection softening per se, but he could feel the pressure ebbing. Sending up a hope that this wasn't the worst thing he could do, he lifted off, contracting as hard as he could, and rolled to the side, onto his back. Daniel grunted. It might have just been surprise.

He heard the timekeeper's soft steps whisper into the room and whisper back out. He didn't have to see the guy or check his watch to know there were ten minutes left. Enough time to wind down, enough time for the trickle from his ass to make a nice wet stain in the mattress, enough time, maybe, to communicate a few things to Daniel through the silence because the chances of them talking about this after it was over were slim to none. They knew things about each other that nobody else around them knew, always had, and knew a lot more now, but their MO had never exactly been oversharing. He needed Daniel to know it was OK, they were OK, and that if Daniel wasn't OK he'd do anything in his power to change that. He'd get that across somehow. He'd manage it somehow, and then all they'd have to do before they walked back through the gate was coordinate their stories; and if he didn't make it back to the gate, if they didn't win the judgement and he caught a bullet getting Daniel extracted from this the hard way, then at least he'd have done his best to leave this as something Daniel could live with.

'Hard,' he thought, had never been such a relative term.

His own face had winced down so tight that it took effort to unwince it. He swallowed, took a few breaths, got his eyes open, and rolled his head to look at Daniel -- and found Daniel looking at him, found Daniel rolling up onto one elbow and looking down at him very intently, or as intently as someone could whose expression was a heart-melting softness of adoration and amazement. Daniel's face could look like that and Daniel's eyes could still focus with the liquid intensity he brought to bear on solving a problem. What's the problem? Jack tried to say with his own wince-mushy face. What?

Jack had landed on his back with one knee drawn up and the other leg flopped out at an angle. Daniel rolled to his knees and in four knee-steps had placed himself between Jack's legs.

Jack elbowed up, just stopped himself from spidering away, absolutely certain that the next thing he was going to hear was "Second warning, two strikes you're out" and the stomp of guards' booted feet into the circle. Are you fucking crazy? he shot at Daniel with a wild-eyed look. After all this you're gonna blow it on a technicality? Come on, Daniel, don't make me take these guys on barehanded and bareassed -- but Daniel gazed placidly back, and the warning didn't come, there was only a rustle of magistrates' clothing as a few of them shifted in their seats, the soft click of a holster unsnapping as the one guard really worth his salt responded correctly to Jack's coiling readiness.

Slowly, Daniel ran his calm gaze down Jack's body. It wasn't sultry, but it was openly checking him out, and it lingered for a long time between Jack's open legs, a frank examination that brought Jack's heartrate back up and raised a fresh bloom of sweat. OK, so it didn't break the rules for Daniel to present himself for their customary next step. He'd moved between Jack's legs the same way he'd gone to all fours for Jack after the opening handjob. He was prepared to render the next service, expected to be called upon for the usual, and after Jack had poledanced on him for a while he was usually called upon to render a blowjob, and so he'd promptly and automatically made himself available to deliver one. OK, so that was the cover; it took a minute, but Jack got that. But why ...

Daniel had been watching him the whole time. He knew it, suddenly, from the way Daniel's eyes were stroking him. Daniel had watched him; Daniel had seen how good it felt for him, how turned on he got. Daniel had even watched him through his own orgasm. Daniel had seen him stir, right there at the end. Daniel was dead serious about doing something about it. Daniel had no intention of letting Jack spend these last eight minutes apologizing to him in silence.

Sitting down on his calves, hands properly stowed on his thighs, gaze darkening from assessment into desire as it caressed Jack's very-public-at-the-moment privates, he wasn't telling Jack anything; he was showing him. Not saying Hey, I've got an idea for how to use the rest of this time; showing Jack how he wanted to use it. He'd seen Jack respond and it made him ... hungry. But he couldn't just do it. Jack would have to make him do it, somehow. And no matter how good the persistent throbbing of Jack's ass felt and how much of a zing was still tingling through his package and how it would blow his mind to have Daniel voluntarily suck him, Jack knew that another orgasm was beyond his reach.

I can't get hard, Danny, he said with a pained, regretful look. I know I look partway there but that was some crazyass reflex thing, I don't know what that was, it's still not gonna happen. All I'm gonna do here is let you down.

It's OK, Daniel responded with a warm, gentle smile. No pressure. Just let me. I want to. God, orgasm did something amazing to his lips, softened his mouth into a tenderness that Jack had never seen there, made a shape out of it -- well, now he knew what 'cupid's-bow' meant, in more ways than one. Daniel wasn't offering to put that mouth on him, he was asking. Daniel wasn't offering; Daniel wanted.

Seven minutes.

Leaving his legs open, one stretched out and one bent up, he straightened one arm to prop himself up nearly sitting, and reached the other arm out, and laid that hand on Daniel's head. He didn't push; he didn't have to. He just let his hand rest there, and when Daniel's head went down, Daniel curling over his own knees as if into a position of worship, his hand went down with it. It looked like he was forcing -- he even put a little tension into his forearm to raise some visible muscle -- but he wasn't forcing. He was following.

He gasped when Daniel's lips touched his penis -- a dab at first, the lightest taste, and then long, caressing brushes and gentle swirls with his open mouth. He did that forever while Jack watched him -- watched that sweet, stubborn, articulate, unobtainable mouth make love to him, and tried to hide his awe. Daniel moaned, and his breath washed warm and soft over Jack's flesh. Daniel gave the barest nuzzle, the barest touch of sandpapery chin against Jack's balls, then ran the flat of his spit-drenched tongue across Jack's scrotum to soothe the scratchiness Jack had barely felt, and made him wish it had been more. He dipped his tongue down to curl under one testicle and the other and lift them, as if weighing them; he ran his tongue up to trace the tip over the tip of Jack's cock, circle the eye; he arched it up to trace the ridge of glans, then swirled it under to come up the slit and hold there, softly rubbing.

Jack made a sound he'd never made before in his life, a thick, low, overwhelmed moan. Daniel glanced up to make sure he was watching, and his eyes creased in smile-like approval upon confirming that he was. He wanted Jack to watch this, and he wanted Jack to know that. Content that the messages had been sent and received, he opened his mouth, and slid his tongue under Jack's penis to lift it inside, and closed his tender, worshipping lips around the shaft just as Jack's peripheral vision caught a flicker of movement over at the door.

The timekeeper's slippers whispered across the trialroom floor.

"Time," said the magistrate who did the talking. "The claimant will now separate from the disputed chattel."

Daniel's mouth made no move toward separating from Jack's penis. His tongue stroked tenderly along the underside, savoring the semi-softness. Telling Jack how delicious it was, how much he did not need the validation of feeling it get any harder, how perfect and wonderful it was, just the way it was. Jack felt like he'd choke on the gratitude and affection that swelled up into his throat. He swallowed, hard, a deliberate start at getting a grip, pushing all this stuff back down where it had to go while they got themselves home. Daniel delayed the process by giving a long, gentle suck, and then eased the suction, just as gently, to hold Jack's penis on his tongue. He still wasn't moving.

"Colonel O'Neill," the magistrate said, curt and sharp. "The demonstration period has expired. You are now permitted to speak. Tell the chattel to desist."

With irony so exquisite that it made his teeth ache, Jack said, "He doesn't belong to me. Can't tell him anything." Lucky for him his speaking voice was croaky with disuse and in-medias-oral-sex hoarse and half the words didn't come out clear enough for anyone but Daniel to hear. Daniel was already lifting his mouth off anyway, coming off Jack's penis in a wet slide of reluctance and uncurling his body to sit up straight and attentive as though what Jack had said was actually "Chattel, desist" -- making sure Jack's flippant attitude didn't get them into trouble now that Jack was free to say every possible wrong thing. He kept his head bowed in obedient deference, but he was smiling at the private joke and the twist on the technicality and the reverse echo of the statement that had started this whole ball rolling, and the look he cast Jack up through his lashes made a dark promise that Jack had to look away from before he started hoping, wishing, for more than he had the right or the career latitude to even think about.

The magistrates got up in unison and left the circle, forming a single file to move to a door at the back. Deliberation chamber. They disappeared inside without a backwards glance.

Jack went for his clothes as soon as they got up. When servants or slaves started coming in to make the place presentable, he had his pants on, and quick access to the contents of his pockets. He waylaid the servant-or-slave whose job was to spirit the lube bowl away, and plunked a fingerful of the stuff into a baggie, which he sealed and dropped back in its pocket. The servant-or-slave looked to one of the guards; the guard frowned; Jack patted the pocket and said, "Souvenir." The guard let it go. The servant-or-slave made off with the bowl. Jack dropped his tags over his head, punched into his T-shirt, and put his socks and boots on standing, ignoring the towels and basins of sudsy and clear water other servants-or-slaves brought. A couple of them started cleaning Daniel up; Daniel submitted patiently, maintaining his deferential pose, and didn't object when they draped him in a shapeless dark-blue robe. He'd been wearing something similar when Jack visited him in escrow. The servants-or-slaves were wearing variations on it. So, slaves -- property of the court or something. They shepherded Daniel into the keeping of two civic guards while other slaves dragged the big mattress away and a couple more folded chairs up and set them against the others along the walls, leaving three set up in a semicircle facing the middle of the back wall.

The private guards moved to flank the main door. Jack took it for a threat until they snapped to attention, facing each other. Then he realized.

Of course. All parties would have to be present for the verdict.

He'd managed to forget the guy existed -- the rich inventor whose cool doohickey they'd inadvertently traded Daniel for. The doohickey, a one-of-a-kind energy modulator from before the disaster that destroyed the civilization whose ruins this one was built on, was supposed to be a gift. The few days of Daniel's time they were offering, to help this guy fine-tune linguistic algorithms for a promising translation device, was supposed to be a favor. They'd had nothing better to do. Carter was on loan to the Tok'ra, Teal'c had requested some personal leave, they'd tagged along on Melton's gig because he'd reported that the world was an archaeological treasure house. Turned out it wasn't, so much -- Daniel had declared the ancient artifacts to be recent fakes, said the really interesting stuff was the pre-collapse technology that guys like this collected, outside his area of expertise, give Bill Lee a call -- but they'd thought the translation gizmo might be pretty useful, down the road somewhere, if the guy got it working.

All Jack could see beyond the door was a crowd of people milling around as much as the hallway allowed for and showing no interest whatsoever in the inside of the chamber. Some other case was lined up after this one, apparently. That put his psychologically fraught and emotionally draining little experience in depressing perspective: just one number in a full docket of run-of-the-mill proceedings. It also suggested that maybe the magistrates couldn't take all day to make a decision. Mostly it posed a potential problem: the hall was a bottleneck full of civilian bystanders.

Somebody was shoving through them, using weight and brute force to clear a path. Same two-tone livery as the private guards inside.

"Jack," Daniel said softly.

It was a low reminder to keep his shit together. It also served as a distraction, because for a few seconds everybody looked in surprise at the talking slave -- the other slaves and all the guards. Because of that, nobody else was looking at the door when the guy came through. Nobody else saw the expression of stark, despairing longing that twisted the guy's face when his eyes found Daniel and found Daniel watching Jack.

By the time the guy was three steps into the chamber, he'd pasted an expansive, glad-handing, I'm-a-bigwig-around-here smile on his face, the look of a guy who could afford to be a gracious loser. Nobody but Jack had seen the truth underneath it, and the guy didn't know that Jack had seen, because he'd had eyes only for Daniel.

The slaves ducked away through the door in the other side of the back wall. The two constabulary guys guarding Daniel ushered him into the backmost chair of the semicircle, the center chair, without actually touching him, then took position to either side of the semicircle. The private guards went out into the hall. The other two civic guards covered the front and the back of the room; the one at the front closed the door on the hallway chatter, leaving the chamber silent.

The other guy walked straight to the rightmost chair in the chair-crescent and sat with a relaxed flamboyance, legs stretched out, ankles crossed, left forearm draped over the chair back. He examined the manicure on that hand, appearing to look at no one, actually keeping the rest of the chairs in his side vision.

Jack took the left chair. The civic guard at the back, which they were all facing now, rapped his knuckles on the deliberation-room door. A signal to tell the magistrates that everybody was ready whenever they were.

One magistrate came right out. The one who'd done the talking -- issued the warnings, called time. Middle-aged woman, wiry, tough-looking. She took a centered position very close to parade rest ten paces in front of the chairs.

"The counterclaimant exceeded the externally verifiable sexual response induced by the claimant, but provoked an unfeignable display of revulsion that significantly degraded the chattel's utility. The claimant verged on fraudulent misrepresentation in attempting to persuade us that he had ever previously used the chattel for sexual gratification, but demonstrated an inarguably genuine and mutual bonded affect, and is clearly the party to whom the chattel will render the most effective service. The claimant is hereby declared the rightful owner. The device held in escrow will be returned to the counterclaimant by the bailiff in the claimants' chamber, along with any weapons left in his charge, and the chattel's accouterments. You are both now free to depart with your belongings."

"Yessss," Jack said, bouncing up from his chair. He turned, doing his best not to see the other guy's reaction, and started to say something to Daniel about tac vests and his radio and hauling ass. Daniel gave a small shake of the head and slid his gaze to the magistrate and back.

"We are a civilized people, Colonel O'Neill," the magistrate said.

For one crazy second, probably because he was looking at Daniel's face, Jack heard the words as an apology, or at least an explanation: that slavery was part of their culture but they did their best to be fair and humane about it. For a second crazy second, as the stress on the 'we' sank in, he thought she was telling him to be a sport and shake hands, and the caution in Daniel's eyes told him how his own face deadened in response. If he touched the guy, if he even looked at the guy again, a handshake was not going to be the end of it.

Then the guy stood up himself, made a sweeping bow at the corner of Jack's eye, and said "I thank the judiciary for its generous attention" before pivoting away from both Jack and Daniel to leave the chamber, his squared shoulders and measured steps screaming dignified withdrawal after soul-wounding injury.

'I'm not bowing,' Jack mouthed to Daniel.

Daniel's face said, Did I say anything?

'I'm not feelin' sorry for him,' Jack mouthed to Daniel, raising an index finger half in indication and half in emphasis.

Daniel's face said, Nope, me neither. Not much, anyway.

"Colonel O'Neill?" The magistrate's tone was two-hundred-proof schoolmarm.

Jack stared at Daniel for another second, then swung his body around and swept his right arm across and out, a half-assed nod at the sweeping-arm part of the other guy's bow that was really a gesture at the departed other guy. "Yeah, sure. What he said."

Her expression said, You are a piece of old gum I have discovered on the sole of my shoe, and you are dismissed.

His expression said, Fuck you.

He turned his back on her again, and gestured Daniel towards the door.

***

"'Exceeded the externally verifiable ... ' ? " Jack burst out when they'd made it past the throng outside the trialroom door and down to the empty middle of the long hall.

Daniel went glacially silent for the few strides that took them the waiting-room door, then said, "Made me shoot four times, which was one more than you managed."

The icy translation was a slap in the face, meant to sting, and it stung, and Jack slapped back on reflex. "Well, you're just a regular Energizer bunny, aren'tcha."

"Yes," Daniel replied steadily, opening the door. "I am. And the other guy knows what a prostate is." He stepped inside.

"I know what a prostate is," Jack said, moving to follow.

"No, you really don't. I also threw up. Twice. That was the 'unfeignable display of revulsion.'"

Crap. Crap. Jack stopped short, just past the threshold. "I'm sorry. I'm an asshole."

"Among other things," Daniel said, lifting his boots off the pile of his stuff on a small side table indicated by the stone-faced bailiff and setting them aside to get at the clothes. His weapons had been passed off to the other teams with his pack and Jack's.

Jack's remaining gear was laid out with more care on a bigger table. The bailiff went to hand him his weapons belt and Jack stepped in and belayed him before he could touch it. "As you wish," the bailiff said tonelessly, and left the room, his duty concluded. He didn't take the slave robe Daniel had flung across his table -- beneath his position to touch a slave's things, some other slave would be in to clean up, whatever. He closed the door behind him.

Jack grabbed his tac vest and radioed their status to the sergeant major in charge of the operation. The Marines around the corner at the end of the hall would escort them to the gate the other teams would be holding unobtrusively secure. There was still an outside chance that Counterclaimant Guy would do something stupid. More of a chance, now, than Jack had estimated before seeing the way he looked at Daniel. Coding his language to keep from cluing in eavesdroppers on either end, he described the two-tone uniforms, got an acknowledgment, signed off. Daniel had gotten his shorts and pants and shirt on and was putting his tac vest on before his boots, goddammit.

Jack strapped on his weapons belt. "Other things, you say," he said instead of hassling Daniel about the gear. "A prick, for example?"

"A dickhead," Daniel confirmed, and started checking every pocket of the tac vest, still barefoot.

"A fuckwad," Jack said, checking his weapons.

"A schmuck," Daniel said, scowling and leaning over to pat down his pants pockets. "Dammit, I was sure I had a -- "

Jack ripped open a Velcro pocket and pulled out a power bar.

" -- power bar ... stashed ... " He reached out and took it, peeled the wrapper down halfway, bit off about a third of it, handed it back to Jack. Mouth full of chocolate and a look of profound relief on his face, he said, "Thanks," and pulled his socks out of his boots.

Jack peeled some more wrapper down, bit off another third, chewed for a minute while Daniel sat in the chair that he'd sat in while he waited through round one yesterday, a million years ago, and got his footgear on. "Not real keen on reporting the sexual activity here," he said, finally.

Daniel finished tying off his second boot. "Your decision. You're the boss."

Jack handed the power bar back. "Finish it."

Again with his mouth full, Daniel looked up and said, "So?"

"So, number one, who understands what really happened here? Number two, please don't hit me with that passive-aggressive double-entendre crap. I said I'm sorry. I am sorry." He couldn't begin to unclog the rest of it. He was pissed. He was eight kinds of asswipe. They had to sort out their story and get home.

"I'm sorry you found out that way. The locals will gossip to the scientists the SGC will want to send here, but trials themselves are highly confidential affairs and most of what gets conveyed will be rumors that will probably conflict. It's unlikely that eyewitnesses will talk. We should be able to get away with 'they construed that I was property, somebody tried to take advantage of that, we argued it in court, we won.'"

"So if we don't specify the nature of the arguing ... "

" ... then there's some hope it won't bite us on the ass even if some long-term assignments are made to study the technology here, work with ... local inventors, and so on. As long as everybody knows how to avoid this kind of misunderstanding." When Jack gave a considering-it nod, Daniel said, "I saw you take a sample of the lube to give to Janet."

"Just took it. Hadn't decided whether to hand it over."

"I think you should. It might be too late after we get sick, if something in that stuff makes us sick, and if you bring it back you can't safely dispose of it yourself, you have to give it to her. And I think we should tell Hammond what really happened, so that she can make a full report to him. He can seal it. It won't be the first time. But he should know."

"Puts him in a bad spot."

"Does it? Or does it put you in a bad spot because if he knows about this happening under duress it'll become unbearable for you to betray him by continuing it deliberately in private?"

Fuck. Fuck.

"I know," Daniel said, rising. "You liked me better when I couldn't talk, and we've gotta go." He tucked the power-bar wrapper in a pocket. Never contaminate the environment. Don't leave some stray bit of a trash for some other poor slob of a slave to pick up.

"Daniel ... " This was agony. He couldn't do agony right now. He had to get Daniel out of here.

"We won't be sequestered. Hammond'll debrief us together. You can see how I word my report before you write -- "

"I know we can finesse the details back at base, Daniel, that's -- "

"Jack." Daniel stepped right up to him, right into his face. "I forgive you."

His face twisting, his whole body twisting between the intense urge to grab that face and plant his mouth on it and the intense need to get moving through that door, Jack said, tight and hoarse and low, "We're not OK."

"I know. Let's go home, Jack."

***

The walk to the gate was the kind of uneventful that strung your nerves so tight they'd cut steel on the backlash if they snapped.

Nothing happened for a hundred meters. Nothing happened for another hundred meters. One block down, two to go. They turned the corner and it was still just people strolling, loitering, hawking wares, bustling about their afternoon business; the stomach-turning combo of eau de livestock and food-vendor grease, tumbles of light trash along the gutters, goats and dogs and pigs foraging for fruit rinds and bread crusts, rickshaws and oxcarts swerving off the streetcar track when the trolley trundled through -- the weird mess of a bronze-age society thriving in the skeleton of a high-tech civilization. The descendants of a whole slew of Mesopotamians transplanted here by some Goa'uld whose name Jack had forgotten except that it sounded Hawaiian to him when Daniel said it. They'd kept slaves before they were enslaved, and after their god abandoned them they kept on keeping slaves while they developed an advanced society and lost most of it in a catastrophe and re-built with whatever they could salvage and remember how to use.

I'll show you catastrophe, Jack thought, scanning the buildings for snipers, scanning the crowds for mauve-and-yellow livery and glints that could be weapons catching the light and the particular way a human body tightened in the moment of committing to a killing strike. There was nothing -- nothing at all. An old man riding along on a donkey, checking his route or his schedule on something like a PDA that cast off a spear-flash of sunlight and made Jack's hand twitch on his P-90. A pair of over-armed civic guards who regarded the march of armed offworlders with bored detachment, no indication that they were on any kind of special alert. A sound like a racked shotgun resolved within half a second into a shopkeeper re-slotting metal shelving for a streetside display; a sound like a spring-loading mechanism was the slip of a bicycle's gears.

Nothing. Nothing in the streets, nothing on the approach to the park where the stargate sat, nothing in the crescent of ornamental trees behind the gate. Nothing on Daniel's face as he walked up to the DHD except a lined weariness that looked more harshly graven, now, out here, than it had in the filtered daylight and incandescent lighting of the trial building. Combination of brutal sun and the polarization of Jack's shades, probably. He probably looked like shit himself, and this position made his skin crawl -- way, way too exposed.

"Dial it up," he said to Daniel, scanning their perimeter, checking silently with the team leaders who were covering their exit. All secure. As secure as it could ever be.

Daniel dialed the way he always did, and the wormhole established, and they stepped through -- Daniel first, Jack backing through behind him -- and there was nothing.

***

The gateroom felt cheerless and cold and smelled ozoney and stargatey and Jack filled his lungs in vast gratitude and just stopped himself from grabbing Daniel's shoulder in a crushing grip of intense relief, diverted the upflung arm into a two-fingered greeting to Hammond and the techs in the control room. Daniel had paused for Jack to pivot and come alongside him, and without looking at each other they went down the ramp and got out of the way of the other returning teams. Jack counted as they came through: one, two-three, four, five-six, seven ... and after a long pause while Sergeant Major Abarca conferred on the other side with the top of the unit that was staying to ride herd over Melton's team, eight. Abarca reported all clear. The wormhole shut down. Jack's stomach unclenched, marginally.

Midafternoon across the galaxy, going on midnight U.S. mountain time. Jack jerked his shades forward to drop onto his chest and hit the button that switched his chrono display to local time, which also synched the clock in his head. Medical and science staff surrounded them immediately, scanning for signs of Goa'uld, Reetou, naquadah bombs, the various and sundry stowaways and killer crap that could be scanned for before anybody was released from the embarkation area. Jack flashed back to the slaves surrounding Daniel to clean him up, and thought, Yeah, good thing we never got funding for that alien-lube-sniffing dog program. If he reeked of sex, nobody let on; they did their jobs with quick efficiency, pronounced all the travelers clean, and disappeared back to their own departments. Daniel was wiping his glasses with a handkerchief, looking down, when Hammond came through and dismissed the SFs and then Abarca and the rest of the Marines. Daniel looked worse under the gateroom fluorescents than he had in sunglare, face shadowed instead of lined, pale and drawn under the beard stubble, mouth set and grim, but when Hammond turned his full attention on them and said, "Colonel, Doctor," he transformed -- head lifting, features alert and composed, eyes clear as he slid his glasses back on -- and the face he presented to Hammond was tired but not haunted.

Jack noticed that Hammond didn't miss the extra second it took him to look away from Daniel and respond with, "General." He straightened, coming a fraction closer to attention than he usually did. Home didn't mean home free. Miles to go, still. Stay with the program.

"I take it you won your case."

"Yes, sir."

Another second while Hammond assessed his failure to add a wisecrack. It wasn't a deliberate omission. He knew he should joke it off, make a pun, wax sarcastic, irreverent, something. He'd shot his wad with the private dog joke. He had nothing. Daniel weighed too heavy at his side. He was defaulting to military mode and he could see the flags going up, hear the bells, and there was nothing he could do about it. This was usually where Daniel would step in to save him, or Carter or Teal'c. Provide a diversion or give him a straight line, something to bounce off. But Carter and Teal'c weren't here, and Daniel had nothing either.

"And the translation device?" Hammond asked, granting Jack a brief reprieve from scrutiny by turning to Daniel.

Jack turned to Daniel, too, realizing that he had no idea.

"Actually there are two," Daniel said. "One is worn by the natives of P5K-732 at all times, translates to and from all languages the culture has been exposed to, and doesn't seem to work with the contemporary Terran nervous system. Or at least my nervous system. It sits against the bone behind the ear and generates some kind of field that stimulates the language centers of the brain. Doctor Feldman will have a full report on it, although I'm not confident that he'll be able to trade for one to bring back. The other is the prototype I was helping with, designed to decode and translate previously unencountered languages."

"Like the Universal Translator on Star Trek," Hammond said, with a hint of a smile.

"Yes," Daniel said -- perking up, even smiling back a little, because despite everything this was something he was interested in, this was his thing, and Hammond had been listening when he'd reported it, and remembered the pop-culture reference -- and Jack had to look away, pretend the science stuff made him antsy, as it came home to him like a fist to the gut that Daniel had cared about this. It hadn't just been an assignment. He'd been pretty hopped up about the device, trying not to show it too much but intrigued and engaged. Jack had taken hardly any notice at the time and then forgotten all about it, but he remembered, now -- the bright interest, the focus, the contained excitement. Turned, now, into that weak smile of gratitude he gave Hammond just for remembering. For giving half a shit. Unlike Jack.

"I pointed out some flaws in the translation matrix as it was explained to me, and after adjustment it seemed to work pretty well with the Tagalog and Quechua I fed it, but the real test would be a genuinely extraterrestrial language, and I had no recordings with me. Possibly it will only work on human languages, but even that would be a tremendous asset."

He helped him with it, Jack thought, stiffening. He fucking helped him with it anyway.

That device had been Daniel's mission objective, the reason they'd stayed on.

Of course he'd helped the guy with it. Kept in captivity as a sex slave, he still worked towards his objective. Fulfilled it, from the sound of it, as much as he'd have been able to even without the property fiasco.

"Doctor Ling from the xenolinguistics lab would be a good candidate for following up, if you decide to pursue it," Daniel finished. "Owing to the cultural misunderstanding, I didn't leave on good terms with the translator's designer."

"All right," Hammond said. "I have a number of questions, but let's save the rest for the debrief in the morning." As if he'd allotted Jack three minutes to get his act together and the egg timer had just dinged, he said, "Colonel? What else do I need to know before change of shift?" The question was mild, but the look Hammond brought to bear on him said Whatever it is, Colonel, spit it out. I still have two teams on that planet.

Jack made it succinct and snappy. Remaining teams knew to avoid the trap he and Daniel fell into, with backup Melton's guys should be able to complete their mission safely. Past that wasn't his AOR; other people would decide whether running the cultural risks was worth it for what the planet offered scientifically. "But if I -- or we -- could see you in your office, sir, before the briefing, there is one other matter," he added, not quite looking at Daniel.

"We," Daniel said quietly, not looking at him at all.

Hammond looked at both of them, cocked his head, and then gestured to the gateroom door. "After you, gentlemen."

"Now, sir?"

"There's no time like the present, Colonel."

"Gear, sir?"

"You've humped those packs this far, the stairs won't kill you."

"Medical clearance, sir?"

"Can wait for however long this takes," Hammond said, his tone making it clear that he'd brook no more cryptic or delaying nonsense from Jack.

"Sir," Jack said, and turned for the door.

Hammond didn't like this planet. Hammond had stayed on duty because he didn't like this planet at all, and he'd wanted to see his men back personally, and clearly something was rotten in Denmark and he wasn't going anywhere until he knew what it was.

Hell, maybe he should call those remaining teams in. He couldn't make that decision if he didn't have all the information, and by holding out on him Jack would essentially be making the decision in his place. There'd never really been any question of whether to report the truth. He wasn't real keen on it, but it had to be done. He'd known that from the second he heard the terms that Daniel had negotiated.

Home wasn't home free. Not by a long shot.

The pack was freaking heavy, they'd installed several dozen extra stairs while he was out, and the soreness in his ass was graduating from barely-noticed to what-was-I-thinking as the adrenaline ebbed. On the second flight, he ran the scenario in his head to pump it up again, imagined himself looking straight at his two-star CO and saying I had penetrative homosexual sex with a direct report, tried I fucked Daniel, sir when that didn't scare up enough juice, tried a few embellishments and alternative phrasings with no more effect, and let it go with a harsh breath. He'd done what he had to do. He trusted Hammond to a degree he'd trusted only one other commanding officer in his career. After his behavior in the waiting room he probably didn't have to worry too much about his personal life taking a turn into the land of don't-tell anyway, and the damn thing was a case in point for not serving with the people you were sleeping with. What he wanted from Daniel now was no different from what he'd wanted from Daniel before they did the deed, and no more relevant. Daniel had nailed him in that waiting room the same way he'd been nailing him since they met, dead-on accurate about ulterior crap that Jack hadn't even admitted to himself. To come clean with Hammond about this, he had to let go of any thought that what he found out in the course of that trial would lead to something more with Daniel. Just let it go. Finito. Kaputski. See? This is me. Letting it go.

On the top landing, he swept his cap off and stuffed it away. In the general's office, he unclipped his P-90, checked the safety for the umpteenth time, and laid the weapon carefully across three same-height stacks of documents on a side table. Then he turned to grab Daniel's pack and hold it while Daniel popped the straps. Eased it off and out of the way, and turned around to let Daniel do the same for him. On the floor, the packs sagged against each other, side by side. Daniel caught him looking at that, and looked at him, and Jack shrugged: Yeah, well.

'You OK with this?' Daniel mouthed, which struck Jack as an odd question, since he was the one who'd requested the private conference, but maybe Daniel was concerned that he'd pushed him into it.

This is how it has to go down. He didn't think Daniel read lips well enough to get that, and Hammond was going around his desk and seating himself, so Jack just nodded, gave Daniel an easy, reassuring slap on the back of the shoulder, took a breath, and took a chair. In this office, that could feel like taking a break in an old friend's study, or taking a knee.

"Whenever you're ready, Colonel." Hammond didn't have to give Jack permission to speak freely; he gestured to Daniel to close the door, and Daniel, who was waiting beside the door for that gesture, shut it with unnecessary care. Hammond didn't have to tell Jack that the office was secure. Nowhere was ever truly secure; even the restrooms and showers could be subject to surveillance when the base commander deemed it warranted, and this room and the CMO's office were no exception. But only this office and the CMO's had triple overrides on cameras and mics, and only this office and the CMO's were routinely swept. They were as secure as you got around here.

Jack waited for Daniel to take the other chair -- the way he always did in this office, halfway to perched on the edge instead of butt-snug against the back, feet tucked underneath on their toes instead of planted sole-to-floor, upper body canted forward -- then thought, In for a metric ton, and said, "When I reported the situation through the MALP, I told you that the people there had construed Daniel as my personal property, thanks to a careless statement I made to another team leader that was overheard by a number of locals. That report was accurate but incomplete. Human property ... human slaves on that planet ... "

"In that culture," Daniel corrected quietly. "In that city and its environs. We don't know much about the inhabitants of the rest of that continent or the other landmasses."

Daniel had heard him stumble and was buying him time to marshal his words. He dipped his head to throw him a sidelong grateful look and sensed Hammond's wariness go up a notch. Like that, anger was churning through his gut, an acid burn -- he was sick of being watched and judged, sick of demands to respond as expected, sick of having to make his case to anyone, on his side or not. He took another breath. Suck it up, O'Neill. He was military. He was accountable. His actions were subject to review. He faced the general.

"Personal slaves are considered to be the sexual property of their owners, sir, in addition to whatever other work they perform. But they make some allowance for emotional attachment. The only remedy available within their legal system was to prove that Daniel had a stronger emotional and sexual attachment to me than to the man we ostensibly sold him to. The trial didn't consist of verbal arguments. We had sex with each other for three hours in front of their magistrates to prove our case."

Hammond didn't blink. For one stony second, he was completely still. Then his eyes cut over to Daniel.

"It was my idea, sir," Daniel said.

"It was my decision," Jack said, tonelessly.

Hammond kept looking at Daniel. "That's not what I was going to ask, son."

"Yes, sir," Daniel said. It wasn't acknowledgement; he was answering the intended question now. "Yes, the other side got to make his case too. It was ... disturbing but not physically damaging, and it was less disturbing to me personally than the casualties and fatalities a forced extraction would have caused."

Hammond looked out past the map-etched glass and through the briefing room towards the gate observation window. "Son of a bitch," he said, so low that Jack wouldn't have caught it if the office hadn't been so dead silent. He flexed his jaw a couple of times, took a deep breath, let it out, then turned back to them. "Anything else?"

Jack said, "I have some concerns about the losing party. He has some manpower, firepower, but he didn't use it. He accepted the judgement too easily. I don't know if I buy it." Quickly, he clarified, "I have no reason to believe he'd take out his frustration or bruised ego on the remaining teams. I just have a bad feeling about the guy. Melton and Tuchman are aware of my concerns."

"Understood. Anything else?"

Jack looked at Daniel. Daniel opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. Jack said, "No, sir."

Hammond didn't nod, didn't acknowledge. He said, "I would never have allowed this. Presumably you both know that. I'll evaluate your justifications for what appears to have been an end run around my authority at a later time. Your candor is noted. Doctor Jackson, you require a more comprehensive and discreet medical evaluation than I can entrust to anyone but my chief medical officer, but paging Doctor Fraiser now would raise too many questions among the staff, so after your standard post-mission clearance you are confined to base quarters until she reports for duty in the morning. We'll debrief at ten hundred unless she indicates to me that she needs more time. You are dismissed."

Jack rose promptly, snapped off a salute, and turned to fetch his P-90. Daniel got up but stayed in front of the desk, saying, "General, technically there was no -- "

"Save the details for the doctor, Doctor."

"Sir -- "

"Daniel," Jack said quietly. "We're dismissed."

Daniel twisted around his chair, upper body first, legs following. His eyes were dark and his jaw had that stubborn jut. He took the pack Jack lifted for him. Jack took his own by the top handle and herded Daniel out through the briefing room and down the stairs. At the bottom Daniel balked and spun around. Jack gripped him by the shirtfront -- felt the thump of impact down the bone of his forearm before his elbow flexed to absorb it -- and said, very low, "Leave it, Daniel."

"Jack -- "

"Daniel. A massively crappy thing happened on his watch. He is very, very pissed. I didn't expect that reaction either, but this is the military. We hit the showers now. Move."

He felt Daniel's shoulder roll into the start of a shirt-grab defense and pushed off him before he could execute. He raised the hand peaceably, then gestured towards the corridor. Daniel went, just enough ahead to miss what Jack heard as he set off after: Hammond telling the gate technician to get Melton and Tuchman on the horn.

Across the gateroom, at the far door, Daniel pulled up, his head going back, his body bowing. He hung like that for a second, tension screaming from every muscle group, and then deflated. He waited for Jack to come up alongside. They went through together.

Unpacking in the gear-up room, checking their weapons back in, they said no more than cursory exchanges with the quartermaster required. Out in the corridor they walked closer than usual, staying shoulder-to-shoulder instead of splitting up to go around oncoming personnel. They had the look that most people gave way for anyway, that mission-from-hell look that everybody knew to give a wide berth. Jack felt the eyes of every camera, the ears of every mic. At his locker, he palmed the baggie from his pocket and looked at Daniel while he put it away. Daniel nodded with no expression, shucking BDUs into the laundry bin. Between lockers and shower he usually snagged a robe; he just strode in bareassed this time, towel over one shoulder, flipflops smacking the wet floor. The Marine units had been and gone in the few minutes they were with Hammond.

"Can you tell me what you were gonna say? The 'technically' thing?" Jack said, after they'd been scrubbing for long enough that the infirmary staff were going to take washcloth burn for mission-related abrasions.

"Not here," Daniel said, as if Jack had said Think it's gonna rain? and he'd answered Not today.

"OK," Jack said. He'd known that, but he'd needed to make contact before they hit the infirmary, let Daniel know he was here, available, that he'd been listening, that he remembered. That yeah, Hammond hadn't wanted to hear it, not just then anyway, but he did. He would, whenever. He fully expected Daniel to tell him to go to hell at the first opportunity. He was ready to be shut out. That meant he had to make damn sure not to preemptively shut the door. Figured he might have to move it back and forth every now and then, so Daniel would hear the creak and know it was open. So he wouldn't either kick it in or stalk away for good.

God, Daniel. God, I can't lose you over this.

He clamped his jaw, scrubbed shampoo viciously into his scalp, cursed and welcomed the sting of base soap he'd pushed up too far to rinse out.

"Isolation suite," Daniel said. "Not quarters. Think that's OK?"

I think he couldn't give a rat's ass, Jack started to say, and then didn't, because he knew it wasn't true. Hammond would double-check their whereabouts and order surveillance disabled, and he'd be glad to find them together when he did -- relieved to find that Daniel wasn't keeping to himself. He'd already be weighing the advisability of reassigning them, but he wouldn't want to have to do it because they couldn't work with each other anymore, and he wouldn't assume the more or less united front they presented in his office meant they were OK underneath.

They weren't OK underneath, and all night was a long time to go on being not-OK. Jack was so relieved that he'd get to go on being not-OK next to Daniel instead of cooped up alone in temp quarters that he sagged under the spray, one arm braced on the back tile.

"Jack?" Daniel said, and the sound of his shower cut off.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Yeah, isolation suite's fine."

***

Midway through a thirty-minute infirmary once-over that felt like a four-hour stress test, Jack got the picture.

Draw a curtain around Daniel's bed and he'd drop casual questions to keep Jack talking so that he knew where Jack was. Suggest he step into Fraiser's office to answer a few personal questions and he'd insist, in his most charming, inoffensive way, that there was nothing he couldn't say in front of his team leader and wasn't it more convenient for everyone to do this right where they were? The infirmary staff used charm as a tool themselves and were patently immune to manipulation. When they let Daniel have his way, Jack recognized what they were seeing, and he saw it too.

Daniel wouldn't be separated from him. It wasn't because he was concerned that Jack would say something to someone and he wouldn't know what it was because he wasn't there. You didn't keep a voice lock on somebody like that if that's what you were worried about. He just needed to be where Jack was.

Once he got it, Jack stayed by him. They went in together for EKGs and EEGs and XYZs, took turns in the blood-lab chair getting stuck. Truth was, he didn't want Daniel out of his sight either. He was incapable of determining whether it was some kind of post-traumatic thing or something else, so he didn't try. He knew he'd have swung by Daniel's quarters, hoping to be allowed to hang out, if Daniel hadn't suggested the suite. He had a feeling that Daniel would crash on the sofa in the suite's common area, and he knew he'd find some excuse for not taking a bunk in one of the adjoining rooms. Stretch out on the floor to ease the back he hadn't wrenched offworld, maybe, and accidentally just doze off there. He'd slept on rockier surfaces than that concrete floor, with less padding than that cheap area rug, and while he was doing the sitting-standing BP test he realized he was lost in a daydream of that, of lying near Daniel, listening to him breathe in his sleep, memorizing the shape of a hand flopped past the cushion a foot from his face, and it was harder to shake himself out of than a steamy fantasy.

They went straight to the suite when the infirmary cleared them -- no detour for Daniel to pick up books or laptop from lab or office or quarters. Jack knew how badly Daniel was in need of a good square American meal -- he was hungry himself, never a good idea to skip lunch for forced sex in front of strangers -- and as they went in he was telling Daniel that he'd call and have sandwiches sent from the mess.

Someone had left food for them -- two covered trays. Someone who knew this was where they were heading. Someone who cared enough to stock Jack's tray with a fresh roast-beef-on-rye and apple pie and the pop he liked and black coffee, and Daniel's with a tuna wrap and soup and chocolate cake and two bottles of water and light sugared coffee.

Someone who wanted them to know they'd been overheard in the shower.

What creeped him out was that it wasn't Hammond -- not his style. What redeemed it, somewhat, was that people did things for his team sometimes, because they owed them or because SG-1 was who they were, and he never found out who those people were, but he was aware of the things they did. This one could go either way. It might even go both ways.

Halfway through the meal, the lights on the cameras went out.

"Can't trust that," Jack said, when he saw Daniel's eyes flick up to register it.

"I know," Daniel said. When they'd finished, he wiped his mouth, tossed his wadded napkin onto the tray, and said, "You done?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna pass on the coffee -- too wired, too tired, and my body thinks it's rush hour."

Daniel got up and made a come on, then gesture.

Jack followed him into the bathroom. Daniel threw a towel over the evidently deactivated camera that they could see and then sat on the floor with his back against the side wall and his legs stretched out perpendicular to the john and the sink. Jack sat across from him, back against the shower stall, knees bent, boots to the side of Daniel's thighs. Daniel produced a steno pad and a mechanical pencil. He scribbled something on the last sheet, the one backed by the back cover, and handed it across to Jack.

It said You can read this, right? in classic Pitman with enough of Daniel's hand in it that it looked like Arabic calligraphy. Light touches of the pencil, even on the thick strokes, that would be nearly impossible for any surveillance to resolve enough to figure out what it was, much less read it. Written in spitting distance of a toilet that a torn-up sheet of paper could be flushed down before the fastest security guy could swoop in to confiscate it. Jack was impressed with the set-up -- but Daniel had never seen him write in shorthand, had never seen his Academy notebooks, had never met his mother, couldn't have extrapolated from his touch-typing to the rest of the skill set she'd equipped him with as forcibly as his father had carpentry and plumbing. There were a million kinds of shorthand, and a variety of Pitmans, and Daniel, who no doubt knew them all, had picked the one that Jack knew.

Jack blinked up at him and mouthed, 'How ... ?'

Daniel's shrug said Lucky guess, which was a lie. He was waving it off, dismissing it as irrelevant. He had a method of communicating and something he was bursting to say; he wasn't interested in being right, probably because he'd known he would be, or in bonding over phonetic transcription systems. He gestured impatiently for the pad, erased what he'd written, wrote something with more care and a lot more intensity, handed it back.

Does he think I abetted my own rape to make sure we didn't lose access to that technology?

Jack read it several times to make sure he wasn't hearing it wrong, but Daniel hadn't skipped auxiliary words or contracted anything -- all the sounds were there, all the vowels were marked, no ambiguity or room for interpretation. Daniel wasn't taking dictation from his own thoughts; he was writing messages meant to be crystal clear to someone else. Apparently didn't get or didn't care that the word 'rape' would hit Jack like a fist. He was paraphrasing a hypothetical viewpoint. Jack knew that. Didn't buffer the hit, though.

He could feel Daniel's stare boring into him, feel the burn of outrage without looking up. He erased Daniel's question and wrote Maybe. Not telepathic here. Handed pad and pencil across the terrain of their legs, mountains and valley.

Angrily, Daniel erased Jack's line, wrote How can he think I would put you, much less myself, through something like that for the sake of a noncritical device?, and shoved the pad and pencil at him.

Jack thought about giving another noncommittal answer and letting Daniel vent. Instead, he wrote, It's possible that he believes you might be capable of prioritizing that way. More problematic is that if he does, he also believes that I would let you talk me into it on those grounds. More to the point is that we won't know unless he tells us. In my opinion that's not what he was pissed about, but I won't tell you that your accusation has no merit, because yes it's possible.

Daniel's eyes scanned across the lines three times before he lifted a mildly surprised, assessing gaze to Jack.

Right call, Jack thought, opening his hands and presenting an open, serious expression of You want to discuss this seriously, let's do it. Underneath that, he was thinking that he didn't do this enough, didn't engage Daniel often enough on Daniel's own terms because most of the time they smacked of academic navel-gazing and his own MO was terse military efficiency and rough-it-off humor and that was a flaw in his team leadership that he hadn't recognized before and he'd need to deal with this piece of enlightenment but now wasn't the time, beyond continuing to employ the effective technique he'd just stumbled on. Alongside that was a suspicion that he hadn't identified a problem with the way he interacted with his civilian specialist but rediscovered a long-standing problem with the way he approached relationships, a wariness that made him think he should shut it down because the minute he started responding as Daniel's partner instead of Daniel's CO he was fucked.

But Daniel was writing again, more calmly now, relaxed out of the tight tension of pent-up rage. He wasn't Daniel's partner -- there was no relationship here, not that kind, not anywhere outside his own private dreams and nightmares, irrespective of whether Daniel shared them -- and he could accommodate a shift in management style without blurring his own necessary boundaries. So he went with it, watched Daniel intently scribble, and by the time he was taking the pad and pencil all he felt was a bemused irritation that the inside of his head was getting as bad as Daniel's, a roiling tumble of extraneous shit. He cleared it all away so that he could focus on finding out what the hell the issue was here.

People were going to get hurt, Daniel had written. No matter how much of a show of force he sent, no matter how much diplomatic pressure he brought to bear.

Obviously I agree with you, Jack wrote back.

Obviously he doesn't. He said he would never have allowed that trial. That implies that he thinks he could have prevented it. That implies that he thinks we made the wrong call. We were visitors there. They were inflexible and arrogant about their rules. They rejected everything we said about mistakes and misunderstandings and cultural differences. They would not have backed down or negotiated. SGC teams could not have confined themselves to zats, they'd have had to use lethal force. We've done that too many times as it is, come back with guns blazing when the people we visit have rules we don't like and do things that inconvenience us. If he thinks he could have prevented that trial with anything other than a military action, then either he doesn't trust our assessment of the situation, or he believes that we deliberately misled him in order to get that device, or he believes it would have been better to kill people.

It took Jack a while to erase all that after he'd read it. He used the time to compose his reply, then wrote it carefully, double-checking as he went because this skill was a little rusty and a lazy mark could derail the whole thing: I withheld information from him. I was justified in doing so because of the nature of the information I would have been passing over a logged, unsecure connection. Getting the information after the fact made him very angry. His gut response, as I read it, was one I sympathize with: He would rather have ordered an armed extraction than allow two of his personnel to be sexually assaulted, their personal preference be damned. Whether he would have ordered one in fact, had we allowed him the opportunity to make that decision, I don't know, but we denied him that opportunity. That's what he meant by an end run. He may believe that I could have taken the time to gate back to talk it over with him privately beforehand, or even sent him a sealed written communication. Whether I could have is questionable and I will be called to account for it. Time was tight, and I did act within my operational mandate. I may also have been unduly swayed by your intense aversion to a military solution. I may have found excuses to cut him out of the loop because I agreed with you and believed that he would agree with you but only if you made the case to him in person, which wasn't possible. There are legitimate questions here. Not entirely happy with the content -- he'd written it clearly, but this was a hell of a way to have an important conversation, and what he'd penciled took up the whole sheet and was maybe a third of what he wanted to say -- he passed the stuff back.

Daniel read the lines several times without expression, then erased them, drew heavy loops and sawtooths through them, tore the sheet off, ripped it up, dumped the pieces in the bowl, and started a fresh sheet. Your operational mandate and the reliability of my recommendations as your team anthropologist are central to those questions and precisely what he refused to discuss. I accept that my failure to identify and warn against the danger of cultural misunderstanding brings my subsequent assessment into question, but he cut off my attempt to defend the entire decision-making process, including that aspect of it, and he wasn't deferring it to the official debriefing because unless I misunderstood something the official debriefing will not address the nature of the trial itself. Technically we were not obliged to get a go-ahead from him. If arguing in favor of an option that doesn't get people killed is swaying you unduly, and we're supposed to make sure it's OK with him before we opt not to kill people, then there is a serious fucking problem here.

Jack stared at the phonetic representation of 'technically' for a long time after his first read, then read it again, then blew out a breath and leaned back, holding the pad against his thigh, looking at the doorjamb while everything realigned. Finally, to be sure, he passed pad and pencil back with 'technically' circled and a line down to That was the technically thing you started to say to him? at the bottom. Daniel nodded, frowning, then scribbled on the last ruled line of the sheet and passed back What else would it be?

Of course, Jack thought, with profound irony. Technically there was no requirement that we get his approval. What else could it possibly have been?

Jack's fundamental assumption, through the entire exchange, had been that Daniel was angry because it was critically important to him that what happened be understood as his decision, not construed as forcible sexual assault. He'd assumed that the "technically" statement was going to be "Technically there was no rape," or whatever substitute Daniel came up with for the R word. Even when Daniel hit him square between the eyes with the R word, he'd still taken that for a given: how important Daniel's sense of volition was to this, how pissed he'd be if he got any sense that he was considered some kind of victim -- of a twisted society or, worse, of his own bad judgment.

But that didn't jibe with either Daniel's behavior or Hammond's in Hammond's office. "Technically there was no rape" was the response you'd make to ease the distress of a CO dumping a bucket of pity on you -- the response you'd assume if you were a distressed CO who'd participated in the damn thing and hadn't begun to come to grips with that -- but Hammond's reserved concern had ended with the "son." Daniel had stated that he wasn't physically damaged, and Hammond knew perfectly well that you could behead the guy and the head would roll to a stop and squawk "I'm fine!", so he made it clear that he wouldn't address the physical or psychological issues until he had Fraiser's report, and ended the meeting without giving Daniel the one thing he needed. Daniel had gone through hell to provide a solution to a horrible problem; what he wanted in return wasn't sympathy but respect for his reasoning, and what he'd gotten was a scolding and then denial of what he felt was his right to rebut. What Jack had heard in Hammond's curt anger was I can't stand that you people did this to yourselves and I'll deal with you when I've cooled off. What Daniel heard was You did the wrong thing, now shut up and get out, I'm not interested in your excuses. For days Daniel had been scrutinized and judged and forbidden from speaking; he came home to a peremptory judgement that he'd acted in error and peremptory dismissal before he could explain. Ten minutes earlier Hammond had been the commander who paid attention and Daniel had believed he was home and the gag was off and the judging was over. No wonder he was ripping when he came out of there.

Jack got it now, and was embarrassed and pissed at himself for missing it before. No way to explain it all to Daniel, though, without coming off patronizing, worst possible thing he could do at the moment. Daniel's outrage had ebbed as he'd had his say, even only on paper and to the wrong commanding officer. He just looked a little wary now, genuinely confused. Best thing was to put an end on this before he figured out -- as he would, a lot faster than Jack had -- what Jack's assumption had been. Looking at him, Jack thought, I want to talk with you, not handle you, goddammit. But he picked the pad up, and wrote, and passed it across, and was relieved when Daniel nodded -- not happy, but temporarily mollified.

You're right, Jack's penciled lines said. There may be a problem. I want to address that when we can talk. All I can tell you right now is that I stand by the decision, my own reservations about my own actions notwithstanding, and I'll do everything in my power to make sure that Hammond hears us out. I believe that he will. Let him cool off.

Not a lot of choice about that, Daniel penciled in return.

No. He's the general. That's how it is.

After a minute, when Daniel didn't scribble back, Jack took the pad again and wrote, He'll be your kindly patriarch again before you know it. Cut him some slack. He was freaked.

He doesn't do freaked.

Appalled. Horrified. Enraged. So was I. A pause; then, out loud, "Still am."

"Yeah, me too," Daniel said tiredly.

Jack reached for the pad. Are you OK? For real? I mean physically.

Daniel nodded. His raised his eyebrows, lifted his chin: You?

Jack nodded, then shrugged and made a wry face and gave his hip a light slap to indicate a sore ass. Daniel frowned and immediately pulled his far leg in to get up off the cold, hard floor. Jack grabbed the closer shin to belay him. Shook his head, gave the shin a pat, took his hand away before it got inappropriate. It's OK.

Daniel's eyes followed his hand, then dropped back to the pad, but he didn't write anything. A faraway rumble-rush of water pushed through the pipes was someone flushing a toilet a couple of levels away. After a second, Jack put his hand back and gave a warm squeeze -- a firmer, gentler It's OK -- and pulled Daniel's leg in close against his flank, curving his hand around the calf to hold it there.

Daniel looked up, the weariness on his face giving way to a sadness and longing that encapsulated all the rest of it, right there, all the personal stuff that was swimming around them. A sharp ache went through Jack's chest, a slosh of grateful, guilty relief through his gut: that wasn't the face of somebody who was going to tell you to go to hell. But it was worse, in its way. Daniel telling him to go to hell for a brutally inconsiderate comment would make it easy. It would be consistent and redundant, too, since Jack was already in hell and a careless pissed-off comment had landed him there to start with. But nothing about this was going to be easy.

He tried to soften his face, tried to smile a little. He gestured at the pad with his free hand, then the bowl. Daniel got rid of the last sheet of paper and flushed the toilet. He flipped the pad closed and clicked the pencil to retract the lead and looked inquiry at Jack, and Jack nodded. Then they were just sitting for no reason in a cold, tiled room inside a rock, so Jack tilted his head towards the door, and Daniel nodded. He got up more quickly than Jack did -- as worn-out but apparently not as stiff and achey -- and gave Jack a hand up. It left them in kissing distance, easy touching distance. Jack knew that his reaction to that closeness was written all over his face. Every muscle in his tired body strained towards Daniel; it took all his will not to haul Daniel into his arms, and there was nothing left to break away and go outside.

He still startled a little when Daniel reached out. Froze, when it seemed that Daniel's hand was moving up to take him by the back of the neck. But Daniel's deft fingers stroked instead -- stroked between metal and skin and slid around to gather both ends of chain and lift his tags out of his shirt in a long, shivery slide, then ease them down to hang in the front, on the outside.

Only Daniel, Jack thought. Only Daniel could wield symbolism that blatantly and that cruelly. The slither of those tags up the center of his chest was the sexiest seduction in a long day of raw sex and the sternest reminder of duty in a long day of exhausting obligations, an arousing caress that was a warning wrapped in a frisson of silky taboo. He gave an involuntary shudder as gooseflesh bloomed across his chest and down his arms, and whispered "You bastard" -- laughing, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Made you laugh," Daniel answered in a low near-whisper that didn't help at all, but with something close to a smile, something close to mischief dancing in his tired eyes, and that helped more than Jack could ever express.

Jack sat at one end of the sofa to leaf through a month-old copy of Airman, and Daniel lay on his back taking up the rest of it, legs stretched over the far arm, a book propped up on his belly for about three minutes before it sagged forward onto his chest and a slow rhythm of unfaked snores filled the silence. Jack scooched down when they started to lull him to sleep, lifting his boots to the coffee table and slumping so the sofa back would support his head; when he half-woke about an hour later, it was because Daniel had turned on his side and curled up. The top of his head was butted against Jack's hip, and Jack's hand, fallen to the side in his sleep, was caught under Daniel's neck. Jack didn't wake himself the rest of the way to do anything about that. Daniel made a low sound, a having-an-uncomfortable-dream sound, and Jack rubbed his thumb gently along Daniel's hairline, where it could reach, unseen, without him moving his hand. Daniel's breathing slowed and the sound didn't come again. Jack let deep sleep pull him under.

***

Jack woke just before Daniel got up to take a leak, a few minutes before six. Cameras still off. About two hours until the doc would be in. An hour 'til he should call for caffeine, unless the support gremlins sent some with the airman who'd be bringing a change of fatigues. Daniel would drink the black sludge in the cup on Jack's tray from last night if he didn't stay on that. He made a mental note to requisition a coffeemaker for this suite, next time he was back at his desk.

Daniel sat beside him when he came back instead of lying down. "Sorry I woke you."

"You didn't. Woke myself." He leaned forward and laid his fingertips on the steno pad Daniel had set on the coffee table, gave a light tap with his index finger. "It's after tomorrow now," he said. "I'm asking, if you want me to. If you don't want me to, I'm not."

"I want you to," Daniel said. "But I can't do it like that."

"OK," Jack said.

"I think I'm done sleeping, but I could use about an hour in the dark. Should I ... ?" He gestured towards one of the bunkrooms.

"Nah, I'll get the lights." While he went around turning off lamps and switching on the bathroom light so it wouldn't be sensory-deprivation dark, he said, "Stretch out. I'll take the floor. My back could use it."

The problem with that ruse -- probably unnecessary but couldn't be too careful -- was that Daniel didn't know it was a ruse, and said, "You strained your back?"

As Jack pushed the coffee table away from the sofa and lay down on the rug, he could hear the whirr of Daniel's brain fast-forwarding through the trial, looking for something that would have strained Jack's perfectly strong back. "Not offworld," he said, quickly, winging it. "In the comfy chair."

"I see," Daniel said, and Jack could hear the smile in it. Daniel was a Monty Python freak; Jack couldn't stand the stuff, but Daniel had gotten Teal'c hooked on it and he'd suffered through them quoting lines at each other for so long that if it weren't for the fact that Teal'c paraphrased everything he could have done the routines himself. He'd tried to turn Teal'c on to the Marx Brothers, less in self-defense than in the hope of one day hearing Teal'c's deadpan rendition of 'Either this man has expired or my chronometer has ceased to function,' but Teal'c hadn't bitten.

A throw pillow landed on his chest. "Thanks," he said, and stuck it under his head.

They lay there for a while, neither of them sleeping. Fragments and sense-images of the trial crowded Jack's head, the other guy's shout of orgasm echoing in the opened-up space like the report of a gunshot, flashes of body parts that he blinked away from in the darkness.

"It's hard not to think about it," Daniel said.

"Who says you shouldn't think about it?" Jack said.

"Are you thinking about it?"

"I'm trying not to."

That was the joke line, that was where he should leave it. Daniel knew that and didn't answer. Jack wanted to say Couple more hours and we'll be outta here, but he didn't know how long it was going to be. Fraiser might see something she didn't like and keep one or both of them in the infirmary. Hammond might expect them to work their shift, because they were technically fit for duty or because they had to seem as if they were or both; Jack had drifts of paperwork awaiting him, should grab a pair of snowshoes before he approached his office, and Daniel's work was never done -- the second he threatened to get on top of his departmental stuff some other team would throw a video or tracing at him and he'd disappear into a translation for hours, constitutionally unable to delegate. He'd like to think they could avoid the psych evals, but Hammond and Fraiser would find some discreet way to get them checked out, possibly even today, and realistically Jack agreed that it was advisable. The big honkin' secret they had to keep would get in the way, there, big time, and he'd never convince Daniel to give it up; neither of them trusted the promised confidentiality. But Daniel should talk to somebody. Somebody who didn't come with the baggage Jack did.

I have to talk to him first. The thought came intensely enough to make him wince. Daniel should talk to him, not the other way around, and only if Daniel wanted to. Daniel said he wanted to, but Jack wasn't sure whether he did or just felt he should. Jack said he wanted to hear it, but he was pretty sure he didn't. He needed to know what happened, and he was determined to share any burden Daniel would let him share, but he'd been on a tight enough leash controlling his response to the general idea. Gonna have to trade the choke chain for a harness vest before the details.

In the semi-darkness, he could feel the waste heat from Daniel's brain grinding against itself trying not to go over and over those events. Jack should distract him, pull out a metaphorical deck of cards, get his mind off it, but he couldn't think of a damn thing to say. How 'bout them Cubs? Hot enough for ya? They'd never had to make small talk, and they couldn't have the big talk. He wanted Daniel to rest -- his whole head, not just his eyes -- but the way to facilitate that was to offer alternative food for thought, and except for the styrofoam and cardboard of logistics, his larder was bare.

Somehow, most of an hour passed. Jack spent most of it in an endless loop -- kicking himself for letting Daniel down, kicking himself for feeling sorry for himself for letting Daniel down, kicking himself to get in gear and do something about it, kicking himself for coming up blank and letting Daniel down. Finally there was something he could do: he could get Daniel a fucking cup of coffee. But just before he rolled to his feet to call the mess, Daniel said his name.

"Yeah," Jack said.

"It matters to me. That you remembered."

"That I ... ?"

"That you remembered to ask."

"You want to tell me, I want to hear it." Jack tried hard to sell the lie with an easygoing sincerity, and realized when it came out that somehow he hadn't ended up lying. What happened to Daniel had happened to him too. He needed to own that, for both their sakes.

"You don't really want to. That's why it matters."

"I do too." He sat up and looked straight at Daniel -- at Daniel's profile, because Daniel kept staring at the ceiling. "I can't say it's gonna be easy for me to hear, shitload of issues here, but I do, Daniel."

"I just don't want her to know before you do."

Jack stopped himself from saying It was that bad? -- whatever happened was that bad, the degree of badness didn't depend on the details, he'd seen Daniel's haggard face in the escrow room, he already knew it was that bad.

"I mean, it's not that big a deal, I don't want to build it up into something it's not, it's just that you should have had the information all along and it's bugging the hell out of me thinking she'll ... "

What? Come out of a private conference with Daniel -- it would have to be private, questions of noncon, she wouldn't believe anything Daniel told her with him present -- and give Jack the fisheye for letting this happen? She was going to do that anyway. He was responsible for his team. He had let it happen.

Daniel didn't finish, possibly because it would push past the limits of what they could say out loud, but he didn't reach for the steno pad either. I can't do it like that, he'd said -- and remembering that, remembering how ticked off Daniel was at Hammond and how getting it off his chest had calmed him down, made a gear turn in Jack's head -- a big, slow, heavy gear.

He does have to talk to me first. He needed to say what he really needed to say, regurgitate the horror of it in a safe place where he could purge it all, and dribbling the information out was going to be torture for him. Giving Janet some stoic, clinical, tersely abbreviated version before someone else had heard the real story, before the person he needed to tell the real story, the only person he trusted with the real story, had heard it, in full -- or starting to give her the clinical abstract and losing his shit because he couldn't uncork a bottle partway --

Daniel had made a life's work of listening to the stories of people who had been silent for centuries -- of finding the stories that no one had ever heard, translating the stories that no one had understood. Daniel had come into the program -- had come to Catherine's attention and become the program -- because he needed people to listen to his story. He'd never once griped about the giant gag order they operated under because once he was in the program there were people who appreciated and respected what he'd done, what he'd figured out, what he'd learned. There was a certain minimum value of explaining himself, of telling his story, that Daniel required in order to keep functioning under increasingly, mind-bogglingly stressful demands. Most of the time it was a professional need and easily satisfied by the reporting structure of briefings and presentations and whatever he did within his department, or an operational need that was satisfied by knowing his team had been there too and it was all understood. But this time it was personal -- intensely, hugely personal -- and this time, baggage and all, it was specifically Jack he needed to hear him.

"Then she won't," Jack said. "I can't get us out of here, this has to play through, and I probably can't borrow more than five minutes against the appearance of coercion -- "

"That's ridic-- "

"That's reality, it's part of the deal. But if five minutes won't hurt more than it'll help, I'll make that happen." It's not much, but it's something. It's what I can do.

Daniel had come up sitting. He swung his feet onto the floor and looked hard at Jack, squinting a little, weighing what he apparently hadn't realized about protocol and suspicion against Jack's relationship with Fraiser, his own relationship with Fraiser, thinking through why it had to be Jack who requested the time, not him -- the markers he hadn't been aware of until their calling-in was implied. "I'd ... Yeah."

"Yeah?"

Whatever eight million things had tumbled through Daniel's head between the 'I'd' and the 'Yeah,' he'd boiled them down, that fast. "Yes -- but I need your word on something."

"Shoot."

"Whatever I say to you, you don't go apeshit, and you don't go 'oh, is that all it was.' "

Jesus. Jack needed to snap that promise out, no visible hesitation, but he missed the beat because what he was starting to say was "I'd never ... " and he couldn't say that because he had, he fucking had.

"Later, somewhere else, fine -- just not here, just not to my face. Not right now. OK?"

"I promise, Daniel." He took a breath to add Not here, not now, not later, not somewhere else, never again, Daniel, never --

And Daniel read it all in his eyes and gave a minute shake of the head that said Let's not get carried away here. Stick to the promises you can keep. "OK," he said out loud. "Thanks, Jack. Think I'll grab another shower now, try and wake up."

Jack was heading for the phone when a smart rap of knuckles diverted him to the door and the airmen who'd brought fresh uniforms and a tray with two light breakfasts and a very big pot of coffee.

***

Fraiser was squaring piles of reports on her neat and orderly desk as they came in and shut the door. When they sat down, she stopped, and folded her hands in front of her.

"General Hammond briefed me on the activity on P5K-732. These interviews and exams will be off the record. I'll deliver an oral report and none of this will be entered in writing. I'll be doing a preliminary evaluation of your state of mind as well as an additional physical evaluation. Is all of that clear?"

Jack said it was.

Daniel, who was looking into the small private exam room off to the side, said, "That's a rape kit."

"Yes, it is."

"That's completely unnecessary."

"Maybe so. I'll decide that after I've talked to you. All right?"

Reluctantly, Daniel nodded.

"Now, you're aware that Colonel O'Neill negotiated for five minutes to talk to you in this room in private before we start."

Daniel nodded again.

"I agreed contingent on your agreement. Is that what you want, Daniel?"

They'd been friends for a long time. More than friends, Jack had sometimes thought, maybe, and then thought no, but that he'd wondered testified to a more than collegial friendship, and Cassie had bonded his team and their doctor into something close to family. But calling him 'Daniel' instead of 'Doctor Jackson' in this situation didn't mean she was speaking as his friend.

Daniel said, "If Colonel O'Neill is the kind of controlling abuser you're implying that I need to be protected from, he has me thoroughly terrorized into saying yes, and he's smart enough to prep me to say it exactly the way I'm saying it, so it's pretty pointless for you to check with me. But yes. There's something I'd feel better telling him before we talk to you, and so he arranged for this as a favor to me."

"All right," she said, calmly, and looked at Jack. "And you're aware that nowhere in this facility, including this room, can ever be one hundred percent secure."

"It's the best we're gonna do, Doc," Jack said -- his fatigue showing around the edges, which meant it was worse than he'd self-assessed. "He's gonna give you the same information right here in a few minutes, unless there's something I don't know, so if we're screwed we're screwed anyway."

There was a second of silence -- the silence of nobody wincing at his poor choice of words -- and then Fraiser nodded, with a last glance at Daniel, and spun in her chair to put on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and busy herself with somebody's fractured tibia on the big imaging workstation behind her desk.

"Audiobook," Jack said, gesturing at the Sony Discman the headphones were connected to. "Patricia Cornwell, I think she said."

"Yes," Daniel said, in a slow drawl. "More effective than music or white noise. Lucky us." He was looking at Fraiser, not at Jack. After a second, he lifted his hand in a little wave. She gave a queenly hand-twist of a wave back and then reached for the mouse to click through to another X-ray on the reflective screen.

Daniel turned to Jack. "Why didn't you wear a condom?"

"Why didn't you want me to?" Jack shot back, baffled.

"I didn't say I didn't want you to. I couldn't say anything."

"You shook your head."

"I wanted you to know I hadn't been put at risk."

"And you didn't want me to wear one."

"OK, I didn't want you to wear one. I'm sorry I let that show. It's still a really bad idea not to wear one. Why didn't you?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"You haven't answered mine yet and I asked you first."

"So that whatever happened to you would happen to me too."

They sat staring at each other.

"That is a really, really, really bad reason."

"I know."

"I mean a mortally risky, boneheadedly stupid reason."

"I know. Romantic, though. Endearing? Heartwarming? No? I didn't think about it, Daniel, I just did it. Or didn't, as the case may be. Whatever. Why didn't you want me to wear one?"

"I didn't not want you to. I didn't know you weren't going to until you, you know, already hadn't."

Jack didn't push it. Five minutes wasn't enough time for any more diversionary bickering. The initial burst of raking fire was done. He was supposed to be listening. He waited.

Daniel took his glasses off, pulled the hem of his T-shirt out to wipe them, put them back on. Seemed to make a decision.

"Because he used condoms for everything," he said. "It got really stupid. I mean, it was good -- safe -- safer -- but I hated the damn things by the end and I guess when you held up those packets I must have ... " He took a deep breath, pushed his glasses up his nose. "It was almost all manual. He didn't penetrate me the way you thought. He sucked me through a condom. He wore a condom on his hand. They don't really get the whole condom thing, and I didn't think to negotiate for gloves because I assumed ... It would have been easier on me if he'd just done what we expected him to do. But he didn't. I'm sorry, Jack, I can't finesse this explanation, I just -- You're going to have to find an unmonitored machine and do a web search on the term 'prostate massage,' or wait for me to explain this another way someplace else. If you don't know what it is, you're going to have to look up the term 'fisting,' too."

Jack's intestines went cold. "I know what fisting is," he said. He meant to keep his tone neutral, but it came out flat, as flat as when he reported that he had a firing solution.

"It's not literally a fist."

"I know that."

"You didn't -- "

"I know what fisting is, Daniel."

"Don't go apeshit. Do not go apeshit."

"Did he hurt you?"

Daniel looked away, but not fast enough to hide the raw response. It was a stupid question, the wrong question, but Jack couldn't have stopped it. His vision had tunneled. He could feel the blood leaving his organs and going out into his extremities. The color leached out of the room. There was nothing he could do about it. He was trained to manage an adrenaline dump, control it and use it, not flip a switch and turn back into a nice guy. "Sorry," he said, tonelessly. "I shouldn't have said that."

"It's OK. I know what you're asking. It's what I want you to ask, what I want to tell you, it's just -- It wasn't physically painful. He worked up to it slowly. The problem -- " He laughed, bitterly, a huff of air and a brief flash of bared teeth. "I was going to say that the problem was that it felt good, but that's not accurate. The problem was that it forced me to orgasm. Also that it was a crashing coma-inducing bore while he was working up to it, it took the whole last hour of the time, but I couldn't ignore it, I couldn't zone out because he kept hitting the goddamn gland, he knew exactly what he was doing. And it never occurred to me to expect -- it wasn't something I ever -- and you know, I can't go into that here. If I start down that road I won't be able to hold it together, and there's no time anyway. That's all it was. Just manual and oral."

Oh is that all it was.

"Jack ... Shit. This was a bad idea."

"Don't worry about me. This isn't about me." Whether because Jack had provided an involuntary distraction or because Daniel had taken the edge off what he needed to say, Daniel was calmer. His shoulders had relaxed out of their hunch and he wasn't messing with his glasses anymore and ordinary worry had crowded the pain out of his eyes. "You feel any better? Temporarily?"

"I do, actually, except that you look really fucking scary right now and you're freaking me out."

"Yeah my wife used to give me shit about that. She wanted to vent and I'd go all hulk-smash on the situation, pissed the crap out of her." He couldn't get any inflection into his voice. His mouth was on autopilot. It didn't matter. Daniel would be OK now for a while. That and making sure that motherfucker hadn't damaged him were all that mattered here.

"We're out of time."

"I know."

"Don't hijack the gate and go mess the guy up, Jack. He was playing by the rules we agreed to."

"I'll be right outside the door. Not going anywhere."

Daniel would have said something else, but Fraiser said "Gentlemen," and turned and pressed the stop button on her Discman before she looked at them, before she took off the headphones. She'd given them eight minutes.

"Are you all right, Colonel?"

"Fine, Major." He could see her writing tachypsychia on the note cards in her head. He liked her, admired her, trusted her, but he hated when they did that.

"There's water on the table behind you. I'd like you to pour yourself a glass and drink it slowly. Will you do that?"

"Sure." In a minute, when he calmed down, the shakes were going to start. He turned to pour the water before that happened.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"I'm fine. Thank you for the time. Should I go outside? Are you talking to Jack first?"

"I'd like to talk to both of you initially, and then see you one by one for the exams."

Daniel looked at him. Jack nodded.

"OK," Daniel said.

"OK," Fraiser said. "Tell me what happened."

***

Jack sat across from the office door, playing with a scissorsy-grabby thing he'd plucked off an instrument tray, watching the door without staring at it, keeping his fingers occupied. Infirmary staff moved around him, nobody coming too close, nobody asking him to move the plastic chair and sit somewhere else.

He'd gone first into the exam room because Fraiser had left the order up to them and Daniel had insisted. A little proctology never bothered him, truth was he couldn't assess his own sore ass since he'd never had one quite like this before, good to hear he hadn't done himself any harm, even better to get a smear of analgesic cream.

Daniel hadn't even asked for an ibuprofen.

Jack was at liberty now until the debriefing at ten, so he could go fetch the lube sample from his locker to give to Fraiser, but he wasn't barging in on Daniel's exam with it and until Daniel came out he was staying right here on the other side of the door as promised.

"So I appear to be the last to know that in addition to whatever stuff it secretes and a tendency to enlarge and get cancer, the prostate gland is some kind of erogenous zone," he said. Health professionals had always been his best source for information about sex, and although this was a first for him -- asking a military doctor a question whose context was very obviously gay sex -- it was faster and a hell of a lot more reliable than the Internet.

Without hesitation she said, "You've probably experienced pleasurable sensation from it yourself without knowing that's what it was, sir," and proceeded to fill him in on everything Daniel had meant when he said 'No, you really don't.'

He kept feeling the first push of his own fingers into Daniel's ass. The soft looseness he'd felt by comparison to other asses. He had another comparison now: his own ass, which had been pretty much the same as ever when he soaped it in the shower and when Fraiser checked it out, which meant that the return time of that sphincter after an ordinary ass-fucking with an ordinary dick was a matter of hours, or even less. Which didn't tell him anything he hadn't found out the other way from Daniel, that he'd been stretched so far that after a full twenty-hour P5K-blahblahblahian day he still felt like that -- just gave him another approach vector to guilt and misery and rage. He tried thought-stopping, tried a variety of techniques to keep from tonguing that loose, bloody tooth. He kept feeling the first push of his own fingers into Daniel's ass.

"So how much abuse can it take?" he said, making no effort to opaque his reasons for asking.

"It's vulnerable in a number of ways, like any other part of the body, Colonel, and the sooner we finish here the sooner I can take a look at him and see. Go ahead and get dressed now. We can do the rest of this out in the office."

He watched the door without staring at it, let his eyes automatically track passing female personnel now and then, acquired another scissorsy-grabby thing from a utility cart someone parked next to him for a minute and crossed his ankle over his knee to see if he could untie and re-tie his boot laces with the grabbers. It was consistent with his reputation for being a big kid who couldn't sit still, and it kept his fist from clenching around his first two fingers until the small bones snapped.

The tramp of a whole lot of boots way down the corridor pulled his attention from the doorway he cared about to the infirmary doorway. Some other team coming back -- couple of teams, from the sound of the feet and the voices. Dammit. He didn't want to play affable colonel right now, and he didn't have a good excuse for his presence here; infirmary staffers were a grapevine dead zone, gossiped freely with each other and stonewalled everyone else, but once a gate team noticed something hinky the hinkiness aerosolized and everybody got wind of it. He was on his feet, the chair swept off to the bedside he'd swiped it from, as the boots came up to the door, but at a loss for how to present --

A pair of hands closed around his right hand, lifted it, slid to take hold of the grabbers he'd still been holding, relieved him of them but didn't quite let go. He followed his arm, pivoting to find the youngest, prettiest nurse in the place smiling with a flirtatious shyness -- glancing up at him from under her lashes with no flirtation at all in her sober grey eyes, then giggling as she looked down again and dropped her hands away from his as if she'd only belatedly noticed that she'd been clinging. "I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but you know you're really not supposed to play with the instruments ... " She looked past him as the boots tramped in behind him, and shifted back with a nervous flutter, but laughed again, as though he'd said something cute and clever.

She'd posed him perfectly.

"Thank you, Nurse, ah, Ivey," he said, as if floundering to cover, pretty sure the genuine thanks would get through. Then, with a twitch of smile intended to be visible to the guy in BDUs going around to the bed at his eleven o'clock, "I'll be a good boy from now on."

"I know you will, sir," she said, lingering for an extra second, reluctant to break off the flirtation, before she stepped away to deal with the influx of personnel.

When Jack pulled his head around from his own display of lingering appreciation for the nurse's retreating rear end, ready to share a wry so sue me, she's stacked look with the guy sitting down on the bed, he saw that the guy was Eric Melton.

Melton, whose team was supposed to be on P5K-732 for another day wrapping up their work, who was watching him with a hint of knowing smirk around his mouth, a hint of smugness in his unfriendly eyes. Melton, a reputedly brilliant historian Jack had argued against ever giving a team, even a dedicated research team, no matter how 'perfect' his reserve National Guard training combined with his academic prowess had made him look on paper. Melton, who never missed an opportunity to argue against Daniel Jackson serving on a frontline team, or a chance to woo him away with some irresistible offworld discovery. Melton, who knew that Daniel Jackson would be the making of his career if he could just get him off SG-1. He'd been equally vocal about getting Carter re-assed to a science team or R&D, and despite knowing that it was cover for the real target, Jack had never argued the point that he had a point; he'd made the same argument to Hammond himself. His personnel were too valuable to be risked on recons and first contacts. By virtue of the experience they'd accumulated while the program was shaking itself out, they were also the only people qualified to be SG-1, and until that changed Hammond was keeping them there. Melton continually called that judgment into question, continually if implicitly called Jack's ability to get them back safe into question. Jack had let it roll off him, let his actions and his record speak for themselves -- until the day on P5K-732 when he lost patience with Eric Melton. Who was looking at Jack, right now, like a guy who'd finally gotten a handhold he'd been looking for.

Shit.

Maybe a second had passed. Jack didn't bother acknowledging Melton or the challenge in Melton's eyes. He turned to see who'd come in with him. Melton's team -- three scientists who worked with complex, sophisticated technology on a daily basis -- were deeply fascinated by the stethoscopes and BP cuffs being applied to their chests and arms. Tuchman's men nodded to him in turn as he swept his gaze over them, eliciting a little ripple of quiet "Sir"s. Their faces were calm and open, relaxed the way military faces relaxed in order to show nothing at all. Their team leader wasn't with them.

"Fancy meeting you here," Jack said, his tone light, curious, casually surprised. "What's up? Hammond pull your plug?"

"Tuchman called it, sir," Binesi said, with a We're just the grunts, what do we know, gotta ask the boss when you see her shrug. "She's debriefing as we speak."

Jack threw a look at Melton, a Who'd you piss off now? look, the look he'd be expected to throw at a guy everyone knew he'd snapped at back on-planet, while in the back of his head a voiceless, wordless voice said This is what happens. This is it, right here. You get overinvested in a team member, you start taking shit personally, next thing you're losing your temper and this is where you end up, right fucking here. He kept his mouth shut. He looked at Melton and Melton looked back. A phone rang and the duty nurse answered it. No clue to be found in Melton's face. The duty nurse said, "Yes, sir." He held the eye contact, hard, until Melton's gaze flickered and slid away to the medic who was checking him over. The duty nurse said "Not yet, sir," and then "Yes, sir" again.

Fraiser's office door opened.

The duty nurse said, "Colonel O'Neill?"

Fraiser looked out, found him, assessed the room, and said to him, "Sir, could you step in here for a moment?"

The duty nurse said, "It's General Hammond, sir."

Fraiser looked at the nurse, then at Jack.

Jack looked back, giving a small jerk of his chin: Problem?

She gave a menza-menza shake of the head, then said, "It can wait a minute, sir."

Jack stepped over and took the receiver from the nurse. "O'Neill."

Hammond's voice -- not the voice of an aide waiting to patch him through -- said, "I'll need to see you in the briefing room as soon as possible, Doctor Jackson to follow as soon as he's released."

Jack said, "Fifteen minutes, sir?"

"Make it ten, Colonel."

"Yes, sir."

He hung up the phone and went into Fraiser's office, shutting the door behind him as his eyes located Daniel sitting in a paper gown on the bed in the examination room. Daniel looked back tiredly, unhelpfully; Jack looked inquiry at Fraiser.

"He's finding the internal exam understandably difficult," she said.

"Actually," Daniel said through the doorway, "my exact words were 'Fuck, I'm sorry, I can't, I'm sorry' and 'I guess this answers the PTSD question, huh.' I may be downplaying the amount of profanity."

"I offered a sedative and he said no; I asked him if he thought we could proceed if you were present, and he said yes."

Funny you should ask that. Not. Infirmary staff gossiped freely with each other -- and kept their CMO well informed.

Out loud Jack said, "I thought I wasn't supposed to ... "

"We've concluded the private interview. An exam is an exam. We can put it off a few hours until he's seen the psychologist, but to be frank, sir -- "

"OK, it's OK," Jack said, and went in to Daniel. "You can do this if I'm here?"

Uncomfortable, pissed at himself, Daniel said, "I think so."

Jack put his hand on Daniel's neck where it met his shoulder, where the gown didn't cover. Skin on skin. "Then I'm here," he said, squeezing, holding. It wasn't a commanderly or a friendly squeeze. Daniel's eyes closed briefly, and his pulse jumped, raced, then steadied.

"OK," he said.

"OK," Jack said, and looked around for Fraiser.

***

It took four and a half minutes, measured second for second in the keening tension of Daniel's steel-banded grip on his arm, like gauging engine RPMs through chassis vibration. Daniel's eyelids creased and Jack said, "That the best you've got? Thought you rocks guys had stronger hands than that," and Daniel's grip turned crushing. Jack had to tense the muscle under it to take it, and Daniel said, "You know that 'bite the bullet' thing? I'm thinking it must suck to be the bullet," and the next thing Fraiser was saying "Good, that's it, you look fine, no problems at all," and leaving her stool to go roll her gloves off.

In the deep, icy, lightless place at the bottom of Jack's mind where Daniel's he knew exactly what he was doing had chased the unvoiced breath of Jack's if he hurts you, I'll kill him and caught up to it and crystallized, a jagged sharpness sublimated back into vapor, and Jack thought, Now I'm not the bullet anymore.

***

While Daniel dressed and Fraiser boxed up their code-labeled samples for whatever on-the-QT analysis they were bound for, Jack said, "The other two teams came back early -- they're outside getting cleared right now, and Melton's got a funny look in his eye. Tuchman went straight to debrief and Hammond wants me there two minutes ago, you whenever you're released."

Lacing a boot with steady hands, Daniel considered that for a moment, then said, "So in other words, our debriefing's been moved up."

Jack just stared at him. After a second, Daniel looked up and smiled, then dropped his head to apply himself to the other boot.

Jack started to grin. "That's one way to look at it," he said, and as he heard the suppressed laughter in his own voice he got it, he totally got what Daniel was saying: This was business as usual. The giant hammer of military discipline might be dramatically poised over their heads, he might be looking at the disbanding of his team, even the end of his career, winning the judgment might have lost them a war before it was even declared, he knew that Daniel had just mentally run all the same scenarios he had and probably a few he hadn't gotten around to yet, and Daniel's conclusion was Yup, another day at the office.

Still grinning, just short of laughing, he glanced suddenly over at Fraiser, expecting to find a look of evaluation that said she was writing inappropriate affect on the note cards in her head, but she was bent over her work, and the side of her mouth that he could see was pulled up in a very slight, mostly private, but visible smile.

"All right," he said. "Doc, I gotta get down there."

"Daniel's released, sir." She looked at Daniel. "Unless you'd like me to hold you until the main area clears ... ?"

"Nope," Daniel said, up on his feet, buttoning his jacket. Neither of the teams outside were going to be particularly surprised to see both of them come out of this office when they'd only seen Jack go in.

"Same instructions to both of you -- back in here at the first sign of fever or inflammation. Colonel, the sooner you can get me that sample the better. I do insist on psychological evaluations for both of you, but it doesn't have to be today. I'll call with the test results, and in the meantime, you know where I am."

As Jack thanked her and started to turn for the door, Daniel went over and clasped the outside of her shoulder. She clasped his arm in return, held his gaze for a second before nodding, then gave him a pat and an easy smile. Jack stayed angled away until Daniel came up beside him.

"Once more into the breach?" Jack said.

"Unto," Daniel said, and Jack opened the door.

***

In the briefing room, Hammond was standing as though he'd been pacing and stopped when he heard their approach. Tuchman sat at the table, her helmet and a cup of water in front of her, still in full gear but having apparently checked her weapons in before coming up here, which might suggest that she or Hammond had wanted her ammo count verified right away. A small monitor on a stand was the only other clue to whatever was going on, and a videocamera was connected to the monitor with RCA leads. The red and white were plugged in as well as the yellow.

"Sit down, gentlemen," Hammond said, taking a seat himself and not bothering to mention the time. "First Sergeant, if you will."

"Yes, sir." She turned square-on to the two of them, shoulders back, arms relaxed, hands on her thighs -- typical of combat personnel who would never be comfortable in the chairs around tables like these but would never show it. Her hard face showed traces of black paint under the eyes, along the jaw where a quick wipe might miss, down the valley of the old scar across her right cheekbone. Ask her about the scar and you'd get Cut myself shaving or Duelling scar from that Austrian op; feed her a good one she hadn't heard before and you'd be treated to a rare grin. "Yesterday at three-fifty-five local time on-planet, with Doctor Eric Melton present, General Hammond ordered me to abort if I got so much as a whiff of trouble. Three hours later, SG-20 passed me this. It stank, so I aborted." She reached over and pressed the play button.

Jack so fully expected to see blurry through-a-window or from-under-a-seat footage of himself and Daniel writhing around naked on a big blue mattress that he had to blink hard to resolve the images on the screen. The big oblong thing the camera was panning across was a table. The things arrayed on it were objects -- devices, artifacts, something. The audio was the airy sound that microphones picked up in a large, quiet room.

Tuchman said, "All three SG-20 scientists claim they were the one who shot this, while cataloguing a collection of ancient technology in a kind of museum-temple structure that was supposedly pretty abandoned. They said we won't be able to tell from the cassette whose equipment recorded it. Whoever it was went off without checking in, or one of my men would have been there."

"These particular items could have been of interest to any of them," Daniel said, in a tone of starting to speculate further, and Hammond said, "At the present time I do not foresee the need to identify that person."

Tuchman said, "If you'll forgive me, sirs, the audio's about to kick in."

The video finished panning over that table and moved to the next one. When voices started talking -- off to the left, muffled as if by heavy drapes over some side room but clearly audible -- the camera didn't jiggle or show any reaction on the part of the person holding it.

"So here we are," said a male voice. "What could possibly require this kind of cloak-and-dagger secrecy?"

Jack recognized the patronizing ivory-tower intonation. It was Eric Melton's voice.

He knew the voice that answered, too. "I believe that you and I want some of the same things, and I believe that we can be of use to each other," it said, and Daniel pulled a note pad over from the center of the briefing table and wrote a few words and showed it to Hammond, who nodded as if that confirmed what was already clear. Jack glanced at the note when Daniel laid the pad down, then was sorry he had. Aird Egru, it said, and under it The disputing party in the trial.

He'd managed to forget the guy's name.

Melton's voice said, "I want to establish a peaceful partnership between our peoples for the purposes of exchanging knowledge and technology," with a touch of strained patience at having to repeat a spiel he'd given several times, "and the military organization under whose aegis I operate would like to ally with you against the Goa'uld."

"And our magistrates have found you to be a gauche and uncivilized people with nothing to offer in return for such an alliance except for trouble with System Lords who forgot us long ago."

Huffily, Melton said, "They've said nothing of the sort to me."

"It would be rude of them to eject you from our world before the agreed visitation period had elapsed. Be assured, however, that unless some influence is brought to bear they will request, upon your departure, that you not return."

The camera just kept panning -- slowly, painstakingly, steadily -- over the objects.

Melton said, "If that's the case -- and I see no reason to believe it is, since you're not a member of the council of magistrates yourself -- then the diplomatic component of my mission will have failed. That would be a pity. But I'm not a diplomat."

Trust an academic to find the most verbose possible way to word a bluff.

"No, you're not. You're a master of history, and you believe that our world is evidence for your most cherished historical discovery. Being deprived of the opportunity to further explore our world would be a professional blow."

"I don't know what you think you heard, or from whom, but I have all the data I require to pursue my own work. I'm still here because the rest of my people need time to finish their studies."

"I have eyes and ears in many places, and your people are unconscionably loose of lip. Let me tell you what else you want and I can help you obtain: Daniel Jackson."

"As other eyes and ears so disastrously misinterpreted, Daniel Jackson is on permanent assignment to another team."

"An assignment that could, one assumes, be changed if certain information came to light?"

Melton's tone was scoffing irritation: "Like what? That he out-argued you in your own court of law?"

"That certain rules your people are expected to abide by have been broken."

"If Doctor Jackson had committed an infraction as serious as you seem to be implying, which I do not for a moment believe, he wouldn't be reassigned to any gate team, mine or anyone else's."

"But if it turned out to be the case that his leader had committed the infraction ... "

Jack said, "General."

Hammond said, "It's all right, Colonel. Hear it through."

They didn't have to rewind; they'd been talking over silence as the camera steadily, obliviously panned and Melton took time to consider the implications of what Airy Ecru had said.

After another few seconds he grudged out, "Tell me how you stand to benefit."

"My aim is to secure Daniel Jackson's continued presence on this planet, for reasons you need not understand. You want Daniel Jackson in your group and you want your group to stay on this world while you prove your hypothesis."

"It's not a hypothesis," Melton said peevishly.

With sickening sweetness, Ecru replied, "Forgive me if my translator prompts me to inaccuracies from time to time, and let me be clear: I have ... information, data, that can at best remove O'Neill entirely and at least ensure that Daniel Jackson will no longer be entrusted to his care. All you need do is pass the information on and let it do its work. If you agree, then I will use my influence with the council to see that you are permitted -- invited, if necessary -- to return for an extended period of fully supported research. If what I have gleaned about the effect of my information is correct, as I have every reason to believe it is, and if your ... team ... is in truth the most appropriate assignment for Daniel Jackson, then he will accompany you back here for that extended stay, and we will both have what we want. Or at least be in a position to achieve our goals."

"You want him for a slave, for heaven's sake. You can't ever have that."

"Acquiring him as property was only one possible means to my end. Another is time and proximity."

"You want him to stay here permanently. That puts our ultimate goals at odds."

"Not at all. Is he truly any more than a means to further your own interests? Do you not merely wish to feast upon the fruits of his labors and his intellect? Once the truth of your great discovery has been acknowledged by your people, what more need will you have of him then?"

There was another long silence, and then Melton said, almost too low to make out, "None, I suppose."

"And by the time he comes to understand that his place is here, and chooses it freely, you will also have been relieved of your greatest rival."

"That's not how we -- "

"Please do not insult me by claiming to be free of professional jealousies. Or perhaps you were unaware yourself of that additional motive behind your desire to have him under your direct control."

"He's needlessly jeopardized on that team, sent out chasing military pipe dreams while the work he was destined for languishes. It's a criminal waste of a brilliant mind."

"Then you should welcome this singular opportunity to relieve him of those constraints."

Ecru had played the guy like a cheap kazoo. Worked him right up into his favorite rant -- a pet peeve that might well have been all Ecru had to go on in the first place, parlayed into a Dale Carnegie bonanza with a fortune-teller's talent for observation and guesswork. Probably had his people -- his slaves, his spies would have to have been his slaves, people the SGC personnel felt sorry for, would let their guard down around, people who probably survived by their wits and their facility for passing and interpreting the smallest scraps of information -- working on the gate teams for days, looking for a weakness he could exploit.

There was no question that Melton would cave. The only questions were whether or not Ecru had the information he claimed to, whether or not he'd shared the information with Melton or found some way to send it under seal, and what the information actually consisted of. Sex under duress with a male teammate wouldn't indict Jack by itself. It would bring him under scrutiny he'd devoted a lifetime of abstinence to avoiding, but it wouldn't get him canned and it wouldn't cost him his team. If Ecru really had something, something more than his word against theirs, it had to be more than that.

"All right," Melton said. "You understand that I can't guarantee that he'll be assigned to my team. But tell me what you've got and, yes, I'll help you leverage it."

"I'm afraid I am not so foolish as that. Your people have demonstrated an unwillingness to abide by our oral agreements; to expect the same of you is only prudent."

"Then what do you propose?"

"Come to my home at midnight tonight. Not midnight as you reckon it -- the end of the tenth hour. There I will have prepared for you a device to bring back to your superiors. It will appear to have an ordinary data-storage function, but the critical information will be embedded more deeply, and will unlock only upon the voice activation of ... say, the commander who spoke to you through your mobile analytic laboratory probe, would that do? My earpiece recorded his voice and the encoding will be simple enough."

"If the information is what you say it is, that would probably achieve the purpose."

"And you could honestly disavow knowledge of the information itself, thus preserving your own honor."

"How do I know there won't be some trick -- no information at all, or an explosion, or ... ?"

"I have no motive to humiliate you before your superiors or cause injury to anyone. My only wish is to have Daniel Jackson here; I would trade anything I own for one more chance to speak with him. You know the importance my people and I put on our spoken words. I give you my word that the device will merely convey the information."

"Agreed, then," Melton's voice said. "Your mansion, the end of the tenth hour."

"Until then, Doctor Melton."

There was no sound of footsteps; maybe the alcove was carpeted. No one came through the drapes. The camera moved to the next table and started its next, slow pan, and there was only silence under the circulation of air.

Tuchman hit the stop button. "That's it for the audio. There's another half-hour of footage of the stuff on the tables."

"OK," Jack said. "So you got this recording at, what, seven?"

"About that, sir. The scientists said they only noticed the audio when they were playing it back to check before dinner."

"That could be the truth," Daniel said. "I understand that it could also be a set-up of some kind. But it's boring work, that kind of recording. Some people wear ... well, Walkmans, headphones, even though mission safety prohibits it."

"But you evacuated at ... " Jack did a quick calculation, sometime around 0845 at the SGC, eight-and-a-quarter-hour time difference, add two hours because their midnight was ten pm. " ... two-thirty in the morning?"

"Yes, sir." She looked at Hammond.

"Go ahead, First Sergeant."

Tuchman knocked back a slug of water. Judging from the angle she tipped it to, it was the last slug in the cup. She'd drunk the rest of it reporting this the first time. Hammond was having her repeat it for their benefit.

They hadn't been called here to respond to an urgent situation or take a reaming for a shitstorm; they'd been called here to be briefed. Something was still pending or Hammond would have let Tuchman go get cleared and changed first, but what they were hearing here was the report of another team's mission. It involved him, it involved Daniel -- but it wasn't their mission. It had never been SG-1's mission.

Tuchman set the cup down and dropped her arms, squared her shoulders. "The scientists were concerned about their team leader conspiring with the alien, but they couldn't contact the base without their team leader's knowledge, so they brought the recording to me. They also thought that what Aird Egru said about how he'd give anything he owned could be used to hoist them on their own petard. You know, make them honor a verbal agreement they didn't understand they were making? SG-20 wanted to keep a few of the devices they'd been working with, the ones on loan from Egru, and they were thinking that maybe Doctor Jackson could decide whether it was worth coming back to talk if it let the SGC keep the stuff. I told them that we don't steal from other planets and we don't trick them, either, but to myself I was thinking, well, unless we're in danger or they're trying to trick us, and that gave me an idea of what else I could do besides abort right then or stop Doctor Melton from going to the mansion. I had the scientists pick one device, something their team leader wouldn't recognize, and separate it out from the rest. Then my team and I broke into Aird Egru's compound. No shots were fired, nobody but Egru ever knew we were in there. We left the other devices on a table and persuaded him to substitute that one for the thing he was going to give Doctor Melton. Caught him working on the thing, at least we're pretty sure that's what he was working on when we got in there, and we destroyed that. We stuck around for the meeting, watched him give the substitute device to Doctor Melton, made sure Melton got out of there safe. We tied Egru up and left him for his people to find whenever."

"But then you had to get off-planet before he could contact Melton or the magistrates," Jack said.

"And so that Doctor Melton wouldn't be tipped off when the magistrates didn't say 'come on back soon' when we left, sir, yeah. I suppose I could have made Egru promise to lean on the council the way he'd planned, but I don't know about that oral-agreement thing. I trusted him as long as I had a weapon on him, and that's about it."

"So you left while everybody was sleeping," Daniel said.

"Pretty much, sir. No announcements from any council, anyway. Bunch of guards around the gate, but they didn't say word one. No standing orders either way that I could tell. Lot of Egru's mercs around too, but they didn't hassle us, so maybe he'd ordered them to take up positions during the night so he could wave his private army at the council in the morning."

"What reason did you give Melton for aborting?" Jack asked.

"Just that a couple of my guys were on patrol and noted an increased military presence, and that was a bad enough smell for me. Doctor Melton made a fuss about how fast I was making them all pack up their gear, but I said better safe than sorry and no reason they couldn't come back tomorrow if it all checked out. He seemed OK with that. Nobody said much on the way back. I sent them all through to the infirmary, had the technician recall the MALP, and reported immediately to the general."

"When it's morning on P5K-732, I'll be sending a diplomatic team with two combat units to see if there's anything to be salvaged from this contact," Hammond said. He didn't elaborate in front of Tuchman, but Jack could feel the pressure of higher behind it, the never-ending hunger for anything technological, anything left behind by advanced, ancient societies -- even, or maybe especially, ancient societies advanced enough to wipe themselves out. "Thank you, First Sergeant. You can go ahead and rejoin your unit now."

When she was gone, Hammond said, his drawl lengthening, "Given this turn of events, I'm cancelling our scheduled debriefing; your written reports will be sufficient. You're released to duty for the remainder of this shift and at liberty thereafter until the rest of your team returns, but I'd like you both to be on call in case Doctor Melton does in fact bring me a device."

"Of course, sir," Jack said.

"Doctor Jackson?"

Daniel seemed to shake himself out of a reverie. "Yes, sorry. Yes. I was just thinking that sometimes ... Never mind."

"Just thinking that sometimes it isn't SG-1 saving everyone else's bacon, but another team saving yours?"

"Yes, sir. Something like that."

"Well, I don't know what was on the device that was destroyed, and I'm by no means convinced this apparent conspiracy wasn't some kind of politically motivated contrivance. That said, to my knowledge nothing that happened on that planet would jeopardize either Colonel O'Neill's leadership of SG-1 or your place on it."

Daniel looked up. "That's good to hear, sir."

Hammond stood, they stood with him, they were dismissed; Hammond took the camera into his office, shut the door, and was on the phone within a couple of minutes.

"You think it was a set-up?" Jack said. "The whole trial, I mean. To get whatever leverage he thought he had."

"I was wondering too," Daniel said. "I don't know. We may never know."

"You think he's that devious?" Jack didn't want to refer back even obliquely to the time that Daniel had spent in that compound, but the hard truth was that Daniel had a better read on the guy than anyone else.

"No," Daniel said, spinning the note pad around with his index finger. "Well, maybe that devious, but not that good a tactician." He frowned at the pad, then glanced at Hammond through the glass, then blinked down again, mouth pursing.

"Because it wasn't our mission," Jack said, answering the question Daniel wasn't asking. "We were a sidebar. He got the information he needed when we were fresh through the gate; waste of time going through the motions of debriefing us now. Busy man. Other fish to fry." Like Melton, he thought. Hopefully on a very hot grill.

Daniel looked up sidelong at him, then looked back down and nodded, apparently getting the message Jack was trying to pass: that an official debrief would only force them to lie by omission, force all three of them to tapdance through a minefield, and that in addition to being a very busy man with some extra problems on his plate this morning, Hammond was jumping on the excuse to spare them. Jack was pretty sure that Daniel had recognized the import of what Hammond had said about their positions on the team. He knew he hadn't heard the end of it, himself -- he had some hard thinking to do on that score, and probably a very unpleasant conversation with his CO in his near future, in addition to a conference where Daniel got to have his say after this all shook out -- but he hoped Daniel could rest a little easier, at least.

Daniel had ripped the top sheet off the note pad and crumpled it into his pocket; he was examining the next sheet now to see if his pen had pressed the letters through. He pocketed the whole thing, which meant that it had. "I guess I have a report to write, then," he said, and turned for the door to the corridor.

"Grab your laptop and swing by," Jack said, falling into step with him out in the hall. "I'll dig a chair out for you."

Daniel said, "Thanks, but there's stuff I need in my lab."

"You sure?" Jack said -- expecting Daniel to say well, OK, yeah, why not, pushing a little without thinking, mostly relieved to be out of the room so they wouldn't be found lingering when SG-20 showed up for their debrief.

"I'm sure," Daniel said, and then added, in a murmur, as they came to the T-intersection where Jack's office lay one way and the elevator the other, "Have to cut the cord sometime."

That murmur hit Jack like a whack in the side of the head.

"You know, you really don't," he said, turning towards the elevator with Daniel -- had to make that run to his locker anyway. "In any of the eight hundred ways you probably mean that."

Daniel didn't answer. They walked in silence down the corridor, breaking to go around a pair of staff assistants deep in conversation, then a trio of SFs. They came up to the elevator. Daniel called for it. They waited. The doors opened. A lone custodian got off and they got on. They pushed different buttons. They stood in opposite corners. They came to Level 25. Jack didn't get out. No one got on. The doors closed. The elevator continued up. Daniel raised a brow at him.

"You're not leaving," Jack said, flat and hard.

"This elevator?" Daniel said, with that mild, blinking innocence that was never innocent at all.

"You know what I mean," Jack said, snappish with fatigue, this close to genuine anger because he'd only just realized what had been going through Daniel's head and they had to talk about this and they could not talk about this and this fucking day just would not end and it wasn't even noon yet.

"Yeah, you know, my floor's coming up," Daniel said, gesturing to the red digits of the display passing 21, 20, 19.

Jack slapped the emergency stop button. "Dinner. Tonight. My place. No excuses."

He expected a dipped head and a stubborn jut of jaw, he expected another shot of the eyebrows and a scalpel-smooth delivery of the first "Yes, sir" Daniel had ever or would ever say to him, he expected an angry explosion of words peppered with his name like buckshot. He didn't expect Daniel to sag back, head dropping into the vee of his corner, eyes briefly closing and then opening with more weariness than Jack had ever seen there.

"That'll only make it eight hundred times worse," Daniel said, his voice low, scratchy, tired, over the distant clangor of the emergency bells.

Jack had no answer for that. He released the car before the call came to ask what the problem was. Daniel pushed off his corner. The doors opened on a confused-looking scientist, somebody from Daniel's department. Daniel stepped out with a greeting, let the woman get on, held the door, held Jack's eyes.

"Yeah," he said. "OK. We'll see how that goes."

Jack had to go all the way up to 11, where the scientist was transferring elevators, before he could head down again, and then he was stuck with the weird smell of that weird guy from Records all the way back to 24.

In the brief blessed seconds of privacy between 24 and 25, he did not put his fist through the elevator car wall.

***

Back at his desk after he delivered the sample baggie to Fraiser, Jack requisitioned a coffeemaker and supplies for the isolation suite, wrote his report fast so that he could sit on it for a couple of hours and come back with a fresh eye before running it by Daniel -- which had to happen, cord or no cord -- then sat staring at his monitor until he stopped having the urge to put his fist through that too.

It was the way Daniel had thanked Hammond for his assurance about their positions on the team. It had sounded like quiet respect, the way a generally soft-spoken man indicated that he appreciated the significance of what he'd just been told. Jack had taken it for that, same as Hammond probably had. But they'd been wrong. It wasn't quiet. It was mild. It was the mild tone Daniel used when something surprised him but didn't matter at all.

Hammond's assurance had become irrelevant to him -- or was well on the way to getting there.

Daniel had fully expected Hammond to leave Jack in command because Daniel believed that as long as Jack didn't confess to his feelings Hammond would never know he had them. Daniel knew he wouldn't lose his own place on SG-1 because he knew he was invaluable and if Hammond was going to reassign him he'd have done it for better reasons a long time ago. When Daniel said cut the cord, he meant the needing-to-be-near-Jack thing -- but that wasn't all he meant.

Jack hadn't even begun to face the question of whether he could continue to be in charge of Daniel in the field, and Daniel was already busy making the decision for him.

Shoe on the other foot, O'Neill? It sounded like Hammond's voice in his head, but he was pretty sure it was his own.

Of course meeting in a private setting would make it worse. The cellar of his house had been surveillance-shielded since he'd built it. It would make the temptation eight hundred times greater. Nothing could be worse than this hell of being unable to speak freely -- nothing except the hell of being free to act. But he wasn't letting Daniel unilaterally choose self-sacrifice out of all the profoundly sucky options. Not without a fight, and they couldn't have that fight on base.

Cellar was a fallout shelter, too. Not the kind of fallout he'd had in mind at the time, but it would serve.

He'd done all he could do about it for now. Time to let it go. If it was anything else, he'd find an excuse to drop by Daniel's lab, goof off for twenty minutes, let Daniel's company work that magic he never examined. Couldn't blame the pitfalls of romantic attachment for that, since it wasn't the first time he'd lost access to Daniel's support, but it was the first time he'd lost it this way and it reminded him of the night he'd had half of Sara's number punched into the phone before he realized who he was calling to bitch and moan about how his wife left him. He could go vent the pressure in the gym, but when he slipped the safety off people tended to notice, and he was the kind of tired where you let loose like that, you got yourself hurt.

So, paperwork. Forms. Emails. Security logs. He was expected to read every mission report and every personnel evaluation, he was cc'ed on every promotion, every assignment, every change of station and expected to review them all. Being Hammond's operational second carried a heavy price: it meant being a bureaucratic Hammond-in-training. He'd have reviewed all this paper in any event; familiarity with everything that went on in this facility was critical to his job. But the crap he had to generate to show that he'd read and digested the material, the analyses, the recommendations, the motherfucking memos ... waste of everybody's time. They'd never offer him Hammond's job and he wouldn't take it if they did. He was too insubordinate to make general, had too many people at the Pentagon and the White House scared of the havoc he could wreak with a pair of stars, he was too many years away from it to be the direct successor anyway, and Academy background notwithstanding he had a commando's scorn for the upper echelons. Colonel was as high as he'd ever aspired. Operationally, professionally, he was where he wanted to be, doing what he was best at, in a field command under a man he believed in, leading people who --

Fuck.

Fuck.

He hadn't begun to face this question because there was no answer he could stand. He wanted to put his fist through Daniel because Daniel was gearing up to provide the one answer he would not accept.

Brisk footfalls in the corridor drew his eyes up to his open door just before Daniel came striding in brandishing a sheaf of printouts and saying, "Jack, take a look at this."

Funny, Jack thought, ignoring the papers in Daniel's hands, trying to ignore the relief and happiness flooding through him, I was just thinking of putting my fist through you, and here you are.

The phrasing, the image, the spectacularly bad choice of metaphor hit him all at once, and he said "Oh my god" out loud and dropped his face into his hands.

Daniel pulled up short, and said, "I'm not asking you to read all of it."

Jack pulled himself together, barely. "You have never once submitted a report in under three hours. Go find Daniel Jackson and tell him to call me when he's finished."

"This isn't my report. It's preliminary notes toward -- Can I close your door?"

Jack gave a weak, hopeless wave.

"It's some of Doctor Melton's notes, more references to supporting data than actual data and really more of a manifesto and a project wish list than any kind of a structured presentation, but I think it's the theory that Aird Egru was referring to on the recording."

"Hypothesis, I thought he said."

"Well, yes, until I see more supporting evidence I'd agree with that characterization, but I've had some very smart students try to snow me and I've written my share of unsupported bullshit and I'm pretty good at telling the difference between a writer blowing smoke and a writer who's on to something significant but still struggling with an initial conception or who's trying to talk about what he's got without revealing what he's got, and this is somewhere between the latter two, and has no trace of the characteristic tone of scholarship gone off the deep end, which I was specifically looking for. Given the fact that he was willing to risk his career for continued access to P5K-732 -- "

"Please don't tell me you risked your career hacking the base mainframe to get this."

Daniel paused for the briefest second, but it wasn't to ask why Jack assumed electronic instead of physical breaking-and-entering, which would have involved a frown and a full stop and a direct look at Jack. His 'lecturing on something I'm looking at in my head and you can't see' expression stayed the same as he took a breath and opened his mouth; the pause was just his brain switching tracks between academic analysis and the explanation of IT infrastructure at the SGC that he seemed on the verge of delivering. But he held that breath, another pause, and his eyes flattened and he said, "No. It wasn't where you could access it, which is why I brought a hardcopy, but he did leave it where I could see it. I think it might even have been bait. I'm not his department head. I never noticed it. He was probably kind of pissed about that."

"But you went looking."

"Under the circumstances, I got curious, yes."

"So maybe it was more of an ... insurance policy."

"Don't you want to know what it says?"

"The guy's toast, Daniel. Whether he delivers that gewgaw or not, he's done here."

"Well, maybe he shouldn't be."

"And that's you paying out on his insurance policy. Listen to yourself. You find this crumb he left on his plate and suddenly you're defending a guy who just tried to crowbar you out of your team and toss you in some kind of offworld honey trap. In a thousand years some paleontologist was gonna find you in a chunk of amber."

"Why is it that the only time you wax eloquent is when you're being an asshole?"

"That was a ten-car pileup on the metaphor highway, and I'm not being an asshole, and let's cut the meta, huh? I don't care how cool his idea was. Give it to someone else. He's finished."

"Give it to -- " Daniel straightened, the picture of affronted, and Jack was struck by a mixture of fondness and exasperation and brutal irony so intense that he had to look away. Out of all the insults Daniel had suffered in the past few days, Hammond's curt dismissal included, this was what offended him speechless -- the suggestion that somebody should appropriate the intellectual property of a guy who tried to steal him and sell him out at the same time. In the seconds it took Daniel to marshal a response, Jack stared at the screensaver Carter had rigged for him, a scoreboard display that refreshed every sixty seconds with the latest stats for the Cubs and Wild and Bulls and Vikes pulled off some feed. It refreshed while he was watching. No change. Nobody playing right now. No newsworthy trades.

"Well, I am going to give it to somebody, Jack. I'm going to give it to Hammond. He probably has an aide poking around the same places I did, but I don't trust whoever that is to understand what's there. Or read as fast as I do."

"Oh for cryin' out loud." Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair, hard, and then leaned over and reclaimed a swivel chair from a pile of manila folders on a stuffed cardboard file crate and said, "Sit. Tell me."

Daniel sat -- gingerly, as the chair wobbled, and too far forward, his knees too close to Jack's thigh, leaning too much into Jack's space. "He postulates that human life evolved independently on more than one world, maybe more than hundreds of worlds. He knows he's way out of his discipline and he wants his theory to be tested. He's outlined a broad range of studies to be undertaken on various worlds -- by evolutionary biologists, biochemists, geneticists, archaeologists, epidemiologists ... It's a long list. Your paleontologist is on there. What it's lacking, and what I think he'll add the minute he gets a chance to revise, is neuroscientists."

Jack tilted his head, interested now despite himself, despite the effect of Daniel's body on his after less than ninety minutes apart, despite his conniving little id pointing out in its insidious whisper that when he was around Daniel all the time Daniel ceased to be an object of desire and was just Daniel, ergo the solution to the problem of his attraction to Daniel was to work with him as closely as possible all the time. "Because those earwig things didn't work on you."

Daniel nodded. Jack was disappointed that he didn't get a flicker of surprised appreciation for proving he'd been listening. Maybe Daniel was so caught up in the subject he didn't notice. "The people we've met on P5K-732 aren't capable of genetic manipulation, so unless somebody else on the planet is, or someone came through the gate and rewired their heads, or there's some environmental factor or another explanation entirely, it's possible that it's an evolutionary difference."

"Which couldn't have occurred in the few thousand years since they were kidnapped from Earth by Baba Loo?"

"Enbilulu," Daniel said, gifting him with a small smile, either because engage-Daniel-on-his-own-terms really did work or because sometimes when he deliberately mangled a name it did actually make Daniel smile. Either way, it meant something that he showed it. "And I don't think so, but I don't know. The point is that the neurological differences could be an indication that those humans are native to that planet, and it's worth looking into. We've been treating as a first principle the assumption that any humans we meet out there are descendants of terrestrial humans, but it is an assumption, and therefore it's open to question, and should be questioned, a lot more than we have been. The assumption underlying that assumption is that no two worlds will ever evolve identical life-forms, and we've proven that humans evolved here, so this is it. But then what accounts for the remarkable similarity between us and the Tollan, people who appear to have had no historical contact with Earth or the Goa'uld? Between us and the race Harlan was copied from more than eleven thousand years ago? Take away the funny hair and the superpowers and the Nox are astonishingly similar to us as well, unless of course they shapechanged or created an illusion of being like us to keep from scaring us and just never mentioned it ... but you get the idea."

"OK, what does account for that?"

"Well, he doesn't have to have an answer to the question for the question to be valid. But he posits some kind of seeding by an older race, possibly one of the four races of the alliance the Asgard were part of, possibly one that existed before them."

"Oy," Jack said. "So, what, he discounts that whole First World story Teal'c told us? Ra looking to trade in for a better model, came here, liked what he saw, took a bunch to parcel out as hosts and slave labor and Jaffa? Wasn't that in the pictures you showed us on that wall on Abydos, too?"

"First is a relative term and doesn't have to mean only. The truth of that story has borne out in culture after culture we've encountered -- but it doesn't mean that humans didn't evolve elsewhere too, only that this was the first place a Goa'uld ran across any. Whether there were proto-humans, some elder race that went around sprinkling 'make more like us!' dust into the primordial soup of Earth-like worlds, I couldn't begin to speculate, and that's putting the cart before a horse that doesn't even have legs yet."

"And sometimes a cracked pot's just a cracked pot."

"But sometimes it was really aliens who built the pyramids."

Jack didn't acknowledge the point scored. His stomach sank into his legs while the back of his neck went tight. He turned his face towards his monitor, rested the heel of his hand on the keyboard tray for something to do, stroked the space bar without pressing it. Seeing in his mind's eye the bedraggled Daniel Catherine had rescued from the street, the Goodwill blazer and the no umbrella and the scuffed shoes Catherine had described to him, the battered suitcase and shaggy hair he'd seen for himself. The Daniel who'd lost his mentor and his grants and his girlfriend and his apartment, scraping the bottom of his savings account for a plane ticket to New York and one night in a fleabag SRO hotel and two hours at some third-tier Egyptology conference, his last shot, his last chance to get the community to listen. That sure that if he just got them in a room and talked to them, they'd understand that he was right. Seeing that mind's-eye Daniel while this one sat on his crappy wobbly half-broken chair and brainstormed his exit strategy from SG-1, climbed hand-over-hand up the lifeline of Melton's grand theory, a cord to replace the cord that Jack wouldn't let him cut.

The screensaver refreshed. Announcement about a rumored trade, the Bulls, a shooting guard. Alt-Shift-N would open a web browser to the news page. Jack put his hand back in his lap and looked at Daniel.

"You never said that aliens built the pyramids. You said the Pharaohs didn't. Other people filled in the aliens part because you left a blank there. Everybody started saying it like that, and after it turned out that's who it was, you did too. But that was never what you claimed. That wasn't in the paper you presented and it wasn't what you said."

Daniel blinked slowly, twice, then stared at him in silence. Waiting for him to go on and make his point, maybe. Or maybe unable to respond to that big a revelation -- that Jack had been paying attention, that he remembered, that he cared. Of course I paid attention, of course I remember, of course I care, what the hell do you think "I love you" means? But it was new for Daniel, less than a day, and the indications were that he wasn't trying to find a way to live with what they'd found out about each other in that room, he was trying to escape it, and maybe not thinking about what he knew wasn't enough; he was trying to not know what he knew, and any time Jack told him again it would be like finding out all over again.

"I read your dossier too, remember?" Jack angled between offhand and intense and landed on gruff, trying to explain and cover and make his point all at the same time. "You raised questions you didn't have an answer for, and they acted like that invalidated the question, and they wouldn't listen to you. People here are more on the ball than that. OK maybe we got lazy about the First World thing, but this place is chock full of flexible thinkers, you hired half of them yourself, you know that. If the evidence materializes, somebody else in Xenohistory will pursue it."

In more comfortable territory, Daniel relaxed a little and said, "The evidence won't just materialize. It has to be gathered."

"Not by you."

He'd said it too loud, hit it too hard. He looked sharply at Daniel but found only a mild frown, surprise and puzzlement at the force of his reaction.

"I'm not saying by me," Daniel said, as if it was obvious, as if it was nothing, as if he didn't see why he had to repeat himself. "But if the people on 732 sever relations with us, it won't be by anybody, and ideas like this need a passionate proponent, someone who'll keep pushing for them, sifting through other people's data looking for connections. Without Eric Melton, this will languish."

"And that's what you're gonna tell Hammond."

"Yes."

Jack relaxed too, all at once, his weight creaking into the back of his chair. "OK," he said. "OK. Let's assume this is worth pursuing -- whether or not 732 pans out, whatever happens to Melton, let's assume his idea is supportable enough to warrant further study." He knew it looked like either defeat or playing along, that if Daniel really was oblivious to what just happened he would have no idea what I'm not saying by me and Without Eric Melton, this will languish meant. It didn't matter. Melton had lost his team and he was never going offworld again, never setting foot in this facility again after today, and all that mattered now was that Daniel didn't see the Eric Melton Memorial Theory of Parallel Evolution as his ticket off Jack's team, as something big enough and important enough to substitute for what he got out of being on SG-1. Let him fight for Melton's job. It was Hammond's job to deal with that. Jack's job now was to stop panicking at any hint that Daniel's foot was out the door. Save that for the private debrief tonight. Don't think about the private debrief tonight. One thing at a time. Moving on. "Who's gonna fund all these studies? Who profits from this information? Where are all these scientists gonna come from? The SGC can't spare the resources it would take to do a serious investigation of this thing, and there's no grant money in the classified world."

"Now you're just humoring me," Daniel said, and put one hand on the arm of the chair to push up.

"I am not, Daniel. I deal with logistics, deployment, staffing, budgets. I'm not a scientist. My M.S., for what it's worth, was in applied engineering. You came to me to bounce this thing around before you went to Hammond. I'm asking you the questions I know how to ask."

Daniel eased back down, warily. It was a little heartbreaking to see how much he wanted this new Jack to be for real, and how much he still mistrusted it. Enough that some awkwardness in Jack's recovery from a lapse of blind panic would set his alarms off.

No more panicking, Jack told himself sternly, and said, "I don't mean what point is there in investigating the origins of humanity, I don't mean who benefits, I mean who profits. Revolutionize anthropology, worth knowing for its own sake, I get all that -- but finding out one way or another, that's a massive project. You got to find out who built the pyramids because the government saw strategic potential in the stargate. Right now we get to study places like the Land of Light as a marginally sustainable sideline to the search for technology and allies of military value in a war. From where I'm sitting, that stuff in your hand isn't just a wish list, it's a retasking of the entire program."

Daniel took his hand off the chair arm to gather up the sheaf of printouts, bounce them on his thigh to square them. "I guess it could be, in some respects," he said. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"So tell me how you were thinking of it. Give me something workable."

"Why?"

"So I can back you up with Hammond."

"I didn't -- "

-- come here to get backup. "I know. That mean I'm not allowed to give it?"

"Two minutes ago you were pissed. You didn't -- I don't know, want me involved, want me wasting your time, our time, something."

"I had a momentary freakout. I'll explain it to you later."

It was a glaring admission of the fear that had just gripped him, and Daniel missed it. His frown lapsed into an I'll never understand you exasperation, and he let it go with a Fine, whatever headshake, and Jack thought, God. You have no freaking idea how important you are to me, do you. Everything that's happened and you still can't see it. How someone could have such bedrock certainty of his value to the program and such insufferable arrogance about always being right and such nonexistent cognizance of his own personal importance was beyond him. So we're even, Jack thought. I'll never understand you either.

"OK," Daniel said. "So, obviously taking the program public would solve a host of problems with staffing and funding, there are a variety of research projects of this magnitude we should be initiating, and hoarding all the discoveries we've already made is a criminal disservice to the global academic community not to mention the human race -- but." He raised the 'aht!' finger before Jack automatically cut in with all the reasons that couldn't happen right now, and Jack shut his mouth, chastened, because he knew Daniel knew all that and had more or less accepted it, that was just the preamble and he was entitled to vent that much if he wanted to. "But in the meantime, manageable side projects could be worked into existing missions, and the information that teams routinely bring back could be filtered and applied to constructing a framework for eventual study, if there's someone keeping track, flagging data that could be significant to this particular question. Someone allocated the work-hours and CPU time and physical and electronic storage space to analyze and archive it."

"So you're talking about one new hire. Some office space, computer usage, a file cabinet."

"If it can't be Melton, and if there's more than just the neurological thing to go on here, yes. Current staff have their hands full. I'm sure that hiring someone at an entry-level pay grade would be less fiscally painful than keeping him on to do that job in addition to the raise whoever replaces him as team leader will presumably get, but I sincerely hope we're not reduced to nickel-and-diming this. And I'd like to point out something that you seem to have misunderstood, Jack. I think Melton's idea deserves attention, and I believe that idea would be best served by him staying on in some capacity to pursue it, but I'm not advocating forgiveness."

"Daniel, Melton is Hammond's call, OK? I really don't -- "

"No. Listen. This is important, because you are obviously totally missing this. You're right in pointing out that I take this personally because I know what it's like to field a preposterous-on-first-glance theory. It's also personal because I'm sick to death of watching significant projects get passed over in the rush to find weapons, and because I'm not over the heartbreak of seeing technology like the Heliopolis library device and Thor's Hammer slip through my fingers the minute I touch it. But it's most personal to me because what he conspired to do was end your career. I don't know how and I hope we never find out, but the intent was clear. If he'd threatened me, maybe I'd say look, let him off with a demotion or something, he's brilliant and we can't afford to lose him. But he threatened you, and I guess I can't take for granted that you appreciate the intensity of my response to that. Even after ... " He waved in the general direction of everything-that-happened-in-that-room, then laughed -- a short, flash-of-teeth huff of amazement at himself, at Jack, at all of it -- and shook his head. "Even after, you still don't get it. What I'm lobbying on behalf of his idea in spite of."

Everything that's happened and you still can't see it. Jack's own thought echoed back to him, only now it was in Daniel's voice. What the hell do you think "I love you" means?

You have no freaking idea how important you are to me.

"I guess I didn't," Jack said quietly to his hands, and looked up. "I guess I do now."

"OK," Daniel said, nodding -- smiling a little, after a second, the bottom-lip-crumpled-up smile you gave when you were pushing it through tears. His eyes were sad but the smile was real. "OK. Good. That's good." He cleared his throat, squared the sheaf of papers again. "So, workable, or not so much?"

"Definitely workable," Jack said, thinking Good, this is good, we're OK here -- so why does it feel like he just said good-bye? He pushed it aside. They were good, they were OK now. No more jumping at shadows. "So, you gonna have the oomph to repeat all this to the general?"

Daniel's expression transformed, his brows going up in genuine amusement, a light coming into his eyes. "You mean have I shot my wad?" he said, and flashed a grin: "I'm the Energizer Bunny, remember?"

Jack tried to keep his face completely blank while a kind of horrible screeching whine burned through his brain. "You did not just say that."

Daniel was laughing now, silently but for real, at whatever Jack's uncooperative face was doing. "Yeah," he said, "that was pretty much my reaction when you said it."

He was fixing it -- neutralizing it through the alchemy of humor, compiling it into their litany of in-jokes. Jack thought it made a good counterexample to the eloquent asshole theory, but that wasn't something to point out right now. "So," he said. "Lunch?"

Daniel lurched in the chair. "Oh, crap. I never wrote my report."

"How long will it take you?"

"I don't know. I want to give a thorough account of my work with Aird Egru's translation device. The trial, there's not much to say. We argued, we won. I didn't recount the arguments in the Cor-Ai or the Taldor, either."

Jack wanted to tell him he could wait, write it up when he was ready, but a delay would invite questions; Daniel was rarely first over the transom with his mission reports, but he never filed late. Nobody had contacted him about the psych follow-up, so he supposed nobody had contacted Daniel either, but he wouldn't ask. Daniel wasn't talking as though mentally reconstructing the experience was going to be a problem for him, but then, he wouldn't, since Jack's office could be surveilled in any number of overt and covert ways. The fact that Daniel had found something else to do instead of writing the report, and then came here, could be pure avoidance. Jack was at a loss whether to enable it or send Daniel back to his lab. What would his CO do? he asked himself, in so many words, only half-joking. Daniel's CO would be at just as much of a loss as he was.

"Maybe an hour?" Daniel was saying. "I could come with you and grab a sandwich to eat at my desk. Or maybe I should just leave the report until after the diplomatic team ... god, how stupid is this. I'm so tired I can't even decide when to have lunch."

"What would Baba Loo do?" Jack said.

"Enbilulu," Daniel repeated automatically. "Sumerian god of rivers and irrigation, guardian of the Tigris and the Euphrates. One of the fifty names of Marduk enumerated on the seventh tablet of the ... holy shit."

"Now, that's a sacred text I haven't heard of."

"No, the tablets are the Enuma-Elish, the book of creation -- Jack, can you look and see if any of SG-20's mission reports have been filed? Kearny's fast, she writes on a PDA on-site and compiles in like half an hour when she gets back and files addenda after she's had a chance to reflect."

Jack checked, and sure enough, there it was, R. Kearny, Anthropologist Unit SG-20, P5K-732. Daniel lunged up beside him, reached past him for the mouse. The folder contained several documents and two subdirectories of images and video. Daniel opened the images folder, switched to a detailed list view, and started scrolling through the cryptic filenames.

"How the hell do you tell what any of those are?"

"I'm looking for a date range. I remember the day we were looking at this wall. If it's not attached here I'm going to have to -- Do you even have access to -- Here, OK." He switched to a filmstrip view and started scrolling sideways. "No ... no ... Here. Here it is. Look at this." He clicked on a thumbnail and brought up a big close-up of a nubbly grey stone wall. "What does this look like to you?"

Jack couldn't lean closer to the monitor without pressing Daniel's arm, so he squinted and said, "Either a very ugly bald man with a Fu Manchu and a goatee, or a very well-dressed squid."

"Yes. Exactly."

"Yes? I really can't make much out there, to tell you the truth."

Daniel zoomed in on the figure, but it didn't help; weathering had blurred the edges of the carving. "How about now?"

"I'll go with squid. What is this?"

"This is Enbilulu. This is their god. Their Goa'uld. I think he was an own."

"An own? You're saying he was some other Gould's property?"

Daniel paused for a second. "Wow. What an interesting ... No, I mean one of the beings called Oannes. Nem's race. Amphibious guy, kidnapped me, made you think I was dead, next thing there's a read-Daniel's-journals party at my place?"

"Oh, those Oannes." Jack vaguely wondered if having Daniel this close was distracting enough to make him stupid. He didn't think so. It felt good, it put him a little on his guard, it smelled good -- which, OK, was a little distracting -- but it didn't trigger a junior-high arousal reflex and it wasn't disorienting. It was mostly just good. Nice. And where 732 was concerned, the safe bet was to figure any word meant 'own.'

Daniel had clicked out of the images folder and was opening a document. "What could possibly have possessed his mate to leave her planet and give her life to free people on Earth from a Goa'uld?" He did a text search for a couple of terms he typed-and-didn't-find so fast Jack didn't catch them, and started scrolling. "She didn't go after Ra, she didn't go around fighting Goa'uld in general; it was specifically the Goa'uld Belus she hated." He clicked out of that document, opened another, searched and didn't find, went back to scanning. "I did so much research when we got back, I wanted so badly to bring him something more about what happened to her, but I kept hitting these strange dead ends. -- I'll never find it this way. Can I use your phone?"

Jack waved at it and sat back.

Daniel punched in an extension. "Yeah, Roz, hi, it's Daniel. I think your Goa'uld's host was an Oanne. ... I know, once someone points it out, right? Take a look at the P3X-866 material and see what you think. ... No no, no problem, that's me, I'm in his office. ... Yeah, I know. Listen, did you get any of the 732s to talk to you without a translator on? ... Oh, great, OK. So what did 'world' turn out to be? ... Wow. ... Yeah, no kidding. ... Yeah, you could say that. Give me about forty minutes. OK. Thanks. Bye."

Jack got up. "Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes you can use my computer to type up whatever brainstorm you just had."

"It's babble," Daniel said, switching places with him and getting a word processor open before his butt had hit the chair.

"Well, sure, to me," Jack said, grabbing a couple of files and settling into the wonky chair.

Daniel was already typing. "I mean as in the Tower of Babel. We'll probably spell it B-A-B-I-L but the English transliteration doesn't matter too much, Kearny's using the IPA. Babil is what they call their planet. When they have the translators on, they speak their interlocutor's language, and when they say the name of their world it comes out 'world.' Distinguishing proper nouns is problematic, so Kearny was trying to get some of them to -- " He looked over. "Are you sure I'm not keeping you from playing Tetris or something?"

Jack gestured at his paperlogged space.

Daniel looked around and said, "Huh." He worked in a den of crates and papers, so it probably hadn't even registered. "Either you're responsible for a lot more than I realized, or you're appallingly behind on your work, or you really do forget where your office is."

"I have an office?" Jack said, and then he worked for an hour while Daniel burned the letters off his keyboard. It was good, it was companionable, it calmed him and focused him and made him forget his tired eyes and the returning soreness of his ass. His aide came in at one point, seemed more surprised to find him there than Daniel, dumped off some more work, cleared the outbox, left the door open at Jack's request when he left. At another point Jack realized he'd been lost in a fantasy for the past four paragraphs of an update on Simarka -- that he was home in his rec room, leafing through magazines, a beer by his elbow, baseball on the tube, Daniel slumped on the sofa next to him clicking away at lightning speed on his notebook. Nothing steamy, nothing charged, just presence. Daniel's company, comfortable and easy. Human rights were on the upswing since old Moughal had unified the tribes of the Shavadai, polygamy was soooo last year, conflict with the river people was looking to escalate into war if the recent drought didn't break soon. Jack stuck a Post-it to the thing saying "Irrigation 101 --JO" and tossed it in the outbox. His aide would stick it in an interoffice envelope and route it to the team leader, who'd stick the Post-it on the education plan his civil engineer had already drawn up and route the whole thing to Hammond.

We need to start recruiting from the Peace Corps, Jack thought, then Nah, they have enough on their plate, then wondered what they were going to do about the increasing demands of humanitarian aid and reached for the next file, a whole peaceful part of him still sitting in that rec room with Daniel, the easy rhythms of a no-hitter filling the cozy wood-paneled space, Daniel's typing like the patter of soft rain. Night game, he thought, or they'd be out on the deck otherwise, double-header on the radio, lazy weekend afternooon, spring sun and greenness and bee drone ...

The rain-patter clicking had stopped. He looked up and found Daniel watching him quietly.

"You done?"

Daniel nodded. "Just burning a disk. I didn't want to email it from here, confuse everybody."

"Kearny thought it was weird that I was accessing her report so soon, huh."

"Well, it was unusual. She was afraid she was in some kind of trouble."

For ratting out her team leader. Or under suspicion of it. All three SG-20 specialists were probably tense about that. Hammond wouldn't have been able to reassure them at the team debrief. Sooner this played out the better for everybody, he thought -- but he didn't want this lull to end. Running under their easygoing words was a gentle, nonverbal subconversation, a quiet statement and acknowledgment of contentment. Daniel didn't want this to end either. Daniel was happy here, because this was where Jack was.

"Next time I'll swing by yours," Jack said.

Daniel smiled. "You and what forklift?"

The CD burner whirred and popped open, and Daniel lifted the disk out and looked around for a sleeve.

"Middle drawer on the right," Jack said. "So you gonna fill me in, or do I have to read this thing like everybody else?"

"Shouldn't I be grabbing a sandwich and writing my mission report?"

"I think we can agree that that report's not getting written 'til after lunch, and I hear a fresh batch of beef stroganoff comes out at 1330. Plate of that stuff's not something you want in the vicinity of your workspace."

Daniel checked his pager, as if Jack's mention of the time had made him aware that it hadn't gone off in an hour and a half and he'd better make sure it was on. Then he said, "I think it's possible that a Goa'uld named Belus took an Oanne for a host and enslaved and exploited the people of P5K-732, who called him Enbilulu. Maybe they were indigenous to the planet, maybe they were exports from Earth, maybe Belus was the first Goa'uld to find or bother with the place, maybe he had to win it from some other Goa'uld. Nem's mate, Omoroca, may have followed him there and rallied the people to rise up against him, or at least inspired them to by giving her life in the attempt to stop one of her own kind from being used that way; Oannes can live thousands of years and a Goa'uld could get millennia of mileage from an Oanne host without a sarcophagus. Another Oanne might have seemed like another god to the people there, a beneficent god; or her death might have demonstrated that their god could be killed."

Jack waited while Daniel paused, and thought he should have brought some coffee in while Daniel worked, give him something to sip now. He knew that Daniel had seen Nem's search for his lost mate as a parallel to his search for Sha're, and that reporting her fate had hurt him at the time. Daniel's expression didn't change, but Jack had some idea how much more it hurt now.

After a few seconds, Daniel went on. "If the rebellion continued or even intensified after Omoroca fell, Belus might have been forced to flee through the gate. If he went to Earth, ended up in Sumer sometime in the Uruk period, and came to control a good chunk of Mesopotamia, the creation story related in the Enuma-Elish could be a mythologized account of events that occurred on P5K-732, and rumors of the true story -- a successful uprising, not their god's triumph over the goddess of the watery deeps with the kick-the-Goa'uld-out part redacted -- may have spread to Ra's domain and encouraged the rebellion against him a few centuries later. It's possible that a Goa'uld brought people here during the early bronze age, not the other way around -- Belus taking with him all the slaves he could still control. If they'd worn their translation devices, we'd have dug some up by now, but the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel could be based on a remembered conception of the planet Babil itself -- a place where all languages were one, thanks to the Oannian translation device appropriated by Belus. I think Nem may have worn something like it. I don't know why Nem's technology worked on us but Belus's doesn't. Possibly Belus's host wasn't technologically inclined and Belus couldn't adapt what he appropriated, or maybe Nem made some improvements over those thousands of years. Or, you know, possibly I'm just spinning a wild tale, and I'm completely wrong. It's a framework for study, anyway."

"And the catastrophe that destroyed the older civilization? That was the rebellion?"

"Noooo, I think that one's still on them. Belus would have kept them primitive and controllable; they'd have flourished over the thousands of years after he left. We haven't been able to do any of the radiometric dating that would confirm a lot of this, but judging from what the people have said, that disaster happened a few hundred years ago, not a few thousand. I'm very curious, though, about when their aversion to written records began -- whether they abandoned writing as a recordkeeping system as their civilization advanced to a point where you could record your own thoughts and memories and grocery lists on, I don't know, little thought-cubes or something, or whether it owes to some older, more deep-seated reaction to Belus's rule. Even after all these millennia, the Babilans may be perpetuating some of Belus's more capricious laws at the same time that they continue to reject the medium he wielded them in -- brutally, we can presume."

"So we can thank a Gould for that whole trial."

"Maybe. In a manner of speaking."

"Figures. What else? Did the Babilans who came here just die out, or you think some of their genes are still floating around? You think Belus might still be floating around, if he was stuck here with no spaceship when the gate was buried?"

"You're actually curious."

Jack wasn't so much curious as mesmerized by the vision of Daniel synthesizing material into story. He might be wrong about this, he might be right, but he was gathering up cross-mission threads of history and legend and science and living culture and weaving them into a tapestry that showed a picture that made sense, and it was ... well, beautiful, in a way Jack had never appreciated at briefing presentations, when his mind was on risk assessment and tactical concerns and all the things Daniel never took into account. Like watching the afterburners on a fighter jet kick in, or a whale arc glistening out of the water -- something extraordinary doing what it was meant to do and did all the time and you rarely got a chance to just admire. "Yeah," Jack said. "You could call it that."

"It's twenty past. How about I tell you the rest over beef stroganoff?"

"You can tell me over dessert. If you tell me over the entree you'll never eat it."

Jack had swallowed his first bite of pumpkin pie when both their pagers went off.

***

They sat in the same chairs, almost the same way they had fourteen hours earlier. Daniel was a little more centered on his seat. There was more activity in the briefing room beyond the window, a few staffers clustered around the far end of the table going over reports, people using the stairs between 28 and 26 instead of waiting for the elevator, a watch change for the security detail. Hammond's notebook computer was open on his desk, the angled bit of screen that Jack could see a mosaic tile of status indicators, updates, IMs. The door to the corridor was closed.

"Gentlemen," he said -- not briskly, but with a tone and demeanor that suggested there were a few things to get through and a time limit. "Your psychiatric evaluations have been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the Academy Hospital, yours at 1400" -- he looked at Jack, then Daniel -- "and yours at 1500. Although they are assessments, they are perforce informal, and I hope you will both consider them an opportunity for counseling. You'll be at liberty thereafter until your teammates return, although I suggest, Colonel, that you use some of that time to clear the paperwork that accumulated while you were offworld."

"Yes, sir."

"Secondly -- Doctor Jackson, I give you my assurance that when the current situation on P5K-732 has been resolved we will continue our initial discussion from the point at which I cut you off, either in private or with the colonel's participation, at your discretion."

Daniel's head dipped to an angle of close listening or consideration, and came up in two short nods. "Thank you, General."

Hammond nodded in return, then addressed them both. "Eric Melton delivered a device to me at the conclusion of his team debriefing three hours ago. First Sergeant Tuchman identified the device as the one her team had Aird Egru substitute for the device they destroyed. Doctor Melton is now in custody."

Daniel said, "Sir, he left a collection of notes that I'd like to discuss with you before his case is reviewed."

"I'm aware of that file, Doctor Jackson, and I will be very interested in discussing its contents when time permits, but the preliminary review of Doctor Melton's actions concluded an hour ago."

"What'll happen to him?" Jack asked.

"His gate clearance has been permanently revoked, he's been relieved of his team, and once he leaves this facility he will not be permitted to return under any circumstances. As he is no longer on active duty with the Army National Guard, military court is not an available recourse, which in this case is to our advantage for several reasons. One, as you're well aware, is discretion; another is the matter of Doctor Melton's potential future contributions to this program." Hammond glanced at his notebook screen, his fingertips swirling a piece of paper in small circles on his desk. "Plans have been under way for several months to establish a more humanities-oriented department within the Groom Lake facility. The current consensus is to employ Doctor Melton there."

"You're sending him to Area 51?" Jack said at the same time Daniel sat up and said, "Humanities?"

"For lack of a better term for diplomacy, economics, history, anthropology and so on, yes, and that's the way it works sometimes, Jack. If we release him back into the civilian community, we'll have to ride herd on a disgruntled, unemployed professor who is almost guaranteed to violate his nondisclosure agreement at some point. If we transfer him to a position where he can continue his work, we can benefit from that work and keep a close eye on him."

"He's going to see that that's exactly what you're doing," Daniel said.

"He's going to agree to the alternative that best serves his interests."

"So he conspires to screw us and he gets a treat," Jack said -- bitter despite what Daniel had said, despite what he'd said himself about it being Hammond's call, despite the dark tone in Hammond's last statement. The consequences of turning the transfer down would be harsh -- but if he accepted the transfer, he'd avoid most of the punishment.

"He'll be taking a considerable pay cut," Hammond said, "his security clearance will be drastically curtailed, and his working conditions will be, in my opinion, considerably less invigorating."

"But he's brilliant and we can't afford to lose him," Daniel said, at the same time Jack was saying, "But it'll keep him sweet."

"About this new department," Daniel said. "How closely will the staff be working with us? How much support will they be giving us, how will it be structured, what -- "

"When I have answers to those questions, Doctor Jackson, you will be among the first, if not the first, to know."

"You're not putting Melton in charge of this thing," Jack said.

"As a matter of fact, higher would like to see you in that position, Doctor Jackson."

Daniel shook his head; Jack couldn't tell if it was surprise or an instant no. No, he thought. No. No. No. Daniel didn't want to spearhead the investigation of Melton's theory. On their way to the commissary Daniel had delivered that disk to Kearny without a word about running back to 732 in search of Omoroca's ghost. Jack had listened as two slugs whizzed past his ear and thunked harmlessly into the wall, and now Hammond was opening up with a fifty-cal.

"I am resistant to the idea, to put it mildly," Hammond said, "but under the circumstances I should make you aware that an offer may be pending."

Fine, not Hammond with the fifty-cal; higher with the howitzer. Or was it Hammond? The general hadn't looked at him, the general was looking away from Daniel to check his computer screen again, but 'under the circumstances,' what did that mean? Under circumstances in which Daniel might no longer be comfortable working with him? He'd said neither of them would be kicked off the team, but was this his way of letting Daniel know that his ticket out was in the mail? God damn it --

"It's flattering that they'd consider me," Daniel said, "but it might save some time if you let them know that I won't voluntarily leave active gate duty."

"You'd still be cleared for offworld activity, most likely with a team at your disposal," Hammond said, "but I'm afraid this is yet another matter we'll have to discuss at a later time." He pulled his eyes away from his screen and swiveled in his chair to take a containment box off the shelf behind him. "A diplomatic mission to P5K-732 is scheduled to depart in forty-five minutes." He opened the box. "This is the device that Doctor Melton handed over to me." The hand-size thing that he pulled out looked like a model trimaran without the mast and sail, two pontoons flanking a long, tapered central cylinder. "The first-response technology unit on duty at the time determined that it posed no imminent measurable threat. Needless to say, it did not activate upon my voice command." He set it on his desk. "Doctor Jackson, I'd like your assessment of this object, if you don't mind."

Daniel pulled his chair up closer to the desk. "What kind of assessment?"

"I'm told by SG-20 that the purported ancient artifacts you declared to be recent fakes on 732 were made of the same materials as Aird Egru's working inventions, including some doping substance that he apparently controls the manufacture of. I'd like your opinion on the authenticity of this device."

"It's not an example of the old technology, real or fake," Daniel said, leaning forward to look it over. "I think there may be an additional distinction between devices brought to the planet by the Goa'uld and devices of ancient Babilan design -- the planet's called Babil and the Goa'uld who controlled it may have -- "

"I'm aware of the material you submitted to Doctor Kearny," Hammond said. "I have a team going back to that planet in under an hour. I'm kept apprised of all relevant updates." He gestured at the little trimaran.

Daniel reached out and picked it up.

"Oh," he said. His eyes went distant, as if he was focusing on some vibration or energy he could feel in the device. His hand closed tighter around the center section. "Oh wow."

"What?" Jack said.

"It's ... when I ... tuuuuuh... " His speech was slurring as it died away, as if his brain had lost the connection to his mouth. He gave a couple of hard vision-clearing blinks, then squinted at something only he could see, and then laughed, fondly, lightly -- a laugh that wasn't his at all, a breathy feminine sound that creeped Jack right the hell out.

"Daniel," he said sharply, and tugged the device out of Daniel's hands.

He could hear Daniel say "holy" something, holy crap, holy shit, they usually watched their language around the general ... he could feel his body in the chair, his hand splayed across the three sections of the trimaran ... he could see the heavy old wooden desk and Daniel and the window beyond Daniel and the framing blur of general and file cabinets ... but the area around him was a mudflat, wet silty soil under his bare feet, oozing up around his sandals, reeds tickling his bottom where he crouched, the rich smell of growth and decay, the low rushing sound of current in the river right next to him, the scent of the sluggish estuary beside him, slow waters meandering to the river where the two beloved figures crouched unaware of --

"Wo," he said softly, shifting his grip on the thing to put it back on the desk, one hand on each outrigger, and he was on the riverbank, he was the man showing his boy how to rig and trim the sail, he was the boy watching half in awe and half in frustrated eagerness to be allowed to do it himself, his small fingers fumbling around the big slow patient fingers of his father, learning by feel as much as sight, he could feel the flutter of those little fingers around his and the pride as he felt them find the trick of the last knot, he was the pride and excitement of the boy launching the boat into the river and the pleasure and worry of the man who knew how quickly the fun could end if the toy got snagged somewhere they couldn't reach and he was the boy jumping up as the current caught the little boat and running down the riverbank to follow it, smooth stones and squishy mud under his feet and cattails whipping his bare shins, and he watched his beautiful brown boy speed along the riverbank, leaping and racing, his precious otter-child laughing and shining in the sun, he was laughing and shouting in delight and gesturing to his father and he was waving encouragement and smiling while his body took a tense step forward, don't fall, don't trip, watch where you're going --

The general's office solidified around him, a druggy bloom of saturation and texture before it settled back into normal, and Daniel was straightening up with the trimaran in the hand he'd pulled his jacket sleeve down over.

"It's not doing it now," Daniel said. "The fabric muffles it."

"Crap," Jack said, flooded with an afterswell of emotion, and pushed the heel of his hand against his forehead. The kid ... the dad ... He pressed harder, closed his eyes tight, waited for it to pass.

"What happened?" Hammond said, looking from one of them to the other.

Jack looked at Daniel, shook his head -- not ready to talk yet. The vivid intensity of that simple scene had touched memories he went nowhere near except in the quietest times at home, the smell of the dope, the smooth balsa wood, putting the remote into his little hands, kneeling behind him and reaching around to help him control it, the two of them spinning slowly in the insect-buzzing grass while the little airplane droned around and around overhead.

"It's a, a ... a memory," Daniel said. "A mother, watching her husband help her son launch ... well, this, or something like it, a little boat, it had a sail. She's crouched down in the reeds watching them while they put the boat in the river. The boy chases it down the riverbank, and she laughs because her husband's so, so -- so worried, the way he stands up and starts to follow, it's so typical of him, always seeing all the ways things could go wrong, but he lets the boy run free anyway and she loves him for that, loves -- both -- " He scrubbed at his face with his bare hand. "Sorry. It was very vivid."

"I only got a flash of the mom," Jack said. He dropped his hand and cleared his throat hard. "I think she's the middle section. I got the dad. And the kid. You were holding the middle of it."

"Yeah." Daniel examined the device, turning it to look at the bottom, bringing it up for a closer look at the struts connecting the sections, then set it back down on Hammond's desk and sat in his chair -- all the way back, pushing his hand out of his sleeve, bare palms laid on the wooden chair arms, grabbing back onto this reality. "It's a memory device. A recording of a happy moment in a family's life."

"I thought their technology didn't work on us."

"It doesn't, sir. It didn't. I can't explain this."

"So this one isn't a fake?"

"It's not ancient, but it's not ... well, how do you define 'fake'? It works. It's not scored or aged to look old, there's no evident attempt to make it resemble the old technology, Babilan or Oannian, so it doesn't appear to be a deliberate forgery. The shape may reflect the contents -- it could be modeled after that little boat so they'll know it contains the memory of that day they were playing with the little boat. But its function is probably modeled after the device Nem used on us. The same way the translation device I helped with was meant to be an improvement on the design of the old translators. I'd say Aird Egru made it."

Jack looked at him and Daniel looked back, a slow, silent exchange as the implications came home.

"The thing is," Daniel said carefully, "I got no sense that the mother was aware she was being recorded."

"Same here," Jack said.

"So I don't think it's something she commissioned. It came to be recorded some other way. Accidently or covertly."

"Little thought-cubes," Jack said, the way you'd say and you said the rain'd hold off 'til Friday.

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"Eyes and ears," Jack said.

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"Everywhere," Jack said.

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"Doctor Jackson?" Hammond said, with an edge to it, a warning to put him back in the loop.

"You said the fakes were made by Aird Egru," Daniel said. "As a revenue generator, I'm assuming, because locals will buy them to trade with the people who come through the gate looking for cool stuff. But the ones that are meant to look like the cool old stuff are only fake cool-old-stuff. They're working new stuff. And they could be surveillance devices that he's distributed throughout the entire population."

"According to the first-response team, this object does not emit any energy whatsoever," Hammond said. "If it's broadcasting, it's not doing it on any wavelength we can measure."

"I don't think they do broadcast. They just hold the information."

"To be retrieved by ... someone ... later," Hammond said.

"Bread cast upon the waters," Jack said -- in a low, bitter voice, more miserable the closer this came to what he knew, and he knew Daniel knew, it was coming around to. "Some comes back tenfold, some comes back birdshit."

"And some he casts other places," Daniel said softly, and looked at Jack.

"All right," Hammond said, picking up the phone. "This will give the diplomatic team more to work with than we thought, and also requires an advisory, so hold the rest of the -- " His intercom buzzer interrupted him, and he hit the speaker button, and his aide said that Doctor Fraiser was on line two and it was urgent. He pressed the button for that line and said his name.

Jack looked at Daniel. Daniel's eyes were scared and fierce and stubborn, that burning immovable stubbornness that was half petulant and half dangerous as hell.

It wasn't the look Daniel got when he didn't want to do what he knew you were going to ask him to do. It was the look Daniel got when you were about to do something to him.

Daniel had fully expected Hammond to leave Jack in command because Daniel believed that as long as Jack didn't confess to his feelings Hammond would never know he had them, and the feelings were what would make it or break it. Daniel didn't know what Jack knew: that Hammond had Command ESP and if he didn't know the score already -- if he hadn't known for months, years, as long as Jack had known -- he'd suss it out within a few days. Maybe Tuchman destroyed the recording of the trial, maybe she destroyed a copy or there were other copies stashed in Egru's mansion, maybe there was no recording and he was jumping to conclusions; either way, here he was, smack up against the thing he'd been avoiding all day, the thing he knew he was going to have to do, the thing that would sink him -- the thing that Daniel was ready to leave the team to make sure he never did.

If he did it, he'd be crapping on Daniel, same as Daniel would be crapping on him if he left the team.

If he didn't, he'd be withholding intel from his CO, and maybe that intel was irrelevant, and maybe it wasn't, but that wasn't his call to make, and if Hammond was going to hear this out loud from somebody, it was damn well going to be him, not some dweeb from the Woodrow Wilson School, sure as hell not Aird Egru himself in a last-ditch scramble to save his ass from his own government.

Both their pagers buzzed.

Hammond said, "Yes, they're right here."

Their eyes stayed locked.

Hammond said, "I see."

Jack dragged his gaze away from Daniel with an effort and looked down to check his pager. Infirmary. No surprise.

Hammond said, "I understand. Right away, Doctor."

Jack sat up straight, took a breath, looked up.

Hammond pushed the button to release that line but held on to the receiver.

Jack said, "Sir." It wasn't You have my attention, sir. It was the beginning of a statement.

Hammond said, "Doctor Fraiser has identified a nerve agent in the substance you brought back. It does not appear to be a neurotoxin, but as a precaution, you are both to report to the medical isolation unit immediately."

Fuck me. It was the fucking lube. Jack said, "Sir, if Aird Egru -- "

"That's why that memory thing worked for us," Daniel said. Cutting him off, trying to run him off the road. "That goop did something to our nervous systems to compensate for the neurological differences -- "

"And if one could play back then there's a damn good chance another could record," Jack said, stating the now-obvious too harshly, twisting the wheel to take the road back. "Sir -- "

"Colonel," Hammond said. "Doctor." He made a palms-up 'on your feet' gesture, one palm filled with the phone, and closed that hand to bring the receiver to his ear as the other hand reached for the buttons.

Talking as fast as Daniel was moving for the door, Jack stood and said, "Sir, if Aird Egru was able to bug the trialroom with -- "

"Colonel O'Neill." The words weren't loud, but they carried the full force of authority, punched out from the diaphragm. The accompanying stare drilled Jack through the concrete, silencing him, and when Hammond spoke again it was with the measured drawl of emphasis: "I understand the implications. I will take care of this. You are dismissed."

Jack blinked hard a couple of times, his pupils so dilated that the room strobed. The dismissal knocked out the manual overrides required to force out what he was trying to say, and conditioning kicked in and he walked to the door Daniel was holding open. He barely saw the corridor. In the elevator, Daniel said nothing, just stood with his hands in his pockets and his head so far back his hair brushed the wall, his angry-but-restraining-himself pose, staring at the top of the elevator door. Jack hit 21 and got off first when they got there. It felt wrong to have Daniel following him down the hall, as if they'd stepped through the gate into a potentially hostile situation and he should have assigned someone else to take point so he could bring up the rear.

Fraiser wasn't there and the section duty nurse wouldn't or couldn't answer questions, just directed them into the isolation unit from behind his mask. Jack hated this room -- the heat and reek and hum of too much electronic equipment working overtime in too small an area, the psychic shadows of too many good people strapped down sick and confused and terrified, the aural water torture of bleeps and plinks from the extra monitors, the looming presence of the observation room above. His loathing was familiar, calming. The sounds and smells helped him pull his shit together. He sucked in a lungful of the recycled air and within a few seconds felt almost normal. Should bottle this stuff, he thought.

They changed into paper scrubs behind a screen and got into the beds because nobody had made allowance for ambulatory patients at this level of medical quarantine. Jack cranked his as upright as it would go, supplemented with pillows, and had a pile of work brought up to him. "There's my forklift now," he said when a suitably suited nurse attendant came in with the armful of stuff an airman had delivered. Daniel didn't laugh. A few minutes later one of his staff assistants showed up with his laptop. He cranked his bed flat and lay on his belly playing an electronic version of some Egyptian game.

"Too pissed to work," Jack said after a while, to his papers. "That's pretty pissed."

"Too noble to keep your mouth shut," Daniel said, to his screen. "That's pretty stupid."

Wow. Excessively pissed. "I never was the sharpest sandwich on the tree."

Daniel paused over the game, blinked once, then shook his head and went back to stroking and tapping the trackpad, moving pegs around.

Still not laughing.

Breathe, Jack thought.

Daniel didn't hear him.

Maybe he'd been thinking it at himself.

Fraiser finally came in. Not in full hazmat, but masked and gloved and goggled. Said a whole bunch of stuff about neurotransmitters and ion channels, what they'd ingested transdermally was a near-isomer of a virulent toxin, not a contact hazard so far but she didn't trust it not to change into something that was. She asked who they'd been in physical contact with since their return; Daniel said no one skin-to-skin, Jack said Nurse Ivey when she took the grabbers out of his hand and thought how weirdly rare it was that folks around here exchanged so much as a handshake. He asked about persistent nerve agents like VX, and Fraiser said the mechanisms were similar but reiterated that in its current form this substance wasn't at all poisonous. Daniel asked about nanotechnology, and she said that she didn't believe that the substance had programmable qualities but their screening procedures were unreliable and she couldn't rule it out. Right now all the substance appeared to be doing was amplifying certain neurological processes, which was consistent with what Hammond had relayed to her about their interaction with the devices. Their acetylcholine and several monoamine levels were abnormally but not dangerously high, and lower than they were last night; if the levels continued to decline -- at the same rate, and back to normal but no further -- they should be clear in a few hours.

"So what's next?" Jack said. "Shaved heads, electrodes, MRIs, PET scans?"

"You're not test subjects, Colonel. You're here to be monitored. If all goes well, the substance won't be active long enough for anybody to learn anything anyway."

She was talking with her back to him, checking one of the machines. The casualness of the body language and the tone of her voice and the way she phrased the statement sparked a connection across the very neurons they were discussing, and Jack stared at the back of her head for a second too long, thinking: You're keeping us away from the NID, too. And the guys from that other special section at Groom Lake, the one nobody-but-nobody was supposed to know about -- the guys who'd had a cell earmarked for Teal'c from Day One, the guys who came in their pants every time the SGC had a shot at capturing a snake. They'd found out about this, that fast, and bells were dinging and they were drooling all over their bibs. Or they were about to, and Fraiser had taken what steps she could to head them off.

He pulled his gaze away before it got any more Significant than it already had, and chanced a quick glance at Daniel. Couldn't tell if he'd picked up on it. Keeping his head down if he had, not giving it away.

Rarely so much as a handshake in this place, but every day, every hour a dozen small touches that said I've got your back.


(continues here)



Prompted by sid, princessofgeeks did a lovely commentfic remix of one part of the trial from Daniel's point of view (originally at LJ).